Rick Bryson will represent we the people

May 3, 2016 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments
Rick Bryson, candidate for Congress in North Carolina District 11.

Rick Bryson, candidate for Congress in North Carolina District 11.

This really is a first for me, announcing in public my support for a Congressional candidate.

I spent 30 years as a newspaper reporter, then six years running a nonprofit, so it was inappropriate for me to support candidates officially and openly.

But this year, I’m speaking up. We can’t allow the reign of the right-wing to continue, and Mark Meadows is about as far to the right as a person can get. Our option in 2014 was another candidate who stands far to the right on issues such as women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and true religious freedom (he is blatantly anti-Muslim).

This time, we have a chance to vote for someone who truly has decent human values. He believes, as I do, that anyone who works a 40-hour week should be able to pay their bills without government help. That means we need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. If we do that, we won’t need to pay for food stamps or rent subsidies for people who work full-time.

Bryson believes that access to quality health care should be a basic human right and that we can’t allow the Affordable Care Act to be diminished; instead we need to add to its protections by making access to care universal. He points out that the pharmaceutical industry has four lobbyists for each member of Congress. I don’t imagine the health insurance industry is far behind.

Bryson wants to see more support for public education, not less. He wants an intelligent electorate with decent critical-thinking skills. That’s not what Mark Meadows wants; he has supported privatizing education.

We have become very adept at blaming the victim in this country by labeling people who need help as “takers,” but these people are left behind by bad public policy, and the corporate shills who sit in Congress now are only too happy to take more away from working people and give it to the super-wealthy by privatizing public programs like Social Security and Medicaid.

The people here in Western North Carolina have suffered the loss of thousands of good manufacturing jobs, many of them with union protections, which have been replaced with low-wage jobs. The state has been able to force workers into these jobs by cutting unemployment compensation to the bone and shortening its duration.

Rick Bryson proposes a project similar to the Research Triangle, but sprinkling it across Western North Carolina. He calls the plan Generation NOW. It would bring higher wage telecommunications, clean energy, bio-medicine, agribusiness, computer modeling, recreation, design, and other similar jobs to the region.

Anyone who knows me knows my most passionate issue is health care, but we can’t fix health care and nothing else.

I find Rick Bryson’s stands on all the issues to be reasonable and kind. He is intelligent and articulate, and he loves these mountain communities because he has deep, deep roots here. His family has been here for generations (Bryson City is named for them).

I can’t think of anyone who would represent the people of District 11 better than he will.

The best way any of us can help is to turn out on June 7 (early voting starts May 26) and vote in the primary. We can do this if we work together, and if we don’t, we stand to lose a lot more than an election in November.

 

More insanity from the anti-life league in Raleigh

September 28, 2015 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments
A North Carolina EBT, of "food stamp" card.

A North Carolina EBT, or “food stamp,” card.

The powers that be in Raleigh have, in the last few years, decided that health care, unemployment compensation, voting rights and education are not necessary for life.

Now they have added food to the list.

As though the passage of a budget that pretty much starves the mental health system out of existence weren’t bad enough, a bill before the General Assembly now would take away food stamps from more than 105,000 adults in the state.

Under federal law, states can suspend work-related time limits on federal food aid in areas with persistently high levels of unemployment. In July, the state applied for this waiver for 77 of its 100 counties because of a severe lack of jobs available in those counties.

The bill before the senate now would ban the state from pursuing this option permanently, no mater how poorly local economies are faring or whether employment and training opportunities actually exist in those counties.

This is one more anti-life measure in the criminalization of poverty by the very people whose policies make it nearly impossible for people to climb out of poverty.

My friend, Sen. Terry Van Dyun (D., Buncombe County), told me recently that her colleague, Sen. Ralph Hise (R., Mitchell County), called people in need of health care lazy.

“He told me they should get off their butts and get a job that offers health care or make enough money to qualify for insurance through the marketplace,” she said.

People who work at minimum-wage jobs can’t afford to pay their bills and buy food. It’s as simple as that. It takes more than double minimum wage to sustain even the most frugal lifestyle — no eating out, no cable TV, no movies or night clubbing, just the most basic apartment, an old car (if you can afford one at all) and the most basic phone service.

North Carolina is a mostly rural state with a few higher-density population areas. It is the seventh hungriest state in the nation. In rural counties, people can’t find high-paying jobs. They might work at a Dollar Store or a Burger King, but they won’t make a living wage in these places and they won’t get a 40-hour work week.

In a city like Asheville, service industry jobs are plentiful, but they don’t pay well, and housing costs are high. That means many people don’t earn enough to make ends meet.

I would ask you to call your state senator if you live in North Carolina, but they have shown no evidence that they care about us or what we think. They feel safe in their gerrymandered districts and they are arrogant enough to believe they can do as they please in all matters.

It looks as though the only way to stop these consistently anti-life policies is to put up candidates in 2016 and fight to unseat all of those who don’t care about us or our well-being.

If you aren’t registered to vote, if you don’t vote because you don’t think it will make a difference, you are part of the problem here. If you care about human life, get off your ass and vote in the primaries and in the general election.

 

Working harder for less money

July 31, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

From the NC Budget & Tax Center

In North Carolina at least (and I suspect in many other states), this so-called economic recovery has come slowly — slower than the previous three recessions in 1981, 1990 and 2001,  especially when it comes to jobs.

Our “job creators” are asking the people who work for them to work harder and then rewarding them by paying them less, according to a new report by the Budget & Tax Center at the NC Justice Center (http://www.ncjustice.org/sites/default/files/BTC-Brief-Working-Hard—Economy-Hardly-Working-Final.pdf).

According to the report: “Unlike in previous recoveries, productivity gains after the Great Recession have been transferred to capital income distributed to shareholders from corporate profits, rather than going to increased wages or new-job creation. As job creation has lagged amidst continuing high unemployment, the growing pool of jobless people in search of work has only increased competition for scarce jobs and served to drive wages down even further—more than 4 percent since the end of the recession in 2009.”

In other words, corporations are keeping the money and asking people to work harder and harder — or lose their jobs.

Already, the productivity of US workers is the highest in the world, but Big Money wants more from the workers, and they’re getting away with paying less — 4.2 percent less in North Carolina.

Three years ago, I attended an economic summit where a financial expert predicted the job market was about to boom because the productivity rate was so high and corporations were sitting on nearly $2 trillion dollars.

Well, corporations are still sitting on their money and workers are still being asked to do the jobs of two or three people and to be grateful they have a job at all.

From the NC Budget & Tax Center

What’s worst is that wages are falling fastest for the lowest-earning workers — the very people who need wage increases the most.

It’s starting to look a little like indentured servitude.

Since 2009, increasing inequality in pay has caused a significant drop in wages among the lowest fifth of earners, whose pay dropped 7 percent (from $10.18 to $9.47 an hour, according to the report), while the top fifth of earners experienced the same 4.2 percent drop as median earners.

America’s wealthiest claim they need more tax breaks to create more jobs; I think this report is evidence that all they want is more money.

 

When jobs mattered

August 5, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

I went to Cleveland, Tenn., this week to watch my granddaughter dance in a national competition, and on the way back I decided to do a little sightseeing.

US Route 74 travels along the Oconee River for awhile, the site of three dams built in the 1930s by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The first one (the westernmost) is the biggest, so I stopped to look and take a couple of pictures.

Standing by the map of the TVA dams was an older man who was telling everyone how his father helped to build this and several other dams in the region. He pointed some of the dams out, describing the work his father had done.

“Got to the point he knew as much about building dams as anyone,” he said. “He was gone a lot, but we had food and a place to live.”

Building these dams and other projects, including the Blue Ridge Parkway, were a way to put people back to work during the Great Depression.

The jobless rate now is approaching what it was then, if you count all the people who have been unemployed longer than 99 weeks and aren’t part of the statistics, plus the people who have had their hours cut back from 30 to 10 because they work part-time and have no bargaining rights. And let’s not forget the people who are working at menial jobs for $8 an hour because they can’t find anything in their field.

Last week, Congress and the President made matters worse by codifying the Republican desire to withhold money and services from the people who need them instead of increasing taxes on people who can well afford to pay.

There will be no TVA for this job crisis, no Works Progress Administration, Blue Ridge Parkway or schools construction. The current Congress believes it’s better to squeeze the poor and let our nation’s infrastructure crumble, our electrical grid disintegrate and our people starve.

If we don’t care that people are losing their homes at an alarming rate and that children are going to bed hungry, then we ought to care about national security. How can we as a nation compete in a global market when our roads and bridges are unsafe and our electrical grid antiquated? Our children’s education is lacking and it’s getting worse as budgets are cut at the local, state and national levels.

Once upon a time, we cared that people were out of work and that we needed a better power grid and roads. We spent money on those things and built a great nation that could compete and even excell on every level. We trained engineers and laborers and we built roads, dams and electrical lines. These jobs weren’t just busy-work, they were important, and much of the word done during the 1930s stands today as a testament to the power of government to make people’s lives better.

It’s awe-inspiring to look at the Oconee 1 Dam and know that families were housed and fed because of the honest work its construction provided.

Today, the richest Americans hoard their wealth and ignore the needs of working people as the nation crumbles around them.

Patriotic? I thimk not

The budget deal is a raw deal for Americans

August 1, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

So, we have a “deal” to precent the United States from defaulting on its debts.

I might be willing to call it a deal made in good faith if the thing had contained any tax increases on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, or maybe if it had closed a few tax loopholes on big corporations.

But the last-minute deal to raise the debt ceiling — which many Constitutional scholars say is unconstitutional itself — did nothing for everyday Americans. It tied the hands of those in Congress who do give a damn about the jobless, homeless and sick people in this country, making it nearly impossible to do anything to help those in need.

And the crisis it averted was manufactured by right-wing idealogues to disable the government’s ability to do its job.

They keep talking about the debt as though it’s the most important thing and it isn’t. The most important thing right now is to get the economy back on its feet.

The Tea Party has won another victory in its effort to destroy our Democracy, and the rest of us have nothing to be happy about.

Why President Obama refused to just sign an executive order to raise the debt ceiling using the authority of the 14th Amendment, I don’t know. It seems he’s afraid of offending the very people who are destroying his presidency and this nation.

The economy is a mess because of hedge fund traders and other immoral, greedy Wall Street executives, who continue to make record profits and pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. They manage to villify people who are out of work and those who work harder and harder for less and less of the economic pie, they control the message to the point that many Americans believe they themselves are at fault for the troubles.

And President Obama caves to them as though he’s being blackmailed.

This deal is not good news. It’s more of what’s destroying us. I think it borders on treason.

Remember what Krushchev said …

April 18, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living Comments Off on Remember what Krushchev said …

By Pulitzer Prize-winnning cartoonist Matt Davies. Read more at http://davies.lohudblogs.com/

Back in the late 1950s, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev said the Communists wouldn’t have to invade the United States because it would take itself down from the inside.

I imagine he thought it would come sooner, but that day isn’t far off. With the Tea Party threatening not to allow the debt ceiling to be raised, our creditors are getting a little scared.

Financial ratings firm Standard & Poor’s moved the nation’s outlook from positive to negative, causing Treasury Bonds to fall this morning because our creditors are worried that the government has no long-term fiscal policy.

Both President Obama and the Tea Party-backed Republicans in Congress have plans to reduce the deficit by up to $4 trillion over the next decade, but they’re nothing alike, and the Republicans have shown their unwillingness to negotiate on anything.

Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan cuts everything but the military, and it pretty much strangles Medicare. It also preserves the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while shredding the safety net that protects our most vulnerable people from catastrophe.

Their games can only result in skittish creditors and increased interest rates, which will cost us more and more.

After the announcement, the Dow Jones industrial average was 230.53 points, or 1.87 percent lower, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined 23.45 points, or 1.78 percent. The technology heavy Nasdaq lost 55.81 points, or 2 percent.

That doesn’t sound too severe, perhaps, but the announcement is serious. Our leaders have to come together to address these financial problems, and cutting off aid to the poor while letting the wealthy cruise isn’t the answer.

We’re still not creating jobs (Where are the jobs you promised, Mr. Boehner?), and people are exhausting their unemployment benefits every week.

Things are only going to get worse until we have some good-faith negotiations about the budget and about jobs.