Can I get a candidate up in here?

2012 is almost upon us, and all signs point to a really interesting year, as in the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. The Mayan calendar is on record as foretelling some cataclysmic changes come Dec. 21, 2012. Tie that in with the presidential elections that officially get started with the Iowa caucuses to be held just three days into the New Year, and we could find that, as Thomas Paine once observed, these will indeed be times that try our souls.

The only thing that bothers me about the Mayan prediction is the date, Dec. 21. It’s one thing to see the world possibly come to an end; it’s quite another thing to have to go through the aggravation of presidential elections first.

Well, it’s not like the presidential election has been completely devoid of humor. Take some would-be candidates. Two who come to mind are the Apprentice, Donald Trump, and former half-term Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. Both were very coquettish as they teased the voters. But after imagining the electorate was salivating at the very thought of them on the ticket, they both demurred, as many of us thought they would. They were, after all, only in it for… Come to think of it, it’d be really hard to say why they were in it, or more properly, pretending to be in it.

The reception these two got motivated at least one other candidate to throw his hat in the ring. Yes, the disappointed voters left in the lurch by the Donald and Palin were rarin’ to see another Texan get into the fray. And Rick Perry, Dub’ya’s successor, obliged them, by declaring for the GOP nomination. The trouble started when he actually began to talk. I’m sure people in Texas are now scratching their heads and asking themselves “We actually elected him, twice? What were we thinkin’”

Herman Cain was the next promising conservative. He came along with his Tax Plan 999 from Outer Space, and was on top until he too ran into some technical difficulties. The weird thing is, he saw them coming, but was still unprepared when they popped up. But thanks to them, he was saved from actually having to talk about anything a President might have to know in order to do the job before he bowed out.

In the end, there are really been only two choices for the GOP; Mitt Romney, and anybody but Romney. Romney, being favored by the party apparatchiks, will likely get the nomination, but there has been a real effort by party conservatives to get another candidate in the race.

Romney is simply too liberal for a party that has seen its center shift significantly to the right since Dub’ya and Dick ran the country. The more conservative from his party consider Romney to be a RINO (Republican in name only).

That’s why first one, then another candidate, each seemingly with more solid conservative credentials, overtook Romney in the polls. Gingrich is but the latest, and he is fading like the rest.

Of course, Romney accepts that, and that is why he’s been backpedaling from positions or statements he’s taken or made to build up support with these disaffected voters.

And while the GOP conservative base may forget, it’s a pretty good bet President Obama won’t.

T’was ever thus! (Sic Semper tyrannis)

It was the late comedian, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, one of the funniest people I ever knew of, (google Moms Mabley and see if I’m not right!) who came up with one of the greatest lines of all times. It came from a routine about an old man (91 years old and U-U-U-U-G-L-Y!) she said her father picked out for her to marry. (My father liked him. He should have married him.). Moms said she thought he’d never die. (Rat poison agreed with him.) At one point she said, “I shouldn’t talk about him like that. They say you mustn’t say anything about the dead unless it’s something good. He’s dead? ‘GOOD!’”

What brought that line to mind was the announcement of the untimely passing of one Kim Jung Il. Now I say it was untimely, because a more timely death would have been a miscarriage. Seriously, can’t nobody be sad about this old boy cashing in his chips, not even his heir apparent. Yes, this is a “communist” nation that seems to operate like a monarchy. The right to rule seems to be a heretical thing.

Kim Jong Il, the “beloved leader” got his “crown” from the “eternal leader”, Kim Sung Il. Two notes about Kim Sung Il: One, before his death, his name was spelled Kim Song Il; and two, he apparently took a cue from the Emperors of Rome, in that he seems to have been deified, judging by that last nickname.

History buffs will recall that the worse an emperor was, the sooner he would declare he was a god. That way, even after he died, he could still make everyone miserable.

I’m sure that both the Kim’s had the same idea. They forgot the joke about the man who refused to buy any life insurance, though. When his exasperated agent finally asked him to for one good reason NOT to buy life insurance, he said “When I die, I want it to be a sad day for EVERYONE!” That one exception would seem to be the Kim-to- be, this one named the “Great Successor”, Kim Jung Un (as in un moment, Monsieur).

There is a joke about this business of the leader of a socialist state passing along the rule in the country to a member of his family. Many years ago, after the Soviet Union was formed, there was a disagreement as to how the newly formed government should go about spreading the good news. One school of thought was it should be exported post haste to other countries, while the competing school of thought was to perfect it (if that is a viable thought) here first. This was known as “Socialism in one country.”

When the Kim’s were told of this, they came up with their own peculiar line of reasoning for passing along the leadership in North Korea to the next of kin to the Dearly Departed. This was known as “Socialism in one family”.

Oddly, the “beloved leader” and the “great successor” have one thing more in common with royalty: It was Marie Antoinette who was said to have responded to a demand by the poor for bread with “Let them eat cake!”

The sheltered and privileged existence these two members of the Upper Crust have had is as much of an insult to their people.

What Price Liberty?

There is a bill called the National Defense Authorization Act that has passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate that contains a very worrisome provision that would allow the U. S. Military to detain any individuals suspected of terrorism, and even in the case of U. S. citizens, the Military would be authorized to hold them indefinitely without filing any charges against them.

So what you ask? What does that mean to me? Nothing, if you’re not one of the unlucky ones who loses the writ of habeas corpus, but if someone is rotting away in a prison cell, they would naturally be a bit more concerned.

It also would mean a lot more if you are one of us who don’t trust the government to take such liberties, too. We trust the Fourth Amendment more, and, in this part of the Bill of Rights, this sort of thing is strictly unconstitutional.

Unlike most bills in Congress, that are favored by either one party or the other, this one has as its supporters, for example, both Senator Carl Levin, D. MI and Senator John McCain R. AZ, two men who are normally on opposite sides of such issues.

But just as strangely, two Senators who spoke out against it are also relative strangers in opposing the same piece of legislation. They are Sen. Al Franken, D, MN, and Kentucky’s own Sen. Rand Paul. Both are vehemently against the idea of allowing any American citizen to be locked up without charges for as long as the military might deem appropriate.

There are other prominent conservatives who are just as opposed as Sen. Paul. One of the more prominent voices against this provision is retired Admiral John Huston, one-time Judge Advocate General of the U. S. Navy and a self-proclaimed conservative Republican whose first vote ever for a Democrat was the one he cast for President Obama.

To Admiral Huston, legislative actions of this sort that chip away at our freedoms are a victory for the terrorists. Huston is quoted by AOL’s Huffington Post as saying “In this war, the enemy doesn't have to win. They can cause us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do, such as indefinite detentions, in the name of fighting a war." This, Huston goes on to say, is something the country would not have put up with before the 9/11 attacks.

The Daily Show’s John Stewart has his own view of this provision. In a show following the Senate’s approval of this bill which includes the provision in question, Stewart asks just who might be suspected of being a terrorist.

Using language included in the bill, Stewart describes how someone innocent might be identified as a terrorist because they might have attended functions that included known terrorists, or at one time sat with radical clerics, or associates with a man who is missing part of his fingers. (That’s one of the identifying marks of a terrorist, according to the bill.)

In the meantime, people who match those descriptions, all from President Obama’s past, are shown: There’s Jeremiah Wright, the radical cleric; Bill Ayer, the former terrorist; and Rahm Emanuel, his former Chief of Staff, the man who’s ID’ed missing some fingers.

Yes, the President of the U. S. could fit the bill. Maybe that’s why he’s threatened to veto it.

Shootout at the XL pipeline

Mitch McConnell rarely makes any major announcements, but when he does, you know his heart is in it. Arguably his most ambitious proclamation was the one he made in 2009 when he said "The single most important thing we (The Grand Old Tea Party) want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Fast forward to 2011 and we discover the Mitch has decided to endorse a bill from the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP) that would force a quick decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. What is the Keystone XL pipeline, you ask, innocently? That, my friend, is a proposed monstrosity that a Canadian company, called, oddly enough, TransCanada, wants to build all the way from the Canadian border to the Texas Coast that would, if approved, carry the dirtiest oil from the dirtiest source of oil on Earth to a Texas refinery.

And what does the U. S. stand to gain from allowing TransCanada to build a pipeline over and through major rivers and aquifers? And I mean other than assurances that the pipeline won’t leak, because that’s about all TransCanada can offer when they build a pipeline.

Don’t believe me? Google TransCanada and leaky pipelines, and you’ll find a veritable treasure trove of stories about their little mishaps with the pipelines they’ve already built. Of course, that’d be cold comfort if the pipeline holds course and is built through the Oglala aquifer, then spills into and contaminates it. Google Oglala aquifer for more info on this major source of water.

No, the U. S doesn’t get much from this pipeline. Yes, Senator McConnell mentions the chance to limit oil imports from the Middle East, but this oil will become diesel in that Texas refinery, then exported to South America and Europe because most of their cars run on that.

This proposal, by the way, has generated a firestorm of opposition in the U. S., from the Oglala Lakota, whose territory the pipeline would cross, to any number of conservation groups that oppose everything about the pipeline, from the tar sands the oil would come from to the very idea that it would cross the U. S. at all.

First to the source of the oil, it comes from tar sands that require strip mining the Canadian boreal forests to get to its bitumen. These forests just happen to be the nesting grounds of over half the bird species in America. To fully understand the implications of losing large areas of these forests, google Canadian boreal forests and bird populations.

Next comes the work of liberating the oil from the tar sands. This is far more complex than can be described in a few sentences, but it is a very dirty process and releases far more greenhouse gases than extracting and refining oil from conventional sources. For more information, google extracting oil from tarsands.

Barring any intervention from Congress, the President will have to okay the pipeline. The President has already nixed the proposed route of the pipeline, and that means the whole process has to start over.

And that is what has the GOTP irked. They’re not concerned with mundane stuff like clean water, just worried a corporation will have to respect the rights of others, and we can’t set precedents like that, now, can we?

Shear nonsense

Just when I think I know all I need to know about how Big Coal operates, something happens to prove me wrong. Take Alpha Natural Resources, a fairly large coal operation whose name I became aware of only recently.

How recently? Try in the harrowing months following the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mines in Montcoal, WV, that took place on April 5, 2010 and claimed the lives of 29 miners at a Massey Coal subsidiary that had been repeatedly cited for failure to ventilate properly or keep coal dust under control.

Everyone took some heat as a result of this catastrophe, but Massey was the main recipient. And the company that came to their rescue by acquiring them was Alpha Natural Resources. There are many of us who believe the whole idea behind this was to take Massey off the hot seat after a lot of experts concluded it was their failure to adequately see to safety measures at Upper Big Branch that lead to the disaster in the first place.

Alpha was out some $7.1 billion in taking control of Massey in a deal that gave former shareholders of Massey 46% of the new company, and Alpha shareholders the remaining 54%. And that answers another question: How big is Alpha Natural Resources now? Considerably bigger than before they swallowed the gargantuan Massey whole.

Consider that the new version of Alpha now has the second largest reserves of coal in the country. That would be some 5 billion tons spread out from the Appalachian coal fields to the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Their assets include 150 mines and 40 prep plants. Alpha’s pro forma revenue in 2010 was around $6.9 billion. It’s 14,000 or so employees can produce around 120 million tons of coal annually.

All of which makes me wonder why such a large company would come to Pike County with hat in hand, looking for money from local governments that are barely able to keep the wolves from their doors.

Pike County, for instance, was willing to put up $3 million dollars to build an office for Alpha at Scott’s Branch Industrial site just a little after considering, but then rejecting, an occupational tax on county residents so it could break even. County workers got laid off and needed services were curtailed, but this money was approved because word was the County had only a week or so in which to act.

Alpha ultimately rejected Pike County’s offer of cash, but Pikeville is now in line to donate some funds to them. The city is willing to loan $170,000 to this billion dollar corporation so they can renovate an office building. The city is also willing to forego a sizable chunk of their occupational taxes for a few years.

In the Old Testament, the Prophet Nathan was charged with getting David to see the wrong he’d done when he sent Uriah the Hittite to his death in battle so he could marry Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. Nathan told David of a rich man who had many sheep and of a poor man who had but one lamb. When the rich man wanted to prepare a feast for friends, he took the poor man’s one possession.

That’s how Alpha must view local governments; as sheep, ready, and all too willing, to be fleeced.

Thanksgiving away from home

Thanksgiving is the one holiday everyone wants to spend at home, and that is perfectly understandable because the turkey never tastes as good anywhere else.  Unfortunately, that isn’t always possible.  Military personnel, for instance, have to stay away and for a good reason for the most part, so it’s important that we remember those who put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of the nation when we celebrate this day devoted to counting our many blessings.

Sometimes you are able to do pretty well for yourself, though, while you have your Thanksgiving dinner in exile.  Way back in 1981, a whole three decades ago, while I was serving in the U. S. Army, some buddies of mine and I managed to literally hit the jackpot and were able to feast at a Holiday Inn located on Emerald Beach in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Our group was, at that time, en route to a new permanent duty station, a transition that was interrupted by some four months of additional training, some three months of which would be spent in a now closed Air Force base in San Angelo, Texas. 

Up until it was our turn to move on to greener pastures, the service members were always considered permanent party at the training stops, which meant you got to eat free.  You could show your military ID at the chow hall, or sign in, or something.  But someone in the Army decided it’d be better if their people were classified temporary duty, which meant that you paid for your meals in cash, and at the end of each month, the Army would cut you a check to reimburse you.

That would have worked out just fine if that someone had told the Air Force of this change of status, but whoever came up with that plan must have been too busy patting their own back to take care of this little detail.  So, when the end of the month came, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving, members of our group were all surprised by a fairly substantial check from the Army.  We were told when we got it we had to use it to pay the Air Force for the grub we’d done et.

When the Air Force was told we were ready to pay, that whole gaffe of not telling them we were no longer classified as permanent party came out and the Air Force had to admit they had no idea who’d eaten what or when, so we got our first month’s rations free. 

Now there’s a situation you didn’t mind finding yourself in; lots of cash and not much to spend it on, except a good time.  So a small group of us decided to go to Corpus Christi and have our turkey on the beach.  Now none of us had cars so we did the next best thing, we took a Greyhound, and on Wednesday we all had a good time looking at the Texas countryside from the air conditioned comfort of our coach.

We checked in at the Holiday Inn, and on Turkey Day, we all had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat, then, that night, we went to a Chinese place and had Peking duck for dessert. 

All in all, one of the more memorable late November feasts ever.

What if they held an election and nobody voted?

Yes, that is a rhetorical question. This happens in Kentucky pretty much every election cycle. Funny, because the candidates on this year’s ballot-all for state-wide office, by the way-covered pretty much every issue except for the poor turnout pretty much everyone anticipated.

We all know that Kentucky toyed with the idea of doing away with the off-year elections to increase voter turnout, but wound up using the American resolve to convert to the metric system as its model. And we all know how that went, because we all have to buy two sets of tools now.

I believe the logic behind keeping state-wide elections in its off-year spot was maybe to keep local elections from being influenced by the presidential politics. That makes about as much sense as whatever counts as logic behind our switch to the metric system, and I’m pretty sure even the ones came up with that aren’t sure what it is.

Those voters who did turn out did one thing right: They chose Democrat Alice Lundergan Grimes over Republican Bill Johnson for Secretary of State. It seems like Johnson thought too many Kentuckians were voting, as he took up a GOP cause celebre by announcing he would push a bill that would require all voters to have a state-issued photo ID available before they’d be allowed to vote.

Current law requires some proof of identity, but allows recognition of the voter by precinct officials to count. In small rural precincts, this is very often how the system works. People know their neighbors.

In Tennessee, where such a law was passed, it resulted in a 96-year old being denied the right to vote. Okay, it was a technicality, but still, for someone who’s voted almost every time she could, that is hardly comforting news. It does sort of prove a contention many of us have, though, and that is the law is meant not to curb fraud but participation by those who’d vote for the opposition party.

Well, Kentucky doesn’t need such a law to curb participation, now, does it? I mean, we have closed primaries to do that, don’t we? You know the drill, you ain’t registered as a Republican or Democrat, and you ain’t votin’, you know what I mean?

And still, I have to ask the question, why is the Commonwealth of Kentucky required to do the parties’ work for them? Why are we perpetuating two entities that should have no official standing in our state or national constitutions?

Why? Because the two have colluded on laws that ought to be thrown out as unconstitutional; laws that give them preeminence where they should have none.

Don’t look for that to change anytime soon, either. Not only are the two parties content with the status quo; the state legislature is the only way any law can be proposed in Kentucky. Yes, if the Constitution is amended, the voters must approve that, but the voters cannot directly or indirectly propose laws nor have laws enacted by the state assembly put on the ballot for approval or rejection by the voters.

But then again, we don’t allow for recall elections in this state either. And that’s too bad, too; nothing like the prospect of a recall election to get a politician in the listening mode.

Progress and Progressives

Today is Election Day. Yes, today those individuals who either hold or seek to hold state-wide office come before the state’s hiring board- those who compose the electorate- asking for a job for the first time or asking that their employment be continued, based either on their resumes or their on-the-job record.

Oh, incidentally, if you’re reading this and the polls are still open and you haven’t yet voted, then you have time to get out and do the dirty deed. That’s a good chap! Off with you then!

Almost without exception, those who seek to lead the state have differing ideas on how to do the job they’re seeking. Each wants to portray their opposition as a group that has not or cannot contribute to the progress the state needs in order to be competitive.

The key word here is progress. Everyone from those who head their party’s ticket on down are constantly reiterating their message that only they can lead the state in its drive to progress. Of course, everyone is careful not to use the word progressive, because the one deadly sin you can commit in Kentucky is to identify yourself with anything liberal; ergo the constant refrain of conservative values and progress.

And that, of course, leads to an interesting question: Why the reluctance to be identified as a progressive? In order to progress, a leader needs to look at every option in order to be sure nothing is overlooked that could possibly bring about progress and that necessitates that the decision maker show some attributes of a progressive.

One of the attributes of a progressive is the willingness to question anything and everything that could be an obstacle to progress. This means seeing the need to delve into matters sometimes long thought to have been settled. Sadly both major-party candidates for Governor, Steve Beshear and David Williams, have failed this test, miserably.

In a story in the Weekend Edition of the News-Express, entitled “Ky. gubernatorial candidates mull industrial hemp”, only independent Gatewood Galbraith threw caution to the wind and whole-heartedly endorsed allowing the state’s farmers to once again grow a crop that would be beneficial, both to them and to the state overall.

Showing themselves to be ones who fall back on old, tired, outdated ideas and questionable reasoning when presented with new ideas, Beshear and Williams responses showed that in their mind, hemp should remain illegal because the federal government says that hemp and marijuana are the same thing, and marijuana is after all, a schedule one narcotic, and that puts both in the same class of drugs as heroin and makes it worse than even cocaine, a schedule 2 narcotic.

Both suggested further discussion on industrial hemp. Gatewood alone noted it’s already been talked to death.

The difference between schedule one and schedule two narcotics? While both have high potential for abuse, schedule two drugs can have recognized medical benefits.

Beshear and Williams assume that marijuana has no medical value. The California Medical Association says otherwise. Both also assume that a hemp crop can be used to hide a pot plant when hemp would greatly reduce the pot plant’s potency.

Research would show potent marijuana became available only after hemp was outlawed. But that would mark Beshear and Williams as progressives, and God forbid that should happen.

And still they come

In an old Laurel and Hardy movie, Stan and Ollie were arrested for trying to sell bootleg beer to a policeman. On their first day in prison, the Warden shook his head and in a most melodramatic way, intoned “My, my! And still they come!”

That line is now apropos of the Grand Old Tea Party Presidential (GOTP) candidate, Herman Cain. On Sunday, Cain was confronted by allegations on politico.com that he’d been accused of sexual harassment by at least two women while he’d been the head of the National Restaurant Association.

Cain, according to Sarah Palin, is the flavor of the week. Cain, of course, demurred, insisting that he was more like black walnut, a flavor that is good all the time. If the allegations prove to be true, Cain may instead be the extremely popular non-fat yogurt from a Seinfeld episode that turned out to be loaded with fat; hence its good taste.

Well, it’s not like there aren't any hard and fast rules on how to behave when such allegations come up. And the most important rule is this: You never say one thing when the facts are going to show something completely different.

Cain seems not to have been aware of the existence of this rule, because his initial reaction was to deny any knowledge of any such allegations. That quickly went by the wayside on Monday when he finally admitted that, yes, he had been accused of sexual harassment, but that was all there was to it, false allegations that had been disproved.

Cain’s conduct following the disclosure that these allegations had been made was what MSNBC’s Chris Matthews called truth by degree; Cain continued to change his story, each time revealing a little more of the truth. And that, said Matthew, is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

Cain was heard to have said at one point that no settlement had been paid to either of the alleged victims. That was modified a bit later, when he disclosed that he had recused himself from the investigation, and that there had been a settlement paid, but he wasn’t sure how much it was. In fact, Cain said, he hoped he hadn’t been much, since the allegations were false. And in another statement, declared the settlement hadn’t been more than severance pay of maybe three or four months’ salary.

Since politico.com issued their initial report, more and more information has been coming out, and none of it is flattering to the candidate. In a report on the Huffington Post on AOL, politico.com is said to have at least a half a dozen sources that are “shedding light on different aspects of the complaints”. According to them, the sexual harassment “left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices.”

In an interview with PBS’s Judy Woodruff, Cain was asked if his behavior might have been in any way inappropriate. He answered “"In my opinion, no. But… it's in the eye of the person who thinks that maybe I crossed the line."

With that statement, Cain may have finally grasped the reality of the situation he allegedly created for these women

Memories and good times

Time’s been doing some strange things here in the latter part of my life. Suddenly things that happened a long time ago seem like they happened only recently. Take the marriage between my sister Jewell and her husband, Paul James. Wasn’t that long ago, was it?

But the first Thanksgiving Paul spent with our family was way back in 1989. They couldn’t have been married all that long then, still that means their wedding day was more than 22 years ago, unless I ciphered wrong.

Paul and Jewell had a lot in common, which made for a pretty good marriage. Both were Ma Bell’s employees at one time; Jewel for about 15 years until modernization eliminated her job, and Paul for over 40 years until he retired. Paul worked for several incarnations of Ma Bell. There was the original AT&T and South Central Bell in Kentucky, and in South Carolina, Bell Atlantic, and lastly, Verizon.

When Paul was in Kentucky, he worked in the Louisville area and one of his jobs was to set up WHAS’s (Louisville’s 50,000 watt am radio station) broadcasts of the Kentucky Colonels’ games. That always blew me away to hear him talk about that because I was a hardcore fan of this team.

The Colonels were almost a reincarnation of the U K Wildcats because they always drafted a lot of U K’s best players. My favorites were Louis Dampier, one of Rupp’s Runts, and number 44, Dan Issel, one of the best to ever wear the Blue and White in my mind. He was ably abetted by one Artis Gilmore, ironically one year after Gilmore’s team, Jacksonville State, upset Issel and U K in the NCAA in 1969.

Paul got to know them all, and I was always suitably impressed with the stories he told of setting up the broadcasts, staying around for the games, and then taking it all apart afterwards. I’d have given my eye teeth at one time to have worked in his place.

Paul and Jewell both like to fish on their time off, too. Once, while I was visiting them in Aiken, South Carolina, Paul and I took his john boat out on the Savanna River. The Savanna is an alluvial bank river, which means that it can change its course whenever it chooses. This time we took the boat up an oxbow lake off the river to see if we could see an old alligator Paul and Jewel saw there on occasion. 

Not only did we see the alligator, we took the opportunity to see if the fish were being sociable by baiting up a hook with a juicy Catawba worm and lowering it into the water. It was noticed immediately by a big ol’ mud cat who gladly took the bait. A quick look told us we’d forgot the net though, and he was too big to land without it. All we had to show for our effort was the story of the one that got away.

Time slips away too fast, sometimes. Before you know it, the good times are gone and all you have are the memories. That’s what’s left to us now. Paul passed away this past Sunday, quietly at home. He left us all the richer for having known him, though.

Rest in peace, Brother.

Examining Economically Depressing Data

The grassroots movement, Invade Wall Street, has made their rallying cry of “We are the ninety-nine per centers” fairly well-known. By segregating that one percent of the wealthiest Americans, they hope to spotlight just how much of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of this tiny minority. What that slogan doesn’t do, though, is show how little a very sizable percentage of Americans have.

By consulting some facts compiled in a web article entitled “Five Facts You Should know about the Wealthiest One Percent of Americans” (you can google the title to find it online), we find that this aforementioned group does, in fact, control forty-two percent of the nation’s wealth. But when you begin to look at slightly larger percentages of the wealthiest in this country, that’s when you find just how much of the total wealth of the United States is now concentrated in a few hands, and how small the percentage is that controls this wealth.

For instance, instead of looking at the top one percent of the wealthiest, let’s look at the top five percent. This small group of the elite controls sixty-nine percent of the nation’s wealth. When you examine the top ten percent of the richest citizens, that percentage of the nation’s wealth controlled by the oligarchs increases to eighty percent. And when you check out what the top twenty has, that’s a whopping ninety-two percent of the richest country in the world.

That would leave the bottom eighty percent of Americans to split up the remainder of our nation’s wealth. Yes, all the rest of us can get fat on the thinnest piece of pie from this graph, with what represents seven percent of America’s riches.

Scarier than that, though, is the bar graph that shows the growth of income from 1980-2007. This comes from a bar graph shown on a website called Igmur.com. Here you’ll see that the growth is heavily skewed in favor, again, of the top one percent. In that time frame, the one per center’s income increased by 261%. And while the top twenty percent saw their income increased by 95%, if you exclude the top one percent, that figure drops to 31%.

From here on down, the increases in income are far more equitable Those wage earners in the 61-80 percentile, for instance, saw their wages increase by 33% while the bottom 20% had to manage with a more modest 15% increase in their take home pay.

The truth is America has not seen this much economic inequality between its wealthiest citizens and its poorest since the Roaring Twenties, and it can be argued that it was the size of that gap then that played a major part in the Great Depression. In fact, that gap is greater today than it was in that period before the worst economic disaster in our history.

This is what has citizens pouring out in support of the aims of Invade Wall Street. Everyone in the middle class has reason to be concerned, from the young college graduates who find themselves unemployable after taking on huge financial burdens to get that sheepskin to workers who never worried about unemployment until the financial meltdowns that began in President George W.’s second term to those whose life’s savings were taken by the swindlers from that same era.

Redefining the Status Quo

Kentucky ought to be quite familiar with the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP). After all, we elected a very prominent member, Rand Paul, to the US Senate in 2010. He won over more traditional candidates twice, even though he espoused viewpoints that ought to have made him very unpopular in this state.

There was his insistence that the federal government was just too large and spent far more money than it should. Kentucky voters bought this, hook, line and sinker, even though the state was the beneficiary of the largess from that “bloated” federal government many times. Without help from the federal government, for instance, downtown Pikeville might look a lot more familiar to the old timers, as a lot of the cut-through was financed by the feds when they were flush with money in the sixties and seventies. And this is but the tip of the iceberg.

The GOTP was purported to be concerned about individual rights, but the individuals it seemed most concerned with were corporations. They were intent, for instance, on seeing that the Bush tax cuts for the significantly well-off would not lapse. And when the GOTP faithful showed up at any town meetings meant to discuss the Obama healthcare proposal, they let it be known they wanted no interference in the insurance market or in the healthcare profession whatsoever.

And all during the media frenzy that accompanied the GOTP phase of the 2010 elections, it was maintained that this was a grassroots movement, even though its organization and funding could be traced back to corporate interests as epitomized by Koch Brothers Industries, whose money helped elect, among others, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and a majority for the GOTP in that state’s legislature.

But if anyone would have you to believe the GOTP, whose self-proclaimed grassroots designation is widely known, would welcome a newer grassroots movement, the one that has become known as Invade Wall Street, they would be wrong. In fact, a lot of the GOTP members of Congress, for instance, have been quite disrespectful when making statements about the Invade Wall Street movement.

Eric Cantor, Rep., VA, still a darling of the Grand Old Tea Party and the author of the plan to drastically cut the federal budget, including a plan to eliminate Medicare, isn’t at all happy with Invade Wall Street. Cantor called the movement “growing mobs…intent on…pitting Americans against Americans”.

Other stalwarts of the GOTP have called the Invade Wall Street group hippies who are out to get a little notoriety, and nothing more. One conservative commentator on an MSNBC disdainfully told the Invade Wall Street group to “get a job!” And a Fox News commentator said she knew what they needed, then delivered her punch line with a sneer-“A shower!”

Perhaps it’s a matter of perspective: To working people, whose income is shrinking, Invade Wall Street is more important than it is to CEO’s whose incomes are growing exponentially. To the young people who are leaving college with far more debt than job prospects, this movement means more than it does to corporations that outsource jobs.

It’s a matter of how you define what’s acceptable as the status quo, and for the 99 per center’s protesting the largely untaxed status of the one per centers, the status quo needs to be redefined

Got hemp milk?

I seem to know instinctively when I’m not going to get something I’m asking for. This is native intuition that was honed when, as a child, I would ask for something I knew my parents would never give me. But that never stopped me from asking for that candy bar anyway.

I knew just as well what the answer would be when twice I sent our stalwart Member of Congress, Hal Rogers, e-mails asking him to co-sponsor the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011 (H R 1831), but I asked him anyway. 

I also know that Hal would never read this request. Well, according to the 2010 census, there are 673,670 of us here in District 5, and it wouldn’t take too many letters each day to require some help, so each time I ask Hal to do the honorable thing, his staff hit a button and sent out a form letter enumerating all the reasons Hal could never accept the use of a “variant of marijuana”.

Hal and many other Americans know it is illegal to grow hemp in the United States, lest some pothead get desperate and try to smoke this plant that contains less than 1% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). That “variant” of hemp, marijuana, can have as much as 15% THC. Hal does not seem to know that hemp can have an adverse effect on marijuana. Hemp can cross pollinate a pot plant, and that greatly reduces its potency.

But what Hal will not acknowledge is this: While it is illegal to grow industrial hemp in the U S, it is not illegal to use hemp in the manufacture of products we need on a daily basis. American manufacturers can import all the industrial hemp they need from those countries that allow their farmers to grow it. By obstinately refusing to think this thing over, all Hal, et al, are doing is ensuring Kentucky farmers will never benefit financially from what is one of the most versatile plants available while ensuring that French, Canadian and Chinese farmers will never face any competition from their American counterparts. 

One of the more than 22,000 products produced from industrial hemp is a variant (there’s that word again) of soy milk-hemp milk. Google hemp milk for details. Yes, this would be a positive boon for Kentucky farmers if they could grow the plant from which the seeds are obtained to produce this THC-free drink that is naturally rich in omega 3 and 6 fatty acids as well as essential nutrients and quality protein.

If you agree that American farmers-and specifically Kentucky farmers-deserve the chance to make money from products such as hemp milk, go to https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/allow-industrial-hemp-be-grown-us-once-again/V2gV7rWy . It is here you will be given a chance to sign a petition that has already met the requirements for being reviewed by President Obama. That threshold is 5000 signatures in 30 days. As of this writing, this petition has garnered 15,076.

At the same time, we cannot give up on Hal. I believe him to be reasonable. He has, in the past, taken money from tobacco interests. I’m sure if you asked him now, he would agree that this was a mistake, just as he would agree that hemp is a very beneficial plant that should be legalized for production if he looked into the matter more carefully

Sleepless in Austin

NBC Anchor Brian Williams ask Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry what should have been an uncomfortable question during one of the GOP debates: While signing any of the 234 death warrants during his terms as Governor, had Perry ever worried that he’d sent an innocent man to an unjust execution?

Perry’s response was no, he had yet to lose sleep over having signed any death warrant. Because of the built-in safeguards, Perry said he was sure anyone executed in Texas under his watch deserved what they got.

That would include Cameron Todd Willingham, a Corsicana, Texas native who was convicted of murder after a house fire he was accused of setting on December 23, 1991 resulted in the death of his three daughters, two-year old Amber Louise and one-year old twins Karmon Diane and Kameron Marie.

Arson was suspected by investigators who found what they took to be pour patterns formed by a liquid accelerant. There were also signs that the fire had burned hottest near the floor as well as signs that the fire burned quickly and very hot, and that it had multiple points of origin, much the way one would have behaved if there had been an accelerant involved.

Willingham was offered a plea deal before the trial; plead guilty and he would get a life sentence. Otherwise he would face the death penalty. But he turned down the offer and insisted he was innocent of the charges.

The trial that placed Willingham on death row had all the earmarks of trials that make the use of the death penalty so questionable. It was over in two days. Willingham was defended by court-appointed attorneys who lacked the wherewithal to question the evidence against him. In his defense, his attorneys called one witness, and within one hour of having started deliberation, the jury came back with a conviction, and as he was promised, Willingham was given a death sentence in Aug. of 1992.

Those appeals meant to insure that this death penalty was just did nothing to overturn this conviction. It wasn’t until weeks before he was scheduled to be put to death in 2004 that Willingham finally had any hope at all. Dr. Gerald Hurst, a renowned fire investigator, looked into the evidence used to convict him.

Dr. Hurst suggested the prosecution witnesses’ conclusion that the fire was deliberately set was based on old wives tales. What these expert witnesses took to be signs of arson were rather indicators of flashover. This occurs when a fire starts in a house and smoke banks down from the ceiling, quickly spreading heat and flammable gases and fire throughout the house, giving all the indicators of a fire started by an accelerant if misread. There was no real evidence, Dr. Hurst concluded, to indicate that this was an arson fire.

The report Dr. Hurst prepared was sent to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole and to Gov. Perry. If failed to sway either of them. With evidence in hand that should have halted the execution, the Gov. signed the death warrant and on February 17, 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death still maintaining his innocence.

The New Yorker published a story about Willingham’s execution in its September 8, 2009 issue called Trial by Fire, available online at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann.

Reunion at Valhalla

Facebook seems to have caught on big here in the New Millennium. Of course, with me, it caught on more slowly than with most folks. But that may be because I am a bit slow at times. (At times? Hah!) Okay, truth is I signed up, but for years never really went near it. In fact, the only reason I signed up at all was to humor an old Army buddy who found a page on it dedicated to our old post in Germany.

Once I either caught on to what Facebook was all about, or I finally got enough friends who would acknowledge me, I began to enjoy the whole social networking thing. I began to post some pictures and enjoyed that so much, I posted a couple of albums of old pictures of my family.

That went so well I started my own group called Feds Creek High School Yearbooks. I actually proposed eventually uploading every annual my alma mater, Feds Creek High School, ever put out. I think I am up to 1985, provided I haven’t missed any earlier yearbooks. That only leaves the 15 remaining annuals from 1985-2001, the school’s last year as a high school.

Sooner or later, I anticipate achieving that goal, and I may have another group from Facebook to thank for it. That group would be “You Went to Feds Creek High School if You Remember…”. I hope I can get someone to loan me those yearbooks I lack by posting a request on this group’s page. And if this doesn’t work, well, let’s say I’ve tried my best.

Like Feds Creek High School Yearbooks, this is an open group and anyone may become a member. Those most likely to join would be those who were Vikings at one time in their life, or so we would presume. What you will mainly find on this page are one-time students reliving their high school days. This includes reminiscing about classmates or favorite teachers and encompasses pretty much every class that ever graduated from that school.

But there are other things going on with this group, including a reunion for anyone who ever went to Feds Creek at any time, or even one of its feeder schools, Jackson Rowe and Grapevine. This reunion is scheduled to take place at the Breaks Interstate Park on October 1, or less than 2 weeks from now. The group has reserved shelter number three, the Lakeside Shelter, the one above the swimming pool. That shelter will be available from 10 am until whenever, probably around 5 or 6 pm.

The driving force behind the reunion at this has been Emma Price, who has done the bulk of the planning and even paid for the use of the shelter. To get an idea of what’s going on, if you are planning on attending, you should probably go to Facebook and enter the group’s name in the search box on Facebook, and read some of the posts. There are some that ask you if you will be there, and how many will be coming with you.

At any rate, the hope is to get as many alumni of Feds Creek and their families at the Breaks as we can to relive our glory days. Hope to see a lot of you there.

Why speech should be free

Put two people together long enough and you’ll get a disagreement.  Keep them together a bit longer and you’ll get a major disagreement.  Extend that forced cohabitation for too long and you’ll get opposing political parties.

Most people can, however, learn to live with the idea that not everyone is going to agree with everything they say.  But there are exceptions to this rule.  For instance, on the facebook, I’ve noticed some people cannot pass by posts that contain statements contrary to their core beliefs without a negative comment.  (And I’ve been guilty of this offense myself.)    It’s as though these people have set themselves up as arbiters of what’s acceptable and what isn’t. 

You can react to this in one of two ways.  You can reply to your detractor and in all likelihood get a long and pointless argument started, or you can use a handy little device facebook has installed for the original poster and that is an x that will magically appear to the side of each comment.  Click on that x and that comment will be deleted.

Oh, don’t worry.  It’s not like you’re suppressing the right to free speech.  Those who have other thoughts on any matter can always post whatever they want to on their facebook page.

In real life, dissent is not always welcomed, either.  Those who have the power to do so will often attempt to stifle viewpoints not totally in line with what they consider acceptable.   But suppression of the free exchange of ideas can sometimes be a costly mistake. 

In the former Soviet Union, dissent was not only unwelcomed; it usually carried a prison sentence. But can you imagine how different the Chernobyl area might be today if someone had had to defend the decision to put an uncontained nuclear reactor in one of the few places in that country that had arable farmland?

And in an article that appeared on MSN’s web site in the week leading up to the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the writer put the cost of the Iraq war in the trillions of dollars.  There were those who spoke out against the then-impending war, but who, like the Dixie Chicks, were browbeaten into silence.

In our area, anyone who opposes mountaintop removal (MTR) as a method for extracting coal knows what it’s like to have their right to free speech threatened.  One of the more blatant attempts at bullying opponents of MTR into silence is the bumper sticker that suggests one way to protect the coal industry is by shooting “tree huggers”.

Using the term “tree huggers” is one way to dehumanize those who see MTR as a destructive and harmful practice.  Other ways include the terms “radical environmentalists, outside agitators”, etc. to describe local residents.

 Then there are those who aren’t above physically threatening or attacking opponents of MTR.  An extreme example of this can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjc7Jg_gMy0.

There is a price to be paid when MTR is allowed to go unchecked.  The topography of our area is such that without the protection afforded by the trees on the hillsides, excess rain can quickly turn creeks into raging rivers.

 Anyone who saw Harless Creek after that flood of 2010 cannot deny the truth of this:  Silence can be deadly at times.

Seasonally Affected Disorders

Labor Day has come and gone and with it, the unofficial end of summer. Of course if you go by the calendar, summer still has about three weeks left, but that’ll be gone before you know it, so we might as well get ready to bid summer a tearful adieu.

Fall is, for the most part, a pretty miserable time of year. Yeah, September and part of October isn’t too bad, but by the time mid to late fall rolls around, this season is shot. The days keep getting shorter and shorter as the season progresses, and we are soon bogged down in November gray.

Okay, if everything goes right in early and middle fall, the deciduous forests really put on a show. The red of the maples and the golden yellows of the oaks, for example, can really dress up the place.

But that’s not guaranteed. For instance, if the season is too dry, the leaves will just turn brown. Too much rain will foul everything up, too, in its own way. There is a happy middle ground, but these conditions are very rarely present. Still, we can always hope for what we seldom ever get; a chance to take some nice pictures as the leaves turn color, before they fall off and need raking.

The changing of the seasons means more in the mountains than they do in other places. Depending on where your house is located, the beginning of fall means you are either entering a prolonged period in the shadows, or you are envied and probably hated because you’ll be getting some much desired sunshine.

Because the sun begins to set further to the south starting on September 23^rd, it will shine back to the north. If your house in on the north side, congratulations, you’ll be in the sun, while your neighbors across the holler from you, those unfortunate souls on the south side, will be in the shade.

This doesn’t mean too much in the beginning, but by late fall and early winter when the snows begin to fall and the temperatures begin to drop, that’s when you can really begin to dislike your neighbors who are sitting so smugly on their north side property.

Once the sun does come back out after a cold snap, the poor south sider will still have to contend with all that snow and ice because his property is sitting in the shadows. And he has to sit and watch those north siders basking in the warmth of a sun that is obviously prejudiced. Why else would you have to wait till spring to thaw out?

There is a middle ground here, too. For instance, your house might sit facing east or west instead of on the north or south side of the holler. For those whose houses sit facing the east, you will get sunshine in the morning and shade in the afternoon. If your house sits facing the west, reverse that.

My own house faces the west, so I am not too unhappy. It’s not like I’m on the south side with no sun, but not getting the sun until the afternoon is pretty depressing in itself. Not as depressing as having to sit in the shade all afternoon, though, like those poor souls whose houses face the east.

Support for the Civic Center

Ever notice how easy it is to guarantee freedom of speech if we agree with everything that is said? No one ever gets into trouble when everyone agrees with them. It’s only when the majority disagrees with what’s said that we find out just how committed we are to this guiding principle of our democracy.

Ask Big Kenny Alphin of the Big and Rich show. This group was in Pikeville recently and because of a comment Big Kenny made about mountaintop removal (MTR), the ticket sales for that show were termed “sluggish”.

Okay, a lot of people in Pike County are paying a lot more attention to what performers are saying than I am. Not only was I unaware that Big Kenny had made any comments about MTR, pro or con, I wasn’t even aware of who Big Kenny was, period.

But in an article about the show, certain members of the coal operators various associations declared this to be so. Well, I’ll take their word for it. Big Kenny insulted coal, that is, if saying that mountaintop removal is not the best way to mine coal is insulting. Because that was it and that is a pretty mild insult. Not nearly as searing as the response from a friend of coal who said these comments meant Big Kenny was a moron.

Various officials from the various coal associations did step in, they said, to insure that the Pikeville Civic Center didn’t lose money. That was mighty nice of them, wasn’t it? But the truth is, these same associations do promote over the top responses to anyone who dares oppose them in anyway whatsoever, so this may very well have led to the poor ticket sales to begin with.

Anyway, the idea was to support the Civic Center, wasn’t it? Not too many more tickets were sold, despite the fact that coal supporters encouraged people to come out and see the show, so I guess we have to accept that the people have spoken, voted with their feet, huh? That’s the accepted reason for poor ticket sales.

Of course, even if ticket sales had been far more brisk, that one show would still have left the Civic Center far short of enough money to pay its bills. The truth is, a lot of shows are well-attended but still don’t generate enough revenue.

What would generate enough revenue? Well, a lot of the big city centers sell the right to name certain venues for large sums of money. In Louisville, the Cardinals play at the Yumm Center, that name coming from a corporation that controls some big-name fast food restaurants, including Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut.

But what about Pikeville? Are there any suitors with deep enough pockets to step up and bail out this civic center? Well, there is the coal industry. It is probably the only industry in the area that would have enough money for this.

Except that coal just dropped $7 million to name the new dormitory being built for U. K. basketball players. That’s too bad, too, because we can all see by their reaction to Big Kenny that coal does support our area and the institutions built here to make our life more enjoyable. It’s just that Pikeville wasn’t as uptown as that U. K. project. Otherwise…