Start your day with this

A quick video that plays when you click on the link in the upper left hand corner of this page of radio programs.

Letter to the editor

Here's a copy of a letter to the editor of the SB News-Press that I emailed today. I'll update this post if/when it's published.

Update: It was published on May 25, 2012.

On May 17, the House was presented with an easy decision: whether or not to vote in favor of an amendment to the massive military spending bill. The amendment, proposed by Representative Barbara Lee of Oakland, would forbid the use of any funds for the war in Afghanistan, except for the “safe and orderly withdrawal of U.S. troops and military contractors” from that war-torn country. It was an easy decision, because a “yea” vote would comport with the sentiments of a strong majority of Americans who have determined that the war is senseless and the U.S. engagement should cease. Nevertheless, Representative Lee’s amendment failed, 113 – 303.

To her credit, Representative Lois Capps voted in favor of the amendment, and while I have often criticized her positions, I applaud her “yea” vote. However, I find it odd that she gives us, her constituents, no indication of her action. She doesn’t mention it in newsletters, doesn’t note it on her website or Facebook. Indeed, on her list of “issues” on her website, neither “peace” nor “war” appears, even though our endless military adventures impact every aspect of our security, our economy, our environment, our culture, our nation.

Representative Capps, as a shoo-in come November, an emerging veteran Congressperson, hear this: It’s time you devoted as much attention as you devote to other concerns of your constituents to the most critical issue of our time. It’s time you spoke out, with unabashed fervor and unleashed ardor, for peace.

Ya gotta love it

A district court judge with some balls.

For my good friend, the poet

Whoever said they were irrelevant? Not this poet.

How long do you think it will take

before the Orange County (California or Florida, doesn't matter) school board proposes this idea for their public schools? (Are you as surprised as I am -- disappointed too -- that the concept took root in Brazil?

Sold out again

Here's the text of a letter to the editor of the SB News Press that I emailed today. I'll update this blog if/when it's published.

Update: It was published on March 23, 2012.

With friends like Lois Capps, who needs Republicans? Once again, our Congressperson has sold out her constituents – the 99%, that is. Not long ago she voted in favor of giving the President the power to arrest and imprison indefinitely any person, including U.S. citizens, who he decided was a terrorist. So much for our personal freedoms. Now, Lois has inserted herself into our pocketbooks, voting in favor of a bill – misleadingly called the JOBS act – that weakens regulation of corporate stock offerings, diluting, and in some cases eliminating, their disclosure requirements and abandoning longstanding rules protecting individual investors from fraud and overreaching by corporations and the sellers of their stock. Companies are now able to peddle stock publicly – using the Internet, for example – without heeding many of the regulatory requirements that protected investors’ pocketbooks in the past.

This enactment is said to make it easier for companies to raise capital. Haven’t we heard this refrain before? Isn’t the absence of regulation precisely what got us into this ugly economic mess? And who benefits from this law? You guessed it – the corporations. And if Representative Capps has the temerity to suggest that the bill will create jobs, I suggest she answer this question: Where’s the evidence? The short answer is, There is none – absolutely no studies, no empirical evidence was submitted to the House supporting the notion that by loosening reporting requirements on corporations more jobs will be created – except, of course, on Wall Street and, eventually, among bankruptcy lawyers

This can't be right

Gerald Ford (not the dead former president) who was the chief stockholder in my bank, having in 2010 bought up 91% percent of the shares of Pacific Capital, my bank's parent company, for the munificent sum of 20 cents a share, will receive $46/ share for his stock in a merger deal under which Pacific Capital Union Bank is acquired by a Union Bank, which is in turn owned by Japanese holding company. That's got to be a typo, right? Nobody's entitled to a two-year return of 2500%. Right?

Not only racist, but stupid

Check out this piece about the "Don't Re-Nig" bumpersticker, and don't fail to read the last two sentences of the article.

I'm a sucker for musical theater

I just watched a presentation of The Phantom of the Opera as shown at the Royal Albert Hall, shown on PBS this evening. I'd seen the show on stage in Cincinnati some years ago and I love it -- the music brought me to tears, really -- but this television production was even better. Powerful, moving, much better than the movie.

Breaking silence

because I'm weeping over this.