Kent State

I was thinking about recent disruptions in citizen participation with regard to the guaranteed rights as provided in the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Let us go back to Ohio in 1970!

http://www.nrbooks.com/kent-state-newinfo-fourdeadinohio.htm

If you line up the sides in this massacre, you will discern that 18 year-olds and 19 year-olds and 20 year- olds for the most part, are challenging 18 year-olds and 19 year-olds and 20 year-olds.

One side is in uniform (duly payed and sponsored by the government) whilst the the other side is made up of other folks with different types of uniforms that are non-military in composition.

The fire bloggers are already on "Obama's Plan" like flies on Schweddy Balls ice cream. There's so much chatter and misinformation about this plan that I hesitate to write this post and add to the problem. But certain facts seem to be clear and I'm advising an underwater guy in Vermont, so here's a quick take.

HARP is an Obama Administration plan, adopted and implemented by FHFA in 2009. It has produced about 900,000 re-finances, far less than projected. The Administration's potential influence over the FHFA is by appointment of the Director, with approval by Congress. Through a series of half steps, Ed DeMarco, appointed originally by Bush has risen to the top and appears irreplaceable. DeMarco would rival Peterson and Norquist as having the most power in Washington outside any given elected official.

The FHFA website gives the specifics of the revised rules regarding HARP. By the way, you can look up your loan there to determine if it is in fact guaranteed by one of the GSEs and if it was purchased prior to 2009 - two of the entrance requirements in qualifying for HARP - and a source of the smell sensed by fire bloggers. The program excludes a lot or worthy would-be refinancers. One of the headlines of this refi makeover is that there is now no limit on "how far underwater" one can be to still participate. Previously, the Loan-To-Value (LTV) had already been raised to 125% - but there were only 72,000 refinanced loans with  LTVs over 105%.  (A property appraised at $100K with a $105K loan has an LTV of 105%)

When President Obama intervened in Libya in March, 2011, political science professor Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said, “Republicans would be blind not to see an opening. This is one of the biggest mistakes Obama has made, arguably.”

“Why Would anyone Miss War?” Afghanistan war correspondent, Sebastian Junger asks. “War,” he suggests, “can be tremendously alluring to young men.” So what is its attraction to young men and women? Our recent wars, in contrast to World Wars One and Two, have employed an all volunteer military.

OWS is getting traction in the aftermath of Steve Jobs' death and I began to ponder a connection between the two events. Was the end of the Steve Jobs/Apple "story", meaning its mystique, also the lifting of a veil of complacency and gullibility about what's going on in plain sight around us? What if the Apple story needed to be debunked, stood on its head in the same way that much of our politics and economic struggles need to be?

The Democratic Party’s hesitance to fully embrace the president’s American Jobs Act isn’t just another example of the ever-powerful role big donors and the corporate lobby play in national politics; it’s a further demonstration that Democrats are scared, lazy and deaf to the American public’s call to end the “Affluent Only” political caste system we live in.

A recent article in The Hill reported that Democrats in the House have been reluctant to co-sponsor the American Jobs Act because it was drafted by the White House, “which should have stream-lined the proposal for floor consideration without official endorsements.”

Obviously, arguing what “should have” happened in the Teapublican-controlled House of Representatives is no more productive than teaching trigonometry to a turtle. But whatever excuses they want to make, the truth is that Democrats hoped to avoid attaching their name to a bill that Republicans have already lambasted as a another “stimulus bill” that “increases taxes on job creators.”

There is a camp here that believes Occupy Wall Street is not leading and not defining a vision. But we don't live in a totalitarian state that requires a revolutionary vanguard. Our chains are of our own making. So the value of OWS is not to lead, but just to say, "Hey, the emperor is wearing our clothes, and we are all naked -- and he made us believe we weren't!"

When I purchased country property in Texas a few years back I didn't realize one of its assets was the burn pile. A neighbor helped me clear some dead tree limbs and I asked him to take it all to the dump. He had a good laugh and said, "I was going to haul it over to your burn pile" I asked him where that was. "Over behind the old barn, been there for years."

We rode four wheelers over to the other end of the pasture. And there it was--kind of a sacred site--a large mound of black rubble, with bits of twisted metal poking out to catch glints of sunlight. "That burn pile has been there for as long as I can remember". My neighbor said. "Even longer than that bodark wood post them surveyors found on the corner of your property. Dates back to the 1800's".