Open Letter to the Walt Disney Company

Disney Corporation has always been a leader in progressive values. I was especially impressed by Disney’s courageous stand in support of LGBT families a decade before the issue became political.

Disney Corporation has promoted social justice in many ways, but especially in the creation of an unique American mythology where young women are powerful princesses, and opportunity for a better life not only exists, but is available to anyone who works for it. Not only that, Disney characters teach us to share, to care about others before ourselves, and to preserve our environment for future generations.

More and more often, people object to the new mythology as a Disney-fication of our history, literally whitewashing away the worst sins of our ancestors. But I would object that the Disney mythology is a product of the 20^th century American ideal of the melting pot, where all cultures give their best ideas and the worst ones melt away into the past, including the worst ideas of the majority—like slavery and child labor are now practices considered to be left in the past.

Today’s progressives prefer the multi-cultural salad bowl metaphor as being more respectful of our history and individual cultures. Times change and the Disney Corporation of 21^st century is in need of a new paradigm that matches the progressive movement it has always supported. Instead of allowing progressives that should be your allies to link Mickey Mouse with an unsustainable consumer society and cultural imperialism, link him and your company, to the green, multicultural society that the majority of your market (the American family) already support, and become a model for corporate and media responsibility in the 21^st century!

Mickey Mouse, today the symbol of cultural imperialism the world over, once symbolized the hope of freedom through commerce and media that energized postwar America. Let’s rebrand him again as the defender of independent media, and the friend of families in all shapes and sizes! It even makes sense from a business standpoint, supporting Hispanic demands for justice today will pay off dividends in visitors to Disneyland as the economy improves…and maybe even create a new market in the Mexican middle class.

Disney Corporation needs to come out publicly in support of justice for the families of Manuel Diaz and Joel Acevedo, and encourage the media let the world see what is happening on the streets of Anaheim. It is time to stand up for justice and transparency in your own backyard, before it is forced on you and you lose any chance of redeeming yourself with your progressive allies—and their families!

Response to Charlie Daniel's Open Letter to President Obama

Here's Charlie Daniels’s open letter To Barack Hussein Obama, with my response in red….

Mr. Obama,

His official title is President Obama, and he will be called that for the rest of his life!

You recently made a statement to the effect that, ”If you have a business you didn't build it, you had help," implying that the federal government helped build our businesses by virtue of paving roads and building bridges and keeping the nation safe from foreign invasion.

First of all, Mr. Obama, if I'm going to take advice about business it will not be from somebody who has had absolutely no business experience like yourself.

That’s just as well since he is not a business consultant and is probably not offering to help you.

Secondly, Mr. Obama, I vehemently disagree with your premise.

Where was your government when I spent as much as 16 weeks away from my wife and infant son to get a business started?

Progressive policies would allow for up to 24 weeks of paternity leave…but if you decide to open a business while your wife is having a baby…it’s not President Obama’s fault!

Where were you on those cold winter nights when my old bus broke down in the middle of nowhere and we had to scramble to make the next show, nobody from the government came along to give us a ride?

Was that a private road or did some local government grade and pave it for you? Did you use a cell phone from a public network to call AAA for help or did the local sheriff’s deputy stop and offer to help?

Where was your government when I had to borrow money from a bank to make my payroll?

The federal government has a number of programs to help small businesses through tough times, including guaranteeing low interest loans for individuals that own small businesses, and they would have more if the Republicans weren’t always cutting them to cut out competition for their corporate sponsors.

Where was your government while I was digging out of a two million dollar debt, playing every smoky beer joint I could to keep from losing everything I owned?

How did you run up that debt and why weren’t you eligible for bankruptcy protection? And why couldn’t you get a better paying gig? I’d like to see some real facts, and hear you take some personal responsibility for the actions that ran up those debts and destroyed your career!

Mr. Obama, I want to make you aware of a fact. It is the federal government's responsibility to build roads and bridges and keep the nation safe. That's what the federal government is supposed to do, not create an entitlement society that is totally unsustainable and pile up debt that we can't pay.

Well, that’s your opinion. The constitution says it is the job of the government to “promote the common welfare” which I interpret to include feeding the poor and healing the sick.

And who do you think paid for those roads and bridges in the first place, and have been doing it for 200 years before you were even born?

The middle class paid for them with income taxes, not the corporations who use them to distribute their goods and make a tidy profit doing so. And certainly not by multi-millionaires who pay their accountants more to avoid paying taxes than they do their entire staff of immigrant domestic laborers.

The citizens of this nation do not need to pay more taxes, the federal government needs to stop spending money it doesn't have and has to borrow.  Because the truth of the matter is that no matter how much taxes the government collects, things are only going to get worse because you'll only spend it and demand even more.

The citizens of this nation do need to stop paying taxes to subsidize the profits of the corporations. We need to raise the corporate tax rate and lower the personal tax rate—for anyone who earns less than $1,000,000 per year. Then we need to spend that money taking care of the victims of the corporate war against humanity and invest it in a fair and sustainable economy for the future.

Mr. Obama you have divided this nation by making the have-nots believe that anybody who has been successful has done so at their expense, that anything they've accumulated has been stolen, not earned. That hard work and risk had nothing to do with their success, because they’ve just been lucky and should give a big part of what they earn to the government to pass on to those who don't even try to be successful.

The haves in this country are scapegoating the have-nots, taking advantage of ignorant, prejudiced whites and religious extremists in our nation to stay in power for one more generation. The 1% attack all attempts to increase the standard of living for the majority of Americans as a free lunch and encourage Americans to undermine their own, and their children’s, future health and happiness in the name of a God that speaks through the mouths of their major donors. They are distracting us all from the real problems of today and undermining any chance we have of planning for a better tomorrow.

Look at what’s going on with the African-Americans who put their hopes and complete confidence in you and voted overwhelmingly for you. The unemployment rate is 14% and the unemployment among young African Americans is something like 40%

Is that what hope and change is all about?

African Americans are well aware that President Obama is not the cause of their continuing economic struggle, and accusing him of it is just pandering to the right.

Look at what's happening in your hometown of Chicago where the murder rate is through the roof.

What is Romney’s plan to help the people of Chicago? Oh yeah, he wants to cut important programs like Housing and Urban Development, so they can be both homeless AND afraid on the streets of Chicago.

Do you think your baseless rhetoric about the unfairness of the successful in America is going to help soothe the situation?

No, it’s not going to soothe anyone, but neither is anything you have said in this letter, so stop being a hypocrite.

Have you ever considered reaching out to them, instead of fanning the flames?

President Obama has tried to work with the Republicans and they refuse to compromise. This is a simple fact. Deal with it.

Mr. Obama I don't think you like America very much. I think you'd like to redesign it from the ground up, to turn it into a lazy, unproductive, secular, socialist society.

President Obama is an example of the fact that it is still possible for a black man to rise to the top in America with a lot of hard work, but the sad fact is that many more black men struggle daily to get by, and not because they are lazy or unproductive. America has always had a secular society that allows religious groups of different persuasions to get along in the public square…and the only danger of that ending is coming from the right, not President Obama. As for your right wing fingerpointing…this is another way to pander to the right. Socialism is not evil or even a bad idea…and President Obama is no more a socialist than President Reagan.

Well, that just wont flush in a lot of ways, the most prominent being that when all the productive people have given up and stopped trying, when all the investors stop investing, when 80% of the population is living on government hand outs, your government is going to run out of money and this nation will sink into chaos.

The actual evidence shows that states with the most comprehensive and progressive social policies actually produce more farm produce, manufactured goods and human services than states with limited social policies. So if you really do manage to secede the red states away from the blue states…it will be the red states that are starving to death. Sorry, the facts are clear.

But Mr. Obama, I’m beginning to think that's what you want.

Mr. Daniels, I’m beginning to think you want a race war!

My help cometh from the Lord who made Heaven and Earth - not the government who made debt and class envy.

Class envy has been around since there have been classes. Read the bible…especially the parts about the Romans and their slaves. Did “the Lord who made Heaven and Earth” feel that it was fair to enslave people for their debts, or put them to death for their beliefs?

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for our country.

I think you should stop praying and do something constructive, before it’s too late—and vote out any politician who perpetuate any of these lies!

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Choose peace, not war.

Donna Wickerd

The Truth about Obama’s 2012 Tax Plan:

A small business is defined as an independent business that employs up to 500 employees. Small businesses employ about half of US workers. They accounted for 65% of the new net jobs created between 1993 and 2009. Small business owners pay taxes just like other human beings; they are not affected by the corporate tax rate.

Small businesses hire 43% of high-tech workers, and produce 13 times more patents than per employee than large patenting firms.

According to the US Congresses Joint Committee on Taxation, only 3.5 % of small businesses will see their taxes raised if we pass President Obama’s tax plan which ends Bush-era tax cuts for individuals earning over $100k/year and couples earning over $200k/year.

237/400 of the highest-paying taxpayers in the US are considered “small businesses” but do not create jobs.

In 2009 there were 27.5 million small businesses, so less than 1 million would see their taxes go up. (962,500).

http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm?areaid=24

How many of you would see your taxes raised? Do you think this will really have an adverse affect on our economy or do you think it is the only sane way to move forward toward fiscal responsibility?

The Magic of...You Tube

Until last week I could count the number of times I watched a video on YouTube on my fingers. Occasionally someone would send me a link that looked interesting enough to chance it, but I have always had a preference for text over video, especially for news. With a few exceptions, I find that text news reports are more in-depth than video, plus, I can read faster than people talk, so watching videos was just a waste of my time.

Rowan has shown me a whole new world. Imagine you are 3 going on 4. Your favorite thing in the world is trains and the tracks they roll around on...but your parents only have enough room in their house for one set of tracks (let's be honest, we don't even have room for that.) You are still too young to grasp the connection between the trackball and the monitor so your previous attempts to use the computer could be classified as watching while Mom plays the game for you.

Enter the touch screen tablet, in this case an i-pad, but an android tablet would be just as good. Now that you can touch the screen directly, the connection between the pictures on the screen and your hand suddenly becomes obvious. You keep begging for Mom to open up one of those games and play it "with" you, but Mom is trying to work so, out of desperation, Mom opens YouTube on her i-pad and searches for Thomas the Train.

Bingo! Several hundred videos appear, most of which are people who are just as obsessed with trains as you are. They have set up their track and recorded themselves playing with their collections. You want to see it again, play it again? You want to see something similar? wait until it ends and try one of their suggested videos. You want to go back to that awesome one where the 6 year old boy narrated the story in German, touch the history button. Once the initial search has been put in, you don't even need your mom, except to bring you food and remind you to go potty. Who wants to go potty anyway when you have this marvelous machine? All you want to do is use the "Play Pad" and laugh and learn German, like the little boy in the video.

I'm afraid that I may have created a monster. Either that, or another Steven Spielberg. I guess we will just have to wait and see....

Real friends are rare...

When I was about 14 I thought it would be great to be popular. I went out of my way to be nice to everyone, even people I have very little in common with. Eventually I had lots of friends, but still wasn't very popular. For some reason, the popular girls were mean, and I could never figure out how that worked.

After I graduated, most of those friends just faded away. We were bound by the school we went to , when we stopped going to school, what little we had in common wan't enough to hold us together. Sure, there were exceptions. Actually, only one. There is only one person from high school that I care enough to talk to today. There are a few more people whose names I remember, if I came across them somewhere it would probably be a pleasant trip down memory lane, but they were never in my heart.

Today I have a very short list of friends. A few of them have become closer to me than family. Sometimes I wonder why it is so hard to make new friends, but then I remember all the "friends" I had in high school and I am just glad to have a few good friends that I can really rely on as an adult.

This weekend one of my friends rescued me. My car seemed fine a few weeks ago, then the motor mounts went and suddenly the drive shaft was about to break. He spent most of his weekend fixing my car for me, and for a pittance compared to what I would have paid someone else. I know he hates working on cars these days too, he has made the career shift into electronics and would rather stay there.

Here's to real friends...if we get one or two in a lifetime, we are blessed.

Occupy Martin Luther King day

This weekend we celebrated Martin Luther King Day by following his example. We attended the 12th weekly Occupy Kingman assembly at Locomotive Park. Luckily for us, Rowan absolutely loves trains and he is just old enough to run around playing on the train while we hold up signs and take turns watching out for him.

Over the last year or so I have really begun to feel hopeless about the political situation in our country. I was raised to be patriotic. My family has participated in every major war in this country since before the revolution. But the wars today do not resemble World War 2, they look more like Vietnam. They are poorly planned and unwinnable, mostly because we refuse to fight for the one thing that could win the hearts of the Iraqi and Afghan people--democracy and self-determination.

Occupy Kingman has become a forum for people like me that can see how the institutions that serve us have failed and must be rebuilt instead of simply reformed. Over the past few weeks we have finally sat down and talked about some concrete ideas for how to proceed, both within and without the Occupy Kingman movement. The weekly meetings have given me a feeling of hope again, even knowing that we are not likely to make any national progress, we can come together as individuals in partnerships that can change our communities for the better.

I have decided to search out others in Dolan Springs who support the Occupy movement and try to form and Occupy Dolans Springs group.