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"Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Send these, the homeless, tempest-toss'd to me

I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door."

Hundreds of Oregon Corporations Escape the Minimum Tax

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Half of the US Is Broke

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The myth of the Christian country

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“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

FDR, 2nd Inaugural Address, Jan 20, 1937

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Middle East friendship chart

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Corporations enriching shareholders

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Facts not fiction on universal gun background checks

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"Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere"

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The GOP - Not One of US.

Wall Street, our new criminal class...       

   Business in the USA is sitting on $2 trillion dollars refusing to invest their own funds in expanding and hiring workers.  

   When one adds to this the reserves that banks, equity firms and hedge funds have - the picture is clear - "capitalism in the USA is on strike." 

   The engine of our economy - the spirit of entrepreneurship is not in evidence today.  So much for business being dynamic and risk taking. 

   They hire K- Street lobbyists and their ilk at the state level because they are averse to risk taking - pleading for tax breaks, tax credits and endless loopholes. 

   The "business of business" in America today is not about job creation, it's about wealth hoarding and redistribution from the middle class to the top 1%. 

   So for those who claim government doesn't create jobs, my response is that business doesn't either until given "corporate welfare" by government.  The fact is that the private and public sector are highly integrated, something the anti-tax, anti-government Tea Party types don't understand. 

   Job creation requires public/private partnerships but the benefits of such collaboration should go to the 99% not just the 1%.  

 

RAD'S

WEBSITE PICKS: 


 

  • A Middle East View      

Rami G. Khouri

  • RealClearPolitics:

Realclearpolitics

  • Jim Hightower:   

Jimhightower.com

  • Robert Reich:

Robert Reich

  • Thomas Friedman: 

Friedman Column

  • Nicholas Kristof: 

Kristof Column

Oregon's Motto: 

She flies with her own wings! 


Hard Times in Oregon: 

Hardtimes

The Oregon story - the rich get richer, the poor and middle class lose ground.  Check this front page Oregonian article out. 

Oregon wage gap widens

Homelessness in Oregon - a call to action

Chuck Currie The crisis of homelessness


  

      Oregon's coming 34th out of 41 states in the Obama "Race to the Top" illustrates the failure of leadership from Governor Kitzhaber and his predecessors as they have built an educational bridge to nowhere called high stakes testing.

   Instead of being in a race to the top we seem to be dumpster diving to the bottom despite doing education reform since 1991.  Insanity is termed doing the same thing over and over again.  When can we put a fork in this stupidity? 

   To confuse matters more the Oregonian's editorial board has pontificated that this was a lost opportunity to get federal funding for innovation.  How firing principals and teachers equals innovation is a mystery to me.   

   The way to reform schools is to reduce class sizes, to encourage teacher collaboration and to support their continued education.  High stakes testing and performance based assessment of teachers are NOT the answer!    

   If you want students to succeed you first have to resolve the issues they confront before they come to school.  Children who face poverty, hunger, homelessness, health care issues and family instability require wrap around services for them and their families, 24/7.   

   Every child needs a safe home of their own and parents who know how to be good parents.   

There is only one way to address this impending crisis.  Schools must have a stable source of funding. Until that happens - we will limp from crisis to crisis.   

 

 

    

    Why does the richest nation in the world have the moral blight of homeless people?

Invisible People

http://www.npr.org


 Homelessness

    Connecting the dots between homelessness & hunger in Oregon and Washington County: 

Homelessness:  

•    The faces of the homeless are families with children, single men and women, vets, and many who are impaired. It is estimated that in Washington County up to 56% of homelessness occurs to families.

Hunger:

•    Hunger is highest among single mother households (10%) and poor families (15%) as well as renters, unemployed workers and minority households. 

     In Washington County, Oregon's "economic engine," the divide between the affluent and the working poor continues.  We have a 19,000 unit gap in affordable low income rental housing.  County political and business leaders are indifferent to this crisis...   

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If you want to e-mail me "comments" use my Yahoo back up e-mail address russdondero@yahoo.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RAD Lines

See my FACEBOOK @ Russ

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Trump & The Mob

http-//www.politico.com#13C5A6C


Trump's role models are Vladmir Putin and Benito Mussolini.  He has contempt for our checks and balances system.  He wants to "rule" not govern like a strong man, a despot.  He will shredd the Constitution anytime he feels the urge to do so and like all despots he only listens to his inner circle.  And he is paranoid and narcissistic. 

     

Hundreds of Oregon Corporations Escape the Minimum Tax

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Half of the US Is Broke

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The myth of the Christian country

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Housing Needs in Oregon 

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"There are men who believe that democracy... is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate [and that] tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future..." 

FDR, 3rd Inaugural Address, Jan 20, 1940

  • "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild


  • Miguel de Cervantes, from The Duke - "I accuse you of being an idealist, a bad poet and an honest man."  Cervantes' response - "Guilty as charged, I have never had the courage to believe in nothing."   from Man of La Mancha  


Professor Kingfield, from the Paper Chase

   "I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you." 

- George Bernard Shaw

 

BLOGS:

From the Left Wing:

Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman - The New York Times

Democracy Now
democracynow.org

The Daily Kos

dailykos.com

Blue Oregon

blueoregon.com

 

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." 

- Emilie Buchwald 

 


    "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." 

- Justice John Paul Stevens, Bush v. Gore, 2001

    The state of our union - check out the map, it's a reality check for those who can't figure out why people are so ticked off... 

americanobserver

 



"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war"

- John Adams

"Loyalty to country always.  Loyalty to government when it deserves it."  

- Mark Twain  

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  

- George Santayana 

"The love of one's country is a natural thing.  But why should love stop at the border?" 

- Pablo Casals

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." 

- William Butler Yeats  

 

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' 

But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"  

- George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah" (1921) 

"...the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society...  The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government..."  

- James Madison, Federalist Papers #11 

"Why … should we have government? Why not each individual take to himself the whole fruit of his labor, without having any of it taxed away?”   

The legitimate object of government, is to do for the people whatever they need to have done, but which they can not do, at all, or can not do, so well, for themselves – in their separate and individual capacities … There are many such things … roads, bridges and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools … the criminal and civil [justice] departments."    

- Abraham Lincoln 

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society  

- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates, but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole..." 

- Edmund Burke  

“It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.  These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions.”  

- Jonathan Swift 

A RAD rhetorical question - Were Madison & Marx "Marxists"?  

 

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments."   

- James Madison

 

FYI:  

Squareapace has closed the "comments" section on my blog as a way around this contact me via my Yahoo e-mail address posted on the left sidebar...   

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 


 

 

  

 


  

 

« WASHINGTON COUNTY'S POLITICS OF SILENCE | Main | WASHINGTON COUNTY'S "TRICKLE DOWN" PLANTATION »
Friday
Oct232015

THE DONALD & THE WEAK TEA OF THE GOP 

     EDITOR'S NOTE:  The blog post below on The Donald is a copy of an op ed which appeared in last week's Forest Grove News-Times.  In the latest Iowa poll Trump is now behind Ben Carson - though still leading in the national RCP poll.   Trump may not play well in the placid waters (corn fields) of Iowa.  We'll see.  But as one friend terms it "the weak tea" of the GOP is really obvious so without Trump to excite people will the voters simply fall asleep and miss the show when it counts in January.  GOP voter fatigue? 

     And despite the 11 hour House Intelligence hearing (an oxymoron) with Hillary on Thursday - Hillary clearly not only survived it - she "trumped" her GOP attackers staying calm, collected and on message.  They helped her look even more "presidential" than her highly successful debate performance in Las Vegas.  And now with the exit of two Ds from the stage plus Biden's bowing out - it's clearly a Hillary vs. the Bern show.  If they keep it civil this could set up the narrative for the campaign. 

     Thanks to our friends in the north 40 Trudeau's victory in Canada suggests the plot line for Hillary - tax the uber rich, focus on infra-structure, and embrace diversity while the "weak tea of the GOP" sinks in their own bile.  

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The Donald and the American Psyche

     Donald Trump has those in the mainstream political class scratching their heads trying to figure out why this master of bombast is leading the GOP parade down the Yellow Brick Road of 2016.

     Remember that road led Dorothy and her friends to the pinnacle of power, only to find the “Wizard” behind the drapes was a fake; all sound and fury meaning nothing.

     Like Oz, “The Donald” is equally a fake; an illusionist into whom his fans put their hopes, fears and anger as if that will be a solution to what bothers them about American politics.

     But alas, he has no answers, as his response in a recent TV clip indicated when asked about his ideas beyond immigration. He simply walked off the stage, leaving a young questioner in the dust.

     The Donald is all about him. He’s creating a cult of personality, not an ideology. He’s a vacuous, self-promoting snake oil huckster out of the annals of Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

     Donald Trump has got on with a diminishing demographic — older white voters who are angry and clearly very anti-political correctness.

      Trump is a 21st century version of a politician who promises Americans — like the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did back in the day — “to run the trains on time.” Instead, Benito ran Italy into an alliance with Hitler’s Germany and into the ditch of World War II.

     The Donald is reminiscent of American neo-fascists such as Charles Lindbergh, Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Strom Thurmond and Robert Welch — who played on American fears of the time, hate of the other, and legitimate grievances against the economic and political establishment.

     Ironically, Trump is a member of the American oligarchy who is running against the 1 percent, which is why he is feared and reviled by the GOP establishment. Again, if one looks behind Trump’s curtain, he has no answers, just pomposity. He is America’s Putin.

     Will he wear out his welcome down the road? Probably. But Trump is tapping into a deep vein in the American psyche. It’s a narrow fissure mostly within the Republican Party and a diminishing demographic in the American body politic, and the math is against the GOP.

     With 53 percent of the electorate being women, how will Trump’s anti-woman rhetoric play in November of 2016? And similarly, how will his anti-immigrant rhetoric play with the black vote, the Latino vote and the Asian vote?

     If Trump gets the GOP nomination, he will sink the GOP ship just like Goldwater did in 1964. If he runs as an independent, like Ross Perot in 1992, he will seal the deal for Hillary, Bernie or Joe!

     In his journey down the yellow brick road cast as “Wicked” or the “Beast of the East,” his campaign will hit a political road bump breaking his SUV’s axle and ending the fantasy. But the entertainment value will be great TV, and Roger Ailes and Fox News will get what they richly deserve. They created The Donald; now their creation will ruin their fun.

References (1)

References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.

Reader Comments (5)

Sorry, there's not going to be any GOP voter fatigue. Wishful thinking on your part.

It's overwhelming now because there are so many candidates, and of course Trump is sucking all the air out of the room. I think it's a sign of good health to have so many qualified candidates. The energy is in the GOP right now, not in the Democratic Party.

Trump pokes a finger in the eye of political correctness, which is a wonderful thing, because political correctness is a pernicious evil that needs to be obliterated. There's one point for Donald Trump right there.

Trump is smart and he's starting to get substantive on the issues, foreign policy being one of them, and he's got a lot of good ideas on that. Of course Trump is so flawed that there is no point even starting a list, but I think the American people are starting to feel like we've been so poorly served for so long by the political class that we're willing to take a risk. We don't owe the political establishment anything, they owe us. But all they care about are themselves and doing the bidding of their corporate masters. We the people don't count and haven't counted for a long time.

I like Rand Paul but it doesn't look like it's going to be his year. Ben Carson is kinder and gentler than Donald Trump, I could easily support him.
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterRhonda
Here's something we can agree on "...But all they care about are themselves and doing the bidding of their corporate masters. We the people don't count and haven't counted for a long time." The far right and far left converge. They just don't agree which candidate serves their interests - somebody like Ben Carson or Benie Sanders...
October 23, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterRhonda
I think it's sad what has happened to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue collar working families. So much for those days. Because of its promotion of issues that so many people find morally or otherwise objectionable, the Democratic Party has been losing natural married families with children for a long time now. The success of same-sex "marriage" has pretty much cinched the secularization of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party seems to have kissed off the heartland as well. It's almost completely urbanized. Where are the blue dog Democrats?

Large swaths of the country are turning read - state legislatures, governorships, and the majority in the U.S. Senate and House. The Democratic Party is almost nonviable as an electoral party in extremely red states like the one I live in, and I suppose that's true in other deep red states as well.

The Democratic Party has become a place where an un-evolved Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton wouldn't have a place a the table. Jim Webb was lucky he got the time of day he did in the presidential race, and that's all he got. The Democratic Party has become secularized, urbanized, and elitist.

The Democratic Party has become increasingly ideologically rigid and disciplined. There is no tolerance for dissent within the Party. They seem to be intent of pruning themselves. The Republican Party stands for nothing, but it has become the Other Party, for everyone who does not like what the Democratic Party has become. The old things that used to define what Democrats stood for and what Republicans stood for don't really mean much anymore. Both are driven by big banks and global corporatist interests, for instance.

Despite what seems to be their smaller numbers and shrinking electoral influence, it seems like the Democratic party/political left still seems to have lot of power. People in the red states really resent that it seems more and more like we are ruled by the interests of the clusters of blue at the coasts and in the big cities. This is not fair or right.

The American people don't have any good choices anymore. That is why it's a good year for the outsiders.
October 24, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterRhonda
Rhonda,

I agree with much that you say here. Both parties are captives of corporate powers that be - oligarchs who represent different sectors of the US economy. Dems are favored by hi-tech based industry while the Reps are favored by petro based corporations. The defense sector tilts to whomever is in power...

Working class whites in the southern states, the mountain states are increasingly red voters as you say who feel ignored by the Dems. But working people in the urban midwest, east and west coasts are inclined to vote Dem... It's also a racial divide - not just Black and white but Asians, Latinos who also vote D...

Trump is an empty ideological vessel into which people put their own hopes and fears. In the general election if he gets the nomination Hillary will crush him on the gender vote alone. The reality is that there are more votes in the Blue states and the Red states. And the once Solid south is much more racially and economically diverse...

Our choices are the lessor of two evils. I will have no problem voting for Hillary over The Donald if that's the choice...
October 26, 2015 | Registered CommenterR.A.D.
Understood. I see the lesser of two evils as voting for the GOP nominee, whoever it is, over Hillary.
October 27, 2015 | Unregistered CommenterRhonda

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