Stop, Drop and Roll–

Let’s see– a war with losses that can not be calculated either humanly nor financially, recession/depression, our stock market gone to hell, the banking system crumbled, morale low, unemployment high, gas nearly rationed and out of sight per gallon— what healthcare we even had in the toilet. Humm– haven’t we been here before!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t know about you, but I grew up at the knee of those who spoke about times like these… and how they endured, of those who didn’t… and the climb back up.

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929. On Black Tuesday, October twenty-ninth, the market collapsed. In a single day, sixteen million shares were traded–a record–and thirty billion dollars vanished into thin air. Westinghouse lost two thirds of its September value. DuPont dropped seventy points. The “Era of Get Rich Quick” was over. Jack Dempsey, America’s first millionaire athlete, lost $3 million. Cynical New York hotel clerks asked incoming guests, “You want a room for sleeping or jumping?”

Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York’s closed World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931. Not only did bank failures wipe out people’s savings, they also undermined the ideology of thrift.

Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

World War I veterans block the steps of the Capital during the Bonus March, July 5, 1932 (Underwood and Underwood). In the summer of 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, World War I veterans seeking early payment of a bonus scheduled for 1945 assembled in Washington to pressure Congress and the White House. Hoover resisted the demand for an early bonus. Veterans benefits took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget. Even so, as the Bonus Expeditionary Force swelled to 60,000 men, the president secretly ordered that its members be given tents, cots, army rations and medical care.
In July, the Senate rejected the bonus 62 to 18. Most of the protesters went home, aided by Hoover’s offer of free passage on the rails. Ten thousand remained behind, among them a hard core of Communists and other organizers. On the morning of July 28, forty protesters tried to reclaim an evacuated building in downtown Washington scheduled for demolition. The city’s police chief, Pellham Glassford, sympathetic to the marchers, was knocked down by a brick. Glassford’s assistant suffered a fractured skull. When rushed by a crowd, two other policemen opened fire. Two of the marchers were killed.

Philipinos cutting lettuce, Salinas, California, 1935. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. In order to maximize their ability to exploit farm workers, California employers recruited from China, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the American south, and Europe.

Farmer and sons, dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein.
The drought that helped cripple agriculture in the Great Depression was the worst in the climatological history of the country. By 1934 it had dessicated the Great Plains, from North Dakota to Texas, from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rockies. Vast dust storms swept the region.

The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.


Dorothea Lange’s , now famous– “Migrant Mother,” destitute in a pea picker’s camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute. By the end of the decade there were still 4 million migrants on the road.

Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father’s ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief roles in Iowa to which state they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. “We don’t want to go where we’ll be a nuisance to anybody.” Children of migrant workers typically had no way to attend school. By the end of 1930 some 3 million children had abandoned school. Thousands of schools had closed or were operating on reduced hours. At least 200,000 children took to the roads on their own.  Summer 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

During the Great Depression, unemployment was high. Many employers tried to get as much work as possible from their employees for the lowest possible wage. Workers were upset with the speedup of assembly lines, working conditions and the lack of job security. Seeking strength in unity, they formed unions. Automobile workers organized the U.A.W. (United Automobile Workers of America) in 1935. General Motors would not recognize the U.A.W. as the workers’ bargaining representative. Hearing rumors that G.M. was moving work to factories where the union was not as strong, workers in Flint began a sit-down strike on December 30, 1936. The sit-down was an effective way to strike. When workers walked off the job and picketed a plant, management could bring in new workers to break the strike. If the workers stayed in the plant, management could not replace them with other workers. This photograph shows the broken windows at General Motors’ Flint Fisher Body Plant during the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37.

Waiting for the semimonthly , stipend relief checks at Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California. Typical story: fifteen years ago they owned farms in Oklahoma. Lost them through foreclosure when cotton prices fell after the war. Became tenants and sharecroppers. With the drought and dust they came West, 1934-1937. Never before left the county where they were born. Now although in California over a year they haven’t been continuously resident in any single county long enough to become a legal resident. Reason: migratory agricultural laborers. March 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.


Lincoln Brigade Ambulance Corps. Group photo in New York of sixteen volunteers, American Medical Bureau. 125 American men and women served in the Spanish Civil War with the American Medical Bureau as nurses, doctors, and support staff. 1936-1939. The Spanish Civil War was the great international cause of the 1930s. Aided by Hitler and Mussolini, the Spanish military led a revolt against the progressive elected government. About 3,000 Americans volunteered to fight on behalf of the Spanish Republic. Spanish Civil War demonstration in New York. Press photo. They returned home with no funds, medical care… homes or jobs.

Members of the picket line at King Farm strike. Morrisville, Pennsylvania. August 1938. Photographer: John Vachon. In contrast to a frequently racist society, several unions were militantly integrationist.

Selling apples, Jacksonville, Texas. October, 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Many tried apple-selling to avoid the shame of panhandling. In New York City, there were over 5,000 apple sellers on the street. Durham, North Carolina, May 1940

I do not have the answers– BUT I know I do not want to bail out anything. I say let her fall!! It wasn’t built on anything ‘real’ to start with. I do not desire to bail out financial institutes that have a majority foreign interest. Too bad for their bad investments. — let the American and I mean AMERICAN PEOPLE,  100%–  hold the notes.
People are presenting many diverse plans, and that is a good thing– and I think we need to look at them with a sheer eye and mind– and not knee jerk ourselves quickly into Hades any further!! We can do this– I know the best of OUR COUNTRY can do this. We have made, or allowed to be made, too many fast, stupid and dangerous choices. Made quickly and made out of fear or exhaustion and confusion. Let us not do this again. We need to stop, drop and roll folks. Unite, stay focused, be patient… seek sound advice that has the 100% goal of making our country sound again, not lining the pockets of the few who have loyalties that reach beyond our shores and borders.

We can not dilude ourselves individually into thinking that these times can not impact us at these levels. All of us, no matter what are living daily on the slippery slope of crumbling system of foreign borrowed monies — and the note is due folks, the note is due. We, because of living on credit are all one or two pay checks from the street. Think about it.

Women, are you voting!!???

Just askin’…

This ever so short time until the historical November Election is a good reminder of the women’s suffrage movement–

[and if you haven't seen Iron-Jawed Angels yet, you should definitely see it-- I heard it's excellent! But I haven’t a clue where in Knoxville I would get to see it…. And I do not have HBO!]

Did you know that the movement was the first to picket the white house?  Did you know that it was inspired by the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain, which taught and inspired Gandhi when he was studying law in Britain?  Definitely an amazing & inspiring tale–pass it on!

And really think about this—-
WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. Many shunned by their families and many lost their jobs.

During the first night in jail…………….

(Lucy Burns)

…………and by the end of that night, they were all barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’ They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

{Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, the men tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid in to her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections … soners.pdf

So, refresh my memory…. Some women won’t vote this year because–why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?… did you even register TO VOTE yet??? I guess we won’t talk about being an ‘informed voter’. That is another topic.

The articles about HBO’s new movie ‘Iron Jawed Angels‘… and it’s graphic depiction of the battle these women waged , just so I; all women– could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have our say… reminded me of Women’s History Class in College– and my own living history growing up in the DC area. I am ashamed to say I needed this reminder of how hard fought my right to vote was– and I didn’t bleed once, someone else did.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. It has never been just a right I have, it is also a responsibility and priviledge. Even if sometimes is inconvenient.

‘What would those women think of the way we use, or don’t use, our right to vote? All of us take it for granted seemingly, not just younger women. I am hoping your American right and obligation becomes valuable and priceless ‘all over again.’

It was also jarring to recall that Woodrow Wilson and his cronies had tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And thank God that doctor refused. Alice Paul was strong, the doctor said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’
It was also due to many courageous women like this– [women in your families pasts] — that contributed to another cause that needed addressing– The Civil Rights of ALL MANKIND! And their right to have a voice also!

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party – remember to vote.

History is being made. Set an example for your children and grandchildren. It is their future we are talking about.

A Radical Shift for Goldman and Morgan …

Actually it isn’t a shift at all–if you review Beaulmans previous post!!!! They were ready and waiting!
review:    Brasscheck TV: The Financial Meltdown Explained

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last big independent investment banks on Wall Street, will transform themselves into bank holding companies subject to far greater regulation, the Federal Reserve said Sunday night, a move that fundamentally reshapes an era of high finance that defined the modern Gilded Age.
The firms requested the change themselves, even as Congress and the Bush administration rushed to pass a $700 billion rescue of financial firms. It was a blunt acknowledgment that their model of finance and investing had become too risky and that they needed the cushion of bank deposits that had kept big commercial banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase relatively safe amid the recent turmoil.
It also is a turning point for the high-rolling culture of Wall Street, with its seven-figure bonuses and lavish perks for even midlevel executives. It effectively returns Wall Street to the way it was structured before Congress passed a law during the Great Depression separating investment banking from commercial banking, known as the Glass-Steagall Act.
By becoming bank holding companies, the firms are agreeing to significantly tighter regulations and much closer supervision by bank examiners from several government agencies rather than only the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, the firms will look more like commercial banks, with more disclosure, higher capital reserves and less risk-taking.
For decades, firms like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs thrived by taking bold bets with their own money, often using enormous amounts of debt to increase their profits, with little outside oversight.
They were the envy of Wall Street, dominating the industry’s most lucrative businesses, landing headline-grabbing deals and advising companies and governments around the world on mergers, stock offerings and restructurings.
But that brash model was torn apart over the last several weeks as investors lost confidence in the way they made those bets during the recent credit boom, when investment banks expanded with aplomb into esoteric securities, the risks of which were not easily understood.
Over several harrowing days, clients started pulling their money, share prices plunged and these banks’ entire enterprises were brought to the brink.
In exchange for subjecting themselves to more regulation, the companies will have access to the full array of the Federal Reserve’s lending facilities. It should help them avoid the fate of Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy last week, and Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch — both of which agreed to be acquired by big bank holding companies.
The decision also raises questions about whether the Federal Reserve will seek to regulate hedge funds, many of the largest of which closely resemble investment banks like Goldman.
Just a year ago investment banks, the titans of global finance, considered bank regulation a millstone to be avoided at all costs. Commercial banks have to subject themselves to restrictions on how much money they can borrow and what kinds of businesses they can be in. Lobbyists for firms like Goldman spent years fending off closer supervision of their business.
As bank holding companies, the two banks, whose shares have lost about half their value this year, will have to reduce the amount of money they can borrow relative to their capital.
That will make them more financially sound but will also significantly limit their profits. Today, Goldman Sachs has $1 of capital for every $22 of assets; Morgan Stanley has $1 for every $30. By contrast, Bank of America’s has less than $11 for every $1 of capital.
JPMorgan Chase acquired Bear Stearns this spring in a fire sale brokered by the federal government, while Bank of America has agreed to buy Merrill Lynch for $50 billion.
As bank holding companies, Morgan and Goldman will have greater access to the discount window of the Federal Reserve, which banks can use to borrow money from the central bank. While they were allowed to draw on temporary Fed lending facilities in recent months, they could not borrow against the same wide array of collateral that commercial banks could. The discount window access for investment banks is expected to be phased out in January.
It will take time for Goldman and Morgan to transform into fully regulated banks because they cannot quickly reduce how much money they borrow relative to their assets. The Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission have had examiners at investment banks since March, giving regulators huge insight into their operations.
Both banks already have limited retail deposit-taking businesses, which they plan to expand over time. Morgan Stanley had $36 billion in retail deposits as of Aug. 31 and Goldman Sachs had $20 billion in deposits.
“We believe that Goldman Sachs, under Federal Reserve supervision, will be regarded as an even more secure institution with an exceptionally clean balance sheet and a greater diversity of funding sources,” Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive of Goldman, said in a statement on Sunday night.
John J. Mack, the chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, said: “This new bank holding structure will ensure that Morgan Stanley is in the strongest possible position — with the stability and flexibility to seize opportunities in the rapidly changing financial marketplace.”
In recent days, Morgan Stanley had sought other ways to bolster its capital and had been in advanced talks with China’s sovereign wealth fund and others about raising billions of dollars, people briefed on the matter said Sunday night. It had also been talking about a merger with Wachovia, a large commercial bank based in Charlotte, N.C.
With their transition to operating as bank holding companies, those talks are likely to take a different form, because now Morgan Stanley can buy a commercial bank.
Meeting the Big-Boys:
For decades, one investment bank in Lower Manhattan has churned out a golden list of corporate executives and statesmen, wealthy financiers and nonprofit managers.
In many ways, Goldman Sachs is seen as the financial world’s equivalent of General Electric, the corporate powerhouse, or McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm. It is a training ground — and finishing school —from which other companies, along with quite a few governments, have frequently plucked their own top leaders.
And it has seeded some of the most successful private investment funds, many of them extending Goldman’s shadow from Greenwich, Conn., to London and beyond.

Goldman claims among its alumni Henry M. Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary; Robert E. Rubin, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and now Citigroup’s chairman; and Mario Draghi, the Bank of Italy’s governor. Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey’s governor, led Goldman for several years. Joshua B. Bolten, the current White House chief of staff, is a Goldman alum, and John A. Thain, the new chairman of Merrill Lynch, was Goldman’s president before he left to help rescue the New York Stock Exchange.
To insiders, all this is a result of Goldman’s elite culture, a sense of close-knit partnership that has endured despite the firm’s decision in 1999 to turn itself into a publicly owned corporation. To detractors, the firm is alternately a cult or a secretive fraternity like Skull and Bones at Yale, one focused on profits and power.
The bottom line on Goldman is that it is stocked with bright people who practically mint money. Even as the implosion of the subprime mortgage market forced many of its rivals to take multibillion-dollar write-downs in the summer of 2007, Goldman reported an increase in profit.
As 2008 progressed, Goldman avoided the deepening economic crisis that consumed two of its rivals – Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. In September, the company reported modest, though diminished, profits for the third quarter, beating expectations.
Morgan Stanley traces its roots back to the House of Morgan, the grandest name on Wall Street. But its last decade of operation has been one of recurrent turmoil.
In 1997, Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter, a retail brokerage firm, in the hopes that the reach of Dean Witter’s brokers and the sophisticated stock offerings of Morgan’s investment bankers would combine to create a nationwide powerhouse. The merged company was led by Philip J. Purcell, a Wall Street outsider whose leadership was been marked by a series of legal clashes and bitter internal dissent. Mr. Purcell was forced out in 2005; his place was taken by John J. Mack, a company veteran who had been unceremoniously dumped by Mr. Purcell.
Mr. Mack has revitalized a demoralized firm and achieved progress in weak areas like asset management and brokerage. But by encouraging a newly aggressive attitude toward trading — from his first days as chief executive, he said often and publicly that the firm would deploy its own capital more aggressively and enter higher-growth and riskier areas like mortgages and leveraged loans — he also laid the groundwork for the firm’s next round of trouble, which hit home when the subprime mortgage market melted down in 2007.
In two write-downs in late 2007, Morgan Stanley lowered the value of its subprime holdings by $9.4 billion, one of the largest devaluations on Wall Street. The investment bank announced on Dec. 19 that it would sell a $5 billion stake to the China Investment Corporation, that country’s sovereign wealth fund, to shore up its capital.

For God’s Sake Citizens!!! WAKE-UP!!!
Congress is on the brink of making a one-sided deal to give George W. Bush a blank check — offering nearly (or perhaps more than) a trillion taxpayer dollars to Wall Street to cover its bad debts. That works out to somewhere between $2000 and $5000 from every American family. So what do the taxpayers get in return?
Nothing. No new regulation or oversight to help avoid this kind of crisis in the future. No public interest givebacks to help people whose homes are in the hands of the banks. Perhaps most shockingly of all, the taxpayers get absolutely no share in the profits if and when these finance giants bounce back, even though we are now assuming a great deal of the risk.
This is worse than a bad deal — this isn’t a deal at all. This is a blank check to some of the richest companies in the world.
Congress doesn’t have to agree to a blank check. Instead, it can choose to impose a few sensible conditions on the bailout to ensure that it will be used responsibly. Here are a few suggestions
If the taxpayers are shouldering the risk, the taxpayers should reap any eventual benefits. We accomplish this by giving the government an equity stake in every company we bail out proportionate to the amount we give them.
If we’re paying (more than) our fair share, the CEOs and executives should have to, too. All of the fat cats who got us into this mess should relinquish their stock options and salaries until they start showing us, their investors, that they can once again be profitable. Future salaries should be linked to profitability.
No more campaign contributions from Wall Street executives and PACs. Taxpayer dollars should be used to get our nation out of a crisis. They cannot be used to fund giant, powerful lobby operations that will be used to strong arm Congress into making bad policy.
Better regulations start right now. Wall Street can’t expect to take thousands of dollars out of your paycheck without agreeing to increased transparency and more stringent oversight — the kind that might have helped avoid this mess to begin with.
Bankruptcy judges get broader leeway to help homeowners. Why should we lose our homes so the CEOs can keep theirs?
If Wall Street doesn’t like these conditions, then it is welcome to find private investors to help it out of this debacle. But if the American people are going to take this hit, then we must have a say in the terms of the deal — even if we don’t have an army of high-paid lobbyists at our disposal like they do.

Contact your Congressperson today! Make your voice heard.

TELL THEM–
I strongly urge you not to issue a blank check to the Wall Street giants who have steered our country into financial dire straits. You must address this crisis quickly and prudently. Do not give these companies a dime of taxpayer money unless they agree to the following conditions:
If the taxpayers are shouldering the risk, the taxpayers should reap any eventual benefits. We accomplish this by giving the government an equity stake in every company we bail out proportionate to the amount we give them.
If we’re paying (more than) our fair share, the CEOs and executives should have to, too. All of the fat cats who got us into this mess should relinquish their stock options and salaries until they start showing us, their investors, that they can once again be profitable. Future salaries should be linked to profitability.
No more campaign contributions from Wall Street executives and PACs. Taxpayer dollars should be used to get our nation out of a crisis. They cannot be used to fund giant, powerful lobby operations that will be used to strong arm Congress into making bad policy.
Better regulations start right now. Wall Street can’t expect to take thousands of dollars out of your paycheck without agreeing to increased transparency and more stringent oversight – the kind that might have helped avoid this mess to begin with.
Bankruptcy judges get broader leeway to help homeowners. Why should we lose our homes so the CEOs can keep theirs?
A blank check without these conditions would be nothing more than a reward for bad business practices. If the bailout does not include these conditions, you must oppose it.

Freedom of speech my ass…

found this online this morning, and my first thought…….martial law has arrived!!! There is a video at the link…

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99433

more about “Incredible Documentary Footage of Mas…“, posted with vodpod

Now that we’ve had a few weeks to settle, a look back at Labor Day in the Twin Cities. Labor Day was of course also Day One of the Republican National Convention. Video was released today of an apparent mass arrest of utterly peaceful concert goers at the SEIU Labor Day concert.

My personal favorite moment in the tape is an off-camera exchange. Police in riot gear have surrounded loungers in a waterfront park. They announce, “Ladies and Gentlemen, You’re Under Arrest” and you hear one young woman say incredulously “Are you serious?”

Yep, I’m afraid they are.

Here’s the press release that came with the video, from the Glass Bead Collective:

BURIED TAPE REVEALS USE OF FORCE AND AN UNWARRANTED MASS ARREST OF BYSTANDERS DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (September 18, 2008) Video released today shows the indiscriminate arrest of a crowd of two hundred at the waterfront across from a concert on Harriet Island Regional Park during this month’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The video includes multiple angles of the event as well as an interview with the cameraman who buried his footage and was one of almost two hundred people arrested for rioting without probable cause.

More than eight hundred people were arrested in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. This video shows that at least twenty percent of the eight hundred plus arrested were seized without due cause.

Don’t know about any of you, but I didn’t see ANYTHING that warranted someone being arrested……either the footage was edited in favor of the protestors or this was a typical heavy-handed republican response to descent…..my guess would be the latter.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH MY ASS!!!

This Week is Constitution Week…

Mayors Declare Sept. 17-23 as “Constitution Week”

September 16, 2008 – Mayor Bill Haslam and Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale presented the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Knox County Council of Regents with proclamations declaring Sept. 17-23 as “Constitution Week” in Knoxville and Knox County.
The presentation took place during a meeting in Mayor Haslam’s office on Tuesday, September 16.

The DAR was instrumental in the creation of Constitution Week successfully petitioning Congress in 1955 to set aside this week each year to commemorate the document that is the foundation of our liberties and form of government.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law the following year.

The United States Constitution was adopted on Sept. 17, 1787 and this year’s Constitution Week commemorates the 221st anniversary of that event.

According to the Knox County Council, the goals of the Constitution Committee of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution are to emphasize, understand, study and promote the historical events that led to our freedom.

In addition to supporting Constitution Week the DAR is also active in supporting the naturalization ceremonies in Knoxville during which several hundred people become new citizens of the United States.

During this week all schools receiving federal funds devote part of their curriculum to teaching students about the Constitution and what it means to the nation and its citizens.

The DAR Regents who met with the mayors on Tuesday included, Martha Cummings of the Emory Road Chapter; Carol Robbins of the Andrew Bogle Chapter; Martha Kroll of the Samuel Frazier Chapter; Nancy J. Montgomery of the James White Chapter; Caroline Murphy of the University of Tennessee Chapter; Alycia Truett of the Cavett Station Chapter; Nancy Webb of the Admiral David Farragut Chapter and Margaret Kensinger of the Bonny Kate Chapter.

Since they are having such a rough time in Iraq writing a new Constitution– we should just give them ours! We aren’t using it anymore.

The Essential problems with Palin

Think of an American president being inaugurated. What image comes to mind?

Almost certainly this one, eh?

“what does a Vice president do?”

This picture embodies what is perhaps the essential difference between the qualifications for the presidency and the qualifications for the vice presidency. In a perfect world, we would all like a president who is Ready on Day One (TM); it is not uncommon for a newly-elected president to face a major crisis almost immediately upon taking office. But more commonly, a president takes the Oath of Office under relatively calm waters, allowing them something of a learning curve.

On the other hand, when a vice president takes over for a president, the nation is necessarily undergoing a crisis, because the death (or resignation) of a president is perhaps as traumatic an event as can reasonably be imagined (in the “best” case resulting from a slowly-developing illness, and the worst, an attack by terrorists or foreign adversaries).

From Lincoln though Clinton, Americans have frequently been willing to gamble on a relatively inexperienced President, exchanging some assurances of near-term readiness for longer-term upside (what might be described as “vision”). But the optimal skill set for a vice president is somewhat different. “Vision” hardly matters; a vice president taking over for a president will not get to name his own cabinet, and will initially at least be left to execute upon somebody else’s agenda. Instead, the readiness component is rendered more important.

I suspect most Americans grasp this on a gut level, even if they aren’t quite able to articulate it. Which is why, to my gut instinct, I think Americans can feel sympathy for Sarah Palin, can believe she’s the sort of person they’d want to have a beer with — and still find her a detriment to McCain’s case for the White House.

Article Washington Post>
Palin’s Pregnancy Problem
My first reaction was shock. Then anger. John McCain chose a running mate simply because she is a woman and one who appealed to the Republican’s conservative evangelical base. Now, with news that Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant, McCain’s pick may not even find support among “family values” voters.
It has happened before, of course. Geraldine Ferraro was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1984 because she was a woman, but that was 24 years ago. I thought we were past this. Apparently not. McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is a cynical and calculated move. It is a choice made to try to win an election. It is a political gimmick. And it’s very high risk. I find it insulting to women, to the Republican party, and to the country.
This is nothing against Palin. From what little we know about her, she seems to be a bright, attractive, impressive person. She certainly has been successful in her 44 years. But is she ready to be president?
And now we learn the 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. She and the father of the child plan to marry. This may be a hard one for the Republican conservative family-values crowd to swallow. Of course, this can happen in any family. But it must certainly raise the question among the evangelical base about whether Sarah Palin has been enough of a hands-on mother.
McCain claims he knew about the pregnancy, and was not at all concerned. Why not? Not only do we have a woman with five children, including an infant with special needs, but a woman whose 17-year-old child will need her even more in the coming months. Not to mention the grandchild. This would inevitably be an enormous distraction for a new vice president (or president) in a time of global turmoil. Not only in terms of her job, but from a media standpoint as well.
McCain’s cynical choice has created a dilemma for many women. For still-angry Hillary Clinton voters, they will have to decide if they want to vote against their concscience and political interests by voting to elect a Republican woman who’s even more conservative than McCain.
Evangelical women also will have to decide if they will vote against their conscience by voting to put the mother of young children in a job outside the home that will demand so much of her time and energy.
Southern Baptist leaders like Richard Land and Al Mohler have praised McCain’s choice. But these are the same men who support this statement from the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message:
“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”
Palin’s lack of experience and her family situation are both valid and vital considerations here, especially when she will be running with a 72-year-old presidential candidate who has suffered four bouts of a deadly cancer.
And by the way, how can McCain call Barack Obama unqualified, inexperienced, not ready from Day One, not able to be commander in chief, and then put someone like Palin in a position that is a heartbeat away from the pesidency?
I don’t blame Palin for accepting the position. How could she or anyone turn down such an opportunity? I was once in a similar position. After four years of reporting at the Washington Post, I was chosen by CBS to be the first network anchorwoman in America, to co-anchor their Morning News. I had never been on TV a day in my life. I was 32. There were women at CBS who were much more qualified than I was and certainly other men. They chose me because they wanted a woman. I didn’t even want the job, but I didn’t feel I could turn it down. Of course it was a disaster. I lasted four months. I wasn’t ready for Network TV. Palin isn’t ready to be leader of the free world.
The calculation on the part of the McCain people is clear. Palin’s candidacy could draw some of the 18-million Hillary Clinton voters who are not happy she lost and who want to vote for a woman on a national ticket. Palin is not of Washington and that will be appealing to some. Most importantly for McCain, Palin is decidedly anti-abortion and that will keep the Republican base under control and appeal to some evangelicals who might be considering Obama. She has a son who is headed to Iraq.
Those are positives for a McCain-Palin ticket, but what about the negatives?
She has no national political experience, especially in the area of foreign policy. That fact that she is not of Washington also will be difficult for her. Barbara Bush once told me that her husband had been a congressman, UN ambassador, ambassador to China, and head of the CIA and they thought they were prepared for the vice presidency (under President Reagan). But she said nothing can prepare you for the criticism and scrutiny of being in the White House. Sarah Palin is not prepared for that.
Is she prepared for the all-consuming nature of the job? She is the mother of five children, one of them a four-month-old with Down Syndrome. Her first priority has to be her children. When the phone rings at three in the morning and one of her children is really sick what choice will she make? I’m the mother of only one child, a special needs child who is grown now. I know how much of my time and energy I devoted to his care. He always had to be my first priority. Of course women can be good mothers and have careers at the same time. I’ve done both. Yes, other women in public office have children. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has five children, but she didn’t get heavily involved in politics until they were older. A mother’s role is different from a father’s.
These are dangerous and trying times for the entire world. This is no time to to play gender politics. The stakes are too high. And given McCain’s age and history of health issues, the stakes for choosing a qualified vice presidential candidate have never been higher.
Maybe this will work. Maybe McCain will win with Sarah Palin as his running mate. But if he does, it will be for all the wrong reasons.
Source:http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/sally_quinn/2008/08/sarah_polin.html

Having a Party–

Questions! I have questions!

My sister-in-law worked at the National Chamber of Commerce/ Washington DC in the 70′s! … and back then she knew that the Democratic and Republican Parties had so much money that they both had to have various Off-Shore Accts then!!! So, I would love know how much each has– and if they pay taxes on the funds????

How do you start a new political party in the United States?

The first step in organizing a new political party in the United States is to think of name and elect temporary officials in your party’s first convention. Despite the pompous air a convention stirs, there is nothing special about it. You first convention could be in your back yard around the bar-b-que grill, for all it really matters. The party name, however, cannot be previously used. At a minimum, your party leadership should include a committee chairman and a treasurer.
Collecting funds to elect an official to a federal, state, or local position is essential to the success of the party. As such, a bank account must be opened in the party’s name. Be aware that you will be required to file financial documents and disclosures with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) when you reach the benchmarks laid out by the FEC.
This next section comes direct from FEC website and includes two parts, when to register with the FEC and qualifying as a national or state party committee:

When does my party committee need to register with the FEC?
National and state party committees must register with the FEC once they make contributions or expenditures in connection with federal elections that exceed $1,000 in a calendar year. Local party committees must register with the FEC once they:
Make contributions or expenditures in connection with federal elections that exceed $1,000 in a calendar year;
Spend more than $5,000 in a calendar year on so-called “exempt activities”; or
Raise more than $5,000 during a calendar year in funds designated for use in federal elections.
As with other committees, parties must register by filing FEC Form 1 [PDF], Statement of Organization within 10 days after reaching the applicable threshold. Party committees should download the Campaign Guide for Political Party Committees [PDF] for more information about the laws that apply to them.
How does a committee qualify as a state or national party committee?
How does a committee qualify as a state or national party committee?
The Commission determines whether committees meet the criteria for state or national party committee status through the advisory opinion process. For state committee status, the Commission has generally looked to see if the committee engages in activities that are commensurate with the day-to-day operations of a party at the state level, and if the committee has gained ballot access for its federal candidates.
For national committee status, the criteria include:
Nominating qualified candidates for President and various Congressional offices in numerous states;
Engaging in certain activities–such as voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives–on an ongoing basis;
Publicizing the party’s supporters and primary issues throughout the nation;
Holding a national convention;
Setting up a national office; and
Establishing state affiliates.
Consult our “Advisory Opinions” brochure for more information on how to obtain an opinion from the Commission.

Once your party is up and running, you will need to elect permanent leadership and accept a Charter and Bylaws. In essence, the Charter and Bylaws are the constitution of the party. It outlines your party organization, and the relationships between other party organizations (such as state committee’s for your party) and other operations your party may undertake (i.e. Presidential Elections, Senate and House elections, State elections, etc.). Your party’s Charter and Bylaws may also outline the relationships between your national convention and your national committee. Your Charter and Bylaws may also establish who is eligible to run for public office (federal, state, and local), may include the basis on which your party was founded (party platforms, idealologies, philosophies, etc.), and should set out the goals and intents of the party as a whole.
Remember during this process to keep meticulous notes. Every dollar raised and spent MUST be accounted for and reported to the FEC as well as Committee members, Party Leadership, and the general public. You will need to record the minutes of every meeting, the decisions voted for and against, officers elected, fundraising started and stopped, voters registered in the party, voter registration drives, and the list goes on and on.
It goes without saying that at some point your party should retain a lawyer. The services of a good lawyer specializing in Constitutional Law, Election, Campaign and Political law will be invaluable. You might also search out a law firm practicing Local and/or Federal Government Law, Labor and Employment, and Administrative Law. They will need to file legal documents on your party’s behalf at the federal level as well as State and Local levels.

Troubling Reminder

On the 29th of this month, it will be three years since Katrina. Has anything changed? The news bites at the bottom of out TV screens scroll stating things like “leeves are the same” etc.  Documentarys that hold ‘truths’ have always been a must see for me to pass along. Of course there is the ultimate one by the two French Brothers accidently filming the 9/11 Documentary. And then there is this one that I am hoping to track down since I do not feel it will be played here in the south.

A Troubling Reminder

By Kai Wright | TheRoot.com

With mesmerizing force, a Ninth Ward woman and her camera capture the destruction of Katrina from the inside out.

 Aug. 22, 2008–There are moments in Trouble the Water, the searing new documentary on Hurricane Katrina, particularly in the hours before the hurricane lands, when you think the central character, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, just doesn’t get it. She’s got her video camera trained on her Ninth Ward block, playfully interrogating everybody about what they’re gonna do when Katrina comes roaring in. They all look around, notice the rest of the city has bailed and shrug.

“Seem like I’m the only stupid nigger that stayed,” Roberts laughs.

 

Trouble the Water , winner of the grand jury prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, opens this weekend in New York and Los Angeles. The timing is apt. The storm formed over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23, a week before it tore through the Gulf Coast.

Roberts’ blasé is haunting. But the story soon makes clear that she, in fact, gets it on a far deeper level than any of the countless observers who’ve tried to make sense of what happened to New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

Roberts’ self-shot footage and personal story drive the film. For her and the rest of the neighbors on her block, in her hood, Katrina brought a more acute version of the same challenge they already faced daily: Figuring out how to navigate the thin but bright line between optimism and fatalism, resistance and submission. They are people who must, each day, grasp, as the old prayer implores, the wisdom to know the difference between things they can change and things they cannot—because survival in walled-off, starved-out black neighborhoods has always meant focusing on the former, so you don’t drown in the latter.

And it’s clear from the outset of this gripping film that few in Roberts’ community can do much about the fact that the city has abandoned them. They’ve been told to evacuate. But they don’t have cars or money to leave. So they laugh in the face of horror. Little girls on bikes taunt the storm; old men serve up false bravado; corner drunks carry on drinking; and everybody takes up the usual front-stoop post to speculate about what tomorrow will bring.

But even as the neighbors submit to the fact that they’re stuck, they know they’ve got a remarkable weapon to deal with whatever follows. Ultimately, they survive Katrina and its aftermath on the singular strength of their shared responsibility for one another. In the face of government’s willful neglect, community stepped into the breach.

The maddening irony is that, three years later, community is the piece of New Orleans that has suffered the greatest damage—and the piece that has been most glaringly ignored in the rebuilding.

Roberts’ chilling footage on the day of the storm alone makes Trouble the Water required viewing for all Americans. It’s citizen journalism at its simple, elegant best: She looks around and documents what she sees.

The filmmakers, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, juxtapose Roberts’ reporting from the rafters of her flooded home with footage shot by professional news camera crews and commentary and reporting from professional journalists. The contrast makes the TV “reporting” look ridiculous. As Roberts records her family clambering out of floodwaters and onto stacked furniture to break a hole in the ceiling, The Early Show ponders the storm’s “wallop at the gas pump.” As she interviews the kids and neighborhood matriarchs crammed into her attic, a local TV reporter plays in the rain, demonstrating how easily he can be blown over, before retreating to the safety Roberts’ family couldn’t buy.

When the rain subsides, Roberts keeps her camera rolling, documenting the heroic efforts of one man—a neighbor named Larry—who turns a punching bag into a floating rescue raft. He wades house-to-house, pulling elderly and disabled people to relative safety in a common home with dry upper floors. Larry even becomes the public information system the city failed to implement. He stands in the middle of the block, chest deep in water, to demonstrate the depth. “I’m taking two at a time,” he shouts out. “The important thing is not to panic!”

Larry, burly and unapologetically in charge, is also the sort of man that law enforcement and reporters subsequently labeled a “looter.” Trouble the Water turns that idea on its head. At every turn, Roberts and her neighbors appeal to the authorities for help and are treated like criminals. The Coast Guard leaves them in the flooded streets on the first night, but directs them to the Navy barracks. When they arrive at the barracks, the Navy sees a mob rather than a horde of stranded citizens and turns guns on them. When Roberts tries to get word to her brother in jail about her safety—and the deaths of her uncle and grandmother—she’s told he doesn’t have “phone privileges.” It’s pretty clear who the real criminals are in all of this.

Throughout the ordeal, Kim Roberts and her community refuse to submit. They can’t control the storm, the Navy, the FEMA bureaucracy. But they can control how they react to it all, and they can build an organic support system to keep them all moving forward. One of the most striking things about Trouble the Water is just how confusing the relationships are—you can’t tell who’s family and who’s not. Roberts casually refers to two different women as “moms,” one of whom in turn calls Roberts a big sister, despite being old enough to be Roberts’ grandmother. Roberts’ biological mom, you learn in bits and pieces throughout, was addicted to drugs and died from complications of AIDS when Kim was a teen. Kim Roberts learned to survive long before Katrina hit.

Roberts’ efforts to make it without the network they built at home ultimately fail. She and husband Scott made their way up to Memphis, but life was just as hard, and, without the community that they cherished in the Ninth Ward, they had to face it on their own. So they sold their dog’s 10 puppies and paid their way back to New Orleans. “It was too hard to start over in a strange place,” she tells the camera. “If something happened to me right around here,” she waves her hand over her still devastated block, “somebody gonna do something for me. Somebody gonna call 911. If I ain’t got no ride, somebody gonna give me a ride. If I need some money, well, they might not loan me no money, but they’ll give me some conversation!”

She brandishes that sort of optimism throughout the film. It’s less an indication of a rosy outlook than it is her knowledge that she’s rooted in something. Even if she can’t find security, she knows she can grasp the safety of the relationships she has built in her lifetime. And those are the vital, lifesaving connections that, three years later, are still being devastated—not by a hurricane, but by a government’s criminal failure to understand their importance, to bring people home and give them the resources to rebuild their neighborhoods and their lives.

Trouble the Water

may be hard to find. After premiering in New York and L.A. this weekend, it will roll out to select theaters nationwide in September and October. Many cities, many theaters may not run it, believing that audiences have moved on or have “Katrina fatigue.” Demand it. Find it. Trouble the Water says as much—in many ways more—about where we are as a country than any other poltical piece that will be in wide release this fall.