Powerful Male Senators

SPEAK MORE! The Female Supreme Court Justices get interrupted 1/3 more often than men. This number actually increases as the numbers of womyn increase. Our democratic system depends on all voices being equal. This is just one case where there is a vast discrepency between those who have always held power and those who are new to the game. It can be enlightening to look at the details, look hard at what is going on. In the best case, patriarchy is taking it's last gasp. We are experiencing the death rattle of cultural systems of oppression that do not work. Just like how the racists put all their eggs in the deceitful traitor basket. Finding the micropauses, to jump in, and speaking just a little louder and a little longer than your opposition, don't let the misogynists dominate the conversation! Talking over, can be taken to an offensive level and still sound "more civil", hey, Bob, I wasn't done making my point... thus cock blocking him while making him look like the "bad guy." Those who fill the space with their ideas are most often obstacles to consensus, not helpful in any way. Changing our culture can be done in as little as twenty years, but it requires concerted efforts on the part of all of us. We are frequently distracted by bluster, misdirection, self-serving blather and opinions attempting to hold dominion over fact ad nauseum. Holding the public discussion to higher standards would require us to more highly value facts, call people out on their lies and to be heard, we would have to shout a little bit louder fo ra little bit longer than anyone who sought to shout us down. That, in fact, is why bullies win out so often. It is the same reason that culturally insensitivity seems to be peddled as the "norm", when it is obviously the opposite of that. Talking over someone does not mean that you are right or that your ideas are inherently valuable. Often, quite the opposite is true.

Working With Smart People

Today I had a great discussion with a businessman from my town. He pays attention to the claims people make and understands how to decipher fraudulent claims. In addition he knows where to look for the best and most accurate information, which leads to great conversations if you can engage him on that level. Today he mused at how wrong Republicans have gotten things. He started out by repeating back some very interesting details about our unemployment numbers. There are just under six million people in Wisconsin. There are just under four million that are working age, 15-65. Just 130,000 are unemployed. Businesses claim they have 150,000 jobs to fill, so that sounds like we need at least 20,000 more people after we get everyone unemployed to work. Expecting further reductions in unemployment without making significant changes to the availability and affordability of childcare, healthcare and education, getting to complete employment is utter fantasy. I worked for just one week with a whole crew of people who make up that last few percent, those chronically unemployed, and they have good reason for not having found a place to fit in. A short list of issues tha tthey bring are racist, sexist, jokes, comments and attitudes, professing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, neglecting safety protocols, claiming either ignorantly or deceitfully false information is true and outright dangerous behavior. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is that most people probably don't want full employment as they have not been trained to deal effectively with sociopaths and psychopaths. Just excluding those two personality types from employment would keep unemployment at five percent! We can't just will something to happen and as much as Republicans like to claim that their policies will help create the most jobs, we have often seen the opposite to be true. Obama for instance, took office with the economy in shambles with over 10% unemployment and during his two terms cut unemployment by more than half! Clinton too, inherited an economy with near seven percent unemployment and during his time in office brought it down to just four percent. Similarly, President Carter received the economy in the worst ever postwar unemployment at 9% and reduced it slowly and steadily to under six percent, until the very end of his term when it rose to slightly above six percent. Kennedy and Johnson both had Adminstrations that presided over lowering of unemployment, Kennedy hammered it down fron over 7%, down to fiv and Johnson continued, first pretty stteply, but the trend continued until unemployment was about two points lower than he had inherited it. Even Truman had averaged under four percent unemployment through his term, although in 1949, there was a spike to nearly double that. His average unemployment rate was the lowest of all Post War Administrations. I am always honored when people that have been paying attention share with me the things they are most concerned about. I hope they feel the same way when I speak from my heart about matters that concern me. I hope that everyone develops working relationships with those who pay attention, those who can sift and winnow facts from fiction. Especially in an age of digital communication and the power of the internet, there is no excuse for not learning how to determine fact from fiction, yet millions seem to be comfortable with perpetrating delusions and flights of fancy on the public at large. Whether we care to hear them or not, they seem bent on screaming about how they have the right to their alternative facts or thinly veiled opinions baqsed on hate. When we were taught about what democracy means, they forgot to tell us that in the Revolutionary War, the majority wanted to stay with Britain. The loud-mouthed bullies have been getting their way ever since. My theory is that we no longer have a world in which we can tell people, "Leave the tribe", because wherever they go pretty much across the whole face of the earth, they will then be perpetrated upon another tribe. We have run out of islands that can be turned into penal colonies. There are too few waste lands to send these people to. I recently had to leave an employer because of dumb. All of the claims they made of professionalism were dwarfed by their real world actions, those of amateurs. Sadly, they were even amateur thinkers. I will gladly return to work with the thoughtful boss, he honors me with honestly derived information, the dolts want me to believe their delusions or at least not expose their logical fallacies. Life is too short and I have too much at risk to let that slide. Seek and don't settle for less than we all deserve! Just imagine, how well things might go if we could all agree that business thinking they can fill twenty thousand more jobs than if every single unemployed person showed up ready to work for them is simply goofy! The imaginary twenty-thousand are hard to square. If a human being was claiming to envision a cadre of twenty-thousand, where they did not exist, there would be good reason to get their mental health checked. In Wisconsin, extrapolating last month's lost jobs, we are losing about 150,000 jobs per year. It takes us more than two years to graduate that many new young people through High School into the job market. The sooner we admit that the only Post War Republican President to reduce unemployment during their term was Reagan, the sooner we can forget all the other economic gimmics they profess. The greatest irony is that before Reagan go tthe unemployment rate down, it first had to spike to a Post War high of over 10.8% he then slowly brought it down to just below six percent by the time he left office. The right wing has never been against spending, as long as it benefits the ultrawealthy, or extracts more money from the rest of us that goes right into corporate profits, not laborers pockets, not into the hands of those who need it most, never to those who have been disenfranchised or marginalized, but those who pay for campaigns. The donor class. We all see it, we are all tired of it, we must cultivate realtionships with others who see what has been done and vote to fix it! KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!

My America?

We had just under 2,200 new covid-19 cases in my county last week. Brown County, Wisconsin has less than 265,000 people, so nearly two in a hundred got a completely controlable illness last week. Some of them will die. Even at only 1% death rate, 22 people will lose their lives to covid-19 simply because they got infected in the past week. Remember, the case fatality rate is closer to two percent across the entire U.S. I have so much shame and heartache about how stupid we are acting, but that will need to be worked out elsewhere. This blog is supposed to focus on positive steps we can take to chage things for the better. I know that after more than a year, we should be past this point. I'll go over it again just in case you have forgotten.DO NOT SHARE AIR! JUST DON'T DO IT! When you must be near others, mask, wash your hands frequently, do not touch your face, maintain social distance. Also, use your brain. All of our lives we have been taught that uncovered coughs and sneezes can jettison sputum up to thirty feet or more. Increase social distance around those who cough and/or sneeze that choose to remain unmasked. I would love to go into more detail about how to re-allocate the money we wasted in Afghanistan...

As we change our focus... The fact that millions of Americans love to shoot off their ignorant pie holes about how we need to love this country or leave it, one would expect them to be true patriots and work conscientiously to make our nation a place worthy of living in. There is nothing patriotic about claiming that your "freedom" is worthy of trampling on the health and safety of others. From a foundation that thinks liberty extends to hurting others, what can you build on a foundation that horrid? We can bear witness to the fact tha tthese same people claim to be victims themselves, justifying running stoplights and spewing toxic chemicals, even into our shared drinking water. This is not the nation I was taught to love. No one has the American Dream of buying a farm in the country only to turn the spigot and get shit out of the faucet, but in millions of american homes, that is what you get. How can degrading my property values by tainting my water source be allowed? Why is it not criminal to do business in ways that kill people? My America, the one I was taught to love and respect has three primary tenets, Justice, based on legislation and rights handed down from our legal cases; freedom to choose our leaders, based on the vote and as so many love to repeat, life, liberty and persuit of happiness. (falsely called "property" by some who fight to retain their greedy self-interest in an environment that requires cooperation and mutualism.) My right to make a living never absolves me of responsibility if I negatively impact my neighbor's ability and right to health, happiness or their ability to thrive. As we look outside our own niche, we need to accept and defend the rights of everyone to find the things we all claim have value. Living life requires us to be healthy. To have ultimate freedom, we must also carry the burden of absolute responsibility. To ultimately seek and have the hope of finiding happiness, we need to know that the basic needs we all have are going to be met. The dwindling but very loud minority who claim that they have the "right" to re-define reality to suit their claims rather than accepting facts and reality doomks all of us to meeting an untimely end. How will we react in the face of lies? We the people must speak truth to these power-hungry people who claim undue influence through the media, use of capital and who cling to their outlandish claims. We have the power to change, too often what we lack is the will.