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Memo to the Governor of Arizona and other faux patriots
Please memorize the following translation for future reference:
Prometo lealtad a la bandera de Estados Unidos de América, y a la república para que se para, una nación bajo Dios, indivisible, con la libertad y la justicia para todo.
Credit Report Abuses Hurting Middle Class Workers
By Michael Boyajian
Credit reporting organizations are trying to expand their businesses by scaring consumers and by expanding into other facets of American business life. One of particular harm is the use of credit reports in making a hiring decision. This has a disparate impact on the middle class which is experiencing extreme hardship during the current economic crisis.
Theater: A Ticket To Peace
By Michael Boyajian
The movies can be quite inspirational but in between great movies you see a lot of B movies that are not bad but just OK. And when you’re in a movie theater most of the people’s faces are blank and expressionless absorbing the shock which is screaming out at them in the form of hyper violent action movie trailers.
Andrea Peyser may not be the Post's most conservative columnist, but she is easily the stupidest, sometimes rising to almost bovinic proportions. Here, she calls for the Islamic Community Center proposed for the Holy Mother Coat Factory in Lower Manhattan to be moved elsewhere. Where, she does not say, but apparently anywhere in the Five Boroughs is too close, for later, on the same page, she hails the quashing of a proposal to build a Mosque on the Hallowed Ground of Staten Island (was it to be called the "Dome of the Rock?”) as "a victory for the right to protest." I agree, but so was the march of the Nazis in Skokie (except the Nazis weren't allowed to achieve their goal). Welcome to Blago-rama – NYPOST.com www.nypost.com
Guns or Butter
By Michael Boyajian
I had an acquaintance when I worked in state service, a fellow judge. You would come back from your weekend and meet him by the cooler Monday morning and tell him how you had dinner and a movie with the wife over the weekend and he would tell you he had dinner, purchased a gun and went to the shooting range.
Peace Through Music
By Michael Boyajian
My dad gave me one really great gift. Though he himself was tone deaf he conveyed to me a great appreciation for music by providing me with audio equipment at my earliest of ages.
I remember the first piece of equipment was a portable Hi Fi phonograph that I would play 45s on. My favorite single was Love Child by the Supremes a choice that probably perplexed my parents. He then gave me an AM/FM Cassette player that I would take everywhere with me recording my favorite songs directly from the radio station I was listening to or playing the cassettes I had made of those songs. I once tuned into WNEW and recorded the opening show in D.C. of a Who concert tour sitting in the back of our station wagon as we drove back from my uncle’s house in New Jersey.
AS I WAS SAYING A YEAR AGO ("Best of Gatey" from 9/20/09):
"Charlie Rangel is a great American patriot. He has been heroic in crusading for a fairer tax system and a better health system. He has told unpleasant truths time and again about the impact of fighting wars with a force made up predominately of folks who needs the money and benefits. He’s been indispensable in helping to elect a Democratic majority in Congress.
But, at the very least, Charlie Rangel’s carelessness, if that is indeed what it is, in handling his personal affairs has become a national embarrassment. Perhaps, if he chaired the committee on Foreign Affairs, it would be an embarrassment we could endure. But, at a time when Democrats hope to greatly expand the services provided through our public sector, to have a Chair of the tax-writing committee who has a casual attitude about his own taxes is highly and dangerously problematic and a serious impediment to the enactment of the programs to which Mr. Rangel has dedicated his career.
It is an embarrassment which makes everything Rangel touches look dubious.
Every Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means raises shameful amounts of money in a shameful manner to pass onto his party’s candidates. The shamefulness of the protection/access game which attracts this money is so bi-partisan and time-honored that the press largely ignores the very legal scandal which it is.
But there is nothing in Charlie Rangel’s manner of raising such money which should attract any special attention. In fact, by and large, Rangel’s contributors get far less for their money than they did when they gave it to his Republican predecessor.
But now such money attracts special and unwelcome attention to those Democrats to whom Rangel forwards it to, because it came though Rangel. And this is even though the “scandal” which has attached to Rangel has virtually zero to do with the real scandal attached to such money.
There is no doubt in my mind that the public exposure of Rangel’s personal problems probably derives almost entirely from the vast right-wing conspiracy, but that does not make those problems any less real.
Since holding his House seat is a right conveyed to him by the voters, calls for Rangel’s resignation from Congress are premature until voters, or a Judge and Jury, decide otherwise.
However, Congressional Committee Chairmanships are not a right, but a privilege conveyed by a party conference entitled to consider questions of political expediency. Rangel should do his Party and his President a favor and step aside as Chair until his issues are resolved." Validating Right-Wing Frames? | Room Eight www.r8ny.com
Tea Party Rally Signals Shift
By Michael Boyajian
Jeff Green publisher of News That Matters reports that he attended a Tea Party rally this past weekend in Putnam County. He states that he observed very little racism, xenophobia or homophobia at this rally but for one speaker who was greeted with cheers from the crowd when he called Andrew Breitbart an American hero.
If that's the deal, and you are completely selfish, why not gamble more? So the city's public employee pension funds seem to have concluded. They want to put more money into hedge funds, which generally don't hedge (accept lower but more assured returns) at all. They leverage — producing huge returns in some years, and 100 percent investment wipeouts at other times, all while charging massively higher fees to their massively overcompenstated managers.
What this is about is coming up with a rationalization to claim the pension fund investment returns will be higher in the future than they will actually be. So more pension enrichments can be awarded but not paid for, until the costs explode and devastate the future of younger generations.
The Morphing of a Democrat
By Michael Boyajian
I had been a Democrat my whole life along with most of my friends and family. In college I worked with NYPIRG on the No Nukes movement. While in college I heard Mario Cuomo speak and he convinced me to support whatever it was that he was advocating due to his great oratory. In 1983 I publically supported John Glenn for president. But the Democrats chose Walter Mondale and that pissed me off and I jumped to the Republican column seduced by the imperial glamour of the Reagan Administration.