You're Not Paranoid – The IRS is out to get you.

This April 15^th Remember the Sad Saga of Craig Franklin

The IRS lurks out there for all of us. Like a vampire of legend it hovers, rapacious teeth gleaming, waiting to pounce, sucking the life's blood from our veins. Most people experience a shiver of fear when a letter from the IRS arrives. Given the propensities of that institution, passed into law though never actually ratified in 1913, the fear is understandable.

But some people are more frightened than others.

One such individual was my former husband, Craig Franklin. Craig not only feared the IRS as other people do he was phobic on the subject. That phobia took a form that made it impossible for him to file his yearly return. This is not to say someone else then had to do it for him. He made sure it was not done no matter what.

I found out about this state of affairs very early in 1997 while going through the 29 boxes sequestered in his office at work. I had found out there was a problem with the IRS and State Franchise Tax Board when Craig came home and announced that he had paid thousands of dollars to a legal firm, Brown & Associates, to save him. Craig collapsed onto the bed. It creaked.

That explained a lot. For instance the irregularity of his paychecks. I realized he, we, were being garnisheed. We were approaching foreclosure, bankruptcy, and emotional melt down. Craig had paid the folks at Brown & Associates and then refused to give them information so they could do their job, saving him from his own non-filing.

When a husband is sobbing, whimpering and fouling the coverlet no decent wife does anything but figure out how to fix the problem. I did that. Eventually, the IRS would refund the nearly $200,000 they had grabbed over the years, making up returns when no money had ever been owed, even by their standards. But when Craig was laying there burying his leaking face in the pillow I did not yet know why the problem existed. I thought we had filed. Craig had made sure that all correspondence went to his work; he had kept every piece of mail from both the IRS, the State Franchise Tax Board, and various other institutions in the previously mentioned boxes along with dirty underwear, personal correspondence, old food, and a truly astonishing selection of other items.

Do we ever really know anyone?

But still, he was my husband and, tas he mother of five, I did not intend to let any bully on the face of the Earth reduce him into a cowering and quivering bowl of jelly. In box No. 9 I found the unfiled tax returns I had insisted be filled back in 1987 when he and I were first married. We were a merged family and, both Libertarians, were well aware of the threat represented by the IRS.

All rational people are afraid of the IRS. I was entirely rational on the subject. Craig was not.

Over the next three months I had many conversations with IRS agents. Slowly, a pattern emerged. I discovered from that series of cheerful thugs that people, like Craig, who cannot file the return are not at all rare.

Finally, having listened to another story of a suicide and the dissolution of another life I asked, “So, you are saying this is like a...the person has an emotional disability?” “Exactly!” Said the agent, cheerfully as we went on to other subjects, for instance why we were now being dunned for more money we did not owe.

As soon as I had compiled the information in those 29 boxes and managed to get the material to my tax accountant the completed returns began to be filed. I continued to beg for time. I interject that the IRS is not a fount of compassion. I began also to reflect on Craig's life before we married. The tax non-filing was of long duration. He had never filed previously, not once since graduating from Stanford with a shiny new degree in Mathematics.

He had not filed while at NASA, Data General, SAS Institute or any of the other impressive places that employed him. But he had gotten stock options, options he had never stayed long enough to exercise. Pause to consider how much money he left behind when he moved on after just two years or so after receiving major chunks of options. Huge. That explained many things, for instance his inability to produce the tax loss documents for Liberty Services, the 'company' founded to fail but provide computer services for the Libertarian Party in 1979 or so. Ten years later, when I was on the National Committee, angry investors/donors were still putting the subject on the agenda. Craig had no answer, he just refused to discuss the subject.

Finally I realized that Craig had a disability. He was emotionally incapable of filing. By ignoring this disability the IRS was oppressing him, forcing him to do something of which he was provably incapable. Just like insisting a paraplegic run the Triathlon.

I made an appointment for Craig with a well-reputed therapist. The letter below was the result.

“ 4/26/97

Re: Craig Franklin

To Whom it May Concern

I have been asked to write a letter to explain the behavior of Craig Franklin regarding his failure to file tax returns. I have seen Mr. Franklin several times and believe I have a thorough understanding of why he is not filing even though it is costing him money not to do so.

Mr. Franklin is extremely intelligent. But he cannot deal with authority figures. He uses several rationalizations to justify this behavior including an arrogant assertion that, “he should not be bothered with every day tasks.” But the source of these attitudes is imbedded in his early childhood. He cannot deal with authority. Anything is preferable. The more authority and pressure he feels the more he is compelled to respond with inaction.

He is extremely angry, and expresses that rage through his refusal to bend to others wished, rules or demands. The IRS and Franchise Tax Boards being just two more authority figures he is compelled to resist.

What is most remarkable about Craig’s behavior is the compelling nature of his resistance. He is literally incapable of paying his taxes. He realizes that he has paid far more money to the government than he would have is he had filed. However, he is still adamant over his refusal to deal with the reality of taxes (and other compelling realities as well).

He has now turned over the responsibility for the taxes to his wife, and arrangements have been made for her to receive and handle ALL correspondence.

If I may be of further assistance in understanding Mr. Franklin, please contact me.”

Then I wrote to the Collections Agent. Here is the letter.

“Dear Sir,

I was directed to contact you regarding my husband, Craig Franklin, and his non-filing. Craig has never filed a tax return. He is unable to do so even though, with levies and penalties, he pays much more than he owes, because of an emotional disability. I enclose a copy of a letter I wrote a few weeks ago that gives a run-down of the situation as I understood it then.

Since that time I have learned that the phobia is actually specific to authority figures. Craig cannot deal with authority figures. Finding this out explained much of his employment history. He left company after company because of conflicts with his employers. This has also cost him because he was never able to cash out when the company went public - and yet was so valuable an employee that he often received large shares of stock options. Craig has made many people wealthy.

I enclose a letter from Craig’s therapist. Craig will never be able to file taxes or do many other things that are normal and expected. But because of his enormous intelligence he has been able to conceal his problem.

I have worried from time to time that he was an alcoholic or on drugs - but I had never heard of anything like this and neither had his therapist. We are considering a conservatorship for him. But I now handle all matters relating to his taxes. It is the only way we can function.

You might well ask why I didn’t notice what was happening to our finances. Craig has proven to be a skilled liar and manipulator willing to do and say anything to conceal his problem. Also, we together have six children and I have always had my hands full with the them and with a series of disasters. These included the death of my mother to cancer in 1987, my own near death in 1989 and the death of our last child., Abigail. In 1992 my father died, in 1993 Craig’s mother died, in 1994 we suffered severe losses on our home in North Hills. The estimate for repairs was $250,000. It took two years to have it repaired during which time we were paying the costs of both houses. Then just months after the earthquake my older sister had a heart-attack in Japan. I flew over to find that she was brain dead. And that was only the beginning of that story.

I tell you this not to elicit sympathy but to explain how I could have overlooked what was going on.

We have four children in college and another in junior high school. We are still supporting our oldest daughter, Morgan, who has never entirely recovered from an automobile accident in 1991 and who was unable to work at all for four years. She was rear-ended by a school bus at a school crossing. Craig’s brother handled her claim and consequently she received nothing. (He filed too late.) She is now somewhat better and trying to find employment. My middle son also had a drug problem in 1993 - that took an enormous amount of my time for I don’t know how long.

So, this is what was happening while Craig’s weight swelled and his health plummeted. Since he couldn’t deal with the problems his disability raised he escaped into work and eating. When he was diagnosed he looked terrible. We re really fortunate that he did not die of the stress.

Since I have taken over he had improved enormously. But this has not been good for me. Both of my sisters died of heart attacks, Anne, as I mentioned in 1994 and Carol in 1974. Their ages were 59 and 36. Two years ago my younger brother had open heart surgery. I am now under a doctor’s care for my heart.

What I want is to resolve this so that we can have a normal life, or as normal as possible given Craig’s condition I really wish that the IRS or the Franchise had charged Craig with non-filing. I thought that was what happened eventually. If the IRS had charged him he would have received the care he needed years ago - and spared all of us incredible suffering.

Craig’s non-filing arose not from any unwillingness to file but from an inability to file. If you read Dr. XXXXXXX’s letter this is clear. Since that is the case we should not have to pay any penalties - or interest.. Most especially since we never owed anything.

This is what I want. I want out from under the mountain of debts that Craig’s condition has caused. A refund of the excess payments would help.

People like Craig who are disabled from childhood are unable to do certain things. Some people have no legs and therefore cannot dance. Craig cannot deal with authority in any form and so cannot file his taxes.

This had been a very difficult letter to write. Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter.”

We had been told by various professionals that we would be paying additional penalties for years, the time ranged from three to five. No one, especially Craig, could believe it when the checks, one for each year, began appear in the mail box. Craig had said to me, “If you can make that work then you should get the money for yourself.” But to our son he said, “Your mother is nuts!!!! No one can beat the IRS.”

But I was pretty darn sure that this was a case the IRS would want buried, and I was right. But what I did not realize that in the convoluted mind of Craig Franklin, I, having beaten the IRS had shamed him and would now play a very unwilling part in the next portion of the disaster movie that is his life.

We call that segment, Divorce, Misho Style for reasons that will become obvious. The Sad Saga of Craig continues to clarify with astonishing and nauseating insights. Go here for the story.The IRS is scary but not nearly as much so as some people I know.

The Glories of Christmas, gifts past and yet to be.

We all go through some hard times. Perhaps not like we are about to experience, but hard. Hard times teach us things that otherwise we would not probably learn.

This Christmas many people are buying less. Many families are buying just one gift for each child instead of filling up the places under the Christmas tree. All of us will learn unexpected lessons in the months and years to come as our nation is humbled. If you had not guessed, that is going to happen.

I suspect that those lessons learned will eventually be viewed not as deprivation but as experiences that refocused us, enriching our lives in ways we did not imagine possible. Hardships bring their own kinds of gifts.

Many children are now learning what it means to have a job far earlier than they imagined it would be necessary. And yet the most significant correlation between future success and experience is how early you held a job and carried it out successfully.

Working is no hardship.

You could say that my first job was ironing handkerchiefs and shirts for my sister. I received $.01 per kerchief, $.15 per dress shirt. At first it took a long time for each kerchief and shirt. I got better and faster.

This was before anything was permanently pressed. I was around seven years old then and my mother used to move the ironing board down as low as possible to accommodate me. I piled the kerchiefs up carefully and buttoned up the shirts so they would not wrinkle.

My next job was selling lemonade and candy bars. The lemons were free. I walked to Savon to buy the candy bars; three for a dime, selling them for a nickel each. We had a lemon tree in the back yard at that point in time. The lemon tree figured in a special part of my life when I was young. Not only did I climb the tree and pick lemons to make that lemonade, I learned important things there.

Along with working I learned the most important lessons life held for me from things I saw, experienced, and learned from people around me.

There were lots of reasons to climb the lemon tree. I climbed that tree for the smell and for the hidey place that Mother had not figured out yet. In a large family alone time is hard to come by.

The tree did not fork for about four feet so at that point in my life getting up to a branch was a little tricky. This involved either a running start or jumping. After getting a firm grip on the lower branch I would haul myself up and into the cocoon of leaves that made a small cave. I had discovered that I could not be seen when I was there if I was quiet and remained still. I had pointed out this advantage to my friend, Jimmy.

Jimmy is James Dean. To the world at large he is an actor but he was my best friend when I was little. Sometimes, though not nearly often enough, Jimmy came over for lunch and to talk to my mother and to me. A visit usually meant a walk in the back yard to view the roses; Mom was always fighting mighty battles with the aphids there and Jimmy was one of the few people who was interested in those battles. I had told him about the hidey place in the lemon tree. He had nodded. Hiding places were things he had enjoyed, too. But living on a farm he had many more than were available to me in a house in the suburbs.

After I was in the little cocoon I would curl my feet into the crook between the branches and put my face against the bark. That was where the smell was strongest, but I knew that when I climbed down I would carry the smell around with me for the rest of the day, taking it to bed with me.

I think of this as the afternoon of the Lemon Tree. I climbed the lemon tree while Jimmy was finishing up drying dishes with Mom in the house.

I could see out when the wind moved the leaves. While I was lying there soaking up the scent of lemon Jimmy came out and looked around. I did not move. Then he laid down on the grass just where the Avocado Tree cast its shade onto the lawn. It was very green then and the longest it was allowed to get because the next day Father would cut it. The dandelions had been busy and several golden little crowns of flower were nodding right there in the grass. Jimmy put his arms behind his head and sighed a big sigh. His eyes closed. I kept watching him, not speaking. He made snoring sounds but I knew he was not really asleep. He liked to pretend.

Then he sat up. He looked right at me in the lemon tree though I was sure he couldn't really see me. Then he said, “Trees breathe.” He said it long, dragging out the sounds of the words and making them kind of scary. I looked around me. The tree had not changed. I could not hear anything that sounded like breathing. He said it again. “Trees breathe.” This time he made little gasping and choking noises like he was dying and collapsed down onto his back.

That was too much. I jumped down and walked over to him. He sat up as soon as I dropped out of the tree. I put my fists on my hips and said, “Trees do not breathe. I have never heard any tree breathe.” I was annoyed. Jimmy was saying things that were not true, I thought.

Jimmy said for the third time but this time he said it differently, smoothly with no scary in it at all. “Trees breathe; they breath in light,” he glanced up, not looking at me but past me to the sky and the sun, “and breathe out life.” With that he looked back at me and gently blew right into my face.

I sat down on the grass, still looked at him, waiting for him to say more. I knew he would. Jimmy did not just say something and expect me to accept it without explanation.

Jimmy went on to explain to me that trees use the energy of the sun to make oxygen, which we breathe in to our lungs to keep us alive. Oxygen, he said, is like the sun flowing through us and since it comes from trees and other green, growing things, it unites us with the lovely green world of grass and trees and all of the growing things on Earth.

“That includes dandelions,” he said. He plucked one right then and handed it to me. I looked at it. It had so many slender little petals reaching out from the middle like tiny arms. I touched the center with my finger and then with my nose. The center was soft like a piece of velvet I kept in the bottom of a little box in my bedroom for storing precious things.

Dandelions are nearly the same color as lemons, I thought. I smelled it. It did not smell like lemon but I liked it. I sniffed again, smelling for the life it had breathed in along with the sunlight.

Gifts can come in boxes under the Christmas Tree but they come in other ways, too. The Story of the Lemon Tree was a gift from Jimmy.

Jimmy stopped coming over to the house in 1955 due to unavoidable circumstances.

Making gifts out of not much was something Jimmy taught me. I had the dandelion for many years, until it fell into a pile of dust.

When I was still in college and the economy was grinding to a stop in 1970 I faced one Christmas with just $5.47 for buying presents for family and friends.

At that point in my life, as you can see, I counted every penny.

I loved giving presents and spent a lot of time thinking about what would please the person to be gifted.

Fortunately, I was handy with a needle, although I did not have access to a sewing machine.

Since I had so little money I innovated, making little rosettes filled with highly aromatic, rose scented powder out of scraps left from other projects. I stuffed then with cotton left over from bottles of pills I had thriftily saved. These would have served, just as they were to lavishly scent drawers filled with delicate hosiery and such but I looked at what I had available and bought for the three ladies on my list, my mother and two sisters, clear glass containers into which I poured bath salts I had bought in bulk for $.59. The three glass containers I got on sale for $.39 each.

I tied the cachets on the tops. They looked very nice and delighted their recipients.

I don't remember what I made for my brothers, but it cost less than $.56 each. For my father I bought a plastic butter dish, filling it with scrolls of jobs I would do for him, when he needed them. One was sweeping out the garage, I remember.

Dad had once told me he wanted a butter dish like this for the cabin. He understood, though no one else did. They all scratched their heads. He smiled. Dad always understood.

The best gifts are the ones that become part of who you become. The people in our lives are, themselves, gifts.

Have a Merry Christmas, filled with glorious gifts, given and received.

From a Tiny Tear to the End of America's Fascist State – How to extract yourself from the Web Corporate Greed.

Halloween, 1976 was special. I had made princess outfits for the girls, then two and three. They were excited by the promises of sweets to be plopped into their own little plastic pumpkins. Dawn, the oldest, dressed as a small version of Snow White, asked what she was to do when the pumpkin was too full. I told her I would take a pillow case. Pausing, she told me to take two. Dawn remains an optimist today.

Trick-or-Treating was always fun. The kids and costumes always made you smile. But that Halloween we had a special added feature. Mom, that was me, had made special Halloween literature to pass out with the Trick-or-Treat announcement. The kids had that down cold. They had passed out their first literature with their first anti-tax rally the April 15^th before.

Our Presidential candidate was Roger MacBride.

Roger was a jolly candidate. The adopted grandson of Laura Ingalls Wilder, he was then often in Los Angeles working on the TV Series from the Little House Books. He had promised to have the National UnVictory Party right there in LA if we got him on the ballot in California. The Party was planned for the old Ambassador Hotel. We all went.

This piece of literature was brown and the front read, Caught in the Web of Higher Taxes and Inflation?” It went on to urge you to vote for Roger MacBride for President. I knew the pieces would be read. No competition and the recipients were curious, you could see that; mostly they were reading while still dropping candy into the upheld pumpkins. We did well in that precinct.

My kids were raised Libertarian. That meant that Victory Parties never were held because of the hope anyone had won, but because the campaign was finally over. Dawn and Ayn, Ayn was just 13 months younger than Dawn, were 11 and twelve before they realized that sometimes candidates won. That was a shock.

When she was 12 Dawn would insisted that 'her' candidate, Ed Clark, be included in First Lutheran Northridge's Mock Presidential Election. Ed did better there than anyplace else in the county, coming in with 20%. Dawn was always eloquent. She remains so today, but today she has moved Green with Market Attitude. Ayn is still Ayn, which means I named her correctly.

The kids knew how to fold, staple and mutilate literature, how to sort mail for bulk mailings, how to lay out newsletters, and the rudiments of boothing by the time they were eight and nine. They also could unerringly choose the right answers for what is today known as the World's Smallest Political Quiz on line. Then, we knew it as the Nolan Chart, for its originator, David Nolan, the founder of the Libertarian Party.

A stalwart Libertarian Activist, Ed Ogawa, made up the box with electronic components and switches to be used at the L.A. County Fair. It was used there, but its heaviest usage was between times at home.

Dish washing was occasionally punctuated by questions because of the Nolan Quiz and literature, as the kids got older.

“Mom, what is drug legalization?” “Mom, why do you want to get rid of people after they eat?”

“What?” Actually, I knew Libertarians who had stranger views than that. “It says we want to abolish the FED.” Oh. Explanations were always forthcoming. Had to be.

Raising children is always a challenge, especially when you persist in being different. But sometimes that political experience came in useful for real life, for instance, one day when Ayn was in 7^th grade.

Ayn had a tiny glistening tear just beginning to roll down her cheek when I picked her up from school that day. The year was 1986. Ayn had been attending First Lutheran School, Northridge near our home in California since she was two years old, beginning at their pre-school, for four hours a day.

At that point she was just a few weeks from graduating into the 8^th Grade, which was as far as First Lutheran went.

“Honey, what's wrong?” I has always been the kind of Mom who wanted to know about all ouchies so I could fix them. If possible.

Ayn sniffed, wiped her eye and began. “They are having the election for school officers for next year. I want to run for Secretary, but I can't.”

A campaign! One of my favorite things.

“But Honey, why can't you win?”

Ayn was and is a very intelligent girl. She received excellent grades, was diligent, hard working, responsible and full of lots of other virtues that qualified her for election to a position of responsibility. She also managed to come back in from playing still clean, no matter what she and her siblings had been up to. Ayn always looked just perfect. With long gold hair that hung in ringlets that Fra Filippo Lippi would have wanted to paint and her startling blue eyes and perfect skin she looked like a little angel. All that biological capital would be a real asset when running for office. My mind leaped ahead to the possibilities.

“Because I am not one of the IN GROUP.”

I paused, considering for a moment what to say to this outrageous assertion.

I had at that point been politically active for a long time. Starting when I had barely put down my copy of Barry Goldwater's “Conscience of a Conservative,” when I was eleven I had been on one continuous and unending campaign. The campaigns came in various kinds. I passed out literature for Goldwater, later for any candidate I thought stood for the principles of freedom, free markets, and civic rectitude. I had left the Republican Party, along with thousands of other people in 1971 because of the outrage of Nixon's Wage and Price Controls, announced on August 15^th of that year. I found the LP a short while later and joined, reregistering Libertarian, while I was actually pregnant with Ayn.

Losing causes obviously did not faze me. An election that was winnable was impossibly intriguing.

Ayn thought she could not win because of a few erroneous ideas. She had accepted those ideas as true because the other kids did. I knew the four girls she was referring to. They were not stupid but neither were they particularly intelligent. One always seemed to need lots of extra tutoring. They were all blond, not ugly, and had no visible infirmities; their parents did spend a little more money on irrelevancies, like buying them far too many toys over the years. One, I recalled, had gotten no fewer than ten Cabbage Patch Dolls that she displayed to her less fortunate friends from school.

Like all cliques their 'in power' depended on ideas linked to 'things' that represented status and the assertion of same. Human social ordering is very changeable if you understand the underlying principles. Changing ideas is like changing your underwear. Easy if presented persuasively.

“Honey, you are going to run and you are going to smash the opposition.” Ayn looked up at me doubtfully. The election proved me right.

The girl Ayn ran against cried when she lost. Changing the usual practice school officials refused to announce the vote totals.

Ayn had run her campaign against the bullying presence of cliques with my help as her campaign manager. Fortuitously, this tiny clique had been very obnoxious for many years. Like I said, the kids had known each other from the time they had been in pre-school together. Voting for Ayn became an opportunity to give those in 'power' a slap down. That is irresistible to oppressed majorities.

I injected humor, picking a campaign graphic of the ugliest old woman you can possibly imagine.

Every day Ayn took a few campaign buttons to school using variations of this graphic and a joke and gave the buttons away. She reported that people were buying the buttons from each other.

Check. Attention was riveted on Ayn, the installer of a new school paradigm.

I had tried to persuade Ayn to run for School President but she had resisted the idea she could be elected to such a lofty office.

The whole election was very disturbing for the school administration; they changed the rules for elections immediately. Not that it would have mattered if I had wanted to do it again. More rules create more opportunities.

That election did persuade Ayn that she was not consigned to the nameless mass of betas. Ever after, through High School and college and today, Ayn is an alpha.

The lesson I was trying to illustrate was that ideas can change and when ideas change so does everything else, immediate circumstances and the prospects for the future.

Ideas hold lots of things in place over time. The idea that some small group of people are inherently destined to rule is just an idea a small group manged to sell to the majority. The more recent idea set wholesaled by Bush Co. and the corporations have lot to answer for. The assertion that they have some kind of special decoder ring and are therefore destined to rule are just as silly as Ayn's IN GROUP.

Change the ideas, you change the outcome. Naturally, making Bush Co., their friends and employers, cry because we eliminated their streams of income and power will be just a little more complicated but it can be done.

Project: Installing better ideas. Better ideas are those that let each of us hold our own power and build our own futures.

Doing that is not rocket science.

Centralizing all power and money through streams of income that delivered money into the hands of a bunch of people who act like cases of arrested moral development was a scheme that it took generations for them and their employees to work out. But changing it can be pretty quick.

You need to lose your illusions.

Those illusions are many; they all take you to the mind set that allows others to control you.

“Baffle them with your bullshit.” That is the strategy they have been using for longer than you can imagine.

Those who want to control you will always assume the robes of authority. Question ALL authority. That is how they sold so many trusting people on the idea that a nation founded on the idea that each of us have an absolute right to autonomy somehow ended up being subject to a government that acts like a monarchy.

Silly when you really think about it.

We can in fact change our ideas and so change the whole structure of how we organize ourselves. Doing so will cost less, leaving much more for the things we want to do for ourselves and our communities.

The tools are readily available and more are coming on line all the time.

Start looking for the alpha within. It is there, you just need to recognize it in yourself. Ask Ayn.

And this Halloween, do your own Trick-or-Treating for Ron Paul.

Finding Beauty in the Silence. With thanks to James Dean and Arthur on this anniversary.

Rob was surprised to hear that James Dean was not the angst-ridden youth he portrayed on the screen. Rob teaches meditation and that was the subject that brought up Jimmy. I was around five when Jimmy taught me to seek my inward Silence, letting all fear, sadness, uncertainty drain out as I reached into the silence behind the wind.

That is what my Dad had called it when he told me about finding it himself when he was eight. The auto accident in 1911 that killed his mother and father left him afraid of heights; he had been thrown from the car as it careened into a canyon.

Jimmy had listened to the story as we sat on the lawn one afternoon; My father had told me about hearing the Silence as he learned to climb the cliffs of Yosemite. Dad had learned from his father, who had been afraid of heights until he had been lost at 10,000 feet dangling on the torn girding of a balloon over San Francisco in 1909. Looking down, Arthur C., his uncle and adopted father, lost his fear, whipped away in the wind and wonder. That had helped Dad when he started climbing in Yosemite. I have picture of Dad when he was around nine, sitting with his feet dangling into nothingness on Overhanging Rock.

Jimmy understood.

Jimmy was the person who told me that the same Silence connected me to God.

Much later I realized that the Friends he talked about that day were Quakers. He had learned about the Silence in Meeting. Sometimes it takes a while for things to connect when you don't understand the terms. I was raised Congregationalist.

My conversations with Jimmy ranged over many subjects in the years I knew him. I remember each of those conversations. I remember the excitement of rolling the ideas around in my mind, tasting them, examining them from different angles. I stored them up, taking them out to examine frequently. Each brought with it trains of other new ideas, each leading inevitably and logically to others.

Over the years I learned that ideas lead you in new directions, to discover unexpected beauty in things you thought were completely ordinary.

Rob, who is also a Buddhist priest, was surprised to hear how Jimmy described the process of photosynthesis. “Trees breathe; They breathe in light – and breathe out life.” Jimmy had told me that on an earlier occasion. I had in that moment seen the connections between the breath I took and the tree that made some part of the air I breathed. Oh. The tree's life flowed into me.....amazing, connections knitting life in all directions.

Jimmy surprised everyone who really understood him, though as time passes I understand how few must have seen this side of him.

This September 30^th Jimmy will have been dead 52 years. He was 24 the day his Porsche Spyder swerved to avoid a clunker on the road ahead in Central California so, if he had lived, he would now be a cantankerous 76. I know, if he had lived, he would still be excited about ideas and the world would be a different place. He had firm intentions in that direction.

Life brings many changes, not all of them ones that fill us with joy.

Tomorrow is the 27^th, the tenth anniversary of another event that brought enlightenment and changed my life. That is the day when my oldest son, then 19, nearly died for the first time.

Arthur went 300 feet 20 feet in the air, thrown off his motorcycle. He landed on his face. No one at the hospital thought he would live; it was a near thing. Six months later he shot himself through the brain. He lived, the doctors did not expect that, either.

Looking back you always wonder what you could have done to change one moment in time, to give events a different course. Imperfect knowledge breeds imperfect outcomes and leads one to wonder about the nature of 'perfection.' All of life is temporary, imperfect; but what we learn is forever. Arthur is glad he is alive; so am I. Sometimes finding yourself takes you into unexpected places that bring amazing blessings.

When Arthur was small he learned to ride a skateboard; watching him was terrifying at first, but there was beauty and grace there as he glided over the pavement. I know he did not see that himself. He was looking for a different kind of perfection. I could see that as elation on his face when he came home.

After he shot himself he had to learn everything over again and it took years before he could walk unassisted. Those steps were slow and unsteady. But in each step there was strength and courage that deepened my respect. Others may see the handicap. I see the man who has found that same Silence internal that my father and Jimmy once helped me find. But I also remember my son, gliding down the street as if he flowed on air.

Memories endure in the Silence; a reservoir of joy and love that never fades. Even if that were all that life is, it is enough.

Anne and the Gifts Life Brings

From right to left - Melinda, Carol, Stephen, Anne and Cappy

Anne and the Gifts

The encounter began in a stark waiting room in a Japanese hospital in Tokyo. My sister, Anne Pillsbury Gripp, was occupying a room in intensive care there, having suffered a heart attack while attending an orchid show in Tokyo in 1994. Anne was the owner of the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate located in Goleta, California.

I had flown in to be with her and with her two mostly adult children, my niece Alice and nephew Perry. The next two weeks were surreal, punctuated by bewilderment and occasional humor.

Anne had always had problems with her heart, we knew that. She had suffered from Rheumatic Fever when she was two years old and it had left its print on her health; her cardiologist was optimistic but realistic. She and I had gone through the loss of the sister who was between us in age, Carol Sylvia, twenty years before. Carol had been 36 when she died of a heart attack. You don't like to think about what that might mean to about your own heart.

Carol was just two years younger than Anne but no one would believe they were related. That was sort of amazing when both their last names were Pillsbury and they, unarguably, had the same parents. Anne was tall, skinny and dark haired with dark brown eyes. Carol was short, curvaceous, blond, and had huge, vivid blue eyes. Anne was a book worm who went on to major in math at UCLA. Carol went to secretarial school right out of high school and went on to dominate any job she took. Anne would become a mathematician for GE right out of college in 1958.

Anne and I had talked just before she took off for the airport to finalize plans to take all of the kids to Disneyland as soon as she was back, mine and hers. When the phone rang that day I picked it up expecting to her her voice.

That waiting room was a long ways from Disneyland, no matter how you looked at it. There was too much time to think about how fragile life really is and about whether of not that still figure in the bed upstairs would wake up and see us. Twice a day we got to see her unmoving form for 45 minutes.

Carol had died the day before Valentine's Day, 1974. I was 9 months pregnant with my second child then. Later, my mother returned to me unopened the Valentine I had sent Carol. Inside were two embossed cards, one from me and one from the baby she had promised to Godmother. I still have those small cards in my desk. Every so often I take them out and hold them.

The nursing staff did not speak English but they were very firm about the time limit.

While in the waiting room we had little to look at except the other families. Some of these changed over that two weeks; some remained the same.

We could not comprehend when those who shared that small room with us spoke, although we knew it was about the people they hurried to see when the time came. We all of us went up together. Sad events brought all of us there, we understood each other. Waiting and not knowing is hard.

One day I bought a small box of candies and shared it with the lady and her little girl who were sitting cross from me. Her face lit up and she bowed, accepting the small confection. I smiled back, using the word for “you are welcome,” I had just then learned.

That started the Battle of the Gifts. I was about to learn about the Japanese custom of gifting. Giving gifts is a custom that is taken seriously in Japan. Gifts are a major line item for companies and for individuals. Gifts given at specific times of the year even have special names. A midsummer gift giving is traditional and called O-chugen. At the end of the year another gifting period blossoms with presents and is called O-seibo. Those are usually gifts given to those to whom you feel indebted.

The next day I was astonished to receive a beautifully wrapped gift handed to me by the lady who looked like a porcelain doll in western clothing. She smiled and bowed gracefully. I bobbed and accepted. Inside was a perfect pastry enclosed in cellophane. Delicious.

It was a much needed distraction at first. The gift-giving continued every day and the value and permanence slowly grew. Delicacies to be consumed turned into a small book, a set of cups, tea to be used in the tea cups. Alice and Perry began wondering aloud where it would end. So did I. Eventually, we found that out.

Talking to the English manger of the hotel where we were staying I learned that it might never stop. Frightening thought. But it was a distraction we all needed, I think.

Every night, on the way back to the moderately priced hotel, I looked for shops where I could get arm my self for the Battle of the Gifts. I enjoyed watching the shop girl wrap it. They were so fast and precise, making an art form of just handing it to me, small bow included.

Back at the hotel I would put it carefully on top of the tiny chest of drawers. Japanese hotel rooms are well appointed, but they are very small. Space at a premium the small bathroom had a bathtub that did not allow for stretching out anything. Breakfast in the morning was classical Japanese, grilled fish, Misho soup, tea and rice consumed rapidly at a counter in one of the small places we passed on the way back to the hospital. Occasionally I would hear from my children or from my husband back in Santa Barbara, but they sounded distant over the phone. They laughed over the continuing Battle of the Gifts.

Then that Battle drew to a close in a way that was very unexpected. I had been in Japan for two weeks.

None of the staff spoke English well enough to tell us what was happened. Straining to understand what the prognosis might be we had decided to put her on full life support a week after I arrived. I had immediately contacted the American Embassy to ask for translation services. They hung up on me after passing me around for an hour. That happened more times than I can remember now. Then I remembered a friend had mentioned the American Express would provide some services to gold card members and called them.

Within a day they had arranged for a specialist who spoke English and Japanese to talk to the physician overseeing Anne's case and communicate with Sue, my brother Cappy's wife back at Stanford Medical Center. Sue is a physician specializing in Oncology and Radiology.

Sue's tones were professional and sad at the same time. Anne had suffered a heart attack. If this had happened out on the street with friends present in the United States the emergency personnel called would have suspected a possible heart attack. In Japan heart attacks are far rarer. Anne had suffered irreparable brain damage. Her body was there, she was gone.

Alice, Perry and I needed to talk.

Sitting on the beds in their small room we cried together. We all knew what Anne would have wanted, there were no doubts.

I flew home alone. Alice and Perry stayed to arrange to have Anne medivaced back to the U. S. so she could be disconnected and die, as she always said she would want to do under these circumstances, at home in her own bed.

I still miss Anne. We took turns reading her favorite books to her and she was never alone. Dawn, my second oldest daughter, was reading her Pride and Prejudice when Alice said that Anne had stopped breathing.

When I was getting ready for the memorial service I discovered how many people remembered the pumpkin pies Anne baked for everyone every Thanksgiving I remembered the many garments and other items she had made for her family from a huge bolt of bold red and white stripped material that felt like it was made of canvas. I got a skirt and blouse; I was five then, that was scratchy where it touched the skin. I also received a jacks bag that lasted better than leather.

All the men in the family got short sleeved shirts that made us look like escapees or a singing group. It was so Anne, we used to say. Anne loved giving gifts. I thought about that during those hours in the waiting room, thought about the gifts, small and large we had exchanged over the years and what gifts mean.

In Japan gifts are very conscious parts of life. After those weeks in that stark, small, waiting room with the ugly linoleum floor and those hard chairs giving and receiving looked different to me. They mean more and now they are more than objects. Gifts are many things. Anne's death and the Battle of the Gifts taught me many things. Some of the gifts life brings, the least visible, connect us across time; the greatest gift, love, connects us us past death, and that I find as I grow older and hopefully wiser, is the most precious thing we ever receive.

James Dean: A Recipe and a Memory

A Recipe and Insight from the life of James Dean.

The Eclectic Sandwich Delight

(Ingredients vary depending on what is available)

Peanut Butter

Strawberry Jam

2 slices of bread

onion so thinly sliced you can see through it.

Tomato “ditto”

Lettuce “ditto”

One of the big, fat dill pickles also sliced very, very thin

Potato chips, crushed to the tiniest possible shreds

Ketchup for dipping mostly

Lightly toast the bread so there is no brown but it is just a little crisp. Slather on the peanut butter on one piece and the Strawberry Jam on the other. Layer on the onion and tomato so that the whole surface of the peanut butter is covered only once with each. Then sprinkle with the well crushed potato chips and cover with the very, very thin slices of pickle, and just enough pickle so that the surface is barely covered. Sprinkle lettuce with a touch of Ketchup on top and cover with the other slice of bread.

Jimmy cut his on the diagonal. I liked that. Served with lemonade and a small glass of milk.

I saw this sandwich prepared and assembled and then consumed by James Dean in the early 1950s. I was struck at how precise he was and how thin the tomato and onion were sliced. Jimmy and I both wore glasses nearly all the time so I tended to lean in close to watch and nearly got my nose trimmed. I was very young at the time.

Jimmy had dropped by at lunch time for a chat and most probably for a bite to eat. He was very skinny and Mom was sure he needed a meal. His Mom and my Mom had known each other before Jimmy's Mom died. Jimmy ate lunch sitting at my small table with me in the kitchen. Mom had already eaten, actually. Jimmy showed me how to peel up the top of my sandwich (Beanie, with just peanut butter and the jam) and sprinkle on the crushed potato chips. I loved it. Then he let me have a bite of his; interesting taste.

Jimmy had unusual tastes in food but when he assembled things it worked even when you thought it wouldn't.

(From my book, What Jimmy Taught me about Growing Up.)

After lunch we went into the back yard.

Mom was showing her roses to Jimmy, pointing out the colors and other details like aphids. The War of the Aphids was a theme that brought on updates at various times to all of us. I wandered off. I was not much interested in roses. I had been pushed into a small grove of them some months earlier and had not forgotten the experience of being a pin cushion.

I went off to play under the Avocado Tree while they talked. That was my favorite destination in the back yard for making mud pies. The Tree murmured, making comforting, familiar sounds as its leaves danced and wavered in the wind. Being under the Tree made me feel like there was a tent over head and under the Tree it was always cool.

For some reason the mud there was especially fine grained and therefore looked like chocolate. Didn't taste like chocolate though. I had already ascertained that on a previous occasion. As I made up hamburger patties of mud, folding these into other shapes suddenly an idea struck me.

I had something I wanted to show Jimmy. I knew he would like to see it; he would appreciate it as no one else would. They were just walking back into the house when I grabbed Jimmy's hand. I told him he had to come look at something – right now. My mother smiled and went in the house. Stevie had started to cry, I could hear him.

A tingle of excitement runs through me even now when I remember dragging Jimmy by the hand over the concrete pathway along the side of the garage. My arm was up at an angle because he was so much taller than me. I looked ahead to the rather dense and tall bush against the back fence. On one brief occasion I was off the ground because I was pulling so hard. Jimmy was going to be impressed, I just knew it.

I rounded the tall bush and pointed, triumphantly. The bush leaned slightly outward, creating a small alcove behind it. There was just a foot or so of space and there was my prize. I had been visiting it for weeks. I don't know how it got there. It certainly had not been ours. The dead Tortoise had been past all hope when I first found it there spread eagled on its back. I had been watching it being eaten by ants for these many weeks, never mentioning it to anyone. I tried to look every few days, although I knew that I should not tell Mom. She would remove it, I was pretty sure.

Jimmy looked at the Tortoise for a long time, just standing there. Then he squatted down to get a better look, pushing the bush aside. He looked at me and smiled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners, as I stood there waiting for his reaction. I have lived a long life but I have never again been so right about someone who was still nearly a stranger. Jimmy was delighted; he nodded. We understood each other.

Then Jimmy told me that he had watched the same process himself back in Fairmount only it was with a whole cow.

I shuddered. Cows were huge and without shells you could see much more. Jimmy was the first person with whom I discussed the physical process of mortality. Normally, when things like gold fish died they were immediately buried, usually in the toilet after a brief prayer. That did not allow me to check back and see how things were going.

I had yet to persuade my parents to let me bury a deceased goldfish in a Band aid box to be dug up later for minute examination. The tortoise came first. Jimmy filled me in on various aspects of the process with horrid expressions of face and gestures of hands as he made rubbery faces that made me laugh.

We had a cat then, Tiger Lady, later Tiger when his gender was correctly identified. Tiger was still a fluffy kittenish presence then. Mortality was an issue still past my horizon for anything but goldfish and the tortoise. I was curious about the physical process of death, but Jimmy did not leave it there. With Jimmy answers led inevitably to more questions.

Jimmy told me right then and there that the essence of the Tortoise was gone. Its form remained but the thing that had built it out of the raw materials of the Earth, just like we were built, had left its body and moved on.

With just a few words Jimmy had given me more things to think about. From the process of the deterioration of the physical body we had arrived at the question of the force that created and moves the body while it lives and the destination of that essence after death.

Those questions were revelations in themselves.

How were we built out of the Earth I wondered, looking down at the dirt? I put that thought away for another time. Now I wanted to know where the Tortoise had gone, if anyplace. I asked Jimmy. He paused, cocked his head to one side and looked right at me. He told me he did not know, exactly; he wondered himself if it was a place we could really understand while we were still in our bodies. Perhaps we would have to wait to know. He told me that if he found out he would tell me. He nodded as he said this. Jimmy did not mind admitting the limits of his knowledge.

The death and aftermath of the life of Tortoise opened up a series of conversations about the nature of the world to me that filled several of Jimmy's visits and spilled over into conversations with my father, too.

Death, Jimmy told me, was not the end of the life of a Tortoise any more than it was the end of our own lives when death came. The essence that made us what we are continued. When he told me this he pointed out that I could not see the wind, only the things the wind carries. I was only aware of the light when it was gone. But all of these things were far more tangible than the essence that created and moved the Tortoise. All continued; Death was transition and illusion.

I already accepted that Jimmy would not lie to me; that was part of the trust that came with his reaction to the Tortoise. But I had learned that people would tell me things that were not strictly factual and often thought this was funny. Jimmy didn't do that. Jimmy told me the truth as he saw it about everything that came up. Then he told me to think it out for myself and never, never accept what others say as the truth until I had done that.

That was the first lessons that Jimmy taught me. Death is not the end; the essence continues; question what you think is true; trust yourself. These were lessons I would carry with me always.

Why James Dean is worth remembering.

Our Christmas card the year I met Jimmy

Earlier this month the Fresno Bee published yet another article, citing someone who postures as an authority on the life and significance of James Byron Dean; this September 30th will mark the half century anniversary of Dean's death in a automobile accident in Cholame, California. During his life time James Dean was not famous. At the moment he died only one of his three movies to have been released was East of Eden. Rebel Without A Cause was not yet in the theaters.

When he died no one had yet considered the tiny body of work Dean left behind as his legacy. No one expected him to die. James Dean's movies represent the only tangible statement of his skill. But those movies in themselves proved to be a monumental commentary. The three films illustrate ability- that plumbs depths and exhibits an intelligence unusual in an actor only 24 years of age. The roles he created in those movies expand to dominate the screen against far more experienced actors. The intelligent portion of Hollywood understood that, but as with all professions only a few could see that. Most people who are fascinated by the magnetic appeal Dean was able to project ascribe that appeal to those causes that more define themselves than they do James Dean.

"He represents eternal youth," Legnon says, leaning on the memorial. "If James Dean had lived, he wouldn't be the icon he is. He'd just be an old guy, like [Marlon] Brando or Montgomery Clift or any of the actors that Dean came of age with."

It is easy for strangers to ooze opinion about someone when that person has been six feet under for a half a century. James Byron Dean died when he was 24 years old; he died having completed only three movies but those movies burn with the intelligence James Dean brought to every facet of his life. Many young actors are the product of the need in Hollywood for fresh meat. Not so with James Dean.

Shelby Legnon, who never knew Jimmy, says that if Jimmy had lived he would have been, “just some old guy, like Brando of Montgomery Clift.” No one could be more wrong. Legnon did not know him.

But his movies speak to those who possess the wit to understand.

Jimmy was an individual who saw clearly and who had values that were defined and honed through years of thought.

If he had lived Jimmy would have transformed the entertainment industry; injecting the vibrant ideas and values that moved him originally into acting. Because that industry supplies the memes and cultural content of so much that we, as Americans, live and breathe every day of our lives, and because the world watches us as the edge of cultural change, it is fair to say that James Dean would have changed the world. That was his intention and his aim; to impact the world through the craft of acting.

He understood how it could be used. He intended to use it.

James Dean had confronted such issues and the life of the spirit, mortality, the profound differences between people, and the ideas that drive the world when he was very young. He began life as a Mama's boy, enveloped in maternal attention. He shared with his mother a world of make-believe.; they also talked about ideas. That world was shattered when his mother died and he was relocated to Indiana to live with his aunt and uncle, two people who were decent, kind, hard-working and very different. He was a sensitive child. He did not forget his mother, he continued to remember and to grieve, creating an intense internal life of ideas. Those ideas eventually took him into acting. People who are highly intelligent and creative make their own rules.

I knew James Dean; he was no hormone-driven Hollywood wind up doll. He was insightful, intellectually alive and very aware of the kind of people and motives that confronted him in the reality of Hollywood, 1955. To be successful in Hollywood you had to play the games Hollywood expected. Jimmy understood people; he understood their limitations and their prejudices. He had learned to project what was expected of him.

The Hollywood perception of James Dean is colored by the timing of when he died and by the limited access he allowed to those whose approval he needed to succeed in the career he was passionately pursuing. If he had died three years later he would have had time to let Hollywood know who he really was; if he had died ten years later he would have changed Hollywood. But that is not what happened.

There was only one James Dean. How much of him you saw depended on how much it was safe for him to show.

Jimmy knew what Hollywood wanted him to be so that is what they saw. He was much more.

I have spent my life fascinated by ideas and James Dean was a major influence in creating that interest.

James Dean explained to me the process of photosynthesis by telling me when I was just a small child that, “Trees breathe; Live exists on Earth because the green growing things breathe in the light of the Sun and produce the oxygen that we, and all life, needs to survive.” An amazing way to make that process real and viscerally available to a child.

James Dean loved thinking about the processes of life. He loved books and the ideas that roil in the mind when that mind weaves the possibilities of what is now with what could be. He pounced on new facts with delight.

The first time I met Jimmy it was over Beanie sandwiches in the kitchen of the family home in West Los Angeles. He was a student; I was a kid. He was the kind of person who listened to children and responded thoughtfully, by which I mean he was able to connect and engage in a real discourse, not talking down to me but exploring the ideas that found their way into our conversation, introducing ideas as part of the text. With Jimmy if there was conversation there were ideas to discuss.

It was on that very first visit that Jimmy and I discussed mortality. It was the first time anyone had mentioned the subject to me. I had been watching a tortoise dissolve back into dust, so to speak. I had discovered the tortoise already very dead behind a bush in the back yard of the house. I was fascinated by the process of its dissolution as ants carried it away and it shrank into itself. I had not told anyone else because I knew how they would reaction. The tortoise would evoke shrieks and Mom would remove it.

Given a chance I hauled Jimmy back to look, too. Jimmy was delighted. He proceeded to tell me about observing the same process with a cow on a farm back home. Then, squatting down for a closer look, he told me that the essence of the tortoise, the thing that had make it move and live, was gone. The same happened to all that lived, he told me.

From that time on we talked about ideas whenever he showed up for a visit. Towards the end of the visits he had started talking to me about books he was reading and the ideas that excited him in those.

Jimmy was looking forward to a career; that career would only begin with acting. He mentioned moving on to directing and other work. He had been unhappy with the way a book he had read was made into a movie. The book was Fountainhead. He wanted to remake it because he thought the characterizations were flat and had failed to evoke the wonderful potential of the human life. I suspect now, looking back through a life time that has afforded me the opportunity to know more than I want about Objectivism, that if he had tried to do the remake he wanted Ayn Rand would have strenuously objected. Jimmy had a strong sense of spirituality that would have offended her. Jimmy would probably have ignored her objections. He was like that. He knew what he wanted and he was determined.

I have many memories of Jimmy; he always found time to talk to me and since we shared a fascination with ideas there was always lots to discuss. The essence of spirit, the past and how we know and understand it; the flow of time. All of these things were subjects we discussed. He did most of the talking, naturally. I listened carefully and asked questions.

Does a shallow, self indulgent kid greedy for fame and the potential for self importance and what fame can buy spend that kind of time with a child? No. Would that kind of discourse slip from the lips of an angst ridden pop tart? Hardly.

If Jimmy had lived he would not have become a fat, self-indulgent has been. He would have taken the capital he had created in name identification and respect and invested it in projects that pushed the edges of thought in new directions. Hollywood would have followed his lead because he was worth following. He would have started projects for kids in Fairmount, Indiana; he would have, perhaps run for office. He would have done good in all directions. He cared about people and he cared about the kind of world his generation would leave behind.

I know that to most people he exemplified the undirected angst of youth. Ironically the image he left immediately in the minds of most Americans was the product of hard work at the craft of acting. To see that perhaps Legnon should stand back and consider the intellectual vigor it takes to achieve that outcome. Jimmy was directed, focused, intent, inquiring and passionately interested in everything around him. That remains the unspoken and compelling presence that continues to fascinate, even if the viewer does not understand why.

I wish you could have known him. Then you would understand why he is worth remembering.

Beatty vs. the Governor: Send Arnold back to Hollywood

I read with interest the article transcribed from a speech given by Warren Beatty today from the keynote address delivered at the graduation ceremony for UC Berkeley's Goldman School for Public Policy. While I agreed with the underlying sentiments expressed I found myself wishing Mr. Beatty had stood up for actors. Certainly there is no reason to assert today that actors contribute less to our common happiness and wellbeing than do politicians. I would make a case for the contrary. I know one honest politician but I have known several honest actors. And actors do not expect the lavish retirement accorded to members of Congress and the larger legislatures. They know if they don't give the audience what it wants they could starve. A laudable attitude that keeps them on their toes.

The state of California would be far better off if this actor turned governor were still making the same quality movies for which he was so well known.

So I would I suggest to Mr. Beatty that his respect for politicians is misplaced. We all have wish lists of issues but first and foremost America needs to return control of governance to the people and reinstall accountability in governance. That is after all, the original idea. That does not mean handing control off to a new form of aristocracy which is what politicians have become.

Being elected to office is the equivalent of winning the lottery.

It has been going bad for a long time but it was the idea that politicians can experiment on us that destroyed the basis of accountability. The ideas of the past, grounded in the failures of socialist thought and utility theory do not work. With the advent of socialism in the early 1900s the practice of installing clever ideas with no proof they would work became accepted. Theories are nice but should never be used without full liability for harm caused and a comprehensive impact study, not in business and not in government.

No-fault divorce, welfare reform, and other nifty ideas foisted on us through legislation have destroyed the expectations of generations of Americans. It has to stop.

And in a world where Americans cannot trust the electoral process discussing health care is like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

We are as able to audit the accounts of those convicted of crimes like Enron as we are the ballots that elect our leaders. Therefore, America has no reasonable expectation of an honest vote. That should scare you. So, while I very much enjoyed the warm sentiments and insights of Mr. Beatty I would urge him to rethink his priorities.

Consider for a moment the retirement and benefits packages of those who serve. Definitely not what they voted up for us. Personally, if I had my way I would put the Congress on whatever privatized Social Security system they elect for us and give the elderly the retirement packages customized for Congress. To expensive you say? Just cancel the present war and we can afford it, I answer.

Which brings us to another issue on which I disagree with Mr. Beatty while sharing his sentiments. Taxation is not the best way to equalize wealth. The robber barons of California went after the money with the help of various legislatures and then bought respectability and acceptance, which was all too cheaply for sale. Being able to buy acceptability without fear of liability makes thievery carried out under the guise of “business” and “government” far too attractive. If this had not been the case, if liability were the disincentive it should be, then the problems with California's 'energy deregulation' would by now have resulted in the seizure of the ill gotten gains and hopefully restitution would have been rendered to those harmed. Jail time is far too good for them. Give them jobs at Walmart. Wealth is not the problem; what wealth makes acceptable to us is.

This kind of predatory behavior is not a recent development and predates both Mr. Beatty and myself.

Far from representing a forgotten era of capitalism the Roaring Twenties was alive with larceny, the legacy of law and practice already distorted by the growing partnership between government and big business that is only today reaching its full flower through the logical consistency of the NeoCons. The motto of these Grandees of Greed ought to be, “If you are going to steal, steal everything.” No one can deny they are efficient. Who else would have ended combat pay the second a soldier is wounded and then charged the injured for food and treatment while still in the hospital, rendering a bill on discharge?

One can imagine the murmurs of awe and respect issuing from the now dead lips of Nazi bureaucrats.

I will happily accord any politician the respect I give my plumber if he or she does the job as promised. Politicians deserve exactly as much respect and profit as they earn by fulfilling the duty they owe to those who pay their salaries. Perhaps at sometime in America's past being a politician meant a life of service but for longer than either Mr. Beatty of I have lived being a politician in America has meant, for most of those 'called' to that profession, serving up Americans to the interests of power. Being an actor is a profession far more worthy of respect. Honor is in any work well and honestly performed, not in the kind of work. Any actor posing as a corpse can tell you that.

So, Mr. Beatty, give actors the respect they deserve. I'd rather have a bad actor acting than one playing politician any day.

Faith and Religious Practice: Quantum Consciousness

When we accept the presence of the sacred in our lives and begin to listen to the flow of spirit coming to us from a place unseen we are confronted with a profound choice. Will we choose to hear or will we shoulder past the ineffable and continue on our way, ignoring what our minds tell us is irrational?
No choice comes without risks. But what is risked is not necessarily apparent, either to the one confronted or to those watching the logic of choice work its way out into the material circumstances that will record the totality of our individual lives.
The verities of the religious experience may be very different than we have thought.
This goes to several questions. One of these touches on the nature of reality, which we are beginning to understand through the insights offered through quantum physics as very different that previously believed. It is not the finite, knowable world that we saw it to be at the beginning of the 20th century. Most human institutions still rest on the assumptions of that century if not on an even earlier century. The structures of human institutions, born from the ideas of generations past, function as repositories for the conservation of moral and institutional capital and are therefore falling edge indicators for coming change.
This takes us to the question of faith, not in the way we have traditionally understood this but in a new way that I characterize as quantum consciousness. According to quantum physics each part of the whole, no matter how far removed from all others, is actually in immediate and intimate contact. This means that the faith derived article of belief stating that all life connects is literally, physically true, the spiritual then being understood as an aspect of our nature heretofore seen as separate and problematical.
But if we are all cojoined, both with our own spiritual nature and with the material world that extends from that nature then this is not faith but intuitively derived truth. There have been indications for a long time that those arenas of human insight, including art and literature, actually function as predictors for oncoming waves of change in how we perceive the nature of reality.
Dr. Leonard Shlain's book, Art and Physics, Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light, notes the relationship between the underlying conceptualizations in edge art and their predictive function in physics.
What, then is intuition and how can we use it as a tool for human progress?
Is religious intuition a partially understood means through which we as humans may understand our own nature and progress towards some unseen horizon? This would seem to be the case. But as with all intuition this is subject to interpretation filtered through the veil of ideas each of us uses to construct the immediate nature of our everyday reality. Because we see through those filters of our own internal experiences we use iconic representations that provide a context for meaning. This in large part explains the difficulty in communicating between individuals coming from different perspectives. But only in part. We can also be mistaken about what specific iconic representations mean to others seen through cultural filters when we translate these into language.
Assumptions about what may seem obvious are a constant block to real communication.
We are spirits living in bodies that see the world through images, language and ideas that may vary widely in understanding. Our backgrounds, genders, cultures, level of spiritual development, education, age, and other factors moderate our 'beliefs.' Our beliefs create the reality with which we react and interact with others.
We are spirits in process of becoming. What we are becoming lies beyond the horizon of our ability to understand. But if we are connected in the way that intuition and quantum physics now indicates then the comfortable and artificial limits we have provided through human culture, practice and religion are as fragile as a curtain suffering long exposure to the sun. It is ready to tear and only our assumptions are holding it in place. Those assumptions are what created it in the first place, let's remember.
So what does this mean to us as individuals and as a people? It means that as individuals we need to confront the nature of the world in which we live and the nature of the world that lives in each of us. Today that need is greater because we are living in a time of transition. Every institution of humanity is showing the strain of long use that has worn it to shreds. Those institutions, forged from the ideas originating in the human mind, are failing because they are not modeling the coming change in consciousness that has been so long predicted.
Baldly stated, that change is from a hierarchal structure for human organization to a flatter, matrixed model for human relations. Equality expressed spiritually.
This is evident everywhere, even in the excesses of hierarchy reaching its logical conclusion as a form of resistance to change. In politics today it can be understood as the one predicted Rapture, that being in truth, the realization that all are one, Christians seeing this as a union in the spirit of Christ, others seeing it through the explanatory iconic representations of their own belief systems. Interestingly enough, nearly all human religious have predicted a transition in this period of time, another argument that the intuition driving these visions has predictive value.
As with all monumental transitions this one is tumultuous, impacting many in immediate ways.
The form and content of churches, giving place to the continuing human need to experience the sacred, are changing in unexpected ways that are leaving members of the older generations bewildered and isolated. The cognitive process to which the younger generations have been subject may well have changed them organically far more than we yet understand. The familiar structure of the human experience, firmly invested in a hierarchal world view is rapidly growing flatter through a series of punctuating events. This bald fact has been observable in business, with the downsizing of the Fortune 500 through the collapse of middle management with the advent of the desk top computer. This has been balanced by the almost hysterical desire of those in positions of power to hold on to the past by accumulating reservoirs of wealth.
The effect of quantum consciousness first appeared in venues for human action that were most easily modified by the forces of market choice. America, representing the optimization of freedom remained a mystic beacon for human hope even as the objective conditions that had made this true were diminished. Where choice is possible, in religion, in occupation, in relationships, choice has been exercised with growing frequency. We are seeing it last in government and other organizations that fail to allow for the modifying power of individuals voting with their feet and finances.
Quantum consciousness is the realization of human freedom, not in the political realm but in all parts of all venues for action.
Individuals from all parts of the world have accepted the idea that they should by inherent right be free. All of us are now trying to understand what freedom means practiced in the individual life. Our beliefs and the hope it generates may be changing the larger direction through the compiled force of quantum consciousness itself. Nothing is separate, as we are coming to see.
The body of human knowledge has increased exponentially. It is no longer possible for any one human being to know everything in even a subsection of one discipline when only ten generations ago it was possible for one individual to have working knowledge of the whole of human knowledge derived from Western Civilization. This rate of change has only shifted upwards with the interface created by the presence of the Internet and other means for the dissemination of memes that would previously have taken years instead of seconds or minutes to change the idea sets of individuals across divides of space and time.
So what does this say about how we should view religious practice?
With respect, with an open mind and with the view of understanding it as an overlooked tool for human understanding of the entire human experience.

Evangelicals are hypocrites: Do not emulate them.

Evangelicals are hypocrites: Do not emulate them.

It is all well and good to call for the signing of endless petitions asserting some kind of ownership in a belief in Christ, but those are empty words. No one owns the message; but each of us can deliver it. How we do that tells everyone whether or not we are living in the Work.
It is not hard to tell. No one mistakes the concentration camps as acts of Christian love. No one who really looks and listens can believe that the evangelicals now pounding their chests and staking out the moral high ground are about anything but deceit. That many of them may be deceiving themselves as well is pathetic.
Those evangelical Christians who offend by using words to change His message are not acting as Christians. But are you? Christ is not about politics in the sense that politics can be used to force others to act. Christ is demonstrated in us when we act as Him, allowing the Gift of His spirit to move us in our own lives.
Sorry if this seems unkind but it should be so obvious. I spent most of my life as an atheist until Christ claimed me. But now I have no doubts.
Reclaiming Christianity cannot be done with words. As the gift was given so must it be lived. Only your acts have the power to affirm His message. Consider for a moment the message of Christ.
Christ gave us his body and blood as a meal to satisfy our needs. He did this freely. He could have at any time avoided the pain of torture and crucifixion. He welcomed it. This was not in His words but in the sacrifice of His human life on the Cross. That was the first part of His gift, but not the greater. The fact of His eventual death was determined at the moment he was born. What could death, even death on the Cross, be to the Son of God who clearly saw beyond its veil?
That death meant nothing. But then, He rose from the grave and appeared again among His followers to speak and to teach. He told them He had still one gift to give. And this time He gave His Spirit. It was not in words that He gave His spirit to dwell in each of us. This He did as a tangible, living act that broke His spirit like the loaf of bread He had held in His hands at the last Supper. After that moment in time we dwelt in Him, as He lives in us, all of us. It does not matter if you believe in Him, He lives in each of us no matter how we doubt and fear.
He has given this precious gift to each of us.
His actions changed the course of history. Because of His acts today we are different. The reality of his acts and Gift sent a message into the world that became greater than its parts. This happened because Christianity was not founded on words but on actions. If you would reclaim Christianity then you must retake it by the compounded acts of your life speaking out the simple but profound beliefs spoken by Jesus with His own life.
We are One in Him. What you do for anyone else so do you do for Him, directly and immediately. Love others as yourself. Love yourself so that you can love others.
This was foundational to the beliefs of the church Christ left behind in trust.
It was this belief made manifest throughout the first centuries of Christianity that changed the face of the world, moving humanity towards a vision of love and unity through the life of one Man.
As it was so it is today.
So toss that petition in the trash can. Now take your life, which is a gift from God, and make with it the living reality that speaks the essence of the message and the reality that is our living gift from the Messiah. Make your own statement. By so doing you will confound those who misuse Him.
Instead of requesting that someone else, in this case the government of the United States, care for others take up the duty left to you by Christ and do it with your own hands. In so doing you can bring the consciousness of Christ back into the world. Where there is disease, heal, as did the Christians of the early years.
In those early centuries the cities of the Roman Empire were frequently subject to plagues that killed thousands. As a practice, pagans had abandoned their own relatives to die when they fell ill. But early Christians, recognizing these victims as extensions of the Body of Christ, made them comfortable, feed them and tended to their needs. As a result as many as 70% lived. This was living the Word; the extrapolation of faith into acts.
The early church was a tool for making the Word real in the sight of all humanity. They heard and came. But this process was not through preaching words but in the eloquence of action.
There were many reasons for becoming Christian. To be Christian was to be persecuted, marginalized, despised. But it was also a force for change and the least among pagans saw, heard, and came.
For a woman becoming Christian meant that she owned herself. She could not be sold into marriage when she was as young as 10. She was not required to abort or kill her babies if her husband did not want them. She controlled her own property. If her husband died she was not given back to her father to be sold again into marriage. She could control and sell her own property and hold positions in the early Church. Many early Christian women did just that.
The promise of freedom built an early church culture of benevolence and love. 60% of early Christians were women. We know these things from careful study of the objective facts left behind, not from the obfuscations of later generations of 'church fathers.' Read the Rise of Christianity by Dr. Rodney Stark, a study in the sociology of the early church if you doubt.
The human spirit was hungry for more than food. They also hungered for freedom, especially the least of these, women. Women had no standing or rights in the pagan world.
That was the living truth on which Christianity flourished, the living word of Christ in works.
Where there was hunger, they feed that hunger. In a world that hungered mightily for freedom Christianity was a feast of the spirit. We know Christ today because that early church feed all of the hungers of a humanity with many needs.
We hunger for freedom today as much as for food to fill our bellies.
Where there is want and lack fill those needs.
It is much easier today than it was 2,000 years ago.
Now we have cooperative organizations enabled through our culture that allow us to donate, work, teach and heal with our spare time. Because we are more productive we have spare time. Go into your own community and see what needs to be done. Then do it.
Given the direction of the government of the United States and the message now being delivered by the Evangelicals awaiting the Rapture in the Rose Garden, there is, every day, more to be done.
Stop giving unto Caesar what is not due to him. Today you can choose. You can start giving to those who hunger for all of the things that the early church gave to those who they touched. Those things are still needed. You can hold up a mirror that makes the lies that offend you obvious to all who see.
But do it from your own heart, from your community, and from the love that Christ gave you without using the coercive power of government.
Christ never voted for the lesser of two evils and neither should you.

A Lovely Tea at the White House with Laura Bush!

Thanks for the Memories that are rather soured
The White House – May 11, 2001
By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

The tea was held upstairs, past open doors that held the portraits of First Ladies and mementos of previous administrations. The People’s House is large enough to hold all of the variations of which America is capable. Therefore it must be large, more on the inside than in any other dimension.
We scaled the broad and beautiful stairs while listening to the floating music of a military string quartet that played in the foyer across a gleam of marble flooring. The music drew us on.
Various of our number stopped to study the portraits of the presidents that hung on the walls and more than a few paused in front of the bust of Lincoln that gazes into a place far away at one side of the hallway.
The People’s House hushes voices and fills the heart with pride. We have known so many disappointments and failures. The light was gold and clear drifting down to touch the marble and gleaming carpets.
The event was everything any of us imagined it could be. We had dressed accordingly.
The tiny pastries epitomized all that is delicious. As rapidly as we could empty the trays they were replenished by the hovering servers. Our noble best did not suffice to empty even one before it was whisked from sight to make way for another.
The day was warm. So instead of sipping hot tea our thirsts were quenched by the most excellent iced tea, delicately flavored with just a touch of mango. Cautioned not to take souvenirs a few of our number did tuck a single paper napkin into a dainty purse.
We basked, remembering the hours of labor that each of us have invested in bringing this administration home.
Pictures were taken, smiles and words exchanged with the First Lady. She shared with us her hopes for a better tomorrow through her work for all children everywhere. Her hopes were made tangible and accessible through programs that enable each to work within their home and community. We listened, moved and delighted with her simple informality.
The contrast served to remind each of us that this administration is very different from the last.
The People’s House is large. It is not so much a home as a symbol and destination for thoughts and deeds. We snapped our own pictures; unofficial mementos to be savored over and over again through the months and years ahead.
Tea. Pastries. Music. A lavishing of thoughts and a reminder that the building is a symbol of things we cannot touch. Those things we can and did take with us.

Raspberry Gumballs and the President

Raspberry Gumballs and the President As told by Little Carolyn to her Mom.


She hungered for raspberry gumballs. These ecstatically wonderful delights could only be had from the gumball machine at the local Safeway Market. She knew it was after curfew. This limitation was an annoyance that had been mandated by frisky high school students wandering through the night looking for very different excitements. This could not apply to her. She was law-abiding and careful of the proper rights of others.
Little Carolyn was always a law unto herself.
She got dressed. Her aunt would never know. She could almost taste the gumballs now.
The Safeway was just a few blocks away, a matter of a five-minute walk. She had often ventured into the night on some such small adventure, but this time it would be very different.
The place was pretty quiet except for a clutch of people around the checkout stand at the other end of the store. Little Carolyn, standing around 4’ 8," ignored them, eyes firmly on the source of coming delight.
The coins clinked into the slot and she turned the handle. The machine groaned, coughed, and fell silent. No raspberry gumballs appeared in the spillway. She tried again. Still no gumballs. She knew that appealing to the store manager would result in a smirk and dismissal. That had happened all too often. The gumball machine seemed to be sneering at her.
"Hey! You can’t shake that machine!" Little Carolyn looked back to see a friend of her grandfather’s glaring at her. She had to look way up as he was well over six feet.
"It stole my money and it is not going to let it get away with it – this time." She returned to her activity. Smack.
Little Carolyn felt herself seized bodily and hauled off.
"Apologize to the Manager, Carolyn. Your grandpa is going to be very upset when he finds out."
"No. This machine steals my money and the manager won’t give it back or fix the machine. He promised he would the last time. Grandpa would say I was right to insist on having the gumballs. He might not have wanted me to hit the machine but…."
"But we do not smack machines. They aren’t our property."
"So I guess it is alright to steal from kids?" She looked up into the face of the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan who had paused while bagging his own groceries in Goleta, California in 1981 to intercede, recognizing the grandchild of an old friend.
Little Carolyn would be hauled off by a grim faced President and his accompanying Secret Service cortege and deposited home into the horrified custody of her aunt. She remained unrepentant.
Authority misapplied that ignores the proper rights of individuals was the issue. It is too bad that with the best intentions in the free world President Reagan failed to see this small revolution as what it really was. Standing up for your rights includes the gumballs – even when authority wants you to shut up and just take it.
Maybe if it had been jelly beans he would have understood.
(The above story is the honest go God truth and took place in 1981. I sent a copy of this to Mrs. Reagan on the occasion of the President's borthday in 2003.)


God Bless you, Mr. President

Women, War and the ERA

Women, War and the ERA


The American Revolution would not have been won without its women. They have never gotten the credit they deserved. It is time they did.
They don’t want much. Just equality, something they still don’t have under the existing Constitution. You might have thought it happened. It didn’t. America has not ratified the Equal Eights Amendment. It is time it did.
The bill has been payable for over 200 years. It is time to pay up.
It is a well known but misunderstood fact that the Revolution was funded and fought for the most part from the New England states. New England was able to put a huge army in the field because it had always depended on the productivity of women, who sharing the goals and dangers of the war, redoubled their efforts to allow fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons, to take up arms.
The household based economy of the New England States made up the largest part of the capital investment that carried the revolution through its years of conflict. The women who bore this burden believed that their risk and investment would be repaid through the capital of liberty thereby produced. They expected that after the war they would receive a full share in the freedom won.
Ironically, women were less free after the Revolution than before. Before the war many New England states tied the right to vote to property, so many women voted. After the war franchise was firmly tied to gender. Emigrants who had contributed nothing to the effort to establish freedom were given the prerogatives of citizenship denied to these original investors. After the war the various States asserted the right to further control women through marriage and divorce laws and other measures that restricted their freedoms.
But subsequent generations of women took up the burdens of the fight for a human emancipation they did not yet share. They became the weight and the will of the Abolitionist Movement. They worked for social reforms and against poverty. Again, believing they would be included along with their black sisters and brothers in full citizenship, they were disappointed when the 14th Amendment failed to include them. They were told to wait while the Black Man had his day. Black Sisters did not matter any more than did they. In each case only a handful of men, those who enjoyed the benefits of their sacrifices, went on to work with them for the liberty of women.
Those of us who cry for their rage remember those names. The honorable deserve the credit of their actions.
Subsequent generations of women patriots have also been denied both the moral credit for their sacrifices and a page in history. They are still not included as full citizens under the law of the Constitution.
The ability to wage war is not just about men in battle. For every soldier in the field many others labor to supply the weapons, the munitions, the food, the essential support that keeps him or her there. Today we well know that the benefits of such service are extended to all of those specialties that never include exposure to the moral dangers of battle. They are nonetheless soldiers that serve to support the effort.
Why then do we deny to women the full franchise and protection of law, granting this to all men? Women have always served. They have simply not been recognized or compensated.
As a long time member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, as an American and a patriot I object.
Extend to women the full rights of citizenship. Ratify the ERA
Equality of the genders under law is no longer negotiable.

Phyllis Schlfly is wrong - but so is everyone.

Why Everyone is Wrong on Title IX

I really meant to be at the debate in Santa Barbara on Tuesday night between Phyllis Schlafly and Anita Perez Ferguson, but it just didn't happen. So I called around and asked questions, read the paper the next morning, and ascertained that for the umpteenth time the same arguments on Title IX with reflections on the usefulness of law as a means of enforcing/changing gender roles had occupied center front of the debate. I was kind of glad I missed it at that point. These arguments go like this:
Feminist - "If public money is spent on sports it has to be equally proportioned between males and females." This treats males and females as if they were on opposing teams instead of enforcing the original principle, so long ignored, of the larger American vision that we are individuals and should be treated as such. Since the Founders also flubbed that one it is hard for me to apportion too much blame on this one.
Anti-Feminist - "Public money spent on sports should be apportioned as it has always been; Mostly to males because males are better at sports." Men have a right to preferential treatment because they stole it fair and square. It is a sanctified American tradition that needs to be continued. This is the argument of Right by Conquest applied internally.
Both arguments assume public money should be spent on sports. Both arguments assume that somehow competitive sports are a positive benefit that justifies their cost.
Both arguments are silly.

This is how things REALLY ought to be - to recycle a phrase from a confessed drug addict.
No competitive sports should be paid for through public funding of any kind. Schools are for educating individuals, helping each child discover and optimize their inherent strengths. Public schools should not be a farm team system for professional sports. Professional teams are a profit-making concern and should pay their own way. The need to find talent may motivate them to fund after school sports programs.
Baseball, football and basketball are not what America is about. Neither is golf.
All students do not benefit from participation in competitive sports and focusing on such activities asserts values that have nothing to do with education. Unfortunately except for a very few exceptional individuals the direction of professional sports has been bad for the values of America. The ranks of professional athletes hold nearly as many felons, rapists, wife abusers, and bad credit risks as we find in Congress. Both groups are erroneously held up as models for public behavior.
We now live in a free country where cities can steal land to build sports stadiums and no one blinks. It is a very wrong picture.
The original issue was fitness for children.
Physical fitness is essential to individual health and well-being. We all want our children to have positive experiences and optimize their health. But the families of students should provide those activities that they think best support their own children. These programs could be direct tax credits, either individually or through employers thus reducing the money controlled by government.
Presumably, providing such programs would be a cooperative effort with the many organizations, mostly nonprofits, already providing such activities for students after school. If local schools and the parents who should have input there feel they need physical fitness on campus during school time those activities should help each student become more fit instead of pouring money into programs that focus attention and resources on a few athletically gifted students of either gender.
The mistake perpetuated by feminists was their failure to recognize that the present system takes control from parents and delivers it into the hands of bureaucrats. Feminism must be about individualism because the State has never been anything but hostile to the rights of women.
The mistake of Libertarians and small government Republicans was one of inconsistency. If individual freedom of choice and markets are the answer then why did they fail to make this point when Title IX was originally proposed? Title IX is a clunky add-on to a failed system meant to redress generations of preferential treatment for males now long gone from the educational system. But punishing young boys for the crimes and omissions of their elder counter parts only creates more generations of resentment. The answer is probably because most Libertarians and small government Republicans are male and they like football, basketball and baseball just the way they are, thank you very much. Southern slave owners had a similar problem.
But those mistakes are in the past. It is time to do the right thing, fix the problem, and move forward together.
Phyllis should go home to Missouri and act as a model for a housewife who does not speak unless spoken to. That is the gender role she says she favors; let her try it for herself. This debate might well be an attempt by Phyllis Schlafly to find new ground from which to oppose the real issue, that being the long awaited ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment so she can go on making a profit by attacking the rights other women struggled to create for her. The Eagle Forum is cheesy but it has given her visibility and benefits beyond measure.
Contrary to what the overwhelming majority of Americans believe men and women are not equal under law and this has rankled and lies at the foundation of the bitterness expressed by the Women's Movement.
The truth is always in what you do, not in what you say. While Americans had ratified equality in their hearts and actions the law does not reflect that and when the question is posed at the Supreme Court we already know that our Constitution will not support equality.
The failure to ratify the ERA, find solutions to such issues as domestic violence, the sexual abuse of children, and the fiasco of no fault divorce, another extreme outrage to the concept of individual accountability, has driven women out of all political parties in growing numbers. Women know there is a problem but do not know where to go for a solution.
Democrats demand women carry the bags in elections but have consistently failed to do anything to forward a real agenda for social justice, preferring to create more customers for government largess whose dependence will reinforce their power. Republicans demand women carry the bags and pull the wagon, too.
The most recent Democrat justification is, amazingly, expressed in Joe Conasons's new book, Big Lies. It is that they, Democrats in Congress, steal less than Republicans. Nice to know he is honest enough to acknowledge what is usually an unspoken verity of government activity. I would like to see that one on a bumper sticker.
It is time women wised up. It is time Libertarians and small government Republicans saw that they have common ground with the one group who can make freedom a reality in our lifetimes.

Accepting the Courage to Live

Accepting the courage to live: A response to William Safire

William Safire approaches one of the most profound points now at issue in human discourse in his July 10th opinion piece on Laleh and Ladan Bijani, cojoined twins who died trying to achieve the fullness that their personal circumstances had denied them. He then slides off into a tangent leaving the reader unfulfilled.
The real issue is individualism versus collectivism as the best tool for driving human choice.
As Americans who have just celebrated the anniversary of a Revolution that asserted the right of individuals to choose against the most traditional form of collectivism, monarchy, we should remember the courage of two women who accepted their risks and chose to reject the limitations of the known, reaching instead for a future that offered them more scope.
They understood the step they chose. In characterizing this as a step into the realm of neuroethics Mr. Safire missteps and falls off the cliff into irrelevancy.
This was not about the potentials of brain enhancement; it was a life style choice predicated on the essential self-ownership of the individual.
The issue was the individual’s right of self-determination. It was their lives and their choice. Mr. Safire’s piece assumed the right of the State to limit individual choice.
That presumption should be at issue. We should be questioning how well this entrenched form of centralized control and choice limitation has served us.
Each of us must consider new choices made available through technological advancement when and if they become available. Responsible professionals need to consider the guidelines they will use to determine if they wish to offer those highly specialized and risky services to potential clients. But there is a long distance between rehabilitation and brain augmentation and this was the shoal on which Mr. Safire floundered.
Treatments to alleviate conditions that diminish the quality of an individual’s life are rehabilitation. The technological developments Mr. Safire cited will broaden the options now available. They are not life style choices but rehabilitative options. Such options belong firmly in the informed hands of individuals. Mr. Safire’s reliance on ‘professionals’ is ill placed.
Understanding the complexities of the human mind through neurobiology will give individuals the ability to make better decisions when confronted by real circumstances. Here science provides tools, new to us, but in a short time taken for granted. The history of medical science does not lend the thoughtful observer to rely on their judgment without strong reservations. When it is your own life or the life of someone you love you are most careful.
Mr. Safire’s comments relating this to medical ethics brings into focus the tendency for professionals to assume the right to decide life-impacting questions for individuals while at the same time seeking to limit their liability for making such busy-body decisions. They generally hide this tendency behind elevated rhetoric, such as supplied by Mr. Safire.
Their means for enforcing their power to choose for others is the State. This always-encroaching form of collectivism denies individuals the right to choose for themselves.
The books written by Antonio Damasio give new form to the relationship between human emotion and logic, entirely rebooting the historical presumptions that divided these two formats for decision-making. All of his books should be on the You-Really-Oughta-Read-This List. He is redefining the philosophical underpinnings of several disciplines simultaneously. Ethics, the economics of human behavioral strategies, will be only one of the things immeasurably impacted.
Human liberty, that subtle weaving of choice and accountability, is the tool that lies behind all human progress. Someone takes a risk, whether it is for revolution or an operation to give him or her a fuller future. Their choice gives each of us valuable input we immediately use, taking note of their success or failure.
In this way we reduce our transaction costs, watching as others stamp down the first grassy steps through unknown wilderness towards better worlds. There is no gene for conscience but it is time we asked ourselves why we tolerate what does not work. Individual choice works; Collectivism does not. If you wouldn’t trust a Congressman to watch your child why should they mandate our medical choices or dictate our energy sources?
It would have been a far sadder fate if Laleh and Ladan Bijani had not been able to choose. One hundred years ago they would have faced the wall of impossibility. They died having exercised their right to really live. We speak of spending our lives, recognizing in those words the temporary nature of human existence. The right choice may empower the soul, even as it kills us. This is the epitaph of all revolutionaries, including Laleh and Ladan.

Rove sends bouquet to Barbra Streisand

Did Karl Rove reprogram Barbra Streisand?


If Barbra Streisand could forward plan well enough to play chess with a six year old she might have a future in politics. Political competence requires that the participant think out the ramifications of actions and learn to lie with a straight face and without too many contradictions. One’s motives should be so obvious.
The decision of CBS to redirect the film, The Reagans, which is astonishingly offensive about every member of a very public family, is not a bad day for the 1st Amendment and free expression. It is a good day for civility and good taste. The offense level would have been much lower if Barbra and her funny friends had made a movie about, say, George Bush being lifted up to heaven in a final rapture as Armageddon is fought out on the plain beneath him. It would also have been much more on point and inject some humor into the ongoing horror movie of American foreign policy.
She is also wrong about who is offended. This is not a right-wing plot. It is not even a Neocon plot; though they will certainly try to use it for their own ends. I am sure that Karl Rove will begin buying Barbra’s albums in thanks.
This was a spontaneous eruption of outrage against extreme bad manners and a level of nastiness that offends individuals at all points of the political spectrum. Compare it to the recent recall, or to the sentiments expressed with Prop. 13. The Dixie Chicks are doing well now because the viewpoint they expressed is now very much in America’s main stream.
Americans are not stupid. They mostly ignore government because it is such a monumental waste of time, but they do notice when it gets too big for its britches and when ensuing events clarify the motives of those in power they will change their minds.
Ronald Reagan was a good man with some flaws. None of us is perfect. His last public act was to use his own illness to encourage support for those also inflicted with Alzheimer’s. He didn’t do that to get votes he did it to use his own pain and suffering to ease the burden of others.
I never voted for Ronald Reagan. I disagreed with him politically over and over again. But I am still offended; not only by this movie but by the stupidity and cowardly dissembling I see in Ms. Streisand and those involved in this production.
Ms. Streisand should learn from her mistake, apologize and move on.
This is clearly a very political movie aimed at impacting the public perception of a man who has become an icon not just for Republicans but for the many Democrats who also voted for him. What they wanted to do was impact Republican loyalty at the beginning of the presidential campaign period. But they should have taken on the present administration instead of a family who needs our love and support through a long agony.
Ronald Reagan projected an image of tough goodness and honesty. This made him unusual in politics because in his case it wasn’t just image. Ms. Streisand is handicapped in her attempts because so many people in Hollywood and in California knew him well.
I never voted for him but along with many thousands of others I saw his behavior over a long period of years not through photo-ops orchestrated at disasters for the media but through personal experience. He had sprightly conversations with my daughter on the phone when he called my Dad, who worked with him through his position at the University of California occasionally. His last conflict with my daughter, fought out near his ranch in Santa Barbara, over the propriety of making war on larcenous gum machines was one war Reagan lost. (see Raspberry Gumballs and the President)
The public may be appeased by having the use of the film shifted to a smaller audience. Maybe. The NeoCons, those right-wing crazies who are neither right wing or crazy but actually unprincipled and canny, will doubtless use this in attempts to stifle appropriate protests against a foreign policy that is leading us into a generation of war aimed at lining the pockets of a subset of corporations owned or controlled by their cronies. In that regard one could wonder if Karl Rove actually wrote the screenplay for this public relations disaster. If not I bet he wished he had.
.

When Justice is Dead: Save KT Delettre

FREE KT – Justice in America is dead

The defense attorney read a novel, ignoring the defendant who, near tears, begged her to speak up. Witnesses to her innocence were not called; evidence was not presented. Those witnesses that were seated in the witness box were not asked the questions that would have exonerated her. All had traveled from New Mexico at their own expense. The court refused to pay for their travel, normally a routine adjunct to a fair trial. Her court appointed attorney refused to subpoena witnesses. The court refused each day to let the defendant defend herself despite her absolute constitutional right to do just that.
In America even those accused of murder can defend themselves, if they ask. But not in Placerville. Or, more accurately, not KT Delettre. She has proved herself too competent for the court’s comfort.
The defendant had been incarcerated for six months before trial, her weight dropping to 83 pounds because her allergies made the food and chlorinated water allowed to her poison. She was held on half a million dollars bail. Recommended bail for this charge is $15,000.00.
Asserting that she is a flight risk she was remanded to custody until her November 7th sentencing. At all costs she must not be heard or have a chance to work in her own defense.
KT has still not entirely recovered from the incarceration caused by the $500,000 bail. It is difficult for her to walk very far or for very long.
This is a short version of the travesty of a trial endured by KT Delettre before she was found guilty for a crime that the court knows perfectly well she did not commit This is a case of an active conspiracy to use the law to destroy and perhaps to kill.
What crime did KT Delettre commit?
None at all.
Arrested and tried for kidnapping her own son more than a year ago the evidence clearly shows that she had legal custody of her small son; that the court never informed her they had given custody to her violent ex-husband. The court had changed custody ignoring state law prohibiting such an action. They had manipulated events so that KT was not informed of the hearing.
There are witnesses who will testify that Loren Oliver, her ex-husband abused their son.
They accused her of hiding but the court always knew where she was. They waited two years to begin action so that the charge could be a felony instead of a misdemeanor.
Living in Columbus, New Mexico, KT was a proactive and involved citizen, opening a much needed food coop and rebuilding her life for two years. The mayor and other prominent citizens respected and admired her. The victim of domestic violence for the 13 years of her marriage she reached out to help others -until the FBI broke down her door in June of 2002.
Over and over again this court has denied her constitutional and procedural rights and finally denied the right to a counsel who would present the facts to a jury. The defense attorney who was more interested in her novel than in doing her job is a friend of the prosecutor.
Everyone on the other side of the table is well acquainted, drawn together by bonds of greed and hate.
This is business as usual in Placerville, California. They should be ashamed. The innocent people living there should be very, very afraid. If it can happen to KT it can happen to them, too.
American’s system of courts has become a tool for the greedy to put money in their own pockets by doing favors for the guilty and the violent. The judge, defense attorney, district attorney, and entire system in KT’s case acted in collusion with the intention of keeping KT from speaking out and to do a favor for a friend, KT’s abusive ex-husband, Loren Oliver. Loren watched and gloated while they put shackles on KT’s tiny wrists. His new wife regretted not having brought their camera.
They not KT, should be in jail.
This pattern of institutionalized abuse is now repeated over and over in courts all across our country.
Something must be done in Placerville, California. Action must be taken in Grand Junction, Colorado. It can happen no matter where you live in America today.
We must act to save those at risk; we must act to save ourselves and America’s justice system. Justice must be for all of us; it must not be allowed to remain a commodity for sale to the highest bidder.
KT nearly died last year, held for over six months, unable to make the $500,000 bail until those who know and understand pledged their own homes. Now she faces something even worse. KT expects to die in prison.
But there is still hope.
The case has been appealed to the next level of court; the perpetrators have been reported to all authorities.
KT is in jail but all of America is at risk. No matter where we are today someday we too may need justice. Lend your voice to our appeal. Call your Congressmen, call the office of the Governor in California. Call the office of the Attorney General of California. Injustice has no place in America.

Rhetoric vs. Reality : A NeoCon ploy

An Honorable Rhetoric; an Ugly Reality - The Bush Inaugural Address

When my oldest son was small I always knew it was time to examine his activities when he felt moved to tell me multiple times that something was true. So when he told me that it was not he who blew up his sister’s Cabbage Patch Doll in a glorious display of the power of gun powder collected from caps I knew perfectly well who had reduced the cherished plaything to a shredded pile of lettuce leaves. Parents know this. Frequent repetitions of such denials drive the point home.
This familial insight becomes politically relevant when considering the content of the recent inaugural address delivered by President Bush. If you use the vision of “freedom” and “liberty” that many times you are not talking about either. But your actions will outline the bald truth.
Do not mistake rhetoric flights, no matter how filled with blandishments of surpassing beauty for anything but public relations. Their emoted words do not match reality but such effusions do provide us with valuable insights.
George Bush used the words ‘liberty” and “freedom” over forty times in that recent speech. He gave that speech surrounded by more security than has ever stood between a monarch and his subjects at any time in history. So turn down the volume control on your mind and watch what he is doing. It is what they do that is true.
We have invaded a foreign country and plan more of the same.
We are selling the natural resources of that country to pay our costs and to make a profit.
We are ignoring the continued presence of terrorist’s threats.
We must now tolerate the presence of an internal military police force miscalled “Homeland Security” that is mandated to spy on us, imprison us, and take our property with impunity.
Our right to free speech is under fire.
Women must again worry that they might not be the ones who ultimately control the right to choose whether or not to give birth.
Marriage, and the definition of the same, has become a matter of state policy. Military serving in Iraq are sent in harms way without body armor.
Our returning veterans are ignored to death.
The message conveyed through the clear lens of reality bears no relationship to “freedom” or “liberty,” two words denoting the emancipation of the human spirit to choose for itself the course most resonate with our sense of the sacred. It is not freedom when we cannot speak out; it is not freedom when we dishonor our obligation to veterans. It is not liberty when the government usurps our right to choose for ourselves. It is not freedom we protect when we use lies to justify an invasion. We are not thus made more secure. Freedom is nowhere in that equation.
A true liberty is founded only in the empowerment of individuals. Our government was originated as a tool to let a free people govern themselves, providing for a common defense and for such services as they were unable to supply for themselves. That has not changed. The vision of America is still valid. If there is a difference it is that now we have many more ways to provide those services without recourse to government.
In each of these matters the rhetoric used by President Bush fails the test to match reality. Each day that slips by finds us less free.
As our Founder Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” He was right. He would have been confounded by the world today, shocked by the use of rhetoric as a means of deceit.
Who among us has not experienced those who lie to get their way? We must not let the trappings of power overcome our discernment. We must not become afraid to speak out. It is bad, but it can get worse.
This administration has institutionalized the use of political operatives in the media, paying these agents for presenting their assertions as objective fact. In the case of Health and Human Services head Tommy Thompson, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher was paid a reported $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote administrative proposals. This is a species of lie new to politics; a conversion of the formerly independent media into an arm of the administration.
It is impossible for ordinary Americans to know what is happening under the cover of authority – but we can watch what they do and compare it to the rhetoric. And as the two diverge we can judge them. Turn down the volume on the rhetoric.
Actions speak louder than words.

Susan B. Anthony for Governor of California

Susan B. Anthony for Governor of California


As happened with Proposition 13, the present surge of public enthusiasm for a recall of California’s Governor, Gray Davis, astonishes and perplexes the political establishment. Those settled into the perks of privilege have amazing lacks of insight.
Proposition 13 was passed into law despite the inequalities inherent in its conceptualization. To the powerless any tool will do. They cannot afford the time to obfuscate, debate and further deplete their sparse resources. As Prop 13 was a loud NO to property taxes the Davis recall is a NO to politics.
Every new political wanna-be coming up the pike talks about reform. The message politicians should hear now is that the public is fed up with talk from them and from those who make a living talking about reform. It is time for the REAL thing. .
The most important lesson to be drawn from Proposition 13 is not about disgust with taxes. There is a more important lesson there that those who are really fed up need to hear.
Proposition 13 was the brainchild of a woman with everything to lose. She had no idea she was starting a revolution. She just wanted to save her small home.
The shock of reading her property tax bill must have been tremendous. By all reports she lived not far from the Kmart in Granada Hills, California and had a fixed income. Along with that her only asset was that small house. She reportedly wondered if a mistake had been made; if a decimal had been misplaced on the bill. She had owned the small house for many years but this tax bill meant she wouldn't be living there very much longer - unless she did something.
So she took a roll of drawer lining paper down to the Kmart at the corner of San Fernando Mission and Balboa Blvds and, seated at her dilapidated little card table, began collecting signatures. People pulled out their own pens when hers disappeared. They were all in the same boat.
I would tell you her name if anyone knew what it was. They don't. And therein lies the story. It soon became obvious that there were careers to be made in Prop. 13. The idea was stolen several times as ad hoc organizations battled over the idea until on election night the divisions necessitated two separate victory parties in Los Angeles. I have often wondered if either Jarvis of Gann bothered to invite our anonymous heroine.
All too soon reformers become the establishment, picking up the same greedy habits as those they replaced. Immediately they fundraise more and do less.
In a real revolution the revolutionaries would go home and get real jobs. In the ‘political revolutions’ of today’s world the revolutionaries immediately get jobs in politics. That is a very wrong picture.
How could it be otherwise? Politics fulfills the definition of an attractive nuisance. It tempts people who are at moral risk. People who want to be in politics or talk about politics instead of holding honest jobs are always at risk.
It is not surprising that Gray Davis is desperate to keep the privileges and perks of the governorship of California. It is not surprising that the Clintons are determined to see him remain in office. A Democratic hold on the state of California is important to their future plans. Neither party has a good history in California. Ronald Reagan instituted withholding taxes when he was Governor. The present Republican Party is actively hostile to women, even within its own ranks.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the public, instead of having the option to vote for Tom, Dick and Harriet, could have voted for none of the above. Empty offices leave many things undone, good and bad.
The Mother of Proposition 13 lingers in anonymity. Desperate people look for solutions to their problems. Sometimes they declare their own small revolutions and those movements catch the fire of our imaginations and change the world.
Prop. 13 sent a message, but in its aftermath a new wave of reformers planted themselves as a new establishment who talked more than performed. They are still talking.
Human problems have human solutions - if you are desperate enough to find them. It is time to look for real solutions.
On October 7th I will be voting for Susan B. Anthony. In life she spoke a message of indomitable courage and real justice. She supported herself and accepted no government salary. In death she will not disappoint me. If she was a politician, now she is a good one.

Recalling Gray Davis: He failed to act

The real reason Gray Davis should be recalled


Buddy has not seen his mother in over a year. His mother misses him
desperately. She is no longer quite sure what he looks like. A child changes so much at eight. She thought about him while she was locked in jail, held on half a million dollars bail. This is the second time Buddy has been kidnapped by the authorities responsible for keeping victims of violence safe.
KT Delettre, Buddy's mother is the survivor of domestic violence. Her abuser, Loren Oliver, tried to abort her son when she was eight months pregnant, battering her pregnant abdomen. He told her he would kill her, if he could get away with it.
What he did not accomplish then he is trying to do using the courts. KT nearly died in prison. Unable to raise the half million dollars her weight dropped to 82 pounds as she was slowly starved nearly to death.
The authorities know exactly what they are doing.
By trading favors with the powers that be in El Dorado County, California this violent abuser has stretched his violent hands through the system to continue an abuse that lasted the entire 13 years of their marriage.
KT fears her son is again being abused, as he was when Buddy lived with Oliver the last time the same court charged her with kidnapping. In 1998 the jury took just a few minutes to exonerate her entirely. She was free, but financially destroyed.
This District Attorney is being investigated by the Grand Jury. It was a long time coming because many people were afraid to speak up. Ugly things happen to people in El Dorado who speak out.
KT is a wonderful mother. The social worker assigned to her case in 1998 said she had never seen better mothering skills. By California law batterers are prevented from having custody. This court ignored the law
The system in California does not work. With billions of dollars being spent on politics justice is still impossible for this tiny woman and her son. This is the true measure of who is heading the government we pay to maintain. This is who Gray Davis really is.
He is the man who ignores the suffering of those who are powerless.
Gray Davis could have prevented this atrocity but he was too busy with his perks and with politics as usual. He rubber-stamped the paperwork that jailed KT for half a million dollars and took her child from her.
He was repeatedly begged to intervene. He never bothered to respond. Of course, neither did anyone else.

State Senator Sheila Kuehl knows KT. KT gave testimony that moved the dialogue on the measure passed to ensure that abusive men could not get custody of children. Senator Kuehl is too busy to help. Her aide told KT to stop bothering the senator with her pleas. The senator was too important to care. We can all be sure she is anxiously considering her employment opportunities for when she is term limited out of office.
This is not an issue of the lesser of two evils. It is a pity we cannot recall them all.
We trust government to oversee our institutions of justice. Human life is always more important to us than money. We trust them to make sure that the power we put into their hands is not abused. That is a trust that has been badly placed.
Ordinary people matter. If it can happen to KT and her small son it can happen to any of us.
We volunteer our time and money after paying taxes to keep shelters open and provide safety for victims. We see every day how flawed and unreliable government is for making small lives are safe.
When Buddy was seized by force and turned over to a man with a long history of violence he was looking forward to a summer spent helping his mother continue developing the family’s successful new business. The business is closed now. Her family is destitute. A year of her life has been eaten up with incarceration and poring over court documents. She is handling her own defense. She has been denied procedural and constitutional rights the denial of which has freed sexual predators from prison. Perhaps if she were a sexual predator the governor and the legislature could identify and her life would matter. But Kt has always been law abiding, careful to obey the courts, even when they were entirely unreasonable.
This court did not to tell KT about the illegal order that took away legal custody of her child. With full knowledge of her whereabouts they accused her of hiding. The records speak for themselves.
If they had informed her she would have been there to protest. Uppity women have to be smacked down; no matter what laws the court must bend to do it. This is justice El Dorado style; it is an injustice that is tolerated by this state run by this governor. They claim they protect the rights of victims. They lie. Recall Gray Davis.

Pray for the fallen that God might lift them up. (It won't be theNeoCons doing it.)

''We pray that God will bless and receive each of the fallen, and we thank God that liberty found such brave defenders,'' President Bush on the first casualties from the War in Iraq. (Hypocrisy comes in all tones and flavors. Here is some of the Republican kind. Democrats are no different but just now they are less abuse-abled.)

Rene needed a wheel chair for her son, a Vietnam Vet who is confined to a care facility because he is a paraplegic. The Veterans Administration told Rene they could get her a wheel chair she could lift. It would just take five years. Five years before Rene, an elderly woman, could hope to take her son on outings since she could not lift the chair that the VA had provided.
Cuts by Congress have immediate impacts on the lives of Americans who have given the best of their lives to their country.
Rene cried. She knew that in five years she might well be dead.
When our soldiers put their lives on the line our debt does not die with the 21-gun salute. We are a wealthy nation and their service exacts an obligation of honor from each of us.
Soldiers have families who need to survive while those they love are in danger of death. While so many are at risk doing the bidding of their government the Congress that sent them is voting to cut $24.7 billion for veterans’ medical care, disability compensation and other benefits and congratulated themselves on their thrift.
Congress, that body so quick to stand up for its own pay, retirement and benefits is buttering its own bread and stealing the crust from the mouths of those who serve. They whine about how tough it is when they experience that bad day in the posh Congressional dining room; they whimper about how hard it is to make it on the most lavish benefit package the world has ever seen. Then they vote to cut benefits to disabled veterans.
If you are a real American you need to understand what they are doing while the eyes of America’s concern are firmly on our troops in Iraq.
Pickpockets depend on distraction.
Slipped into legislation with the experienced slight of hand wielded by these pickpockets of privilege, the Congress, in cooperation with the Bush Administration, are cuts to the slim funding now allowed to those who truly serve. These reductions slash past the bone into the pittance now allowed to those on active service and to veterans. Not satisfied that military families are on welfare the Congress seeks to grind them into abject poverty and abandon them to insolvent old age and disease.
You can trust the government to do two things; make sure that their own personal pockets are lined and that everyone else pays.
Doris is the wife of a sergeant on active duty. He is in the Gulf. She cannot afford to feed their children on what the Army pays. These well-mannered children struggle to help her cut costs. No second helpings are requested at their table. They understand that pennies are not to be wasted. Doris cries because, along with the terrible uncertainty of a husband at risk comes the sadness of being unable to buy balloons for her child’s birthday party or call her mother. Toll calls are too expensive on her slim budget. Her mother is dying along with her faith in her country.
It is not all bad news. The same people who originally established services for American Veterans bought Rene a wheelchair she could handle. Now she takes her son on those small journeys into the sunlight. Doris has balloons for the party.
But not because of Congress.
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks established the first hospital for America’s veterans just after WWI. No money from Congress was involved. Now, local lodges raise money as individual Elks reach into their own pockets. Rene went to them. They heard her. Rene had her wheelchair in one week. Toney Russell, the Chairman for Veterans in Santa Barbara, where Rene and her son both live, made sure it happened. I contributed. It was the least I could do. Her son fought for me, too. My daughter skimped to send money to Doris for the party. Individual Americans see what must be done and do it because it is the right thing.
Thank God for real Americans.
Congress is still working on the least it can do. Less for everyone else - more for them. That is one goal they always manage to accomplish. The right thing is obviously way beyond them. They have problem understanding such esoteric concepts as ‘honor’ and ‘justice.’
Real Americans should send a message even Congress can’t ignore.
No member of Congress should have a benefit package better than is given to our armed forces. No member of Congress or any administration should enjoy benefits denied to those who risk their lives to give us freedom. Cutting benefits to Congress would save money and send a powerful message to these purveyors of privilege who abuse power every day of their lives.
And instead of a Congressional dining room let them eat MacDonald’s. But no Happy Meal toys, that is far too good for them.

The Mother of Proposition 13

The Mother of Proposition 13 - No one knows her name


The shock of reading her property tax bill must have been tremendous. By all reports she lived not far from the Kmart in Granada Hills, California and had a fixed income. Along with that her only asset was that small house. She reportedly wondered if a mistake had been made; if a decimal had been misplaced on the bill. She had owned the small house for many years but this tax bill meant she wouldn't be living there very much longer; unless she did something.
So she took a roll of drawer lining paper down to the Kmart at the corner of San Fernando Mission and Balboa Blvds and, seated at her dilapidated little card table, began collecting signatures. People pulled out their own pens when hers disappeared. They were all in the same boat.
I would tell you her name if anyone knew what it was. They don't. Over the years I have wondered about her and silently thanked her for her insight and courage. She saved me, too.
The Mother of Proposition 13 lingers in anonymity along with who ever it was who fired the shot heard around the world. Every April 19th I think about the person who fired that gun. And I think about the courageous lady from Granada Hills. Both were heroes. But in the lady's case, we know what she meant to accomplish and we know that, despite not receiving any of the glory, money or power that accrued to those who grabbed the motley little movement that eventually resulted in Proposition 13, she accomplished her objective. We can only hope that relief came soon enough to ensure that she stayed in her home.
Today we associate Proposition 13 and the subsequent tax revolution in California that swept across the country with Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann. But they were late adherents, coming in after the fact of our lady's desperation had launched so many ordinary people into political action.
They got the glory. But the credit is hers. April 19th is again approaching. If you live in California; if you were able to keep your home because of Proposition 13; if you are appalled and horrified over the waste and abuse of government, think of her then. Light a candle. Volunteer time to a cause in which you believe.
Desperate people look for solutions to their problems. Sometimes they declare their own small revolutions and those movements catch the fire of our imaginations and change the world.
We live in a world threatened with terrorism. We live in a world fraught with a drug war that is destroying our children and our security. We are living on the edge of an abyss we did not even suspect existed.
On April 19th this year think about your own revolutions of the mind. Human problems have human solutions - if you are desperate enough to find them. It is time to look for solutions.
You can get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit.

Libertarian Retrospective: And thanks to James Byron Dean

The Libertarian Party: A Personal Retrospective of a Time Long Past.


Note of A Political Nature to Chris Hocker

Privily speak I of promises well made
For I would have you know I them remember
For pen to paper thus I put - for so you bade,
And hearing thus your words could I malinger?

You said that you would give me many wonders
For papers writ with wisdom good and clear
That Clark did read to parry many blunders
Of policy when run he did last year.

And murmured you of booklets that you wrote
Designed to teach my candidates of things
That will make them yet less clumsy with the votes
And credit to the cause of freedom bring.

So find the stuff - tout suite, and make it fast!
For I needed it all months ago, you ass!
(1979)

Earlier today Lee Wright, the editor of Libertyforall.net as well as the present vice-chairman of the National Libertarian Party and I were chatting about my most recent contribution to his excellent publication and the subject of my early memories of the LP came up. Natural enough since I was myself a long time activist starting in the Libertarian Party starting in the early 1970s.
The upshot was that I threatened, promised, to jot down some of those memories for the amusement and edification of those Libertarians of more recent vintage having only had to be nudged a little to attack my computer. So here it is. Part memories and part memoir; personally gleaned insights I hope will serve to make some points that need making.
Long ago and far away when we were all young and less wrinkled and I was the shiny eyed young mother of several small children (the number magically continued to grow) and learning some interesting lessons about life, the Universe and Libertarianism I found a wonderful thing. It was called freedom. I had been reading about it since my initial encounter with the ideas of liberty when I was six. That was the year James Dean told me about his views of freedom, just days before his own life ended.
James Byron Dean was 24 then, unimaginably young when I look back on it through the shrouding events of so many decades. But the vividness of that afternoon stayed with me. Freedom became forever a magical destination for me; something to be cherished that made me most truly human. At age six I had listened, enraptured to the words of someone who seemed as old as Methuselah to me then. I was barely breathing I listened so intently. Jimmy told me about how we each choose and how sacred the right to make those choices is. When you choose, he said, it is your life you mold and make. When someone else chooses for you your life belongs in part to them. Jimmy had told me many things but this telling was perhaps the most important. Jimmy had been coming over to visit since I was two or three. My first memory of him had been the sharing of Beanie Sandwiches at the small table in the kitchen where I always ate lunch. He came back regularly for sandwiches and conversation. His mom and mine had been friends before she died and he went to live with his aunt and uncle in Fairmont, Indiana.
That day Jimmy told me the story of a man named Howard Roark who saw freedom as building in his own way. Roark suffered to learn his craft and then to practice it. His way was to make the structures a part of the Earth so that his buildings sheltered, enclosing those who lived and worked in them economically and well. The buildings were the extension of the mind of Roark and by building them Roark made his statement about himself and the world. That was freedom for Howard Roark and it did not matter what he had to do to build them. When he was doing that work he was free.
For Jimmy being free was doing different kinds of things. His freedom was his craft done so that he merged with and because the character he played. He loved acting and intended to try every part of that art. He got to do just a few of those things but all of his work spoke his intense spiritual commitment to his craft and to his right to choose for himself
Jimmy told me what he would do with the freedom God gave him. To do that he used the story of Roark from Fountainhead. I listened. That is where it started for me.
The reason I became a Libertarian was because I loved the ideas of freedom. James Dean was my personal inspiration.
When the Freedom Movement began its present incarnation in the early 1970s I was an eager participant. I had passed out literature for Goldwater, read Atlas Shrugged, and gorged myself on the science fiction books of Robert A. Heinlein. I thought I knew everything , just like we all did.
I was wrong, of course. But it was never boring and along the way I did learn a few things.
We made history, like it or not; good or bad. And that history needs to be remembered.
The history of the Libertarian Party and the Freedom Movement holds insights that can be helpful to the next generation of souls hungry for the freedom enunciated by people like Jimmy and so I am going to share some of those stories with you and try to make some small points. Studying any successful movement is as much about accepting what went wrong as what went right.
The real issue isn't heading towards freedom, the issue is arriving.

The Libertarian Movement launched itself towards freedom. It arrived someplace else. How that happened is a story both horrifying and instructive; horrifying because it happened, instructive because it is not too late to change direction.

From a living room in Denver in December of 1971 where it was founded by David and Susan Nolan and a handful of others, the viewpoints propounded by the LP grew into the major force in American policy. We began as a resounding NO! To the imposition of wage and price controls by President Richard Nixon. So our birth cry was born from the impact of policy on the lives of individuals who decided they were just not going to take it any more.
Both major parties eventually embraced our ideas; examining laws coming into existence today make that clear. So where is the freedom? America has never been less free; the Libertarian Party remains small and is wracked by power politics and greed that might intimidate the denizens of the major parties.
The answer is in the form adopted, the relationship of form and action to rhetoric, and to the underpinnings of culture in which each of these reside.
The structure of the LP is hierarchal and adversarial. It sends the message that success is counted by moving up an organizational structure. In Libertarian politics words speak louder than action. Winning, no matter how, is the final justification for what you do to win nominations and rake in money for fundraising. But that is all wrong, of course. That is not the world we wanted to create.
This happened because the LP spoke a rhetoric of freedom through the infrastructure of centralized control. Each major party has been through the same cycle of idealism leading to internal corruption. The Democrats spoke an agenda of socialism and the Republicans of economic opportunity. Each talked about freedom nearly as much as did Libertarians. They all have become corrupt no matter how hard we work to fix them.
This happened faster in the LP than in other comparable movements of the last two centuries is due to the kind of people who became Libertarians. Over 60% were male.
It is women whose efforts provide the consistency and the institutional memory for an organization. This provides a compass and stability. While women do not exercise much control in the Republican Party they historically do most of the volunteer work. In the Democratic Party women share power more equally, although women in general are disenchanted with them, too. In the Libertarian Party there are, percentage wise, far fewer women than in either major party. The lessons of our history are therefore more quickly forgotten.
The means by which our values are transmitted are always cultural. Culture is the water in which we live and breathe.
The means of transmission for new ideas into law is policy. Through policy, read and bred in the spin offs of politics, the think tanks, the new ideas are turned into bills, becoming the walls, doors, and guts of law and through law the customs and practices of the court and commerce.
Ideas are the tools we use to build new worlds; but weapons are also tools. And the ideas of liberty have been turned and used to forge the weapons that have helped to destroy the founding principles on which America was built.
All of this starts with people; what they say; what they do and the sometimes yawning gap between the two. In the lives of people the real story is always present.

The people I met on the road to liberty became my friends, adversaries, lovers, and enemies. Sometimes all of them rolled up into one. In the stories of the people is the truth most finely writ.

Roger Mac Bride was the adopted grandson of one of the three women who were the godmothers of the Freedom Movement of the 1950s – 2000 period. Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, was the actual author of Little House on the Prairie Series. Rose wrote the series of books, basing the story line on the recollections of her mother's childhood. Into those recollections she injected the values that made the books instant classics, still being read by yet another generation of young people.
Rose was the author of The Discovery of Freedom and pursued the issues of freedom in multiple directions. Her adoption of Roger stemmed from their mutual commitment to those values.
Roger was a good guy. It was his act as an elector from Vermont in 1972 that put the LP in the history books. Roger jumped ship and cast his vote for John Hospers instead of the newly elected Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon. In doing so he also cast the first electoral vote in history for a woman, Tonie Nathan the LP candidate for vice president. This act was incredibly valuable to the Libertarian Party. How they repaid Roger speaks loudly about the values of the LP.
So in 1976 Roger Mac Bride was not unnaturally a shoo in to be the nominee for president of the shiny new Libertarian Party. His running mate was David Bergland, an attorney from Orange County, California. A wealthy man, Roger campaigned from his own plane, fondly known as NO Force One. Roger was himself a pilot as well as producer for the original television series created from Little House on the Prairie. Roger paid for a big chunk of his campaign himself. I later realized that this was the high point of the movement. We all believed in what we were doing; everyone chipped when there were projects to be paid for; we all worked; and while there was much debate on things like platform there was very little backbiting and unsocial behavior. Debate on issues continued with a modicum of dispassionate civility.
In the late 1980s Roger left the Libertarian Party. He was disheartened and disappointed. He had endorsed Hunscher for President in 1979 and could not understand the political machinations used to defeat him. It is the practice with all major parties that their former presidential candidates are treated with decorum and courtesy. In the case of Roger Mac Bride this was far from true. After his departure he asked to address the national committee as it met in Las Vegas on a project he was undertaking and was treated with discourtesy and barely disguised contempt. This would never have been the case in either major party; the contributions of presidential candidates are there remembered and honored even when the principles have been political enemies.
This was wrong not just because it was rude but because it devalued what had been built on the months and money Roger had contributed. This sent the clear message that those who work do not necessarily create credit for what they have done. It is just one of dozens of examples of similar behavior.
Respect should be created by the acknowledgment of virtues, not for reasons of political expedience. When Roger was still active in the LP he had been generous. He loaned money to those trying to make it, contributing to their attempts to achieve their dreams. One of those to whom Roger loaned money was Michael Emerling Cloud. Michael repaid him by declaring bankruptcy without even a thank you. Yet Michael Cloud is celebrated and far more well known to Libertarians today than is Roger Mac Bride.

In Santa Barbara while Roger Mac Bride was running for president Bob Poole was putting Reason Magazine together on the dining room table. The Libertarian Party had used the Reason list to get started in 1971 when Bob loaned that list to David Nolan. The two had both belonged to YAF and Young Republican for Goldwater in the 60s.
Bob had bought the struggling magazine when it was just months old from the founder and editor who had solicited from Bob his first article. Bob himself determined the subject and it was to be a pivotal issue that would eventually change national policy. The subject was deregulating the airlines. The reason Bob chose the issue goes straight to the heart of a young boy.
Bob grew up in Florida and his dad was an airline pilot. Bob had a cousin and his uncle, the cousin's father, was also a pilot. But in the old days airlines had routes set by government mandate. Bob's cousin could fly west and thus enjoyed many, many vacations at Disneyland. Bob could only go north to NY and DC. The Statue of Liberty did not measure up to Mickey Mouse in Bob's eyes, understandably. This injustice burned in the heart and mind of young Bob. The deregulation of the airlines was the outcome.
The personal moves us; small injustices live in our minds even when we are long past the events themselves. Bob shared this story with me in 2000. He had not realized himself why he chose the subject until I asked.
It was Bob who originated the term 'privatization;' He has not become wealthy working for liberty but now he does have time for his consuming hobby, model trains.

The birth of Cato Institute came about when a young man named Edward H. Crane, III clearly saw something that another insightful young man would notice twenty years later. There is a market for policy. Ed announced his intention to, “go to D.C. and get rich.” in the elevator of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco during the National Libertarian Convention in 1977. The immediate means for this tidy plan were the brothers Koch, Charles and David. To this day they remain stalwart funders of Cato.
Now, wealth is not in itself a bad thing. Money, even vast amounts of money earned through consensual exchange beneficial to all parties is laudable. But money earned through the misuse of power is just another more sophisticated form of theft. When that happens it is the duty of those closest to call foul especially when the law, which always lags in enforcing what is appropriate, has not allowed for specific abuses.
Over the next twenty years the 401ks of those employed at the think tanks, including Cato, continued to be burnished; the Cato banquets grew ever more lavish. The policy proposals that wended their way through into law using the libertarian tools of deregulation and privatization to redirect the flow of cash and power grew in number and in scope. Those on the receiving end were not necessarily the ones who had created the wealth.
Policy is a legitimate tool for enabling changes that allow for better outcomes. But when policy, like the hazardous but glittering blue of your unfenced pool lures in the innocent or when policy is used to disguise that what is happening is actually a subtle form of wealth transfer then it is imperative that those who profit to be held accountable. Those who made the tools share culpability.
So here we are today living in a world where George W. Bush is discussing 'privatizing' Social Security, the idea originated, surprise, in a white paper researched and written for the Clark Campaign in 1979 and borrowed from Bob Poole. When done right privatizing the functions of government returns choice and control to the individual. But unfortunately, this is not always how it works.
Ed Crane was the man in charge of the Clark campaign and the man who ensured that Ed Clark received the nomination over William Hunscher, a candidate who pledged to campaign full time for a year. Bill Hunscher was a wealthy businessman and good friend of Roger Mac Bride.
For those of you who are newbies I will mention that Ed Clark was the Presidential Candidate of the Libertarian Party in 1980. Ed did very well, though not as well as Edward H. Crane, III promised Charles and David Koch he would do. The means for funding the Clark campaign was the vice-presidential candidacy of David Koch. The mother and father of the campaign was Ed Crane.
This is where personal agendas come in.
Much of the policy new being formulated and sold by Cato is now being used to advance the agenda of those willing to pay for a justification to steal and then cancel all liabilities. The problem with privatizing Social Security is that this ignores the fact that the fund does not exist and 'privatizing' the program means that the millions of victims of theft are left high and dry, facing old age without the money they hoped would carry them.
The name of the man who noticed how well policy could be marketed in Texas in the early 1990s was Karl Rove.
Today Karl Rove is celebrated as a genius in political strategy. But this is not really accurate. A genius is one who originates. Karl Rove simply, with nearly Japanese intensity to detail, optimizes existing practices. That practice can be summarized as chopping off body parts from one set of individuals to sell to another. That, and wearing silk underwear are his most stellar virtues.
Now, I wonder where he got the idea? The means of transmission could well have been yet another Libertarian. This one's name is John Fund.
John Fund got his start in Libertarian politics as the Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of California. From sleeping on the floor of the northern office because the LPC, always careless of their financial obligations, ran out of money to pay him, he was hired by Evans and Novak in D.C., who seeing his potential as a political operative sent him on to the Wall Street Journal. There, John Spent 18 years on the Editorial Board before being fired for being too well known for things the Wall Street Journal doesn't like being known for.
It was John who colluded with Matt Drudge to make up the story that Sidney Blumenthal beat his wife. That's a fact. Lots of freedom-types paid good money into a defense chest to protect Drudge from charges that were absolutely true. Why did they do this? It was to keep the White House busy so they would chase their tails instead of doing what they were supposed to be doing. Not that I wanted them doing that, either. But if the truth does not matter then because the bad drives out the good soon there will be no truth at all – which is remarkably close to where we are now, isn't it?
Now, we all know that acting as a political operative when you are overtly a journalist is not considered to be quite the thing. But it pays well, far better than being a journalist would. It also provides access to power and all that comes with power.
Not all of the above are Libertarians, but all have and continue to use the tools created by the movement for liberty. Think about that and ask yourself this: Have we arrived at liberty?

Each of these is a personal recollection. There are lots more. The poem at the beginning of this essay was written when I was managing campaigns for 14 candidates in the San Fernando Valley and serving as Southern Vice-Chairman of the Libertarian Party of California. Chris said he would send it; didn't; and then asked me to drop him a note to remind him. I sent the poem. Then I borrowed the white papers and copied them for my candidates. Most of the papers, I understand, ended up in the hands of large donors, which I certainly was not.

So that is the first few pages of my recollections. No sex, not yet. Maybe later. But I include in closing this poem that seems suitable.

18. The Predator (dedicated to Michael Emerling Cloud)

The hooded eyes intelligent, assessing and unfed
Taste the likelihood of meat to be found, brought down and dressed.
But the eyes have human contours and the face is human born
Predators walk among us, their identities deeply worn.

Their goals are sex and power; all forms of human wealth.
Their means are fraud and violence and every form of stealth.
They smile, use charisma; they milk cajole and bleed.
Their goals: enjoy and prosper, make sure they’re first to feed.

They choose the weak and needy; they use our trust and minds.
They speak the rhetoric of honor to carry out their crimes.
They insinuate with widows and they take a cripple’s time.
They use the rhetoric of honor to pad their bottom line.

You find them selling cars and you meet them down the block.
They smile and drip charisma as they grimace, share and talk.
But their eye is on the income and their hand is in your purse
They will slander and defame you if it isn’t something worse.

But real humans have the power to remove the jungle’s maw.
The predators of the hour can be reformed through rethought law.
Reform the standards for deception; so the weak can see wrongs called.
Eliminate exceptions that allow abuse, misuse and fraud.

The statute is the enemy of freedom and the truth
The common law is justice that conforms to honor’s roots.
The predators live in darkness; their acts must not being seen
For what they do is ugly and the light defines their being.

I see a world a-borning where truth is not disgrace
Where children know that human is the world behind the face
Oh, the futured world of human promise, where doing right is safe.
A world of commerce and of honor; a place for human grace.

In Placerville, California, mothers have no rights

In Placerville, California mothers have no rights
The tragic story of KT Delettre

It is drawing close to sixteen months since this frail woman with the big eyes has seen her small son. Buddy has been the center of her universe since before he was born. She always knew she had to protect him from harm. His father, Loren Oliver, tried to kill him in the womb. She had endured 13 years of abuse, finally leaving him for good despite her fears, because she wanted a better life for her baby. Loren told her he would kill her, too, if he could get away with it. What he failed to do himself he has gotten the court to do for him.
The worst things KT could have imagined have come true. You and I are paying those who jailed her for six months, sending her into a downward spiral that saw her weight drop to a scant 82 pounds. She looked like she had walked out of a concentration camp when friends and others across the country finally made the half million dollars in bail last December.
Victims of domestic violence are supposed to be extended the protections we, as Americans, want them to have. Instead the DA and the courts in Placerville, CA have treated KT DeLettre like a felon. On the 30th of this month she will stand trial for kidnapping her son for the second time. The first time it took the jury 15 minutes to exonerate her. She was not guilty then. She is not guilty now. Penniless, she is struggling to defend herself as the court ignores her procedural rights, her Constitutional rights, and common decency. They have no shame. They sneer at her when she stands to defend herself. They mock her pain and pile roadblocks in her way. They ignore her pristinely self-prepared motions; refuse to give her the transcripts from her own hearings, and pile on abuse of the judicial kind.
Her accusers have a lot to answer for. They have been well paid for continuing Oliver’s abuse. They have converted the legal system of Placerville into a cash register. What they are selling is not justice. It is a very ugly railroad.
KT and her little son have not been the only victims.
Unfortunately, KT's case is not that rare, for courts across California have similarly punished other victims of crime. The DA prosecuting KT, Gary Lacy, is under investigation for dozens of similar cases. A perusal of the El Dorado County website answers and raises many questions. His do it yourself enrichment scheme has also had passive help from the Office of the Governor – who is much too busy with important things like selling favors – to pay attention to this small time operation to the East of his posh gubernatorial offices in Sacramento.
So, while most Californians watch the recall this small drama plays itself out in Placerville. The bad guys sell favors, in KT’s case to her very nasty and violent former husband who has provided contracting services for some of DA Lacy's subordinates. Sean O’Brien, Lacy's Chief Assistant postures as a Good Guy, looking for donations so he can further his own political ambitions. He wants to move up, just like Gray Davis did. He might not make governor but he certainly hopes for a slot where he can continue to sell favors and rake it in. Gray Davis has a lot of emulators in Placerville. Together they constitute a spiritual brotherhood of butchers that view us as uncut meat.
Every single night KT prays for her son. She knows he is being abused, as he was before, when the court first handed him over to Oliver, in 1998.
Vote YES on the Recall and NO to politics as usual. Small boys need their mothers. They need to know that real fatherhood is not violence, either personal or institutionally instigated.
We need some real changes, in Sacramento and in Placerville. When you lift your eyes to hope for change, remember KT and Buddy.

Send in the Incredible Hulk: A Darwin Award for Government

A Darwin Award for Government

The ongoing debate over gender roles is still bubbling in a caldron of silliness generated by the misapplication of law. Some of us want to use government to force men and women to accept the roles we have decided Higher Powers have mandated. Those Higher Powers come in both the religious and governmental varieties.
Most of us think we should choose those roles for ourselves limited only by our own abilities, luck, and willingness to work.
Ask yourself; is it appropriate to inject policy and a desire for social engineering into law? Personally, I think the idea has enough merit to qualify for a Darwin Award of its own.
When I am caught at the top of a tall building on fire I want the firefighter who fetches me to make the Hulk envy his musculature. I don’t want him not hired because he is not female.
If we do a Darwin Award for individuals who manage to kill themselves through stupidity what do we give to honor those who manage to destroy lives and opportunities for others through manipulation of legislation and policy? Muddy thinking is a waste of time and resources. It hurts individuals and confused the issue.
It is time for a little clarity and to award some Darwins. Men and woman are different. This is a very good thing.
Our military has been used as a reengineering ground for the idea that male/female individuals are basically the same. They are not. Individuals come in all sizes and capabilities. Think of it as a bell curve where on we chart different characteristics. These include body strength, I.Q., creativity, the ability to multi-task and aggressiveness, to name just a few. All characteristics can have benefits in some circumstances and be annoying or dangerous in others.
My hair dresser does not have to bench press 400 LBS. to do the job.

We are different – but we are leaving a past where gender was used to assert social policy that limited the choices available to women. Denying choices to women was wrong. But turn about is not fair play.
The question is where do we go from here? My solution is the Unified Merit Standard.
On one end of the human race you had those huge, lithe, hulking individuals who look more like super heroes than anything human. When they walk they gleam with testosterone and danger. On the other end you have delicate bones and little upper body strength. Most of the individuals on this end are female. Your average person of one gender will not be that far removed from your average person of the other gender. We all envy that muscle rippling upper end but legislation will not get us there; even diligent work-outs won’t work for most of us.
We are different and that is not a bad thing. .
Some jobs in the military call for the best physical profiles we can get. To place individuals in those roles who are not inherently qualified risks their lives. In turn they may be unable to perform when it becomes necessary.
We need a better way of assessing abilities that is gender blind but fair.
Gender is not a factor with a unified standard. If my daughter can qualify by passing objective standards for upper body strength and endurance to become a Navy SEAL then she may be candidate. But probably not. However, not all jobs in the military are the same. She has fine small muscle control and great reaction time and therefore may be the better candidate for flight training and for a shot at NASA. Women are smaller and thus cheaper to lift into space. They have better social skills and are very physically resilient. Perhaps the astronauts should have been women.
Men and women are different. Men are on average better with linear thinking, the result of their generations of focus on hunting and war. Men work best in hierarchies, this being the form of organization most comfortable for linear thinkers. Women on the other hand have adapted themselves through thousands of generations to mufti-task. The failure to do so would have been death to their children. It was necessary to watch for danger, gather food, and keep an eye on the kids to succeed in the ancient role of mother. Cooperation, the foundation of networking, is the most natural form of organization for women.
The rational decision is to adopt objective standards. Private companies should take the inherent strengths of applicants into account because failing to do so denies them the best possible workers. No one should bail them out if they choose to engage in biased hiring instead of providing the best products and services to their customers. On the other hand, government should be forced to adopt those objective standards for all hiring they do themselves. Government works for all of us.
We should start with the military.
The armed forces are about combat, necessitating high standards for physical strength and a linear chain of command. They are not trained to be social workers. Many of the jobs presently handled by the military are being privatized and this is all to the good. There are many tasks now handled behind the lines as support, for instance counting the stock of belts, typing up reports, and working in the Pentagon kitchen. These do not need to be handled by a trained soldier. These can and should be contracted out.
Military personnel who train for and serve in combat situations are individuals who put their lives on the line for all of us. They should be appropriately and well compensated. Their benefits should be more sacrosanct than those of Congress, meaning they are untouchable.
Good ideas create prosperity and efficiency. Bad ideas are road blocks to real progress. Good ideas are adopted as behavioral strategies that then percolate out into the marketplace of our lives.
We want a strong military that knows it can trust us to do the right thing. I want the Hulk to be there when I need him.

How Close is too close to a NeoCon?

How Close is too Close? How the NeoCons are using fear to stifle free speech

First, it must be said that every political viewpoint, Right, Libertarian, and Left, have their flaky and weird factions that are routinely given far too much attention by the media. They get media attention because they make great copy. Threatening to blow up the bowling team will always garner you more attention that complaining that the color of the team tee-shirts makes you look even more sallow. These individuals evidently get off on the adrenaline rush they get by being outrageous. It would be interesting to see the media do an in depth study of their backgrounds with attention to their other asocial behavior, which is certainly there from those I have known personally.
People are pretty consistent if you know them over time and in depth.
The EarthFirst! Fanatics and their ilk should not be encouraged any more than the hysterical Abortion Clinic Bombers should be glamorized. Neither represents the movement they are trying to hijack. Shame on them.
The media should also get a sharp rap on the knuckles both for their laziness in looking for the most outrageous story over and over again, thus providing copy with a minimum cost in thought and journalistic output, and also for cooperating with the powers that be in ignoring the real ground swell for protest from the American people evidenced first at the Democratic Convention in Boston and now at the Republican Convention in New York.
Protesting the establishment is more American than political conventions and predates them. The American Revolution was, after all, a protest using the means available.
But we want our protests today to be non-violent, of course.
So, if Central Park is too close for the comfort of the powers that be in New York and Coney Island also makes then nervous how far away do the authorities need protestors to stand?
This is not a rhetorical question.
I fear that the answer will be someplace rather remote, say on the football field of the Brigham Young University in Utah or if that is too close to electrical outlets then out in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
Snideness aside, the question still remains. Where can the protests take place? Those who are unhappy, and at this point that is a very large number of people from every conceivable viewpoint, they need to be told immediately so they can begin organizing and the intelligent media can cover them. The overwhelming number of Americans protesting the policies of the Bush Administration are honorable, decent, Americans and have an absolute right to make their opinions known. Using terrorism as a justification for stifling protest violates the foundational vision that is America and should not be tolerated.
While we are waiting for the powers that be to emerge from their NeoCon huddle with their buddies in New York and determine what location will be the most impossible for protestors to use efficaciously we might turn our attention to how we can make our opinion known while staying quietly at home and going about our business.
This is my suggestion.
Most of us own and cherish the emblem and symbol of the country we love, the American flag. We can show the flag, using its radiant stripes and glorious stars to speak for us by hanging it upside down, or with the blue field down where it will be clearly visible.
When I do that I will be saying, “Please God, do not put either of these Bozos in the Oval Office.” Personally, I will be voting for Susan B. Anthony this time around so it will not be my vote that affirms the candidacies presently offered.
Susan B. was a woman of principle. When she lived she spoke truths with which I could agree on human rights. She stood up with singular courage to the establishment and never backed down. She is now dead, and some would say that the only good politician is a dead one. I would not go that far but certainly now she will never disappoint me.
Be American. Show the flag if you love your country. And God bless us and the nation that we love.

Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson - April 13th

Today is Thomas Jefferson's birthday and the country whose birth certificate he wrote is in serious trouble. Americans have lost their country and with it the the common dream of freedom. A pity that the media has not even noticed.
The Pundits of the Left, RealRight, Libertarian and others of the caste of the crassly and vigorously emotive are starting to realize that the last election was stolen. No one is going to give them points for being swift, but, hey, at least they finally noticed. That is more than we can usually expect. Now we can look forward to another insight. Get ready for this.
America is never going to have another honest election with the present system in place. Think about that for a moment.
The present administration is not going to fade into the sunset, their pockets filled to overflowing with the stolen lucre of befuddled Americans. First, because they do not intend to leave. Second because they don't dare do so. You can never burn enough records.
They went too far, you see. They liked the perks, the guaranteed income, and the extras. They enjoyed the view from the palaces of privilege, Congress and White House, so much they made plans to stay. They intend to take up not only life time tenure but arrange to leave it to their brain dead heirs.
America, while still a nominal republic or democracy is actually now functioning as an oligarchy, a serial monarchy where the privileges of occupying the Presidential Palace will be shared amongst the very limited number of folks who hold control in their sweaty palms.
Not so, the Pundits gasp. We will get them next time. Oh, the sweet innocence of the politically credulous. I do love you. But I cannot allow the pristine condition of your mental simplicity to impede the truth. Examine the exit polls. There was as much chance that O.J. Simpson was innocent as there is that those polls failed to indicate the outcome correctly. Kerry won the election and failed the test.
How often do criminals who are in complete control surrender themselves to justice? Because that is what they would be doing, you know.
Now I will repeat the previous statement with a qualifier.
America is never going to have another honest election with the present system in place. But we can change that. It is still possible to do so.
We can install the best and most reliable security system in the world. You have seen it, or some of its components. Remember those rectitude filled faces that confronted you the last time you voted? The older ladies that always knew what you were doing when you were a kid and could be counted on to snitch to your Mom? The retired teacher who walked a mile to return the change when the clerk got it wrong? Yep. Them. We all know who we can trust in our own neighborhoods. And we, the desperate but no longer illusioned at One Vote, One Voice, have a plan to install them at your local precinct not just to count the votes, though God knows we need that, but to register us all as voters, too. No more fraudulent voters, either. That will be a nice change.
The folks we know we can trust will be the ones we elect as our Precinct Captains to take America back. That will be the beginning of real change, change that affirms the true vision of the America that mists our eyes when we see the flag carried by. That is the front line for security America desperately needs today. It isn't even a big change. We will vote the same place, see the same people, and even get to know our neighbors better. our communities will not suffer, not in the suburbs and not in the inner cities if we have a desperate reason to know each other.
One Vote, One Voice is the focus project of a new political party, just forming. The name of the party is American Revival. You can join – if you sign the pledge and mean it. The pledge is your word of honor you will use no deceit, manipulation or violence to achieve your ends. Or other words, just do the right thing.
It is time Americans started governing themselves again. We are a nation that prides itself on doing for ourselves so lets make it true. Voting is important but it is not rocket science.
Next time I stand in line for three hours to remove the rascals I want to know my vote will count and I bet you do, too. America was once a shining light and the hope of the world. It can be again.
America is not just a place, it is a promise of unbounded possibility for all people everywhere. It is a sacred gift and a trust put into our hands for our own children and all children everywhere. It can be so again if we do what is needed.
God bless America and re register American Revival, the Unparty of American politics
Website: americalrevival.ws

Gay Marriage: A Comment

Response to article in the Santa Barbara News Press

It is nice to know that Democrats also squabble, as I saw in today’s News-Press, page A3, in the article titled, “In protest, gay couple quits Democrat group.” Having encountered monumental political wars as a Libertarian and then as a Republican, it is both sad and illuminating to see that this is a behavior that rears its head in all political institutions.
It is, however disturbing to think that with Democrats political expedience over rides an issue of principle, as we can construe in the words of Ms. Carey when she said, “,,, at this time, we Democrats need to be united against the recall.” What does gay marriage have to do with the recall? This kind of reasoning is morally bankrupt. Gay people have the same inherent rights, possessed by each individual. These must never be traded for purposes of political positioning.
It is appropriate, however, to question whether or not the State should ever have been making policy in this most personal area of our lives. With the best motives ‘family law’ has been used to steal the lives of uncounted numbers of women – and men, who thought that marriage, as defined by the State, was an institution of responsibility, integrity and honor. It started as a tool to undo great wrongs. It has been converted into a means for the unethical and irresponsible minority to feed off the decent majority. It is the base cause of many of the present social ills that distort our nation.
Be careful what you ask for because the version of ‘marriage’ produced by the State will cost you more than you can imagine. The State has taken it upon themselves to produce, the last time I looked, more than 50 specific things one partner is obliged to do for another. It had separated responsibility from the equation, empowering predators to steal, abuse, rape, molest and lie with impunity. It happens right here in Santa Barbara. It happens every day.
Imagine signing a contract then you do not know in advance what it really says? The three-party contract, that we know as ‘the marriage license’ is a contract between you, your spouse and the State. The State, as usual, has all of the power. Your contract can be altered without your consent and without your knowledge. Would you do business that way? Could you? Imagine having this most intimate and personal part of your life at the mercy of the same people who bring you fiasco after fiasco and vote themselves raises with cheerful abandon.
I suggest that gay couples use private contract and mandate arbitration, naming their own agents instead of thrusting their necks into the noose of State control. This makes much better sense. Heterosexual couples should also give the marriage license bureau a pass.
What gays are trying to achieve is clearly a public validation for their relationships. But in believing that the State is the appropriate institution to provide this they are inadvertently setting themselves up for the inching fingers of control that now distort and destroy the lives of so many good women and men.
Gays are better off without State marriage. I sincerely hope they decide to have someone else do the calligraphy. It’s much cheaper that way.

Wendy McElroy: NeoCon Flack

As always Wendy McElroy has failed to do the due diligence you would expect of a first grader.
I first met Wendy over twenty five years ago at a Libertarian event in West Los Angeles. My daughter, Morgan, was a small girl then.
This is relevant because the case she is citing in this most inane of screeds is the one in which my daughter was battered into an inch of her life by John Fund of the Wall Street Journal. I was a witness. I heard two events of battery going on over the phone. Later, I saw her bruises and I watched as she vomited blood from internal injuries. I nursed her through those first horrible days. I sat with her on the phone all one long night after the almost successful break-in attempt at her apartment in New York. John has thugs who work for him. I helped move her into hiding so that John Fund and his NeoCon buddies could not find and kill her.
I am not the only such witness.
You might ask why Wendy did not know this. Perhaps because like Alterman she never asked. You see victims and those who love them are deemed to be unreliable witnesses in the eyes of women like Wendy who would prefer for reasons of their own financial wellbeing to continue to doubt without ever asking for proof. Wendy McElroy makes a living off the raped and brutalized bodies of women and children. She is an apologist and enabler for those who steal through violence, stealth, and deceit. Her comfort level means more to her than the freedom from violence for the innocent. She is a dishonest, aging intellectual pygmy with the morals of a William Bennett. With this ‘opinion piece’ she has proven her moral weight to anyone with even a modicum of brains and objectivity.
The last several years has taught me a lot about human nature. I am no longer as trusting as I once was. I have learned some ugly truths about human action and the greedy side of self justification and how the cults of philosophical posturing are used by those in power.
At one time I thought I was working for freedom. I thought that I shared a common understanding of freedom with those who surrounded me. I dealt with people on a handshake, always taking pride in being my word. Unlike so many of my former compatriots I never tried to make a living out that work. I worked for the future I wanted to leave for my children. That was more than enough.
To them it turned out that the rhetoric of freedom is just another tool to continue the ugliness of a different flavor of slavery. A culture that allows, tolerates and enables the kind of abuse we have suffered should be destroyed so that something better can take its place.
When John Fund lied to my daughter he took from her. When he coerced her into having an abortion he destroyed the child she wanted. When he battered her and stole thousands of dollars from her with the help of American Express, Citibank and Chase he committed felonies. He used his influence in continuous attempts to destroy both of us so that he would not be found out. But he was. The courts do not work well. They are often corrupt and it is difficult for those who have less to get the simple justice that our ancestors believed were their due.
Today the fight for freedom is not to be fought in the safe incestuous maunderings of the political parties but at the grass roots.
Only when all of the power is returned to the people will America be free. When that happens Wendy will have to find an honest job.
Unlike Wendy McElroy I do not expect to be believed in the absence of proof.

Ann Coulter and the ERA

Anne Coulter wears skirts so short you can see her brains. Or you could if she had any. She is the best argument that the foamy-mouthed Right has made for the immediate passage of the long delayed ERA.
Nasty? Yes, and like all humor it arrives at a truth seen but not spoken.
Coulter is the unwoman prime of this generation; the latest and least representative of a species of women who have carried the ball, and presumably the coffee, for an establishment that wants more than anything to deny women the seats they earn at the table of power and their place in deciding for themselves how their lives will be lived.
The ERA is history but it is also the future. Americans assume equality for men and women by an overwhelming percentage. A recent poll from Opinion Research Corporation found that 96% of all Americans believe that men and women should have equal rights even as the Foamy-mouthed Right, and Libertarians deny it to women by blocking the passage of the ERA.
Congress will be taking up the question again. So far the measure has 186 cosponsors, nearly enough to push it past the blockage put up by Republicans.
That, and other factors mean it is about to happen despite Anne Coulter.
The Good Old Boys needed a titular woman who would obfuscate the truth. They found a real tool in Coulter to replace the sad, silly spokeswoman they had found in Phyllis Schlafly.
They still use carefully forged campaigns of disinformation and managed pressure groups to arrest the future. Coulter has rung in new variations on the theme. Such women are conscious tools of the GOB network. They have a long and dishonorable history in American politics.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, along with other leaders of the original American Women’s Movement, were at first astonished to be sniped at and then virulently attacked by women of privilege. Why would those who had so much grudge other women, most of them far less wealthy, a voice in public affaires and the right to their own lives and property? The Madams of Privilege had not been asked to give up their soirees, their laundrywomen, their coachmen, and their wealth. Why would they seek to deny working women the rights of self-determination?
The answer is not nice.
The fact is that there are always individuals out there looking for the benefits of public acclaim.
Therefore with women arming for war Phyllis Schlafly still tries to frighten us by urging mothers not to allow their daughters to risk joining the military. Anne Coulter goes farther, asserting that women should not be allowed to vote – while voting herself and enjoying all of the privileges of power.
These MOPs accept the privileges of fame and adulation for destroying the future of women unborn. It is the best job they could find – and the perks have been very good.
America has birthed many famous women, women who poured lifetimes into finding better truths for all of us.
Such is the fame of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Margaret Sanger and the host of other women who redefined the world in which we live. Fame is a heady drug for some, a tool for others.
Mother Theresa could tell you about the benefits of fame. The best holders of fame convert it into movements that change the world. The best are not about having the perks. They are about service.
This is about the MOPs. They are not good enough to make it to the upper echelons in their chosen marketplace as proponents for women - but they mightily want the flavor of fame and the favors fame brings.
So the GOBs sign them up. It is easier to join the Good Old Boys and shoot down those struggling for equality than it is to fight city hall. There are always those who valued the advantages of fame and wealth over being particularly discriminating about how they accomplish those ends. Fame and money are aphrodisiacs for self-love, too.
The subtext of GOB Babes like Phyllis Schlafly and Anne Coulter is not just, “to the back of the bus,” but, “on your back, bitch.” Not that they would fail to be outraged if they were treated like that themselves. Anne expects to be treated like a celebrity, meaning she does not expect to do the right thing herself, just to talk about it.
They have changed their strategies but their ends are the same.
Anne Coulter in particular has used the FemCard. She is blond by choice, razor thin and dresses like a two bit whore. This allows her the natural protection of femininity, armoring her from males on the left. All males hope they might get lucky, that is simple biology. Leftist males are no different.
The issue is what comes out of her mouth.
She has a mouth like a toilet and a mind to match. She calls for death, destruction, hate, and female servitude to the principle of masculinity. Her book, Slander was well named. It marks what we must hope is the low tide mark for journalistic standards. The challenge to the reader is finding statements that are true, not those that are false. We can hope that this attack of the undead of the Right will die in oncoming light, leaving the field open to a productive discourse between the decent majority.
Think of the ERA as the garlic that will put Anne Coulter back in her coffin. There, she cannot offend.

A Valentine for San Francisco

San Francisco is to be congratulated for affirming the right of gays to marry and doing so in defiance of all higher authority except their consciences.
Marriage is an ancient human relationship and will always remain the only familial connection that can be based entirely on choice. We do not get to choose our mother, father, sisters, brothers, cousins or children; in the sense that we know exactly who children are going to turn out to be after investing eighteen years in their raising. Children come with mountains of obligations beyond the diapers, and although they are certainly worth every moment of the time we invest it can even happen that they grow up and register in some Party that is antithetical to our own beliefs.
The featured simulation above symbolizes the freedom that will now be offered even to those who will probably reject this particular match for a variety of reasons. Matt Drudge will probably not be moving to San Francisco so he can offer David Brock marriage with a bouquet of yellow roses. David already spurned him. David would probably not be interested in a man who does not share his new political beliefs now any more than he was when he occupied a prominent position on the Right. Ann Coulter, while doubtless the best man of the three, will therefore miss out on the chance of standing up for the fantasy duo. But we can wonder who else might have been involved if such a wedding took place.
Weddings are always a wonderful human experience.
So while I hardly ever agree with anything that happens politically in San Francisco it was very nice today to open my paper and see that the city of the Golden Gate had allowed gays to put their head in the same noose provided for heterosexuals.
Now, having said that, and along with advising that the calligraphy on the wedding certificate be in Old English, I would like to add a cautionary note on the institution of Marriage as practiced by the government.
Before you pick you bride’s maids, groomsmen, and decide on what kind of wedding cake to serve at the reception think about that license you take out from the government. Read the contract the government issues. It is a Soviet kind of one size fits all document. This is in itself enough to sour you on the project. There are over 50 obligations intrinsic in the deal; the contract can be changed without notice and on the whim of the legislature, most of whom are attorneys. Would you sign a contract like that for a motor home? No way.
Think about that. Also, the judicial system is staffed by a cadre of former attorneys and judges who are immune from accountability. You can sue your contractor but not the judge. Which do you think can cost you more?
While getting government to recognize that you are married is necessary to securing benefits such as medical insurance, government marriage can cost you in ways you do not anticipate.
The better approach on the issue would actually be to let people determine who they name as their family members and write their own contracts, where necessary. A further objection, not often cited, to the current involvement of government in marriage is that some Americans view it as a sacred bond, affirmed by God, and therefore within the covenant of a religious institution; others as a civil contract, and therefore within the jurisdiction of the right of individuals for self determination. Many Suffragists married with a conscience contract in which their husband agreed to ignore the mandates of government.

The bottom line issue is that it is we ourselves who should be making these choices about our lives, not the government.
But tomorrow is Valentine’s Day – so congratulations to San Francisco and long live romance.