Ma, I’m hurt real bad.’ Boston. April 15, 2013.
‘Ma, I’m hurt real bad.’ Boston. April 15, 2013.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author’s program note. To experience the joy of spring in New England and in its first and principal city since its inception in 1630 you must have faced and survived the very real rigors of the New England winter as only the genuine New Englander can do… resolute people… determined people… people for whom the very idea of tenacity was created.
These are the people who know the rancor in the bone rattling chill the old Atlantic has thrown at its stubborn inhabitants each wintry season since there were such inhabitants; daring them to spend yet another exacting season on this inauspicious pied-a-terre the Pilgrims audaciously decreed would be their Godly capital. And so fearing nothing but God they began, little knowing how many challenges there would be, but bolstered by the living God facing each one as it came, no matter what it was or how it seared us.
These are the kind of people who in this often grim, demanding geography built their Shining City on a Hill… these are the kind of people who sustain it. For we are a stern and rigorous people who have grown up sometimes daunted, sometimes misguided, sometimes stumbling, but always advancing… renewing… improving; even when our heart is breaking… as it most assuredly is breaking now.
For the musical accompaniment to this article, I have chosen one of the most soothing and uplifting compositions because I feel sure composer Aaron Copeland meant it especially for moments like now. This is “Appalachian Spring“, and I recommend you go now to any search engine and listen to it carefully… for if your soul has no immediate need of it, there is sure to come the day when it will.
This radiant achievement was first recorded October 7, 1945. It caught the sound of the Great Republic as she moved out of the massive burden of war and took her great place on the world stage as the one certain hope of every person who loved freedom and all its works.
One of the first recordings was made in Boston, the uneasy, restless, aspiring city where every corner, every location, every crooked, narrow lane revealed another aspect of what this place and its people had done for themselves as they forged revolution here in order to secure liberty everywhere. The world took note of Boston and knew that here important things had been done… things which might benefit them.
And so the unyielding land of New England and its principal city changed the world while admonishing the good people everywhere to see what they had done to shape the better life, urging them to do as much for themselves and to do it as well.
Into this great city of liberty came people determined to use that liberty to confound that liberty, wreak grievous havoc, and inflict mayhem and pain on a perfect April day when spirits were high and joyous and all New England was garlanded by the flowers of springtime we had all been waiting for. These people came to kill… and they did kill. Came to maim… and they did maim. Came to show what purposeful menace might do… and they did show.
Thus a mother heard in disbelief and horror what her son called on this April day to say, “Ma, I’m hurt real bad.” He had lost both legs to the people of purposeful menace. Then shortly after she learned a second son had lost both his legs, too, her dismay now complete. In this way the bright promise and happiness of the day died… to be replaced by disbelief, lamentation, and wonder that the work of so few could disrupt so many, so completely, and create so much pain. The universal question was ‘How could this happen?”
Martin Richard.
Of those killed, I felt an immediate affinity for Martin Richard. Why? Because he was a boy who wrote improving messages on poster board. What’s so important about that? Just this: I was such a boy myself and spent happy world-changing hours crafting my posters with Magic Markers like Martin, just so: school election posters, powerful lines taken from a well-thumbed “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations“, the ones designed to decorate my room (often featuring the strongest possible warnings to a younger brother who wanted in when I was determined he should stay out) and, of course, the pieces de resistance, master works laboriously created, to be displayed in presidential elections, then kept proudly for years in my clothes closet, until they, tattered, still venerated and profoundly admired, were in shreds.
He was just 8 and his latest beauty, hand-lettered as usual, said a mouthful, “No more hurting people. Peace.” It was festooned with those hard-to-make symmetrical hearts beloved of the very young and the very young in spirit. The peace symbol anchored the bottom standing alone in majesty, the better to make sure people knew it was a thing of the utmost significance and Martin’s credo.
Of course, as many different colors as the young inventive mind could conceive , were riotously used to create this baby. He reckoned that such an important message called for such an abundance of color as the world had never seen. Thus he applied his choices with verve, lavishly, restraint unthinkable.
In perhaps the last picture of Martin he stands before the world, a wisp of a lad, no heavier than a sack of potatoes as my grandfather used to say, his smile a tad sheepish, proudly showing the message that was the heart of his endeavor.
He died in an instant, his mother and sister were severely injured. And so the youthful advocate for what the world needs now became a mangled thing of blood, disfigurement, and death.
Thus he touched the world and became the very symbol for what we so desperately need and can never have enough: peace. One hopes for the existence of God, if only so that Martin Richard can abide through eternity in serenity with the peace he urged upon us all… the peace he had for himself such a little time.
4:21 p.m. Eastern. “Are you alright?”
The voice at the other end was the best of friends. “Turn on NPR at once. Are you alright?” And so the great matter was brought with urgency to my attention, by someone who watches out for me. By that time, the cell phones of the world were overwhelmed by the calls of the near, dear and concerned, all having but a single refrain: are you okay?
In such ways does love work… and if there was malice that day on the part of a handful, millions demonstrated love. And as these calls were made, so numerous that even the most sophisticated systems were overburdened and crashed, the people of Boston did what they have done since 1630 in the face of every calamity: they said a little prayer, dusted themselves off, and helped the sore afflicted as best they could until the great resources of the great city could be summoned and brought to bear.
For this is the city of the living God, as eternal as the Eternal City itself, the city the Pilgrims wrought from the inhospitable and daunting terrain, the very definition of fortitude, endurance, courage and unflinching resolution. This is the city which gave the men of ’75 the ideas that changed the course of world events and the lives of millions, including generations yet unborn.
We are the people of Boston, current custodians of her universal renown. And if our pain today is sharp, deep, and acute, we have not bowed before the unfolding tragedy. That is not the way of this place and its people even under the greatest duress. There have been great tragedies in these hallowed precincts before; there will be great tragedies again. We shall rise to every occasion, just as we have risen to this one. In this way we honor our ancestors and provide the righteous example for those who, in the fullness of time, will take on this essential burden of our greatness and humanity.
Envoi
Tragedies like this one must be remembered. Yet remembrance is difficult in a society where tragic incidents come thick and fast. We want to remember, we try to remember, but all too soon we cannot remember… and something essential is lost to us and our posterity.
Let us learn from London, a city of important incidents, people and events, all memorialized by blue historical plaques reminding us of what transpired in these critical places, each a thing which might well be forgotten if no conscious effort was made to remember. Yet remember we must for the consequences of negligence put all our crucial memories at risk… and this is unacceptable.
The past is prologue, and we must do everything to ensure that its significance is never lost. Otherwise, the senseless deaths of Martin Richard and his companions for eternity will be unmitigated, their oblivion making a great tragedy more tragic still; thereby further blighting these once perfect spring days in the city of godliness, revolution, and unceasing incident.
——————————–
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc.
providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses.
The most beautiful place in the world to die. Tyler Clementi… Dharun Ravi… the George Washington Bridge… and the necessity for remembrance
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
http://worldprofit.com
Author’s program note. Tyler Clementi was a young violinist who with his obliging instrument produced sounds that touched the heart. Given world enough and time who knows where this undeniable talent, showcased in the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Youth Orchestra, would have taken him? But because he was attracted to men rather than to women, he was never to know. And so today, I sit here in Cambridge starring at a photograph of a dead boy we cannot afford to forget, for to forget would be the real crime…
… but memory is sharp, hard, remorseless, exquisitely painful…
And so we must have Mozart. Mozart who so well understood life… and who with such grandeur enables us to cope with death…
Thus, as the occasional music to this tale I give you the Master’s Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), composed in Vienna (1791) available in any search engine… Focusing on his life, whilst never forgetting his death and uneasy spirit…
The thousands of pages dedicated to the matter of Tyler Clementi focus on when he died, how he died, why he died, and, above all, who is responsible that he died… and I shall also deal with these crucial questions. But, first and foremost, we must never lose sight of the boy at the center of this matter… for this is above all his story…
Tyler was born in 1991 in Buffalo, New York and raised in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was a good student and like so many other aspiring musicians found life, beauty, meaning and sustenance in the celestial purity of sound, often so intense as to produce exaltation, apotheosis, catharsis, ecstasy. Tyler was one of the gifted who took mere notes on a page and produced beauty… and whenever he picked up his violin that beauty was his to command…. and to give…
… and he gave freely, liberally, with the exuberance and trust of youth and a heart that sought love and meant no harm to anyone…
And so Tyler Clementi went to Rutgers, to test himself against the best of his peers… He was just 18 years old… with a mere handful of days to live. What happened next is now a matter of detailed record… why it happened will always require the judgement of Solomon and perhaps more… for the person we long to ask — Tyler himself — cannot tell us.
Dramatis personnae.
Now come the principal actors…
Tyler, his roommate Dharun Ravi, fellow hallmate Molly Wei… and the gaping worldwide community found on the Internet and without which there would have been no story, no tragedy, and a happier life for all.
Here is what happened….
On the nights of September 19 and 22, 2010 Clementi texted Ravi about using their room for the evening, a thing college students have been asking their roommates forever. On the first occasion Ravi met Clementi’s friend, an older man whom Ravi did not like. Nothing so far meant very much; surely no one thought that Tyler would be soon dead. But the mad chemistry of tragedy had started… and it fermented in the brain of Dharun Ravi.
Ravi now says, as well he might, that he wasn’t the agent provocateur for what happened, but as he stands convicted before the world, this is not surprising.
Fact: He thought it fitting and proper to use a webcam to view a portion of Clementi’s dorm-room liaison with another man… and immediately tweeted it to his list of 150 people, thus beginning its viral dissemination.
Fact: Ravi posted text messages saying “Yeah, keep the gays away” and “People are having a viewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer in this kid’s room for my roommate”, along with directions on how to view it remotely.
Fact: Ravi set up his webcam and pointed it toward’s Clementi’s bed, where it was found by police, still so pointed.
All this Tyler learned… and acted responsibly, complaining to his resident assistant and two other college officials. He also wrote in detail about these events on the “Just Us Boys” message board and the Yahoo message board. He asked for a new room, a new roommate, and for help. He was doing what he had to do and he was doing it responsibly.
But here is where things went so very wrong…
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” (Hamlet)
But something gnawed at Clementi and so 38 times following his first webcam viewing he returned… returned… and returned again and again to that bit of video that he became convinced had destroyed his life, his future, his peace of mind. He was wrong, so very wrong, but he was young, inexperienced, and, he thought alone. And that is the real tragedy…
Thus did his dark purpose commence.
8:42 PM September 22.
The cast of characters was growing now. College administrators were now involved.. Ravi was back peddling as quick as he could, minimizing what he did, why he did it, stating over and over again that he meant nothing by it, didn’t mean it, apologized for it.
But already Tyler had his foot upon a very different path… He was Hamlet now, without even knowing it:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or take arms against a sea of troubles.”
He had solved this conundrum…. tragically, finally, unnecessarily… an act of passion from a mind in turmoil. “The George Washington Bridge over the Hudson is the most beautiful bridge in the world.” Le Corbusier
And it was here Tyler Clementi came to die, that is to say to do the extremest thing in his power… to embrace oblivion. What made him do this deed of rashness, to end everything and remove the future and every joy to come? We can never know, for his final words, sent on his cell phone from the great marvel towering above him, picked out in the brightest of lights, was brief, inadequate, far too little for such an epochal event:
“Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
And so he jumped, alive for seconds still… already gone from the living, en route to eternity, the last things he saw, the dark waters of the Hudson, the explosion of light that was Manhattan. Then nothing… a dead boy of enigmas and secrets which I so long to know but never shall.
Envoi.
On March 16, 2012 now 20 year old Dharun Ravi was convicted of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, a hate crime. Wherever he goes in life, however long he lives, every day he will think on young Tyler Clementi, whose vivid memory and restive spirit will be ever present… “To die, to sleep/No more… Be all my sins remember’d.”
Related articles
- Tyler Clementi’s brother writes touching letter (cbsnews.com)
The lady from Maine laments and quits; the gentleman from Oklahoma says shoot ‘em, and we revisit the savage beating — on the Senate floor no less — of Sen. Charles Sumner by Rep. Preston Brooks
U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. There’s a whole lot of lamenting going on in Washington, D.C. It goes like this: once upon a time the Congress of the Great Republic was a genteel place where ladies and gentlemen put on their white gloves and best manners, taking tea while cozily arranging America’s affairs… thence home to a Dickens novel and well-earned slumber. The problem is that such a time never existed in the Congress of these factious United States. It’s the merest myth… for all that the poor lads and lassies who represent us yearn for such a place, such a time, and such amiable, thoughtful, sympathetic colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
And so, these folks give way to frequent tears and even more frequent sighs and vapors… with lamentations loud, frequent, poignant, heart-rending — and silly.
The most recent to give way to this “feel sorry for me” rubbish is the lady from Maine, senior Republican Senator Olympia Snowe. On February 28, 2012 the Honorable Olympia announced her inability to stomach the poisonous, internecine, downright nasty senatorial environment for another term. And so, lamenting, petulant, self-pitying, she said “basta!”… and started packing her valises with the accumulated treasures and heirlooms — not to mention the pensions and emoluments — of over 33 years in Congress. These will be substantial indeed.
As for me, I cannot find a single tear for the lady, rather the reverse. She says she was armed for another campaign, had money aplenty to fight the good fight… but she clearly lacked the stomach for so much closeness to her feisty and outspoken Mainers. Senators are revered, coddled, kowtowed to in Washington, D.C. Back home amidst the problems and bleakness of Portland, they are asked, insistently too, just what have you done for us lately, Missie… and you’d better have a detailed answer at the ready. Demigods like Senator Olympia find such directness rude, and long for fragrant camomile in a fragile cup of Old Worcester while aides fan her with cooling air…. unlimited incense… and deference to every word and wish.
Ms. Olympia says she’s a Greek from Spartan stock… and while that might have been true 30 years ago in her elected salad days, it is most assuredly true no longer. She’s gone Athenian, and now demands reverence, not the stark choice of returning with her shield — or on it. And so she must retire… because she is no longer able to fight the good fight for Maine, for Mainers, and for the Great Republic which needs visionaries, fighters, not aging voluptuaries who crave comfort, not confrontation.
Enter Congressman John Sullivan (R-Oklahoma).
February 22, 2012 Representative Sullivan made a few red-blooded observations during one of his regular “town hall” meetings with constituents. The subject was how to get the Senate of the Great Republic to get serious, I mean really serious, about balancing the out-of-control federal budget.
“I’d love to get them /the senators/ to vote for it. Boy, I’d love that, you know. But other than me going over there with a gun and pointing it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them, I don’t feel they’re going to listen unless they get beat.”
Cornered by the ever present Thought Police, Representative Sullivan, that able and forthright member for Tulsa, backed down. He didn’t mean it….shouldn’t have said it… certainly didn’t imagine… and would never, ever do… You get the picture. The Honorable John was tripping over himself, back pedaling to beat the band. But why?
After all, he is far more what we actually want in our elected representatives, even while we say we prefer the Olympia model. No, we want our reps to represent us robustly, directly, rudely, shrewdly, without limits … because unless they do that our share of the pie — and the extra bucks we covet — will go to others more able to bring home the bacon than our shrinking violets… and that will never do.
The great example of Representative Preston Brooks.
In 1856, the great issue of the day was slavery. It was a question which overshadowed all others. It was intractable, divisive, perhaps insoluble… certainly unavoidable. And because moderates could not prevail in resolving the matter, it was left to the zealots on both sides to see what they could do, using whatever means they chose to use.
And so on May 18, 1856 the Honorable Charles Sumner, the Senator from Massachusetts, arose to see what he could do to resolve the irresolvable… his vehicle being his great speech “The Crime Against Kansas” given to ensure that slavery did not encroach into the Kansas Territory and so augment the South and the slave owners he despised.
It was a great speech in every way — 50 single-spaced pages in length, a detailed analysis of the problem, the most brilliant, vituperative language; language meant to insult, to scald, to enrage, with a position that absolutely no one could misunderstand, whatever side they supported.
Picture the scene. Not a cup of camomile to be seen.
Great Sumner rises sustained by sanctimony, rectitude and rage; each word is sonorous, delivered with venom, designed to sting, outrage, rebuke, condemn, no quarter asked, none given.
And so this man of Harvard, of Boston, of Massachusetts, this man of certainty, no doubt or hesitation rose to challenge the nation and to reshape the Great Republic.
Every eye was on the man, a mere man no longer, but the agent of a stern, implacable God, God the Avenger, majestic, awe-inspiring, I Am that I Am.
“Mr. President,” he began, “You are now called to redress a great transgression.”
And every word that followed in that vast torrent of words beat home this point.
There was no note of accommodation, no politics as usual, nothing less than total victory would do.
In the course of this great philippic, which ultimately saw one million copies distributed, Senator Sumner attacked Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, not just the man or his ideas but his stroke-impaired physique. It was brutal, it was hurtful; it was insulting… and a few days later inspired the Senator’s outraged nephew, South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks to enter the Senate Chamber and, with his gutta-percha cane with solid gold knob, beat Sumner insensate, even when Sumner was comatose, lying in his puddling blood.
So did immoderate Sumner make his case…so did immoderate Brooks retaliate.
And so was the Congress of the Great Republic shortly peopled by representatives carrying devices of every kind, guns, knives, and of course the gutta-percha sticks with gold knobs made fashionable — or abhorrent — by this incident which moved the Civil War appreciably closer.
That is why, Senator Snowe, your decision to leave is a bad decision. The people of Maine need you.. the Congress needs you… the Great Republic still has great need of your services. No, it is not convenient for you; not least because you must present yourself again to your constituents, and, being Mainers, they will question you closely, for they are no respecters of persons and so may affront you. What of it? You have the Great Republic’s work to do. And that is far more important and pressing than your own personal feelings or comfort. They count for nothing against what you can do, must do and cannot abandon now.
Thus I give you this song, “John Brown’s Body”, a rousing tune which arose from the American camp meeting tradition in the early 19th century and, after many changes of words, became the marching tune for people who understood the implementation of Truth was a long, difficult, often dangerous process. Go now to any search engine and find the rendition you like… and bookmark it, for you will have need of it in the work ahead:
“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave His soul’s marching on.”
And so must you, too, Senator Olympia Snowe, for your work for the people is most assuredly not finished yet.
Dedication: The author is pleased to dedicate this work to Joshua Aaron Sumner and Roshelle Elena Sumner, descendants of the magnificent Yankee who alerted the world to “The Crime Against Kansas,” children of dear friend, Lance Sumner, fellow Internet argonaut.
—————————————————————
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today.
Republished With Authors permission
By Brian Armstrong
My $5. Marketing system really works
http://m5as.com/268
Jobless rate drops to 8.5%… Obama winks at Michelle and does his happy dance… O! Mamma!
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
It is Saturday, January 7, 2012 as I write. The nation’s air waves and print publications are filled with stories about Republicans. About today’s flash-in-the-pan former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum… about the Boston Globe endorsing former Utah governor and U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman over Boston’s not-so-favorite son former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Bummer, but what can you expect from that crowd anyway?
Despite that little drawback, it’s the Romney people who are cock-a-hoop this morning not only because they are ecstatic to be running against a pigmy like Santorum, whose friends and neighbors in Pennsylvania refused him — and by a huge number — a third U.S. senate term. Even better today’s latest poll results show Romney still romping to an avalanche in the crucial New Hampshire primary, and, lordy, lordy, way out in front in what could be the make-or-break primary in South Carolina. I hear Mitt’s got all those toothsome boys of his learning to deliver a winsome a cappella version of “Hail to the Chief.” Cute.
If all this is so — and I assure you it is — why did one Barrack Obama, after seeing a certain news item on the front page of all the newspapers he reads with voracity, take Michelle in his arms and whirl her about the breakfast room letting those delicious blueberry scones he loves get cold?
It’s because of this single number: 8.5%. And you don’t have to be a political junkie to know what it means: It’s the latest piece of welcome news… in what is getting to be a lengthening string of such news… because every time the jobless rate drops the political fortunes of Barrack Obama go up. Let’s review the facts that make the First Mom and Dad so awfully cheerful, even giddy.
8.5% unemployment means the lowest rate in almost 3 years.
Barrack Obama is a very fortunate man, a man who can say to America, with complete factual accuracy, too, that “You’ve never — at least in my Administration — had it so good.”
The nation added a tidy 200,000 jobs in December, 2011, a burst of hiring that drove the unemployment rate down to its lowest point in just under 3 years. Tra la!
Moreover, December was the sixth straight month that the economy added at least 100,000 jobs, the longest such streak since 2006. As a result of this happy-making data, more and more practitioners of the dismal science have resoundingly concluded there’s a dance in the old dame America yet.
What makes a weak and vulnerable president purr with contentment?
Just this. The unemployment rate declined to 8.5% from 8.7% in November, and 9.1 percent at the start of 2011. The jobless rate peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009.
These numbers made Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands, positively rapturous. “There is more horsepower to this economy than most believe. The stars are aligned right for a meaningful economic recovery.” Obama when he read this was heard to mutter “From your lips to God’s ear” and beamed a mega-watt smile that had been little seen throughout the early days of his watch.
More good news.
But heart-warming though all these data were to the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they were only a portion of the good news arising from grass roots America. For instance, the nation added 1.6 million jobs in 2011, on top of 940,000 added in 2010. Mind you, more than 8,000,000 jobs were lost in the Great Recession that began in December, 2007… but this figure was History (and therefore of no interest) whereas the jobs added were very much about the present and give the President credibility when he launches into a rousing rendition of Franklin Roosevelt’s iconic ditty, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” the tune that always means we have something good to smile about, wide and broad, and which you can find in any search engine, to play along with this article.
The pretzeling of presidents; their dexterity with astonishing contortions.
Now President Obama knows… every Republican presidential candidate knows… every member of the Congress knows, whatever party they adhere to, that the good news is only part of the report, but what’s a politician for if he can’t take a crumb and turn it into a bakery?
Take this bothersome conclusion, for instance, the considered opinion of Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He said just a couple of days ago that he expects the economy to grow modestly this year — 2 to 3 percent — despite signs of building momentum.
The reason for this deflating opinion is that households and small businesses were especially hard hit during the recent economic turbulence now widely called the Great Recession. Until these sectors improve and get distance from their particular issues of foreclosure and falling house prices, the recovery won’t be as glittering as you can be sure Obama and the Democrats will paint it. You can be equally sure Mitt Romney will be assiduous, morning and eve, about pointing out this and every lapse from the strict Truth.
Keep in mind that Mitt, too, is a close reader of these data and learned predictions. And more to the point, as a business wunderkind, practiced in high level (and very lucrative) leggerdomaine, he is the more likely to glean helpful suggestions and ideas from what he sees than Obama, who was a mere lawyer (albeit, like Mitt, Harvard trained.)
Thus, whatever Rosengren and his ilk recommend, Mitt will (with alacrity) recommend… while strongly censoring Obama and his minions for not having acted. Rosengren wants the Obama Administration to do more to stimulate the economy…. Mitt does, too, whilst Obama (whatever he has done) has done it too little, too late. Rosengren says the housing market and small business should be a particular focus, because these two sectors have traditionally lead the nation out of recession and unemployment… but not this time round. Mitt says ominously that is because of Obama’s ineptitude and lack of vision. Obama will point to what he has done for those folks… who were always in his mind,his heart, and his political calculus. He well knows he needs these people, especially with the acute disappointment and chagrin of Blacks, Liberals, and young voters (with high unemployment rates) who were once wild for Barrack but now mutter darkly about how they were hoodwinked and deceived by their hero and his mastery of high sounding, flatulent rhetoric.
And so it will go, ad nauseam, until our can’t-come-quickly-enough-for-me November Election Day confirms what most of us already feel in our bones…
… that the President will defeat Mitt in a solid but not overwhelming victory.
… that both houses of the Congress will be comfortably Republican.
… that Obama’s second term will be in such slow motion and so undistinguished you’ll think the White House Sleeping Beauty’s castle, all asleep.
What then should der Mittster do, when he’s handed the worthless presidential nomination of his splintered party? Easy. He should tell the truth, the straight-forward, unvarnished truth about where this country is going and offer SPECIFIC proposals of the type congenial to policy wonks like him. In this role the Romney too few like to make him President will become respected and even admired, his considerable merits at last put to proper and significant work, saving America as he once saved the Olympics; greatly honored by all who love the Great Republic and wish her Godspeed.
*** What do you think? Your comments are invited below.
_____________________________________
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today.
Republished with author’s permission.
By Brian Armstrong
http://smarthomebusinesssolutions.info
Indiana governor Mitch Daniels February 1, 2012 signs first right-to-work law in over 10 years… the key is that it’s for a crucial state in the ‘rust belt’.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. When I was a little whippersnapper 60 years ago and more, my young father used to take me on his knee, his only very occasionally used guitar in hand and sing me a song that I hadn’t thought of in all these years. It’s the kind of childhood memory that comes at you when you’re least expecting, bittersweet, tugging at your heart. Now I just cannot get it out of my mind…
The song is the “Wabash Cannonball” originally written in 1882 as “The Great Rock Island Route”, a happy-go-lucky number credited to one J.A. Roff. In 1904 William Kindt rewrote the lyrics, changing the name of the train to the “Wabash Cannonball”.
It’s a pip of a tune with a chorus that makes you glad to be alive…
“Now listen to the jingle, and the rumble, and the roar, As she dashes thro’ the woodland, and speeds along the shore, See the mighty rushing engine, hear her merry bell ring out, As they speed along in safety, on the ‘Wabash Cannonball’.”
… named after the great American main street town of….. Wabash, Indiana, its claim to fame the fact that in 1880 it became the first electrically lighted city on Earth. It is the center of the center state of America, the state that has just tossed a stink bomb into the politics of the Great Republic with its brand-new right-to-work law.
Get into the spirit of this article by going to any search engine, finding one of the many excellent versions; (I prefer the one by Johnny Cash)…. then let ‘er rip…. because you’re riding the rails through the great American heartland, once so prosperous, the pride of the nation, now blighted in so many disheartening ways.
Born in 1947.
In the year of our Lord 1947, at least two significant things occurred: I was born… and the Congress of the Great Republic resoundingly overrode the adamant veto of President Harry S. Truman on a matter of resolute importance to unions. The result was the Taft-Hartley Act, a haymaker by the Republican Party that punched a gaping hole in the closed union shop, thereby providing the U.S. labor movement with an abiding grievance and red-meat for a million stump speeches and union halls. Here’s what Taft-Hartley did to the prevailing National Labor Relations Act.
NLRA dictated that all employees at unionized workplaces must be members of the union as a condition of employment. It turned employee coercion into union power… and as such became a critical component of what transformed the disorganized, scattered Democratic Party into the majority party that ruled the Great Republic under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman for 20 years, with still major influence today.
The politics of the matter went like this: To wed the millions of laboring people to his governing coalition, Roosevelt cut a series of deals with union leaders, including giving them the right of introducing the closed shop, wherein every worker — whatever their personal views and politics — was forced to join the union… and finance it with their dues.
This gave the unions raw political power and Democrats a leg-up for local, state, and federal elections where this muscle delivered victory after victory. But it also created an outraged, seething menace from people who didn’t like Roosevelt (and despised Truman)… patriots who vociferously demanded to know how such coercion, the stuff of Red revolution and godless Communism, could possibly be justified in the Land of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.
One side said that employee coercion, fueling union power, brought good jobs and the realization of the American dream… the other demanded liberty and unfettered freedom of choice. Both arguments had valid points… which made the resulting battle bloody, bitter, protracted and internecine, a bona fide civil war… which Indiana has now re-opened, to the outrage of the unions…
The matter was further complicated because of the unconcealed contempt the leaders of each side felt for their opponents, dictated by the unyielding, abiding, fathomless scorn and disdain of Senator Robert Taft (R-Ohio) (1889-1953) for President Truman. “To err is Truman,” Mrs. Taft said… The words Senator Taft used are unprintable. No quarter asked for, no quarter given by anyone, war to the death.
Taft-Hartley became the crucial weapon in that war.
Taft-Hartley outlawed the closed shop. The union shop rule, which required all new employees to join the union after a minimum period of time, is also illegal. As such, it is illegal for any employer to force an employee to join a union.
Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act goes further and authorizes individual states (but not local governments such as cities and counties) to outlaw union (as well as so-called agency) shops. Under the open shop rule, an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can the employee be fired if he joins the union. In other words, the employee has the right to work, regardless of whether or not he is a member or financial contributor to such a union.
22 states ban “forced unionism”… 27 states and the District of Columbia do not.
Proponents of right-to-work laws, based on freedom of association, went to work with a will signing up one state after another. The states they persuaded reads like the playbook of the Republican Party, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. There the great roll call of right-to-work states stopped, until now… with the adhesion of Indiana.
Why did Indiana act now… and why does it matter?
The signature tune of the people they call Hoosiers is “Back Home Again In Indiana” (1917) … and there’s nothing more domestic, more American, more representative of the Great Republic, than these sane, decent, responsible folk. They are the very salt of the Earth, the bedrock of who we are and what we believe in. And these folks in recent years have watched as the land — and lifestyle they love — diminish, as one job after another ends, so many shipped overseas, all gone forever. And as the jobs left, their outrage and despair waxed.
To sustain the people, to maintain the land, there must be jobs… and so the people demanded jobs… seeing the bloated unions no longer as job providers but as menaces to their revival and reconstruction. Their representatives (in the persons of the majority Republican Party in the legislature) heard this plea… and essentially said by their actions that Indiana, to compete again and prosper again, must be prepared to face economic facts, no matter how unpleasant. Thus, unions must give back, divest, rethink… instead of merely waving placards, opposing this, blocking that, fulminating, never solving. For the issue here is and always will be the welfare of the people, not merely the welfare of the unions.
Thus the unions face the growing disbelief in towns like Wabash that they are not up to the job at hand, the job of making Indiana, a key industrial state, livable again. And so as the unions argue against their fate in Indiana, the “Wabash Cannonball” surges anew… to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois… an engine of change for a nation that needs it, the ghost of Senator Robert Taft riding in triumph.
“Oh, the Eastern states are dandy, so the Western people say Chicago, Rock Island, St. Louis by the way To the lakes of Minnesota where the rippling waters fall No changes to be taken on the Wabash Cannonball.” All aboard…
** We invite you to submit your comments below.
______________________________
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Details at worldprofit.com
Republished by Brian Armstrong
http://smarthomebusinesssolutions.info