Shape Up

Big government is an institution that has no conscience. I has no feelings, it has no brains. And it doesn't read constitutions and it doesn't understand liberties.

Chuck Hagel
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Hello Ally
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I don't like to write about politics, but who can avoid thinking about it these days. I'm just a humble vagabond, retired, living in a small town and with health problems and debts. But I wish I could write a letter to each member of the big aloof government and say "Look at yourself in the mirror and shape up!"

"Big government is an institution that has no conscience." One year I helped two friends gather up all the food that had been donated by local markets to take to a homeless shelter in New York for their Thanksgiving dinner. The people who lived at the shelter were nice, friendly, normal people like you or me. They weren't drunks, drug addicts or dead beats. Some of them had meager, low paying jobs.

The person who ran the shelter thanked us and said it would be a happy Thanksgiving for them. But he also said that at Thanksgiving and Christmas people are very kind to them, it's the rest of the year they suffer. I wondered what they did in February when they ran out of heat.

"The reason they're homeless is because they refuse to work" one politician said. One block from where I used to live in the city there was a thriving out door book store run by about a half dozen homeless mem. They had tables set up and large laundry baskets full of books, magazines and post cards. People, including me, gave them books. There were always people going through those stacks and buying books from them.

One day they were all gone. It seems some self righteous, self important person objected having to walk past those ragged looking homeless people on her way to work. What happened to those men? What happened to all those books?

I worked with a theatre company that performed for homeless shelters around town. When we arrived at one of the largest ones we drove our van up a ramp and from there I looked down on the main area, it was a former armory. There was a rank and file of beds as far as I could see. There was absolutely no privacy for those men. What a depressing, degrading way to live. The small Indian woman who ran the place treated them as if they were her own brothers. They all respected her.

"It's their own damn fault if they're homeless." What a cruel and unconscionable attitude for anyone in a government that is supposed to be taking care of its people.

"It has no feelings" Only once in my life did I apply for unemployment insurance. I was only out of work for six weeks but I didn't receive any money until after I went back to work. I used it to pay back the people I had fortunately borrowed it from. When I called to find out about the money I explained that I had a small room in a cheap residential hotel but that if I didn't pay the rent I would be evicted and be homeless. The woman I spoke with said "Well if you change your address let us know." I tried to tell her that I would be homeless, without a new address. She didn't care. "It has no feelings."

"It has no brains." Examples of brainlessness on the part of government are too numerous to list. I once heard a U S Senator stand up and list all the things wrong with a bill that was before the Senate. He had nothing good to say about it And then he said he was going to vote for it. Even with the country in the terrible financial trouble it's in there are members of Congress who are actually considering legislation that would extend tax cuts to the rich. It doesn't take an elementary school education to see the stupidity of that. The same Congress people want to cut into the benefits that make the United States a livable place. Where are the brains? "Look at yourselves in the mirror and shape up."

"it doesn't read constitutions" Our Constitution guarantees us "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" unless you're an Occupy Wall Street protester. The 99% are making things very uncomfortable for the 1%. So the obvious answer is arrest, tear gas, pepper spray, beatings, anything to get them to disassemble. It has been said they occupy parks and streets they haven't paid for. Well then who paid for them? The tax payers. Well, not all of the 99% are out of work or income, they must have paid for the streets they occupy. But there are others who pay no taxes. Who is it, again, that doesn't pay taxes? "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." The 99%. The Occupiers. The people who live here, who don't go the Costa Rica with their billion dollar bonuses. Who...


One presidential candidate said the protesters should get a job, after they take a bath. Where's the brain? How can a man who makes a remark like that ever consider himself qualified to be President? A man who will talk about the American Dream.

Here's the American Dream: Take care of the rich and let the other classes fend for themselves. Well, that is what Occupy Wall Street is all about. We are beginning to fend for ourselves. Communism would be an unexpectedly bad result of all of this, but it's a possibility if you don't look at yourself in a mirror and shape up.

"it doesn't understand liberties" "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Without liberty there is no happiness. Without liberty life is a desperate struggle against depression and enslavement. It's not that big government is for or against liberty. It's that government doesn't know what it is. Liberty is not woven into the fabric of its duties. The slaves got their freedom legally, but they didn't get their liberties without struggling for them. Congress may pass feel good laws but when they are broken it goes into the courts with "the laws delay" in front of a wealthy judge who is presiding over a poor man's rights or the deprivation of them, before anything is even temporarily settled.

Big government is a waste of the tax payers money, since only the non tax payers seem to benefit from it. But taxes are necessary and can greatly improve our lives if collected properly and spent properly. And the present and future of America is mostly in the hands of those who will have the courage to look at themselves in the mirror, shake themselves loose from the mesmeric influences of politics and shape up.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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American Jobs

The world is moving along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Helen Keller
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Hello Sandy
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Here is a word to the wise and the otherwise. Have you ever heard of Spencer Silver or Art Fry? No? They should probably be almost as famous as Thomas Edison. They invented the Post-it. A thing some people use every day. The were two honest workers for the 3M Corporation. You've heard of them. I'm fairly sure Silver and Fry were compensated for their work, but it was 3M that walked away with the millions the Post-it has earned in all it's various forms.

"There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:
Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. (Ecclesiastes) 9: 14,15)

Think of all the nameless workers who have made things happen. The part time tutor who makes sure the kid passes her math exam. The typist who finds a mistake in the legal document and corrects it. The fireman who rescues the boy and his dog from a blazing building. The engineer who finds a more efficient way of moving the traffic through a busy city. The technician who gets two parts to fit together properly that allows the space shuttle to fly. We never know their names, those poor wise ones. Why are they poor? Because what they earn is never as much as their efforts are worth. But it doesn't matter. They have jobs.

Honest American workers want honest American jobs. If you are out of work the unemployment ratios presented on the TV News don't mean a thing. They just mean that you're a statistic.

Hence there is Occupy Wall Street, young people standing in the rain, shot at with rubber bullets, tear gassed and mustard gassed, arrested, beaten and sleeping in tents. Ecclesiastes also says, (4:13) "Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning." That wealthy corporations don't pay their fair share of taxes is an absurdity. They say they need the money to provide jobs. I wonder what the honest American unemployed worker thinks of that, when he can go through his home and see all the things that say "Made in China." Recently one of our rich Congressmen complained that he couldn't afford to be taxed because he would only have $200,000 left to feed his family. I wonder what the single mom who feeds her family on less than $20,000 thinks of that. They can out source jobs to Asia, hire temp workers so they don't have to pay for health care and vacations and squirm out of collective bargaining to fill their pockets and Maximize Shareholder Value. But now they have been warned. Will they heed the warning?

All the talk about economic policies, national debt reduction, stimulus packages and fiscal responsibility is, as the old farmer whom no one remembers said, all a lot of "hog wash." America is a poor country. The number of poor people who live here far out weighs the number of rich. The answer is to pry the money out of the hands of the greedy who don't even know they are greedy and spend it on a gross national product that people can afford. Honest American workers want honest American jobs. Now.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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WEEKEND CONTEST

This is easy.

A farmer son loads some pumpkins in his pick up truck and goes out to deliver them to various markets around town.

At the first market he delivers Half of the pumpkins in his truck plus half a pumpkin.
At the second market he leaves half of the pumpkins in his truck plus half a pumpkin.
At the third market he gives them half of the pumpkins he has plus half a pumpkin.
At the forth market he delivers half of the pumpkins he has plus half a pumpkin.
Then he drives his truck back to the farm to get more pumpkins because he's run out of them.
How many pumpkins did he have in the truck to begin with?

I await your clever answer.

DB
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AUTUMN QUESTION
This is not a contest

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Autumn is moving along.
Only 6 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answers.
DB
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Weekend

The Stream

All things flow, nothing remains the same.

Heraclius
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Hello Ernie
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In ancient times one of the questions that occupied philosophers was about the stream. If you put your foot into a stream and then remove it. Is it the same stream or a different stream when you put your foot back into it? The shape of the stream, its banks and its bottom may be the same but the water is different because it flows. It was finally concluded that it is a different stream.

Every day someone's clock says high noon. But is it the same high noon as it was yesterday? Of course not. It's a new day, a different day.

I think it was John Cage who said that he didn't understand why people were frightened of new ideas, that he was frightened of the old ones.

There are those who expect and anticipate change. (I hope I am always one of those.) We know that things are going to change, that they are in fact changing all the time and that it's constant change that keeps life vigorous and interesting. There are those who know that things change and try to adapt to it even though they may not like the fact. There are those who resent and attempt to ignore the changes going on around them. There are those who adamantly try to prevent any change from happening. But worst of all are those who flagrantly refuse to accept the fact that things have changed. All things flow. The world must progress. If you try to stop it from progressing it will put a ring in your nose, attach a rope and yank you into the future.

There must be some government officials and large corporation officers who are bewildered and astonished at what is going on world wide with the Occupiers. I heard one American politician ask "What do they want?" The fact is if he doesn't know what they want then he has no right to be in a position to ask the question. Bill Moyers said "Sometimes standing up for your country means standing up to your government." John F. Kennedy said "ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." And that is precisely what Occupy Wall Street is all about.

It took over 100,000 people of all races to convince the muddy minded American Congress to write and pass Equal Rights legislation. How many millions will it take to convince the power holders of the world that the human race means business, that the sordid circumstances of our oppression are no longer acceptable, that new levels must be reached in the ever flowing affairs of the common man and that the world, as we have known it, is changing.

The Occupiers will be killed, beaten, tasered, tear gassed, arrested, tortured, infiltrated, lied to, lied about, scorned and humiliated. But they will keep coming back because "All things flow, nothing remains the same."

DB, Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Only 4 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I await your answers.
DB
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