Rip Rap

Tweet

Why is it every time I see the TV commercial for Dividedwefail.org, I think of Neversurrender.org?

---

Why artificially inflated crude prices are good.

Excerpt:
Speculators are often blamed for artificially inflating crude prices, but some experts say high prices are needed to cut demand and develop new resources.

If you've been reading Rock netroots for some time, this is what I have been saying all along. Except the "experts" in this article are half right, it's not the price of crude that was manipulated to exert conservation, but the price of gasoline. The tail has been wagging this dog for some time now and finally some experts “get it.” But they're still at least three years behind the curve. Prices of gasoline have been manually adjusted to increase the supply by limiting the demand. It has been priced to force some level of conservation on consumers to guarantee no physical shortages at the pump. This I believe was the rule for the domestic side of the "secret" Energy Task Force plan created by Dick Cheney soon after taking office in 2001.

But I also now believe this has all changed since June of 2007 as new pressures from OPEC have recently developed outside of the Energy Task Force's control. Gasoline prices are no longer artificially inflated by the task force to keep demand flat with refinery production. The U.S. gasoline price threshold has been reached. Instead, oil speculators have been doing this for them since. Obviously, the loss of price control from within the Bush Administration is not welcome.Here it is possible OPEC has decided to apply tit-for-tat economic pressure on the globe by slowly closing the spigot to coerce the U.S. military withdrawal from their lands. They have been doing this in the face of George W. Bush since the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner flew in May of 2003. Despite an over-supply, Bush nearly begged OPEC recently to increase production only to be rebuffed. Their tone with America has changed dramatically since then. And why not? Our government does it all the time.

---

Clinton, Obama Stealing Voters Attention

After bashing Democrats for weeks because we don’t have our presidential nominee chosen just yet, Faux news channel commentators are now worried that because Hillary and Obama STOLE the national spotlight, McCain is losing ground.

This coming after bragging how Republicans have a huge jump start advantage over democrats because they have their nominee so early in the game. McCain should expand his advantage and pick his running mate now - don't stall. Just too, too funny. Gotta love it!

---

Which presidential candidate was ranked 894 out of 899 students in high school?

You know what? I have to give McCain credit for his achievements. I don't know of many others who have gone as far as he has while being so ..... He's a U.S. Senator and should remain a U.S. senator. Look what we had with a 'C' average for the last seven years.

---

Teachers Overpaid In Low Wage Communities?

Teachers Give Job prospects an “F”:
"Teacher pay is so low it's ridiculous," said Ron Clark, a teaching expert and author, who began his teaching career in rural North Carolina 15 years ago. Clark suggested an annual salary of $100,000…….

Janesville Adjusting To Wal-Mart Effect

Tweet

After reading the latest articles about the rising tension between union officials and Woodmans, I still don’t understand why workers would petition for union decertification. In many ways this thing sounds like someone has a personal problem, but beyond that, it doesn’t make any sense.

The real question to ask is: What will stop Woodmans from dropping wages and benefits when the union is gone? The same thing that stops Wal-Mart. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Is it a fair comparison? Sure it is, unless Woodman’s operates outside of conventional business practices OR you don’t believe competition is playing a role here.

And don’t believe the union busters who say competition will force Woodmans to pay higher wages. It’s a completely phony argument. Competition to sell more goods, increase sales and profits overrides all others and will force Woodman to pay less and less for products and employees against an adversary such as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, Woodmans or GM are not in the worker business, unless you haven’t noticed, they’re selling something else. If they can earn more profits by paying less with fewer employees they would. It’s fundamental.

Many in Janesville have predicted that competition from the double-headed Wal-Mart/ Sam’s Club development would have an effect on nearby and long established grocery stores and mom and pop businesses. The latest episode with Woodmans seems to emanate from more and more evidence that its ownership is behind the drive to expel union representation. Together, this could be just the beginning of the clashing fronts evolving into the perfect storm for Janesville’s economy.

JG Excerpt:
For that, Bandemer lays the blame on the family’s patriarch, Phil Woodman, and his “union-busting interloper.” The pair is working hard to rid the Woodman’s stores in Janesville, Beloit and Madison of union representation, Bandemer and others said Thursday at a rally in Janesville.

In the heavily promoted global economy, perhaps American labor unions have it all wrong. Maybe they should be recruiting and representing workers who want to work harder, put in more hours and earn even less without retirement pensions, safety regulations or health benefits. Only then it seems would they get some support from the community and grow in this Wal-martized economy.

Paper Disputes Letter Writer’s Views Of Free Trade

Tweet

Wednesday’s Janesville Gazette contained a letter from a resident describing certain aspects of a Bush-brokered FTA with Korea and it’s adverse impact potential on the Janesville GM factory. The letter, as most letters are limited to 250 words, was an easy to understand perspective showing the possible effects in real dollars, and although it did not call out Rep. Paul Ryan by name, the writer concluded with an open and fair question to readers.

JG Letter Excerpt:
This is a typical FTA. The United States is always the loser. By the way, do you know how your U.S. Representative votes on FTA’s?

Although the vast majority of letters to the Gazette are usually left uncontested unless some serious or obvious mistakes were made with comprehension, clarity or lack of disclosure, the Gazette editorial staff would not let this resident’s perspective stand on it’s own. This particular letter came with a rebuttal attached in the form of an Editor’s note.

Editor’s Note:
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s office informs us that under the proposal, U.S. trucks would get duty-free access to the Korean market and that the top-selling Korean “truck” in the United States, the Hyundai Santa Fe, is assembled in Montgomery, Ala., and thus not subject to the current tariff. The proposal likely won’t be considered in this session of Congress. A spokesman says Ryan has concerns with aspects of the agreement, especially it’s impact on the auto industry.

The editor’s note was a poor attempt to dispute the writer's points using what amounted to be opinion from Ryan’s office. Ryan’s understanding of the consequences of FTA’s could also be called into question and are no more or less credible than your’s or mine. The Gazette's apparent defense of the Korean-FTA while injecting Ryan’s concern into the picture appeared to be just another opportunity for them to do Ryan’s bidding....again.

As a Congressman, Ryan should be demonstrating his constituency's position on FTA's with votes that represent his district's views, not his own. After all, who is he working for?

Besides, Ryan thinks the recent Janesville job losses were due solely to the lack of an energy policy. Oddly, and the above article link was written by Ryan, a supposed Conservatives Conservative, there was no suggestion from him that energy reform should include conservation – at all. It becomes obvious Ryan’s suggestions for the nation’s energy policy could have very well been written by Big Oil. The first three of Ryan's five steps to a sustainable energy policy are geared to increase consumption! The Gazette of course seems to tow the same line.

See how Paul Ryan votes on FTA’s here.
More Opinion: Ryan Out of Touch.

Newspaper Off Kool-Aid For a Day

Tweet

After reading the Gazette’s thumbs up/down editorial on Monday, I had to rub my eyes and pinch myself. I then threw a bucket of water out my window to see if it would flow up or splash down. I looked into the sky with binoculars to see if any pigs were flying. To my dismay, everything seemed…. normal. Still puzzled, I had to read this excerpt….again. I couldn’t believe it.

JG Editorial Excerpt:
Two area Republicans, Sen. Neal Kedzie of Elkhorn and Rep. Brett Davis of Oregon, scored poorly in a new ranking by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign related to legislation that would help put state government back in control of ordinary citizens rather than special interests.

If you happen to be surfing the Web and stumble in here, you won’t know or care anything about this, but this was startling news.
I can’t recall EVER when our town's daily newspaper, the Janesville Gazette, called out by name two of their three most beloved local politicians, both Republicans, and gave them a thumbs down AND mentioned the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign without a lefty connotation attached, all in the same sentence. I had to catch my breathe. But it got even better.

JG Editorial Excerpt:
In contrast, three Democrats, Sen. Judy Robson of Beloit and Rep. Mike Sheridan of Janesville and Chuck Benedict of Beloit, scored much higher.

What the…#?!...to scold Republicans while simultaneously writing up Dems without disparaging remarks just doesn’t happen. Not in this newspaper.

Unbelievable! Informing the reader with this additional information all in the same draft is unheard of around here. This has to be the very first time in the new millennium this particular newspaper fairly editorialized about Democrats without tying in a political gimme somewhere.

However, I’m certainly not convinced the paper has shed their partisan ways with one little fair and balanced perspective. Instead, they could have presented this brief commentary as a positive thumbs up for the democrats. But I'll take what I can get here. This is a gift horse. Nevertheless, this must have been very difficult if not painful for them. It reminded me of a baby’s first steps, so I have to give them a smidgen of credit on this one. What will we do with this information overload?

But it wouldn’t come as a surprise if they prove me all wrong tomorrow.

When Phony Non-Partisans Come Home - Part 2

Tweet

One month has passed since the residents of Janesville elected three new city council members and unfortunately for me, a bad taste still continues to linger on. A recent anonymous comment here got my wheels turning again and pointed me back to the earlier primary election articles published by the Gazette reporting that one of the top vote getters in the primary, KellyO, had a police record.

JG Excerpt:
Convicted of disorderly conduct in 1999 after an incident at the Dart Inn. -- Convicted of disorderly conduct in 1996 after a confrontation with her ex-boyfriend in Traxler Park. -- Convicted of battery in 1994 after a fight with a woman in Beloit.

This article was published on March 6th, just a couple of weeks after KellyO collected huge primary vote numbers as reported in this February 20th newspaper article.

At least two points should be considered here. One: After debating well and gaining heavy voter support, it turns out two popular candidates, KevinB and KellyO, literally fell out of the sky. In the grand scheme of who's who inside Janesville politics, they were virtually unknowns, at least to the Janesville Gazette.
Two: After the newspaper received some public criticism about the criminal report article, the Gazette claimed they investigated KellyO only after receiving a tip about her background from a reader, and to be fair and balanced, they proceeded to check public open records of all the remaining candidates. The Gazette later published that the others apparently were “clean.” Fair enough.

Soon afterwards, another resident tipped off the paper in a letter about his concerns of political partisanship entering the city council election, a valid concern. The writer claimed KevinB, one of the top three vote getters in the primary, had ties to union labor and the Democratic party and that full disclosure was necessary. So be it.

Some residents in Janesville want supporters to disclose their associations, but not the candidates to disclose their associations. Very bizarre. Personally I believe all candidates should disclose their guiding political principles and philosophy including association with any politically active groups. This is a huge step forward in Janesville elections. Disclosing their community volunteerism, church attendance or education may work for some, but it doesn't cut it for me.

But something strange happened after this one. Instead of publishing the results of an inquiry of all the candidates ties or membership to local quasi-political groups, like the KellyO investigation, they chose to target KevinB alone. After thoroughly dismantling election chances for KellyO to stand on her own appeal, the Gazette proceeded to throw KevinB and his openly public supporters under a bus. At no time after the watershed article “When politics comes home” or during their endorsement editorial of council candidates did the Gazette claim to investigate or question the other five candidates as they claimed to have done with the tip they received previously about KellyO’s record. Of course after the lopsided negative publicity targeting KevinB and KellyO, the two favored primary candidates failed to make the final cut.

Instead, the people blindly elected three candidates without any record disclosing their connections to quasi-political groups published in the Janesville Gazette. For reasons of their own, the Gazette deliberately failed to inform their readers.

Afterwards, during the three weeks following the April election, the Gazette brazenly integrated the political views and opinion commentary from members of the political action group Forward Janesville in a variety of articles and editorials dealing with important city government issues. No connection?

Although it's too late for the election, residents should request that the three newly elected council members disclose all their community memberships to the Gazette, and demand the Gazette to publish the information. Not because an open democracy demands it, but because a “fair and balanced” newspaper neglected to.

I missed this aspect of the newspaper hit job at the time primarily because I wanted to keep blogging support to a minimum for my council picks as an experiment of sorts. Never again.

I also want to thank Anonymous 8:39PM from April 30th with the "skate right in" comment for helping me connect the dots.

Note: As a courtesy to the two candidates in this posting, abbreviated names were used to avoid search engine robots.

Rip Rap

Tweet

Headlines: Gas Cheaper for First Time in Weeks

Time Excerpt:
The national average price of a gallon of regular gas fell 0.1 cent overnight to $3.622, according to a survey of gas stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That's the first time since April 14 that retail prices have fallen. Diesel prices fell 0.2 cent to a national average of $4.249 a gallon.

Does anyone know what 1/10th of ONE PENNY looks like? Okay, if you buy 10 gallons, instead of it costing $36.23, it’s $36.22 and you’ll save a whole penny. Better hurry and fill it up before they change their minds.

---

McCain's Tax Cut A Boon To Big Oil Interests

GOP tax cut electioneering:
The McCain campaign, in a conference call after the speech, said the lost revenue would be paid for by money from the general fund, and that staffers were currently drafting a bill.

We have a General Fund? - I mean, with money in it? The best part was when McCain said "special interests" are against the gasoline tax cut.
I was extremely disappointed that Hillary Clinton did not offer an alternative to McCain's pandering. Someone should advise her she doesn't need to match McCain to beat him, she’s smarter than that.

---

Quote of the Month
"I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic?
How many years did Cheney serve?" -- Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Link

---

Richest country on the planet cannot afford cheap gasoline? Somewhere in that statement – is a lie.

Excerpt:
In many oil producing nations gas is absurdly cheap. In Venezuela it's 12 cents a gallon. In Saudi Arabia it's 45. The governments there forego the money from selling that oil on the open market - instead using the money to make their people happy and encourage their nations' development.

This is the first time I can recall where a mainstream writer's journalistic slant was in favor of Venezuela's government.

Radical Tax Policies Threaten To Divide Nation Further

Tweet

The Sunday edition (April 27th) of the Janesville Messenger contained their bi-annual tax ritual editorial titled,"Tax policy threatens to divide nation."

JM Editorial Excerpt:
According to a study conducted by Stephen Moore, a senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal, the top 10 percent of wage earners in the country now pay 68 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 50 pay just 3 percent.

Oh, boo-hoo-hoo.

When the top 300,000 Americans collectively rake in income equivalent to the bottom 150 million Americans, something is wrong and it has nothing to do with taxes.

But to be fair, the Messenger editorial is about tax policy, and in simple terms we are taxed not as an individual but by the income we earn determined by sliding-scale brackets for the best and fairest of reasons. For instance, if the country produced $5 trillion in annual cash flows and you alone collected 2.5 trillion of it - you are in a bracket that collected 50% of all revenue, you would be required to pay 50% of the goverment's operating costs. It may be 20% percent of 2.5 trillion dollars or it might be 80% percent, whatever the government requires. Granted, I'm looking at supply side only, but this isn't rocket science.

A flat tax is an income-blind tax that would raise the cost of living tremendously to anyone earning less than $200,000.

The Fair Tax or flat tax recently promoted by some GOP presidential candidates including Mike Huckabee actually involves a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level. Is that what poor Americans really want? ....another entitlement? Contrary to what rich people think, the masses don't want a hand-out. They WANT to pay their fair share in taxes providing they're paid their fair share in wages. If you think there is a great divide between the rich and the poor now, you ain’t seen nothing till you see what a flat tax, a two-tier two-America's tax rate or sales only tax would do. Any of them would be devastating.

Drop the phony moniker and implications of the "Fair Tax" plan and endorse the implied simplicity of a Fair Wage doctrine designed to not only pay everyone a living wage, but a taxable one as well.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY IN AMERICA

Tweet

Written by Rev. Howard Bess

This past Sunday evening I listened to the entire speech that was given by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Detroit before a gathering of 12,000 members of the NAACP. The speech was brilliantly conceived, masterfully delivered and wildly cheered by the audience to which he was speaking.

Most people who watched and listened had little understanding of what was being said. Welcome to Black theology. Black theology is a particular application of liberation theology. And what is liberation theology?

The roots of modern liberation theology are found in Central and South America. In its inception, liberation theology was firmly rooted in the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic priests and bishops took note that the post-World War II prosperity in Europe and in the United States did not translate into prosperity for the poor of Central and South America. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer.

They took note that Jesus was poor and identified with the poor of his day. Jesus had found himself in an intense struggle with the wealthy and the powerful. Those with wealth and power killed him. A considerable body of Central and South American Catholic writers began identifying themselves with the Jesus who spoke out for the poor.

Peruvian Catholic Priest Gustavo Gutterrez gave the movement intellectual integrity when he published “A Theology of Liberation” in 1972. It was the definitive volume on liberation theology.

At first the Vatican was supportive of the movement. Pope John XXIII and Vatican II were seedbeds of encouragement. However, since the mid-1970s the Catholic hierarchy has become increasingly negative about the movement. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has been especially condemning of liberation theology. The Vatican silenced Gutterrez.

By the time Pope Benedict XVI visited Brazil in 2007, The New York Times estimated that there were at least one million Bible study groups in Brazil with an orientation to liberation theology.

Educator/sociologist Paul Freire was born into a middle class family in Brazil. His family lost everything in the great depression of the 1930s. Freire identified with the poor and never forsook them when he became a successful academic. His book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” published in 1973, is a classic in the liberation movement.

According to Freire the biggest problem with the poor is their “culture of silence.” After suffering poverty and oppression over a long period of time, poor people accept their fate in silence. The greatest challenge of any oppressed people is to break that silence.

Liberation theology in Central and South America, led by people like Freire and Gutterrez, broke down the control gates. They broke people out of their chains of silence. Things will never be the same in the South American hemisphere. Just as liberation theology comes out of the experience of the poor and oppressed in Central and South America, black theology flows out of black experience in America. It is an ugly history. First slavery, then segregation, then educational and economic discrimination.

The amazing part of the black story is the “culture of silence” that developed over the centuries. This is exactly the same “culture of silence” that Paulo Freire found among the poor in Brazil. People like Freire and Gutterrez broke the silence of the oppressed in our south hemisphere. Who will break the culture of silence for our oppressed black neighbors? Black movie stars, black writers, black musicians, black academics, and black athletes are making a contribution. However, the key is the black preacher. Martin Luther King Jr. was the prototype. Americans are almost totally ignorant about what is going on in American black churches and the leadership being given by very capable black preachers.

Jeremiah Wright is not a lonely voice. He is a part of a huge chorus of intelligent, educated, talented black preachers who understand how badly African Americans have been treated by their European American neighbors.

What is going on is much bigger than the 2008 presidential election. Wright is correct when he says that the attacks on him are really attacks on the black religious community. All Americans need to be listening.

And then there is feminist theology, gay theology and Hispanic theology. Straight, European American male dominated leadership is looking at rough times.

The Rev. Howard Bess is pastor of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.