Stop the Insanity: Target 2014 — A 21st Century Libertarian Blog

Driven to Danger, Interview with Jon Wexford

on 06/16/2013

In my ongoing search for interesting people to interview I ran across Jon Wexford, author of Driven to Danger. Jon’s book is a fictional account of a Dictatorship and at first seemed to have little in the way of material that could be related to our present political problems in the U.S. However, upon reflection, and after seeing the seemingly never ending series of scandals (with the NSA fiasco being the latest) with our current Administration it occurred to me that Obama is becoming more and more like a Dictator.

Then I also discovered that Jon has a new book coming out soon which is about the Constitution. Putting two and two together I realized that a good Constitution that the citizens force leaders to follow is the one way to avoid a Dictatorship. Hopefully more of our citizens will become proactive and do something about the current unfortunate drift in our country.

Anyway, enough editorializing. But before we get started please note that I will have an expanded version of this interview live on blog talk radio on Monday, June 17^th at the usual 7 p.m. California time slot. You can listen in to Books and Politics at www.blogtalkradio.com/angelsandwarriors at that time. But meantime you should find the following written interview quite interesting.

Tell me a little about yourself, your background, etc.

My parents are older, so they instilled in me an old-world value system, one where government is not the answer to the world’s problems. I started writing when I was 15. I’ve always believed in myself, that I can do anything. It’s just a question of making money from it. I’ve also always been interested in foreign culture. I’m as close to being an expert as it can get in some areas in the world, like Central Asia, India, Europe.

2. I’ve read a bit about your book, “Driven to Danger,” and it seems that the bad guys in your story run the country and their main goal is to stay in power rather than do what is best for their subjects. Please explain how this works.

It’s the way of the world, reward your friends and punish your enemies. They, like the real Central Asian nations, are still run by Soviet-era hacks. These people know the game, when you give people power over themselves, you can’t control them. The dictator, Almatov tolerates no dissent. So then those who oppose him and whom he treats the cruelest plot to overthrow him clandestinely. But the main character is a poor musician named Vadim. He has a great talent, but no opportunity to do anything with it unless he plays the game and follows the “rules” the dictatorship has established. Vadim sure doesn’t want to do this, and fights it. Sound familiar?

3. Do you see a similarity between the regime in Driven to Danger, with its obsession on staying in power and the two major political parties in the U.S. (Democrats and Republicans) who also seem more interested in power than in doing what is best for our country?

Yes, because the further we get away from the US Constitution, the more corruption we’re going to have. It’s hard to put other people first, but good leaders do this; bad leaders put their own interests first. The difference is, and it makes me crazy, is that we still have the power to say no and vote these elitists out of office; the people of Derghistan and other nations like it don’t have that power. Those countries are “democracies,” but only in name. I don’t want America becoming like that.

4. Are there ‘special interests’ in your story and, if so, what do they do to maintain or enhance their position?

I guess the special interest is anyone who’s thirsty enough for power. It’s like the game king of the hill, you do all you can to knock off whoever’s at the top.

5. How can the people in a country like the one in your story, or like our own country for that matter, protect themselves against leaders whose primary interest is themselves?

It’s an easy answer, but it’s to do something about it. Getting people to do something about it is the tough part. Even just vote. You look at voter turnout and it makes me sick. I mean, we should do something about Washington while we STILL CAN do it peaceably, with a vote. Look at what the founders of this country had to do to shake off big government. Big government came after them with a bayonet. We’re not at that point yet.

6. But even if there is a Constitution, as we have in the U.S., what can prevent the leaders of a country from finding ways around it?

The people. We have to hold our government accountable. It makes me cringe when I hear people say that all politicians are corrupt. We allow them to get away with it.

7. What do you think of the current status of our own Constitution?

I know people all over the world, and I see how things go in their countries as far as taxes, regulation, corruption, job opportunities go, and believe it or not, I think America still isn’t in as bad a shape as some places, but, we’re headed in that direction. The US Constitution was one of the greatest gifts to mankind and has been replicated all over the world; but unfortunately people don’t know why it’s important, or care. That’s why I felt the need to write a book about why Americans should care about it, which is coming out on July 4^th.

8. What can we do to strengthen the Constitutional protections that we supposedly have, but which seem to be eroding in recent years?

We’re going to have to start caring more. Again, it’s easy to say, but harder to do. I think that we who know better should be leaders and encourage everyone to do something. It seems like a Goliath, a Colossus, people hear 17 trillion in debt and it literally seems impossible to recover from. But just because something is hard doesn’t mean it can’t be done!

9. I understand you plan to release a new book about the Constitution in a few months. Can you tell us a little about that book and when it will be available?

It will be on Amazon on July 4^th, so coming very soon. It’s called “Why Care About the Constitution? 10 Reasons to Give a Dang.” It’s a short book, but it’s short and to the point.

10. Where can readers/listeners get a copy of your current book, and how can they keep in touch so they know when your new book is available.

There are a lot of ways, the best is visiting jonwexford.com. I will be launching an email newsletter soon, so people can get updates, but check out jonwexford.com for that too. I have links to my books on my website too. I’m on Twitter, @JONWEXFORD, on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, but all that can be found on jonwexford.com too.

Jon I’d like to thank you for taking time to deal with this written interview in advance of our live interview Monday. I am really looking forward to that interview since it will allow us to be more interactive and will also allow listeners to call in with questions. But in the meantime the above written interview provides readers with an idea of what they can expect and should allow them to start thinking of the questions they would like to ask on Monday.

Again, the live interview will be on the Books and Politics Show, Monday evening, June 17^th, at 7 p.m. California which is 10 p.m. on the East Coast. I hope you can all listen in. The address is www.booksandpolitics.com/angelsandwarriors.

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Skullduggery – An enlightening interview

on 06/10/2013

From a ‘whistleblower’ who was there!

The following is a written interview with Ted Krager, author of Skulldruggery. If you can read this without becoming completely disgusted with our government there is something wrong with you! And if you would like to listen in to a live interview on blog talk radio please go to www.blogtalkradio.com/angelsandwarriors Monday night, June 10^th, at 7 p.m. California time.

1. Ted, in your book you make some pretty serious accusations. Could you give our listeners a little information about your background and how you know so much about the Financial Crisis?

I worked on Wall Street for just over 10 years and one of my specialties was MBS – Mortgage Backed Securities, which are bundles of closed mortgage loans that conservative and / or retired investors like because they provide a steady stream of monthly or quarterly income, securitized my the mortgages. (Those conservative investors included individuals as well as institutional accounts like municipalities, public employees retirement unions, etc..) Until the implosion of the economy in the fall of 2007, these MBS’s had never failed to provide that steady stream of income to conservative borrowers, many of whom by charter could only buy what they thought were AAA-rated securities.

After my Wall Street career, I started a mortgage banking company and built it from just me working out of my basement into a 310 employee company with offices in 39 states. We never did subprime loans because I don’t believe in them.

2. What do you hope to accomplish by publishing Skullduggery?

To expose the REAL story about who caused the Financial Crisis. It was an artificially/politically induced boom and bust and the true architects of this disaster will stop at no lengths to stop the truth from becoming common knowledge because many of them still serve at the highest levels in Washington. If they aren’t exposed for the roles they played in this, it could and probably would happen again.

3. What has the response been like thus far?

From the left, the book has provoked insults, threats (including 2 death threats) and attacks on my web sites.

From the right, the book has received great responses and most purchases are now because of recommendations.

4. I’d like to go through the chain of events that led up to the Financial Crisis and if I understand what I’ve read from your book it began in 1995 and Barack Obama was involved. Could you tell us what happened at that time?

It actually started in 1977 with Jimmy Carter passing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). That Act was supposed to help mostly minorities that could not qualify under traditional mortgage parameters / rules as contained in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines.

Seeing as how mortgage defaults since records were kept back into the 1940s were less than 2%, it defied common sense as to why anyone would want to tinker with those obviously successful records. The banks refused to lower their lending standards and because Jimmy Carter was a milktoast president, the CRA just sat there, languished if you will, and served very little purpose other than symbolic and to provide the framework for what was to come decades later.

In 1995, there was a landmark lawsuit against Citibank by a Chicago law firm. It was initiated by housing activist and progressive lawyer Fay Clayton and backed by people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The lawsuit revived interest in using the CRA to force banks to make loans, ironically that they could sell to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because the loans wouldn’t meet their guidelines. Banks only have so much money to lend for mortgage loans and because most of these banks were public companies, they had shereholders and Boards they had to answer to, both of whom resoundingly said “no” to subprime loans. But this 1995 lawsuit became a class action lawsuit with 186 litigants and extreme pressure was applied to the banks.

In 1997, Citibank settled out of court and the proverbial floodgate opened wide. The vast majority of people DO NOT KNOW that Barack Obama was one of the lawyers on that team in 1995 that basically were responsible for forcing the banks to lower their mortgage lending standards to what became known as subprime mortgages. I liken Barack Obama to the Little Dutch Boy who pulled his finger from the dike. At first it was just a trickle but soon turned into a tsunami that took down the U.S. and the global economies because of the millions of subprime mortgage ticking time bombs that had been sold to the world as AAA rated securities. (The ratings agencies like Standards & Poors and Moody’s were complicit in rating those MBS’s as AAA but that is a whole other story.)

Interestingly, the banks really only gave lip service to the mandates of the CRA until Bill Clinton had his treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, literally re-write the charters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. allowing them for the first time ever to buy what we now know as subprime loans. That was in 1999 and the banks no longer had an excuse not to meet the quotas imposed on them by President Clinton. Janet Reno, his Attorney General, literally threatened the banks that didn’t meet their quotas that there would be fines, refusal of requests for new branch locations and more. The spigot opened wide and in less than a decade, the very predictable boom and bust ran its course, hence the Great Recession of 2007 to 2010. (Officially those are the dates but many people still are suffering from the meltdown because of losing their homes and / or their jobs.)

In what I think is supreme irony against the progressive liberals pushed this agenda, as few as 19 of those 186 clients (in the Chicago area) still own homes with clean credit ratings, following a decade in which Obama and other progressives pushed banks to provide mortgages to poor African Americans.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/03/with-landmark-lawsuit-barack-obama-pushed-banks-to-give-subprime-loans-to-chicagos-african-americans/#ixzz2VAQUiFhW

It’s also estimated that more than 50% of all minorities who used subprime mortgages lost their homes to foreclosure since 2007. The very people progressives wanted to help are the ones who were hurt the most. It calls to mind the cliche: “With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

5. Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank had a huge role in the loosening of bank lending standards the ultimately caused the housing crisis which is the root of the Financial Crisis. Could you explain what exactly went on?

See # 4 above! And, you now know that none other than Barack Obama as young attorney in Chicago was also quite instrumental in all the true reason for the Financial Crisis! Is it any wonder he went around proclaiming at EVERY opportunity as a young Senator and also as President, proclaiming that the Financial Crisis was caused by “Fat Cat Bankers, Greedy Wall Street and the Failed Policies of the Previous (George Bush) Administration.” It is a classic case of projection because Obama’s fingerprints are all over the Financial Crisis!!

In my book, Skullduggery!, Obama is #4 in my “Top 10 list of Chief Architects of the Financial Crisis.”
6. There is mention of a 63 page White Paper on other abuses by the mortgage industry. When was this Paper issued and what happened to it?

This paper by Pershing Square Capital came out May 2007 and is titled: Who’s Holding the Bag?” It is at the link below:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120657397294066915.html

and was the main topic in my May 3rd, 2013 article at: http://www.thebrennerbrief.com/

What was done with these findings? Per the authors:
”We are in the process of identifying additional violations of NYS Insurance Laws. Stay Tuned. We are meeting with ‘the relevant congressional and regulatory authorities’ to focus attention on the problem.”
Those “attentions” would have gone to the NY State insurance commissioner and to either or both of the heads of the Senate Banking Committee (Chris Dodd) and the House Financial Services Committee (Barney Frank). Why was nothing done about this? Better yet, why was this white paper and its findings buried and who buried it? Those questions remain unanswered as part of the coverup of who and what caused the Financial Crisis.

7. I understand that the TARP bill that then Secretary of Treasury Paulson submitted to Congress on September 20, 2008 specifically limited the use of funds to purchasing mortgage related assets, in other words it was specifically intended to help homeowners who were underwater in their mortgages. Yet on October 19th, 2008 just 11 days after the TARP bill was passed the Treasury put $125 Billion into the nine largest banks and made another $125 Billion available to other banks that wanted to apply. This clearly was a bailout of the banks and did not help homeowners. What went on to cause this change of direction?

I have to surmise that only Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke know the answer.

Both of those men were involved in coercing President Bush and the select Senators and Representatives in that meeting into decisions that a select few people know about. I do know that the banks were all imploding due to what was deemed as “cross-collateralization” between all the largest banks. Here is a link to an article on that: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120657397294066915.htm
Note the date on that article: March 27th, 2008 This was 7 months before the well known emergency meeting that caused John McCain to suspend the November presidential election and rush back to Washington to be a part of hurried meeting that seemingly decided the fate of the nation’s policies of government choosing the winners and losers in a capitalistic free market society. The article is powerful and should be read by everyone.
8. Whatever went on in 2008 under a Republican administration did not change once the Democrats came into office. The new Treasury Secretary, Geithner, continued providing assistance to the big banks and seemed to disregard the homeowners TARP was supposedly passed to help. Since both Paulson and Geithner were both from big Wall Street firms do you think there is a problem having our Treasury Secretary and key members of the Federal Reserve be on some kind of revolving door between the government and Wall Street?

Absolutely! The cronyism between presidential cabinets (Democrats and Republicans) is obvious and these appointed positions are almost always filled with ex-Wall Street guys who have many friends at the highest levels of all the banks and investment banks!
9. Later on you indicate that a well known Hollywood actor and Director helped divert attention from the true causes of the Financial Crisis?

Here’s the passage on that in my book:

Hollywood far-lefties made a 2 hour movie “documentary” that is at best, incomplete. This movie, narrated by Matt Damon, infamous and outspoken liberal, narrates this farce of a coverup. This is the progressives of Hollywood attempt to support the corrupt politicians and activists efforts by bolstering the subterfuge that “fat-cat banks and greedy Wall Street companies” caused the meltdown. The movie goes to great lengths to explain the incestuous relationship between Wall Street and the NY banks and how they caused the meltdown. The movie actually does explain a great deal about the role that the banks and Wall Street played in exacerbating the meltdown. But there just is no escaping the fact that without the subprime mortgage leviathan created by social / political progressives, there would never have been a subprime mortgage bubble and the ensuing meltdown!

My suggestion? Go see this movie! Rent it… NetFlix it… but see it. It explains a lot and most of what’s in the movie is correct. However, as radio commentator Paul Harvey was famous for – the rest of the story – is conspicuously missing! Therefore, it is yet another effort from left-wing America, this time Hollywood, to deflect attention away from the true causes of the meltdown.

10. Everyone knows we have suffered from an unacceptably high unemployment rate in recent years. We went many months with unemployment above 8% but you indicate that was just the ‘reported rate’ and the true rate was much higher. Could you explain this?

Sure. The seldom reported Labor Participation rate is down to something like 63%, a generational low. The attached chart vivid shows that. This is the percent of people that want a job but that don’t have a job and have given up. If these numbers were included, the true unemployment rate would be around 14%. But the MSM media is complicit because they won’t cover this. Only FoxNews, their contributors and the WSJ talk about this. The real unemployment rate is truly quite bleak. No President has ever been re-elected with unemployment above 8% but because it was under-reported, Obama was the 1st one to do that.
11. It seems to me that the ‘too big to fail’ banks were a major cause in the financial crisis while our political leaders share a huge part of the responsibility. But today the biggest banks are bigger than ever and many of the same inept, or corrupt, political leaders are still in office. What can we do about this sorry state of affairs?

You hear a lot about the “low information voters” as the ones who elected and re-elected Obama. That isn’t a racist thing at all but the left slanders the right every time they try to use this argument to explain the polls that have been taken that prove most Obama voters just don’t know about things like the Labor Participation Rate or the IRs and Benghazi scandals. The answer to your question is therefore to educate the public but how conservatives go about doing that is something I don’t know the solution for.

12. That’s it for my questions, is there anything else you’d like to add that would provide a bit more information and make it clear to listeners why they should buy your book?

From my perspective, the most amazing thing about this Financial Crisis is that it was 100% perpetrated by liberals / progressives and it was and still is in many ways, disastrous to the economies of the world and to the very people (minorities) that progressives always say they are the party that looks them! But those very people… minorities, the low income groups and the people who can’t take care of themselves are the ones who suffered and are still suffering the most. The reality is that capitalism and entrepreneurship are the best and most successful systems in the world and have created the most wealth in the world. Wealthy people give quite generously to those groups so you would think, logically, that all people would want more of those wealthy people because of how much they return to society. yet the liberals continuously try to game the system and it never, ever works! Keynesian economic theory has never worked, not once in any economy in the world. Never. Not once. You would think that the liberals would figure that out but every single time they get in power, the far-left wish lists spring up again and again and they spend money like a drunken sailor. Milton Freidman, demand side economics works, not supply side Keynesian theory. Why can’t liberals see this and learn this?

Liberals caused this Great Recession yet they have successfully, this far, shifted the blame to Fat Cat Bankers, Greedy Wall Streeters and the Failed Policies of the previous (Bush II) Administration. I do a poll each quarter (my database is now up to close to 15,000 random people) through either www.surveymonkey.com or www.surveygizmo.com and the number of people that can correctly choose the right answer out of 8 possible answers to this question:
” What are the true causes of the Financial Crisis?” hovers around 7%!

That number proves my theory that there are a lot of low information voters out there, people who just don’t pay attention, read the right papers and books and magazines or watch FoxNews, the only network that tells the whole truth.

Lastly, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) was formed by Obama to study the true causes of the Financial Crisis. However he stacked the deck with a very liberal guy, Phill Angelides, as head of that commission and 6 liberals and 4 conservatives. You won’t believe who Phil Angelides is until you read the story at the link below. It’s my most recent @theBrennerBrief and is about the FCIC:

http://www.thebrennerbrief.com/2013/05/24/the-financial-crisis-players-setup-hook-tale-wire-and-finale/

Obama gets away with anything because not enough people know the truth and this is but 1 more example!

So, you asked why people should buy my book? Because it is THE ONLY ONE that tells the truth, the whole truth and also comes from someone who was there inside both a Wall Street firm and the mortgage banking industry. I’m therefore arguably THE best whistleblower that could have written about this.

Ted, I really appreciate you being on the show and providing us with information about the incredible true story behind the Financial Crisis. I know there is a lot more information in your book, Skullduggery, so please tell the listeners where they can buy your book?

Sure David, Here are two links where people can go to my webpage and buy my book:

http://www.skullduggerybook.com/aboutauthor.php

http://www.skullduggerybook.com/morebooks.php

You can look at those and judge for yourself if you agree with me that 99% of people do NOT know much if any of this information!

If you agree, I think this data will infuriate a great number of people who soon will realize 3 things about the Financial Crisis:

1. It was orchestrated by Democrats!

2. Homebuyers were egregiously ripped off by banks, mortgage banks and mortgage brokers using loans with interest rates that were guaranteed to escalate rapidly, even precipitously.

3. Powerful people in Congress learned of these abuses in January 2002 (Professor Howell Jackson’s presentation to the Senate Banking Committee) and they buried it?!

Provocative stuff!

Thanks Ted, you are correct, this really is provocative stuff and I hope readers will flock to buy your book and will get mad enough about what they read to actually do something about it.

Please remember, you can listen in to a live interview with Ted Krager on blog talk radio: www.blogtalkradio.com/angelsandwarriors Monday night, June 10^th, at 7 p.m. California time. Rebroadcasts will be available after the live show. Just go to the same address and look for the previous shows of “Books and Politics.”

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From American Dream to American Nightmare – A true story

on 06/04/2013

I was recently approached to do a book interview for a book concerning the bad treatment of “an American worker” and misread the summary as bad treatment of “the American workers.” I assumed it had something do with globalization, outsourcing, etc. and quickly followed up only to find out it concerned workplace harassment of an individual American worker. I recognize this is a serious problem in America and in the rest of the world as well, but since I have no expertise and no good ideas in this area I was reluctant to proceed.

However, I did exchange a few e-mails with Teresa Zerilli-Edelglass, the author of “Thrown Under the Bus: The Rise And Fall Of An American Worker,” and was pleased to discover that she had some excellent ideas for solving the problem. Realizing that, I decided to go ahead with the interview and let her tell you about “Thrown Under the Bus” which provides a wonderful example of why this is such a problem, along with her great ideas for fixing the problem.

Teresa, could you give a little background about yourself prior to the incident covered in your book?

I was born and raised in New York City where I grew up in a fairly typical Italian-American family. Well, except for my parent’s marital strife. When I was 14, they divorced. That, in conjunction with being a product of the Gloria Steinem era, engrained in me how important it was to be self-sufficient, educated, and have a successful career, and by all means, to put off having kids as long as possible.

I was out on my own at 19, working full time, and attending night school. I earned a Bachelors in Business Management from St. Johns University in 1989 and an Executive Masters in Public Administration from Baruch College in NYC in 1992. I was finally on my way to achieving the American Dream. But only a few months prior to finally having my grad degree in hand, I was suddenly ripped out of my job as a mid-level manager at New York City Transit where I had worked for the 4 years prior and was on the fast track to success. It was the beginning of the end.

2. You’ve got my attention. Now if you could walk us through the incident that caused the problem and ultimately led to you writing the book?

To say this was an ‘incident’ is like saying 911 was a bon fire! It’s a very long story, but in a nutshell, I refused to play dirty with the boys and the problems began. I was demoted in early 1992after which time I proceeded to go through all the legal steps up to and including petitioning the Supreme Court many years later after being repeatedly and brutally retaliated against. In the end, I was left a careerless, childless, broken woman despite that I was victorious in a federal lawsuit against NYCT in 1997. But with a bottomless purse of taxpayer dollars at their disposal, these mean-spirited bureaucrats spent your money to make my life a living hell, forcing yet one more diligent employee out of the public sector.

Once the dust settled in 2010, I knew it was time to start the book I had known for some time it was my duty to write.

3. In hindsight do you believe there is anything that you could have done to avoid the incident, or is there something you would have done differently?

Actually, I hate that question. It suggests that we have a long way to go before we have a good understanding of workplace harassment, or ‘bullying’ as it is now called, and all that goes with it. It’s like blaming the rape victim for wearing a short skirt. So I guess you know my answer is “No…unequivocally, no. I worked my tail off like it was a “real” job! I suppose the only thing I could have done differently, is never to have worked in a governmental setting in the first place!

4. Sorry you hate the question and I wasn’t really suggesting anything. Now let’s focus on what happened after the incident. What did you do to report it and what was the response?

Oh, no. I didn’t mean it that way, not in a personal one. I only meant to say that I hate that question because so many folks are still in the dark as to how these things really play out. I think we are going in reverse in this country where a lot of these cases get politicized and the resulting notion is one that the woman (or man) has incited a triable workplace incident. I can assure you that that is merely the exception, it’s what we see on tv. It gets ratings.

Anyway, almost immediately after the demotion, I filed an internal EEO complaint that fell on deaf ears followed by an EEOC charge that took an exorbitantly long time to be processed. All along, I was barraged with retaliation including a transfer to an even more hostile environment: a filthy bus garage where I was sexually harassed and humiliated on a daily basis. Each and every action I took thereafter to preserve my rights, incited another act of retaliation. There were no boundaries; I was dealing with pure evil.

6. My understanding is that this was a long term problem so could you tell what happened over the relevant time period?

In short, I lost 19 years of my life. The whole ordeal changed me, in some ways for the better, but in others for the worse. I tried to turn lemons into lemonade by writing ‘Thrown’ and warning others of the pitfalls of both workplace litigation as well as how that might play out in the government setting. Many of the entities we are taught to believe are there to help us, such as the EEOC and the courts, are not necessarily at all what we think they will be.I pray folks read the book — and be warned!

7/ Obviously the resolution did not make you whole for what you went through and took far, far too long to reach. And sadly many people in similar situations do not have the drive or persistence to fight through to a resolution. What can be done to avoid or find better and faster solutions to such problems?

That’s a tough one. We all live and learn. Often we don’t listen to others who have been there-done that. When I think back to how stubborn I was wanting to leave Wall Street for the public sector, I tell you, Hercules couldn’t have pulled those rose-colored glasses off my head! It took getting the idealistic crap kicked out me over many years to learn. I wish that all young women (and men…and everyone who works or will work) would read my book, not for selfish reasons, but for a wake-up call! Trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem is an arduous task, for sure. But there are some societal solutions I propose in the book. Not to say they would be easy to implement, but I always say if there’s a will there’s a way. Am I still too idealistic?

8. I understand that one of your ideas is making such workplace harassment a criminal, as opposed to civil, offense. That is certainly an interesting alternative to the way such things are now handled. Do you know of anywhere this approach has been tried?

No, I don’t. But it needs to be! Our judicial is seriously problematic. A guy sells a few pain pills and then lands in jails for years for what? Cheap labor?That’s just nuts. Then we allow decent, hard working people like me to be banished from their careers and driven to near nervous breakdowns with no accountability for the offenders? If we took the whole money-making aspect out of the equation, workplace harassment would dwindle significantly, if not end almost entirely!

In terms of my ordeal, if the 3 men who initiated and perpetuated the harassment against me thought for even one second that they could be the stars of their own mug shots, never mind spend so much as a minute in jail, they would have thought twice. Facing criminal charges usually puts a different spin on things.

9. My one concern with your idea is that I do not have a great deal of confidence in the police to take such crimes seriously. Most of our police forces are male dominated and they don’t necessarily take actual rape cases as seriously as they should so they might not be very enthusiastic about going after sexual harassment or even workplace harassment in general. Would we need a special department in police departments dedicated to workplace harassment?

Yes, good point. This would have to be a separate, say, task force of sorts. It’s not the kind of thing where you come in and throw the cuffs on a guy and drag him out of the building. These matters usually take time to culminate. So we would need to devise a way to handle such offenders. Again, I’m not saying this would be easy. But when you read my book, I guarantee that you will be screaming from the mountain tops that what happened to me was criminal. It most certainly wasn’t civil. There was nothing civil about it.The only downside I see is that lawyers will still have their hands in the cookie jar; however, not for nearly as many cookies!

10. Is there anything else you can add that might pique reader interest in your book?

Let me just say that there are things in my book that will make blood shoot out of your eyes! For instance, I was once forced to walk around a bus garage full to the brim with men with a menstrual blood stained skirt – all day! Another time I was given a surprise (retaliatory) yearly performance evaluation and rated “marginal” for leaving dirty dishes in the sink. Yet another time, I was told that they (“the men”) could use me for whatever they wanted. Some really unbelievable stuff went on that even I still have a hard time wrapping my head around.

In the second part of the book, I take the reader behind the scenes to meet the folks without whom these workplace atrocities wouldn’t be possible: doctors, lawyers and bureaucrats. I talk about how these individuals have become too powerful and often abusive, not only in cases of workplace litigation, but also society in general. It is eye-opening, for sure. I take no prisoners.

11. Ok, last question: Where can readers find your book? And where can they get more information about you and any future books you write?

You can grab a copy of THROWN UNDER THE BUS: THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN WORKER directly from my WEBSITE: http://www.TZEUnderTheBus.com(MyBooksOrders.com or via Paypal)or through Amazon and all other major book distributers. Frankly, I much prefer folks buy direct. It’s no secret that 3^rd party retailers will reap the fruits of my labor otherwise.

You can visit and like my Facebook Fan Page at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Teresa-Zerilli-Edelglass/275374229238923

You can also find me on Linked In, Goodreads, Smashwords, Twitter, Library Thing, &Wattpad. There is a blog on my website where I welcome all feedback!

Thank you Teresa for the information about your book, and the problem of workplace harassment. I guess in a way it is not surprising to find it can occur to government employees as well as in the private sector. With the protections against termination provided to government employees it seems they can get away with a tremendous amount of abuse with little or no consequences.

I hope your book encourages other workers who tolerate such abuse to step forward and to work for improvements to the system.

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True Globalization – Interview of Larry Porter

on 05/27/2013

In my never ending search for interesting blog topics and interesting books I ran across Larry Porter, author of “True Globalization.” As you know I look for books and authors with a political slant and “True Globalization” certainly fits the bill. It is a story set in the near future where the big corporations that today control so much of the world’s business, and which already have undue political influence, have somehow merged or combined into one humongus Corporation that controls everything. Science Fiction of course, but not that far from the truth that exists.

The book offers insights into “Globalization,” “Outsourcing,” “Mulitnational Corporations,” “Big Banks,” etc. Insights that may leave you a bit uncomfortable, as they do me. So, an interview with Larry Porter was inevitible and that interview follows:

1. Mr. Porter, could you start by telling a little about your background. What qualifies you to write this kind of story?

Thank you for having me David. I have been a small businessman most of my adult life having started and developed four different small businesses over my lifetime. I’ve also worked for a couple larger corporations, not giants like GE or GM, mind, but large enough to get a good understanding of how the corporate works works. And yes, I did build them, Mr. Obama.

2. What inspired you to write “True Globalization?”

My wife and I had a plastic fabricating business in the Atlanta area in the 70s. At that time Chrysler Motors was in trouble and about to declare bankruptcy. Then, as now, enough politicians became convinced that none of our Big Three auto companies could be allowed to fail so they made a loan $400,000 (big bucks then) to Chrysler to keep them afloat. I talked to other disgruntled businessmen about how if we got into trouble because of shoddy business practices, the government wouldn’t come to our rescue. And yet, small business is the heart and soul of the American economy, employing 70% to 80% of the work force. Then in the 80s the Savings and Loan industry turned sour. People tend to forget that this was our first big real estate scare since the Depression of the 30s. And it, too, was caused by bad business practices foisted on the public by greedy crony capitalists. But they were also bailed out with the Federal Savings and Loan Administration, a program similar to the banking industry’s FDIC. This was when the idea started forming about the book. But I was a playwright and had never tackled novels or books before so I put it off. Over the years I’d watched giant corporations gobble each other up with merger after merger. Finally by the 2000s, I learned enough about the business world to know that the entire world had as few as four corporations controlling any one industry. And this permeated all industries. It was time to write my book.

3. And of course the ever bigger Chrysler Motors, along with GM, failed again and was again bailed out by the government. What do you believe would have happened if they were allowed to fail the second time around?

In response to the politicians, hogwash. This wasn’t about saving American jobs. It was about more control of the business world by a government that has been growing more progressive by the year. I defy anyone to tell me one automobile that is fully made in America, or anywhere else for that matter. We have become a truly global economy, with everything being made piecemeal all over the world. Nothing would have happened if GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail. Other auto companies would have picked up the slack and most likely, another foreign company would have come here and set up shop. The very company we “saved” with your and my tax dollars in order to save American jobs, has plans to go to China to build a factory to make Jeeps. I ask, “Are they going to provide a shuttle from Detroit to Beijing on a weekly basis so the Americans now making Jeeps can be taken to the new factory?”

4. Your story about your experience with Chrysler makes me think of our recent banking crisis caused by inappropriate actions by banks that were “too big to fail” yet the result of that crisis is that, through government assistance, those same big banks got bigger. Is that a coincidence?

It is not a coincidence, David. In fact, although I hate conspiracy theories, the proof is in the facts that this was a planned operation. The Ben Bernanke’s Fed now feeds the banks money at zero percent interest. They then invest in the stock market and receive upwards of five or six percent on their money. Haven’t you wondered how the stock market could continue to make such gains with such a lousy economy and with unemployment hovering at the ten to twelve percent mark (actually much higher because of the bogus system used by our government to get unemployment figures, refusing to count people who stopped looking). Check the stock ticker every time QE writes new money. A true free market allows for bad business practices. It’s called bankruptcy. In fact, a business that has, perhaps run into problems not of its own making has another out. They can declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy and reorganize if they are really astute business people and can recover as they pay their creditors. But crony capitalists need not worry about their consequences for bad business practices anymore since they have Big Government in their pocket.

5. In your book there is a “Real Underground” which fights the Corporation. Is there anything similar, or the prospect of anything similar, in today’s world fighting against Big Business and Big Government?

I wish there was. I had hope after the Obama election as I helped organize our local 912 group in Waynesville, North Carolina. Then I went across our state and surrounding states helping other similar groups. Unfortunately, by the time of the primaries for the 2010 elections, I watched as the Tea Party groups of all types folded for the Republican Party. Some of us tried to warn them that their thinking was wrong. They thought they could force the party to fold for them. But the hugh and cry became “Anything to stop Obama.” They sold their soul. And the few politicians that got elected (It was not the landslide they like to rave about. The math tells us that a mere three percent got elected that year that could even be called Tea Party candidates and several of those were frauds using the name to ride a popular movement.) That is hardly a huge movement. I tried desperately to point out the 1994 elections. The Republicans got in with the promise that they would only stay for one or, at most, two terms, then come home, as the Founders intended. Well, there are still some of those birds holding seats, unabashedly and unapologetically, proclaiming they are needed to carry on the conservative business. But, alas, we humans seem to have short memories.

There are two systems that could work if allowed, but I don’t think the powers that be, and they are indeed powerful these days, will allow it. The first is the Fair Tax movement. No matter what the Main Stream Media professes, how can any sane person argue for a tax system that is 70,000 pages long. How can anything we try be any worse than what we now have. But what we have gives the politicians their power. They can use the system, as they are doing at this very time, to force segments of the population into the holes they want them to be captured in. They will never give that power up now.

The other system, which I helped with as state leader in 2010 and 2011 for North Carolina is something I’ve never seen before. Tim Cox, a Texas systems analyst, designed something called Get Out of Our House or GOOOH. I won’t go into details about it. People can search the website if they like and find out about it. But in his research, Tim discovered something I’d never thought about. The Founders, in their wisdom, designed a system that could be changed very quickly if it went awry and the people had the fortitude to change it. The House is re-elected every two years which means the whole House can be replaced in any given election. The House controls the purse strings. So in order for the people to regain control of the country they need only, on a local level, to change their own House representative. Tim’s system takes all the politics and money out of the campaign and makes it incredibly easy to use. I had signed up over four thousand interested people across the state as I held meeting to teach them about it. But the parties have indoctrinated the people to such a point they are scared to death of any change, even though they were able to see that this system would work.

So in my humble opinion, the answer is no, I don’t see a change coming anytime sooner or later, at least not a change for the better.

6. In my opinion there are two kinds of Republicans, what I call Big Business Republicans and Small Business Republicans. The Big Business Republicans are not actually opposed to Big Government, as long as it works in conjunction with Big Business. The Small Business Republicans are much more for Small Government and Individual Rights. The Small Business Republicans again are divided into two groups: The Libertarians who have a sound intellectual foundation (perhaps a little extreme but sound nonetheless) and the Tea Party Republicans who sense something is wrong and fight like hell against it but unfortunately do not seem to have a clear idea of what needs to be done and thus come off as too negative. If the Libertarians and the Tea Party could somehow combine forces do you think there is a chance they might eventually form a new party that could put our country on the right path?

As I pointed out earlier, I think the Tea Party has no power and never will. As for the Libertarian Party, I think Ron Paul answered that question by joining the Republican Party. He saw that it was impossible to even get a House seat in the Libertarian Party. George Washington made yet another profound statement when he was retiring. He saw that different camps were forming from his own small cabinet as Hamilton and Jefferson continually fought about the type of government we should have. He said to his audience that if they dared form parties, it would be the end of the Experiment. And indeed it was. Because of party bickering at first and now outright fist fighting, we have only a shadow of the Constitution. But they have both become so powerful it is impossible in any state I’ve examined, for a third party to even get on the ballot. For example, here in North Carolina, it took ten years for the Libertarians to even be allowed to have candidate’s names on the ballot. And now they only elect a very slim number of people to office and only in very local offices. The parties are now in control completely and will stay there. Ever wonder how 90% of the population, poll after poll, says they hate Congress and yet 95% of the incumbents get re-elected year after year? Here’s how. A candidate gets funding lined up from several large companies. Once he gets elected, he awards, say, a million dollar contract, to one of the companies. That company then gives, say, one hundred thousand dollars of that money, our tax money, back to the candidate for his next campaign. Money is everything in campaigning these days, ever since the politicians learned real marketing from the corporate world. How can a new candidate with a couple hundred thousand dollars ever hope to beat an incumbent with two million dollars built up in his war chest? Shoot, our state senator, a job paying $20,000, spends $800,000 to win that office! Harry Reid spent ten million in his last election.

7. Getting back to “True Globalization,” could you tell us a little about the main character, or characters, in the story and what they do to fight the Corporation?

Yes, thank you, David. I’m always happy to talk abut my books. Henry Negley and his wife Helen have a small business with four employees. One day a fancy car drives up to their door and out pop three well-dressed men. They came from the Corporation to buy the Negley’s business whether they like it or not. They give them a fair price for their business and offer everyone a job. The Corporation has been formed by merger after merger until there is only one huge corporation now running the entire world. They are wise in understanding that if they make sure the people all have a means of earning an income large enough to buy the things they want and they produce enough of those things, like the latest gadgets, cars and so forth, the population will be happy. There is no need for revolution with such a socialist system. And they are pure Socialism, not Communism. They do not try to redistribute the wealth and they allow for free election, which are only a facade because they hold the real power. But it gives the populations across the world the feeling they are in control.

Henry and his wife decline the offer to work for the Corp and join an underground economic system. Meanwhile, the Corp, made up of twelve board members and a CEO, Alan Brightson, a truly ruthless, powerful man, have divided the world in territories for each of them. But human nature being what it is, several board members develop their own armies, in the name of keeping the peace. The jealousies and power plays become more frequent among them.

Henry has become a known figure as he has fought a program the Corp put together to develop a mind control system to control the population they are afraid is readying for a fight. Big Cola’s army visits his home and kills his twelve year old boy and drags his wife and ten year old daughter away. He learns later that they have killed his wife and placed his daughter in a re-education camp for children. This sets Henry off as he becomes the leader of the Underground movement. They use many techniques to fight guerilla war against the Corp. But even though some want a true shooting war, most feel they can beat the Corp with subtile tactics since it has become like all corporations do, too big to react quickly. For example they start a campaign against the public transit systems across the country. The have been told by one member who works for MARTA in Atlanta, that the system carries an average of 5% of the working population everyday. So they organize to flood it with 20%. The system can’t handle that and fails. The businesses grind to a halt because they don’t have enough workers to do the jobs. By the time they crank up the systems to handle the increase, the Underground drops the load down to 2%. Now tons of equipment sits idle.

Finally, the Underground joins an unsuspecting group, one I think will surprise my readers, that make the fight real and winnable.

8. Without giving away the end of your story could you at least tell us if you believe such determined individuals even have a chance against such a big and powerful Corporation? And by inference, if we as individual Americans have a chance to reverse the powerful trend of Crony Capitalism that currently controls both the Democratic and Republican parties and seems to be leading our country to disaster?

I’m afraid I’m a skeptic. I don’t see anyway for this to happen today. I believe the US is the only country that has a chance of bringing back the country the framers developed. And if one looks at the hard facts, this country’s population has become entrenched in security over freedom. As I mentioned with the Tea Party movement, there isn’t a very large group of patriots willing to bear the burden of fighting for freedom. I use the TSA at airports as a prime example. 85% of the flying population is willing to allow total strangers to grope them and their children in the name of safety. And yet has flying really become any safer? We’ve had two instances we know about where individual terrorists were on planes and tried to blow them up. And we all know this government doesn’t ell us much of what really is happening. The corporations really do own the politicians today. And with their unlimited funds they aren’t about to give that power up. I just don’t see the numbers today that are even willing to take on, let alone win, a battle with the world we live in. I do have this hope and have written about it in another book. I believe our country will Balkanize when it collapses, becoming many smaller sovereignties based on geography, culture, political persuasion and other points I haven’t even thought of. And among those will be a few that will develop with constitutions very similar to ours. A restart, if you will. The good news is, it will allow those who believe in more and stronger government to have their own place without infringing on those who want the government out of their lives. Of course jealousies and differences will develop but perhaps we can make it another two hundred fifty years without too many fights.

9. Is there anything else you’d like to add before I wrap this up?

I’d like to expand on one of your questions that I think will give your listeners a little more insight into what would have happened if we had let the auto companies fail.

For those who remember the Savings and Loan companies, when they had their problems, the lenders to them, their customers, were saved by the FSLA, which made sure their savings were okay. But many of the companies did go out of business. And the rest lost so much value in their stock they were forced to be bought by banks. At that time the whole financial structure changed. The S&Ls made mortgages and paid a higher rate of interest to depositors in order to attract the money they needed to make the mortgages. That was the sole functions. The banks very seldom made mortgages and if they did, their rates were higher. Also, their savings rates were lower. Their primary function was lending money to businesses and private individuals for such things as car purchases, appliances, etc. Mostly they made their money on big project such as corporate buildings and equipment for expansion. After the S&Ls went under, the banks took over the mortgage origination business for residential loans. It became almost impossible for one to get a small signature loan to, for instance, make the payroll as a small businessman. The pawn shops, believe it or not, and the title lending and payday loan companies filled the gap for small loans. The banks started on a large scale to issue credit cards as loan gap measures after they saw that these small loan companies could get away with ridiculous interest rates. Up to that time, the only credit card I remember was the American Express, which used an amazing technique of living on the float of American Express checks. They insisted, with their credit cards that the bill be paid in full every month and they didn’t charge any interest. It was simply a branding technique. But this is a good illustration that shows that nobody is too big to fail if the free market is allowed to flourish. Something will be found to replace what has disappeared.

10. My final question is: Where can readers get a copy of your book? And, if they would like to know more about you and keep track of your future efforts, do you have a webpage or some other medium where they can get more information?

David, I want to thank you for this opportunity. People who are interested in this and my other books and an epic history of the US can go to my web site:

http://www.trueglobalization.com. “True Globalization” is available as a paperback and I will be happy to send a signed copy if anyone likes. The information is at my web or they can reach me at ownahome@copper.net.

That and all my other works are also available as ebooks at nearly all ebook stores on the web including Smashwords.com, Amazon Kindle, B & N, Kobo, and many others.

Please drop a line just to say hi folks.

Thank you Larry for an interesting, but quite frightening, description of your book and of the economic/political situation in our country today. I am not quite as pessimistic as you, but not a heck of a lot more optimistic either. My book, “Stop the Insanity Target 2014,” does suggest a way out of the mess but it will only work if lots and lots of people pitch in and help. Readers please take note of this and do your part!

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Cost of the war in Afghanistan

on 05/23/2013

American Political Insanity at its best (worst)

In my book, “Stop the Insanity Target 2014,” one of the suggestions I make is that we should immediately withdraw from Afghanistan. There are many reasons for this including the fact that we are supporting an inept and corrupt government and that our sacrifices there will never be appreciated by the Afghanistan people.

Another other reason is the incredible cost of our participation in this insane war. An estimate by the National Priorities Projet estimates the total cost, as of May, 2012, starting in 2001, at more than $570 billion¹. That’s U.S. dollars and billion not million.

According to the CIA World Factbook as of early 2013 the population of Afghanistan was approximately 31,000,000. Simple math shows that we have spent more than $18,000 per person for every man, woman and child in Afghanistan. According to World Bank statistics the per capita income in Afghanistan was below $500 in 2001 but by 2012 had risen to nearly $1,100. So, the U.S. has spent more than 16 times the amount of the latest per capita number and some 30 times the average per capita income during the 11 years we have been involved. Please explain to me how this is not Insanity?

Of course the estimate cost of the war to date does not include the cost of future medical care and other expenses we will continue to pay for veterans who were physically and mentally disabled during their tours in Afghanistan or for the losses in future income and productivity, not to mention the deep scars faced by the families, of the three thousand plus soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan. If we factor those things into the equation the cost probably will exceed $1 trillion and that’s a big number, even for the idiots in Washington.

I have only two questions: What insanity caused us to go there in the first place and why on earth are we still there?

1. According to the Costs of War counter by the National Priorities Project. Note that this data is current as of May 2012. For a detailed explanation of the project and the numbers please go to http://costofwar.com/about/counters/

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Heart right, Head wrong!

on 05/20/2013

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t understand what it is.

A California State Assemblyman, Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), wrote an editorial in today’s (May 20^th) San Jose Mercury News that pointed out that student loans to obtain a college education are a big problem and he offered a solution, allow student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy (it presently cannot be).

Clearly Assemblyman Wieckowski has his heart in the right place, something needs to be done to prevent college graduates from being so deeply in debt that the first ten or fifteen years after graduation (sometimes more) are stress filled as they work to pay off their debts.

But his proposed solution reflects the insane logic of our typical political leaders. Making student debt dischargable in bankruptcy will make it harder for needy students to obtain loans meaning even less students will be able to finish their degrees and put themselves on a path to future prosperity, not to mention that our country’s need for well educated graduates to meet future job needs will go unfilled.

If we examine the problem logically instead of emotionally, use our heads instead of our hearts, it should be clear that the problem is not the student loans themselves. Likewise we can see that legislation reduceing the availability of student loans is the opposite of what is needed.

The obvious solution is to reduce the cost of a college education. A lower cost means less will be required in terms of student loans and more, not less, students will be able to complete a four year college degree.

There is a simple, practical, and easily implemented thing that can be done to reduce the cost of a typical four year college education by up to 40%. I explain this in Chapter 10 of my book, “Stop the Insanity Target 2014.” In Chapter 12 I also make a suggestion that would make a change in our educational system so that far more graduates would be able find immediate and profitable employment. It seems that while the cost of a college education has gone up dramatically, and the amount of student loans needed to fund that education has also gone up, the amount of meaningful jobs for college graduates has gone down. Clearly something needs to be done!

My book is available at Amazon.com and the e-book version can be downloaded for just $2.99. Hopefully Assemblyman Wieckowski can afford that small amount to discover workable, as opposed to insane, solutions to the problem he has identified.

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Castro: The Intolerant Tyrant

on 05/19/2013

Augusto Venegas is the author of “Memories from the land of the Intolerant Tyrant” which recounts real life experiences in Cuba following the 1959 Revolution. Augusto was born in Cuba but fled to the U.S. with his family shortly after the Fidel Castro took control. Some of his relatives assisted Castro in the revolution thus he and his family have a great deal of insight into the inner workings of the Castro dictatorship.

In addition to his book on Cuba Augusto is active in a number of social media outlets on Cuba and is not at all hesitant in voicing strong views on the subject.

Here are my questions and Augusto’s answers:

I understand you were born in Cuba but left at an early age. What recollections do you have of life in Cuba?

I was born in Cuba in 1952, and I remember that in 1959 my parents were supportive of the revolution, because they wanted the Pre-Batista constitutional republic restored. I was one of the people cheering the rebels as they marched thru my hometown in January of 1959. But members of my family noticed Cuba was being radically transformed, and this transformation was not what they expected- political and economic repression. In 1966 my parents decided it was time to leave utilizing the Freedom Flights started by the Johnson administration in 1965. I was 13 years old when I left Cuba, and it was easy for me to adapt to life in America. Yet, I will always have sweet memories of my hometown, family get-togethers, trips horse riding and fishing in one of my uncle’s farm, stick ball games with playmates, and a couple of vacations in the Varadero beach resort. I imagine that it was tougher for my middle-aged parents to be exiled from the land of their birth, leaving many family members and friends behind. But I also have memories of the daily lack of free expression, hard times getting consumer goods, imprisoned dissident relatives, and a few friends that died trying to regain freedom for Cuba.

And what can you tell us of Cuba before the revolution?

The Cuba before Fidel was economically well off. Most of the buildings in Cuba were built before 1959. Under Batista the main problem was the lack of political rights that were before available with the liberal constitutional republic that he overthrew in 52, when he was lagging far behind in the presidential polls. Enclosed is a short documentary from the blog of dissident friend Jorge Luis Naranjo, about Cuba before Fidel (see http://superpolitico.blogspot.com/2011/04/la-cuba-que-el-comunismo-de-castro.html ). There were strong independent unions in the Cuba before Fidel and Cuban industrial and agricultural workers were amongst the best paid in the world back in the 50′s ($3-$6 per day), workers from neighboring islands coming to Cuba because of the abundance of work (http://www2.fiu.edu/~fcf/cubaprecastro21698.html ). These salaries in the 50′s exceeded the slave wages of $20/month earned today in Castro’s Cuba (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7449776.stm )! The problems that Cuba had in the 1950′s were political because of the Batista coup in 52. The efficient production by the free enterprise system with independent unions resulted in a high standard of living in Cuba. Cubans owned 85% of private property in Cuba and foreign investment- particularly from the US- helped in the development of electric and telephone utilities. Education-wise, the Cuba before Fidel was the Latin American country with the highest budget for education in 1958, with 23% of the total budget earmarked for this expense. It was followed by Costa Rica (20%). Today Cuba is ruled by the corrupt Castro Dynasty, which has brought political repression and economic misery to Cuba the last 53 years! I talk of the Revolution and life in Cuba in my book “Memories a from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant”

Can you tell us a little more about your background?

a) Worked as aerospace engineer for over 32 years at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in design & development and project management for ground systems for the Shuttle, Space Station, Atlas V, and Delta IV.

b)  Currently aspiring author. Published “Memories of the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant”, a book about the Cuban Revolution and life in Cuba. 

c) Have performed volunteer work in jails, psychiatric wards, half-way houses and drug rehab centers. Working on book on addiction and recovery.

Could you give a brief summary of the Cuban Revolution and how Castro went about consolidating power after the Revolution?

After the Batista coup that ended 50 years of the constitutional republic in 1952, Fidel formed the 26th of July Movement- where he was joined by one of my older cousins (my mother’s youngest brother joined the Revolutionary Directorate- led by the deceased Jose Antonio Echeverria). During the struggle against Batista, Castro received money, weapons, and recruits (including former second in command Camilo Cienfuegos- deceased in 59) from the Cuban exile community in the US. During the summer of 1958, Castro is elected leader of all of Batista’s opposition groups (e.g. 26th of July Movement, Revolutionary Directorate, Authentic Party, Orthodox Party, Labor representatives, etc.) in what is called “The Pact of Caracas.”… After the triumph of the Revolution in January of 1959, the first thing Fidel does to to suppress the rights of Cubans to bear arms. By mid-1960, he cancelled multi-party elections, freedom of expression, independent labor unions, etc. By then he had formed an alliance of convenience with the USSR- which became a subject of debate during the 1960 US Presidential debate, where JFK accuses the Republicans of dropping the ball in Cuba. By mid-1961, my two older kin that fought for the Revolution had both been sentenced to several years in jail … Kicking out foreign business and nationalizing/socializing the remainder were a core part of the Castro regime’s economic policies during his first few years in power in Cuba. The economy became stagnant under the management of the incompetent Castro’s cronies- who knew nothing of how to manage Cuban businesses, including most agricultural activities outside the production of cigars and rum. Total collapse of the Cuban economy occurred after Soviet subsidies (exceeding that of the combined foreign aid by the US to Pakistan, Egypt, and Israel) at the end of the Cold War circa 1990. The Cuban economy today depends largely on tourism, cash/medicines from exiles to kin and friends, and Venezuelan oil subsidies. Today Cuba, a former food exporter in the 50′s, imports 80% of its food- mainly from Brazil and the US (despite the so-called “embargo). What a disaster for a country that in the 50′s had a higher standard of living than the bulk of its Latin American neighbors and a few countries in Southern Europe! I give more details of how Fidel consolidated power in Chapters 1, 4, and 5 in my book.

Why Don’t They Rebel?

The War Against the “Bandits”, as labeled by Fidel, was a six-year rebellion (1959–1965) in the Escambray Mountains by many of no more than 4,000 Cuban insurgents in as many as 200 small independent groups who opposed the new dictatorship led by Fidel Castro. The group of insurgents was a mix of former local farmers disowned by Castro’s farm collectivization, and former guerrillas who had fought alongside Castro against Batista. The insurgents launched attacks on rural garrisons, convoys, and weapons and ammo warehouses. The outnumbered anticommunist guerrillas often fought to the death. Cuban forces used sweeps by long columns of militia, which cost the government substantial losses but ultimately won the war. Castro employed overwhelming force, at times sending in as many as 250,000 government troops. The end result was the practical elimination of all insurgents by Cuban government forces by 1965…

Today, the average salary for a Cuban is $20/month; most of them making ends meet in the black market, where they may spend 15-20 hours above their nominal 40-hour week serving their Castro Slave Masters. Why don’t they rebel? With 55-60 hour workweeks to make ends meet and no right to bear arms- who’s got the time and resources to rebel? Besides if they even tried, the Block Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Rapid Deployment Brigades (like Iran’s Revolutionary Guard) would monitor all their movements and prevent any kind of large unauthorized assembly. In recent years, the opposition has taken the form of Gandhi-King like pacifist dissidents.

Most American’s are vaguely familiar with the “Bay of Pigs” invasion but don’t really know a great deal about it. Could you give us a brief summary of what this was about?

Chapter 16 of my book “Memories from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant” is titled “Bay of Pigs: Good Guys Make Mistakes Too.” The failed Bay of Pigs episode in April 17 of 1961 was the low point of JFK’s Presidency. Some criticize the initial decision for providing training and some limited air support to the Cuban exile force as a political blunder. Others believe that once JFK committed the 1400 Cuban exiles to land that he made some military misjudgments- such as changing the landing site from Trinidad to Bay of Pigs, cutting down drastically the air support required for a delicate amphibious operation, and faltering in providing follow thru logistics support. By 20 April, despite successfully establishing a beach-head, the invaders surrendered as they were outnumbered about 40 to 1, the Castro regime’s Air Force had established air supremacy, and the Cuban exiles were running out of ammunition.

Again Americans are familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis and how JFK managed to keep Russian missiles out of Cuba. I remember at the time there was a lot of concern over a nuclear attack against the U.S. and building bomb shelters was a hot topic. Could you tell us more about what really happened during this scary standoff?

On Oct 14 of 62, U-2 reconnaissance missions confirmed the presence of Soviet missile installations in Cuba. JFK was upset, as Nikita K. had lied to him more than once earlier in the year telling that the Soviet Union had no missiles in Cuba. For months, Soviet personnel (nearly all men between 20-60 years old) paraded around Cuba in civilian clothes pretending to be tourists. It was an odd sight in towns of the interior of the island, who rarely saw any tourists before 59. During the October Crisis JFK opted for the naval blockade instead of the air strike recommended by the JCS. The blockade worked and we all lived happily ever after, except for the Cuban people that got stuck living under Fidel, which included me at that time … Soviet General Anatoly Gribkov made a revelation in 1992 that the Soviet Union had sneaked undetected about 100 small nuclear weapons in Cuba during the crisis. This arsenal included ground-to-ground Luna rockets, with a range of 30 miles and 2-kiloton warheads, and 80 FKR cruise missiles armed with 12-kiloton warheads (Hiroshima bomb was 14 kilotons) with a range of 100 miles Nikita K. originally had planned to leave this weapons in Cuba, but horrified at Fidel’s request during the crisis for the Soviets to launch a first strike, he ordered that all small tactical weapons be swiftly removed from Cuba (Ch. 18).

Tell us about the Castro regime’s subversive activities during the Cold War?

Fidel Castro planned a terrorist attack similar in magnitude to 911 in November of 1962, barely a few weeks after the missile crisis. The FBI caught five of Castro’s agents, disguised as UN delegates, with 500 kilos of TNT and plans to blow Grand Central, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s in New York City during Black Friday. Castro’s agents were exchanged for five alleged CIA agents in Cuba. I believe that the level headed Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev reprimanded Castro for such barbaric behavior soon after the October Missile Crisis. Most of Castro’s Cuba other subversive activities in the Third World during the Cold War were limited to training and providing finance and logistics support to left-wing revolutionaries- as early as 59 in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Panama. And of course, there were Cuban troops directly involved in various conflicts in Africa during the late 70′s and 80′s- an intervention that ended with Soviet subsidies at the end of the Cold War. At that time Soviet leaders realized that with friends like Fidel Castro, they needed no enemies. I cover more details in Chapter 19 of my book.

Cuba plays a role in many JFK assassination conspiracy theories. Can you give us any insight into this?

The question is not who killed JFK, but why he was killed. Author Gus Russo’s answer (Live by the Sword) is that Oswald shot Kennedy because of the White House’s secret war against Fidel Castro, a “secret” which was common knowledge in the city of New Orleans, from which many anti-Castro operations were based. Lee Harvey Oswald, a young communist sympathizer that had been in the Soviet Union, knew of these operations through acquaintances in New Orleans’ Cuban community and decided to kill JFK to protect Castro. Russo discusses Oswald’s failed attempt on General Walker’s life, previous to his contact with Cuban agents in Mexico and his subsequent shooting of the President. Details of the Kennedy assassination and Oswald’s escape attempt are provided, including his killing of officer Tippit. An important contribution this book makes to the discussion of the JFK killing is the photograph of the interior of Kennedy’s limousine in Appendix A. It clearly shows that the seat John Connolly was on was about a foot lower than JFK’s back seat. This seating arrangement validates the often dismissed “single bullet theory” — the trajectory is obviously in line with the placement of the two men. A great read for those interested in knowing the truth about the JFK assassination. I recommend this book as a companion to a Kennedy biography (e.g. Dallek). Personally, I prefer to honor JFK’s memory by cherishing his values- such as political equality and freedom for all, compassion for the less fortunate, and level headed leadership in times of crisis.

Could you tell listeners about your book, “ Memories from the land of the Intolerant Tyrant”?

My book (published Nov 2010) tells of life in Cuba before the Revolution, Batista’s coup in 52, the ensuing Revolution, the Castro regime’s consolidation of power in 1959/60, and life in Cuba thereafter under the repressive Castro regime. It mixes a historical account of the Cuban “Robb-Illusion” and personal accounts of life in Cuba. I feel it is a must read for those seeking an understanding of the Cuban Revolution – why and how it happened – and life in Castro’s Cuba. The book tells a story of intrigue, deceit, and betrayal in the search for absolute power by Cuba’s totalitarian dictator Fidel Castro. We see the metamorphosis of Castro from a young idealistic pro-democracy liberal in the late 40′s to a totalitarian Stalinist dictator after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. It explains its failure to deliver on its promises of political freedom and economic prosperity to the average Cuban. Had I stayed in Cuba, I could not have published such a book. People found with anti-Communist literature are sent to prison for 3 years in Cuba. In 2011, Cuba had 2,400 political prisoners.

Your book, and other things I have read from you, paints a rather bleak picture of today’s Cuba and offers statistics that support your belief. Yet when I look at official U.S. government statistics on Cuba, such as the literacy rate, average life expectancy, per capita income, etc. the picture is quit different. How can I reconcile these differences?

Cuba’s average wage is about $20/hour (for more information, see BBC link at http://www.google.com/url?q=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7449776.stm&sa=U&ei=DO2QUdb4KY6a8wTWh4DYBQ&ved=0CBgQFjAA&sig2=ZuDBrlBqb_QrpiCkHohCBA&usg=AFQjCNF8o1fZ6hZ51EqNUDkGbeo98tc7Eg). Prostitutes, cops, waiters and cab drivers in Cuba make more money than professionals like doctors, nurses and engineers- that sometimes get a second job to supplement their income. Cuba is not a member of the IMF and the World Bank. Statistics provided by the propaganda driven Cuban regime. With a system of political apartheid for stores, education, healthcare and housing; I would expect high-ranking members of the regime to be better off. There is no upscale mobility unless you kiss up to the Castro regime.

Although I lack the intimate knowledge you have regarding Cuba it seems to me that the U.S. should end the embargo against trade with Cuba immediately. I don’t believe the embargo hurts Castro or the government but only the Cuban people. What is your opinion on this?

Embargo? Ironically, CUBA IS IMPORTING FOOD FROM THE U.S., as humorously commented in Spanish by Hugo Chavez, who we hear referring to “pollo gringo” (reference http://amanecerenlahabana.blogspot.com/2011/03/fidel-castro-y-hucho-chavez-comiento.html ). I share the concern that in someday soon seeing relations between the US and Cuba improves. However, I’ll say that will not happen while Fidel is calling the shots, as demonstrated by his rejection of Obama’s gesture of reconciliation in 2009 … Fidel likes the status quo of isolating himself from the US (his Big Satan), he also likes to keep the average Cuban starving for consumer goods (anything from food, education, health care, housing, computers, cell phones, and internet) and, despite of his double tongue confusing rhetoric, he does not want reconciliation with the US … several of the last eleven US Presidents have tried and failed- Obama been the last one (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30354741/ns/world_news-americas). As a matter of fact, I know of two American citizens that ignored the so-called embargo and were jailed by the Castro regime, not the U.S.. One of them was MLB scout Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar (released after 13 years in prison for trying to recruit Cuban ballplayers for MLB) and more recently Alan Gross was sentenced to 15 years for bringing several PC’s and cell phones to a Havana synagogue. I speculate that the so-called embargo will continue while Fidel calls the shots, behind Raul’s throne. By keeping the embargo in place and placing blame on the US for all his troubles, Fidel plays the victim and draws attention away from his failures due to political repression and the mismanagement of the centrally planned Cuban economy the last 52 years- a typical ploy by a dictator. Keeping from formalizing formal relations with US, while at the same time blaming the failure of doing so on the US and the Cuban exiles is what George Orwell called double speak, a form of expression mastered by Stalin and the Castro brothers to deceive and confuse the naïve!

Although I’ll say that it’s OK for anybody to go travel to Cuba- either as a tourist or to visit kin/friends- I would advise any close friends to restrain from investing or establishing businesses there until you see native Cubans making umpteen thousand dollars there, well over the pitiful $20/month average slave wage. Recent reforms have not gone far enough. Just last summer they shut down an innovative opera restaurant business because they were making too much money, including employees making from $60 to $80/month (for more, see link at http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/120731/cuba-attack-the-bureaucrats). Also see Ch. 23 of my book.

Despite glowing government statistics you indicate that the medical system in Cuba is very poor for the average person. I’ve read that the average life expectancy in Cuba is slightly higher that that in the U.S. Doesn’t this suggest that medical care in Cuba is not that bad?

Castro’s system of political apartheid- depriving those not aligned with the government from access to more food, better HEALTHCARE/housing and access to a college education! Only members of the communist party (a privileged minority in Cuba) and visiting foreigners get to go to the good stores, hospitals, hotels/houses, and receive a college education. When Michael Moore went to Cuba, he was shown the hospital assigned to foreigners and communist party members, not the hospital assigned to average folks (you bring own bed sheets, pay own medicine, kill the roaches, and you are lucky to get an aspirin out of them).

I’ve read some of your comments on the Cuban prison system. Could you explain why you feel it is one of the worst in the world?

Any discussion on contemporary Cuba would be incomplete without talking about human rights! Human Rights Watch/World Report 2012 Cuba: Cuba today is unique in Latin America in repressing “virtually all forms of political dissent”. In 2011 Raúl Castro’s government continued to enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced exile, and travel restrictions. In addition to criminal prosecution, Raul Castro’s government has increasingly relied on arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate individuals who exercise their fundamental rights. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation documented 2,074 arbitrary detentions by security forces in 2010, and 2,224 between January and August 2011. The detentions are often used preemptively to prevent individuals from participating in meetings or events viewed as critical of the government.

Within the last two years two of the most prominent dissident leaders have died under mysterious circumstances:

Laura Pollan dies of cardiac arrest in Castro regime hospital 14 Oct 2011. Pollan founded the dissident group, Ladies in White, which holds specific protest marches with the spouses of political prisoners in Cuba. She suffered the imprisonment of her husband, acts of repudiation, the insults, the beatings, her disqualification in the government-controlled press, and constant surveillance. Witnesses claim an undercover agent injected her with a foreign substance during a protest before she was taken to hospital.
Oswaldo Paya dies in car accident 22 July 2012. Family members claim that the vehicle he was in was deliberately forced off the road. Mr. Paya, a long-standing democracy activist, gained international fame as the organizer of the Varela Project, a non-violent campaign to petition the Cuban government for such fundamental rights as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Launched in 2002, the project’s supporters collected around 25,000 signatures in what was seen as one of the most potent public demonstrations of opposition to Communism in the country’s recent history. However their calls for a referendum were rejected and several activists imprisoned.

Prisons are not a good place to be- particularly in third world countries with tyrannical regimes where even the citizens outside the prisons don’t have much in terms of human rights. Ranking prisons in the world can be a hard thing. I was surprised to see GITMO in several listings- which many Cuban workers there thought that it was a Hilton compared to what the Castro regime has on the other side of the fence.

By the way, I had two of my older kin stay there for a few years in #5 (“La Cabanna Prison”) and I dedicate a chapter about their stay there in my book “Memories from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant”.   Fidel Castros brutal Cabanna prison is the most inhumane in Latin America. It first got its bad reputation when Che was in charge in early 1959 and would hold “justice” thru firing squads within 24 hours of a quick kangoroo trial. There you can be arrested without warrants and may be convicted without a fair trial. When a trial is scheduled the judges verdict is decided in advance- the sentence is normally either death or X years in prison. High profile prisoners are put in cells so small they can barely sit down and can’t lay down. Your food is often contaminated with worms and insects. Regular everyday criminals in Cuba are given a higher rank than political prisoners and are encouraged to beat the crap out of inmates with pipes, heavy electrical cables, and clubs- not to mention rape (Ch. 17).

The Castro brothers obviously have only a few more years to live. What do you expect will happen after they pass?

The recent appointment of Miguel Diaz-Canel, a 52-year-old party apparatchik factotum, as first vice president of the Council of State places him in line to succeed Raúl Castro in that state body. It is not often understood that Raúl Castro leads Cuba not because he is president of the Council of State, but because he is first secretary of the Communist Party and Fidel’s brother. Under the Cuban governing succession scheme, the military-dominated Politburo would recommend Cuba’s next leader. Cuban history offers no tradition of military subordination to civilian rule. With Raúl Castro gone, it is difficult to envision old comandantes like Ramiro Valdes and three-star generals of the Politburo obediently offering military allegiance and saluting in subordination to a civilian bureaucrat like Diaz-Canel. This comportment of unchallenged civilian command of the armed forces is not in the Cuban memes (cultural genes). When enterprises are state-owned and managed, the military-officers-turned-business-executives enjoy the privileges of an elite ruling class. Their standard of living is higher, they move into better homes, etc. But these benefits are minuscule when compared with the opportunities to gain significant wealth by owning the enterprises under their control. The military elite understands that managing government-owned enterprises offers only limited benefits — owning the enterprises is far more lucrative. In the years to come, the military elite will be highly motivated to arrange a manipulated privatization of the economy in order to monetize their positions. Alas, this corrupt mockery of privatization ends with the generals and colonels as the new Cuban “captains of industry.”

Is there any chance for better relations between the U.S. and Cuba while Castro is still alive?

Nope. Medieval kings and modern dictatorial regimes alike (North Korea, Cuba, Syria, etc.) are control freaks and they are happy with not sharing power. Dictators that are obsessed with power do not give it away voluntarily out of the “goodness” of their hearts.

Do you have a webpage? A Facebook account? And most importantly: Where can readers buy your book?

Face book page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Memories-from-the-Land-of-the-Intolerant-Tyrant/168959919785203
Linked In page at http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.linkedin.com/groups/In-Defense-Freedom-against-Dictatorships-4251613&sa=U&ei=V3yQUcqvMIXo9ATawoCoBg&ved=0CBgQFjAA&sig2=94zgxNvzC71fAO_XphcuFg&usg=AFQjCNGSQavKCRUC4M465QXM301YsKmzSA
Save $5 by ordering hardcopy of “Memories from the Land of the Intolerant Tyrant” straight from publisher at .bluenotebooksonline.com/tyrant.html
The e-book version is available at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Many thanks Augusto for the information about your book and about conditions in today’s Cuba. I hope readers will buy your book and expecially take advantage of the $5 discount available for purchasing direct from the publisher. Of course the e-book version from Amazon is a great value can can be downloaded on a regular PC, not just a Kindle. Anyone who really wants to know about Cuba should have and read this

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“The Bill of Human Wrongs”

on 05/14/2013

Interview with Cynthia Michaels, author of “The Bill of Human Wrongs”

Cynthia Michaels is the author of “Bill of Human Wrongs” an openly political novel concerning fictional legislation introduced in the near future. Legislation which greatly restricts the rights of women, and anyone else other than white males. As such it clearly presents a rather ‘left wing’ view and a strong indictment against the Republican Party. Since I personally believe that both political parties, Democrats and Republicans, are responsible for the mess our government and our country is in, I was initially turned off by this seemingly one sided assualt.

However, being the curious person I am, I decided to investigate and find out a bit more before rendering judgement. I’m glad I did since Cynthia turns out to be much more of an Independent, albeit a leftward leaning Independent, than I would have first guessed. She clearly sees the problems stemming from the Democratic side of the aisle in our government as well as the Republican side and has a pretty open mind towards what needs to be done.

Feeling much more comfortable with Cynthia and her views I decided to do the following interview which I hope you find interesting and informative. And I even recommend buying and reading her book, provided you keep in mind that it is intended to focus on a single issue which is perfectly valid but is not an open endorsement of all ideas and policies that emanate from those who happen to be right on this particular issue.

With the above in mind, here are my questions and Cynthia’s answers:

1. To get a better idea of ‘where you are coming from’ could you tell us a little about yourself, your background, etc.

David, thanks for taking time with me today. I have found your blogs interesting and intriguing to read.

My background includes teaching programming languages at a community college in Washington State, and later, wandering around the country teaching for Oracle.

In the early 2000’s, I accidently fell in love with a beautiful place called Mazatlán, MX and am now living there. At that point in my journey through life, (so dramatic) I decided to write. I have to say, it is a magnificent environment to write, paint, and listen to talented musicians. This town just pulls the creative juices out of a person. I now have three novels for sale on Amazon, and have begun the fourth.

My last novel, Bill of Human Wrongs, is my jewel at this point.

2. I’ve been to Mazatlan myself and remember a long, beautiful beach where delicious seafood can be purchased for very nominal prices. It sounds like you have a wonderful life in an idylic setting for writing your novels. Can I visit? (lol)

Ha! Everyone should visit this paradise, but my advice is to do a little homework before you come. I understand the beauty and comfort of an all-inclusive hotel, but you won’t see the real city, culture, color, art… if you do not wander. And like many places, the history is rather romantic. I actually talk about all this in my book, NO FEAR! There you have it, just read this thriller, and learn enough about Mazatlán to give you the urge to make your reservations sooner rather than later.

3. I am somewhat of an old fashioned gentleman and subscribe to “ladies first’ so why don’t you begin by telling us about the “Bill of Human Wrongs?”

You are charming, so I will say thank you, and take it away.

I love tracking the politics in the US, but as many might say today, I am very unhappy with the current state of affairs… nothing is getting done. Extremism has taken over, negotiating seems to be a lost art. I believe that our constitution was written with the intent for two major parties to voice their opinions, they fight for what they want in a given bill, and settle for something in the middle. No one is completely happy, but no one loses entirely. Additionally, politics give us dramatic stories full of deceit, sex, dirt that make for a great novel.

The premise of my story is to debunk extremism.

You laid out my beliefs at the beginning of this interview. It is true that I tend to lean left with my ideals, but age has brought me more to the center. In my book, I used the right-wing zealots to make my point, but in truth, it could be any group that has moved off the charts.

This story is centered around one week before the vote on senate bill, sb1257. This is no ordinary vote, it remodels the Bill of Rights to fit the ideals of the far-right.

Rather than preach my principles to the reader, I wrote two parallel stories, one in the present, and the other 35 years in the future… a future based on the bill having passed all those years ago.

To add an interesting twist, there is a “magic coffee shop” that allows characters from both time periods to intersect, a mysterious room with a portal between the two times.

4. I did enjoy what I read of your book and found it to be well written and the heroine to be quite an interesting character. But do you believe the secenario is realistic?

Claire Winslow is a republican Senator who votes her conscience, but the pressure is on her to help pass this bill… hers is the deciding vote. The dirt is thrown at her, depicting how vicious the political game can become. Her dilemma is that she knows she will lose her position of power if she votes no. Can she get herself to vote for a bill that can ruin the future of citizens for years to come?

Enter Eve Hart, the product of this bill.

The two women meet in this coffee house. After some time, it becomes clear to them, however impossible it may seem, that they are from two different eras. Claire now knows firsthand what her vote would do for the future, but she cannot help but wonder if she can stop it in another way while keeping her powerful position as Senator.

My scenario for this book is obviously not realistic, but because of that, I feel it drives the point (in an exaggerated way) that our congress must not make decisions for one group of ideals and leave the rest of the population behind.

5. I do agree that some members of the Republican Party perhaps belong more in the 19^th Century rather than the 21^st Century, but I find most of the Liberal Democrat members of Congress to be equaly out of touch with reality. Can you give the names of two or three members of Congress that you hold in high regard and explain why?

Sure, there are a few good ones…

Senator Barbara Boxer: She has a fight in her that I find beneficial for women’s rights.

Elizabeth Warren: She is not afraid to address the bankers.

Amy Klobuchar: Smart, a thinker for the people of the country

What an interesting question this was. I googled for a list of current members of congress and senate members. Wow, interesting how only a handful of these folks are known entities for their party. I am also laughing at myself for giving you a list of females; not intentional.

I must say we disagree entirely on Barbara Boxer. To me she is far too liberal and close minded. However, what I know of Elizibeth Warren is quite positive since, as you say, she is definitely taking on the big banks. In helping my brother in his mortgage modification business where we do our best to save families from having their homes foreclosed because of dirty tactics by big banks I have learned to realize that a complete overhaul of our banking system is needed. Elisibeth seems willing to step to the plate and do this! I’m afraid I know nothing about Amy Klobuchar. As for all three being women I’m fine with that.

6. The Obama administration has endorsed the use of drones to attack and kill individuals in other countries, often without the consent of the host country. This seems to me to be a violation of ideals that American’s hold dear. How can you justify such an action by a clearly Liberal, if not left wing, President?

David, I have actually spent time thinking about this issue, and honestly, still do not have a grasp on what I feel.

1- If drones can stop a war from breaking out, the casualties they cause are far less destructive than war.

2- Can we trust having this legal for a given president to carry out in a responsible way?

As you can see, I am torn. Many of our politicians are chomping at the bit to start ANOTHER WAR. Our country is hurting now, our infrastructure needs drastic help, we worry about the deficit; we could use this interview on this one topic alone. Austerity isn’t the way, but that is what we are currently engaged in. It is mind boggling when I read about the dollars given to and spent in the Afghanistan war when the pain at home is at such a high level.

I hope I haven’t disappointed you, not an intense debate here from me.

My only disappointment is that you don’t mention that killing people in another country by the use of drones or any other method, absent a Congressional Declaration of War, is clearly against our Constution and thus is something that should absolutely not be done. The President simply does not have the authority to do what he is doing, and he supposedly studied Constitutional Law at Harvard. Either his professors were incompetent or he slept through his classes.

7. Let’s move on to some issues and ideas that I consider “Independent’ and which we can both agree on. First, I believe that the cost of a college degree has increased to a point where many qualified students cannot attend and those who do are often saddled with debt they cannot afford to pay off. If we require colleges, that receive government funding, to provide exams that would allow students to obtain credit for up to two years of ‘introductory courses’ simply by passing the exams we could reduce the cost of a four year degree by up to 40%. The students could study for the exams by taking free internet courses or simply by self study. The key thing is that passing the tests would show that they knew the subject they were getting credit for. Would you go along with this? Or do you have a better idea for cutting the cost of a college education?

Ha! I told you about my teaching at a community college. You are right, we can agree about a lot here. I taught in a two-year vocational program, far cheaper than a university degree. I do believe in internet study, but also know how important hands-on training is. The two options could be part of the same program, and still make the cost of education minimal. Have the student spend a year interning in their field. They get that precious hands-on, (not just theory) while giving a company, corporation relief workers.

8. I believe we should end the embargo against Cuba. What is your opinion on this subject?

YES! Sometimes I look at our politicians and see the ramblings, decisions, actions of children. I live among Mexicans, and Canadians who can take vacations in Cuba. Time to stop the US embargo!

9. I have worked, with my brother, to help save the homes of more than 100 families that faced foreclosure due to unethical banking practices. I believe we need to do something to break up the big banks and provide more protection to consumbers. This may seem like a ‘liberal’ position but in my experience both sides of Congress have supported unrealistic laws that protect big banks. What’s your opinion on this subject?

The unfair, dishonest, disgusting practices by the banks is a horror story. I agree, both sides of the isle have turned their heads to this problem. This is the reason I listed Elizabeth Warren as one of the few politicians that I respect. But she can’t do it alone, there must be a way to change this.

10. Thank you Cynthia. I know my last few questions were rather lengthy and had my opinions embedded but I wanted to make clear to readers that you truly were Independent minded and a person worthy of being listened to. I hope they will buy your book and my final question is: Where can they find the “Bill of Human Wrongs” and where can they find out more about you and your other books?

Thanks, David. All my books are available on amazon.com. My website is perhaps the easiest way, a gateway to both the amazon sales site and information about me. I also write a weekly blog, the page is part of my site. For kicks, I have a page showing off my paintings, but as I said, that is just for fun. www.cmichaelsbooks.com

I really appreciate the effort you put in answering my questions and I do hope readers of this blog will purchase one or more of your books from Amazon or direct from your webpage which is linked to Amazon. Your responses to my questions reinforce my belief that it is not liberal leaning Democrats or conservative leaning Republicans that are the problem – It is the political parties themselves who are obsessed with their own power and beholden to their own special interests. This is why I believe that electing a number of Independent members of Congress in 2014 would do a lot to put our country back on the right track.

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Postal Insanity – Congress proves worthless

on 05/12/2013

May 10, 2013

The U.S. Postal Service said it lost $1.9 Billion over the last three months and that losses would continue without help from Congress.

Although technically not a part of the U.S. Government the Postal Service must follow operating rules set by Congress. Among those is a requirement for Saturday delivery service which the Postal Service has asked Congress again and again for permission to discontinue since it is a major contributor to the losses. Another Congressional requirement adding greatly to the reported losses is that they make advance payments to cover expected health care costs for future retirees, something no federal agency does.

If all federal agencies were to make such advance payments it would greatly increase the reported federal deficit. So, if it is something that should be done why not do it for all federal agencies? If is shoud not be done why require it for the Postal Service? But wait, the huge losses of the Postal Service do not count in the federal deficit even though the U.S. taxpayers will eventually have to make up the losses.

To me this just further illustrates the insanity of our Congress and the way the federal government operates.

We have a chance to end this insanity in 2014 by electing enough Independent members to the U.S. House of Representatives. Read my book, “Stop the Insanity Target 2014,” for details. Will the voters take this great opportunity? I’m not sure but the odds will be much better if YOU pitch in and help!

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Student Debt Burden

on 05/12/2013

May 10, 2013

A report in the New York Times claims “the anemic economy has left millions of younger working Americans struggling to get ahead. The added millstone of student-loan debt, which recently exceeded $1 trillion in total, is making it even harder for many of them, delaying purchases of things like homes, cars and other big ticket items and acting as a drag on growth.”

So, recent college graduates have $1 Trillion in debt, much of which will never be paid, but in the meantime acts as a drag on our economy. This raises a question as to why the government is funding or guaranteeing this debt when the main thing it accomplishes is to allow colleges to continue the unconscionable raising of tuition and book publishers to continue to sell vastly overpriced educational materials. The student recipients of these loans are mostly going way over their heads in debt even as their future job prospects deteriorate.

I suppose it would make some sense if there was not a much better way to make a college education available for the majority of young people. That way is to lower the cost of a college education, something that could very easily done by adopting ideas from my book, “Stop the Insanity Target 2014,” which explains how we can reduce the cost of a four year degree by up to 40%. Obviously if the cost were reduced by 40% the students would have far less dept and thus far less stress when they graduate.

Instead our government seems content with continuing the status quo which will inevitably lead to a new debt crisis as the graduates realize it is impossible for them to pay off the loans since their degree no longer enables them to obtain high paying employment.

This is all a result of the insane way our Congress and our government operates. Please join me in doing something about this by electing responsible, Independents to Congress in 2014. We can change things if we get off our butts and act! Read my book for details or visit my webpage at www.stoptheinsanitytarget2014.com

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Medicare

Insanity

Taxation

Efficient, Effective, and Appropriate

Bring the Troops Home

A Safety Net for All

Let’s Be Neighborly!

U.S.P.S.

College Education

Technical and Vocational Education

Bring K-12 Education into the 21st Century

Mega Banks: Too Big NOT to Fail

Punishment, Not Imprisonment

Making Laws That Work

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Stretch the Safety Net

“To me, the government is as insane as the voters who send the same representatives back time and time again.
And as long as those voters continue to reelect the same worthless politicians, the insanity in Washington will continue.”

Driven to Danger, Interview with Jon Wexford

Skullduggery – An enlightening interview

From American Dream to American Nightmare – A true story

True Globalization – Interview of Larry Porter

Cost of the war in Afghanistan

Heart right, Head wrong!

Castro: The Intolerant Tyrant

“The Bill of Human Wrongs”

Postal Insanity – Congress proves worthless

Student Debt Burden

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“To me, the government is as insane as the voters who send the same representatives back time and time again. And as long as those voters continue to reelect the same worthless politicians, the insanity in Washington will continue.”

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“To me, the government is as insane as the voters who send the same representatives back time and time again.
And as long as those voters continue to reelect the same worthless politicians, the insanity in Washington will continue.”