The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 11 Issue 48…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 30, 2008

Venue for an Artist

Sacrificing Reason

By Victor Gonzalez

How does one judge what is right, if morality has no rational sight.

Decisions are made based on a whim, never questioning the screams that come from within.

Deep in the mind, lie two demons, one of passion, and one of reason.

Confronted with a situation all too rare, he must decide which cross to bear.

He leads with his heart, his mind left aside, decisions are easier if it feels good inside.

Later he finds his decision short sighted, it's now too late, what was wrong can't be righted.

He gave an inch and now they want more, but how does he know when even is the score.

Irrational the decision in thinking of others,

now behind the eight with all their druthers.

Give more they say, you must change your ways, but how does one judge with a heart that plays.

A tune of acquiescence, the melody airs, thinking of oneself is not it declares.

The general consensus is as such, that your mind can do little, and heart does much.

The end is now open for those who'll demand, to keep on giving or deviant is his brand.

They keep on asking 'cause he can't say when', guilt is their weapon whilst trapped in their den.

Submit to their needs, their plan, the goal, he opened his heart, since his mind they stole.

For the mind knew when to end it all, but he discarded the tool that built the wall,

He now puts others before himself, his needs now dusty upon the shelf.

Give in he did for that was the way, for the users of life, an endless prey.

With his last breath on the day that he died, "I lived for me!," to himself he lied.

About Me: Author and motivational speaker, Victor Gonzalez believes, "Too often people lead with their hearts and not their heads. Even worse is when I sit and watch television evangelist convincing people to hand over their hard earned money and to sacrifice all they have (including themselves). What happens to people who 'just buy into anything' without thinking or questioning? I dedicate this poem to those who buy into these modern day snake oil salesman on TV. For more info, go to www.thelogicofsuccess.com or email victor@thelogicofsuccess.com.

Bit of History

Roger Sherman (1721-1793)

Born April 19, 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts to a "respectable farmer of moderate circumstances," Roger Sherman's early education consisted principally of grammar school and access to his father's library, which was considered a good one by the standards of the day. In 1723, his family moved to the frontier town of Stoughton. At age thirteen, the town built a "grammar school" which he attended. He also received some tutelage from Rev. Samuel Danbar, who was trained at Harvard, in mathematics, sciences, literature and philosophy. As a young man, Sherman served as a cobbler's apprentice; he designed shoes for some time after age twenty-two.

Following his father's death in 1741, Sherman assumed responsibility for the family; his older brother had already left home to live in New Milford, Connecticut. In 1743, after disposing of the family's modest farm holding, Sherman moved his mother and siblings to New Milford, where in partnership with his brother, he opened the town's first store.

Sherman quickly became involved in civil and religious affairs. In 1745, he was appointed to the office of county surveyor and lobbied on behalf of the town at the provincial assembly. As early as 1748, he supplied the astronomical calculations for an almanac; Sherman wrote and published the very popular Almanac each year from 1750 to 1761.

In 1749, he married Elizabeth Hartwell. After her death in 1760, he married Rebecca Prescot. By these wives he had fifteen children.

Despite the fact that he had no formal legal training, Sherman was urged to read for the bar exam by a local lawyer and was admitted to the Bar of Litchfield, Connecticut in 1754, and chosen to represent New Milford in the Connecticut General Assembly from 1755 to 1758 and from 1760 to 1761. In 1762, he was appointed justice of the peace, judge of the court of common pleas in 1765, and justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut in 1766, after being elected to the Upper House of the Connecticut General Assembly, where he served until 1785.

At the onset of the Revolutionary War (1775), Sherman was appointed to the Connecticut Governor's Council of Safety and served as commissary to the Connecticut Troops. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1774, Sherman served on numerous committees, including the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Sherman remained in Congress through 1781. He left the office in 1781, then returned in 1783 and 84, when he served on the committee forming the Articles of Confederation. In 1784, Sherman was elected the first Mayor of New Haven, an office he held until his death. Appointed treasurer of Yale College, Sherman was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree. A professor of religion for many years, he corresponded with some of the greatest theologians of his time.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation, Sherman, then sixty-one spared no effort in defending the rights of the smaller states. He offered what came to be known as the Great Compromise, which resolved the large-small state dispute over congressional representation. The Great Compromise called for proportional representation in the lower chamber or House of Representatives and equal representation in the Senate or upper chamber. Large states, primarily slave states accepted this Great Compromise because of the 3/5 Compromise, which allowed them to count 3/5 of all slaves for representation and taxation purposes.

Sherman is also memorable for his stance against paper money; he authored Article I Section 10 of the United States Constitution. Sherman and others feared that without such a prohibition, congress could simply print an endless supply of paper currency and force it upon its citizenry. In his highly influential book, A Caveat Against Injustice or An Inquiry into the Evils of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange, Sherman expounded on the "evils" of paper money.

Patriarch of one of the most powerful and prolific US political families - the Baldwin, Hoar and Sherman family - Roger Sherman was the only person to sign all four great state papers of the U.S.: the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. On July 23, 1793, US Senator Roger Sherman died of typhoid fever at the age of 72. (Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Sherman, http://colonialhall.com/sherman/sherman.php, www.ushistory.org)

Bailing Out the 3/5 Compromise

By John Burl Smith

It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, "The very time I thought I was lost, my dungeon shook and my chains fell off.....James Baldwin - The Fire Next Time

They show up at the welfare office with hat-in-hand and tin cups, after arriving in limousines and on private jets begging for bail out money. Taxpayers looking for the same help are accused of looking for handouts. Wall Street banks have brought back welfare as we never knew it. Whatever happened to free market capitalism, get the government off the backs of business and the old "invisible hand" that corrects markets? Moral hazard be damn, greed is being rewarded because avarice has been allowed to run amok. Unrestrained acquisitions and deregulation have created Leviathans that are "too big to fail." In the face of these monsters, the most powerful government in the world quakes, like timid parents before ranting petulant children.

Citibank is just the latest in a long line of corporations that gorged themselves on cheap and easy credit, like bulimic teenagers. Leveraged to its eyeballs, Citibank is being rewarded for its gluttonous acquisition binge and now is using the bailout like a laxative to keep from throwing up the toxic assets it gobbled up. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and George Bush are doling out welfare to corporate America, while Republicans refuse to give poor and needy Americans such generous consideration. Their justification has always been, "Welfare only encourages poor people not to work. Once you give people welfare it robs them of dignity and the desire to try and find a job. All these people want is a government handout because they're too lazy to work."

Republicans made welfare synonymous to black people. They stigmatized a whole host of programs designed to alleviate poverty, eliminate discrimination and end disparate treatment left over from segregation. These systemic racist policies were the underpinning for the structural unemployment of slaves, who were simply turned loose penniless, uneducated, unskilled and without land. Reconstruction helped only a few of the millions of former slaves needing that assistance. Most assistance given former slaves was provided by private individuals or groups. St. Katherine Drexler and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament were in the forefront assisting former slaves; they built schools and churches throughout the South.

The 3/5 Compromise, Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson legalized discrimination against slaves and their descendants. These legal precedents relegated blacks to sharecropping on former slave masters' land, trapping generations of slave descendants in abject poverty. The color line was erected like an American "Iron Curtain" that walled off blacks from socioeconomic and political advancement until Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (1954) outlawed "separate but equal."

During the years of second class citizenship, slave descendants paid first class taxes that built and maintained institutions to which they were denied access. Job discrimination limited competition and prevented slave descendants from amassing wealth. A black face justified denying health care and other essential social services financed with tax dollars from black people.

Today, the same patterns of discrimination are being repeated with the Wall Street bailouts, even though segregation was outlawed 54 years ago. Look at corporate America, it is as segregated today as it was in 1929. The companies that are being bailed out maintain corporate structures that are exclusively white. Only token blacks are allowed to penetrate the upper levels.

When one considers the long arc of history and the fact that black people's tax dollars are helping to bailout corporate America, slave descendants are financing their own discrimination. A major string that should be attached to any bailout money given companies should be not just a pledge to be an "equal opportunity employer," but should have specific targets that not only make up for past discrimination but ensure future advancement.

These are government tax dollars and the law prohibits discrimination, therefore any company that has gotten bailout money is obligated to obey the law. The US Treasury Department, SEC, Federal Reserve, FDIC and other regulatory bodies have looked the other way to avoid seeing the discrimination taking place right under their noses. Now, black people's tax dollars are being used to save businesses that are continuing their discriminatory pattern against blacks.

Corporate decisions are responsible for slave descendants being excluded from competing for contracts, small business loans, and corporate sponsorships solely on the basis of skin color. These are the same institutions that forced black borrowers into subprime loans, offered only the highest interest rates and refused to give black businesses credit lines comparable to those given whites. Black models have been barred from the runway, publishing houses refuse to publish black authors, Hollywood has a limited number of actors, directors and screenwriters whose work they will consider, but all of these businesses use these same banks for financing, therefore black people's tax dollars are being used to support discrimination.

The Wall Street bailout is another 3/5 Compromise for slave descendants and since it is being run exclusively by whites, slave descendants cannot speak up and protect their interest because we are not in the room. Blacks are outside looking through the window, waiting for the master to come out and tell us whether we have been sold down the river again or if we will stay on the plantation with him. Synonymous to former slaves following emancipation, all we are getting are more promises of "40 acres and a mule."

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled an economic team that does not look like us, so who will be looking out for our interest? Moreover, the Congressional Black Caucus is acting as if its members cannot see the 3/5 Compromise in action again. They have yet to introduce or attach any riders to bailout legislation prohibiting discrimination by businesses that receive bailout money. They should also demand mechanisms be put in place to monitor compliance with non-discrimination by those that benefit from the bailout. Pushed to the back of the bus and made to use the back door, black citizens and black businesses are at the back of the line, while whites are getting fast tracked like train robbers. The last hired and first fired, everything is being balanced on the backs of slave descendants.

Although this is happening to us, it is not about us. This is about all the kidnapped Africans that survived the Middle Passage and landed on these North American shores, whose free labor built this economy that is now falling apart. Our ancestors endured, so that we could be here in this place at this time to bear witness to their audacity and share in this historic moment. Our presence wiped their names from the wall of shame heaped on them by their sacrifices. They made us unique; we are the only group of disparate individuals to survive the pain and degradation of forced bondage and emerge one people. No other people can celebrate such a legacy, and for that, we, their progeny, honor, validate and vindicate their strength. Following 400 years of struggle, we must demand the promise our ancestors purchased with their blood, which we now redeem as our children's hope.

Hood Notes

All Don't Fall Down

By Dot

Writing for the New York Times, op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman's November 26, 2008 essay should be required reading. Unfortunately, the title - All Fall Down- is misleading.

Friedman eloquently writes about the greedy cynicism and/or stupidity on the part of the nation's wealthiest banking establishments and the general breakdown 'in personal responsibility, government regulation and ethics' that led to the current financial crisis. None is spared his disgust. His criticism runs the gamut from the people who bought homes with nothing down and no prospects of ever paying off a mortgage to those bundling the toxic loans into securities, the rating agencies and banks that all made fortunes pushing these risky "assets."

As Friedman points out, there were people out there warning about the problems these over-rated assets would pose down the road. Of course, no one in a position of power or authority to do anything about the "irrational exuberance" listened. Rather than acting as a watchdog and regulator, the Bush administration advised people to do the patriotic thing to keep the economy humming. Shop until you drop, even if it is on credit, became the common folks' raison d'etre. Unlike sacrifices that defined the WWII home front, saving and conserving to support the troops were never considerations.

So, the buying and selling risky mortgages continued, until those no-payment, low-interest grace periods expired and those new homeowners and those that used their homes like ATMs were faced with making exploding mortgage payments that sometimes exceeded their monthly gross income or going hungry. Because they chose food, foreclosures rose to historic levels. Only then did banks, hedge funds and even insurance companies and countries holding these toxic securities realize they did not represent reliable income streams.

Now, taxpayers are left with the responsibility of cleaning up this mess. We are warned the government either bails out every entity that is considered "too big to fail," or the nation incurs the risk of a meltdown that will overshadow the Great Depression in depth and severity. That is the ultimate message of Friedman's op-ed -we bail them out or drown.

Again, it is misleading to suggest we all fall down or will take a hit as a consequence. In reality, all of us did not act irresponsibility by spending beyond our means or engaging in the risky and/or illegal activities that brought us to this abyss. And, we will not all fall down the rabbit hole. Thanks in large measure to the government bailout prescription, plenty of the sinners responsible for compromising the financial system and creating this economic crisis will escape with their fortunes intact.

Friedman's next op-ed should expose the individuals and families that run the global financial system and demand they take responsibility for this mess. Only when they are exposed and forced to pay for their transgressions will 'all fall down' be an apt caption.

Politics Y2K8

Dismiss Chambliss

On December 2, 2008, Georgia voters will have another opportunity to add a touch of blue to a largely red state that voted twice for George W. Bush and went with Senator John McCain in the November presidential election. One-term Senator Saxby Chambliss is in a tight run-off with Democratic challenger Jim Martin, who has pledged to work with President-elect Barack Obama to get the economy back on track, to protect and serve the interests of middle-class Georgians, provide universal health care coverage, especially for the state's most vulnerable - our children - and support our veterans, rather then attending to the concerns of big business lobbyists and Wall Street bankers, while dividing us along narrow social issues.

Chambliss, who enjoys a reputation on Capitol Hill for taking numerous golfing trips with lobbyists, employed Karl Rove's playbook of dirty tricks to oust one-term Democratic Senator Max Cleland in 2002. While Chambliss' political ad campaign may not have directly linked Cleland to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden or called the disabled Vietnam veteran a terrorist, his efforts did portray Cleland as "soft on terrorism" for his failure to record unanimous support for the Bush administration's war-for-oil agenda. Coming on the heels of 9-11 and warmongering by the Bush administration, it was a nasty campaign that fed on the fears of Georgia voters.

The dirty tactics worked, propelling Chambliss into the US Senate, where he succeeded in becoming a "yes man" for the Bush administration. A pro-business conservative, Chambliss has a sterling record when it comes to government welfare and warfare in support of Wall Street. Allied with the Bush administration, he has been an integral part of the corruption that has led to a literal looting of the US treasury, bankrupt US goodwill and status as an honest broker in world affairs and made the nation more dependent on foreign made goods, natural resources, including oil, and credit to finance an endless sea of debt.

Sapped by rapacious greed and abuse at the top of government and business, the nation's independent spirit has been zapped. Chambliss, like George W. Bush, bears some responsibility for the national morass. He should not be rewarded for his role in bringing this about. On December 2, Georgia voters can boot him out. Together, we can dismiss Chambliss!

Disgruntled wants to know: In 2005, when the war in Iraq was going badly, George W. Bush went on a nationwide tour, mostly to small friendly venues, to tout the economic advantage of partially privatizing Social Security. The plan he favored called for young workers to take a portion of their Social Security payroll contribution, say four percent, and invest it in a combination of stocks and bonds. The assumption was these securities would enjoy a far greater return than what workers would receive under the government-run Social Security program, which, according to Bush, would be insolvent by the time these young folks retired. Besides, he argued, individuals are better able to manage risk than the government. Some folks saw the urgency to do something about Social Security as more fear-mongering on the part of the Bush administration, much like the sort used in taking the country to war against Iraq, a country that posed no threat to the US. Moreover, partially privatizing Social Security would do nothing to solve the solvency issue. But, it would have been a huge windfall for Wall Street brokerage firms and mutual funds, since these entities would reap billions of dollars in management fees. Now that we have seen their greed and poor risk management, is anyone still suggesting that young people take a portion of their Social Security contribution and invest it in the stock market?

Disgruntled says: Because I could not have said it better, here is an excerpt from an article written by Rick Kepler. Titled "I'm an American Worker and I'm Tired of Getting Screwed," it appeared online at www.alternet.org. I am an American worker, and you are damn right I want the wealth to be shared and spread. I am talking about the wealth my hard work helped to create, but was taken from me by George Bush's base, the very rich, or as I know them, my corporate bosses. For the past eight years I have watched W.'s and McCain's (Country Club First) base grab the largest share of our country's wealth. Where did they take it from? They took it from my family's pocketbook, and my co-workers' families' pocketbooks. They stole the wealth that I was trying to build for me and my family when they stripped my pension plan from me and told me to invest in a 401k. Then, they stole most of that 401k and other workers' 401k savings with this economic meltdown. This was a massive transfer of wealth from the workers' pockets into the already stuffed pockets of the rich. My retirement savings and my coworkers' savings all across America have been looted by the corporate bosses, who just got bailed out while we got left out. Again! The American worker, whether black, brown, white, red, yellow, or rainbow color, has been fleeced over these past eight years. We are the ones who go to work every day. We don't own our places of work, nor do we help manage them. We just go in and do the job. And we must be doing one hell of a good job because we are told that we are the most productive workers in the world. We are working longer and harder, but our paychecks keep shrinking! Where are those productivity gains going then? Not into our pockets. Our standard of living has been going down these past eight years ($2,000 less in family income since W. took office) This is another damn transfer of wealth into the hands of the extremely rich. Their greed is insatiable.

Disgruntled feels: Compromised! When our elected representatives seek to appease competing interests, those with the biggest purse are heard first. Take for example the Wall Street bailout. There were a number of things Congress could have done with that boatload of funds from funding health care for the children of working poor families and extending unemployment benefits to helping distressed homeowners. You get the picture. Instead, they poured massive sums into banks and insurance companies on the pretext of easing credit, a scheme that has yet to work. As a general rule, by the time our elected representatives get around to lending an ear to the concerns of those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, our interests have been compromised out of consideration.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.msnbc.com ...Wal-Mart clerk dies as crowd rushes in...Pregnant woman also knocked down, might have had miscarriage ...NEW YORK - A Wal-Mart worker has died after being trampled by a throng of unruly shoppers shortly after the Long Island store opened Friday, police said. Unconfirmed reports said a pregnant woman also miscarried as the crowd rushed in. Nassau County police said the 34-year-old Wal-Mart worker was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 6 a.m. ET, an hour after the store opened. A police statement said a throng of shoppers "physically broke down the doors, knocking him to the ground." The exact cause of death "will be determined by the medical examiner's office," the police stated. A coworker said the clerk was "bum-rushed by 200 people," according to the New York Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges," said Jimmy Overby. "He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too ... I literally had to fight people off my back." Police added that "a 28-year-old pregnant female was also transported to an area hospital for observation."

Email www.wsws.org...CEOs "cashed out" prior to economic crisis...By Tom Eley...Balzac's maxim that "behind every great fortune lies a great crime" may yet prove a fitting epitaph for American capitalism. A recent survey by the Wall Street Journal reveals that CEOs at major US financial and real estate firms converted tens of millions of dollars of overvalued stock into cash prior to the eruption of the current financial crisis, even as many of their corporations approached the precipice. The Journal analyzed the fortunes of CEOs from 2003 to 2007 based on executive compensation and stock sale data. Fifteen of these CEOs took home more than $100 million in cash during this period. At the high end was Charles Schwab, who made over $816 million from his self-named accounting firm, almost all of it from stock sales. Of the 120 publicly traded firms the Journal analyzed, CEOs cashed out a total of more than $21 billion. However, data was gathered only from publicly traded companies, and thus does not include similar fortunes that have been made by "hedge fund chiefs, Wall Street traders, and executives who sold their companies outright." Nor did it include data related to exit packages, the multimillion-dollar "golden parachutes" awarded to retiring or fired executives.

Email aharlib@earthlink.net ..The Bailout: Bush's Final Pillage...By Naomi Klein...When European colonialists realized that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts. The Bush gang prefers bureaucratic instruments: "distressed asset" auctions and the "equity purchase program." But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese--a final frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.