RIGHT OUT OF DICKENS

PBS programming has featured Charles Dickens programming  this month in honor of his 200th birthday, or some such hallmark of accomplishment, and they’ve proved to be very popular programs indeed. Maybe because there are parallels to today’s social and political system? From the early 1600′s, in merry olde England, destitute people were cared for with money raised by a tax on their neighbor parishioners. A parish was a unit of combined religious and political authority. The parish distributed money or food to the poor, who were allowed to remain in their homes and maintain some dignity. Parishes recognized that caring for their poor people was a public responsibility and that it was in the best interests of all to look after their poor neighbors.

Large estate owners always had the upper hand in things from Napoleonic times,  passing laws that favored the rich, keeping peasant people in control enough to just let them get by. (Middle class).  Even though wealth and avarice controlled  the legal system and always had, during the Industrial Revolution  the ranks of the poor grew steeply and the growing poor became an outrageous nuisance. Thus The Poor Law of 1834  was passed, and instituted  debtors prisons, and being poor became  a crime. (Not unlike our homeless today).   Dickens’ father, who temporarily fell on hard times, was dropped out of the middle class and locked up in a debtors prison along with thousands of others.  Oh, the wonder of   government at work. It didn’t reduce the number of poor, of course, but the cost of caring for them was reduced by 36 per cent. A great accomplishment!   Our prisons are full, too, but not from the ranks of  “white collar” criminals. That designation of  “white collar” is interesting. It is a division of class, where the rich and powerful are treated differently than the common man.  Not much has changed. Our prisons are mostly  filled with uneducated, poor black men.

The rich really didn’t care about the abject misery they had created, then.  And our current political climate is determined to stomp the middle class into the ground and make laws to keep them there. I know many people who vote against their own best interests. The purveyors of wealth and avarice can make you believe we can run this country today, on the same amount of taxes we paid thirty years ago, while our infrastructure is falling apart, our educational institutions can’t find enough doctors, nurses and teachers to fill our needs,  and immigration is blamed for our problems instead of the rich, congressional shareholders.  Americans pay billions of dollars over cost for their health care,  and our political system runs on a steady stream of corporate money. That money never trickles down to our pockets. The 99% are desperately trying to change that, but without a free press (you only think it is free), the battle they are waging is a drop of water in an ocean of contempt. Not much about government has changed since Dickens.
But, there was a time of honorable intentions, insisting that all men were created equal. Unfortunately, they aren’t, and they weren’t treated equally, either. Despite the fact the preamble to our constitution states in part that our government was organized for:  “…the general welfare of the people.”

THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT

Yesterday, my congressional candidate brother, Will, visited  Cousin Gary visiting from Southern, CA. Gary had never been to an Occupy Wall Street protest because, as he put it, “I’m not interested in closing ports and businesses where people have jobs. And, I don’t want to lay down in the street.”

He also confessed to not quite understanding what the point is. While vitriolic radio show hosts criticize and condemn the movement as pointless and leaderless, I notice that all National news organizations are covering this movement- because  it has legs.  As one local protester, Rick Mines put it, “Protesting the concentration of wealth and power held by less than 1 percent of the population is an effort to  save capitalism.  Capitalism has to be fair,”  (And I would add regulated.)
You can’t compete when some guy is putting $100 million down to put a  Supreme Court Justice in place, or when 80% of congress regards their major job in governing is to get rich by way of  hand-outs, insider trading, and million dollar jobs when they leave. I take heart because the long term apathy among the general population is finally over. You couldn’t get people to take to the streets. That has changed all over the world as well as  in our highly conservative mountain counties, Tuolumne, Calaveras and Amador.

It was a small band on a cold December evening during the busy Christmas season. Two young students were there. The only other woman said to me, “In our county we are all part of the 99%. We don’t have any concentration of wealthy here. But, it is still important to let people know, its time to take a stand and we desperately need change and jobs and a robust middle class.”

This sign speaks to an issue that may be more important than the government laws that tilt toward the wealthy.  It is a slippery slope to a fascist state when we weaken our first amendment rights.  There are many good things in the NDAA, like protections for whistleblowers. But, we are not to know if sub-par maintenance of our airplanes is a factor in crash. We cannot know who contributed what to the congressional committee people overseeing the granting of government contracts. On any contract,  any savings realized cannot be directed to the National Debt once the money has been set aside and is not used for that project. No clue to where that money WILL go. Suspected terrorists will not have the same rights of trial, detention, and ability to defend themselves as we do now. There are good things in the act, but  many slippery areas. The idea to audit the Defense Department Budget was soundly rejected. Hmmm. It’s on-line. Read it.