Ford Gets Dunce cap

Rebirth of a Realist
The new President of the Ford Motor Company Made an astounding statement
regarding the tragic layoffs of 30 thousand workers and the closing of 14 plants.
The statement must have been born out of more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of education and years of on the job training. It was a statement that needed a drum roll introduction. He said, "What we(Ford) needs to do now is create a product that the public will buy." As my ten year old grandson would say...DUH.
In one chapter of Rebirth of a realist (actually written more than a year ago) I point out the real cause of the Ford layoffs and also the layoffs of 800 workers in Connecticut at the Stop and shop warehouse.
Rebirth view www.erols.com/suttonbear

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In defining the meaning of his phrase," democracy first," which was in answer to those reactionaries who shouted, "America first," Henry Wallace said, " democracy and freedom also means, that the businessman can be free from the fear of those monopolies and international cartels which use unfair practices in buying from him and selling to him or competing with him."
Beginning this new century, in my home State of Connecticut, there are only a few American owned grocery stores left. The food industry is controlled by out of country, tax evading, investor, holding- companies. Royal Ahold NV a Dutch based company owns hundreds of Stop and Shop Supermarkets in New England, however at this writing they are being called the Enron of the food industry because of their exposed accounting manipulations and the entire house of cards is coming down. A spokesman for the prosecution office in Amsterdam said the investigation focused on the possible "falsification of documents" and the "publication of possible false figures in company reports". Needless to say, the Ahold stock took a nosedive, causing more layoffs in related fields. The workers hurt by that scandal are mostly the poor that Clinton "Freed from the welfare rolls", and have no savings or even health benefits to fall back on. On April 11, 1947, President Truman took the sledgehammer to the braces strengthening anti trust laws put into place by the Roosevelt administration to prevent another depression. Truman first announced the "anti Trust group would concentrate its efforts on major violations of anti trust laws while the Federal Trade Commission would increase it’s effectiveness on an industry wide basis instead of on an individual complaint." He then fired Roosevelt appointee Wendall Berge, Assistant Attorney General; in charge of the anti trust division. The New York Times reported, "Berge has been one of the most aggressive trust busters to hold that position, but it was whispered that he was too much of the old "New Deal " to be comfortable or effective in the new era." Ahold would never have been able to capture such a large segment of the food industry under a man like Wendall Berge.

It is easy to compare the failure of our automobile manufacturing business to our short -sighted foreign policy. For decades, Detroit has paid more attention to the rate of return for their investors than they have to the creation of a better product. When more stock went on the market, they increased the rate of return to the investor by cutting costs on the product development and manufacture. They became immersed in the paper business instead of the car business. Selling the stock (paper) became paramount instead of developing a good product. Dividends are what sell stock. Cost cutting (layoffs) and cheeper production costs pay dividends. The Japanese did just the reverse. They knew that in the end, the better product would sell more and the investors would be much better off. American consumers were not fooled. They bought the better product. A few Americans got very rich maneuvering the paper on Wall Street and tens of thousands of American workers were laid off.
From 1948 to the present, American foreign policy has been only with the investors in mind. Whether you are viewing Mexico, or any South American country and certainly Eastern Europe the emphasis is on the resource drain of those countries. The poverty rate grows in every country where American dollars are invested to steal resources, and in America, another million personal bankruptcies will be filed before the decade ends. We are producing less and less product and stealing more and more. We are sending more jobs out of the country every day.
In India for example we have created a high tech elite with jobs from both the US and Britain. One would think that it is a great arrangement for the Indian people, but while we continue to lay off workers here, we also continue to increase poverty there. Taxes go up for the poor, prices go up, and the cast system flourishes. A small fraction of the population being paid what Americans would call low wages control political decisions to benefit them.
There was not one word from any politician in the fall of 1992 on how this entire philosophic steel plate can be melted down. It would require a revolutionary structural change. There does not seem to be any leader on the horizon with the inclination, the courage or the mandate to radically re-direct the economy domestically, or to seek the wellspring of a creative foreign policy.
On March 17,1965 Willard F. Mueller who was the director of the bureau of Economics on the Federal Trade Commission said, "With Corporate profits the highest in history and still rising and stock prices reaching near record levels the prospect is for continuing pressure for mergers." Dr. Mueller was testifying before the Senate anti trust sub-committee. He told them that since the end of the pre Korean war recession of 1948 to 1949 there has been a post Korean war increase of 17% of total manufacturing assets held by the 200 hundred largest manufacturing companies and the proportion amounted to 54.6% in 1962. If this trend continues," he said, " the two hundred largest companies will own two thirds of all industrial assets by 1975."
The trend did continue for twenty more years. April 8,1997, the Wall Street Journal announced, "Fortune 500 firms list 23% rise in profits." It then goes on to say that they have, "Restructured, re-engineered, re-financed, down sized, laid off, split up and merged their way to prosperity." The key phrase is, "their prosperity." Trickle down mind set cannot separate the "Their" from the country’s prosperity.
They did not do it by manufacturing better products. Consumers are doing a similar thing. They are merging one credit card to another credit card and sinking deeper, and deeper in debt. In February of 1996, the consumer debt was an astounding $1.21 Trillion.

Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist excerpts and comments from the works of David Truskoff
visit www.erols.com/suttonbear
Yes, As Yogi Berra once said, " it is deja vu all over again." Folks my age know that spying on Americans by an unsready government is nothing new.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Rebirth Of A Realist
"War preparations create record profits for big business, but only false prosperity for the people—their purchasing power shrinks as prices rise, their needs go unfilled, and they are burdened with new debts." Henry Wallace 1948

The most disturbing factor to those abroad charged with the task of the selling of American democracy was the continuing practice of tarnishing the product at home. Europeans stood aghast at the undemocratic methods of suppressing dissent in America. It was all too reminiscent of the fascist tactics that they had suffered through just a little more than a decade earlier. It made our brand of democracy a hard sell particularly to third world countries and certainly to the Koreans and the Vietnamese.
In 1954 while diplomats at the Geneva peace conference were planning to insist upon elections that would unify Vietnam in two years (July of 1956) the New York Times was keeping up the drumbeat and increasing the anti-Communist frenzy. On the front page of the Sunday May 30,1954 edition a full column that spilled over into a five column story with pictures of handcuffed "Reds" on page 25 jubilantly announced . . ." F.B.I SEIZES 7 MEN AS RED OFFICIALS FOR CONNECTICUT . . . Conspiracy is charged. 109 rounded up since 1948."
I wish I could include the entire article because it reads like one of those old black and white, J Edgar Hoover promoted, television shows with a description of how the agents raided an art studio and rounded up these supposedly dangerous criminals. They were tried under the 1940 Smith act as "conspiring to overthrow the United States Government." As Yogi Berra once said, " it is deja vu all over again." Only today, "al Qaeda", or "Muslim rebels," is used instead of Communist. The effect is the same.
As I mentioned earlier one of those arrested in 1956 was the sculptor Robert Ekins of New Haven Connecticut. Although Bob was a veteran of World War II he was one of the most gentle, sensitive and creative persons that I was privileged to know. We first met in the 60s when I was planning another bus trip to Washington D.C. to protest America’s involvement in Vietnam. By that time, I had given up the idea that my anti War and Civil rights statements would allow me to survive in the Broadcast industry; given the political climate. I had found safe haven with The American Friends Service Committee.
When Bob called to reserve a ticket on the bus, I recognized the name immediately. Anyone with liberal views who read the papers would remember the name. I did not pursue any conversation with Bob on the office phone. While the protesters were boarding the bus in the driveway of the Quaker Friends Meeting house, I noticed two cars parked out front. I knew that they were from the local and State Police and or the F.B.I. I had been through it all before more than once. This time a bunch of goons arrived and tried to board the bus shouting obscenities at those already seated. I managed to pull one of them off the bus and the police arrived to get the rest of them. An FBI. agent told the driver not to move the bus until he gave him permission to do so. That infuriated me. The agent then asked me to go with them back to my office where he asked for the names of the passengers who were going to demonstrate against the war. I, of course, refused. They left my office, but did not release the bus. Moments later a local police officer came back in and told me that the reason that they wanted the names was because they had received threats against the property of those who were going and they wanted to be able to protect the property. I did not mean to be rude. I never was with police officials, but at that statement, I could not help but burst out laughing. The police officers left and the bus was allowed to go on its way.
A few days later, after I had burned the list, a small figure appeared in my office doorway. Bob Ekins said that he just wanted to stop by to thank me. He said that he was about to leave the bus because he knew that they wanted to prove to the media that the protesters were indeed a bunch of Communists. They could prove that because they had a real live one on board the bus. I told him that I was well aware of that and I was also aware of the fact that we had an informer in our group, and that our phone was probably tapped. He said that he had come also to suggest that what I had said was true and our friendship developed.
Bob had a studio home in a neat, and yes, cozy cottage above a lake in Connecticut, and at times I would go to the cottage and relax. He was a very articulate person with a sense of humor that helped to carry him and his wife Edie through those terrible years. Many of the conversations that we had are very pertinent to the subject that we are dealing with in this manuscript and I feel that I must share them with you.
I shall paraphrase his answers because it was so many years ago and I took no notes, but I remember asking him about the so-called clandestine meeting where he was arrested, and all the aliases that they were supposed to have used. Through his infectious laughter, Bob told me that they did use other names at times because the FBI not only tapped their phones, but also read their mail and contacted their employers. He said that it was a nightmare that few Americans living in the suburbs could relate to or even believe.
As far as the charges of conspiring to over throw the United States Government, he told me that it was so ludicrous that at times he would laugh. That is when he did not feel like crying. Bob said, "Can you just imagine us, at that meeting discussing something like this . . . ‘O.K. Sid, you get the twenty ninth infantry to go along with us and I’ll work on the 82nd airborne. James, you do what you can with the U.S. Marines.’ I mean, David, how can seven people from Connecticut conspire to overthrow the United States Government? J. Edgar Hoover used to say that it only took a few Russians to overthrow their government, but he fails to mention that the people and the army were already in rebellion.
To the State Department, it did not have to make any sense. They got what they were always after and that was the scare headlines. Americans were traumatized and wallowing in the quagmire of suburban life. They just did not give a damn about what was happening to their constitution. Nor were they able to project themselves into an America ten or twenty years down the road."
I asked him to be specific and tell me just what it was that they were discussing at that meeting and his answer was simply that they talked about the same things that the young people who have taken to the streets (it was 1965) were demanding. His answer was, "Honesty in government, civil rights, ending the war economy and moving toward peace. We spent a great deal of time on tactics; how, in the face of the FBI. harassment, can we get our message to the people? One thing that I must say; we never expected America to be able to keep a war economy going for twenty years. We expected 1929 revisited by 1949 or 1950. That would not create a revolution, but it would bring Americans back to reality and perhaps force the government to make the kind of structural changes that are needed. We wanted to be in a position to help them do that. No one else was getting ready to do it. It may still happen before I die and then people will eventually see that democratic socialism is the only way to go."
I told him that there must have been others in the fifties who were fighting back and he responded that, " there were some, but they were mostly the intellectuals who may say the right things, but they always just say them to each other. They read each other’s books and attend each other’s lectures, but when it comes time to act they fall off the tree like autumn leaves." The one time that I saw Bob Ekins get emotional was when I mentioned Howard Fast. Howard Fast produced over seventy-five books, along with mystery novels (under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham), science fiction, innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, plays, screenplays and poetry. Until his death Fast said, "I’m a lefty. I was born one, and I’ll die one." He was convicted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Bob said, "I was at the demonstration at the St. Nicholas Arena, to protest the sentence. Dr. Edward Barsky was sentenced to six months prison and $500 fine and Howard Fast, one of my heroes, and nine others were sentenced to three months and $500 each. They read a statement that said in part, "we were engaged in dispensing help - medical help, food and clothing to those Spanish Republicans who fought against Franco. We established a hospital in Southern France, another in Mexico. Thousands of men, women and children who would have otherwise been dead, lived because of our work and effort." Bob sounded like he was pulling the script out of his mind. He went on to say, "I was crushed when the media claimed that he had condemned Communism and Stalin for crimes against the people. It is true that crimes were committed. Did we not commit such crimes against our own people who are Black? Did we not commit such crimes against the people of other countries in Latin America and Asia? Did we not commit such crimes against me and people like me, and did not the company goons shoot down striking mineworkers? I know we should be against all injustice everywhere, but Howard gave the right wing media a field day. It was all because of Khrushchev’s speech to destroy the personality cult."
The crash did not come in Bob’s time although there were many narrow escapes. The truth is that his thinking was actually matched by many in the western capitalist superstructure. They had the same fear that Bob had about the viability of the economic system. The motivation to continue the open door and wartime policy came, not only from the profit mania, but also more from that constant fear that another depression would be the end of capitalism.

Did we win? What did we win?

Rebirth of a Realist


Now that the great show and political performances at Rosa
Park’s funereal are over, it is time for a reality check.
I have worked for human rights and equality most of my adult life.
In March of 1965 I joined Martin Luther King and marched from Selma-to-Montgomery Alabama. I later signed on again to register voters and march in Mississippi. In 1969 I was the liaison person between the city of Hartford and the Black and Puerto Rican caucus when the city was experiencing the out of control violence spreading across America.
It was a time when most of us still clung to Kings dream that America will, at last, grow up. I have since become cynical and not very hopeful of that happening. King said, " It is not enough to throw a coin to a beggar, but one must address the edifice that creates beggars." I thought about those words as I watched the shameless performance at the Rosa Parks burial.
When Opra Winfry made her speech about how Rosa stood up so she could be the billionaire that she is, I wondered what Rosa would think of the great show. Then there was Jesse Jackson and the other regulars basking in the TV lights at the Gala event.
Recently I have been giving talks titled, "Did we win, and if so what did we win?" I tell the audience the fact that schools in America are more segregated today than they were when Rosa kept her seat. The truth is,
poverty among minorities today is worse than it was when Rosa sat down in the bus. The wall between the suburbs and the inner city is thicker than it was then and the fear that exists in the suburbs is worse than it was then.
When the New York Times prints the fact that almost fifty percent of
young Black males in New York are without work we better all stop and ask the question ;did we win and if so what did we win.
In 1969 a member of the Quaker Meeting house brought a young Black friend of his into a meeting I was having on the subject of violence and to warn about the growing anger. The young man said, "to think that violence will come to Hartford is preposterous." Two days later the city was on fire and the mayor clearly not able to touch reality issued a statement that the violence and burning were the result of, " outside agitators stirring up trouble."
She had no idea of the anger growing in her own community. Today in France and other European countries, as well as all over Latin America, we hear the same thing from out of touch so called leaders. Yes, it can happen again in America and it will happen soon if we all do not face reality
and work towards equality in education and equal justice for all. With the frightening high school drop out rate and the proliferation of guns and drugs in our cities we all better act now.

electric bills

Rebirth of a Realist visit www.erols.com/suttonbear

In 1979 I published a book titled The Energizing Of Power politics. In it I tried to point out the danger of the emerging economic threat to our state and the nation created
by the free wheeling Utility holding companies such as Northeast Utilities. I also wanted the public to recognize the powerful force that controls our Connecticut state Government. I called it the protective triangle. It consisted of the political, incestuous, relationship between the insurance companies, the banks, the media (three members of the board were officials of major media outlets) and the Utility companies. They forged the most powerful lobby at the state capital.
As far back as 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt said," Holding companies must be smashed. Their tyrannical power is a menace to the nation." He then proceeded to push through congress the 1935 Holding Company Act. Just one of the many acts FDR created
to "Reign in the robber barons."
The act says that, "It shall be unlawful for any person holding the position of officer or director of a public utility and the position of any bank, trust company, banking association or firm that is authorized by law to underwrite or participate in the marketing of securities in a public utility."
The Bush administration has put the final bullet into the act and let the robber barons
across the nation run free again. The 70-year-old act, already full of holes, is now dead.
As are many of the other constraints that Roosevelt thought would keep the gap between the haves and have nots from again getting out of control
Barbara A. Connors Statement of December 8, 2005 ((202) 502-8680 Docket No. RM05-32)
Says, " COMMISSION FINALIZES RULES ON HOLDING COMPANY ACT REPEAL;
REFORMS WILL BOLSTER ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today finalized rules to implement
The Congressionally mandated repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935."
A brief look at the N.E.U board shows us the structure hasn’t changed all that much. The only missing ingredient from the 1979 board is the powerful members of the media that sat on the board.
RICHARD H. BOOTH, 58, President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director of HSB Group, Inc. and Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and a Director of Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance Company since January 2000.
The Hartford Society of Financial Analysts, the Society of Financial Service Professionals, the Association for Investment Management & Research and the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council. From 1994 until 2000, Mr. Booth served as Executive Vice President and a Director of Phoenix Home Life Mutual Insurance
COTTON MATHER CLEVELAND, 52, President of Mather Associates, a firm specializing in leadership and organizational development for business, public and nonprofit organizations. Director of The National Grange Mutual Insurance Company and the Ledyard National Bank. She serves on the Board of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy and has served as a Director of Bank of Ireland First Holdings
ROBERT E. PATRICELLI, 65, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Women's Health USA, Inc., a provider of women's health care services, and of Evolution Benefits, Inc., a provider of employee benefit services.. Mr. Patricelli was Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Value Health, Inc. (1987-1997) and previously served as Executive Vice President of CIGNA Corporation and President of CIGNA's Affiliated Businesses Group. Mr. Patricelli has also held various positions in the federal government.
In my opinion no other factor is more responsible for driving jobs out of our state than the Northeast Utilities holding company. As an intervener in utility rate cases I petitioned many small business in the late 70’s and early eighties and I heard the same complaint over and over. Mom and Pop stores could no longer afford to keep their coolers going. Owners of plastic companies and foundries told me of their plans to move south and save millions on energy costs, new residents that bought all electric homes came to my home asking for help as their electric bills were, in some cases, higher than their mortgage. Do we not hear the same cries today?
We are not the only state suffering at the hands of utility holding companies. Any one paying attention will tell you that thousands of jobs were driven out of California for the same reasons.
I ask readers to join me and ask congress to fully investigate this matter before it is too late. There have been cries from the National Democratic leaders to "Take back our country." I say we must first take back each state. The present weak lobby laws passed by a red faced legislators stung by our state’s reputation as one of the most corrupt states in the country, are not sufficient to hold back the triangle,
nor is the mouthing about reform by an also red faced congress.

Alito, Roberts and the ghost of nine old men

Rebirth of a Realist ---excerpts from his books and comments by David Truskoff
With the confirmation hearings over judge Alito's appointment to the Supreme court now going on
it is important that we liberals put it in its proper perspective. Republicans launched a vicious attack against President Roosevelt when they claimed he tried to "Pack " the court in 1935.
The Truth is that America could have advanced much faster out of the depression of 1929 had it not been for the resistance of the All male Court that FDR called the "Nine Old Men."
Elected by a hopeful public in 1932, FDR promised a New Deal and a way out of the misery of the great depression gripping the land, but the Republican stacked court, fearing a move toward real social reforms, blocked his efforts, usually by a 5-4 vote.
In May 1935, it killed the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934, a law that had established pensions for railway workers. Next on the kill list came the very important National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. "We have been relegated to the horse-and-buggy definition of interstate commerce," FDR said
The president was later frustrated by "The Nine Old Men (Most 70 or older) When he tried to rescue America's starving farmer, but his efforts were thwarted in January 1936 when the court ruled the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 unconstitutional. Ironically the Justice who fired the last shot at Roosevelts New Deal efforts was named Roberts.
Today Bush appointees Roberts and Alito will stack the court again to block the much needed social reforms and realistic economic planning America needs to regain world respect.

CHAPTER SEVEN --Rebirth Of A Realist by David Truskoff
"We of the Progressive Party must-and will-carry on where Roosevelt, Norris, and La Guardia left off. They preserve for us all that was most precious, the old-fashioned Americanism that was built for us by Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson."
Henry Wallace acceptance speech Philadelphia July 24,1948

Yes, I felt good about calling myself a liberal in 1947 and even better when I moved up to Warrens description of a ‘‘Progressive" and joined the Progressive Party to help get Henry Wallace get elected in 1948. Actually what I joined was the Young Progressives Of America. The YPA had as its honorary chairperson Gene Kelly, who always was and still is one of my favorite movie stars. I still get a thrill out of seeing his old musicals on the cable channels. His brilliant and lovely wife, Betsy Blair, was our leader. It is sad that even today poor Gene Kelly is remembered by Liberals as a "coward" who gave in to the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. Like the woman being raped, Gene had to choose between surviving as an actor, or professionally dying. He chose to survive. I still love him for what he was.
I did not enjoy the Conventions in Philadelphia and most of the local meetings that followed. The wrangling was unbearable. During the sixties, I tried to tell my own children who were becoming active in the anti- establishment culture that protest was fine, but being for something and being politically directed was better. While speaking to an audience of young people at a University, I was booed for saying that if I had to chose between Richard Nixon and the "crazies" trashing in the street, and using drugs, or if I had to chose between the media babies like Abby Hoffman and that lunatic that was screaming at Yale University ‘we have to kill our parents,’ I would have no choice to make."
I follow only those who have a plan and a direction for bettering the world. If I agree with their plan I give them all the support that I can, and Henry Wallace had a plan.
In view of the great depression suffered by the people of Russia and most of Eastern Europe today, I am more convinced than ever that if Roosevelt had not been forced to play his political game and caved in to the racists in the southern block of the Democratic Party and fully supported the man that he wanted to carry out his policies, (Vice President Wallace) we, and perhaps the people of the world, would be enjoying a much more equitable and less violent lifestyle than the bloodshed and devastation that has become the legacy of the shallow, "Get tough" policy of Harry Truman.
Now, let us try and make that case. First, we have to recreate the atmosphere that engulfed Wallace when he made his decision to run for the presidency on the "Progressive Party" ticket. Anyone who decides to run on a third party slate gets the knee jerk, oddball, treatment from the media. If you can not practice what wily old Abe Ribicoff (Ex Senator from Connecticut) once described as the "Art of concession" when referring to politics, and you believe strongly in the principle for which you are fighting, the party hacks will see you as a danger and immediately launch an attack. So it was from the outset with Henry Wallace. He could not find, nor did he bother to look for a concession that would save his Vice Presidency and allow Roosevelt to demand that he remain on the ballot in the 1944 election. It wasn’t just his commitment to civil rights that bothered the party regulars and the behind the scene power brokers, it was the extraordinary vision of Wallace that frightened them.
As a young YPA (Young Progressives of America) I can remember being given much literature to read. One piece was a pamphlet of a speech Vice President Wallace made on May 8,1942. He had just been in office a little over one year (January 1941) and he had both political party leaders after his scalp. The anti Communist post war policies were already being formulated by the old robber barons who knew that Roosevelt would not live out his last term. Their plan was obviously to see that America would control the seas and emerge from the war ready to assume full guardianship of the New World. Imagine the shock that must have struck Cordell Hull, then the Secretary of State and old time party chairman, when he heard the man he must have thought of as a loose cannon, the Vice President say . . ." No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older Nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. . . . Cartels, in the peace to come, must be subjected to international control for the common man, as well as being under adequate control by the respective home governments . . .With international monopoly under control, it will be possible for inventions to serve all the people instead of just a few. . . We can not perpetuate economic warfare without the planting of seeds of military warfare."

Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist
I can not imagine what it must be like to be a fourteen year old today.
Each day it seems priests are getting arrested, teachers are getting arrested as are policemen,
mayors, governors, top businessmen, coaches and other so called leaders in the community.
If you do not have football practice or other extra activities you can come home from school,
before your working parents get home, and turn on the computer and watch Porno. Worse yet you can watch the news that will tell you about all the shootings in the city the night before. What do they have to believe in? What kind of world do we want to help them make?
Their world is a world so distant from mine that I can not touch their reality.


CHAPTER SIX...Rebirth Of A Realist...www.erols.com/suttonbear
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Tell me, who is the most liberal of all?

One of the first and perhaps the most painful lesson that I learned when I came out of my cocoon was that we are not holy. We are a nation,"Full of beliefs and empty of religion." The naked truth is that we are a militarist, imperialist, nation, and that we have lifted our standard of living by using our military presence to acquire the resources of other nations, thereby lowering the standard of living for the people of those nations. "That," said one of my professors "Is the way of the world. It has always been that way. Anyone who reaches the age of reason must know that while the propagandists speak to the 18 year olds of democracy and God, the basic reason for almost all wars is anchored in economics.
In 1947, I tried hard not to be tagged with a political label. I shied away from some of my dogmatic friends who were pushing me to the extreme left. To escape I went so far as to play another year of semi-pro football. After the war, there were many minor football leagues. Returning veterans needed a place to play. If you haven’t tried it, don’t laugh. There is no greater escape than to put on your armor, hit somebody, and be hit in return. I once wrote a piece for the Hartford Courant titled, "The Religion of Football." In it I tried to describe the mind washing, sin forgiving, powers of the football field. Today professional football players can earn much more than bank presidents or large corporation CEOs, but I know that is not their main motivation. You get cleansed out there. When you walk off the field all muddy and perhaps bloody, you can congratulate your opponent and know that you are all safe in an innocent child’s world, far from any reality. That is where part of me wanted to be in the fall of 1947. To make a concession to that other part of me that kept tugging toward adulthood, I finally accepted the label of "Liberal."
During the Bush-Dukakis presidential campaign of 1988, the scare word was "liberal", the more that it was used (and it was used often) the more degrading the connotation. This may have left older Americans with a new compilation of farragoes to deal with, but for the baby boomers, it was just another case of the media jerking the reins. Middle aged Americans, however, were still reacting to the cold war rhetoric that President Truman began. It escalated months before the war in the Pacific ended when he canceled the "Lend lease Program " to The Soviet Union. That same rhetoric grew into the dementia that America still has not fully recovered from called "The McCarthy Era". The seeds of cynicism were planted at that time and have been growing inside me ever since.
In 1988 meek voices rose to defend liberalism, but they found no support in the camp of the once liberal Democratic Party where most of the candidates and the so-called leaders were all fighting among themselves to prove which one was the least liberal of all. It seems that today they are still doing it. The Democratic candidate for President in 1988 separated himself from the old guard leaders of the democratic House and Senate. Contrast that to 1948 when all the major candidates for the presidency were jousting for the title of "World Champion Liberal."
The following quotations may strike some as astounding in view of the present political climate, but they are as relevant today as they were then. The New York Times, obviously trying to keep the hate mongers from bringing the American psyche to a political imbalance that would lead the country into a blind faith, blank mind, political morass, posed this question to all of the major candidates seeking the presidency in 1948. The Times asked, in it’s magazine section of the Sunday April 18, 1948 issue, " What is liberalism?" Governor Dukakis should have read all of the answers from the podium at the 1988 Democratic nominating convention in the Omni. It might have created the momentum for victory instead of the, tail between the legs, defeatist, campaign that was run.
We shall start with excerpts from the sitting president of the United States at that time, Harry Truman. He did not answer the question directly (He was, after all, a machine politician) but addressed it obliquely as one who had already won the contest and was the Chief liberal of the land. He said, "Our first goal is to secure the human rights of our citizens. Some of our citizens are still denied the equal opportunity for education, for jobs and economic advancement and for the free expression of their views at the polls. . . . We believe in freedom and we are doing all that we can to support free men and free governments throughout the world."
Well there certainly isn’t anything there to be ashamed of although I am sure if that statement were given today the president certainly would have added "free women," especially in an election year. Now let us try the answers of the late senator Robert M. Taft, but first we have to resurrect this man who flirted with greatness, but never brought it to bed. Three times, he challenged for the Republican Party nomination for president and three times, he failed. He did come very close to denying Eisenhower the nomination. In 1953, he served as the Senate majority leader in the Eisenhower administration. Yes, this is the same ultra- conservative who was the chief architect of the Taft-Hartley bill and was once quoted as saying that he agreed with Herbert Hoover that, "the best answer (to high cost of food) was that people should cut down on their extravagance and eat less." One has to inject here that in 1948 liberals still had the bit in their teeth. The great depression and the labor wars of the thirties and the global war against fascism, with a Communist country as one of our major allies, freed many Americans from the mental straitjacket placed upon them by the media during the Bolshevik scares of the early nineteen hundreds. So it was politically prudent for a man, whose father was William Howard Taft the very conservative one term president, who served in the White house from 1908 until defeated by Woodrow Wilson in 1912, to try and suspend his established image and convince the media that he could be the president for all the people. He said, "Today everyone goes around calling himself a liberal. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to attach the term to anyone who supports any change proposed even if such change would lead to serious limitations on freedom of thought and freedom of the individual. Such a man is a radical, a sentimentalist, not a true liberal. In the United States liberalism means the resumption of progress under those historic American principles of liberty which have kept our people free and our economy free, principles that have made the United States the greatest and most productive country in the world today."
Damn, as a liberal I was busting with pride, but wait, the best is yet to come. Other conservatives have not been heard from yet. The man who was to deprive Taft of the nomination in 1948 was New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey who came as close to being president without moving his underwear into the White House as one can come. Truman (who failed to get a real majority of total popular votes) received 24,105,812 popular votes while Dewey received 21,970,065. It was so close that the Chicago Tribune, which went to press before the final tally was in, happily declared, "Dewey defeats Truman." Dewey was not the winner, but he did not fail because he lost the contest in the New York Times. His answer to "What is a Liberal" borders on holy script. "Liberalism," he said, "derives from the same word root that gave us "Liberty." It seems perfectly clear to me that no man has a right to call himself a liberal unless he believes explicitly, spiritually and concretely in economic, social and most of all human liberty. True liberalism springs from our deepest spiritual aspirations. It is as old as the Ten Commandments and the Sermon On The Mount. It practices brotherhood of all men and places first the dignity of the individual and his opportunity and personal liberty. It fights tyranny and regimentation of any kind and insists that the Government exists to preserve the freedom of human beings."
I am sorry about the long quotation, but as an old battered liberal, I could not find any of it that I wanted to deprive you of. It does make you wonder what the Dukakis people were so defensive about doesn’t it? It should also make you wonder how the media turned "liberalism" into a dirty word and how the political momentum was created to move America so far to the conservative right. (I must add here that, at this writing, right wing. off the wall, talk show hosts around the country on radio and TV are still trying to make LIBERAL a dirty word and smearing Howard Dean with it the way they did to Poor Henry Wallace.)
Well now, if that is what the conservative candidates and the President, who was rapidly losing whatever liberal credentials he had, said about "Liberalism," what was left for the real liberals, or at least those who wore the liberal mantle long before the campaign began? Governor Earl Warren of California who was to be appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by Eisenhower in 1953 had this answer to the question.
"Liberalism, as I understand it, is the political belief and movement arising out of the belief that the individual should be the all important, precious object of consideration in every phase of social relationships. This belief and movement born of faith in mankind and in the dignity of the human soul has found its finest expression so far in western civilization. Civil rights, representative governments and equality of opportunity are all part and parcel of the liberal tradition. Unfortunately, this great term has been abused and distorted in recent years. If I had a choice of classification, I would place people politically in three groups, reactionary, radical, and progressive. I particularly like the term progressive not necessarily as a party label, but as a concept. I believe that the great body of American people regardless of what party they are in are progressive and liberal. In this sense the finest thing that could happen to our political system would be to have such liberal thought and action dominate both political parties."
Then there was Henry A. Wallace the "Progressive Party" candidate. Vice president of the United States, Henry Wallace was the man who was deprived of the presidency by the southern racist block of the Democratic Party. He was always thought to be the heir of the Roosevelt White House by most liberal democrats. Wallace gave the most direct answer to the question. He said, "Liberalism is the credo of those who have no fear of change. Its core, as I see it, is a willingness to place human rights first and property rights second or as Lincoln put it, ‘I am for both the man and the dollar, but in the case of conflict I am for the man.’ Liberalism demands that there be no price for honest, forthright expression. Free speech is not free if it is limited by the fear of losing a job, by fear of business reprisals or by the fear that frankness endangers naturalized citizenship. Liberalism demands action against the vile practice of segregation and discrimination . . . Today’s liberalism requires that we engage in sufficient government planning to assure the maintenance of independent enterprises and full employment and to guard against excesses in business cycles."
The media giveth and the media taketh away.

Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist
As an old warrior I sometimes think that I am looking though the wrong side of the binoculars. I have heard it all before. The Vietnamese will welcome us. ..They are marching with their feet to democracy...we killed a thousand of them and lost only one...we have now established a democratic governmwent and we can soon bring our troops home...we can not turn tail and run.."
It was all said before and we got our tail kicked in Korea and again in Vietnam. The question always remains
why did so many people have to die.
Please read Rebirth of a realist see it at www.erols.com/suttonbear.

Our repetition of the runaway, disastrous and painful " Trickle down" economics can be traced directly
back to the media war on the Roosevelt constraints placed on the robber barons of the twenties.
That war raged from April of 1947 when Harry Truman, obviously intimidated by the power of the conservatives, announced, "There is more of a need for co-operation by business rather than
regulation," until the remnants of the Roosevelt Realists surrendered to Ronald Reagan in 1981
and allowed him to tear down what ever was left of the regulatory structure. He gutted the major agencies. Reagan’s firing of the striking air controllers severely wounded all of organized labor. It was a near fatal wound that still has not healed. On August 5,1981 a petulant President Reagan fired the 11,359 air-traffic controllers; he declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Agency, and on August 17, the FAA began accepting applications for new Air traffic controllers. On October 22, the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified PATCO. The Controller’s union. Those behind the throne of Reagan smashed the Union and deprived trained workers of ever returning to their life occupation. The Reagan administration was filled with "Trickle down" devotees who did all they could to deregulate big business. He became known as the, "de-regulation President." His reverting back to 1920 economics caused horrendous results.
Unemployment shot up 10.6% by the end of 1982. On Oct.19, 1987 the stock market plunged 508 points on the Dow Jones average. It was another one of those close calls with economic depression that America has from time to time. It took a Herculean effort from banks and bankers to save the market and the system.
Conservatives still claim that Reagan was a great president because of the fall of Communism during his administration, "He won the cold war" they claim, but the facts are that Ronald Reagan should have been impeached and had there not been so many cowardly Democrats turning a political blind eye to the illegal acts of the Reagan administration he would have been impeached.
Reagan authorized direct sales of weapons to Iran. National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and
his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, were convicted of criminal acts that included North purchasing weapons at cost, selling them with huge profits that he diverted to the Contras, who were waging a civil war in Nicaragua. North ran the Contra operation out of the White House, despite a congressional ban against funding their operation. In the fall of 1986, it all blew up when a Lebanese journal wrote about the sales to Iran and when a plane carrying weapons to the Contras was shot down in Nicaragua. The pilot was captured and admitted that he was a CIA pilot. Laws were broken, many on the white House staff were convicted,
but North had his conviction overturned on a shrewd legal maneuver while others were pardoned by President Bush and went on to other administration jobs. Reagan escaped unharmed as easily as he escaped overseas duty when he was made a captain in the army in charge of making movies for the army during World War II. Real stars of his time like Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart worked no such deal. I can remember those days clearly. I can remember my anger and the anger of many of my friends. President Ford had already pardoned one president that should have gone to jail, Richard Nixon. On September 8,1974 Ford said, "The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society."
What he said was that Presidents were above the law. I was no longer on the scenic train viewing the beauty of America. I was on a train of cynicism traveling at increasing speed toward the political left.
Americans my age were called, "The Great Generation." Those patriots, who were born in the depression and who joined their parents in the labor wars of the thirties, fought the great war against fascism, and came home to build a new America, were trying hard to save the system. They wanted to make the place of Roosevelt’s promise for their children. The JFK assassination, the murder of King, and Bobbie Kennedy Caused many of them to pull the blankets over their heads. The revolutionary spirit that made the nation great began to disappear. The confidence that the American worker had that in union, there is strength and the union will protect them began to wane and with it went the pride we all had in the forties.
President G.W. Bush, in 2003 is still riding on the momentum of those horrendous anti-labor acts. He like Nixon and Reagan before him lied to the congress and the people about the danger of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the evil Saddam Hussein. There are many who speak again of impeachment. That would make the fourth president who faced the possibility of impeachment in my time. It is hard to keep the faith under such shaky leadership. G.W. Bush ordered an end to all labor-management partnerships in federal government. He urged Congress to overturn standards adopted to protect workers from stress injuries on the job He destroyed the unions ability to insist that Government contracts are awarded only to Companies that have protected their workers. On September 11,2003 business pages across the country reported that many corporations are rescinding family insurance coverage and rewriting retirement plans, all part of the Bush Republican agenda. One would think that organized labor would have people out in the streets protesting. They did not, mainly because organized labor is no longer organized.
. The union membership rate has steadily declined from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983. Union membership dropped to 13.4 percent in 2001 Many dues paying union members feel let down by union leaders who are much more involved in the investment of pension plans than they are in protecting workers. I say again, labor has not yet recovered from the Reagan years.
According to a report from FAIR, "workers being brought into the U.S. labor pool through the so-called L-1 and H-1B visa programs (L-1 visas, which allow multinational firms to transfer overseas workers to their U.S. facilities,) have nearly doubled since 1995. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, "In 2002, 13.2 percent of wage and salary workers who were electrical and electronics engineers lost 241,000 jobs in the past two years and computer scientists lost 175,000 jobs," the report states.
When a person in a position of power such as a President or a Governor takes a dictatorial, anti-labor position and receives no resistance, the Nation, or the State, will suffer the consequences for many years. Roosevelt tried it with the striking miners during the war. He threatened to send the National Guard in to end the strike. Head of the miners Union John L. Lewis told the president he can try to dig coal with bayonets, but the miners will strike for better conditions. He knew that to give in at that time might very well mean the end of the union. John L. Lewis made peace with Roosevelt eventually and both sides benefited.
"I have pleaded (labor’s) case, not in the quavering tones of a feeble mendicant asking alms, but in the thundering voice of the captain of a mighty host, demanding the rights to which free men are entitled," John L. said. In 1981, there was no John L. Lewis to speak for labor. In 2003, there is still no John L. Lewis type of labor leader, and labor is floundering. Thousands of jobs are sent out of the country every year and the labor response is meek.

Rebirth of a Realist

Rebirth of a Realist


CHAPTER TWO rebirth of a realist..www.erols.com/suttonbear
REALISM . . . Webster’s third new dictionary
Preoccupation with fact or reality; objective procedure not influenced by idealism, speculation or sentimentalism: disposition to think and act objectively and unemotionally and to reject what is impractical.
REALIST. . . . An adherent or advocate of realism.
Letter from Hubert H. Humphrey (Senator and US Vice president 1964, Presidential Candidate 1968) to Henry A Wallace 4/12/1945
[The handwritten postscript:]
"5:05 P.M. I’ve just heard of the death of our great President. May God bless this nation and world. I scarcely know what to say. It is as if one of my own family had passed away. If ever we needed men of courage—stouthearted men, it is now. I simply can’t conceal my emotions. How I wish you were at the helm. I know Mr. Truman will rise to the heights of statesmanship so all-important in this hour. But, we need you as you have never been needed before. HHH"
Reply from Secretary of Commerce to Hubert H. Humphrey April 21, 1945,
"With you, I share the faith that President Truman will rise to the heights of statesmanship which the present hour requires. He has gotten off to an unusually fine start."
Henry A. Wallace
(University of Iowa Library)
The month of attempted merry making in California did not leave me very merry. Day after day, I was surrounded with people all striving to re-capture their youth. It was a national plague. I came back to New Jersey to find some of my friends going to political meetings instead of our favorite bars. I was bewildered by the sudden change that seemed to come over everyone. I still heard the echo’s of the High School band playing Anchors Aweigh when I left for the Navy, and I had a clear memory of the emotion that I felt snapping my final salute to the ensign flying aft when I left the ship for the last time. I was still so full of patriotism that any of John Wayne’s hero characters would be slackers by comparison. I hated to hear my own father refer to the President of The United States as the world’s worst mass murderer, and war criminal for dropping the atomic bomb on the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Facing political reality for the first time, I was actually dragged kicking and screaming into the 1948 Henry Wallace presidential campaign by my other self. I fought hard against getting involved in the distasteful machinations of politics. The pushing and shoving of one huge ego against another and the constant bickering and posturing of staff people tested my commitment.
I actually contributed very little to the campaign in my home state of New Jersey. My efforts consisted of handing out literature and making a few speeches, mainly to Black community groups, but what the Navaho Council chief started, Henry Wallace finished. The metamorphosis was now complete.
CHAPTER THREE
"Working for peace and the general welfare is the essence of all true education and all true religion. It is the Sermon on the Mount in action."
Henry Wallace, Commencement Address, Connecticut Colledge1943
All through my teens and into adulthood my President was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. My family loved him and I loved him. He brought my worlds together. He ended the anti Bolshevik madness that threatened the lives of so many Russian émigrés when in the face of media criticism he recognized the Soviet Union. There was also the warm relationship with the Soviet Union during the war that made my parent’s family feel safe, and like full-fledged Americans for the first time since coming here from Byelorussia. It all ended abruptly when F.D.R. died. No person can be a leader with the international stature of FDR without making some enemies. He had his detractors. They were mostly men of his own economic class who wanted America and the world to revert to the pre-war absurdity of divine right. They felt that Roosevelt, born into wealth, was a traitor to their breed. Off the wall, right wing extremists railed, that Roosevelt was creating a "Welfare State." In 1933, America surely needed welfare,
and it was the conservative right that created that need.
The extreme left knew that Roosevelt’s main purpose was to save the system and they wanted to change it. They claimed that Roosevelt was in the same leaky boat as Winston Churchill and drifting America into England’s war.
My parents had not fully recovered from the trauma they suffered during the anti-Red madness that engulfed America following World War 1. My father’s greatest fear was that another ship like the Buford, which sailed out of New York harbor in 1919 with its cargo of 249
Deported, men and women accused of being red spies, with no evidence to prove the case, would sail again. It was a new kind of senseless lynching in America. Roosevelt did not stop the lynching of Blacks in the south or completely end the media induced anti-Communist hate that threatened to split America during the depression, but he did create a positive aura of a growing democracy that smothered much of the hate.
<<<>>>
I tried to ignore the daily headlines in the summer of 1946. I suppose that is when I started planning my escape to California. The shrill media became more depressing day by day. Each day they seemed to tell us how America was deteriorating. The department of labor statistics showed that living costs had risen 18 percent since June of 1946; Millions of Americans could not find adequate housing. The "Communist menace" was rising again. Left politicians were calling for price controls while the conservative politicians, supported by greedy businessmen claimed that would open the door to dreaded Socialism.
The one thing that brought the most dismay to my family and recreated our mistrust of the government was the Taft-Hartley bill, passed by the 80th congress in the fall of 1946. That bill threatened to roll back all the gains for the American worker that my parents fought so hard to achieve.
1947 was not the best year of my life, nor was it the best year for American workers. In fact, it signifies the spot on the chart when America went off course and sailed into the economic, thick fog that we still find ourselves in today. Michael Quill, then president of the transportation workers called President Truman, "The number one strikebreaker for the American bankers and railroads." He then went so far as to accuse the president of treason. Phillip Murray, president of the CIO called the anti labor laws of the 80th congress and the Truman administration, " The first step toward fascism in the United States."
Truman himself called the 80th congress a, "Do nothing session by a do nothing congress." Senator Taft leader of the conservative Republican members of that congress said that Truman wanted to, "fix wages, fix prices, expand government spending, increase Federal taxes, socialize and nationalize medicine, and generally regiment the life of every family, as well as agriculture, labor and industry."
The air was not being let out of the balloon for the American workers; the balloon was exploding in their face. The Roosevelt created dream of a semi-controlled, or as Henry Wallace phrased it, " a Progressive Capitalism" that American labor leaders clung to, was turning into a nightmare for labor."

I am sure that if Hubert H. Hunphrey were alive today he would be saying the same thing. OH how we need an FDR or a Henry Wallace today.

The Garden Of The Prophet

When I was in school I remember hiding the book THE GARDEN OF THE PROFIT in my football playbook so no one would see me reading it. I aced the book report and my pretty young teacher, that I had a crush, on was very pleased. The book,as the expression foes made avery lasting impression on me. It was the first thing I thought of when I started my bookREBIRTH OF A REALIST. Gilbrans words were very prophetic and can certainly be applied to today's America.


CHAPTER ONE
Out Of The Womb

And Almustafa was silent, and he looked away toward the hills and toward the vast ether, and there was a battle in his silence.
Then he said: "My friends and my road-fellows, pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not, save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.
Garden Of The Prophet----- Gilbran --- Knopf

I ask you is that not Bush's America.

At the end of WWll I sold my old Harley and decided to hitch-hike across the country. I had two objectives. One was to visit an old girlfriend at UCLA and the other was to stop in Indian Country to say hello to a shipmate.
All of that happened more than half a century ago and I hardly need my notes to remember it because I have gone over it so many times. I remained on the reservation for three days and two party filled nights because the family insisted that I stay and ride into Gallup with them at the end of the week for the Indian Rodeo. I spent another day with the family in Gallup and watched Willy’s younger brother win a black and silver saddle for the best roper in the junior class. That evening Willy and I had our last beer together. I remember telling him how glad I was to have been able to meet his father and how impressed I was.
It wasn’t until I reached Flagstaff Arizona that I had a chance to sit down in a truck stop and bring my notebook up to date. As I did, I could feel myself being transformed. The metamorphosis that began when I was discharged from the Navy was nearing completion. The chief, who stripped the cocoon off me with every angry word buried my youthful naiveté in the sands of New Mexico As I hold this yellow pad in front of me and read from the blurred pencil notes, I can re-capture the emotion that I felt at that truck stop. The night before we left the reservation, I learned that the chief, as far back as the late twenties, helped to organize the "Returning Students Association." They were a group of Navahos who came back to the reservation after acquiring a high school and in some cases a college education. They were all welcomed as leaders in the community and were very important links to the Anglo world.
Draft records show that at the time of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, 88 % of the Navahos drafted were considered illiterate. To resurrect that vision of hell on the sands of New Mexico, still ignites the anger and the shame I felt then. The poverty, the frustration, the despair that smothered young Navaho minds in 1947 washed over me like an icy shower. I had left a white world still celebrating their victory and planning their futures in a peaceful and prosperous America, but this too was America.
As a small child, my mother took me to a demonstration where I carried a sign to free the Scottsboro boys (a group of young blacks accused of rape). I knew a great deal about racism and anti-Semitism in my country, but I never expected to see the bland acceptance by the Navaho people of the degrading circumstances in which they were forced to live.
I have reflected on those hours that I spent in Flagstaff many times in my life. In jail, in Selma Alabama, I compared Willy’s experience with young Blacks who were being sent to fight for free elections in Vietnam and getting arrested for trying to help their parents register to vote in America. In Mississippi, while working with the impoverished farm workers who were little more than slaves while their government paid huge subsidies to their masters, and in a poverty stricken Connecticut city when the plants closed and the dreams ended leaving the poor freezing and hungry in high rent fire traps. I became the person to be actively involved in fighting against all of those injustices that blistering day in Flagstaff Arizona.
As I turn the pages of my note pad, I still have to blink back the tears. I remember offering to pay for my meals to Willy’s mother who, of course, would not accept. I offered to pay for the gas for the trip to Gallup and again they refused. Before I left, I wrapped a twenty-dollar bill around the gearshift of the family pick up truck when I took my things out and headed west. As I write this in 2003, I know that high school kids can spend twenty dollars on the game machines in the local pizza parlor. In 1947, a gallon of gasoline was only fifteen cents, but the per capita annual income for the Navaho living on the reservation was about one hundred dollars. White America had a victory to celebrate, but the Navaho did not. There were no jobs for returning veterans and the Navaho war plant workers, who had little education to fall back on, were the first fired once the war ended.
Time magazine of November 3, 1947 stated, "Great numbers of the Navahos are facing starvation . . . From 25,000 to 30,000 are lingering in the state between malnutrition and starvation. By January many of the old men and many of the children will be dead."
I thought that I was an astute young man then ready to take on the New World. The icy shower in July of 1947 drove off the fantasies and left me sitting in that truck-stop promising myself to at least try and be like Willy’s father and my own parents and try to be a REALIST.