Democrats and Organizing

Dear Ms. Schultz (@DWStweets):

The GOP does things very differently from the way we do, but they do some things right. One of the things they do right is to organize the grass roots with training and administrative support. Chris Carr sent me a fundraiser letter (he thinks I'm going to send him money -- ha ha) in which he crowed about their organizing:

The grassroots is fired up. Here's what's going on in the field:

• More than 2,000 individuals have applied to be a part of our Republican Leadership Initiative (RLI).
• We are training and deploying field organizers throughout the entire country.
• Our field program is expected to expand to thousands of paid staff across the country.

Note, what he calls "Grassroots" are totally astroturfed, not volunteers, because he's not targeting unpaid volunteers like we Democrats have to live with. He has an almost military organization of paid organizers. Something we can't maintain because we rely on organizations like Planned Parenthood and Acorn, that wind up being vulnerable to attacks on the volunteers, for being paid, or for having a life if they aren't being paid. A lot of what our party does should be supporting democratic institutions not a One Party style initiative -- but the point is that the leadership training and money support needs to be present for Democratic organizers too. So naturally he's:

"excited to share this update with you. I hope you're pumped up too."

I am pumped up. I want to defeat his army of astroturfed professional con artists at the polls.

To do that we need more than money raising. We need Democratic forums, communications outreach, list serve administrators, primary candidate recruitment and support; and alternative media. And these need to be replicated to every village, town or city equivalent in the country; and to every county.

Yours Truly, and I hope you are paying attention to Chris Carr too.

He's coming from www.GOP.com

Henry George would have been for Social Security!

Beyond What We can See

Out in the darkness, beyond what we can see,

There is a place in our imagination, where all can be free.

But we live in A world, where the dark is out of sight,

Just on the other side of a wall, that we fear, called the night.

 

Out there in the darkness, where I know you are,

As distant from me now as a faint vanishing star.

That is where only my imagination can go.

Even though I know that it is just my aching soul.

 

Maybe where you are, all is clarity and light.

Or maybe you sleep a dreamless dream in eternal night.

All I know for sure, is that one day I'll join you there.

In a place deep in the earth, where I won't have to care.

 

Meanwhile, I'm here, with other strange survivors.

Dwindling in numbers, huddling against the cold.

We sail in a vessel that is leaking and is sinking.

Comforted by memories of when our fine ship sailed the seas.

We might be a fine wine, we might be just the lees,

But we are temporary survivors of this process called growing old.

 

Christopher H. Holte, written 8/16/2015

Yogurt and YaÜ

Always on the Search for good eats. I found this little yogurt Creamery:

http://eatyau.com/story/

It's caramelized!

The Georgist Constitution

Rick DiMare Dug this up in his studies of Georgism and Henry George's writings. It was called the Georgist Constitution. He writes:

"The following Georgist platform was adopted on September 3, 1890 in Coopers Union, New York, on the final day of a 3-day convention, the first national convention in Georgist history, and only a few months before Henry George had a stroke that would cause him to withdraw from the movement (though he kept writing important works until he died in 1897)."

"The event was remarkable, as hundreds of delegates attended from nearly every state in the union. It was after this convention that Georgism entered a new phase, one that sought federal and international recognition. This month (August 2015) the movement’s 115th annual convention was held in Detroit."

Economic Rents are private Taxes

Modern Neo-Georgists (my term for them) have a principle called "All Taxes Come from Rent (ATCOR). It is an assertion derived from interpreting what Henry George had to say in his book "Wealth And Want." It's my contention that this principle is an invention of Mason Gaffney not Henry George and reflects a drift in ideation from what Henry George actually said. Even so the principle is true, but not necessarily the way that its proponents try to claim it is.

The MAD insanity of War Planning with Atom bombs and Bunker Busting

The "Mutually Assured Destruction" doctrine known as MAD planning illustrates the insanity of War Planning with Atom bombs comes from the fact that Atom bombs are a doomsday device. Sadly that insanity is still the only thing that is sane about our international regime at the moment. Instead of working to stop proliferation, reckless leaders are using fear-mongering while seeking to sabotage arms negotiations and use warfare to attack Iran.

The reasons that nobody has used them in (intentional) mass murder since the USA did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are manifold:

Radioactive Fallout ignores National Boundaries. For example the USA is downwind of both Russia and Japan.

If one country attacks another, the country attacked will definitely retaliate

They are totally useless as weapons except to destroy the targets one might be fighting over.