The DISH
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Volume 9 Issue 25…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…
Hypocrisy
By Neil Harding
McAlister
A rocky desert
stretches far
To distant mountains,
brown and bare.
A waif, abandoned in
the dust,
Wipes flies out of
her matted hair.
Her threadbare misery
we see,
A poignant vignette
on TV,
So aged beyond her
seven years!
The interviewer
swallows tears.
In her short life
she’s known no life
But death and war.
Now all alone,
This dolly never
clutched a doll,
She’s never had
a loving home.
A war-embittered TV
host
Asks this poor wretch
what she wants most,
And strains to hear
what she has said.
One plaintive word
she whispers: “Bread.”
From half a world
away we watch,
Warm, fat voyeurs in
safe, clean homes.
Our indignation is a
sham,
Decrying pain
that’s not our own.
Though we condemn
with righteous rage
Injustice in the
modern age,
Words without deeds
shall always be
Contemptible
hypocrisy.
God damn our nations!
damn our flags!
And damn religion,
every creed!
In pained disgust God
turns His back
On men inured to this
child’s need.
Whatever pious words
we say,
Our empty words
won’t wipe away
The tears of
children, forced to dwell
In our world’s bitter, man-made hell.
About Me: I
am a physician from
Ugly American II?
Since its inception in 2001, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which is
principally funded by the Washington-based Pew Charitable Trusts, has conducted
thirteen (13) major projects on issues, attitudes and trends shaping
An increasingly unpopular war, as the conflict in
In classic ugly American fashion, many
respondents expressed largely negative feelings toward George W. Bush and his
administration's policies. On the other hand, their feelings about Americans in
general were positive. Led by
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
The son of noted economist John Neville Keynes, John Maynard was born in
On returning to
In addition to teaching, Keynes served on the Royal Commission on Indian Currency
and Finance (1913-1914) and in the Treasury (1915-1919). He attended the Paris
Peace Conference (1919) as principal representative of the Treasury and deputy
for the chancellor of the exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. In June
1919, he left the post in protest against the Versailles Treaty's reparations
clauses; he published The Economic Consequences of the Peace the same
year. From 1921-1938, he was chairman of the National Mutual Life Assurance
Society and ran an investment company.
Keynes published his most important economic work, The General Theory of
Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936. Representing a significant
departure from neo-classical orthodoxy, which held that there is a natural
tendency for the economy to reach full-employment equilibrium, i.e., supply
equals demand, Keynes' work revolutionized economic thinking. He showed that
the economy can reach and maintain equilibrium at a level of output less than
full employment. To address economic depression, Keynes advocated reducing the
bank interest rate to stimulate investment, a progressive income tax system to
make incomes more equal and thereby increase the percentage of aggregate income
that people spend on consumption, and government investment through public
works and other mechanisms when private investment declines. Keynes'
prescription for addressing depression became known as Keynesianism or the new
economics.
A member of the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry (1929-1931), Keynes
was appointed to the Treasury Consultative Council (1940). In How to Pay
for the War (1940), Keynes advocated a system of forced or deferred
savings to avoid wartime inflation and to insulate the economy against possible
post-war slumps. Influential in Britain's wartime budget matters, Keynes was
made a director of the Bank of England (1941), although he was a frequent
critic of the institution's orthodox fiscal policies. In 1942, he was named 1st
Baron Keynes of Tilton.
Keynes headed the British delegation to the United Nations Monetary and
Financial Conference at
Generally considered
Legacies
For six months beginning
In addition, the exhibit seeks to remind visitors
that slavery continues to affect millions of people around the world. Featured
artists include iAbolish members Simon Deng, Francis Bok, Beatrice Fernando and
Abuk Bak - survivors of modern slavery. They will be featured in a video
testimony entitled "New Captivity Narratives."
Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on
Slavery will run June 16, 2006 - January 7, 2007 at New York Historical
Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024. For more information about
the exhibition, visit www.nyhistory.org. For
additional information about the American Anti-Slavery Group- iAbolish, contact
Diane Nguyen at action@iabolish.com.
Hypocrites 'R Us
"Americans believe that no one who works hard for a living should have
to live in poverty. A job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it A
worker paid $5.15 an hour would earn $10,700 a year, almost $6,000 below the
poverty line for a family of three." Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA).
On June 13, Congress quietly accepted a $3,300
cost of living adjustment (COLA), which raised their annual salaries to
$168,500. This new salary is approximately $81 per hour, provided they actually
worked 40 hours a week. Of course, members of Congress rarely work more than a
few days for a few hours each week. In reality, they work fewer hours than a
Wal-Mart part-time employee earning the $5.15 minimum wage with no benefits.
On top of their generous salaries, members of
Congress enjoy other perks and benefits, including the best health care and
retirement package available. The recent COLA represents the seventh time since
1997 that Congress has given itself a pay raise.
Epitomizing the level of hypocrisy that is
commonplace in
The Kennedy proposal would have increased the
minimum wage to $5.85 beginning 60 days after the legislation was enacted. A
year later, it would increase to $6.55 an hour, with a third increase to $7.25
the following year. For now, the $5.15 hourly pay floor remains in effect.
Arguments for and against raising the minimum
wage fell along predictable lines. From a state that believes in exploiting all
labor, especially illegal immigrants, Sen. Johnny Isakson, (R-GA), argued it
would cost some low wage earners their jobs. He described the debate as a
difference in philosophies. His philosophy, the conservative orthodoxy buried
by Keynes, believes in the marketplace, while those that support raising the
minimum wage believes the government knows better and that topdown mandates
work.
In reality, the debate put on display the
elitist-greed-exploitation hypocrisy that currently rules this country. The
nation's rulers believe for a chosen few, more is better; for the common people,
more spells doom for the country. Members of Congress, like their wealthy
backers, deserve and need more to survive and thrive, while $5.15 an hour,
which has been eroded by inflation, is sufficient for working poor Americans.
Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
On Wal-Mart Redux
By Dot
Several issues back, I wrote a short article on Wal-Mart. I explained my
decision to end my boycott and shop at the mega-discount store, which recently
opened blocks from my front door. A few weeks later, a reader wrote to urge me
to reconsider, listing all the reasons I initially embraced to boycott
Wal-Mart, while ignoring those I used to end it.
I placed the email in a respond folder, where it sat as I tried to come up with
something that did not make me sound like the hypocrite the reader suggested I
would be, if I failed to stop shopping at Wal-Mart. In the interim, my computer
crashed twice because of some "registry" problem. (Has anyone else
experienced this problem?) The response folder got lost somewhere in
cyberspace.
Beyond my original remarks, I still have no cogent points for that reader. A
hypocrite, I continue to shop at Wal-Mart. In the final analysis, I am like
most folks, filled with contradictions. I confess; I have idiosyncrasies. I
have come to rely on Wal-Mart's low prices on some items and frankly rely on it
to stretch my household's limited budget.
To all other readers, if I failed to respond to your request, comments, etc.,
please resend.
Disgruntled wants to know:
When John Maynard Keynes proposed the use of government spending to stimulate a
depressed economy, conservatives adamantly opposed any governmental
intervention. Convinced the economy would naturally reach equilibrium,
conservatives, such as US Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (1929-1932), opposed
the New Deal programs of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration that created
jobs to employ average Americans, helped reduce national poverty and ended the
Great Depression. The current US administration claims to be conservative, yet
it is engaging in historically high deficit spending, is fighting an expensive
foreign war on two fronts on credit and has cut taxes for the wealthiest
individuals. What exactly is conservative about the economic paradigm being
pursued by the Bush administration?
Disgruntled feels: Torn! Since age 18, I
have voted in every election. The last two presidential elections significantly
dampened my enthusiasm for the "democratic" process. With deep
concerns about electronic voting, I am wondering if I should bother.
Disgruntled says: According to mainstream
news reports, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald does not plan to indict Karl
Rove in the Valerie Plame investigation. Fresh from news of his reprieve, Rove
ridiculed Democrats for falling back on the party's old pattern of 'cutting and
running.' Rep. John Murtha, who appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,
responded by criticizing Rove and others who can sit on their fat backsides in
air-conditioned offices and say, 'Stay the course,' while others do all
fighting and dying. Murtha is right! Staying the course is not a plan. It is an
unsavory recipe for more death and destruction. Most of the world, including US
citizens by a two-to-one margin, want a change in direction. Bring our boys
home!
Mailbox: E-Mail, Faxes and Phone
Calls
Email www.truthout.org Their Barbarism, and
Ours...There is no doubt in the slightest that "the words of horror used
by John Burns to describe the 'barbaric murders' were totally appropriate. The
problem," writes Norman Solomon, "is that Burns and his mass-media
colleagues don't talk that way when the cruelties are inflicted by the
Email rballan@twcny.rr.com The DLC
(Democratic Leadership Council) frequently comes up in discussions of
Democratic Party politics. But do you know what this organization is really
about? Do you know who the founding members were? Do you know who and what
funds it? Do you know what its ideology is? Probably not. The DLC is a Trojan
horse. It is the means by which the right wing of the American politics has
infiltrated and subverted the Democratic Party. The DLC's "New Democrats"
are really conservative Republicans, spending big money from ultra-conservative
donors, while wrapping themselves in Democratic Party rhetoric, in order to
implement policies that are destroying the
Email bushbuster04@yahoo.com I was
listening to Senator Durbin presenting a case for raising the minimum wage. He
indicates that historically minimum wage raised was followed by an improvement
in the economy. In apparent confirmation
Email www.gregpalast.com African-American
Voters Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List...Massacre of the
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