Monday, August 31, 2015

The irritating Kathleen Kane

I’ve been a big supporter of Kathleen Kane.  The kind of charges leveled against her are small beer stuff, and it is obvious she poked the hornets’ nest of the old boys and riled them up.  They should take their porn pics and jokes and go to their rooms.

So why am I irritated with Ms. Kane?  Way back on July 25 I wrote about a decision by U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel that Pennsylvania law restricted minor parties from organizing and speaking.  

Libertarians and Greens are required to gather as many as 10 times the number of signatures as Democrats and Republicans, and if the petitions are challenged, the third party candidates must pay the legal fees, which can run over $100,000.

This is blatantly discriminatory.  Judge Stengel did democracy a favor by invalidating the law.  The Philadelphia Inquirer urged the state not to appeal.  On August 21 Attorney General Kane announced that her office would appeal the decision anyway.  She evidently wants the discriminatory law to stand.  

Incidentally, here is how bad things are in Pennsylvania.  On August 18 a state trial court removed the Green Party nominee for Philadelphia Commissioner from the November 3 ballot, using the same process for checking signatures that had been declared unconstitutional in federal court in July.  


Sunday, August 30, 2015

Voting Rights

On Saturday Linda and I drove to Manhattan to see an exhibit on political posters at the New York Historical Society’s museum on 77th Street across from Central Park.  The posters were wonderful, but we also saw an exhibit of photos by Stephen Somerstein of the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights for African-Americans.

It was shortly after that march that the Voting Rights Act was passed, a bill supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

Now Ari Berman has written a book about recent attempts to roll back those rights.  It is entitled “Give Us the Ballot:  The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.”  It details the attempts by conservatives and racists and the U.S. Supreme Court to roll back the guarantees of the Voting Rights Act.  


Battles to extend freedom in this country are never final.  We must always refight them, always push back against the forces of racism and bigotry.  I am tired of fighting, but we don’t have a choice.  We have to battle back.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Planned Parenthood videos

It turns out that those videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood was violating the law and selling”baby parts” were deceptively and misleadingly edited.  Planned Parenthood broke no laws.  

Public funds cannot be used to pay for abortions.  They were not used.  Now Republicans in Congress want to strip Planned Parenthood of the approximately $500 million it gets annually to care for low-income women.


Once again we see women’s health sacrificed on the altar of right-wing ideology.  It is so obvious that Republican presidential candidates care nothing about women, or babies for that matter.  What they are about is winning elections, no matter how many innocent women will suffer. 

Friday, August 28, 2015

Born in the U.S.A.

The 14th Amendment is one of three amendments passed after the Civil War.  The 13th said no more slavery.  The 15th gave the right to vote to males regardless of color or condition of previous servitude.  The 14th, a long amendment, guaranteed equal protection of the laws, and it also said that anyone born in the U.S. was a U.S. citizen.

President Andrew Johnson opposed the 14th.  He was quoted as saying that under the provisions of the amendment, “even the Chinese will become citizens.”  The 14th has unified and strengthened this country.  When California passed laws that Japanese aliens couldn’t own land, they put their deeds in the names of their children, who were born here and,therefore, U.S. citizens.

Turkish immigrants who have lived in Germany for three generations and speak only German are not necessarily citizens of Germany.  The Germans don’t have the equivalent of the 14th Amendment.

We have always been an inclusive country.  In 1908 Israel Zangwill wrote a play about our mixing and blending entitled “The Melting Pot.”  Many social scientists think we are more of a stew with some large chunks, but we are still in the melting process.  As I often told my students at San Jose State, a real melting pot, “If you are born here, you are one of us.”  Us.  Inclusive.  Together.


Now Republican candidates, and not just Trump, are proposing to change the 14th Amendment.  Citizenship would no longer be a birthright.  We’d have two classes--citizens and a permanent underclass.  People like Walker are whipping up xenophobia.  Even Jeb Bush is talking about “anchor babies,” a silly paranoid fantasy of the far right.  I’m telling you, this is getting serious.  People of good will and common sense and a knowledge of our American heritage need to speak up.  

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Men with Guns

Just in case you missed it, I will quote two paragraphs from columnist Nicolas Kristof in today’s New York Times

"More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides every six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. "

"More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history."

Oh, I almost forgot.  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people--at least according to the N.R.A.

And here is one more item from Kristof.  OSHA has seven pages of regulations concerning ladders, which are involved in 300 deaths in the U.S. each year.  It has no regulations on guns, which kill more than 33,000 people each year.


Every politician is afraid to take on the N.R.A.  Even Trump, who supposedly speaks without fear of the consequences.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Eight glasses a day?

You don’t need to drink eight glasses of water a day.  You really don’t.  If you are a normal American eating and drinking normally, you will not dehydrate.  You will not die.

Aaron E. Carroll (Times, Aug. 25, 2015, p. A-3) examines the origin of the eight glasses myth.  It may have started with a 1945 Food and Nutrition Board recommendation that people need about 2.5 liters of water a day.  The following sentence has been completely ignored:  “Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.”

I am amazed at the number of people who carry water bottles with them.  You’d think we were in the Sahara.  Of course, companies like Deer Park and Poland Springs want you to purchase water at a high price in plastic bottles which will end up on landfills or in the ocean.


So remember, unless you have some terrible stomach flu accompanied by a high fever, or you are working outside in the 100 degree heat, or you are a marathon runner, you won’t dehydrate.  Step away from the water bottle.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Gov. John Kasich, moderate Republican?

Note the question mark.  The Republican-dominated Ohio legislature is considering a bill to criminalize abortions if they are a result of a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome.  

Given the Republican efforts to criminalize all abortions, the bill will probably pass.  These are the same Republicans who want to get government off our backs and out of our lives, except when they don’t.  This legislation would actually try to determine what a woman is thinking.

Of course the bill is outrageous.  Of course it is impossible to enforce.  The question is, will presidential candidate and Ohio governor John Kasich veto it if it does pass?  


I’m guessing no.  He’s running for President on the Republican ticket.  We are about to see if he is worthy to be president, or if he is just another panderer to the Republican extremists.  

Monday, August 24, 2015

NOTICE OF INTENT

PennEast Pipeline Company complained about the press coverage of its recent letter to affected land owners.  Last Thursday Linda noted at a meeting of the Carbon County Commissioners that the letter implied that the company had a right to enter property to survey without the landowner’s permission.

A spokesperson for PennEast said “...at no point does the letter convey that PennEast will access properties without the owner’s consent.”

Here is how the letter is entitled (in bold caps yet):  NOTICE OF INTENT TO ENTER LAND TO SURVEY. 

If someone walks up to you and says, “I’m giving you notice of intent to punch you really hard in the face,” what would be your reaction?


I think you can understand why landowners and environmentalists don’t trust PennEast.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

A visit from Ramona

Our friend Ramona Moon stopped by on her way back from New Jersey.  Ramona was the Artist in Residence for Fairfax, California, for two years when we lived there.  She is returning from an art car show in New Jersey; her car featured a corn motif.  Ramona now lives near Columbus, Ohio, but she has exhibited her cars all over the U.S.  

If you aren’t clear on the concept of “art cars,” do an internet search.  You will be amazed.


We spent the evening going through bins of books left over from our yard sale.  Ramona works in a book store and loves books perhaps even more than I do.  She is heading back to Ohio tomorrow with the car weighted down with jam, tomatoes, and about five boxes full of books.  It’s been fun.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Yard sale, part II

Donations from 15 people.  Help from a small army of volunteers.  And we made over $1300 today.


That’s over four month’s rent for the Democratic information Center.  I’m happy,  And exhausted.  And I’m hitting the sack.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Yard sale

Five years ago a number of liberal Carbon County activists decided that we needed a permanent headquarters for environmental and labor groups and candidates on the left of the political spectrum.  We formed a group called the Community Outreach Association and opened a headquarters in downtown Lehighton under the name Democratic Information Center.

The D.I.C., as it is more commonly known, provides a meeting room for Democratic candidates, for the Carbon County Labor Chapter, for the environmental group “Save Carbon County,” and for any other liberal or progressive group that needs a meeting space or headquarters.

The Community Outreach Association is not an official part of the Democratic Party.  Our Board of Directors (of which I am a member) is completely independent of any other political organization.  If the Clinton campaign wants to use our HQ, fine.  If Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden wants to use the facilities, also fine.

We get our funding from local activists.  We also hold a once-a-year yard sale at 6495 Pohopoco Drive.  The yard sale is tomorrow, and 14 people have donated items for the sale.  We have art, antiques, furniture, thousands of books, dishes, tools, WWII machine gun oil in its original container, CocaCola bottles, and hundreds of other items.  Stop by.  It is for a good cause.


P.S.:  We ship to Belgium.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Khalid al-Assad, a true hero

The word “hero” is over-used.  Soldiers, firefighters, and police officers who are doing their routine jobs are often labeled “heroes,” and the word has become somewhat debased.

Khalid al-Assad is someone who really deserves that label.  He was the archeological expert for the Syrian city of Palmyra.  Jihadists captured him, but he would not tell them where he and others had hid some of the city’s antiquities.

Mr. al-Assad was dragged to a public square where a masked swordsman cut off his head.  He was 83.  His body was strung up to a traffic light with his head, still wearing his glasses, was put between his feet.

We know this because the jihadists broadcast the picture on social media.

I think the United Nations should award a medal for brave people like Mr. al-Assad, men and women who are willing to die to preserve our planet and its civilization.  It could be like the medal of honor, which is sometimes awarded posthumously.  We need to remember people like that.


Information for this post was taken from an article entitled “Shielding Syria’s Antiquities, to His Grisly Death.” by Ben Hubbard in today’s Times

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Police shootings

I’ve quoted from “Harper’s Index” before.  This item contained in the latest issue is truly amazing.  I’ll quote it in its entirety:

Number of people fatally shot by British police in the past three years:  2
Average number of people fatally shot by U.S. police each day so far this year:  2.6


Please supply your own comment.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Donald Trump–no longer funny

If I heard correctly, Donald Trump is proposing to deport about 11 million immigrants.  

The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin and was first used in 1944.  If you look it up on Wikipedia, you’ll find the term not only applies to the killing of an ethnic or religious group, but also can apply to the elimination or disruption of that group’s culture or existence by various means.  Deportation certainly would fit the definition.


I was one of those people who thought Donald Trump was rather amusing.  Now I think he is a danger to the Republic.  I hope he soon burns out, but it is a measure of the sickness of our culture and the disgust with our politics that he has the support he has.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

Late August music

I’ve written about the lovely sound of the spring peepers piping out their mating calls in April and May.  I’m not sure which I like better, the frogs in the spring, or the crickets and katydids in August.  If you live anywhere in the country, step outside after dark and listen.  You are hearing a closeout of summer and the harbinger of fall.  

I’ve noticed the black walnut leaves are already drifting down, and I haven’t seen any swallows lately.  I think they’ve already headed south.  Today was the first day the sun set before 8 p.m.  


For most of my life–elementary school, high school, college, grad school, and teaching at San Jose State and East Stroudsburg–I would be thinking about the fall semester.  Now fall is just another season, and I look forward to it.  Play on, crickets and katydids.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Koch Brothers image redo

In July President Obama praised the Koch Brother’s support for criminal justice reform.  They are also giving a $25 million gift to a college fund.  They have a $20 million branding campaign featuring their 60,000 American employees entitled “We are Koch.”  Charles Koch is publishing a book about his philosophy called “Good Profit.”

It ain’t gonna work.  The brothers, according to a report in the Times by Nicholas Confessore, have budgeted 889 million for the 2016 election.  That money will not go to Bernie Sanders.


An old Texas expression comes to mind:  You can put earrings on a hog and call it Jane, but it is still a hog.  The Koch Brothers are still the Koch Brothers.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Life under Marco Rubio

An 11-year-old Paraguayan girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather gave birth on Thursday.  

The government barred her from having an abortion.  According to the article in today’s Morning Call, religious groups praised the government’s decision.  


Based on their past statements, I assume that Marco Rubio, Rickie Santorum, Scott Walker, and most of the other Republican candidates are also happy with the policy.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Christine Donohue

This morning I attended a press conference held by Christine Donohue on the steps of the Carbon County Courthouse in Jim Thorpe.  Ms. Donohue, now a member of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, is a candidate for a seat on the state Supreme Court.  She comes “highly recommended” by the Bar Association.

She was raised in Lansford, where her father was a United Mine Worker and her mother, a member of the ILGWU, worked in a garment factory.  She graduated from Marian Catholic, received a degree from East Stroudsburg University, and attended law school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

Ms. Donohue is a dream candidate for Pennsylvania citizens who want a Supreme Court justice who will be honest, fair, and impartial.


Now here is the bad news.  2015 is an off-year election.  That means low turnout.  That means Republicans vote, Democrats don’t.  Judicial elections are low information elections.  That means that millions of Republicans across the state will go in and vote for less than qualified judicial candidates just because they are on the Republican ticket.  That’s the reality Donohue and her supporters must overcome.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

What to say about Donald Trump

One of your Republican friends asks you, “What do you think about Donald Trump?”  That means your friend likes Donald Trump.  You should encourage that–the longer Trump is in the race, the better for the Democrats.  Here are some possible responses:

1.  I don’t agree with everything he says by any means, but I like the way he isn’t afraid to speak out.

2.  He probably shouldn’t have said those things about Megan Kelly, but I thought Fox News was unfair to him.  (Any time you can get a Republican to agree that Fox News is unfair you create cognitive dissonance.)

3.  Well, at least he isn’t sucking up to the Koch Brothers like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio.

4.  In some ways he can be nasty, but he isn’t as mean to the people on the bottom of the economic scale as Ted Cruz or Scott Walker.


5.  He’s really something.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Affordable Care Act update

According to columnist Paul Krugman, the Republicans in the prime time debate referred to God 19 times, but mentioned the hated “Obamacare,” which the G.O.P. has tried to repeal again and again, only nine times.

Perhaps headlines like the one in today’s Morning Call are making the Republicans reluctant to push for repeal.  The headline:  “Health insurance coverage soars under ACA.”


In 2013 there were 14 states in which over 20% of the population lacked health insurance.  Today there is only one.  It’s Texas, home of Ted Cruz and Rick Perry and a whole bunch of Tea Party politicians who would rather have people die than support a program initiated by President Obama.  

Monday, August 10, 2015

Voter Fraud in Texas

In 2011 the Republican Texas legislature engaged in voter fraud.  Legislators passed a bill requiring voters to take a government-issued ID photo to the polling place.  Student ID’s are not acceptable.  Voter registration cards are not acceptable.  A permit to carry a concealed weapon is acceptable.

Out of 20 million votes cast in Texas in the ten years before the law was passed, there were two convictions for in-person voter fraud.  

A federal judge found that 600,000 voters, predominately black, Latino, and poor, (and Democratic) lacked the necessary ID.  She overturned the Texas law.


Will the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act as no longer necessary, uphold the lower court decision to void the Texas law?  Five of the U.S. Supreme Court justices are Republicans who seem more interested in protecting the interests of the Republican Party than in upholding the Constitution.  I am not optimistic.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

The DARK bill

Earlier this week I ate some GMO sweet corn.  I did hesitate to eat it, not because I’m worried about my health, but rather because I don’t like the way Monsanto is using GMO seeds to sell the herbicide Roundup.

On Aug. 8, Lancaster Farming reported that H.R. 1599 passed the House on July 24 on a 275-150 vote.  The bill, labeled the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling law,” or the SAFE act, would prevent states from requiring food labels to indicate the presence of genetic modified organisms.  


The bill is also known as the DARK act, or the “Deny Americans the Right-to-Know.”  My own sympathies lie on the side of people who want to know what they are eating.  If they don’t want to eat GMO foods, they should have the right to know what they are eating.  To label this the “SAFE act” is the kind of crap at which the Republican Congress excels.

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Dr. Frances Oldman Kelsey, 1914-2015

In 1960 Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey was the F.D.A. bureaucrat who in charge of licensing new drugs.  She was asked to approve Kevadon, a sedative, already widely used in Europe.  The drug was sold to pregnant women for morning sickness.  The William S. Merrell Company of Cincinnati was the manufacturer and was quite annoyed at Dr. Kelsey’s request for more information.  They called her a “petty bureaucrat.”

The drug, more commonly known as thalidomide, caused thousands of babies in Europe, Britain, and Canada, to be be born with flippers instead of limbs.  

Thanks to petty bureaucrat Dr. Kelsey, this did not happen in the U.S.  

In 1962 President Kennedy awarded Dr. Kelsey the nation’s highest federal civilian service award.  He said she had “prevented a major tragedy of birth deformities.”

The word “bureaucrat” is usually used as a pejorative.  I don’t see it that way.


(The information on Dr. Kelsey came from an obituary in today’s New York Times.)

Friday, August 7, 2015

Confederate flag history lesson

Last night at the Carbon County Fair I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt with a Confederate battle flag and the message “If this shit offends you, you need a history lesson.”

Actually, the young man needs a history lesson.  The Constitution of the Confederate States of America parallels the U.S. Constitution in many ways, but here is what Article IV, Section 3 of the Confederate Constitution says about statehood:

The Confederate States may acquire new territory, and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States lying without the limits of the several States, and may permit them, at such times and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government, and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and territories shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

I thought about calling the guy over and telling him about the Confederate Constitution, but I remembered a poster my Department head kept on his wall.  It said, “Never try to teach a pig to dance.  It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.”

Incidentally, I thought it interesting that the T-shirt called the Confederate battle flag “shit.”  

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Republican debate

As I write this, ten Republican presidential candidates are debating on the Fox News (?) Channel.  I’m not watching it for three reasons:  

1,  Rick Perry has been excluded.  Really, Scott Walker is in and Rick Perry is excluded.  That is just wrong.

2.  The debate is on Fox News.  If Rupert Murdoch invented a cure for cancer and I had cancer, I would rather die than take Rupert Murdoch’s cure.  I refuse to watch.


3.  I really need to organize my sock drawer.  My socks are all messed up, and I need to match up the pairs.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Friends of Beltzville State Park plan litter cleanup

On August 19 the Friends of Beltzville State Park, a newly-formed group of which I am a charter member, are planning a litter cleanup on the trails on the north side of the lake.

I have two thoughts about this.  One is that if we lived in a country in which people cared about the environment, we wouldn’t need a group to pick up litter.  We wouldn’t have any.

The second is that if we had a state legislature that funded the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to its proper level, we wouldn’t be needing to form “Friends” groups to augment the park staff.


The relevant word here is “if.”

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

High Line Park

Today we visited the High Line Park in New York.  The park is about a mile and a half long and runs from below 14th Street to 34th Street in Lower Manhattan.  It is a park built on an abandoned elevated railroad track, it is filled with an amazing variety of plants and flowers, and it has access points every two or three blocks. 


On the High Line you can walk across lower Manhattan above street level.  Vistas open up as you walk along.  We did not walk the whole length, but we walked far enough to conclude that this has to be one of the most fascinating urban parks in the U.S.  What a concept.  New York City deserves a great deal of credit for the High Line.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Donald Trump holds back

Five Republican candidates–Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Carly Fiorina–visited the oil billionaire Koch Brothers in what Trump called a “beg-a-thon.”  Hey, sometimes the guy is right.


Trump called the five candidates “puppets.”  What a nice word.  I would have called them “butt kissers.”

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Pipeline death threats

On Saturday morning Linda, our daughter Rachael, our grandson Gavin, and I canoed from Preacher’s Camp Boat Launch across Beltzville Lake and up Wild Creek Cove.  The Christman family once “owned” Wild Creek (can you really own a creek?) from Pohopoco Drive to about half a mile from the confluence with the Pohopoco.

After the Beltzville project was completed, what had been Wild Creek became the Wild Creek Cove, under many feet of lake water.  I wanted to show Gavin where our stream entered the lake, and the rock formation my Dad called “the bear cave,” and the cliffs below the Wild Creek Falls.

I wanted him to see it before the UGI-PennEast pipeline cut a permanent scar through Beltzville State Park across Wild Creek Cove.  I wanted him to see it while it still had hemlocks on both sides of the Cove, while it still had an unbroken shoreline on both sides.


The Morning Call recently published an article that PennEast officials had received death threats.  The FBI is investigating.  Perhaps the FBI should also investigate the real threats to the the environment, to the natural beauty of the area, to endangered plant and animal species.  These abuses to the environment aren’t some fanciful and silly threats--these are promises of things to come, brought to our neighborhood and our parks by a company which has one interest only--to make money.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Mission Impossible and other reviews

Let’s face it–Tom Cruise is getting a little long in the tooth to play in action movies.  In the scene early in the film where he is shirtless, he is starting to look like an old man, with doughy skin.  Not only the that, but the movie goes on way too long.  Fast and Furious 7 had a lot more action and suspense.  Still, it was entertaining.  At no point was I tempted to walk out.

“Holmes” is playing at the 19th Street Theater in Allentown.  That one is worth seeing.  Sherlock Holmes has been played by many actors in many permutations, but in this one he is very old, bordering on dementia, yet the movie delivers.  Laura Linney is excellent as the house keeper, and the kid is great.


Finally, “Ant Man” is a good popcorn movie.  It is funnier than most of the Marvel Comic films, has a good lead, and a satisfying ending.  Two thumbs up.