RE Scott Protestors at the Marriott

I was one of the SCOTT protestors at the Marriott. What I saw was teachers, firemen, families, union workers, working people with concerns about the cuts to the DRUG DATABASE, and people protesting cuts to the care for the Homeless and the elderly. People worried about the environment, people worried that dissolving the Department of the ENvironment into the Development Department will speed the destruction of what's left of Florida's Environment.

Protestors object to Scotts refusal to Fund The Pill-Mill Database

The current GOV. showed whose agenda he served when he chose to address a Tea Party Rally when he rolled out his budget.

I find it a very sad fact that the same people who say, we must all share the burden, of the results of the Mortgage Speculators, and the Banking Speculators and now the Petroleum Speculators, but insist that the price must be paid only by the working people and the poor. The RICH, get tax benefits and the working poor get to carry society's burdens. The RICH get tax cuts, the poor get to suck it up. How is that sharing the burdens?

I stood at the entrance way, to the Marriott were the limos and well heeled drove in to visit with their pet governor. 

I saw happy faces, of people engaged in the dialogue of democracy. I saw concerned faces of people worried about their jobs, their neighbors, their children. I saw no one yelling angrily at the inbound fat-cats, I saw no one trying to block the driveway. I saw among over 400 people protesting, not one angry face, except, on the faces in the fancy cars. They were angry, they wanted us to just disappear.

There were two county police checking cars entering the Marriott parkinglot, but there were no confrontations at all. I saw over four hundred people standing up to be heard. More democracy than you might see inside. Where the congratulatory backslapping, stood more for PURCHASED POWER of the PLUTOCRATS than anything resembling democracy.

CUT TAXES for the RICH, and Funding Cuts for firemen and women, TAX BREAKS FOR LIMOS and PRIVATE PLANES, reduced funds for libraries and the Unemployed. How is that fair?

It's fair, like the republicans in Wisconsin, using legislative tricks to GUT Workers Rights, Fair like Utah's republicans repealing Government in the Sunshine Regulations, so corruption covered up, and simultaneously retrieving any documents will be prohibitively expensive.

How is TAX CUTS for the WEALTHY and funding cuts in schools, libraries sharing the pain? And why have the speculators, not only benefitted from their fraud and theft? But then been given TAXPAYERS BAILOUTS? for our losses?  Does anyone actually believe that Mortgage Bankers and CREDIT CARD COMPANIES write page after page of fine print - to help YOU?

The people were standing outside the Marriott to say NO to tax cuts for the wealthy and wage and benefit cuts for working people. We were there to tell Scott, we know crime when we see it. Why is he fighting the people's vote to end Gerrymandering - Enforce don't Thwart Amendments 5 and 6. 

Let the INDICTMENTS BEGIN! 

ORIGINAL COMMENT

Upon learning that Obama will join Jebby at a Charter School in Miami

Jeb, (the smart one)

Known by those of us, who paid attention as Governor "Nefarious".
(He used the word to describe his own plan, to thwart the public will on Pupil-Teacher Ratio)

Mr. Nefarious, will join the Constitutional Lawyer, Community Activist president while they laud the decimation of the Public School System at a charter school in Miami.
 
Tell me what is inevitable, if a pre-purchased Congress refuses to tax the hand that feeds them? What will happen if they continue to refuse to tax their corporate PAYMASTERS?
 
Why is it UNFAIR for the public to pay for modest retirement pensions but it's totally fair for Banks and Credit Corporations to gouge the same public so that their CEOs can get Million Dollar Bonuses? And then bank the tax funded bailouts to keep them wash in the luxurious style that would pay the pensions of tens of thousands? I know of no union man or women getting a million dollar pension.

How  will they wring the funds for crumbs of government from the poor, a government  [no doubt] small enough to drown in a THIMBLE?

Will it really be by gutting all those non-essential public employees, like TEACHERS, LIBRARIANS, FIREMEN & WOMEN and POLICE OFFICERS? Florida's New TAX CUTTING Governor has already fired hundreds of prison employees because "PRIVATIZATION" is better, is better, is better, is better.

It seems the poor, can't afford to pay for their own survival. Odd, are they too cheap, can't they be compelled or at least conscripted?

Clearly the RICHEST 1% needn't be bothered about these once critical infrastructure pillars. After all they send their spawn to the PRIVATE SCHOOLS. They FLY ABOVE the POT-HOLED STREETS and they don't need police or firemen, they own their own SECURITY FORCES.

I wonder why Prez "o" and jebby didn't journey to the RUST BELT? 
Why aren't they there ? Why aren't they  PRAISING THE BRAVE GOVERNOR KINGS of OHIO, RHODE ISLAND and WISCONSIN, those proud men brave enough to GUT public employees and their pensions in the face of all that FEIGN STREAM MEDIA hand-wringing.

Lay on McDuff - Mr President maybe next you'll stand next to Alberto Gonzales and praise his eye for Justice (wink-wink). Or maybe Rummy and praise his skills at WAR-PLANNING, wrong country not withstanding...

Heck of a job Jebby, Heck of a Job!

solidarity & peace
Rick@AveryVoice.com

RE Walking all over WI Workers

A few Thoughts on Krugman's piece in the NY Times...
Dateline: Stolen Treasure, FLA-Duh

PK: "What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process."

Krugman points to the hidden nasty nuggets in the WALKER draconian agenda - passed without the clumsy encumbrances like the stumbling block of a democratic debate or pesky journalists.  Another hot one is this PRIVATIZATION HO!

PK: "And then there’s this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”

Sounds like the selling off of state enterprises to their favorite cronies, like the Russian economy - does this fall into the category of "you become what you hate?" Or is it just old fashioned greed and corporate over-reach.

PK: "The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.  If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering — remember those missing billions in Iraq? — you’re not alone.

It interesting to see in "The Times" what many of us, have known for sometime now. The deficit, and the tax cut mantra, that we've been receiving like the benediction from the KOCH juiced up Murdock mouthpieces, is part and parcel, of the old Gingrich/Norquist fable where they said, the plan is "to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub" ... as long as it can still underwrite International Bankers and Stock traders and bail out Mortgage Brokers and Insurance Emperors... They just insist on keeping the public away from the Federal teat, and to make room, for just a few more RED BLOODED-CAPITALISTS. 

Pass ME... that welfare check Jeeves. We be, too big to fail!

WI Union Workers call for National Work Stoppage!

Friends there is no longer time to dress like a progressive,  look like progressives, discussion time has passed. In the party, out of the party, it's irrelevant. It's time to work together. We must support each other they are out to smash the last solid unions left in America it is a unified campaign to finally destroy what remains of the middle class.

They are in it to WIN, and your wages, your jobs, your pensions and healthcare are just so much collateral damage as they finalize their plan to gut the middle class. I feel sorriest for the bozo's who blame the teachers those underpaid sobs, and the inspectors who protect their food supply their workplaces, and garbage men who clean the streets. They are not the enemy.

They want you confused and blaming the immigrants, the poor, the unions; everyone who like the middle class are victims of the class warfare they have cleverly disguised with their advertising and the faux news spokes models.

THE WALL STREET BANERS with their double dealing Insurance and Mortgage buddies who write unreadable contracts, so carefully crafted in such tiny slippery print, that an army of lawyers and an electron microscope couldn't protect you.

Rapacious rates on your credit cards after you already paid to bail out the companies? Mortgage bankers who only write deals that would be theft, if the law wasn't twisted into a pretzel to protect them. (Don't choke Georgie) Wall streeters master criminal - all walking around scott free with bonuses that you couldn't ear in thirty lifetime. Criminals so outside and above the law, that they each have their own pet legislators to write laws that can grab your future swing it around over their heads until your dizzy, then wring every penny out of it.

Your wallet and your children's future is definitely on the table, and their not using scalpels their using chain-saws.

Walk like an Egyptian

My Egyptian Brothers and Sisters

Congratulations my fellow freedom fighters

You stood alone and unarmed with only your dreams for a democratic future to protect you.  Led by ideas and hope not despots or generals or business tycoons, or bankers or dangerous men and women armed with plastic explosive and infrared glasses, dropped from gunships in the dark of night.

I can see, Thomas Jefferson and the proud General Washington looking on in admiration even Thomas Paine, looked up from his pamphleteering to smile for a moment before he went back to his work of reminding men and women that they must be free of despots.

You said, no to the security state, you turned away in horror, from the whips, and iron bars and electrodes of those secretive butchers down below in the dark forcing screams from the innocent. You didn't need martial law, you didn't need special security rules and terrorist bombs.

You just said no, and no further. You were braver than the enforcers, you were braver, than the secret men who pulled the despots' strings.

We don't need such bravery in these fair lands, we have the pATRIOT aCT. We don't need the sinew to face down a charging band of secret service cavalry on horses and camels, we take our shoes off at the airports. We don't need the kind of brave hearts that can hold a town square like Tahrir, we have universal surveillance on our streets and the internet. 

We don't need no democracy down home, we have lobbyists and purchased legislators, and bankers here in the land of the free. We're too busy inserting enforcing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and sending in via cruise missiles into Pakistan. 

We don't need the kind of inconvenience of camping out in Tahrir Square. We have Homeland Security and a Constitutional Scholar to keep us safe from Habeas Corpus. But Good Luck Egyptians... We don't need your kind of new fresh citizen activists. We have pre-owned political parties to choose the faces who are purported to be in-charge on TEE VEE.  

HANDS OFF THE WOMBS - Republicans

In Support of L2E by Vicki Impoco
"Focus On Jobs, Not Violating Women's Constitutional Rights" 

How can these "legislators" say with any seriousness that a government mandate for health care is an unconstitutional but that these same republican lawmakers can decide what medical care insurance companies can cover. They seem to think they have been empowered to remake every Floridians' reproductive choices, in their own image.
"HB 321 by Rep. Trujillo (R-115) would ban abortion post 20 weeks unless necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman. Rep. Trujillo's bill would force a woman to carry an anechephalic fetus (no brain) and other horrific fetal anomalies even when a fetus is not viable to term.

HB 415 by Rep. Charles Van Zant (R-30) This legislation would ban abortion in Florida with limited exceptions for the life of the mother (certified by two physicians). Survivors of rape, sexual assault and incest would be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will."

These legislators, these Government Bureaucrats, (for those of you who need this translated into Tea-Party language.) They seek to overrule a woman's judgment. They think they know better, than every woman in Florida. They seek to IMPOSE their personal religious judgment on every Floridian, born and unborn.

This hypocrisy is a perfect example of standard republic "thinking". Whatever they disagree with is unconstitutional, but whatever over-reach, excess, and judicial activism suits them, is just fine.

Ms. Impoco is if anything too polite. Imagine for a second, how these men might react, if some government official decided, that it suited their private judgment, they must cultivate a spare kidney for harvest and put their own life at risk, in some STATE MANDATED MEDICAL PROCEDURE?

I can see the misspelled signs even now.

Florida Women, tell these Legislators they do not OWN your WOMBS, and they cannot Constitutionally control your reproductive life. TELL THEM - HANDS OFF MY WOMB!

RW Spisak
www.AveryVoice.com

Superb Film: "William Kunstler - Disturbing the Universe"

Watched an amazing and heart warming film William Kunstler Disturbing the Universe, at the Fort Lauderdale film festival in the lovely Cinema Paradiso in downtown Fort Lauderdale here is the synopsis from a PBS showing:

Synopsis

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe examines the life of this radical attorney from a surprising angle. Kunstler’s two daughters from his second marriage grew up lionizing a man already famous for his historic civil rights and anti-war cases. Then, in their teens, they began to be disillusioned by a stubborn man who continued representing some of the most reviled defendants in America — this time accused rapists and terrorists. In this intimate biography, Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler seek to recover the real story of what made their late father one of the most beloved, and hated, lawyers in America. Winner of the L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth Vision Award, 2009 Sundance Film Festival. A co-production of ITVS." 


The film takes the viewer down into the famed freedom fighters life from the perspective of two of his daughters Emily and Sarah. You see his pre-fame life as a soldier as a family man in upstate New York and as an early civil rights attorney until the events that changed his life working to support the freedom riders who support those brave souls who liberated lunch counters and eventually the hearts of many across the south. And while racism, wasn't limited to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida it was simply at it's open and ugliest display there.


While it might seem trivial to some unimaginative historically illiterate souls that water fountains, hotel rooms, restrooms, and voting booths wee off limits to peoples of color just fifty short years ago. Those of us who lived those years, and saw that slow evolution these were epochal struggles. Watching human rights established as the bloody fingers of oppression were pried off the throats of so many could not but affect many Americans.


Watching Dr. King and so many other brave nameless individuals stand against batons, police dogs, fire hoses and lawful murderous legally sanctioned racism to reclaim their humanity from a power structure  unwilling to grant humanity, much-less civic rights. Watching those scenes replay made all of us in the theatre remember those awful days, and the bravery demanded of so many, in an era that transformed our country from a land that sanctioned open apartheit, to a country that was prepared to work toward a new civic justice. A journey that remains an unfulfilled promise.


The film took us back to a watch a young lawyer transformed from a simple small town lawyer, into a firebrand who stood high atop the barricades to defend civil rights activists, anti-war activists, First American activists. We relived the travails of political show trials like the Chicago Eight, and the tragedy that was the Attica massacre. The story of the his spiritual kinship and awakening attained through the   struggles defending the First Americans at Wounded Knee.  We met his second family and saw, Mr. Kunstler, not just as a freedom fighter who time and again stood with defendants against the voice of the mob, after the press and public had already reached their verdict, but also as a family man with two precocious daughters. 


And we joined the mourners, who gathered at the final ceremony for the freedom fighter who defended the unpopular, the revolutionary, and the politically engaged in a life that mattered. And all of that , through the eyes and the voices of two daughters that honored, challenged and loved him greatly.


"William Kunstler  disturbing the Universe" a film every activist should see.