Schools

Trump Budget A War On The Poor, Disabled, And Rural Supporters: A Savage Class Warfare Attack By The Elite Wealthy Against The Rest Of America!

Ronald 11 Comments

The Trump Budget proposal to Congress is a war on the poor and the disabled, as well as rural supporters who believed in Donald Trump!

It is a savage class warfare attack by the elite wealthy against the rest of us!

It is aiming to destroy the Food Stamp Program; Medicaid for the elderly, poor children, and disabled; disability programs of the Supplemental Security program under Social Security; and cuts funds for the War on Cancer and other health care spending.

It will affect nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and college students, making it harder for young people to gain a college education.

This is a reverse Robin Hood!

Its purpose is to force people to work at minimum wage to gain any benefits, and to, effectively, create a permanent lower working class that will be exploited and treated as if under the Poor Laws of England in the 19th century, setting up the horrors of unsafe factories and mines of two centuries ago in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

It is a war on all common decency and compassion, and the Budget Director, Nick Mulvaney, is Ebenezer Scrooge to the extreme.

The people who elected Donald Trump will, in many cases, be the biggest victims of their own ignorance, selfishness, stupidity, and racism.

It is hard to have compassion under the circumstances, but no one, not even the clueless, deserve the fate they might face if this budget plan is not radically transformed!

The Obscenity Of “Religious Freedom” And Bullying Of Gays In Tennessee And Mississippi!

Ronald Leave a comment

It is amazing how the most Right Wing religious groups argue for “religious freedom”, as if there is any denial of the rights of people to have their own religious beliefs!

For a nation where the vast majority are Christian of one sect or another, it is preposterous to argue there is an attack on religious freedom, when, if anything, it is Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and agnostics who are endangered in their right to religious freedom.

But devout right wingers in Tennessee have now managed to push through the state legislature a bill to allow bullying of gay boys and girls, a particular growing problem all over America, in schools, and that those who bully them cannot be prosecuted due to “religious” freedom!

The number of suicides of young gay boys and girls, and barely legal adult men and women, has grown by leaps and bounds, and it is essential to fight such bullying as a crime that is prosecutable!

No one should be allowed to use the veil of “religious freedom” to discriminate against anyone at any age, based on sexual orientation.

Hopefully, the law, if signed by the governor, Bill Haslam, will be appealed and lead to revocation of a hideous law! Even if Haslam vetoes, however, the bill is likely to become law with a Tennessee Senate vote of 32-0 and a House vote of 90-2!

It makes one wonder what has happened in Tennessee, a Southern state rapidly deteriorating into being similar to Mississippi, which has also passed an anti gay discrimination bill based on “religious freedom, and Governor Phil Bryant has signed it.

Federal challenge of these laws must move ahead expeditiously!

The Georgia Gun Law: The Most Extreme In America!

Ronald Leave a comment

Georgia now has the distinction of having the most extreme gun law in America, termed the “Guns Everywhere” law, allowing any person to carry a firearm in full view into any school, bar, church, restaurant, youth center, library, and sports arena, and cannot even be asked to produce a license by the police.

Already, a man brandished a gun at a youth baseball game, and despite twenty calls to the police, nothing could be done, and the man could brag that he had a gun, with no one being able to know if he was stable mentally, or might use the weapon on the gathered crowd. This kind of incident can scar children for life, the fear of someone shooting them, and with the reality that about 12,000 people are killed annually due to widespread availability of guns.

This is pure insanity, and means everyone is endangered every day in the Peach State, and there is certainty that the death rate from guns will rise dramatically. Anyone who gets angry in any public place can open up fire and kill many, because of his or her unstable emotional state.

How can a civilized society allow this, and say a person’s right to brandish a firearm outweighs people’s rights to security and safety from people who become, often, vicious, when they have a firearm, as it makes them feel more masculine and worthy by having in their hands a weapon that can do mass killings? Promoting the Second Amendment should not mean that all of society is under the gun literally, every day, and can never feel secure in their ability to lead a normal and long life span!

The National Rifle Association Answer To Gun Violence: More Guns And In All Schools! Absolutely Insane!

Ronald Leave a comment

The National Rifle Association answer to the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre, and others that have happened on a regular basis, is that there should be more guns, and that all schools should have a uniformed police officer on campus to prevent bloodshed.

What insane ideas, as expressed by Wayne La Pierre, who could be regarded by many as our leading domestic terrorist with his refusal to recognize the need for the banning of assault weapons, background checks, waiting periods, and the prevention of buying firearms on line or at gun shows, without any check into the mental stability of the purchaser of weapons.

The Columbine Massacre of 1999 occurred despite the fact that an armed police officer was on the high school campus. No police officer can automatically be on site of the location of a shooting rapidly enough, and the danger of innocent victims being killed in the act of challenging a gunman is not being considered at all.

Also, the whole concept that a school should be an armed camp is a terrible message to send to young children, that with all of the anti terrorist actions of the US government overseas, we need to have guns everywhere to protect ourselves domestically,

Why not have uniformed police officers in every house of worship, every shopping mall, every movie theatre, every restaurant, every location in the nation? The cost, and the efficacy of such a move is clearly, something not considered by gun advocates.

Meanwhile, without regulation of any kind, we have 11,000 to 12,000 people murdered each year by guns, a lot more than died on September 11, and a lot more than killed in our wars in iraq and Afghanistan combined.

The NRA is not concerned about our welfare, but only about their profits for the Board of Trustees and officers, and the profits of the gun industry, which should be regarded as the death industry, as lives are not saved, but shed–including parents and children–the horrors of matricide and infanticide–as in the case of Adam Lanza.

Focus On Bullying: Schools, State Governors, Tea Party Congressional Republicans, And A Supreme Court Justice!

Ronald Leave a comment

It is very sad that this nation is witnessing so many examples of bullying as a method of taking advantage of others.

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama held a White House Conference on Bullying Prevention today to draw attention and concern to the growing bullying problem faced by young children, teenagers and early 20s youths in schools and colleges, either because of social pressures, or their sexuality, physical characteristics, or ethnic or religious heritage, often leading tragically to suicides. President Obama even said he had been bullied as a child because of his big ears. A lot of this bullying also occurs on the internet.

But it is not just an issue of young people being bullied. It manifests itself in so many other ways in our political system today, with bad manners and rudeness becoming endemic!

We have Governors such as Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, Chris Christie of New Jersey, and John Kasich of Ohio, among others, who are bullying public servants who have dedicated their lives to working for their communities as teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers, prison guards, social workers, librarians and other fields of public service, and now are facing the loss of basic labor rights to collective bargaining that have been long held.

Workers having basic rights of organizing is a human rights issue for anyone in a democracy, and for Wisconsin to bypass the Democrats in their State Senate and strip workers of their basic rights in an unethical and slimy way is despicable beyond belief! Scott Walker is clearly a bully and a political thug, and the other Governors are no better, as they all proclaim, as do Republicans nationally, that we all have to “share the pain”, with the wealthy and corporations however not part of that equation, just the middle class and the poor. There is no sense of morality or decency in these men and their party as they take us back to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when labor was first trying to organize to protect the rights of workers.

One hundred fifty years of progress is being wiped out by these right wing fanatics who will stop at nothing to give tax breaks to the rich and the corporations and harm the masses of the nation, who are facing attacks both on their homes and their employment, and being expected to pay more and get less, squeezing the middle class down into poverty!

But the same tactics of confrontation, arrogance and belligerence are also demonstrating themselves in Congress, as the Tea Party freshmen in the House and a small band of Tea Party supporters in the Senate are showing their disdain for civility and rational thought!

And even the Supreme Court is witnessing bullying, primarily by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, becoming more contemptuous of his fellow Justices when they go against his views. As he nears the 25th anniversary of his elevation to the Court, he is becoming more obnoxious and insufferable than ever!

When will civility and decency return to America in its schools, its government leaders, and even the Supreme Court? Unfortunately, it seems not anytime soon!