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The Rationale Quest - All decisions should be made at the lowest level possible- (Subsidiarity)
Explore the latent response of philosophy and philosophy to the global economic arena.
Early posts include the study of heresies in the early church and the problems of Liberalism and Raw Capitalism in our times
An economy with a split personality
Do we have Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde President
President Obama told the American people in his State of the Union message that America is Back. He says this while the poverty rate is breaking records in many major cities across the country.
What kind of man would talk like he does when so many people are suffering.
Health care costs are climbing too with many who where many who could afford to go to the doctor, now have to ration their health care.
What kind of political parties let these things continue under a masks of celebrating something that does not exist.
What kind of politicians fund large enterprises with taxpayers money while ignoring all the real possibilities of working from the bottom up fostering micro loans to all. Just funding one end of the economy, creates an unfair competitive situation.
What kind of leaders who fostered free trade, ignore the fact that free trade is the major cause behind our economic crisis.
President Obama should be challenged with his bailing out big money, the banks and the investment community without doing nothing to help those at the bottom and those who would be happy to get just a small micro loan to start up a business. The Small Business Administration is a laugh. It has existed for many years and has not accomplished much of anything.
I never thought so many would vote more at the cash register line than in the voting booth. I never thought workers would shop their way out of their jobs. I never thought taxpayers would fund research and development and then let the production phase go somewhere else in the world. I never thought we would chop up our economy and spread it around the world in a hopeless fashion.
I never thought we would give away the golden goose that laid the golden eggs. Instead of giving just the eggs away, we ended up killing the golden goose that lays them.
If free trade had to be ratified by a popular vote, it is obvious that none of the free trade agreements would have passed. Yet, the workers stood back and watch it all happen. The Occupy Wall Street goes after the money changers and the investment community but even in the midst of the protests, President Obama passed three more trade bills and even calling them job bills. He got away with it. How could the protesters let this happen.
Workers had no voice in the creation of free trade but when they finally get a chance to voice their concerns, they ignored free trade which is the major cause behind our economic crisis.
And no one asks Who said we had to compete like this with one another for the same jobs in an economic arena and why ?
It is obvious that free trade did not evolve in any natural economic fashion but was driven by power forces outside the will of the people.
See Trade Traps
The private sector production workers unions have been virtually gone for years but they are still being blamed for our economic crisis.
Now, Conservative Republicans and some of the media are pushing for Right to Work laws. This surrounds the problem of workers having to pay union dues if they work in a union shop.
Political leaders and the media still blur the issue since most of the major unions like the AFL CIO primarily consist of public sector government workers and not production workers. It is obvious that even when unions were strong and arrogant, all workers were better off including non-union workers.
Unions still represent one of the best channels in the pursuit of the life ideal and the proper balancing of human nature in a very competitive economic
world. It is about bringing Sunday worship into the work week and about doing unto others as you would have them do to you. If you separate these things and put them in separate categories, we will never evolve into communities the way they should be.
The private sector production workers unions are virtually gone. They have been wiped out by selfish interests with the production middle class workers
being wiped out for the sake of financial and investment entities that do not
know how to connect to fair play and the life ideal for all in a society.
Pope Leo's Rerum Novarum encyclical about owners and workers stood the
test of time for more than a hundred years. It endorses the the gathering of workers as one for the sake of seeking the life ideal for all as one
This would include the payment of union dues as one. The current drive for the so called Right to Work laws just is another way to degrade the value of workers, labor and human dignity.
Free trade came and smashed this into pieces. The Republican conservatives played a major role in this devastation of human dignity in the workday.
I do not trust Republican conservatives when they start talking about
unions. They pursue the order of things in a confused state especially when they do the talk without ever doing the walk.
Here are some essential points to consider before talking about the so
called right to work.
1. The private sector production union workers are virtually gone. They
have been wiped out by the surge of free trade which has nothing to do with fair play or the enhancement of human dignity in the workplace. Free trade has deflated and degraded the value of workers and labor down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor. It can be described as our slave trade of our times. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can go to Saturday or Sunday worship and the let this happen during the work week.
2. It is obvious that no matter how arrogant unions were in the past, our economy was much better off than it is now.
3. In the past, the money changers even used unions to knock out small business. This was just another tool for radical Capitalists to capture markets. Another tool big companies used were spending years selling products under costs to capture market share. Many companies make the value of their stock the main priority of their business venture rather than making money by a reasonable mark up on the products they make or sell.
Fair trade laws have been on the books for years but our court systems
do not even know how to used them or enforce them. There is an unnatural environment on how business ethics and what their basic mission should be. The basic mission is based on pursuing the life ideal for all in society.
If you partition these things in a a sophist way for utilitarian good, we will
continue to have an economic mess on our hands and growing working poor class.
4. The mixing of the meaning of unions into the government workers sector is part of the problem. The private sector union workers represent a distinct
element and can not be put under same umbrella with the public sector workers unions. This major distinction is rarely made in the discussion of unions in general. Only about 15 percent of the AFL-CIO are private sector production workers. About 50 percent or more are public sector government workers. It is improper to speak about major unions like the AFL-CIO in any given thought process as one union of workers. Added to this shoddy thinking is the fact that about 25 percent of the AFL-CIO are retail and service workers who definitely are left out of the American Dream with many needing government subsidies to survive. Employers like Walmart has carried the betrayal of workers to even lower level. They represent the worst case scenario in the degradation of workers and labor
President Roosevelt altered the face of our economy when he ushered in
ceiling prices during World War 2, This launched a "lost leader" economy where the markup of individual products became a collage of confusion. Before any discussions in our economic world we need to fist clear this confusion. Republican conservatives were one of the first to take advantage of the confusion for their selfish interest outside the common good of the people.
I grew up in a family business and found out about unions and unfair trade this at a very early age . I had more than twenty years of experience in the food business before I was thirty. I also serviced the last of the large family supermarkets where I saw all the tricks of big money chains taking out real fair play enterprises. I worked in several factories while going to college and saw the deep void between the college classroom and the factory floors. Neither side understood what the other side was thinking. I had some of the best Jesuits ever teaching me philosophy and ethics but most of them
just didn't get it when it came to what was happening in the workplace
and the value of workers and labor.
I saw the activities of unions from this perspective and later on from
the perspective of management. We drove through tough strike lines to keep utilities like the phone and gas companies going. I was part of a negotiating managing team when workers tried to unionize for the first time. I had a burning 2 x 4 waved at my head by workers who very jobs I was trying to save. After all of these experiences, I know unions are more in tune with human dignity in the workday than the owners and money changers that
control our corporations. Corporations are treated as if they are more important than the dignity of workers.
A vice president once told me he made the same spiritual retreats
as I did but I had to face facts about the real world in the workday and how our economic system plays out. His life was a contradiction that I could not live.
We need to break down all these partitions and start discussions on every
level about the pursuit of the life ideal. The discussion about the so called Right to Work laws is a good place to start. We need to stop making workers commodities in a global economic arena where they are put on a global trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs down to the lowest levels of wage slave and even child labor.
Ray Tapajna
Resource Tapsearch Com Unions
Ray Tapajna Pages - Journey in the fields of broken dreams
Parasite Economics continues
The very people who caused the major problem of our times
are now the ones who have been bailed out by President Obama and then have the gall to be on Super Committees and pushed for austerity measures. On top of that , we have governors like Governor Kasich of Ohio who are granting tax breaks and incentives to larger companies to stay or come to the state supposedly to create new jobs. Governor Kasich was one of the Contract with America Republicans who pushed the passage of free trade agreements that stole our economy from us. Free trade was a failure from the beginning and it has subtracted trillions of dollars from the value of our economy and our workers. People like Governor Kasich made their fortunes from the process.
When the free trade bills were passed in 1994, politicians like Governor Kasich and House Speaker New Gingrich told workers and small businesses who lost out due to free trade that they would get help. They virtually got nothing. It turned out to be a lie as millions of workers lost their jobs and thousands of companies went out of business due to free trade.
Time to Occupy All Streets
Instead of getting any help, President Obama follows the fallout by
bailing out those who caused the problems and put them back in charge of the process. We all know if free trade had to be ratified by a popular vote, virtually none of the bills would have passed. Still, the globalist free traders keep trying to keep the failed free trade system afloat.
Now they are trying to create jobs out of nothing and giving the companies that are still in business tax incentives to stay put or move their companies to different states. This money comes out of the pockets of those who are still able to pay taxes. Those who lost their jobs or businesses get nothing.
It is a new version of the "take away" economy that is waiting for the next economic bubble to burst. It is a shell game and a juggling exercise by politicians and big money interests that caused the problems in the first place. The play the game hoping to buy time but that time has run out.
People like Newt Gingrich and others who you feature are part of the
problem and not part of the solution.
Gingrich did not even mention or list free trade in his Contract
with America even though it was a life changing event for most of us.
Many lost everything it took a lifetime to accumulate. All those who
lost their jobs or businesses due to free trade were supposed to receive
some help. It never came as the "take away" economy is being lit more by foolish tax breaks that will not amount to much of anything. The real jobs are gone. The value of labor and workers has been deflated, degraded and devalued. The only way back is to restore the the economic models from the past. Only local value added economies work. Free trade has more than a twenty year history of failures.
By Ray Tapajna Occupying All Streets
A Strange Brew of Religion, Philosophy, Wars and Economics
President Clinton said it all depends on what your meaning of "is", is. In his land of "is", he bombed Iraq consistently with no definition of what these attacks were all about. I recall seeing a news program showing a female Navy Officer controlling the board on the ship launching missiles into Iraq during the 1990s and I wonder why no one in the U.S. seem to be upset.
President Clinton later started the Balkans Wars to stop ethic cleansing. However in doing this he did it himself. More than 700,000 Serbians and Gypsies had to flee for their lives from Bosnia and other parts of the Balkans. They fled to Serbia and Kosovo. In Kosovo they were bombed by U.S. planes. There is constant conflict now in Kosovo with the Serbians being pushed out of the region.
During the war, President Clinton invited "Arab Freedom Fighters" to Bosnia to help out. Many of these "Freedom Fighters later became terrorists with some being part of the terrorists who attacked the trade centers on 9/11/2001.
Behind the scenes during the 1990s, the economic crisis was brewing in the U.S.A. as President Clinton joined with Republicans to pass the NAFTA and GATT free trade agreements which stole the American Dream away from workers as their jobs were shipped outside of the U.S.
When President Bush ran for president, he continued to mix a strange brew of religion, theology and philosophy. He was asked who is favorite philosopher was and he said Jesus was. Jesus was never a philosopher. Philosophy is the study of being as being. Jesus claimed to be all being and asked all to take his claim to heart and soul. Obviously, he never mixed in wars and terrorism in his mission on earth. Philosophy is a study of life based on rationale thought and stops at the door of Faith. Jesus said, knock on the door of Faith and I will open it for you.
Jesus is all about is salvation. He came to save us from ourselves. He demonstrated his powers of miracles in raising people from dead and performing miraculous healing. He then gave himself up as the ultimate sacrifice of all times. He gave us a supernatural look at life and not a study of being as being.
President Bush contradicted Jesus being when he used jingoism like "shock and awe wars" that lit up Baghdad like a 4th of July celebration for all the world to see on TV. Behind all the bright explosions were innocent people being killed. He lied about the Weapons of Mass Destruction when many of us knew, Iraq had none since 1992.
He hid our economic mess behind all of this as he pressed for more of NAFTA, GATT and Fast Track to ship more jobs outside of the country.
Instead proclaiming the WTO , he let it take control over the flow of wealth.
While he was supposedly fighting for democracy in other countries, he ignored the fact that the WTO was enacted outside the will of the people and outside of any real democratic process.
With Fast Track, he made the executive branch of our government the CEO of so called free trade with workers being the main commodities being traded. Workers are put on a world trading block to compete with one another for the same jobs down to the levels of wage slave and even child labor.
I wonder how presidents in general can visit hunger centers without
connecting the problem with government. Hunger is not something that is separate from government policies. Hunger is the result of it.
President Obama followed and bail out big money and married it to big government and put big money back in charge of the process. He ignored the suffering of all who lost their jobs with many losing everything due to
free trade. No one seems to want to talk about it. Even while the Occupy
protests were going on, President Obama passed three more free trade bills calling them "job bills."
Jesus was not philosophical about any of this He just said, - the last shall be first. This indicates how many of our recent presidents have ignored
the order of things. It is time to Occupy All Streets and Free Trade and not only Wall Street.
Tapsearch Super Links - Tapsearch Com Network -
The inversion of values and the need for an economic conversion of conscience
Occupy Wall Street movement please note....
In support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, I try to co-op with people who hold different political views. It is not an easy task especially when the far left goes after the far right and vice versa and I as a Populist Conservative have written off many of these political rants as just being dysfunctional.
Many in the Occupy Wall Street movement still ignore the new "ism" of Globalism that has arrived on the world scene under the cover of free trade.
Wall Street and big money interests use free trade as their major tools trying to create economies based on making money on money instead of making things.
If Occupy Wall Street movement ignores the issue of free trade as the major cause behind our economic crisis not much good will be realized from their efforts. I have not voted for either party for years because both have betrayed the dignity of workers and labor. There is only one major party in the USA now and it should be called the Globalist Free Trader party.
Raw Capitalism and Socialism are now one. It is State Capitalism with the Federal Government bailing out big money which subsequently bails out
free trade in the process. The Federal Reserve Bank, as a "shadow government" also played their game in secretly covering the losses of some banks and investment houses. Trying to define what this new "ism" is all about is a difficult thing to do. It is a strange mixture of Raw Capitalism, Communism, Socialism and Totalitarianism for the sake of making money outside the will of the people and the real Free Enterprise System.
Recently, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the largest newspaper in Ohio, USA did an article about the Sir James Goldsmith who was a corporate raider. Usually corporate raiders buy companies for pennies on the dollar, sell off their assets and the put the company up for sale. The story in the Plain Dealer tells how Goldsmith won control of Goodyear Tire and then suddenly changed his mind about taking over Goodyear as a corporate raider. Stuart Warner the writer gives no explanation why Goldsmith changed his mind. The story was on several pages of the newspaper but the explanation was missing . The story also left out the what happened to Sir James Goldsmith after the attempted take over .
Sir James Goldsmith had an economic conversion of conscience during this period.He changed to a person who fought for the human dignity in the workday for the rest of his life. He wrote the book The Trap which centers on the priorities
in society and workers dignity. He told how we have forgotten the purpose of the economy. The purpose is to enrich and create a stable society. He said the deflating the value of labor was a bad mistake. He was against free trade and international organizations like the WTO which conducted business in secret and sought to control the flow of wealth throughout the world. He was against industrial and trans-national giant agricultural corporations that devastated farming families and farming communities. He called our dysfunctional economics as an "inversion of values" where instead of measuring the well-being of mankind and the social stability of society, we are pressing for economies and that cause such things as urban slums and environmental decay. In his testimony to the U.S. Senate in 1994 he told how the GATT free trade agreement would create massive unemployment in the U.S. He said lower skilled workers would be treated as disposable commodities. ( As it happened, all workers in our time are now just became disposable commodities in a free trade world. ) He was very concerned about the fact 4 billion people will work for close to nothing. His book The Trap actually predicted the coming of our economic crisis as it is today.
After his transformation during the Goodyear situation, he created a populist movement in both England and France and started a new political party in England to fight the against free trade and the globalists. He was not for protectionism but for a sane economy that set the priorities in a society. He ran for high office in England with this as his platform. If he would have lived longer, the world would be a much better place today and we would have escaped some of the economic horrors of our times.
Being involved with the tire industrial community for many years, I experienced the destruction of the U.S. tire industry directly. As a national accounts manager to all of Firestone accounts, I completed an annual blanket order with a handshake during a lunch paid by the purchasing agent. There were no written contracts. There was only a verbal agreement.
I also was a trouble shooter supplier for General Tire for more than ten years. I also called on Goodyear for many years and all the other rubber companies in Akron area. These companies lost the war with free trade. It was not about ordinary financial concerns or streamlining operations. It came down to the disposal of middle class workers for the sake of cheaper labor abroad. Wall Street played a big part in all of this but it still is not the full cause of our economic crisis. It came down to the betrayal of workers and the betrayal of the free enterprise system.
We all have to take the blame for this. We let it happen as we shopped our way out of our jobs. All who drive foreign made cars added to the economic mess. We gave billions of taxpayers' dollars to foreign auto manufacturers to build their assembly plants in the U.S. For example, the State of Indiana, when all is said and done, paid Honda $160 million dollars to build their assembly plant in their state. Honda employs 5,000 workers but must have replaced at least four times that number of former middle class auto workers in the process. During this time, another 20,000 auto parts workers lost their jobs in the state. There are many more similar examples like this in many other industries and in farming.
All of us need to have an economic conversion experience. Even during the most active times in the Occupy Wall Street protests, President Obama passed three new free trade agreements. In Korea the people came out in mass to protest the the new agreement with them. No one seem to care in the U.S.A including the Occupy Wall Street movement. There virtually no opposition. President Obama even called the passing of these trade bills - job bills.
Free trade is the major cause of our economic crisis. If Wall Street did not have this as a tool, most of our financial problems would not exist. It comes down to this. If free trade agreements had to be ratified by a popular vote, it fair to say none of them would have passed. And I doubt there would have been a need for an Occupy Wall Street protest. The value of labor would have been high enough to support all needed government services. Occupy Wall Street movement should stress that all decisions should be made at the lowest possible level.
A massive big centralize government doesn't work especially in the new "ism" of Globalism
See Trade Traps
The Occupy Wall Street movement is beginning to define itself, but still leave out a very important part
By Ray Tapajna
Even while the Occupy Wall Street protests were spreading across America, the issue of free trade was left out of the picture. President Obama passed three free trade bills during this time. In Korea, there were massive crowds protesting the free trade bill related to them.
Here in the USA a few connected with free trade as the major cause behind the economic mess across America and the world. It must be noted both major parties joined as one when the NAFTA and GATT free trade agreements were passed. Even Rush Limbaugh, who was at his height of power of influence joined hands with President Clinton for the passage of free trade. NAFTA and GATT represent the the most massive dislocation of jobs in U.S. history.
Why protest about big money controlling the flow of wealth if free trade is not directly a part of it. Free trade is not trade in the first place. It is about moving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor. The former CEO of GE says factories should be on barges so they can be moved again and again for the sake of cheaper wages.
The financial community divorced itself from production phase of our economy and used free trade as only a tool for the sake of growing money values. The value of labor and workers was deflated to increase the value of paper money.
It did not work because the value of labor is a better money standard than the value of money transactions. The bottom fell out because of this. Speculative investments bottom out. The cutting of the value of labor and workers reached a point where the values of labor reached a point where it can not be cut any further without affecting the value of money and all the government services in place.
In the 1990s, companies were bought and sold as if they were commodities.
A investor would come and buy a company and strip out top management. They then moved corporate headquarters to cut the ties to all local influences. Speculators than had the freedom to do anything they want. They could start things going again or sell the company after creating a good looking balance sheet. They could cut all the workers they wanted and move production outside of the USA and call it trade. The stocks climb with investments separated from production.
What happened when this all plays out and there is nothing left to cut and a corporation has to make it in a real world where mark up products becomes the priority again. When all the money games played out, President Obama
bailed out the money community and put them back in charge again. The only process gets a boost but it can only last a short time before the real economic balances need to conform with doing business in a true free enterprise way.
When things start catching up with the process, there is no longer any process left to sell the company and create something out of nothing.
This is why free trade can not be left out of the Occupy Wall Street protests. It is the tool of the Globalist Free Traders. All societies are also finding out that workers can not be used as tools in the games of Raw Capitalism. The Occupy Wall Street movement needs to plug this is in. To go directly at Wall Street is a good starting point but Wall Street uses free trade as their tool.
See Occupy Wall Street defines itself but leaves out the issue of free trade
Big money gets bailed out and put back in charge while the suffering of workers is ignored
He says we have to be more competitive in the global economic arena
By Ray Tapajna
I am going through Rerum Novarum again . Rerum Novarum is an economic encyclical by Pope Leo issued in 1891. It covers many thing related to human dignity in the work day. It stood the test of time for more than a 100 years as a standard for workers' rights, ownership etc. It supported the right of workers to organize for the sake of fair living wages. It has been thrashed in recent times by both liberals and conservatives. Both major parties in the U.S. have participated in the degradation of human dignity in the workday through free trade and I wonder why we all let it happen. Free trade has proved to be the tool of Raw Capitalism.
I can not understand how people of good will like Gov. Kasich
and Senator Portman from our state, led the way in the betrayal of workers dignity through free trade. They allowed the degradation of the value of labor and workers and still want to do more. Gov. Kasich pushed the passage of a bill limiting government workers unions. The people rose up and got a referendum for ratification of the bill by a popular vote. The people voted it down.
The bill was an assault on the value and dignity of labor and work. Workers are not property. Free trade and globalization have "commoditized' them as if they were. Workers are not tools of capitalism. ( Re. Pope John Paul ) It is just the opposite. Capitalism should be the tool of workers to seek a better life.
On a recent presidential debate, there was a great opportunity to get into things like this but the whole panel quickly pass it by. Former Senator Rich Santorum followed Ron Paul comments about the primary rights of an individual in society. Santorum followed and told how the family holds the primary rights and delegates these rights to the state. The state do not hold power over the rights this basic family unit. Ron Paul immediately countered that before the family there is the individual and our constitution starts from there. If we lived in a more balanced society, the flow of the debate should have centered on this for a long time. It could have been the whole debate since it is the basis of all we do and say about fixing things. We need to find the starting point and go from there.
At the time I just got finished reading through Jacque Maritain's distinctions again about individuality and the personality or person and how it sets up the priorities of our society. I finally understood why Ron Paul Liberatarianism bothers me. He is too close to the Rousseau's liberalism that has harmed our society for such a long time. Individuals can claim many rights under the Constitution but as persons they are also members of a family and communities where as individuals they must subject themselves to the common good for all.
This all set the stage for me to read through Rerum Novarum again and to
try to understand why we let so many elite groupings betrayed the rights of workers. Now conservatives in our state who passed the bill to limit workers' rights, are trying to get a new Right to Work bill going. This would challenged both the private sector and government workers unions. We have had some rough lock outs in our state and a passage of a Right To Work bill most likely would lead to companies being able to lock out union workers and bring in replacement workers at much lower wages.
It is time for all to review Rerum Novarum again especially all who are in favor of human dignity in the work day. It can be read in light of Pope Benedict's economic encyclical where he emphasizes the practice of "subsidiarity" which means all decisions should be made at the lowest level possible. The people can challenge both liberals and conservatives who are responsible for the new working poor class and the underclass with these documents. Any leader who claims to be a person of good will and for the common good, would have to answer for any process that openly degrades the nature of labor and workers.
This is not the time to degrade the value of workers just because free trade smashed the middle class who were paying the toll for government services.
Workers Dignity Betrayed reference link
By Ray Tapajna
Pope Benedict uses the term subsidiarity about 12 times in his economic encyclical. It means everything should be decided at the lowest level possible. This seems to be the same priority that Phillip Blond follows. Our Ray Tapajna Chronicles forecasted our economic crisis years ago stating that only local value added economies in balanced geopolitical settings work. Our economies based on making money on money instead of making things with governments acting as brokers and dealers tied with massive transnational corporations have failed. President Obama keeps hiding this fact behind war issues just like President Bush did. It seems it is that last ditch effort by Federalists to control populations. It won't work and President Obama is just delaying what is going to happen. People will now gather into smaller groupings with something like subsidiarity leading the way.
See Sophist Health Care Link and Human Nature on trial
David Brooks and Phillip Blond apparently have heeded the call for furthering the life ideal over sophists' view of the world. Do unto others has you would have them do to you is becoming a pragmatic necessity and not just a biblical saying.
Alan Greenspan went out of his way in putting down The New Harmony Workers Community as being too idealistic for something like it to work in the real world. The New Harmony experiment is still referenced in many ways when people look for alternatives to raw centralized Capitalism which is not failing across the globe. The G 20 elite groupings meet trying to save the globalization of money and labor but they are now out of touch with what is happening in the real world. The real world is portrayed by the Occupy Wall Street protesters. They are seeking an end to the economic lunacy of the globalist free traders.
It is obvious that one size does not fit all and we should be preparing for the post globalization era where many different communities will surface. There is no reason for new ways to start out in a subsidiarity approach. Even the progressives will find decentralization is much better than centralization.
The new generation of activists with all their electronic communications are sorting out the good from the bad. They will not follow any fake prophet.
David Brooks and Phillip Blond on Patrich Deneen blogspot
By Ray Tapajna Tapart News Editor and Artist
I am a Conservative Populist and advocate for workers dignity. How can I deal with an article like the one below by an assistant editorial editor at the only major newspaper in my city. How can I respond in only 200 words they allow me in a letter to the editor. Doesn't this point to a real problem of our time? Is it Communications by rank or worst yet do workers really have any voice in the process of free trade and globalization?
I did get a letter published and you can read it after reading the article by Kevin O"Brien about the Occupy Wall Street protesters .......
Revolution in October
The ones who cart their horses and cannons off to Civil War battlefields a couple of times a year, don blue or gray and charge one another amid the rattle of musket fire do so to develop a deeper appreciation of a momentous period in this nation's history.
Participants and spectators alike know that it's not the 1860s and that a sprained ankle is about the gravest wound anyone is likely to suffer, but the re-enactors remind us of history worth remembering.
We've got another re-enactment going on right now, in the streets of cities all across the United States.
For weeks now, a handful of Americans has been re-enacting the late 1960s -- beating drums, waving placards, chanting slogans and otherwise making minor nuisances of themselves in U.S. cities. Their claim is that people who have money aren't forking it over fast enough to people who don't.
They want things like health care and college degrees for free, and they say "the rich" -- "the 1 percent" -- should be forced to provide them.
But freebies for me via taxes for thee isn't really the point, just as ending the war in Vietnam wasn't really the ultimate goal in the 1960s. Those are just tools employed to recruit enough sign-carrying dupes to garner media coverage.
(If you wonder what is meant by the well-worn term "useful idiots," Google "YouTube, Occupy Atlanta, John Lewis" to see them in hilariously ironic action.)
The real goal of Occupy Wall Street, etc., is the destruction of constitutional government and capitalism. Where we'd go from there varies according to whichever true believer is on camera or holding the bullhorn. Pure democracy? Anarchy? Socialism? Communism? They're all on the menu.
In New York, where it began, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proclaimed that Wall Street's occupiers can stay as long as they like, providing they beat, wave and chant within the law. He knows the first cold wind to whistle through Manhattan's concrete valleys will blow away his troubles.
But the protests will continue in warmer climes and it will be a surprise if they don't turn violent -- a perfectly natural course for a movement that springs from a destructive impulse.
Until that happens, the rest of us should keep score, taking careful note of which politicians support these people who despise our Constitution and preach revolution. Democratic Reps. Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur, Tim Ryan and Betty Sutton have all disqualified themselves from a return to Congress on that score. They should be judged by the company they keep.
Whatever complaints Americans have about Wall Street -- and there are legitimate complaints -- should be based on cold, hard logic, not dewy-eyed emotion.
The problem isn't "unbridled capitalism." This country has never had any such thing. The problem is government's perversion of capitalism.
The problem isn't that Congress is in Wall Street's pocket. The problem is that Wall Street is tucked away in a fortress called Congress, which works overtime writing laws to protect the favored from competition and that discourage innovation and entrepreneurship. From bailed-out banks to "green energy" pipe dreamers, they all ought to rise or fall on their merits.
The problem isn't that "the rich" are sitting on their money out of some weird malice toward 99 percent of the country. No one knows better than a person with money that active money grows, while idle money shrinks. The problem is a presidential administration with an insatiable appetite for confiscation and redistribution.
And if we have a greed problem, it's more than counterbalanced by an envy problem embodied by the people occupying this, that and the other thing, and claiming a right to the fruits of someone else's labor.
Encouraging that attitude has long been a pillar of Democratic Party politics, but Democrats who care about this country must repudiate this pernicious movement while it's still just an irritating re-enactment of the 1960s. Because the radical trade unionists, socialists and communists pulling the strings want to replay something even more evil.
It happened 94 years ago this month, in Russia.
By Kevin O'Brien, Assistant Editorial Editor, Cleveland Plain Dealer
----------------------------- ----------------------
Here is my letter the Cleveland Plain Dealer published responding to O'Brien's editorial article :
NEW GENERATION OF ACTIVISTS
*NEW GENERATION OF ACTIVISTS [ THE BOTTOM UP GENERATION ]
Kevin O'Brien should know the Occupy Wall Street protest has a new generation, which some call the "bottom up" generation. They use the Internet and all kinds of electronic devices for their news channels. They want to make all decisions from the bottom to the top. This is what Pope
Benedict suggests when he talks about "subsidiarity" in his economic encylical.
I am part of the protest, following what the pope suggests and what Lech
Walesa says. Walesa led the Solidarity movement in Poland and played a major role in the fall of the Soviet empire. He says, " I do not know that much about business or economics, but I do know that something is very wrong when 10 percent of the population controls 100 percent of the wealth." He recently said, "America has lost its way."
I am part of the protest, and I vote for the Constitution Party candidates who want to confirm the Constitution in our daily lifes.
Ray Tapajna
Cleveland
Here is what they edited out.
* The editors took out the word - possible. My original letter said ...
the Bottom Up generation want to make all decisions at the lowest
possible level.....as Pope Benedict describes the process of "Subsidiarity." .
They also left out the example I give. ---If the free trade agreements
had to be ratified by a popular vote, how many workers would vote for the trade agreements that put them out of their jobs?
This is a perfect example how workers do not have a voice in the matter and need to have a Bottom Up choice in the matter.
They also cut out my comment about Rep Marcy Kaptur who O'Brien calls a far left progressive person. This shows O'Brien does not understand who I and people like me are all about. We are Conservative Populists who hold someone like Rep Marcy Kaptur as an expert in the field of globalization and free trade even though she is a Liberal Populist .... Ross Perot asked Rep.
Marcy Kaptur to be his running mate when he ran for president. Perot certainly not a far left Progressive. ....
And this is how it goes in the Bewildered New World as coined by Manuel Castells who wrote several books about free trade and globalization - where workers have no voice in the process. Castells says if you are not part of any network, you do not exist Search under : tapsearch Bewildered New World.
Occupy Wall Street' protest in New York continues, with hundred encamped
The regular news channels reports are different from the online independent reporting. The Occupy Wall Street protestors are largely educated and organized and their marches are planned, not spontaneous. They are planning a long term protest through the winter months. People come out of college and there are no jobs. They challenge Wall Street financial manipulations as a major cause. The major media reports about 100 have been arrested so far and the police have used pepper spray. Independent media and online media reports many more being arrested and the size of the protestors are much larger than the main media reports.
Amy Goodman, who holds the respect of both liberal and conservative populists is covering the protest at her site and interviewed David Graeber, a top professor at Goldsmith' University of London
The Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths is considered to be one of the best in Europe. David Graeber, whose contract at Yale was not renewed in 2005 because of his political commitment is reportedly is recognized as an expert on economic influences in our lives. Many of the protestors reportedly follow his views.
Economies based on making money on money instead of making things are burning out
Our article - Free trade is economic cancer - Can not leave free trade out of the Wall Street protest is showing up on many blogs and sites online. We invite you to copy it to your blogs and sites or send it as a oped to news channels around the world and copy your political leaders. Feel free to add any of our Art that Talks from Toonpool which shows art on German transit systems
or from our Arklineart gallery
Free trade is economic cancer - Can not leave free trade out of Wall Street Protests
By Ray Tapajna
President Roosevelt said economic diseases are highly communicable. Free trade is economic cancer.
Economies based on making money on money instead of making things are
burning out. The investment community divorced itself from the production sector of our society many years ago. The globalists used free trade as a tool to create new money products. They thought they could make debtor nations into exporting nations and have them at least pay interest on the loans whereby they could create perpetual revenues from these nations. But it didn't work because the new money products did not replace the loss value of workers and labor. Free trade deflates the value of labor, and this value is a real asset and perhaps a much better money standard than the value of paper money and all the funny money manipulations of transactions. Degrading the value of workers and labor affects all money values and creates a negative balance. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the most massive dislocation of jobs in U.S. history including the Great Depression.
A must read is "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins.
Mainstream media tries to make him look like a quirky character, but in
reading the book, you can put aside this judgment for another time and
study the process he portrays. He shows how the money powers of the world get nations hooked on loans and then penetrate into whatever they can in terms of capturing the total resources of these countries -- or at least find a way to control the flow of wealth in these nations. If we ignore these things while going after Wall Street directly, we miss the proper sequence of cause and effect.
Free trade is a take away project. It is not trade. It primarily aboutmoving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor. The
money products represented by equity loans, home loans and credit cards
went bad because free trade came and smashed the middle class production
workers. This affected other businesses and services as a new working
poor class replaced the middle class workers. More than a decade ago,
newspapers reported that 47 percent of all small business owners maxed
out their credit cards to stay afloat. Many businesses were surprised by
the onslaught of free trade and tried to find ways to survive. Many put
their homes and other personal assets on the line trying to survive. The
same applied to all the millions who lost their jobs due to free trade.
They thought they could easily get a job of equal value but this was not
case as many waited too long in joining the working poor class. We had
record-breaking personal and business bankruptcies and record-breaking
home foreclosures making headlines more than a decade ago.
Many thought that the "Battle in Seattle" in 1998 would wake America up
to the savage assault of globalization and free trade. The protests made
a big splash, but nothing really changed. The elite money powers found
ways to control these protests and keep them out of the news, just like
the Wall Street protest is now left out of big news channels.
Unfortunately, in the background, we shopped our way out of our jobs. We
took the dangling carrot of cheaper prices and went for the imported
goods from the wage slave markets of the world, with many saying they no
longer had a choice. They said it was a matter of survival.
We can say it is Wall Street who caused all this -- and perhaps they
did. But they did it after we participated in the process. We
participated in the deception by shopping our way out of our jobs. We
have to keep history straight about the Clinton era. It was a Democrat
President and a Democrat controlled Congress that passed both NAFTA and
GATT trade agreements. Of course, the Republicans locked hands with the
Democrats. Even people like Rush Limbaugh joined hands with President
Clinton and pushed for the passage of both NAFTA and GATT.
We also should let everyone know that even though President Bush hid our
economic mess behind his "shock and awe" wars, President Obama followed
him and bailed out the financial community and big money interests and
put them back in charge. We have only one major party in the U.S., and
it should be called the Globalist Free Traders party which ignores those
who have lost everything due to free trade. The first question to ask
all political candidates is this - who said we had to compete in a
global economy with one another for the same jobs? We do not need any
conspiracy theories to know that free trade did not evolve in any
natural fashion but has been driven by powerful elite forces outside the
will of the people.
Ray Tapajna
Editor and Artist
Tapsearch.com and Tapart News
(With thousands of resources online)
Cleveland, Ohio 44111 USA
_____________________________ __________________________
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Author's Bio: Ray Tapajna 's Bio and background at
Babe Ruth New York League Bio or see
About Ray Tapajna Search under Ray Tapajna pages for thousands of references. Most of business career was in the computer industry being part of every computer generation and many innovations.
Was called upon to resolve disk storage problems nationwide and
internationally . Wrote on error recovery codes. Supplied China with Diagnostic,Calibration and other computer components directly.
Advocate for workers dignity and fair trade. Editor and Artist at Tapart
News and Art that Talks at Tapart News Mobile user friendly summary of articles at Mobile user friendly Tapart News and
Mobile user friendly Flatworld site Explore lost worlds in the Globalist
Free Trade Flat World at http://tapsearch.com/flatworld See also
Tapsearch Globalization and most popular artwork which is
part of more than more than a million search results referenced on
Yahoo, Bing and Google is the Clinton Years American Dream Reversed- see
http://tapsearch.com/clinton and http://tapsearch.com/backfire For
untold stories behind the news in the global economic arena, see
http://www.bizarrepolitics.com featuring series of reviews of The Age of
Turbulence by Alan Greenspan and The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
by John Perkins. For a philosophical and religious perspective of
Globalization relating to the common good and workers dignity see
http:/www.therationale.com/ Blogspot is at
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) at ArtMoney concept Art galleries at
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