Hippies were right all along

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, which brought thousands of young people to San Francisco, we should acknowledge that many of the opinions that the hippies were vilified for are today mainstream. The first event in the hippie movement was the Human Be-In, which took place in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on January 14, 1967.

The timing was critical. The war in Vietnam was claiming up to 1800 deaths a week. Students and young men of draft age staged frequent protests, mostly peaceful, against the war. African Americans asserted their citizenship rights in similar protests. Young African Americans, frustrated by the slow pace of the civil rights movement, rioted in Newark and Detroit, two of the most hopeless and poverty-stricken communities in America.

Hippies were less violent than the rest. They only wanted to be left alone to enjoy life. But the mainstream society found ways to harass the hippies at every turn. Older white men threatened to kill them, calling them Communists--in those days an insult taken seriously. Communities enforced laws against marijuana and LSD as well as rousting the homeless. These police activities united the hippies with homeless people and radical African Americans.

College students, the children of the newly affluent middle class, felt alienated as well, as the government drafted them into the army to serve in the unpopular war in Vietnam.

At this juncture, a new current of history created the Counter-culture. Music groups sprang up everywhere, using the electronic instruments that transformed them from folksingers into bands that competed with symphony orchestras for sheer volume. These newly minted bands became the cheerleaders of the counter-culture, urging their fans to turn on, tune in, and drop out.

Underground newspapers, like the Oracle, the Rolling Stone, and the Berkeley Barb, found a ready audience, fed up with the way the establishment press was whitewashing the Vietnam War. There had been a steady stream of good reports from the front. The government kept claiming the war was almost over at the same time they raised the number of inductees. Soon there were 500,000 US soldiers in Vietnam, most of whom did not want to be there.

Hippies viewed all these developments calmly. They adopted peace and love as their watchwords and eastern religions as their philosophy. In many ways, they emulated hindu and buddhist monks, who took vows of poverty and lived together communally. But they also took advantage of scientific advances, such as the birth control pill, that made free love a possibility. They used drugs developed by science, such as LSD, that provided much stronger ecstasies than traditional alcohol and nicotine.

The most important achievement of the Hippies was that they broke away completely from the pr-driven culture. They rejected popular music in favor of indie rock bands. They rejected alcohol in favor of marijuana, which they believed provided a better experience with fewer side effects. They rejected traditional marriage and experimented with new forms of sexual activity, including open relationships and communal marriage.

As set out by the speakers at the Human Be-In, the goals of the counter-culture--aka hippies--were simple yet profound.

Personal empowerment

Hippies believed in self-expression, no matter what form that expression took. This conforms with the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. The government attempted to jail hippies for burning the flag and profanity. Today: Court rulings have largely favored hippies, finding that you can't ban speech for one group without banning it for all.

 Cultural and political decentralization

Hippies objected to the society and mass media telling them what music they should listen to and what the definition of "art" was. They made their own music and art, which they used as a unifying principle. They also refused to accept the candidates that major political parties nominated if those candidates were not sympathetic to their views. This led to the rejection of Hubert Humphrey as a presidential candidate. The establishment resorted to force to put this rebellion down, but without success. Richard Nixon became president and proceeded to mock every ideal the Republicans held. Today: Elections have become more open, with primaries that nominate candidates, not political party bosses.

Communal living

Hippies rejected the suburban lifestyle, which leads to single adults living in houses intended for families and wastes resources. Hippies lived in cities and on communal farms. Today: Middle class people are moving back to the cities, abandoning their suburban utopias. This trend will undoubtedly continue as oil and coal become less acceptable for ecological reasons. 

Ecological awareness 

Hippies were mocked for their opposition to clear-cutting and experimentation with live animals. They believed in the interrelatedness of all living beings, so favored vegetarianism and organic gardening. Today: The world is coming around to the hippy position. Whole foods are good; coal and oil are hazardous. Extinction of species has taken on a more serious meaning. Environmental groups are influential in politics. Continued awareness of global warming is likely to make people even more concerned about the environment.

Higher consciousness

Hippies rejected traditional religion. They were looking for a deeper and more personal connection with the divine. They frequently used psychedelic drugs to achieve this end. Today: The interest in meditation and eastern religions is much wider-spread and more main-stream than in 1967. Polls reveal that 16% of Americans meditate daily using a secular meditation practice, while another 9% use an eastern meditation practice.

Counter culture drugs

Hippies used marijuana and many other drugs. The establishment responded with increasingly harsh sentences for marijuana use. Their severe laws filled the prisons with prisoners whose only crime is taking a relatively harmless drug that is not approved by the establishment. Today: The prisons are still full of non-violent drug offenders, but states are beginning to legalize marijuana. Some states, notably Mississippi, have recognized the folly of locking up non-violent drug users and paying for their upkeep, sometimes for years. The great logjam of strict drug laws is starting to break up.

Hippies triumph

Fifty years ago, hippies were attacked and mocked for their eccentric views. Today, their views are either mainstream or becoming so rapidly. The Tea Party are the same folks who mocked the hippies then. These latter-day bigots seem to be dying out and leaving the hippies to inherit the world.

Cantor's Defeat: Chalk one up for the 99 percent

Paul Krugman writes that Eric Cantor's defeat in his Republican primary signals the end of the Republican party as we know it. For decades, the Republican party has been selling itself to voters as far more radical than it actually is.

For example, Republicans preached against abortion rights since before Goldwater ran for president in 1964. The Moral Majority, founded in the 1970s, supported Republican presidential candidates like Reagan, Bush, and Dole. The Moral Majority campaigned for a ban on abortions and prayers in the schools.

Republican candidates gave lip service to social issues but ignored them once they got into office. This was an entirely practical thing to do, since there was little chance of convincing less fervent believers that these programs should be imposed on the entire population. Instead, the Republicans took the Moral Majority votes and used them to promote their own agenda, which included wars around the world to protect their financial interests and weakened regulations to protect their business interests.

The Tea Party first came to national prominence with the 2008 Presidential election. There was no clear idea of what the Tea Party stood for, primarily because Republican traditionalists quickly tried to grab its leadership. These included the corporatists, people who wanted to give more power to the corporations, and the libertarians, people who wanted to give more power to individuals as opposed to the state.

These two forces are diametrically opposed to each other. corporatists insist on corporations having more power over individuals, through laws that discourage lawsuits against them and Supreme Court rulings that give corporations more influence over elections than individuals. Libertarians want to preserve individual rights, not just from government control, but from corporate domination as well.

These two disparate factions continued to pour money into Republican coffers during 2010 and 2012, resulting in victories for Republicans in congress and in statehouses. But rank and file Republicans saw the results of these elections as reaffirming their worst fears, namely that the Republican establishment in Washington was continuing to buy their votes with empty promises.

Cantor was one of those politicians who pretended to be populist while getting cozy with financial interests. In the area of home mortgages and financial shenanigans, the tea party and the liberal left agree. They hate the one percent. People in rural Virginia, naturally conservative but very definitely not of the one percent, see Cantor as the enemy. That's the main reason he lost his primary.

Chalk up a victory for the 99 percent of us who find ourselves struggling in difficult economic times.

Koch Brothers: Liberals are conspiring against us!

Note: In keeping with the Koch brothers' love of anonymity, KochFacts.com consists of a number of anonymous posts. For convenience, this post assumes that all the articles are written by someone named Koch.

The Koch brothers are whining again. They claim to be misunderstood. Nice guys, really. Their libertarian views (which are a lot like Mitt Romney's views about the 47%) are good for everyone. Since Koch never did anything wrong, he assumes there much be a great liberal conspiracy to attack him and blacken his reputation.

KochFacts.com states that a conspiracy began in May 2010. The proofs he offers for this claim are few and those few are debatable.

1. Charles Lewis began a study with his students at American University that, says Koch, “repackages nearly every false and misleading attack leveled against Koch over the past couple of decades.”
2. Barack Obama began “calling out” conservative groups in his speeches.
3. The IRS began targeting tea party groups for special scrutiny, as well as groups that sought to educate the public about the Bill of Rights or desired to make the country a better place.
4. Austan Goolsbee publicly accused Koch of not paying taxes.
5. An internal Media Matters for America memo laid out that organization's and its allies' three-year plan “to initiate actions that promote progressive thinking and policies in the media.”
6. Democrats and other activist groups began fundraising efforts on the backs of Koch.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. None of these items suggests any secret plan or conspiracy to attack Koch.

1. The study by Charles Lewis and his students is thorough academic study of Koch Industries and its influence on Conservative organizations. The study uses public IRS forms to trace where Koch donations had been made. This is frequently difficult because Koch has set up an elaborate thicket of groups that conceal where contributions came from and where they went. The clear takeaway from this study is that Koch does not want the public to know what it is doing with its money. Koch attacks this study because it was funded by liberal organizations. The authors gave Koch notice of its publication, but Koch refused any comment.

2. Barack Obama began calling out conservative groups that opposed Democratic candidates and ideas in an election year. There has never been any evidence that Obama orchestrated any sort of conspiracy. Many of these groups had been making personal attacks on Obama for years, forcing him to distance himself from longtime associates, calling him a socialist, claiming he was unwilling to accept conservative ideas, questioning his birth certificate. It would have been remarkable if Obama had not called out conservatives for baseless and irrelevant attacks. Koch was one of the primary funders of such attacks through its numerous charities/front groups. Social Welfare Groups (501(c)(4)s), which are supposedly non-political, gave $254 million in political contributions in 2012. Much of the money was funneled through Koch's Americans for Prosperity Group.¹

3. One IRS officer targeted political groups for audits, but these were not just conservative groups. The IRS also targeted progressive groups. While none of the conservative groups failed to achieve tax-exempt status, two progressive groups did. The right-wing noise machine has morphed this problem into a bigger deal by claiming that all investigations of 501(c)(4) groups are politically motivated, but the IRS has an obligation under the law to determine whether a group is primarily political in nature or not. The right-wing has an issue with the IRS about how it should apply its regulations, but the problem is a bureaucratic one, not a political one. No evidence has ever connected the White House with these investigations.

4. Austan Goolsbee did not, apparently, have access to information about Koch's taxes. His comments indicated that Koch paid no corporate taxes because it is organized as a pass-through entity, such as a limited liability corporation (LLC) or a partnership. He was only guessing about this,however, and Koch subsequently revealed that it was organized as a regular corporation. Koch here implies that Obama was using confidential tax information to attack his political enemies. The only proof of this is an off=hand remark by an employee.²

5. The great power at the heart of this conspiracy is a relatively small non-profit called MediaMatters.org. Koch states that MediaMatters engages in politically motivated attacks against groups that the left and its allies disagree with. He publishes an internal memo from MediaMatters that describes its mission to “initiate actions that promote progressive thinking and policies in the media.” But the MediaMatters memo describes no illegal methods. Their primary method is to take video clips from right-wing spokespersons and post them on a web site. They do not use ad campaigns against them, although they do ask advertisers to stop sponsoring these persons or programs. MediaMatters takes their own words, which may be inflammatory, or bigoted, or merely false, and publishes them. This method has made MediaMatters the object of Koch's anger, but it is not contrary to the First Amendment. These spokespersons have access to microphones and tv cameras. Their problem is that their words themselves are toxic. Furthermore, Koch appears to believe that MediaMatters plan “to initiate actions that promote progressive thinking and policies in the media.” is somehow insidious. I don't get it. Koch has been saying how much he loves free speech, yet here he attacks his rivals for speaking in defense of their own values.

6. Koch is whining again. Democratic groups are raising funds on “Koch's back”. He makes it sound like he suffers personal pain whenever someone raises a dollar by invoking his name. He doesn't understand that his opinions and actions are actually hateful to progressives. His environmental views are considered by many a major threat to the survival of the planet. He blithely comments that he doesn't feel one way or the other about global warming. But failure to take actions to limit global warming is not an option. Not believing that global warming is happening and that his companies are having a big effect on it is not an option.

Koch has proven nothing about any liberal conspiracy to attack him in his article. He attempts to do so by associating the times of the events in the story with each other. Things that happen at the same time are not causes of each other. Furthermore, several of the events—IRS investigations, Charles Lewis study, Media Matters—have little or no relationship with the President or the Democratic Party. One of these “conspiracy” events consisted of an off-hand remark by a Cabinet member.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Koch wants us to believe there is a vast anti-Koch conspiracy. He has to provide some evidence for that if he wants us to believe it.

An alternative explanation is that Obama recognized the nature of his opponents and began attacking them. People hate and fear the Kochs both because of their words and actions and because their secrecy is troubling. For the most part, the Kochs actually did the things they are accused of. People have easily seen through their attempts to deny responsibility by claiming that some other “unrelated” group was responsible.

Make no mistake about it, the Kochs are the one percent. They fear and loathe the 99 percent and will attack them whenever they can. Many of the problems that beset America right now can be traced to the no-compromise, no-prisoners attitude of the Kochs.

1http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/10/the-irs-was-wrong-to-target-the-tea-party-they-shouldve-gone-after-all-501c4s/

2http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/goolsbee-koch-industries-irs-scandal

Moore, OK: Where Taxes Are Low And Children Die In Tornadoes

By Holly and Allan Masri

In 1999, Moore, Oklahoma, was hit by a tornado that killed 36 people and registered the highest wind speeds ever recorded. Then yesterday, another massive tornado struck, killing twenty-four people, including nine children. At least seven of those children died at school.

Between 1999 and yesterday, the citizens and government of that town had 14 years to make their schools safe for their children.  You would think that the 36 deaths in 1999 might have been a wake-up call, that the survivors would say, "We must be better prepared, next time.  We must make sure our children, at least, have a shelter to go to".    But yesterday, children at both of the schools had no better shelter than hallways and closets.

Where were the underground shelters?  Where did the tax money go, the money that could have built shelters for those children?  Turns out, the wealthy people have it... because Oklahoma eliminated inheritance tax, and made sure that the wealthy people pay no more income tax than poor people.

Keith Mitchell, executive director of communication at Lawtown Public Schools, located 80 miles southwest of Moore, Oklahoma, told the New York Daily News that there are no specific guidelines from the state that mandate a certain type of storm construction like a fallout shelter.

 "It was left up to the school district to determine what structures to have," he said.

Since money obviously wasn't spent on the schools, who was responsible for that decision?  Here's one person:  U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, who lives in Moore.

According to Wikipedia, Rep. Cole's voting record "during his nine years in the House marks [him] as a solid conservative with occasional libertarian sympathies. Cole has consistently voted against positions supported by lobbies for senior citizens, labor unions, and teachers' unions."  

Cole said Tuesday on MSNBC TV that the school was the most secure and structurally strong building in the area.

"And so people did the right thing," he said, "but if you're in front of an F4 or an F5 there is no good thing to do if you're above ground.  It's just so tragic."

"Tragic" doesn't begin to cover it.  But WHY were people above ground, Mr. Cole?  Why were there no adequate shelters at Plaza Towers Elementary, or at Briarwood?  Why did seven children drown in a basement?

Undoubtedly Rep. Cole and the wealthy people he works for are enjoying the blood money they saved because they refused to make safe refuges for the children of Moore. Perhaps they are even toasting each other with expensive champagne right now, congratulating each other on how little they pay to the government.  And all the dead, and wounded, of Moore?  Expendable.  (Big sigh)..."It's just so tragic."

Every day we hear from the Tea Party and their ilk that government spends too much, collects too much in taxes, and wastes our money.  But Mr. Cole, what better use for money could there be, than to keep our children alive?  A little tax money spent on underground shelters in Moore would not be wasted.

Unholy Alliance: South Carolina Politicians Suppress Report on the Environment

South Carolina's coastline is rapidly eroding, due to the rising sea level and other effects of global warming. The government of South Carolina should be planning for the changes and budgeting state money to counteract them.

The South Carolina state government, firmly under control of Tea Party climate change deniers, is not preparing for those changes. Instead, it decided not to release a three-year scientific study on what changes have already occurred and what changes are likely in the future.

The study had been compiled by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (DNR) under the leadership of its Director, John Frampton. Tea Party darling, Governor Nikki Haley, appointed Caroline Rhodes to chair the board regulating the DNR. Rhodes, in turn, forced Frampton out of his job and replaced him with Alvin Taylor, who explained the suppression of the report on global warming with the ominous words, “priorities have changed”.

Rhodes, a small business owner with no government experience, has been forced to step down as Chairman of the DNR for lying to the SC legislature about her part in Frampton's departure. The DNR has now agreed to release the report.

The global warming crisis has hit hard along the Atlantic coast. Suppression of a report like this in South Carolina is only a minor problem. The real problem is that the government of South Carolina won't be paying attention to the report anyway. They have no plans to combat global warming, but will only react to each event as it happens.

The global warming report contains a list of consequences of global warming for South Carolina's coast. Rising sea levels, salt water intrusion into ground water, disappearing islands, appearance of new exotic species: These are only a few of the items listed in the report. South Carolina needs to decide whether to preserve the sea turtle hatcheries along the coast. If the people want to save the turtles and other endangered species, they need to act now.

It would help them to act if they had a report outlining in detail what they must prepare for.