Free Yourself

The great American revolution of the 2oth century went unnoticed by many of us, because it was silent and leaderless. In 1900 about 90% of black people in America lived in the South, where they were denied citizenship. In the 1920s, for example, if you were a black motorist, you were forbidden by law, in much of the South, to pass a white motorist on the road. Over the next 50 years about half the blacks, deciding one at a time, moved out. They freed themselves.

Bloomberg the Book Burner

Have you ever wondered what Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC is up to? I haven't.

I mean, until now. Bloomberg's a billionaire and a five foot pile of horseshit in a wig. My guess is that he bought himself a political job to get more face time on camera.

Last week he confiscated the donated 5,000 copy library of Occupy Wall Street and had it destroyed. That makes him Bloomberg the Book Burner. He did this, he claimed, to protect the citizens of New York, which he accomplishes by assaulting those citizens with hordes of large blue men wielding batons and pepper spray against children and old ladies.

Bloomberg is a typical American mayor, funded by real estate interests. By "protecting citizens" what he means is "protecting the system run by the 1%." A few people in tents are pushing for changes in the system--so tenting must be against the law and punishable by street justice. If you tent in NYC, Billionaire Bloomberg will beat you black and blue.

Big Window

I like to amuse the Peace Project's Bob Boardman with new facts (new to me). The last time we had dinner together, about ten days ago, he spent most of the meal staring out the Big Window. I finally told him that 100,000 Jews (half Jews and quarter Jews) had fought in Hitler's army. "I didn't know that," he said, glancing at me, then resuming his stare.

A few years back Bob decided to bike in the AIDS ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He hadn't done much serious cycling, so the little bike club I belong to provided people for him to train with.

Anyway, Bob loves this club. Until recently he has joined us on twice-a-week excursions, where the point is to play like kids and then stop and eat something sweet. Bob fell on the trail for no apparent reason on his last ride. I suspect that he fell because he'd started to look through the Big Window. That's no way to ride a bike.

When Bob steps through the Window, everything will change. Nothing can stop that. The way I see it, we're here only once, so we should be good to each other right now. We won't get another turn. That is, more or less, my politics. Bob Boardman--no one better--has gotten his turn right.

Not Enough Jobs

We've seen the new Sonoma County pension proposal made by Supervisors Shirlee Zane and David Rabbit, and it is conventional, thoughtless and a good illustration of why the Democrats will have a hard time enlisting the 99%ers into their party. The Tea Party fled immediately into the arms of the Republicans because they were Republicans to start with and because the Tea Party wanted funding from Wall Street. Now the Democrats hope for a similar boost from the 99%ers, but they won't get it unless they figure out why the 99ers are in revolt. So far they haven't.

The county Democrats plan to reduce benefits for county employees (a Republican concept involving punishing the poor for the sins of the rich) and to increase the age of retirement (guaranteed to reduce employment slots for young people). The elected Democrats are not getting the message--they listen to corporate campaign donors, not to ordinary people.

The basic problem is that there are 7 billion people on the planet and not enough jobs to go around. The Democratic Party response is to make the lucky folks who have jobs keep them longer, shutting out newcomers. That's senseless.

We live in an age where technology ends more jobs than it creates (see RACE AGAINST THE MACHINE by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee). That is our future, except that it's going to get worse. Robots are more profitable than human workers. Our current economic system depends on everyone working to earn money so we can purchase products etc. And the system is failing because many cannot find work. An estimated 2 billion people on this planet go to bed hungry each night.

There are quick temporary fixes for the relatively rich Western World. We could cut the work week to 35 hours and have instant full employment. We could make the retirement age 55 and have full employment. But our ideology--when times get tough, America punishes the poor--forbids these answers. Our political class doesn't get it (or doesn't want to). Almost no one in power is listening. Finding humane answers is left the powerless.