NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

Yesterday, my congressional candidate brother, Will, visited  Cousin Gary visiting from Southern, CA. Gary had never been to an Occupy Wall Street protest because, as he put it, “I’m not interested in closing ports and businesses where people have jobs. And, I don’t want to lay down in the street.”

He also confessed to not quite understanding what the point is. While vitriolic radio show hosts criticize and condemn the movement as pointless and leaderless, I notice that all National news organizations are covering this movement- because  it has legs.  As one local protester, Rick Mines put it, “Protesting the concentration of wealth and power held by less than 1 percent of the population is an effort to  save capitalism.  Capitalism has to be fair,”  (And I would add regulated.)

You can’t compete when some guy is putting $100 million down to put a  Supreme Court Justice in place, or when 80% of congress regards their major job in governing is to get rich by way of  hand-outs, insider trading, and million dollar jobs when they leave. I take heart because the long term apathy among the general population is finally over. You couldn’t get people to take to the streets. That has changed all over the world as well as  in our highly conservative mountain counties, Tuolumne, Calaveras and Amador.

It was a small band on a cold December evening during the busy Christmas season. Two young students were there. The only other woman said to me, “In our county we are all part of the 99%. We don’t have any concentration of wealthy here. But, it is still important to let people know, its time to take a stand and we desperately need change and jobs and a robust middle class.”

This sign speaks to an issue that may be more important than the government laws that tilt toward the wealthy.  It is a slippery slope to a fascist state when we weaken our first amendment rights.  There are many good things in the NDAA, like protections for whistleblowers. But, we are not to know if sub-par maintenance of our airplanes is a factor in crash. We cannot know who contributed what to the congressional committee people overseeing the granting of government contracts. On any contract,  any savings realized cannot be directed to the National Debt once the money has been set aside and is not used for that project. No clue to where that money WILL go. Suspected terrorists will not have the same rights of trial, detention, and ability to defend themselves as we do now. There are good things in the act, but  many slippery areas. The idea to audit the Defense Department Budget was soundly rejected. Hmmm. It’s on-line. Read it.

OCCUPY WALL STREET, WHO ARE WE?

Amazing that about 70 people gathered at the Sonora Courthouse Park on Saturday to “Occupy Wall Street”, but nobody knows who organized the event. The local paper expressed puzzlement.  People from a group dubbing itself The 99% were there. Others came from Tuolumne County Citizens for Peace. There were Republicans, Democrats, Green Party, Peace and Freedom members, and I don’t know who else.  In short, a cross-section of our community, with the same concerns.

The corrupting  political influence of big money;  the growing,  inequitably taxed,wealth of 1% of the people  at the cost of the declining income of 99% of the people;  Wall Street greed and fraud that plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression;  a broken political system hobbled by Republican extremists willing to block any helpful measures;  and a President who has failed to stand up to extremists on Wall Street and in the Congress.

Our tax money, bailed out the titans of the financial world whose scammers went unpunished while they brazenly raised their CEO’s  compensation by millions in the face of mass unemployment, the under employed, and foreclosures breaking the back of working families across this nation.

I didn’t see anger so much as frustration, determination;  parents with small  children who know their children are going to inherit this mess.

And, most refreshing of all, young people who are beginning to understand how undermined their future has become. Corporate profits are up 22 percent while squeezing wages and salaries and ratcheting up production. Working people have fewer safeguards; they fear for their jobs if they come out and protest;    Retirement income is threatened  while our failed congress  pushes to take away benefits, worker based health insurance, social security and every safeguard the unions have provided working people in the last century. The Governor of Wisconsin and his assembly  proposed a bill  to forbid Union Organizing.

It’s interesting that the OWS movement has not made up a list of demands, as in this is our agenda, and this is what we demand and it drives the media nuts. They don’t know how to attack them. They can’t call them outrageous. There are too many to ignore, as in  500,000 in Zuccotti Park in New York City, an encampment.  So the pugnacious, conservative radio hosts call them stinky, unbathed – which they are. Some of them live within walking distance of their own homes, but they choose the sleeping bag in the park.  They were forbidden a bullhorn so protestors  use  sign language and the echoing power of their own voices to communicate.  What a wonderfully human and Democratic gathering to give heart to a suffering nation.

Judging from this large group in the Courthouse Park in Sonora, a small town in a rural Motherlode county, the movement has legs. And it isn’t difficult to divine what our needs are.  Just read the signs.

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Driver Kills Bicyclist…Gets $42 Fine!

On October 4th of this year I wrote a Blog entry about witnessing an accident where two bicyclists were struck by an auto in Oregon. In case you missed it…here’s the link…

otrwjam.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/a-sad-blog-today/

In the above accident I’m pleased to report that we very recently heard from one of the two gals who indicated they are on the road to recovery. Still no word whether charges will be filed against the driver in that accident.

Yesterday I read about another accident where a driver who killed a bicyclist got off with a $42 fine. Here’s the link on that story…

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2011/10/14/driver-who-killed-bicyclist-escapes-charge-gets-42-fine/

That just doesn’t set well with me…how do you feel about it? In my view some kind of charge should be filed against the driver. He killed an innocent person. Just having to live with it for the rest of his life does not seem enough punishment to me.

In other news…

Yesterday Mary went off to be in the Occupy Wall Street protest in Sonora. Here she is with her messages…

I took the day off and had a do nothing day. Played on the computer and did some reading.

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2011
For more information about my three books, click this link:
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OCCUPY WALL STREET

Occupying Wall Street for me is tomorrow, on Earth Revolution day, October 15th, at Sonora, a small community in Tuolumne County.

This movement is really the first major grassroots revolution going on in America since the Viet Nam protests.  Its been a peaceful revolution and I expect it has put our legislators on notice, maybe…  Maybe not. Did they pass a jobs bill?  No.

Republicans have turned into a fringe element as in you have to refuse any compromise with Democrats, especially any budget compromise. You have to question Science, because all those environmentalists are a bunch of crazies. You have to think  you can  run a country without any taxes, or regulation, nor listen to any sensible tax plans; you can’t support any muslim citizens of the United States, nor allow women to have control over their bodies.  And, if you are a candidate, you have to PLEDGE to hew to the party line, don’t even think of having an independent thought.  And, while Republicans sympathize with alternative lifestyles, maybe, well, some do, they start to shake when it comes to the word marriage as in same-sex marriage.  The word scares hell out of them. And, you have to deny  environmental holocaust and climate change exists because those pesky environmentalists want to phase out coal and dependence on oil where the $$$$$$ comes from.   And, you can’t be friendly to anyone who ever worked with or compromised with a Democrat.  And gun control, cannot be touched, even for a child safety lock, or for assault guns that can kill an elephant.  And you can’t associate with the “wrong” people,  as in Democrats or anyone who thinks a Union has any merit. Lock our borders, don’t let anyone in, but let cheap goods flow freely across the borders. Why make anything in the U.S?

So, I’m going to put my legislators on notice,  that this movement is about holding Wall Street, the banks, the money grabbers pushing for legislation that benefit only a certain segment of corporations, accountable.  This is about taking back Democracy By The People For The People. This is about basic freedoms and it is just part of a global revolution.

Occupy Wall Street has websites and demonstrations in every state,  ten provinces in Canada, and Puerto Rico. This occupation has been going on for 28 days.

There are protests for PEACE, and REBIRTH of  DEMOCRACY  in Egypt, France, England, Italy, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Syria, and Tunisia. Oh, and don’t be surprised if it doesn’t surface in your local newspaper.

In Ohio, the state is bulldozing houses to keep neighborhoods from turning into slums, and our Congress can’t pass a jobs bill?  They send people to prison for stealing a loaf of bread, but banks and corporations that steal billions get away without even a reprimand?

This isn’t the Democracy that I grew up with.  It may take Americans a long time to wake up, but change is in the air.  Revolution is a painful way to make change, but it works. And, it could get bloody.