Contrast the Real and the Ideal about Wealth in America

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

References:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2...
http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealt...
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011...
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/...

Guest Essay: Thinking for Ourselves--New Year, New Democracy

Here is a clear and concise article that explains our present circumstances.  Shea Howell, a communications professor at Oakland University, is one of Detroit's grassroots leaders who is seeking a revitalization of the city through its world-famous urban gardens program that is focused on re-creating and re-visioning community from the bottom up in this post-industrial era.  


by Shea Howell
Detroit, Community of Hope
December 30th, 2012

While much of the country rejected the idea that we would move backward in time, the republican dominated government in Michigan has redoubled its efforts to restore power and privilege to a few.

Governor Rick Snyder and the right wing republican legislature have aggressively adopted policies that come straight out of the Reagan-Bush-Romney vision for America. They want a country where market capitalism runs unfettered over the lives of people and the protection of the planet. They want policies that foster individual greed rather than communities of compassion. They believe that public resources should be used to create private wealth.

At the core of their vision is the belief that a select-elite know better than the majority of the people what should be done. This belief, once scoffed at as an archaic idea belonging to a time of limited understandings, was on full display during the last frantic days of the lame duck legislature in Lansing.

First, it was expressed in the brazen violation of the will of the people to curb the power of the state to impose emergency managers on cities and school districts. The overriding argument against emergency managers was that they were undemocratic, setting aside locally elected officials.

The effort to bring this issue before the public for a vote took unprecedented effort, overcoming almost laughable attempts to invalidate petitions and then to throw up court challenges. Even before the election, Governor Snyder and his group of extreme right wing republicans announced they didn’t much care what the vote was. They had another law waiting in the wings.

The people overturned the emergency manger law, especially in cities that were suffering from them. Within days, the republican dominated legislature reinstated a new emergency manager law. To prevent it from being overturned, they tied it to an appropriation of funds, precluding any future referendum.
A similar process was followed by the so-called “right to work” legislation. Attacking the capacity of unions to collect dues from all who benefit directly from union negotiations, the legislature again invoked an appropriations measure to preclude the right of the people to challenge this act.

Disrespect for the opinions of the people was on display at the Detroit City Council, too. Against a clear and vocal majority of citizens, five council members voted to practically give away almost 2,000 publicly owned lots on the east side to a single individual.

These actions have revealed starkly that legislative bodies do not represent the will of the people. Nor do they protect our interests.

In contrast to this limited view of power and privilege is one that has been slowly emerging as people have been reconstructing life on a human scale. In places long abandoned by corporate greed, neighbors have been coming together to create new community life that fosters local production, creativity, and compassion.

These new communities are rooted in radically democratic processes.  People are coming together to make decisions about the things that effect daily life and the protection of what we hold as the common good. They are developing a sense of shared values and authentic processes for decision-making. In small groups, people are organizing new forms of education, establishing public safety, providing means for healthy food, and celebrating artists who advance our vision of a more just and sustainable future.

Over the next year, those of us envisioning a vibrant democracy necessary for rich community life will have to call upon our deepest resources of memory and imagination. These local, community-based efforts creating new democratic forms are our path to a better future.

For Those Massacred in Connecticut

See Saturday Night Live's unusual opening--and remembrance--of those who perished in Newtown, CT on December 14.  click here

CHARLOTTE   BACON,   6
DANIEL   BARDEN,   7
RACHEL   DAVINO,   29
OLIVIA   ENGEL,   6
JOSEPHINE   GAY,   7
ANA   G.   MARQUEZ-GREENE,   6
DYLAN   HOCKLEY,   6
DAWN   HOCHSPRUNG,   47
MADELEINE   F.   HSU,   6
CATHERINE   V.   HUBBARD,   6
CHASE   KOWALSKI,   7
JESSE   LEWIS,   6
JAMES   MATTIOLI,   6
GRACE   MCDONNELL,   7
ANNE   MARIE   MURPHY,   52
EMILIE   PARKER,   6
JACK   PINTO,   6
NOAH   POZNER,   6
CAROLINE   PREVIDI,   6
JESSICA   REKOS,   6
AVIELLE   RICHMAN,   6
LAUREN   ROUSSEAU,   30
MARY   SHERLACH,   56
VICTORIA   SOTO,   27
BENJAMIN   WHEELER,   6
ALLISON   N.   WYATT,   6

Guest Commentary: In Charlotte, as in America, Capitalism is the Real Religion

By Don Hudson | Yahoo! Contributor Network
Sept. 2, 2012

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Back in the '70s, before the NBA's Charlotte Hornets and the NFL's Carolina Panthers came along, before Bank of America became the most beloved corporation in America, my hometown was known for three things: 'Racin, 'Rasslin and Religion. Back then, NASCAR and pro wrestling were held in tiny towns and venues, and evangelicals still held their revivals in huge circus tents on the outskirts of town instead of megachurches.

ESPN, Ted Turner and the PTL Club changed all that.

The Washington Post once called Charlotte "the city that never wakes."

But really, we are the city that loves business. Don't be fooled by the buckle of the Bible belt stuff. It's a smokescreen. Business, not religion, is the god here. Trust me. We took our entertainment, the three Rs, and turned them into gold. And then we started buying banks and didn't stop until we had gotten two of the biggest in America, too big to fail.

That's what they were protesting in Charlotte this weekend—the city's banking practices.

Now, with Charlotte's crowning moment, the Democratic National Convention, only a day away, what Barack Obama needs to understand is that Charlotte is first and foremost a corporate town, a Wall Street Journal town, a commerce town. More than any other town in America that I know of, Charlotte's yardstick is money. There is no state government here, no big-name university, no labor unions—the normal tripod of liberal politics. In picking Charlotte, Obama chose the town most likely to rebel at any thought of government regulation.

Casino capitalists

Truth be known, per capita, Charlotte's Wild West—a.k.a. California—banking practices did more to wreck the global economy than any city in the world. Sigh. So proud. Yet most bankers don't want regulations like Glass Steagall put back in place. Just ask 'em. Secretly, bankers like their odds in the current system of casino capitalism.

If they win, they keep the profits.

If they lose, taxpayers bail them out again.

(Yes Matt Damon. Inside Job II is here for the making.)

Sure, Charlotte has a Democratic mayor and a Democratic city council and a Democratic county commission. But the business people in this town are the ruling class, and they tell the political class how it's going to be. All the bank leaders, mostly Democrats, voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and most are supporting Mitt Romney this time. Why? Here's a hint: Business Week reviewed Peter Applebome's 1996 book Dixie Rising thusly: "With an astute eye and painterly writing, Applebome takes us to such places as ultraconservative Cobb County, Ga., dollar-hungry Charlotte, N.C ..."

When a friend came to work for Bank of America some 20 years ago, fresh out of college, his uncle told him, "You're moving to the city with no soul." I was downtown last weekend having wine at Wooden, and we were looking down Tryon Street, a.k.a. Wall Street South. From the sidewalk, it's a stunning scene: Platinum skyscrapers. Rococo arts museums. Swank condos. All surrounded by tree-lined sidewalks, five-star Michelin restaurants and surface parking lots full of BMWs.

Banktown's DNA

With prosperity came some soul. The bankers lured Johnson & Wales main campus here, and the Queen City has become a great restaurant town. But the DNA is business. Bank of America built out North Tryon, and Wachovia built out South Tryon. As fellow taxpayers who helped bail out Bank of America, we'd like to thank y'all. Everything is new here, kind of an homage to the denizens of khaki-wearing young Republicans who come from Wharton and UVA and Duke to make their millions in finance. Little girls here don't dream of marrying a doctor; they dream of a banker, a trader or a corporate raider.

Just like mommy.

At lunchtime, uptown Charlotte looks like a Delta Kappa Episolon fraternity reunion from Chapel Hill as well-heeled 30-somethings in khakis, Ferragamos and Polos wander back into the bank boxes for more hours staring at screens. Richard Rohr, the brilliant Catholic priest who visited here last year, once made the observation of bankers: "They make nothing. No thing." They shuffle paper around all day, or they make trades with a touch of a button but they make no thing.

His point was it is a disconnect from the soul.

There have always been very close ties between capitalism and religion here. Back in 1933, in the American Mercury, Charlottean W. J. Cash wrote a story about Charlotte titled Close View of a Calvinist Lahsa.

"One takes what the pastor of the First Presbyterian is thinking, or takes what the Duke Power Company is thinking, and one arrives at the editorial page of The Charlotte Observer—the very living mirror of the Charlotte mind and a catechism for all true believers. 'The Bible,' it appears, 'is the best textbook of biology.' … The cotton mill barons, it seems, are Little Flowers, and the Duke Power Company, a sort of orphan asylum for small, wet kittens."

Substitute "cotton mill barons" for bankers, "depression" for recession, and you have Charlotte 2012.

It's also human nature. If you're around people who are millionaires all day long, they are your peers. You want to live like they do. If you missed the first wave of risk-free alpha, you can be sure our would-be Rockefellers have their bets down before the next too-big-to-fail crisis comes along.

Supply-side Jesus

Charlotte native Billy Graham got his big push in 1949, when at a tent revival in Los Angeles, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst heard him preaching a pro-capitalism message. The Rupert Murdoch of his day, Hearst sent his editors a two-word telegram—for you kids that would be like Twitter—telling them to "Puff Graham." Hearst helped make the Charlotte native a Christian star, pastor to presidents. By default , evangelical Christianity and unbridled capitalism became America's twin religions.

Former Charlotte Observer cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize-winner Doug Marlette once told me about an article in Charlotte magazine, "In Charlotte, everything is done under the guise of Christianity. But it is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is the cult of mammon. Charlotte is about money and moi.

"Me-first Christianity. It is the cult of narcissism. Everybody laughed at Jim and Tammy Bakker, but they were the prophets of what Charlotte is becoming today."

If religion and business are right out of the Republican platform, why did Charlotte not get the GOP?

From my sources, the GOP told Charlotte don't bother; we're not interested in North Carolina's 15 electoral votes. We're going after Florida and its 29 electoral votes. Great move, except, why the Ayn Rand acolyte from Wisconsin and not Marco Rubio? Whatever. We in Charlotte hope ya'll enjoyed the Grand Old Party—and by grand old party, I mean St. Pete, shuffleboard and Dirty Harry's moving soliloquy against aging.

Regardless, I think you can pretty much rest assured Charlotte's bankers are back in the GOP fold. When Obama said the private sector was doing fine, he got castigated. When Mitt Romney said big business was doing fine, partially because of sheltering money off-shore, he might as well have been speaking for himself. He is big business, and he is doing fine because he's sheltering money in the Caymans.

Welcome to Charlotte, Democrats! 

Don't be fooled by religion. It doesn't matter if Romney is a Mormon; the evangelicals who blast you for not being a Christian don't care. It's a smoke-and-mirrors game. Mitt could be an agnostic Martian and people would vote for him if they think he will help the economy. The bottom line here, Mr. Obama, is the bottom line. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. 

Cartoon Commentary

not a cartoon, but a view from Mars

Oh How I Wish It Would Rain

Thank God for the rain last night!







This summer has brought to mind the Temptations' 1967 hit song.

However, this is no joke.  Here are just a few horrendous stories about the drought.  Please add yours in comments below.

* In the dead of night, people are leaving their horses at farms that have hay because they can't feed them.

* Farmers who raise hay are storing it because they know there will be a shortage this winter to feed animals and they can command a higher price.

* Farmers will be faced with selling off or slaughtering livestock because they won't have enough hay or grain to feed them.

* Hundreds of acres of corn in southwest Michigan are burned and wasted.

* Before it rained last week southwest Michigan went 40 days without rain.

Guest Essay: The New McCarthyism... in Michigan

by Jack Lessenberry
Michigan Public Radio
July 20, 2012

Fasten your seat belts. We are in for another three and a half months in which President Obama and his surrogates will try to make us believe that Mitt Romney’s main goal is destroy the middle class and outsource every last American job to China.

Meanwhile, the Romney forces will try to make us think that President Obama is totally incompetent and single-handedly responsible for the long recession.

Hyperbole and exaggeration have been how campaigns have been conducted since George Washington’s time. But what has been taboo is reckless, vicious and false character assassination. We did have one very infamous practitioner of that kind of politics - Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, whose name we now use to define them. Back in the early 1950s, McCarthy destroyed lives, careers and reputations by recklessly accusing people of being Communists without the faintest shred of evidence.

Much of the nation was in a grip of terror. Eventually, McCarthy was stripped of his powers and soon drank himself to death. Ever since, there’s been agreement that there was such a thing as too far.

Until now, that is. A form of new McCarthyism has been growing across this nation and this state ever since President Obama was elected. My theory is that this was inspired by racism. There are millions who just can’t stomach that we have a black president.

Somehow, they feel, he has to be illegitimate. Usually, this has taken the form of saying his birth certificate was phony, though it clearly isn’t. Yesterday, however, there was a shocking new development, right here in Michigan. State Representative David Agema has long been out there on the far right.

He went off the deep end; he asserted that President Obama was a Muslim. Someone posted a video that showed the President appearing to compliment the spiritual side of Islam.

“That explains it all. He is a Muslim,” Agema said, and he wasn’t kidding. Until now, Agema’s biggest claim to fame has been deserting the legislature during a key budget debate to go sheep hunting in Siberia.
But now, the former airline pilot has topped even that.

Agema also added, “I disagree that Islam is a religion of peace. Just about every terrorist is a Muslim.”

Well, I am sure that would come as news to Timothy McVeigh or the Irish Republican Army, but there’s no evidence Agema has any interest in the truth; McCarthy didn’t either.

This comes during the same week in which Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann accused a highly respected state department official, Michigan native Huma Abedin, of trying to “destroy Western civilization from within,“ apparently by infiltrating agents of the Muslim Brotherhood into the government.

Bachmann was immediately denounced by a number of top Republicans, including John McCain and the Speaker of the House. The bad news is that not only have Michigan Republicans failed to denounce Agema, they recently elected him to the Republican National Committee. His party needs to repudiate his smears and strip him of that post.

Otherwise, they are headed down a slippery slope that could end with the destruction of civil society. Whether we allow that to happen is not just up to them, but to all of us.    


Jack Lessenberry worked as a foreign correspondent and executive national editor of The Detroit News, during which time he reported from more than forty countries. His writing has appeared in such national publications as Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.  Locally, he is a contributing editor and columnist for The Metro Times, The Traverse-City Record Eagle, The Toledo (Ohio) Blade, and has been a consultant for many other newspapers, including the former Heritage Newspaper Group in Wayne and Washtenaw counties. He also has provided political analysis for local television and radio stations, and is a professor of journalism at Wayne State University.