From left to right we have Ariel Morgan, Catherine Morgan and Frank Morgan of Allen, Texas.

Catherine told me that the other two signs are going to friends in Allen who have requested one of John Lingenfelder’s yard signs.

I guess they must have heard that John represents families.  Unlike Sam Johnson, John Lingenfelder thinks that the sky should not be the limit for interest rates that Credit Card Companies can charge families.  John would like to introduce the term “usury” back into the American vocabulary.  Unlike Sam Johnson, John Lingenfelder believes in equal pay for equal work.  Unlike Sam Johnson, John Lingenfelder believes in helping families to stay in their homes.  Sam Johnson voted against H.R. 1106 “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009.  This bill authorized bankruptcy courts to modify the terms of mortgages made on home owners’ primary residence.  This bill doesn’t “raise taxes” or “increase the deficit”–it simply helps ordinary American families in the Third District to stay in their homes.

What folks might not know is that bankruptcy courts allowed owners of yachts and vacation homes to  renegotiate those loans–just not the roof over your families heads.  Now, thanks to a lot of good Democrats and few good Republicans, ordinary Americans have the same rights as the wealthy to renegotiate terms of their home loans in a bankruptcy court.  If it were up to Sam Johnson, families like Catherine’s would be out of luck–unless they had a yacht or a vacation home.

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Ariel is learning political campaigning early.  For a school assignment last week she and her classmates had to make a home out of a paper bag.  Each child was given a paper bag from which to construct their home.  As you can see from the photo below, Ariel made sure that her home had a campaign sign for John Lingenfelder–Democratic Candidate for US Congressional District Three.

Emma Berry is endorsing John Lingenfelder, the Democratic Candidate for the

Third US Congressional District of Texas.

First of all I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for signing my petition for ballot. I realize that it takes a lot of faith and a lot of discontent to put your signature and personal information on a sheet of paper that a stranger like me brings around.  Yet over 800 of you did that for me and I’m deeply touched.  Like me you are true Americans who still have at least a little faith in our democratic system and hope that our Democracy can be repaired by those of use who still believe in government.

I’ve done a lot of soul-searching these past few days.  I could go ahead and run as an independent write-in because, thanks to you, this second time around I have enough signatures to qualify.  However, since my name would not appear on ballot beside the Democrat, Republican and Libertarian [Write in would be a selection that would then lead to my name.]  Frankly, this just about assures that I would not be able to win–I am an optimist, but I also understand odds better than when I began in March.

I’ve decided there is too much at stake to “go for it.”  Instead I will support John Lingenfelder to my fullest extent–as an INDEPENDENT, however.  I am NOT joining the Democratic Party.  I remain an Independent who happens to be supporting a Democrat.

In fact, John is not the only Democrat that I support this year.  I support Bill White, David Cozad, Greir Raggio, Rick Koster, Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Boxer, and Justin Coussoule.

I support the majority of Americans first, not last–those of us who work for a living and who earn less than $166,000 a year.  I support the reality that Social Security is just fine and does not need to be “fixed” by the upper 5%. They have done more than enough fixing which is why we are in the mess we are in today.   I support immediate job creation. I support reallocation of the $19 billion that we currently fork over in farm subsidies to the rich and to Wall Street Agribusinesses.  That money could be used for job creation in the USA and beginning the tedious task of rebuilding our manufacturing base.  As long as there  are human beings we will need goods that were made by other human beings.  Globalization and the shipping of millions of manufacturing jobs overseas so the rich could benefit from cheap/slave labor is an evil that was perpetuated on this nation that needs correction.  The globalization scheme of the rich, by the rich and for the rich has destabilized our economy.

I believe that John Lingenfelder is the man who will work to correct these injustices.  I KNOW that Sam Johnson won’t.  Sam Johnson is part of the problem–not part of the solution.

I URGE, NO, I BEG YOU TO CALL JOHN’S OFFICE TOMORROW  972-468-1127. Tell him what you can do for him and then do it.  It will take votes for John to win, but that is not all it will take.  IT WILL TAKE THE SUPPORT OF HUNDREDS OF CITIZENS WHO CARE ENOUGH TO SUPPORT SOMEONE WITH THE COURAGE TO CHANGE WASHINGTON.

IF YOU DON’T STEP UP TO THE PLATE WITH ME, THEN SAM JOHNSON WILL WIN AND WE WILL ALL LOSE.  I’m counting on you to do more than vote this year.  Bring your friends with  you and tell John that I sent you.

If you live in another state, send money:  Write to info@lingenfelderforcongress.com.

Another plus about yard signs for people like me:  They force us to take a good look at our front yard.  My Word!  Next week I’ll have to get out and trim my shrubs.

TO GET YOUR LINGENFELDER YARD SIGN:

Go down to the Lingenfelder Campaign Headquarters at 1108 West Parker, Ste 108
(Southwest corner of Parker and Alma)

**Peachis Gray**
Executive Assistant
Lingenfelder for Congress
TX 3rd Congressional District

1108 W. Parker, Ste 108

Plano, Tx 75075

Ph: (972) 468-1127

Scheduling & Special Events: Peachis@LingenfelderForCongress.com

IF YOU EARN LESS THAN $200,000 AND LIVE IN THE THIRD US CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF TEXAS, YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO VOTE FOR SAM JOHNSON!

IF YOU RELY ON SOCIAL SECURITY, YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO VOTE FOR SAM JOHNSON EITHER!  SAM JOHNSON HAS TOLD THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS THAT HE THINKS IT IS “SENSIBLE” TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY.

Go to John’s ACT BLUE portal and give all you can afford to give!  Consider it a wise investment in your future!

http://www.john.lingenfelderforcongress.com/index.html

Who pulls the strings in Rick Perry’s Texas?

It will be obvious later tonight at his big “Lobbyist Ball” fundraiser in Austin — 29 out of 30 members of the steering committee are registered lobbyists. Many of those lobbyists are former Perry staff members who then cashed in for millions after working for Perry.

Please help us send a clear message that Texans from all backgrounds are tired of the “politics as usual” that has brought us rising tuition, insurance, and utility rates.

Click here to contribute $5 to make sure ordinary Texans — not lobbyists — pull the strings in Austin.

All contributions in response to this email will be counted toward our “Say No to the Lobbyist Ball” goal of surpassing 20,000 individual donors to our campaign — we are now at 19,523.

Our campaign is building momentum, as you can see from the crowds and energy growing statewide.

If you are ready for a new governor, please contribute today and help us move Texas forward.

Respectfully,

Bill White

HEY BOSS!  I keep asking you.  If you rip off my bootstraps, how do you expect me to pull myself out of this hole?

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This boot strap philosophy of the rich and of those who buy into the Wall Street right-wing ideology is the part that I find the most objectionable about the right-wing and Corporate Centrist Democrats as well.

To be poor in their eyes is, if not a crime, at least an indication that the poor person has done something wrong.  In their world, they believe that any one can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and “make it.”

The obscene truth about these people is that they are in the business of cutting the bootstraps off the poor by paying them low wages so they can pay larger dividends to the already rich.  Many of them, like David Koch, for example whose father invented the process for changing petroleum into gasoline, were born with a gold spoon in their mouth.  Furthermore, even those who were not, such as Barack Obama, grew up with a strong family support system that included at least one adult who nurtured their dreams and hopes.  In Obama’s example, he had not one but three such people in addition to having an exceptionally brilliant mind.

The three countries who are the worst about perpetuating myths about the fault of the poor are the USA, England and India.  At least in India, with its caste system, and belief in karma, they have it half right in that it is not the poor person’s “fault”.  However, they still shun the poor as do most Americans and the English.  Oh we have our annual Thanksgiving Dinners–most of which are held the day before the actual holiday so we can be home with our own families on the actual holiday.

How many of the rich bring a poor person to their own table on Thanksgiving day?  Do you know any?

SOURCE:  ONE OF MY IFLIZWEREQUEEN POSTS  IN 2009.

David Koch, the Tea Party Organ Grinder Man with Chuck Grassley, one of his Monkeys

The primary organization who supply the millions of dollars for buses, training speakers, pamphlets, organizing events is an organization called AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY.  Over the past two years I’ve written numerous articles about this group. The two men who bankroll Americans for Prosperity are David and Charles Koch–the 16th richest men in the world.

“Americans for Prosperity” is anything but a group that supports prosperity for the majority of Americans. For example, when the USA lost their bid in 2009 to bring the next  World Olympics to Chicago, members of this group are on tape for cheering!  Yes cheering–in spite of the fact that winning this bid would have brought thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to the American economy. They are not about prosperity for our nation.  And they are not about Christianity.  They are more about an ideology of hatred that is designed to further the wealth of the top 1% of the richest in our nation.

Ironically, the inherited wealth on which the Koch brothers live was made by their father who made his money in the 20’s and 30’s by helping Joseph Stalin build the oil infrastructure for communist Russia.

Yasha Levine has recently published a devastating article on the Koch brother that appeared in the New York Observer on 7 ways the Kochs make their money that really doesn’t’ jibe with the the ideology that they pour tens of millions into every year.  In other words, the Koch brothers are conservative hypocrites. The Kochs make a fortune through state government welfare — American and Venezuelan — in all kinds of ways.   Instead of being puppets for the Koch brothers, the Tea Party anarchists should work to cut off the Kochs’ access to our money, common wealth and private property, which they in turn use to fund an ideology that makes it harder for normal people to get their own fair share and enjoy on some kind of human, as opposed to billionaire-inhuman, scale.

Here are the four most outrageous activities associated with the Koch brothers include:

1.“In 1998, Koch Industries entered into a lucrative partnership with two state-owned companies-one Venezuelan, the other Italian-to open a massive $1 billion nitrogen-based fertilizer plant in Venezuela called Fertinitro. … For Koch Industries, whose role in the partnership is to unload half of the 6 million tons of fertilizer produced by Fertinitro every year on the American market, that equals up to $123.6 million in subsidies every year.” Get that? A billion-dollar double partnership with two state-owned companies.

2. “Two years before founding the influential Cato Institute, Charles Koch bought a supertanker from a communist regime.”

3. “For the past fifty years, through its Matador Cattle Company subsidiary, Koch Industries has been quietly milking a New Deal program that allows ranchers to use federal land basically for free. Matador … has something in the neighborhood of 300,000 acres of grazing land for its cows—two-thirds of which belong to American taxpayers, who will never see a penny of profit.”

4. “In 2006, Koch Industries acquired pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific for a $21-billion cash payment, allowing the Koch brothers to tap into a whole new area of government largess: the ability to log public forests for private gain and have taxpayers cover the operating costs.”

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Links to a few other articles that I’ve posted on the Koch Brothers over the past year:

Maybe someday ordinary Americans will wise up to the frauds that the rich perpetrate against them such as the Tea Party Movement(August 3, 2010)

Koch Brothers: Bus your Tea Party People down to the Gulf to Clean Up the Oil Spill (June 15, 2010)

The Republican Leadership and Shadow Men Behind the Tea Party Movement are literally  using propaganda tactics that Adolf Hitler promoted (April 25, 2010)

Tea Party members don’t even know what they are talking about.  They yell socialism and yet they want Medicare, government job creation and for government to rein in Wall Street. (March 27, 2010)

In the USA and in fact most of the world we make poverty the fault of the poor. (November 5, 2009)

Our Battle should be with the people who fund the hate groups (Oct. 28,2009)

Tom Phillips, “Mr.Americans for Prosperity” appeared on Rachel Maddow (Oct 15, 2009)

This is the violence that Chuck Grassley and David Koch incite with their rhetoric (August 25, 2009)

Look at the vile propaganda that David Koch helps to fund and promote (August 20, 2009)

Meet one of the Architects of the Corporate Nation: David Koch (August 20, 2009)

Learn about a Group who Sponsor anti-health care reform: “Americans for Prosperity“ (August 20, 2009)

Between 2000 and 2005, an average of 850,000 people a year entered the United States without authorization, according to the report released Wednesday. As the economy plunged into recession between 2007 and 2009, that number fell to 300,000.

The sharp drop-off has contributed to an 8 percent decrease in the estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, from a peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009.

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EMMA COMMENTS AND ANALYSIS OF THIS NEWS:
This is astounding and important news! Consider the time line.  Until 1994 when NAFTA was passed, the illegal immigrant population in the USA had been stable at 2 million for 10 years.  After the passage of NAFTA, the number of illegal immigrants in our nation swelled to 12 million by the end of 2000.  The reason for dramatic increase in illegal immigration was due to a number of factors and among them was most definitely NAFTA, an unfair trade agreement that decimated the livelihood from 2 million Mexican corn farmers.  They could not compete with the heavily US government subsidized corn markets.  In addition to the corn farmers, many of the other cottage industries dependent on the corn farmers prosperity also failed.  These millions of people migrated as displaced persons to the USA. Another reason for the rise in this migration to the USA was because, if you will recall, the USA was a boom economy during the 1990’s with lots of new construction and a booming new housing market.  By 2000, the number of people who had migrated to the USA illegally from Mexico swelled to 12 million souls.

But the winds of the new century blew in George Bush and his conservative ideology for the wealthy.  Also, in fairness, our economy by 2000 was already beginning to contract economically and workers in the USA were feeling the impact of NAFTA and other unfair trade agreements that resulted in  millions of jobs being shipped overseas and ironically,  to Mexico as well.

Now, thanks to this new information from PEW, we know what many of us have been suspecting for many years–illegal immigration to the USA is NOT increasing.  It is in fact decreasing and has been now for ten years.

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So now we know the truth–illegal immigration has been on the decline for the past 10 years–what are its implication and what are we going to do with it and how will this shape our solutions going forward? How are we going to receive this news?

Well that all depends upon who we are and the core beliefs that we cling to.   Our core beliefs also will influence our our interpretations of the implications of this new irrefutable data.

Of course the hard core nuts among among us are likely to deny the truth.  They will claim that the findings are bogus and do what they can to discredit this credible information from a reputable and reliable  source such as the PEW foundation.

Then there are others who will say that it is because law enforcement policies have been enacted that made it more difficult for people to cross the border. And this is true, but only as part of many factors, not the sole reason.  Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew, and one of the people who created this report had this to say:  “We know that it’s harder to sneak across the border than it was four or five years ago, and especially than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” he said. “Virtually everyone who sneaks across the border uses a coyote now, and the cost has gone up. The increase of the border patrol around cities and ports of entry has pushed the flows across the border into more remote places.”

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IMPLICATIONS

We do have the issue of approximately 11 million people who are in this country illegally. We do have the issue that although they have a positive impact on our county nationwide of a +2% annual addition to our over GNP, many areas in our border states have been negatively affected by this influx of people and we do need to pay attention to assisting these communities in healing their problems.   However unlike an unconstrained rising tide, our illegal immigration  problem has boundaries and we could even say is shrinking.   It is contained and that is very positive news.  Surely this will diminish the fear-mongering of  politicians like Governor Brewer of Arizona and others who use illegal immigration as a wedge issue to polarize Americans.  The news that swarming hoards of brown people south of the border are not taking over our nation, but are decreasing, takes much of the wind out of the sails designed to traverse the seas of  mass hysteria regarding people “flooding our nation” from Mexico.

We must be aware of and remind America that the solution is not to put these people in jail–not any of them.  That should never be part of any solution. It would be taking a net positive factor (the economic plus factor of illegal immigrants) and turning it into a net negative factor for the American taxpayer by forcing us to pay privatized Wall Street prison corporations to keep these people locked up.

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A WALL STREET PRISON SERVICES CORPORATION AND ITS CONNECTIONS TO GOVERNOR BREWER

Rachel Maddow had a news breaking expose (September 1, 2010) of Governor Brewer and her connection to CCA,  a privatized prison services corporation and  the fourth-largest corrections system in the nation, behind only the federal government and three states.  CCA houses approximately 75,000 offenders and detainees in more than 60 facilities, 44 of which are company-owned, with a total bed capacity of more than 80,000. CCA has contributed big time to Governor Brewers campaign.  In fact, CCA and Governor Brewer use the same PR agency–High Ground.  [I guess they call name it "high ground" because if you are not on high ground when you listen to some of their BS you are likely to drown.]

Privatization of institutions such as prisons, schools and health care insurance which should be held in public trust is the cornerstone of Republican and conservative thinking. If they had their way,  Wall Street would be in charge of all government.  Instead of being represented in a US court of law, the conservatives would have citizens settling their difference in arbitration courts managed by Wall Street corporations.  We must educate people and spread the word so that they are aware of CCA and its connections to Governor Brewer’s political campaign as well as to the passage of the draconian SB1070 legislation that she signed into law.

A local news station in Arizona KPHO (CBS affiliation) has been running exposes of Brewer and her anti-immigration campaign along with her connections and funding that she has accepted from CCA.

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Once again, the approach to solving our immigration issues with job creation is even more viable as a workable solution.

And again, the seed money for a jobs creation program is already there if we can force our Congress to overhaul the current Farm subsidies program.  Out of our current annual budget of $19 billion in farm subsidies, only $310 million goes to small farmers who still live on the land.  We can reclaim $18.5 billion that is wasted on Wall Street agribusinesses and rich “gentlemen” farmers and apply that taxpayer dollar to job creation.  We can begin this program in our border states who are negatively affected by illegal immigration.

Who knows?  After five years we might be able to cut the farm subsidies program from its current $19 billion to $500,000 and return the other $18.5 billion to the taxpayers.

]]> http://emmaberry.org/?feed=rss2&p=3699 0 http://emmaberry.org/?p=3696 http://emmaberry.org/?p=3696#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:53:03 +0000 admin http://emmaberry.org/?p=3696
Photo from National Archives

The Newsboys Strike of 1899 was led by the children to force change in the way that Joseph Pulitzer’s and William Randolph Hearst’s   newspapers compensated their child labor force. The Evening World and Evening Journal started charging newsboys 60 cents for a hundred copies of their papers, a hike from 50 cents. Angry, thousands of newsboys went on strike. They held protests all over Manhattan and got into fights with men and boys hired by the papers as replacement workers.  The strike lasted two weeks, causing Pulitzer’s New York World to reduce its circulation from 360,000 to 125,000. The strike was successful and the price was reduced back to the original 50 cents.  But honestly can you imagine the raw greed of wealthy men such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst taking advantage of homeless urchins? That was the world of Wall Street then and that is the world of Wall Street today.  Little has changed.

Newspaper boys were the main distributors of newspapers to the general public from the mid-19th to the early 20th century. They were among the poorest classes of society, often seen sleeping on the streets. The newsboys were not employees of the newspapers.  They  purchased the papers from the publishers and sold them as independent agents. They were not allowed to return unsold papers and these children typically earned around less than a dollar a dollar a day even though they often worked until very late at night.

In 1875 a writer of the period wrote, “There are 10,000 children living on the streets of New York….The newsboys constitute an important division of this army of homeless children. You see them everywhere….  They surround you on the sidewalk and almost force you to buy their papers. They are ragged and dirty. Some have no coats, no shoes, and no hat.”  [Source: WIKI].

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Labor Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the first Monday in September (September 6 in 2010).

The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City. In the aftermath of the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals  during the 1894 Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with Labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike.

AFL-CIO

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions. The AFL-CIO was created in 1955 by the merger of the AFL and the CIO.

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In 2005, SEIU was a founding member of the Change to Win Coalition, which furthered the reformist agenda, criticizing the AFL-CIO for focusing its attention on election politics, instead of taking sufficient action to encourage organizing in the face of decreasing union membership.  In 2005 the SEIU, the Teamsters and the UFCW all disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO.

However, regardless their differences and allowing for the fact that not all unions represent their members as well as they could–all you need to do is take a trip down memory lane to see how awful things would be for workers if they were not joined in the solidarity of a union.

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UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS (UFCW)

BUY A UNION BRAND!

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