Thoughts on The Three Stooges, Stereotyping Blue Collar Workers and using Cognitive Dissonance to attack Rail Workers

Note: This was written originally as a comment on an essay on the remake of the Three Stooges in Working Class Perspectives, http://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/calling-all-stooges-slapstick-and-the-working-class/

The remake or recreation of the Three Stooges by the Farrelly brothers is mission impossible, because the individuals involved, the original Stooges, were more than an act, but their caricature of American society in its many faces. An actor can act, perform or more correctly mimic, the Stooges, but cannot recreate the mindset that motivated their performances.

When I was a young child, I loved the Stooges, but as I became older, their performances were almost painful for me to watch. This is because I had begun to indentify those caricatures created by the Stooges as the stereotypes present in our society, particularly in the identification of blue collar workers as being "less than," the middle and upper classes. The Stooges' caricaturization of bumbling plumbers, carpenters and many other bluecollar workers was utilized by the power paradigm to attack workers in campaigns aimed at esmasculating labor unions and workers later on in the 20th century and have been built in to the over perception fo those work with their hands and backs.

As a railworker for many years, I was always amazed at how little value my fellow workers equated to their labors in making the national economy,"work." This was a consistent theme in my years on the railway as the company continuously represented the labor of the workers as a liability on their balance sheets and consequently a drag on the profitabilty of the company.

In the railroad industry, the carriers had undertaken a national campaign in the 1950's and 1960's to disparage the labor of their workers with the infamous "Featherbedding" offensive. The underlying reason for this campaign was to garner public support for the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs on the nation's railroads in the shops, railyards and on the trains. In the Featherbedding campaign, railworkers were caricatured as being lazy, and sleeping on the job. Train crews, especially firemen, conductors and brakemen were caricatured as lazy, sleeping on cabooses and engines while getting paid. Left out of the picture was the fact that train and yard crews worked as much as 16 hours at a time and could be forced to work multiple tours of duty.

The Fireman position was a central issue as the rail companies wanted to eliminate that position from road and yard crews. During the steam era on the railways, the fireman was a necessary position, as he kept the fire in the boiler on the locomotive going and regulated the steam created in it that power the engine that pulled the train. The diesel-electric locomotives were first introduced into yard and local switching service and steam locomotives were still dominate in over the road freight and passenger service. In 1950, the National Carriers Conference (NCC), the organization that negotiated the national agreements wth the railroad brotherhoods, offered the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers who represented the firemen, an agreement guraranteeing the firemen's jobs on the railroads of the nation. This agreement called the National Diesel Agreement was accepted by the BLF&E.

With the arrival of the diesel-electric locomotive and its introduction into road freight and passenger service on a wide scale, the role of the fireman became ambiguous in its original design with the elimination of the steam engine. The NCC and its rail company members, recognized that the National Diesel Agreement was a mistake and begin to place pressure on the operating rail unions to renegotiate crew size, and the fireman position was at the head of the list to be eliminated, along with cutting a brakeman's position on train and yard crews.

Rail labor, especially the union representing the firemen, defended the fireman position, saying that since locomotive engineers were promoted out of the ranks of the firemen or as they now called them, enginemen and the experience and education needed for an engineer to operate a locomotive and run a train came from the enginemen's time working on the railroad. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers made the case that their members were the railroad equivalent to the airline co-pilot and necessary.

The railroad operating brotherhoods went to the state legislatures in many states and were successful in getting legislation passed, requiring railroads to operate with a "full crew," that consisted of at least five men and in some states, six men. In Ohio, they were successful in getting a full crew law passed, the mandated that trains operated in the state, have a crew consisting of a Conductor, two Brakemen, an Engineer and a Fireman. All of these laws were passed with the idea of public safety and the preservation of rail jobs in Ohio communities. The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen put together a pamplet that discussed what 100 rail jobs meant to a community in terms of local commerce and taxation. All of these actions were undertaken to counteract the featherbedding campaign by the railroad companies.

The featherbedding campaign was aimed at all rail crafts, in the shops and on the trains, as the elimination of the steam engines had reduced the need for many of the mechanics who worked in the shops in those areas directly related to steam power. By the late 1950's, the total workforce on the railroads were reduced by at least one million workers as large shops whose purpose was designed around the steam engine, were shut down and the workers fired. These actions caused many dislocations for workers and their families, as many of them had to move to the ends of their railroads to keep their jobs, and many more found that their railroad job was gone forever.

By the middle 60's, most crew agreements had been changed because of either renegotiation or imposing of agreements through Public Law Board and National Rail Adjustment Board decisions. Rail train crew sizes in full crew states stayed the same, but in many southern and western states, crew sizes were reduced, with the fireman position being the first one eliminated. Some 13 years later, these train crew consist battles were resumed by the NCC. These wars went on, with the intrafracidal behavior of the railroad brotherhoods against each other contributing to the eventual victory of the rail carriers.

These wars finally came to an end in the early 90's, with loss of not only the fireman but also the brakemen positions on train crews. It is now common for road train crews to have only two people, a conductor and an engineer, while in the yard, many crews have only one person, a conductor, who performs all of the duties of the four workers lost in these fights, operating the locomotive by remote control while physically performing the work of coupling the railcars together to build the large trains common today.

Too bad, the contemporary version of the Stooges does not deal with the idea of one person coupling hundreds of rail cars together while controlling the movement of the locomotive from a distance of sometimes a half a mile, this would make good comedy, but it makes a terrible job and raises questions of workers safety sacrificed to increase the bottomline of the company. When I hired out on the railroad in 1966, there were about 1.2 million people working in the industry, now that number is less than 120,000. Where once upon a time, rail unions used to argue the benefit of 100 rail jobs in the community, rail unions are less than a shadow of their former selves and have little power after selling their jobs for a dollar raise at contract time.

Fear and Loathing, 2012

As we watch the Republican process for choosing the next candidate for President of the United States unfold in a series of tortured, Kabukoesque debates. That are more like a Sumo wrestling match where large people try to shove one another out of the ring and that seem to have no end, a thought occurred to me. Well, not really occurred to me, for it came to me while I was reading Hunter S. Thompson's memoir, "The Proud Highway," his record of his life from 1955-1967, as caricatured in letters he wrote over that time. In the beginning of the book, in the editor's note, the origination of the phrase that became Hunter S. Thompson's trademark, "Fear and Loathing," is discussed. Thompson first used it in a letter written to his friend, William Kennedy, after the assassination of JFK, in which he wrote about his anger over this murder. Thompson wrote, "There is no human being within 500 miles to whom I can communicate anything--much less the fear and loathing that is on me after today's murder," continuing, "From now on it is dirty pool and judo in the clinches. The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency." When you look at the primary process on the GOP side in 2012, Thompson's words come full into play, as the savagery of it amazes and depresses at the same time those who try to make sense of it.



Thompson's catch phrase that became embedded in the titles of two of his books, underlines the state of America at this intersection in her history. Because fear has become the hallmark theme in our society, we are fearful of someone and something, everyone and everything in the third century of our existence. Loathing has become the other part of our existence, because in the post 9/11 world that is our nation, loathing someone, or something has become standard in the emotions displayed in everyday life. That which we loath the most, is of course ourselves, for we in our subconscious minds, loath what we have become. That is why we long for days gone by, when fear and loathing were abstract words and thought to have no part in the emotions of our society.



Thompson's imagery in his words, "dirty pool and judo in the clinches," describe perfectly the depths to which American politics has descended, and with Citizens United, this process is now layered over top with obscene amounts of money used to drown out what used to be a marketplace of ideas and create a whorehouse of excess. The voter turnout in the primaries show that even GOP voters who have been the most disciplined base, are staying away. In the Democratic primaries, with only the President on the ticket for the most part, members have now began to engage in a fratricidal frenzy of loathing of each other. This is brought about by not being able to accept criticism of their candidate by other Democrats. Criticism that has been leveled against the President since the days of the fight over healthcare reform; the reneging of the promise to close the prison at Gitmo, our 21st century version of Devil's Island; embracing war and not peace and the list goes on and on. Criticism, that the President said was important to effect change, citing pressure that was placed on FDR to make him go against the political grain of his day, and that if we wanted change, we would have to make it happen by making him do it.



Pressure or criticism, that has paid off in his decisions on Keystone XL, on access to birth control for poor people and even going after those who committed criminal acts in the financial meltdown in 2008 and its aftermath. In fact the only thing that has kept the robber barons and plunderers at bay has been the rapid response of social media, tens of thousands of citizens can, with a few clicks, register their concern over things like Keystone XL, censorship of the internet by the corporations and the increase of poverty amongst women and children in the richest nation in the world. Thoughts that were included in the SOTU, the words, "rich" and "poor," and the announcement of an investigation into Wall Street wrongdoing, were placed there by pressure from the people of the United States upon his office. Americans are crying out for an end to what Thompson called, "dirty pool and judo in the clinches," that has been part and parcel of the electoral process, and a revival of the idea of what Thompson called, "the great myth of American decency." We want this great American hate fest to come to an end, and bring back that the idea of caring and loving for our neighbors that was the real hallmark of our nation.

Acts of Empire

The news is humming with the impact of a video of Marines who are apparently urinating on the bodies of dead Afghan Insurgents. One would think from comments that this is an occurrence not in keeping with the traditions of the US Armed Forces and history of our country. But in truth it is exactly in keeping with the traditions of the US Military going back to the 19th century and forward to the 20th century, one has only to look at those operations by our armed forces that could be part of what are defined as acts of Empire.

This activity has its beginnings in the 19th century expansion of our nation across the continent to the Pacific and the campaign against the Native American Tribes who were seen as obstacles to that movement. The idea of marginalizing of the Native American Resistance fighters, either in the popular press, by esmasculation of their souls and self respect by introducing alcohol, or the actual extermination of their ability to resist by killing women and children indiscriminately, was a common tactic and used throughout that century. The tactics developed and honed in the western campaigns against the Indians, were exported to the Philippines in the last year of the 19th century to smother a resistance struggle by the Filipino Nation.

While the idea of extermination was a component of the campaign against the Indian Nations in the United States, it became the centerpiece of the Philippine Insurrection from 1899 to 1910. While the US Government or President Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 declared victory in the Philippine conflict, but in truth it continued for eight more years in many parts of that nation. Roosevelt declared victory to accomplish one thing, to get the struggle off of the front pages of the US papers, as it had became an embarassment to the US in the release of stories of genocide, torture and crimes against civilian populations had occupied the front pages for several years. The leader of the Filipino Resistance, Emilio Aguinaldo surrendered in 1904, to stop the indiscriminate killing of his people by the US Military. Waterboarding, which has become a watch word in the Global War of Terror, can trace its first use by the US Military in the Philippine Insurrection as a interrogation tool and called the "Philippine Water Treatment." Concentration camps, where civilian populaces were moved to in order to keep them from supporting the Resistance fighters, were adopted from the British who were using them in their South African Campaign against the Boer Resistance fighters. By our count, over 250,000 Filipino civilians, men, women and children were killed or died as a result of the conflict, and by the Filipino count, around 1,000,000 civilians were killed or died in the struggle against US hegemony and occupation of their nation.

Throughout the first 30 years of the 20th century, our troops were sent routinely to nations located south of our border, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicauragua and Panama played host to the US Marines for short or long periods of time. In the Caribbean, Cuba, Haiti, and Dominican Republic were occupied frequently by the US Marines, mainly to insure that governments friendly to the business interests of the United States were installed. Those citizens who resisted these visits were catagorized as bandits, and killers by the US, the most famous was Sandino in Nicauragua, who resisted the efforts of the US Marines to install "friendly" dictators. The Marines were eventually successful using 20th century technology against fighters armed with rifles and handguns and installed a dictator who ruled for over 40 years, Somoza. Who was ironically overthrown by a insurgent movement called the Sandinistas in the later 1970's.

Since WWII, we have intervened in the western hemisphere, in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvado, Nicauragua, Honduras, Chile, Grenada and Panama directly or indirectly to maintain a ruler friendly to our business interests aka our national interests. We have resurrected the 4th Fleet, which sails off of the coast of Eastern South America, for the purposes of restoring the idea of a watchful eye on our southern neighbors, who have been electing truly democratic and representative governments across that continent and that is a worrisome problem for a nation dependent on resources from that region of the world. In other parts of the world, we have also intervened with not much success, we bankrolled operations in Africa to check peoples' revolutions funded by the former USSR and aided the South Africans in their fight against African Nationalist movements.

In Asia, we fought a 20 year war in Southeast Asia, ultimately embroiling Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in warfare that had genocidal tendencies, killing millions and millions of civilians, using the tactics developed in the Philippine Insurrection, which was held up as a "successful counterinsurgency war" by the US General Staff. The climax of the Vietnam War in May of 1975, threw a damper on the idea of prolonged and protracted intervention by force for the next 25 years. Desert Storm in 1990-91, was a campaign that achieved its goals and then extracted most of our forces as soon as those goals were achieved. Our activities in the Adriatic region, in the 1990's, were a reaction to pressure from Europe and although we still have a presence there, it is muted. With the attacks on 9/11, a new era of unrestrained imperial ambitions was unleashed on the world by the US. Attacking terrorists and terrorism and the eradication of same became the mission, and the idea of borders, and sovereignty disappeared, as we have recognized neither in that pursuit.

The invasion of Afghanistan in early '02, the defeat of the Taliban was just the beginning and wetted the appetites of those who wrote the "Plan for a New American Century," in the 1990's, were now in charge and further invasions of nations seemed possible to make this plan a reality. The invasion of Iraq, and the destruction of Saddam was the next step taken by the new American Empire. The glitch that became the hair in the soup of these American Czars, was the unplanned for insurgency that arose in the fall of '03 in Iraq. An insurgency that made eventually made the longterm occupation of Iraq by the United States untenable and the factor for our leaving that country in the early morning hours in the last month of '11.

Now we are in the midst of disengagement from Afghanistan, and it is clear that the continued operation of US and NATO forces will not resolve the issues present in that nation. When you are in the midst of this kind of fights, frustration and rage will manifest in the troops sent to fight what is essentially a holding action. Because for no matter the amount of treasure, blood and sweat invested by them in this kind of operation, satisfactory results that will seem to make those sacrifices worthwhile will not or ever be forthcoming. This kind of frustration ends up in actions like that of those Marines who committed what is a unforgivable act on the dead bodies of their foes by any nation. It also ends up with the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan who are not resisting but do not want the foreign troops occupying their nation are labeled, the "enemy." So it follows that any action against an enemy is alright, drone attacks , shootings at checkpoints of civilians, and no knock raids in the middle of the night into the homes of Afghan families, that have killed thousands and thousands of innocents have undermined the reasons for our being there in the first place.

Our troops will be coming home from that remote and dusty place, which was before the Soviet Invasion, a backwater nation, that was referenced in some lines in poems written by another white imperialist, Rudyard Kipling, that defender of the British Empire and marginalizer in chief of indigenous independence movements. The sun eventually set on Kipling's British Empire despite its best efforts to keep that from happening, and that leaves the question, when will it set on the American Empire?

Portsmouth Boys

Portsmouth Boys

We headed north from the big river, looking for an idea

Following a path blazed by the Indians, called Route 23
Along the river named by them, the Scioto, towards the lakes named for them

We had studied the three R's for in school for 8, 10 or 12 years

Graduating "magna cum laude" in Readin,' Ritin,' and Route 23
The road beckoned us with the stories sent back by others gone before

Some of us made it in stages, stopping at Dayton or Columbus

Some of us came straight away, not stopping along the way
But all of us came for a reason, to find that job was only a part of it

In our youth, we liked to cut it up and have a good time
But we worked as hard as we played, not forgetting the reason
We made new friends, bonded with old friends and started families

While we came here to the north, some for a short time and others for good

Home for us was always an abstract thing, where we were at was not home
For we never forgot, where we came from and who we were

Portsmouth Boys, not afraid of making a journey, taking a chance and to make a new life...

By Patrick R. Saunders, 01.07.2012

Indoctrination in the Dogma of Sameness

Indoctrination in the Dogma of Sameness

             In the years that have passed since the end of WWII, the people of the United States have been subjected to mind control indoctrination by the those who run the country. I am not talking about the government, for those in government have been subjected to the same indoctrination, even when it looked like they were doing the work. In the over 60 years that have passed, since the end of the last "good war," that saw a nation of compassionate and empathetic people use the most terrible weapons designed to rain violence down on those who started the war in a volume that vastly exceeded their ability to do the same. We entered the war, it was because we had been attacked and not an pre-emptive action as earlier wars, WWI, Philippine Insurrection, Spanish American War, the extermination campaigns against the Indigenous people of the United States and the Mexican American War. We were a nation who had pulled ourselves up collectively from the depths of a great depression by looking to each other's needs. We went into the war as a nation of Social Populists and came out a nation of Capitalists defending the right of the few to have more than the many.

               In the intervening years, the idea of collective responsibility, a gospel of compassion and empathy for the downtrodden has been under attack. The campaigns against healthcare in the 90's and 00's are testament to the success of that attack. The idea of obtaining justice or economic redress has been twisted where old ladies who suffered grievous third degree burns from boiling coffee are the enemy and corporations whose deliberate policies led to those injuries are the protectors of society. Medical Malpractice claims, are now infamous and the blame for skyrocketing healthcare costs; which is pretty amazing since even at the height of these claims, they amounted to less than .35% of all civil suits in the United States. Doctors and hospitals are allowed to commit murder without fear of criminal prosecution and civil prosecution in the 21st century. Dying in a hospital because of infections has become common, and is not discussed at length with at most a shrug of the shoulders. Social Security that beacon of hope passed into law when the nation was in the depths of the depression, has been under steady attack since day one and now is being partially blamed for our nation's deficit. The other villain is Medicare passed by Congress in the wake of a new emphasis on social responsibility in the middle '60's. Both of these social programs are not part of the discretionary budget that is passed by congress. They have a revenue stream going into them separate from the taxes that are part of the congressional budget, but a deficit commission appointed by the President named them the primary areas to cut and redesign or reform, why? 

                  It's like the quote attributed to the late Jim Rhodes, a four term Governor of Ohio, who responded when asked why he always cut mental health funding, "They don't vote." Most of those who are on Social Security and Medicare do not have a voice, or if they do like AARP, the words that come out don't really serve the interests of the poor but of the more affluent members of that organization, who are largely white, and middle class. Those organizations who were the ombudsmen of the poor, like ACORN have been attacked and rendered feeble by a campaign of lies and deceit, that we willingly believed because after all they were those "people." Now in the second decade of the 21st century, government, and public servants are under vicious attack.

                  Teaching, the most noble of callings is now attacked as the cause of the failure of our educational system and this has been successful. Instead of questioning the funding system that puts the burden on the backs of home owners and that gives generous exemptions to those who can afford to shoulder this burden with the least amount of effort. We question those who are in the classroom, trying to stem a flood of ignorance and dumbing down. That is becoming the norm in a system that values "rote learning" so that students can pick "C," on testing protocols that put the pressure on the school while getting the pressure off  the politicians in Columbus. The byproduct being students who do not really understand why they should pick "C." The result is a sheep like mentality that is more interested in acquiring things, and not thinking about the process that provides those things. In this, I can see also the result of the homogenation of religion, especially the Christian religion that has become commodified, and is now part and parcel of the capitalist system. This is from a indoctrination approach used by the new churches, and that was also evident in those years after WWII to attack Godless Communism. This single-minded idea of belief was endemic in fundamentalist and mainstream churches during the cold war.

                      I was raised up in a fundamentalist church down in the hills. I loved the people who went to church there, but I was never convinced that heaven was only going to have the hundred or so souls that attended it, as was the dogma taught in Sunday School and Church. Also there seemed to be a competition in the congregation as who could profess the greatest love for God and Jesus. The same could be said for praying, as every Sunday, there were quite a few who blasted out the windows of the Church with their appeals to heaven and a small number who quietly contemplated God and Jesus. There was also a great pressure on everyone to go to the altar and reaffirmed your salvation in Christ, each Sunday. It was almost un-American to not perform this act, as if it was a loyalty oath to the nation and the church, whichever comes first. I had a school teacher who attended church who would patrol the back pews where most of the young people sat, asking each of us if we wanted to go to the altar. Since she was a teacher at the grade school I attended, I would trot up to the altar and earnestly pray for forgiveness for the sins that I had committed the past week. It was a show that got me off of the hook but eroded my personal ideas of that church. I started sitting in the front pew, and surprisingly that action took the heat off of me from the salvation patrol, who were busy twisting arms of my peers in the back pews.

                       The constitution gives each of us the right to practice their beliefs as they see fit. Thomas Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus considering him to be a prophet like Isaiah. He called himself a primitive Christian after those who professed belief in Christianity in the 80 years after Jesus' crucifixion and wrote his own bible by taking those passages from the bible that he agreed with. Jefferson once said on the freedom to practice your beliefs; "It does me no harm if my neighbor worships a rock or a tree." In other words, the freedom to practice is just that; freedom and not having to fear what others think, believe or say about it.

                        We have seen the freedom to organize come under attack from all quarters. Now we are seeing that the freedom to disagree, the other part of the freedom to practice, is coming under attack. There are those in congress that would like to take away our right to dissent and to express it. John McCain, who should of all people understand the importance of dissent, has sponsored legislation to make it a crime to criticize the government or those in government on the social networks of today. If this becomes law, what is next? Will we have a morality police like in Iran and in the former Taliban Regime in Afghanistan?

                         Unfortunately, there are no back pews or front pews in which we can take cover to avoid what is coming down the aisle. It will have to be the acts of those who are not afraid of condemnation by the mob. 

An Injury to One, is an Injury to All

Op-Ed sent to Norwalk Reflector, Sandusky Register and The BG News

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“An Injury to One is an Injury to All,” this is a famous saying from our Labor History in this country, you know, the history that is not taught in our schools or at the university level in our state. The thought behind it, means that when one person is suffering from injustice, we all are suffering from injustice. Actually, this has basis in the precepts of most of the life philosophies of the world, including Christianity. Pope John Paul II said in his 1981 encyclical, “Novarum Rerum,” that as long as there is one person suffering from injustice in the world, it was the collective responsibility of the rest of the world to have that redressed. John Paul II also went on to say that it is the right of all workers to organize to bargain for better pay and benefits in the workplace.

It is 2011, and there is a new order in Columbus and other state capitols, as well as on the hill in Washington, D.C. The elections of 2010 tilted the pendulum to the extreme right of the spectrum. We are now seeing the fruit of that swing in legislation being advanced in the Congress and in State Legislatures across the country. One of the prime targets of this legislation seems to the working class, particularly those workers in the public sector who are organized. State after State that was been taken over by the GOP are now demonizing the folks who plow our roads and streets, make our water clean, protect the environment from pollution, teach our children from Kindergarten to University level and protect our homes from fire and crime as the cause of the fiscal problems we are currently facing in Ohio and other states. In Ohio, Governor John Kasich is asking the legislature to castrate the collective bargaining system by passing Senate bill 5 and which will give government dictatorial power to set aside contracts negotiated in good faith, to reduce pay and benefits.

This is nothing new for it has been an ongoing process since 1981, when the Air Traffic Controllers were arbitrarily fired for striking by the President, Ronald Reagan, and were replaced with scabs. The labor community witnessed this action by the executive branch and did nothing. Since that time, working people have been under attack, by outsourcing their jobs to other countries under the guise of cheaper wages for sure but also to diminish the numbers of UAW members, USWA members, IAM members and all of the other industrial labor unions. The industrial unions tried their best to contribute to the “solution” by givebacks, rules concessions, and job consolidations in the shops. Workers were coming up with better ways to operate and produce their products, the result being the dramatic increase of productivity to record levels today. An increase that the workers did not share in with increased wages and benefits. Worker wages and benefits since 1973 have been nearly straight-line with little or no increase. Health benefits have been on the chopping block at each contract talk, and have been whittled down or eliminated entirely, resulting in a net loss of wages to workers who have to pay for them out of pocket now.

When I graduated from high school in 1966, there were many opportunities, going to college was an option but not critical, as there were many good paying jobs available that could support a family, now that is not the case. An example is in the railroad industry, as recent as 1982, over 510,000 people were working in it, and now in 2011 there are about 110,000 working in it, moving more or the same number of freight tons per mile with 400,000 fewer workers. We see every day those kinds of jobs being under attack, the current attack locally being the workers under siege at Tsubaki in Sandusky, Ohio. The same story can be found in all of the industrial unions which have had a spin off in fewer opportunities for our children to find a good job.

We are now told that the key is in education, and we have record numbers of people going to school or returning to school. The issues here in higher education are the cost, the loan debt being assumed by the students and the $64,000 question, are there going to be jobs for these folks after they finish school? The $8 Billion budget hole in Ohio will again cause tuition and fees at state schools to increase even more, pricing more and more people out of an education. When I was teaching at a local college, faculty received emails discussing the numbers of new and transfer students on a continual basis. This was to remind us of that higher education was now a “business” that needed higher and higher numbers of students  to run it. As the state government cut taxes for the rich, the SSI or State Share of Instruction, fell from over 70% in the 70’s to less than 30% in the 21^st century, parents and students have now become cash cows for Higher Education Administration.

Senate Bill 5 is a bad idea that impacts on working Ohioans and will not really address the issues of the funding gaps in a tax system that has shoved most of the burden on the middle class and poorer classes while creating billions of dollars in welfare handouts for corporations. We need equity in Ohio, not Tyranny; truly an injury to one is an injury to all.

Racism, Extreme Militarism and Materialism

Martin King, in his April 4^th, 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” discussed what he called the triple tragedy of “Racism, Extreme Militarism and Materialism,” that could engulf the United States if our foreign policy was not re-examined and re-focused toward people and not toward money and protecting the interests of money around the world. If we look at our nation today, it is easy to see that Martin King’s prophecy has come true.

Our nation even with the legislation that was enacted in the 60’s as result of the civil rights struggle is perhaps more racist now than then. You ask, how can this be, and the answer is that our government still focuses its wrath on those who have no voice, the poor, the marginalized and those who disagree with it. It is common place for local news, television and radio to echo the calls for expelling those who don’t for some reason, “fit in” in our nation. The violence that is a daily occurrence on the border with Mexico is in a large measure the fault of our nation and its people. Instead of having an open discussion on the causes, trade treaties (NAFTA), our sponsorship of oppressive governments in nations in central and south America, or our sponsorship of military opposition to governments that are seen to be unfriendly in that they do not want their countries owned lock, stock and barrel by American interests.

We also blame the drug trade for the violence on the border, and some ways that is correct. The end of the war on drugs, our continued refusal to see the logical results of legalizing certain narcotics, marijuana for one; which would take away the demand for the narcotics trade as it passes through Mexico. This would free up resources to start a treatment programs to deal with those our friends, neighbors and family members who have an addiction problem and to attack addiction at its source which dries up demand for the illicit drugs. We see racism in the way that the war on terror has unfolded, which has been a declaration of war on persons of Asian heritage who practice Islam. We see racism and extreme militarism in the way that we have militarized our domestic police forces and court systems to fight this war on “terror,” by terrorizing segments of our population at home and those who live outside our borders.

We use racism and extreme militarism to support the last part of Martin King’s triple tragedy, extreme materialism. It is by using the armed forces of the United States to ensure that the US has an uninterrupted flow of resources to prop up our appetite for things, and what is becoming a burden that cannot be propped up forever. The idea of materialism has engulfed our nation, as acquiring “things,” has become the main purpose of life for our young people, who have been programmed and bombarded with messages of materialism since before they could walk. When children can say “Burger King,” “McDonald’s” or “Wal-Mart,” before they can say Mommy or Daddy, what does that say about our society?

Extreme materialism has caused the tax burden in our country to be shifted from those who have it all, to those who have some and are losing it. In the election of 2010, we seen the pendulum swing again, but I question that movement, because it was largely caused by those who have riches playing on the fears of those who have little. By manufacturing consent as Noam Chomsky calls it, the rich using media outlets controlled by them, swing the minds of people to vote against their own interests. We cannot forget, the forfeiture of power to the rich by the Democratic Party by not taking a stand on healthcare for all, by not forcing the withdrawal of our sons and daughters from wars fought on questionable grounds and by not taking on those who robbed the people of the United States of their savings, investments, pensions, and homes by their gaming of the financial system.

The prophecy of Martin King has become fact, and the question is how do we deal with it?