Political Frenzy

Today the House passed a bill that would require that our combat troops withdrawal from Iraq by April 1, 2008. It is said that the House passed this to pressure the Senate to attach similar restrictions to the military policy bill they are deliberating….then what?

President Bush will veto this bill while still in the hands of the messenger boy.

This is the third bill passed this year that has to do with time tables and troop withdrawals. Drafting and passing bills takes a lot of time and effort. Why would Congress keep passing the same bill over and over, it is a waste of time. Mr. Bush has vetoed it, and will continue to veto it. How about they spend their time on passing bills that will actually cause change?

It is obvious that the public is fed up with how President Bush is handling the Iraq war. When Congress members go back home they want to be able to tell their constituents that they ‘tried.’ Where in reality they didn’t. Isn’t the definition of insanity ‘doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result?’

By Congress passing this bill it make makes it obvious to me that they have no idea how to end the war.

As usual, politically vocal residents of a politically divided region are approached first by parties and activists. As such your loyal blogger has received a generous invitation from yee-hawing Democratic leader Howard Dean to give them my money. First off, on this blog’s best month I made $6.50 off of it (so start clicking on ads, you deadbeats!) and I cannot get a job until school lets up because I’m not even a full-time student, I’m an over-time student. Howard Dean MD, as the letter touts, will make more money sucking out one old lady’s belly fat than I probably do all year. How about you give ME some money?

But it’s not that - they need donors, yea, I get it. The weirdest bit is that the words “Fellow Democrat” in the heading were crossed out with blue pen with my name written next to it. Wait, no, that’s not blue pen. Close inspection reveals that it is in fact pixelated and printed onto the page. They used a font and a computer to put my name there. And for what? I know this is mass-mailed, I know Howard Dean didn’t write this letter just for me. All you accomplished, DNC, is looking douchey.

The letter is also insulting to my intelligence, telling me I’ll be part of a “grassroots” campaign if I join up with them. No, my friends, voting for Lance Romance as the next King County Executive is a grassroots campaign. Voting for Barack Obama, while probably the socially responsible thing to do, is not at all a grassroots campaign.

In closing, me = awesome and very tired, Howard Dean = douche.

Howard Dean, DNC, Democrats, Lance Romance, The Briefs, King County, voting, grassroots campaign

While riding the bus to school today, I was witness to something that touched my heart.

I was sitting in the back of the bus, with my headphones on listening to “Feign Amnesia” by They Might Be Giants (a wonderful little ditty off of their latest album “The Else” apparently about Alberto Gonzales) and working on a paper for my Environmental Studies class when the bus stopped in SoDo (south of downtown industrial district)

Onto the bus stepped a man wearing blue flannel with a big bushy red beard on his chin and a Nascar cap on his head. He sat down near the front of the bus while the others who were waiting at the bus stop got on. When the bus began to move, he noticed that one woman - apparently and African Muslim with a colorful cloak covering her from head to toe, only the top part of her face showing - was the only person standing, having gotten on the bus last. He stood up and tapped her gently on the shoulder, motioning for her to sit down where he had sat. She smiled and took the seat as he moved farther back on the bus.

When on September 12th, 2001 I saw Nascar-hatted men verbally berating women in burkas and chadors, and heard tales of men being beaten simply for wearing turbans, I thought that this country had gone down an irreversible path of hatred. Now I am happily proven wrong. Maybe it’s just in Seattle, maybe it was just one man, but that still keeps hope alive.

Comment and share with me any similar experiences!

And don’t forget, you can add this blog to your feeds by clicking this link. For those not blog-savvy, this means updates will come to you automatically every time you open the internet.

They Might Be Giants, Nascar, Racism, Bus, King County Metro, Awesome stuff

The recent fad in student ‘activism’ is to kick military recruiters out of schools, sometimes leading to hostility, shouting matches, and occasionally physical violence which this blogger has actually been privy to. While accusing the right wing of reducing everything to a sound byte, they themselves have become just as guilty - Books Not Bombs my Persian butt. Indeed.

One student in a recent walk-out at Seattle Central had the nerve and gall to claim that recruiters at the community college were racially profiling students from lower class backgrounds simply by showing up to campus. This is obscenely absurd and the result of fanciful extrapolations from their expectations of the right wing, not reality. People from lower class backgrounds rarely attend the community college, it costs a damn arm and a leg. And the majority of the student population is white! Besides, the army and marines booth is often passed over. Soldiers come back from action to learn at the college, but those already there rarely have incentive to leave.

Besides, no one is forcing anyone to recruit ever! It is a cognitive choice. Like any organization, our armed forces have the right to be there. And for many, service in the military is a great option, giving them free room and board, free education, and a fine paycheck. My mother served in the Navy as a communications officer in Guam and later in Alaska, providing her with the money to later become an alumnus of the University of Washington. Before her both my maternal Grandfather and Grandmother served during World War II, the former as a machinery operator for the Army Corps of Engineers and the latter as a secretary in the Marines.

If I didn’t have the financial backing of my parents to afford to go to college now, I would gladly sign up for the Coast Guard because I feel strongly about stopping the importation of drugs and defending the US border at sea. But no recruiter will convince me to, they simply provide information on the armed services, and a resource for joining if that’s right for you.

What really needs to be done is provide better funding for military hospitals, ensure the contractual rights of National Guardsmen and Soldiers so that they can come home safely and quickly without further delay, and have our great country provide as much to our men and women in uniform as they provide to us.

People on the far left confused our troops for the war, and while I feel we need to allow the Iraqi nation to evolve into whatever it will become without further assistance from us, the armed forces are this nation’s best possible way to train and employ our population as possible. Kicking out recruiters isn’t the answer, people. Focus on what’s important instead of blindly attacking whatever is closest.

books not bombs, liberalism, sound byte, student activism

When on a recent trip to Ellensburg, Washington, where I will be transferring my credits to Central Washington University in the fall, my family and I ran into a group of Bush supporters who held banners reading “Support the Troops” and wielded American flags. Feeling insulted by this disingenuous attempt to ostracize those who disagree with the war and label us unpatriotic, I was compelled to engage the group, mostly senior citizens and young single men.

Before I got an attempt to voice opinions such as “How can you claim to support the troops by putting them into hostile situations? I support them by trying to bring them home without further injury or death,” I was pre-empted by a particularly liberal member of my family who - to my shock and dismay - flipped the group the bird! He continued by shouting obscenities at them and insulting their intelligence. One elderly woman who was a member of the group responded to him by saying, “I hope your mother is proud of you for flipping off an old lady.”

When I confronted my family member, he said he had done so because “those people are beyond reason. You can’t talk to them, they’re idiots.”

I am constantly frustrated by these extremely polarizing agents on both sides of issues across the spectrum of the political divide in the United States. Immediately they turn to insults and rage at dissenting opinion instead of engaging in debate and discussion. Both sides have created melodramatic worldviews and put themselves as knights in shining armor, fighting demons and dragons who threaten their fictional utopia.

My position with the war supporters was now irreconcilably compromised, and I was unable to actually engage them in discussion because they had been put into a defensive frenzy by the thoughtless and hate-filled actions of my family member. I had been stripped of an opportunity to open up discussion with people I could safely assume were intelligent and educated - living in a College town hardly lends itself to idiocy and illiteracy - who simply did not see or disagreed with my opinions.

People, you have to stop calling each other names. Nowadays it’s hard for any American to go without some knowledge of what’s going on in the world. Both CNN and FOX News run 24/7, Google News feeds itself onto our homepages, and standing at the bus affords us the opportunity to glance at that morning’s headlines. College newspapers across the nation are flourishing, and blogs like mine provide opinions from intelligent people from all walks of life. If anyone feels strongly about any subject, you can be sure they have at least some information on the subject. If they disagree with you, they probably know something you don’t. Whether or not you think that’s relevant is another story, but you’ll never know if you don’t find out.

This is a plea to everyone - stop it. Stop underestimating your fellow Americans and instead try and listen and talk to them like people, because that’s what they are. If you disagree, that’s one thing, but don’t think they dissent because of some mental inadequacy.

Liberals, Conservatives, FOX News, CNN, Google

The number of homeless Seattlites has caused me great concern. So I decided to do a bit of research as to why so many people in the United States are living in poverty. What I found surprised and saddened me. It is literally impossible for many to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” - and this is why, using Seattle as a microchasm.

When black soldiers of World War II returned from combat, they were denied use of their G.I. bill in certain suburban neighborhoods in which it was written into the contract of many land deeds that they could not sell to “colored people”.

In Seattle, that meant that West Seattle and Arbor Heights remained white, while all the non-whites were forced into the ghettos of the Central District and Chinatown. The value of land was low because of their very presence, and no major businesses would open operations there because the residents didn’t have money, and they couldn’t get jobs because there weren’t any businesses there.

President Johnson made it illegal for racial wording to be used in housing contracts, which opened up new possibilities for black and Asian Americans. The formerly all-white neighborhood of White Center, just north of Burien and just south of West Seattle, was called such because of its racial homogeneity - startling, really. It was once the ultimate Seattle suburb, with large houses taking up several lots, and flourishing business. Because of its relatively low property value, many non-whites flocked to it, moving in, taking out mortgages and loans, with the local job market promising that they would be able to pay it off within a few years.

Instead, white landowners were told by real estate companies that the presence of colored people would diminish their property value. The real estate agents offered to pay the current owners a diminished price so they could cash in and move immediately. They then sold the property back to non-whites at inflated prices. This phenomenon is known as “White Flight”.

But now that the majority of the people in White Center were now indebted non-whites, the property values plummeted, the house no longer worth the money they had put on the mortgage, but the debt still the same. The local businesses closed up and moved to more profitable sectors, taking their jobs with them. White Center is now in utter disrepair, with neither the city of Burien nor the city of Seattle taking responsibility, and leaving it up to the already overloaded King County’s Unincorporated County Jurisdiction. The poverty in the area due to plummeting land value and receding job market has kept two generations in debt, the sins of the father passing on to his offspring. White Center is now known affectionately as “Rat City” to most locals.

Meanwhile, the blacks and Asians split the Central District into both the Central District and the International District, the CD housing primarily blacks and Hispanics, while the ID houses Asians. While a boost from the presence of super-mall Uwajimaya’s in the ID helped increase the economy of the ID, its own preference for hiring Japanese and Korean workers prevented blacks and Hispanics from working there, as its mission statement was to help Asians, not anyone else. The CD suffered tremendously.

Education in these areas, White Center and the Districts, also suffered. Because many were non-native English speakers, they did poorly on tests. Poor test results meant deficient funding. Deficient funding meant cutbacks, laying off educators, reducing technology expenditures, and using outdated books. Lack of resources led to increased illiteracy and caused even worse test scores, which forced more budget cutbacks. The vicious cycle of rewarding those already doing well and punishing the struggling had been put into play.

A bit of hope appeared on the horizon as the APP, or Accelerated Progress Program, found a home at Washington Middle School, smack dab in the middle of Seattle, the heart of the Central District. This APP would attract wealthy and exceptional students from across the Seattle School District to the CD, hopefully increasing funding. In conjunction, the high school, James A. Garfield High School, would be creating Advanced Placement classes, providing college-level education for those who placed in the program.

Instead, the schools were polarized, with APP and AP programs receiving the bulk of the funding, while ‘regular’ and even honors programs were still cut back. Managed and funded differently, the schools were divided along racial lines.

This exists today - as an alumnus of both schools, I can attest to that fact. While in an English class that had both honors and non-honors students, I was shocked that a black ninth grader who was a resident of the CD had to ask the question: “Is ‘excellent’ spelled with two ‘g’s?” This displayed tremendous illiteracy, but not a lack of intelligence. Using what he already knew of the English language, he heard people pronounce with word as we do in the pacific northwest accent: “egg-sul-int”, and knew how to spell the word “egg”. He used reasoning skills, and understood not to jump to conclusions, so he asked. It was simply a matter of the fact that he had not been taught how to correctly spell the word until that day.

The culmination of this process was sub-par education to blacks, Hispanics, and the ‘lower-rung’ Asians like the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. Whites and ‘acceptable’ Asians like the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese were receiving better education. They could afford to take the PSAT and improve their SAT scores. They could afford to not get a job in High School and instead take extra-curricular activities that poverty-stricken neighborhood schools could not provide. This meant that those from rich neighborhoods were more likely to be accepted to universities and get scholarships, which results in better jobs.

And the cycle continues.

Within the last two decades, the problem has been growing worse. In the Central District the land is owned mostly by real estate investors and housing companies, with few people owning their own homes due to debt problems they inherited from their parents. But with Seattle Central Community College, the Art Institute of Seattle, and the University of Washington being in relatively short commute from the Central District, white students with higher budgets than the blacks and Hispanics of the community began seeking to alleviate a bit of their financial strain by moving to low-rent housing in the CD, and taking up jobs in the ID. Because these students were willing to pay a bit more than the original tenants, black families who had lived there for generations watched as their rent climbed. What was a meager $100 to students - many of whom are getting funding from parents - was the rest of the paycheck for those who lived there before. The opposite of White Flight was happening. The CD was getting gentrified.

Now the CD is home to less and less non-white Americans while foreign and out-of-state students set up residence - again, something I have been personally privy to. South American and Asian employees of local businesses in the ID are losing their jobs to students from California, Wyoming, Oregon, and Idaho. In the CD jobs are being lost by blacks whose families have been in the United States since slavery, while Eritrian, Ethiopian, Sudanese, and Algerian immigrants come and set up shop - the Ethiopian Tana Market, for instance, which made it appearance next to Garfield High School a few years ago, replacing an old grocery run by a family in the CD.

With nowhere left to go, the cheapest rents in Seattle now moving out of their price ranges, whole families are forced into the streets, or in to even worse living conditions.

This is a systematic problem, not easily solved by “buckling down”. These people are living from paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford a decent meal or a place to sleep, let alone college. Businesses do not hire the homeless, and the limited mobility of these people in a city with an underdeveloped metro transit system and hills and passageways sometimes literally insurmountable on foot prevent them from leaving the impoverished areas.

If you think this is a strictly Seattle problem, think again. This has been going on and is currently happening in almost every major city in the United States. The racial discrimination of the past may no longer be on the tips of our tongues or the wording of our contracts, but its legacy has left thousands of people unable to support themselves, unable to escape the bonds and failures of generations past.

The fundamental flaw in the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy is the assumption that all Americans are born into equal opportunity. But we’re not. Where you are born and the color of your skin does bar you from certain privileges, and does stop you from achieving all that you could.

And before anyone quotes to me from that damned movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”, the true story of Chris Gardner was that he was well educated in Milwaukee, and the internship paid $1,000 a month. They changed it for the big screen. Read the book.

So enough of “up by your bootstraps”. Just enough. Why don’t we try helping our fellow Americans instead of letting them languish in the misfortunes created by the decision makers of deceased generations.

Right here in my home state of Washington gay rights are taking a step in the right direction. Governor and Democrat Christine Gregoire signed into law a bill to allow same-sex couples Domestic Partnership, which will allow two people of the same sex who have lived together for an extended period of time to be recognized as financially and medically responsible for each other, and give them joint custodial rights over a child.

I think this is wonderful.

Do I think, however, that the government should allow gays to be married? No.

But no one ever asks me if I think the government should allow straight people to be married. If you did, you’d get the same response.

Say WHAA?

Here’s how it breaks down. Marriage is an institution of faith, a contract between you, the person you love, and God. Nobody on Earth should be able to tell you who you can or cannot marry. Marriage licenses given out by the government is an insult to the sanctity of the institution. The leaders of your faith, or your own moral compass if you do not believe in organized religion, should preside over your marriage, and not the suits and ties of the District of Colombia. All the government should be handing out is the legal recognition of the financial union and shared responsibilities of two consenting adults, and that’s it.

I offer to you the example of the Church of Latter Day Saints. You cannot be married in a Mormon Church if you are not Mormon. In fact you cannot enter a Mormon Church without being a Mormon. This is exclusionary and effectively prohibits interfaith marriage for Mormons. If we truly believe that the State has any right to dictate our marriages, we should be clawing at the temples in Salt Lake City, because this is a blatant act of exclusion.

But it’s their faith, and we cannot take it from them. Marriage is a spiritual covenant, not a piece of paper handed to us from Capitol Hill. They have the right to exclude whomever they wish, just as any other church has the right to exclude or include whomever they wish.

I love the idea of Washington having domestic partnerships, mostly because of a wonderful article I read many months ago in Seattle’s own “The Stranger”, by Dan Savage, the internationally syndicated columnist and gay rights activist. In it he detailed the traumatic events where, out of state, he got very ill and had to be admitted to a hospital immediately. His partner was there to give the go-ahead, which Dan couldn’t do on his own as he was completely incapacitated, for an invasive surgery which ultimately saved Savage’s life. But, Savage notes, the doctors didn’t have to listen to his partner at all legally, and had they arrived in any other hospital Dan Savage may have lay dying while the hospital tried frantically to call one of his close relatives.

This law does more than grant titles to homosexuals, it saves lives - allowing men and women who now live only with one other person, their lover, to be guarded and secured by them. If one were to perish, a child who had been adopted would not be left to foster care or taken from their home, but left to mourn and grow and go on with the parent they still have. This law safeguards Washingtonians from the Olympic Peninsula to the Inland Empire, and paves the way for better and more fair rights for all - including silly straight vanilla boys like myself.

That’s my two cents.