WEAK MINING RULES: Lobbyists Pro & Con

"Unlike the industry lobbyists motivated by profit, we are nonprofit lobbyists dedicated to the preservation and restoration of pristine areas like this, where we live. "
http://bangordailynews.com/2016/03/23/opinion/contributors/its-not-about-killing-jobs-aroostook-residents-really-dont-want-weak-mining-rules/

BERNIE SANDERS FOR JUSTICE

SPEECH AT THE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS

PRESQUE ISLE, MAINE, MARCH 6, 2016

Alice Bolstridge

I stole the idea on the poster about justice from a Face Book post. Most of what I say today is stolen from research I have done because I am so disturbed about the state of the world, and I want real and lasting solutions not just more tweaking around the edges. I supported Bernie Sanders for president before he became a candidate. His values, goals, and public record offer the best hope for achieving justice with all the issues I worry most about.

I worry about how the power and influence of money in our political system which negatively affects all the other issues I care about.  Hillary Clinton claims she will stand up to those powers, but she receives from Wall Street and big banks 6-figure speaking fees and millions of dollars in donations to her campaign and foundation. Studies consistently show that money influences the behavior of all of us in the direction of loyalty to the source of money. Sanders funds his campaign with small contributions averaging $27 each from people like me. His refusal to accept money from businesses and banks too big to fail means his political loyalty will be to contributors who care about social justice and the constitutional promise to “promote the general welfare” and not the corporate welfare.

I worry about the economic well-being of the dwindling middle class, the loss of labor union power to offset the power of the rich, the stagnation of wages, and the increasing numbers of working poor. Our economy is rigged by the richest 1 % through campaign contributions, lobbying, mass advertising, ownership, and other types of cozy relationships established with politicians and the media. Sanders wants to raise the minimum age to 15% over a period of time, to fix our crumbling infrastructure which will create millions of good-paying jobs, and he wants to make the richest pay their fair share of taxes. Clinton says these plans are too ambitious, but they are no more radical than have already been accomplished in our history by the likes of Roosevelt and Eisenhower, the Republican who created the largest Public Works program in history with the construction of the Interstate Highway system. Government programs of the mid-20^th century period created the most prosperous economy of our entire history. Bernie is fighting to create that kind of prosperity again.

I worry about the restoration of the environment so polluted by the big- money interests of the carbon-energy industrial complex that the whole earth is endangered. The Clinton Foundation accepts millions of dollars from major oil companies. At home and abroad, she promotes drilling for oil and natural gas, including fracking, which will add to global warming.  Sanders wants to tax the polluters to pay for accelerating the transition to clean energy and creating millions of good paying jobs by investing in clean energy.

I worry about the need for a national expanded and improved Medicare-for-all which Sanders promotes.  Clinton wants to tweak the Affordable Care Act which would do nothing about getting the insurance companies out of the health care business. She criticizes Sanders plan, saying it is unrealistic and will impose a new tax on the middle class. She fails to mention that the so-called tax used to help fund his program is far less per family than current insurance premiums for all but the richest. And of course she fails to mention that she has received around $13 million in campaign contributions from the health-care industrial complex. 

I worry about education and college debt. Sanders proposes free tuition to public colleges through to the Bachelor’s degree funded by a small tax on speculative Wall Street transactions. Clinton, worried that Trump will send his kids to the public college, wants to limit free tuition to community college. Remember here that Eisenhower’s free college for the thousands of returning Veterans played a major role in developing the economic prosperity of that period. Sanders understands the value of universal higher education to the whole society. 

I worry about sexism, and racism, and all forms of prejudice that are on the rise along with and related to income inequality, poverty, and criminal justice.  Caleb Rosado, a professor at Eastern University in Pennsylvania who studies prejudice says the issue of privilege and power is the root of prejudice. Sanders understands that relationship, so when he is asked about racism he brings up money in politics and income inequality and criminal justice. He is not changing the subject.  He understands how the love of money feeds the prevalence of discrimination that results in poverty and prisons overflowing with victims of discrimination. Increasing privatization of our prison system is morphing into a prison industrial complex which intensifies prejudice and discrimination.  Clinton is in a position of loyalty to privilege and power, and her criticism of Sanders as a one-issue candidate suggests she does not understand the relationship between power and discrimination.  

Along with economics, prejudice is a major factor in every international conflict, and I worry about our foreign policy. Clinton’s record shows that she has supported trade agreements that contribute in a major way to economic inequality and the disappearance of the middle class here at home. Her Senate vote for the war in Iraq and her role in taking out Bin Laden and Kadahfy have not made us safer. Consequences of those actions have contributed to the destabilization of the whole Middle East. 21^st Century wars have cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. They have driven millions of refugees from their homes, intensified immigration problems, and made billions of dollars in profit for the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. Sanders’ record shows that he understood and warned about consequences of violence for regime change long before he became a presidential candidate. He has much better understanding and judgement about likely consequences than Clinton has shown in her experience.

With every issue that I worry about, Bernie Sanders is the candidate I trust with plans to resolve the problems.  Visit berniesanders.com on the web for all the details. Read Hillary’s web site too. They share many of the same values, but Clinton’s ties to big money compromise her promises.

IS BERNIE SANDERS' POLITICAL REVOLUTION RIGHT AND POSSIBLE?

Published in The Star Herald, February 24, 2016

Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, argues that all people have a right to basic needs (health care, education, a healthy environment, food, shelter, and more) and that government has to play a major role in seeing that those needs are provided for. These rights are not un-American: the constitution itself says that government has a responsibility to “provide for the common welfare.”

As a Democrat, he wants to protect the power of all the people to influence government. He argues that money power of the richest 1 % has rigged the system through huge campaign contributions and other benefits such as speaking fees to political candidates, lobbying of those candidates once they are in office, advertising to the public in all the major media outlets, most of which they own, sponsoring and even writing legislation that benefits the wealthiest and affects the welfare, voting choices, and voting rights of certain groups of its citizens whose numbers are increasing.  This rigging has led to obscene income inequality, a middle class disappearing into poverty, the poorest health outcomes of any developed nation, climate change that threatens the whole earth, intensified legislation attacking civil rights, and increasingly dangerous international tensions as nations compete for a fair share of the wealth. 

Sanders is definitely not a one-issue candidate. The power of money in politics affects every other major problem that we have. Advocating a political revolution as a solution, Sanders wants to change this rigged system by harnessing the power of the people through the simple democratic exercise of the vote by masses of people who become aware and inspired to do the right thing by voting for the right people.  In this election primary, he has already changed the dynamics of the Democratic Party establishment which lost its moral ground for social justice in attention to the seductive appeal of riches before he became a presidential candidate.

Sanders’ Democratic critics do not argue with his goals. They only argue that his plans are too radical to be possible, that the US will not elect a declared Socialist, and that at best we can only hope to make incremental progress toward the goals.  Republicans, so far, don’t argue with his goals either. So focused on Clinton, Obama, and each other, they barely mention him so far. Hillary Clinton claims that money she has received in campaign contributions and speaking fees has no influence on her goals, values or votes. I will leave it to readers to judge for themselves how possible you think that is, and how much you think money already influences both parties in their claims about solutions to problems.

As for those claims, think what kinds of socialist progress was made in the mid 20^th century. In the 30s & 40s, President Roosevelt’s government invested in a host of socialist programs, including social security and public works programs to create jobs and improve the quality of life. His accomplishments were more radical than what Sanders proposes. In the 50s, President Eisenhower’s government imposed an income tax of 90 % on the richest to pay for common-good programs, including veterans’ college education and infrastructure construction that included the Interstate Highway System, “the Greatest Public Works Project in History.” As Sanders says, he is not as big a socialist as Eisenhower was; he plans only 52% tax on the richest. In the 60s, President Johnson passed Medicare and the most important civil rights legislation in history, civil rights that are now being eroded by the power of money in politics. Sanders proposes expanding Medicare to all and paying for it with a modest tax that will be much less expensive for the poor and the middle class than they now pay in insurance premiums. His proposals to remedy inequality include the social-justice issues of gender, racial, and ethnic equality. These presidents achievements demonstrate that socialist programs advancing the common good are an important part of the American character and are not a deterrent to electability. Roosevelt was elected 4 times.

As Sanders says, no president can accomplish such proposals by him- or her- self. He needs the vote of all citizens who care about reducing the power of money in politics, promoting social justice, and restoring our democracy. He not only needs our vote for him but also our vote to change the congressional balance of power.  We have waited too long for common-sense solutions to the most pressing problems we face. Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate from either party who proposes these solutions and who has a workable plan to pay for them according to many top economists.  Many of the polls now suggest his electability, and his record demonstrates a life-long commitment to “provide for the common welfare.” Maine Caucuses are March 6. Please go and vote for the common good.

CELEBRATING JACK MYERS' LIFE AND WORK, & THEA TEMPLE

2 POEMS BY JACK MYERS & 1 OF MINE INSPIRED BY HIM

After I am gone and the ache begins
to cease and the slow erosion I felt,
being older than you, invades you too,
you’ll come to see that an image of the desert
is the memory of water, like remembering.

When we were walking in beautiful Barcelona
and you said you thought the trees were gods
because they were rooted in earth
and flew in the air and magically made food
out of light and made the air we breathe.

— Jack Elliott Myers, “The Memory of Water” http://blog.smu.edu/forum/2011/11/30/jack-myers%E2%80%99-final-book-nominated-for-pulitzer-and-pushcart-prizes/

As long as You’re Happy

I don’t know what the Bible says—
my mother who died after being
mercilessly kept alive
by machines at the hospital
looked at the photo of my fiancée
and said, “As long as you’re happy . . .”
as if it were the final measure of my reach.

The star through which I shot
my young heart has little value now
except as an occasional reference point,
a piece of cosmic punctuation
some third-rate planet may depend on
to survive.

What I thought was an ethical problem
of existence was just a broken heart.
The woman for whom I have ransomed
my wife and children would like to erase
the past. I would like to gather them all,
please, under one roof, one heart.

About my mother . . .
each day the doctors and machines
told us her chances of living
with one more operation
on her overburdened heart
would probably be better.
I thought of reading the Bible then.
It wasn’t a question of being happy.

            ~ Jack Myers http://www.vqronline.org/long-youre-happy

Are You Happy?

            Eve in Paradise to Adam:   “How are we happy, still in fear of harm?” 

John Milton.  Paradise Lost.

1.

Water from the artesian well

overflows and collects in a pool.

We kneel, drink deep.

Oh, happy moment!

2.

Be here now.  Certainly. 

Smell the blossoming lilac.

Snuggle with your beloved.

In the garden, eat

the sun-warmed tomato.

Cherish the moment.

3.

No zealots among the vulnerable

tulips.  Forgive them their gaudy dress. 

Lacking the shame of moral thought,

they flirt out their brief lives.

4.

Little yellow finches flit

through the poplars

and sing, Nature’s spoiled

children protected from

the Tree of Knowledge.

They yield themselves

to Paradise.

5.

Child-animal,

think,

become human.

Oh, loss!  Oh, hunger!

Bless us.

6.

Adam was led by lofty senses

of obedience to the eternal.

Eve was the one swayed by delight

in the ephemeral, the one to look

with longing.  Thus they rebelled

against the only commandment

in Eden.  Surely a merciful law

in view of what God knew

about all that would come after. 

7.

Juice was sweet on her tongue, dripping

down her chin, when she kissed him.

She brought the dewy  fruit

to their mouths.  They chewed and licked

until their whole bodies were drenched

in the juices, until the sweetness coursed

through their blood, until it pierced the DNA.

8. 

Even at that, could we not have been saved

if she had not said, See how good?

We will not surely die?

if he had not stopped then

 to think of eternity, 

if they had not hurried

to gather the leaves?

9.  after Mary Oliver’s “Morning Poem:”

The rapist pulls

the world down

into a heap of olive leaves.

Black-painted lilies

block the trails

leading to the wells.

Pray.   

10.

What to do the with that pile

of moments that became history?

What to do with the burning eyes

approaching the rose?

11.

Are you happy?  In the after myths

of Eden, struggle through

the painted lilies, the cult-

ivation.  At the wells, drink deep,

watch the finches, fill buckets

with water for your gardens.

                    ~ Alice Bolstridge, published Maine in Print, Spring 2005, 

1^st Prize, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance  Poetry Contest.

ENVIRONMENTAL VICTORY

The Maine House of Representatives defeated the bill to weaken mining Rules, 109 to 36, a bipartisan vote.

NO MINING AT BALD MOUNTAIN

 3 LTEs from The Star Herald, 6-3-2015 

 

NO OPEN-PIT MINING ON BALD MOUNTAIN

PUBLISHED STAR HERALD 5-6-2015