Category: Dr John Gilmore

James
Richard Verone, of Georgia, attempted to rob the bank for one dollar.
After handing the teller the note he sat and waited for the police
to come and arrest him. Why did he do this? Verone was 59 years old
and laid off after 17 years of working at Coca Cola with no
prospects. 

Instead
of Good Government the Republican Congressional focus has been
to “Get Obama,” through the use of various soft war
(Psychological Warfare Techniques) developed and perfected by use on
developing nations. This consisted of creating an image of
incompetent governance through the media, focusing on specific areas
that needed to be fixed, and then working to reinforce the idea of
incompetency by purposefully sabotaging the government so those areas
couldn’t be. 

Some
examples of this: 

Not
allowing the Democrats to enact legislation aimed at addressing the
financial and economic crisis by forcing the Democrats to water down
the stimulus packet to push it through, and then broadcasting
propaganda about high unemployment due to the “Failed Stimulus.” 

The
media attack that accused Obama of trying to brain-wash children when
welcomed American students back to school in 2009 and told them to
work hard. 

The
crisis in American health care and a palliative care option being
reduced to nothing more than the government denounced as taking away
freedoms and imposing “death panels.” 

Billionaires
like oil man David Koch and media mogul Murdoch, promoting a
“grassroots” rebellion against Obama called the Tea Party
bringing guns to rallies, making racist remarks, or at the least not
denouncing them when they were being made. All of these thing
happened within the first two years of the Obama Presidency. 

This
set the stage for the Right Republican comeback. The party swept to
victory in the House and fell just short in the Senate. There is
still no health care and no jobs for the unemployed. Liberals,
Conservatives, and Progressives find themselves struggling to
maintain the civil and human rights fought for and won by patriots of
the past like the eight hour work day, child labor laws, public
education, and the Commonwealth of the nation. The goal for the
Republican Party, however, is not a better America, but the White
House with all its executive powers. 

As
Robert Parry writes, “The Right’s best hope for regaining
complete control of the U.S. government in 2012 is to sink the U.S.
Economy. Already, the Republican success in limiting the scope of
the stimulus package and then labeling it a failure – combined with
deep cuts in local, state and federal government spending – have
helped push the economy back to the brink where a double-dip
recession is now a serious concern. 

Despite
these worries – and a warning from Moody’s about a possible
downgrade on U.S. debt if Congress delays action on raising the debt
limit – the Republicans are vowing more brinksmanship over the
debt-limit vote. Before acting, they are demanding major
reductions in government spending (while refusing to raise taxes on
the rich).” 

Because
of all of the racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious splits created by
the constant soft war techniques used to divide and conquer We the
People, it seems that the Right will be successful at this task,
and all of us will meet together in the poor house. 

If
we, as a nation, cannot build consensus before this happens and move
this nation toward the dream of our great fathers and mothers instead
of just struggling to be on top of some other group, we need not
worry too much about who wins. Most of us, the 90% sharing 10% of
the wealth of the nation, will be in the bottom of the same boat,
chained to the same oars, cursing and fighting while we are forced to
row to the same old drumbeat: If you work hard, you can pull
yourself up by your bootstraps too; bootstraps made in China.

Dale Maharidge spent spent several
years traveling by rail to many parts of America speaking with people
who have been affected by what he calls the New Depression in
his book Someplace in America: The new depression. It was
very disheartening to discover just how bad many Americans are
suffering today. Many people have gone broke because of health care
bills. Some have been laid off because of jobs leaving the country.
Other factors—things that could happen to any of us like fires,
floods, natural disasters, car accidents, have ravaged their lives.

The employment rate has risen back to
9.1 percent overall, almost 18 percent in African American
communities, and it will be 50 t0 60 percent for Latino American and
African American teenagers in the inner city. What will the youth be
doing this summer? One may say this is a travesty, or that we all
need to buckle down and share in the hard times that sometimes
happen. The truth is that these are just not hard times that
happened. Much of this has been either engineered, or maintained,
purposely by those who make profit from the suffering of working
class people and the poor. Even the prisons have been privatized.
It is more profitable for corporations who own prisons to have people
locked up, which costs each tax payer about 40,000 dollars per
person, than working for half that cost.

After the big mortgage crash more than
700 billion dollars were given to banks and large financial
institutions, no strings attached, so that the capital would continue
to flow. This money still has not reached those in need. People’s
mortgages are still being foreclosed, money is still being invested
overseas instead of in the U.S., and jobs are still not being
created. The companies that profited from these interest free loans
have not only made record profits, but they are not paying taxes.
Some have even received tax credits as the money flows outward to
foreign investments. In the meantime families are becoming homeless
or barely able to make it. We blame this crash on unions and on
teachers? There is a much larger problem here.

The problem is that no one really cares
about the average American. The social contract has been broken.
The government no longer answers to the demands of the people, and
small groups of the people no longer support the well being of the
whole country as much as they support themselves or their small
group. Until we can come together and realize that we are one
nation under God and one people, and that a divided people will
not prosper, we will have runaway unemployment, runaway jobs, and all
of the Commonwealth will continue to be sold to private companies.

We have returned to the Great
Battle-field that Lincoln referred to in his Gettysburg
Address, but this battle field is within our hearts and minds.
What we do will decide whether this nation dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal will endure. It is
truly up to us to not be willing to see our neighbors driven into
poverty. And who is my neighbor? Anyone who I will treat kindly out
of the love in your heart.

Just when you think that people have become as stupid as possible something comes along to prove they haven’t. Since the banning of “Happy Meals” at MacDonald’s in San Francisco, a new, more controversial proposal is being considered that would ban circumcisions of all boys under age 17, and it’s causing lots of debate.

According to ivillage.com, “The latest statistics from the CDC (which, admittedly, is from 1999 — not too recent) reports that 65 percent
of all boys nationally are circumcised (but the percentage drops to
37 percent on the West Coast). Plus, it’s a religious or cultural
tradition for many people. And it’s a controversial topic in
general.”

The reason San Francisco is considering this ban? Lloyd Schofield, the
activist pushing the law, calls it “genital mutilation.” In his
proposal, punishment would be either up to a year of jail time or up
to a $1,000 fine. With all that is going on in the world and in San
Francisco and CA at this time, I am glad that this activist can find
the time to work on an event like this one that will keep the tips of
our male genitalia safe.

For
a climate where so many people seem to preach getting government out
of their personal lives it is strange and amazing that some not only
want government in their lives, but in their bedrooms, and even
governing what can be done to the end of their sex organs. This can
only happen in America.

By Dr. John Gilmore

A friend received a petition being distributed by Penn Environment
through email to inform our State Governor about the desire for more
safety regulations to protect the environment and forests in central
PA. Instead of receiving “email sent” upon completing it, she
received a smiling picture of the governor and a code that was called
a puzzler that one had to answer before the email would be accepted.
There was basically a code like FQAH6 (an actual code) and a place
where one had to type in the meaning of the code in order for the
mail to go through. Whether one agrees with Penn Environment or not,
this is yet another example of inaccessible government doing the will
of corporate interest instead of the people and taxation without any
representation. Penn Environment is supporting the legislative
process of regulation in drilling due to the following reasons:

• Gas
  drilling contributed to the contamination of the drinking water
  supply of 325,000 people near Pittsburgh in 2008.

• Already,
  drilling has contaminated drinking water in seven Pennsylvania
  counties with dangerous methane gas.

• In
  the past year, nearly a dozen different drilling companies have been
  caught breaking cornerstone environmental laws, such as the Clean
  Water Act, at their drilling sites.

• Last
  September, drilling activities spilled 8,000 gallons of harmful
  pollution into Stevens Creek in northeastern Pennsylvania. 

Right
now, state officials are considering policies to help protect the
public from the dangers of gas drilling. Unfortunately it seems that
the people are not allowed to have any input in the process—yet
again, and the government is not interested in hearing what the
people think. Whether one is far left, far right, or even out in the field the one thing that we all need is a government that serves the people and makes decisions based on their input.  This is what is known as democracy.  There is nothing like democracy that works.
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much of it in our country in the 21^st Century.

By Dr. John Gilmore

Other than being a bit annoying and aesthetically challenging to many people from my generation, it seems that sagging pants, i.e., pants hanging off someone’s butt, have become a crime in some local jurisdictions.  During these times when people are looking to local government for more support and sensible decisions, and the federal government for less, it is a bit frightening to see the focus of some of our jurisdictions.

In recent years, cities from Dallas to Rivera Beach, Fla. have launched efforts to make sagging pants punishable by fines and jail time. Some of the most vociferous supporters of these efforts claim the fashion was born in prison culture and, by implication glorifies criminal behavior.  Others just argue, like Townsend, that it offends community taste.

“It’s a horrible fad,” said City Councilman Anthony Davis of Paterson, New Jersey.  The 40-something legislator, who spearheaded an anti-sagging campaign in his city, traces the trend to correctional institutions, where belts are often banned, and says many in the African American community worry that young black men are embodying a “prison mentality” when they let their pants sag.

What better way to deal with this “embodying a prison mentality” then by fining them and putting them in prison?  In the study of Symbolic Logic there is a type of logic called “not logic.”  I would definitely say that this is a prime example of not logic, or perhaps logic–not!  I wonder if this is what happened to tube tops.

By Dr. John Gilmore

When Bill Meyer was about to retire he
gave an excellent speech on the idea of the Commonwealth. He said he
was born in a very poor neighborhood, but didn’t even really knew it
because we all shared in the commonwealth when he was growing up.
There were parks, free summer recreational programs, free after
school programs, free music programs in the schools and art programs.
Sometimes they even had free summer camps sponsored by the counties
or cities. Anyone could be involved in a sports program for just the
cost of a two dollar insurance policy each year and the school
provided buses that would take the children to the away games on the
weekend.

We don’t have many of these programs
because of the movement led by rich people to disassemble the
commonwealth and do away with taxes. As a result of this people end
up paying for all of these programs as if they are a privilege. Many
people spend hours of time driving miles to carry their children to
soccer games and other sports activities, thus spending the money
they thought they had saved in taxes on time and for gas. Now only
the ones who can afford it send their children to music programs and
to art classes. Just think of all of the great musicians from poor
families who started playing their instrument in school. This won’t
happen now in most school districts.

Now people who can afford it have to
pay for day care, pay to go to parks, pay to go to the beaches, and
the many other things that add to the quality of life for all
citizens, allowing us to share in the riches of the nation as a whole
group instead of as individuals working and struggling to buy what is
necessary to enjoy the fruit of American life.

As we cut taxes the savings are now
being funneled into overseas investments that put us out jobs and
foreign wars—especially to defense contractors. The states and
local governments are broke, so they need to raise state a local
taxes while cutting the services we so desperately need. In the long
run the average person ends up paying more for services than he paid
for taxes, while the rich person has an opportunity to invest in
China and send their children to the best schools, concerts, music
programs and so on so they can make us look like failures when we try
to compete against them. As a result of this the rich communities get
good resources while the average and poor ones decline until they
begin to look like the slums in most Latin American countries. We
end up with beautiful homes in one block and torn up ghettos right in
the next block, except for the most rich areas—all because we don’t
want to support each other by paying taxes.

The sad thing is that the amount of
taxes never go down, they only get transferred from the federal
government to state and local governments, utility fees, park fees,
higher car registration costs and licensing fees. We end up paying
the same amount of taxes for no service. That is why I like the idea
of a tax and spend government as long as the money is being spent on
the people who are being taxed instead of on foreign wars and foreign
investments. It is strange that anytime we hear the words tax and
spend government from the corporate media we are hearing it from a
person who’s income is highly invested in stocks in foreign countries
that are taking our jobs. They tell us we can’t depend on the
government to take care of us, but we can depend on private
corporations. That doesn’t even make sense, when you really think
about it. We can pressure the elected government to make changes in
its spending patterns; we cannot do anything to corporations.

By Dr. John Gilmore

In the Spanish countryside, a strange sight rises from the landscape: a massive concrete tower surrounded by glowing beams of light. That tower may hold the key to a clean-energy future. The 40-story concrete tower is surrounded by four massive arrays of 600 mirrors each, all designed to track the sun on its path across the sky and beam the light back at the tower. Right now only one of the arrays is completed and functional, but construction is continuing on the other three. The Solar Tower, designed and built by Spanish energy company Solucar, generates 11 megawatts of energy–enough to power over 6,000 homes–without emitting any greenhouse gases or pollutants.

By Dr. John Gilmore

I went to a bed and breakfast in Upstate PA.  Nearby they were just beginning to mine marcellus shale.  There have been several reports about the pollution of fresh water that takes place during this process.  Heavy metals, cancerous agents, and even radioactive elements have been found in the drinking water of many residents around areas who feel they need to suddenly have access to marcellus shale.  On one video a man actually set his water on fire to show how polluted it was by the process done to separate the gas from the shale.  The inn keeper at the bed and breakfast almost panicked when my wife told him of the dangers.