A Great Absurdist Plot—if it Weren’t Real….





Who could ever imagine that a self-created War has become the equivalent of the magicians sleight of hand to distract the audience from what his other hand is doing?

In this case, the mismanagement of the economy and the violation of the constitution to name just two.



When the audience, the voters, see the trick, undoubtedly they will roar that they have been hoodwinked, but by then the damage will be done. The pristine forests will be spoiled, various species will be weakened, the environment sacrificed to the oil gods, the economy destroyed through tax giveaways and insane policies that benefit only a few, the Constitution decimated, jobs flitted away, science denigrated and America’s advantages bargained away to fulfill the needs of his friends operating through NAFTA and for his own special interests.



Yes, we’ve been hoodwinked as we’ve thought about nothing else for the last five years but War with nation based on artifice and deception.



It is a stunning insult to the intelligence of the Ameican people that when they look beneath the smokescreen they will see that this president has made mistake after mistake in the pursuit of the war—even to the extent of losing sight of the legitimate targets—in order to take our eye of the target of maintain our freedoms and our democracy.



In the process of obfuscation, lying to us and the other deceptions, we have put this country into the worst servitude to its foreign debt holders which may eventually result in the most inconceivable of all scenarios. After eliminating manufacturing and selling our jobs off to third world nations, we now may be running a fire sale to sell the rest of it off to China and India and the rest of the world who owns 8.5 trillion dollars of our debt.



If one were trying to come up with the most absurdist and unbelievable plot for America’s future, they couldn’t have done better.



Les Aaron

The Committee for Positive Growth



When it Comes to finding good people to lead, begin with yourself!



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How the American Character Defines Our Relationship to Our Leaders


Some day, someone will write the definitive study of our time and explain how 300 million people allowed themselves to be lied to, manipulated and exploited for eight long years while they waited for the terms of the guilty to play out instead of picking up the standard and declaring this government null and void.

What will explain our inability to act against our government will invariably evolve out of a better understanding of our national character.

Now, nobody suggests that the entire country is homogeneous for it is not, but there are decisive fringes that are extremists at both sides of the spectrum. But, mostly, Americans tend to be conservative in dress, habit and thinking. And this is not something new; it has been with us since the beginning of our nation. We have always been stereotypically
Quaker-like. When the French were thought by us to be the original progenitors of sin, we were going to Sunday school in our best and looking askance at those who experimented with clothes, attitudes and life styles. It was not in our nature.

Even as a young man I was exposed to the American way We were all proud of being silent and strong; we hated controversy or being exposed. During the Second World War, we did the right thing: We stood up for apple pie, motherhood and the American way. Goldstar parents retreated behind closed doors and became dead to the world; they had lost one or more of their loved ones but they would suffer in silence, in their own private grief.

We tended to detest things we didn’t understand very much. We hated communism; not that we really understood it. And we tried to root it out of our society. We admired Tail Gunner Joe for letting us know of the dangers it posed to the world and how we might all be taken in by the attractions of this Russian device to turn us all into slaves.

We hated the Hun and the Nip who were the enemies.

We listened to those who radicalized the enemy.

We belived in a boy called Nixon who ran for office in California and radicalized Helen Gahagan Douglas and her husband for their views—regardless of whether it was true or not. If you were not perceived as an American through and through, you were thought to be in cahoots with the enemy. In those years, the enemy was not terrorism but “communism.”

We hated Whitaker Chambers, and all the writers and folksingers claimed to be communists whose careers were ruined by rumor and innuendo—some of the best minds of their time.

We believed in Jimmy Stewart and we understood how he saved that little town he lived in by God and spirituality and his good Christian nature. After all, we were a good Christian country. We didn’t understand much about the plight of slaves—In the land of equality, they proved less than equal with separate stalls for water and a warning to get to the rear of the bus.

We all listened to the same radio programs, the Fibber McGee’s and Molly’s, Duffy’s Tavern and others that reinforced stereotypical images, including the over-arching cheapness of Jack Benny (was that, too, a stereotypical response to the Jews among us—the money lenders of the Medieval Age?).

We all went to see the same movies and saw the rest of the world through the Director’s lens.

What we did not know was that many of the war scenes were either faked or recreated to entertain the viewing public and to communicate American propaganda. We were all proud to be in sync in those days. We raised Victory gardens, we listened to the Air Raid Wardens and we sat in darkness to keep the Huns away from our doors…

In short, all Americans who were white and Christian were pretty much the same, listened to the same ideas, believed in goodness, charity and what their presidents had to say.

Trying to contrast this to today, you still have the bedrock of the American people believing in their government, come hell or high water.

There are still Amercans willing to give up their lives to perpetuate such an idea.

Even though during the intervening fifty years, we have seen much change and alienation.

Today, many Americans support the government because they are frightened by the prospect of some one coming into our country and taking our lives away. Today, the idea of “terrorism” has completely replaced “communism.” But we are still afraid of what the government tells us to be afraid as it consolidates its hold on what we see and think….

We still tend to believe what we are told by our ministers and our leaders; that has not changed all that much.

But we have changed in our ability to accept change. Today, in our capitalistic culture, we seem increasingly alone, increasingly isolated from the mainstream of life.

Many have left their churches because they do not find satisfaction there; that the churches and their religions leave them wanting somehow and unfulfilled.

We find, too, a growing inability to assimilate new ideas, a growing alienation from reading and other forms of improving one’s ability to understand the world arounds; that is, other than TV and there is a reason for that. TV does not make demands. It does not force the brain to think, to process complex information. It is the antithesis of reading and, thusly, it is where the bulk of America spends its time.


In our choices, we have 250 channels and the Internet and literally thousands of choices.
But with such enrichment, no two people share the same kind of information that shaped our thinking and our ideas back in the early part of the century.

In terms of economic distancing, there has never been so much inequality. Today, the top 1 ½% of the population earn more after taxes than the bottom 40% of the economic ladder; today, today, a manager on a production line can earn up to 400 times what his line worker earns. The top 5% of the population today controls more than 40% of the country’s wealth—something unheard of in a free, westernized society.

All of these forces have contributed to creating a population that hardly understands each other any more. Children don’t understand their parents. Parents do not understand their children. Christians don’t understand Islam; Islam does not understand the rest of the world; The East does not understand the West; the “haves” do not understand the “have nots.” It is a ringing denunciation of our way that there is so much living apart, so much unwillingness to come together as a people. And it is very dissimilar from the way the Asian’s live where so much of their lives are defined by family and relationships.

If there is any defining trait to our time, it has to be that we have forgotten how to live together and it is as if there is growing alienation held together by only the narrowest of strings which seems to be our religions—for many, deemed unsatisfying—and our president. To think of our president as someone who doesn’t have our best interests in mind is somehow unthinkable; yet, our forefathers did think of that and did equip us to do something about it. Still, it has become for Americans the ultimate breach of faith and for many, we are simply not up to the task.


Les Aaron

Hardboiled Rice

When the dust settles—if it ever does, our citizenry will have an opportunity to review the performance of Bush appointees and being the healing process of hard questions.

No one will be more out there than, Condy Rice, our National Security Adviser turned Secretary of State.

Considering that the Secretary of State is one of the highest profile positions in any administration, some may begin to ask some very explosive questions.

Among them:

What has Rice brought to the table?

And what is her legacy?

Neither is capable of a quick answer…

In Rice’s behalf, she does have an impressive set of credentials: A PhD and a specialization in USSR Studies.

But of course, the USSR no longer exists so in one respect Rice is a specialist without a specialty.

And despite her impressive credentials, it is hard to see that she has placed her own personal stamp on the office she holds.

Secondly, over nearly four years since she has become Secretary of State, we have the right to ask what is Condy Rice’s legacy?

Judging from the evidence, it is hard to see one.

If anything, Rice has brought a new policy of remoteness to the art of diplomacy.
She has been quick to say, “no” when it is to her advantage to do so; but, at the same time, she has been less inclined to encourage dialogue among interested parties. This has conveyed to other countries’ officials that Rice tends to dialogue with those she likes and ignore those she doesn’t like. And she is more connected with that mind set than any particular legacy.

In effect, this seems to be an inversion of the way classic diplomacy works where opposing parties are encouraged to come to the table for the purpose of discussing their differences and how to find a common path to arriving at an accord.

Much of our plethora of stalemates on many issues have evolved out of charges of obstinacy and inability to compromise that are increasingly being laid at her door.

When diplomacy has called for imagination and creativity, it is clear that they have been sadly missing from Ms. Rice’s repertoire; instead, she has chosen to emulate the recalcitrance of her boss and, ironically, instead of helping his cause, she has only served to dig his hole deeper.

It is clear that we have a long way to go to patch things up with the world and restore our democratic outlook on the world.

Les Aaron
The Committee for Positive Change
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It's Time to Get Real!....


Americans tend to be predisposed towards happy endings. It is so ingrained in us that America can overcome any adversity, any threat to its hegemony.

This kind of insulation from the real world has not really worked to our advantage in the post industrial world.

And 9/11 should have been America’s call.

But instead of asking the hard questions ourselves, we have deferred to the leadership to answer them for us—giving them carte blanche to see the world through its own lens.

This has allowed us to shunt any bad news aside explaining that we/they “ just don’t want to hear it”….This tendency to bury one’s head in the sand is predicated on the idea that there is always a solution, it’s part of the American birthright.

For a student of geology, this is a view that fails to take into consideration forces beyond our control.

But there is a hard fact that remains. After the last seven years, it seems what we need will take more than wishful thinking; it will take literally a miracle; yet, there are at least fifteen candidates from both sides of the aisle who believe that they are the ones who are up to it.

What we are viewing is either sublime chutzpah, incredible naivete or perhaps real talent to do the necessary.job We just don’t know.

The question is: Where do we go from here.

You see, the problem is confounded by the magicians smoke and mirrors that diffuse focus and draw attention away from the real issues.

In the last five years plus, this government has focused almost exclusively on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan almost to the exclusion of everything else.

This doesn’t mean, imply or infer that there aren’t other issues and considerations that deserve our time.

Only nobody seems to want to know about these issues.

And the media has become the government’s willing hand maiden.

In fact, our neglect of those issues and concerns now, will only make it tougher for us to address them later.

In fact, they will come back to haunt us.

We don’t seem to understand that the decisions we made one hundred years ago are only now being felt.

Our inattention, our distraction, also serves as a green light to other countries in the International arena. Putin has not missed an opportunity to move in where Washington has been inattentive. Nor has China in its push forward that seems to show as operating in an almost parallel universe.

Too easily, our leadership is either willing to dismiss China or make believe as if nothing is happening.

In the meantime, China continues to push forward on its agenda which is to make China number one in the world.

Could this happen?

Within the next ten to fifteen years, China will have at least parity with the rest of the world and, it seems, there is no limit to just how far it can go.

China is grabbing up contracts with all of our old allies because we are too busy, or too distracted. China is becoming a superpower. China is the world leading ship building nation. By 2020, it will probably be on a par with the leading automotive building nation.

Just how does China compare with America. Consider this one remarkable statistic: In America, we have 9 cities with over one million population; today, in the course of twenty years, China has become a nation of 170 cities plus with over a million in population—most of them new with parks and skyscrapers.

This is the future.

And we are sill fixated on getting the Iraqi legislature to play ball.

It ain’t going to happen. We should do the best we can to stabilize the country and move on. We are allowing the world to pass us by.


Les Aaron
The Committee for Positive Change

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"A VETERANS LAMENT..."



Those Who Applaud

Our Veterans’ Sacrifices





As a Veteran, let me tell you what ticks me off.



I become especially enraged when I see those big gas guzzlers with all of the signs all over them that say, “We Support Our Troops!”



Bull Poop!



Because if you truly supported our troops, you wouldn’t be driving a big gas guzzler; you would be fighting for alternative energy sources…



Don't kid yourself!



We are there because of one thing Oil.



Put any kind of face on it you like, the name of the game is Economic Imperialism and B's name is all over it!....



The truth is that most of the sunshine patriots who talk about heroism and patriotism and values are off doing their own thing which has nothing to do with helping Veterans.



Sure, you can buy a one dollar sticker and I hope it assuages your guilt; but your name on a petition, or a letter to the editor would help to do a lot more.



I served in the time of Vietnam and those poor boys and gals are getting the short end of the stick by all those who waved them on.



When push comes to shove, it’s not the words that count but the actions of government and whether the public rises to the occasion.



If the public rose to the occasion, those suffering affliction or illness or wounded would not have to wait years for the VA to address their needs. They wouldn’t have to go search out other hospitals to get the treatments they need. And they would all be covered 'til the day they die for health benefits and insurance.



But that our president doesn't talk about



(In fact, while virtually all the death and destruction comes from bombs planted in the highway, only in January will we start to deliver the trucks that can protect our troops!--a little misplaced priority here?



Maybe instead of stickers, all of our defenders of Iraq should have been buying for our troops armored transportation equal to the challenge.





All the rest is crap!



Today, the fact is that less than 1% is really feeling the pain of this unnecessary war and for the most part, they are from the lower rungs of the economic ladder.



Our president never asked anything else from the rest of the population.



In Vietnam, we still had thedraft and everyone seem engaged.



Now, only those directly affected and all the other flag wavers who seem to thrive on War.



More than 75% of Republicans think that Bush’s strategy is right for America.



We can do something about what is happening but writing to all the fence straddling Republicans and let them know how we feel whether or not they are in our district.

We can write editorials and we can protest. It is an American right and under these circumstances, an obligation.



Les Aaron

The Committee for Positive Change

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Mattel Apologizes…

Most people would be gratified to learn that Mattel, the giant toy company, has finally come out and apologized.

What most will find hard to believe is that they made their apologies not to all of those parents who were treated badly by the toy company but to the Chinese Communist government.

In the apology, the Executive Vice President of Mattel said that the recalls were not due to the mistakes of the Chinese but to their own design department.

This speech was delivered to the Chinese head of the Department that controls quality.

if we had any doubts, this admission makes crystal clear that Mattel sees its future inextricably connected to its manufacturing partner, Communist China.

One might also tend to wonder why Mattel hasn’t shown equal seriousness in its intentions to the people of America.

Aren’t the people who received toys with small parts that could be swallowed be entitled to an apology?

Shouldn’t all those who paid top dollar for expensive brands be apologized to for not being told that the toys they bought were painted with lead base paints. And isn’t it shabby that this brand would stoop to such measures to save a few cents…

I am starting to feel that Mattel has gone through the rabbit hole, and for perhaps decades has nurtured an upside down Alice-like view of its loyalties and its commitments.

I for one who bought Mattel toys for all six of my grandchildren, will no longer allow these products to come into my home.

If the largest marketer of toys is more concerned with product profits than its commitment to toys than I for one say “enough is enough.” Mattel, you are no longer welcome in my home.

No Other Serious Candidate
Is Talking More About the Middle Class
And Restoring Hope….


I listened to John Edwards last night at the Iowa Forums sponsored by NAACP and I started to come around to his point of view. Before, he never got a chance to speak in more than sound-bytes and that does a disservice to his ideas that need to be fully expressed....

I dont know if I am going to vote for Edwards but I do know that I am going to try to find out as much as possible about his ideas and his plans.

Here's what I've gathered so far:

He seems to be the only one of the serious candidates who is willing to shake things up. I like the idea of not accepting the status quo. There is much work to be done. And the lobbyists do not get paid to please the voter.

This contrasts with Hillary whose modus operandi seems to be working within the system. I don't believe that no matter how well intentioned, we can work with lobbyists to achieve voter goals. Edwards takes the position, on the other hand, of rooting out the old and replacing it with the new. And that sounds like a more viable idea...

When the subject turned to health care Edwards said that it is hard to accept the favors of the lobbyists and then vote against them.

I agree.

In the last health care reform bill, the PMA won. And all of those involved in pushing for the ‘doughnut,” got guaranteed jobs with PMA members.

This is not the way to get the best deal for the voters.

We cannot have lobbyists crafting the bills for the people.

Eight years ago, NAFTA was crafted by lobbyists and our representatives voted for it believing it was for free trade; actually, it was a bill that allowed entrepreneurs to make fortunes on the backs of the poor and disadvantaged.

It was a sham!

And it also had provisions that left the people out of the machinery for settling grievances.

For the most part, few if any representatives read the bill before the vote.

We can’t allow that to happen again.

Soon we will have to find ways to extend the power of social security after 2056.

Before Clinton left office, that was what SS was good for; with Bush’s bad management of the budget and excessive spending, SS has been shortchanged by fourteen years…

It is time to think about raising social security payments for the very rich.

It’s time to end the tax breaks for those making over 200 thousand dollar per year.

And it’s time to end the capital gains benefits enjoyed by the rich.

We must do what is possible to make it easier for Unions to form.

And we must end the abuse of workers on pensions.

All of these and more are part of Edwards planning if he were to become president.

I like his ideas for getting the lobbyists out of the rule making and influence peddling business.

I like his ideas to rebuild the unions.

I like what he is saying about helping the poor and improving education.

Although Hillary is looking like the presumed front-runner, John Edward’s ideas seem to be the best out there to preserve the democratic tradition of giving th Middle Class reasons for hope.

THere is no question that we need change. And for me at least, change consists of getting rid of the whole crew now running things, especially the lobbyists.

And I hope we take a moment out to listen to what he has to say; it just might change your mind.

Les Aaron

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Selling America on the Cheap!
For the first time in collective memory, we have to ask ourselves why America’s leaders who swore an oath to protect America and her citizens, are now so hard at work trying to sell everything they swore to uphold.

It is a question for the ages.

Let’s look at cases. In the last several years, America has entertained the sale of its ports to the Middle East which is more than a little surprising inasmuch as the Middle East seems to be the area, when last checked, that is the major source of the terrorist threat to this country.

It doesn’t seem to matter that whomever runs the ports, knows all of our plans to protect our country.

Prior to that, we were willing to sell our highways, our bridges and our tunnels to other countries so that we could raise revenue to compensate for bad policies and tax breaks for the rich.

Before the Port Authority got into every other business than the bridges and tunnels it was authorized to build and maintain, it used to cost fifty cents to cross the Verazzano.

Today, it costs 18 times that! Maybe the Port Authority should have concentrated on its main business instead of beating up on the driver!...

But the Middle East is at it again!

This time it wants to buy one of our biggest Stock Exchanges and nobody seems to be objecting to it.

What does that tell you?

It tells me that first of all, everything in America is for sale.

We have enemies and “friends” in the world; but that doesn’t seem to overlap with things that we can sell. We can sell to most anybody it would seem—anything for a profit.
We’ve sold our manufacturing assets to countries who used to weave rope or bag tea. Now, we complain that they aren’t building products the right way. Could it be that the truth is that our companies were so anxious to get a deal on building cheap products, they couldn’t care less if they used small, breakable parts or that they used lead paint?

There is nothing more important than making profits! Let’s not forget that.

But the bigger question is do we have the right to sell America’s assets?

Shouldn’t the people have something to say about that?


Morevover, wouldn’t you suspect that anyone willing to sell our country couldn’t possibly have our best interests at heart.

Why would someone who we elect to protect America be so anxious to sell it off? I don’t understand that..

Nor does it seem to end there.

There’s a group of business people from Mexico, Canada and the US who are looking to opening up America’s highways to Mexican trucks. And that’s only the first step of their plans to circumvent the laws of the land…

Right now, at some portals, more than 400 Mexican trucks are lined up. Imagine if they were given carte blanche to drive anywhere in America?.

Wouldn’t people who approved deals like that clearly have another agenda that has nothing to do with protecting our people and our highways. Might it not be that they are blinded by profits? For whom? Surely, not the American people.

All of this is more than a little offensive to me whose entire family became citizens of this great country through the old fashioned way: applying for citizenship and going through all of the work necessary to become a decent and honest citizen of this great land.

I don’t know anyone who has come into this country through legitimate ways who doesn’t love this country more than life itself.

To see that cheapened through the cheap and tawdry methods used today to accommodate the big right wing processing and growing operations, is more than a little sickening.

To think that the greatest country in the world is willing to sell of its assets to any bidder, who is willing to sell its highways, bridges and ports to the highest bidder, and willing to let foreigners control our distribution and supply throughout the lower 48 would have to be an unthinkable anathema to our founding fathers…

And at some point in time, we must begin to ask ourselves are our officials any better than the Russians who have squandered Russia’s great assets or taken them over from those to whom those assets really belong, leaving them to get by as best they can while the aggressive businessmen sell what is not there’s in order to built vast fortunes.

Is this what America is fast becoming?



Have we such little faith in our own assets that all we can think of doing is selling them to some Arab potentate?

Perhaps, we should have never left the protection of England if that’s the case.

Your comments invited!

Les Aaron

Questions for the presumed leader….

If you talk to most people, it seems that Hillary is the presumed candidate running in double digits ahead of Obama and Edwards. As a result, she inherits the position of being front runner and, therefore, cannot be immune from the hard questions…

Overall, the candidates are both promising and disturbing. They are promising because they are beginning to find solutions to the issues; it is disturbing because so many questions remain as the candidates drift off to platitudes and generalities.

As a result, while we know about Hillary’s ideas of a Health Plan, we don’t know where she stands on NAFTA, H1B, the PMA, lobbyists, etc. Every candidate has things that they don’t talk about; it may be how they finance their campaigns, who they take money from what those people expect in return, influence peddling and the like….. .And, no, we did not find the answers we were seeking at their websites.

I find that I am beginning to agree with the critics, like Edwards, who argue that Hillary cannot have an effective and objective health care program until she parts with the insurance companies, health care companies, pharmaceutical companies who have a vested interest in investing in a leading candidate.

Will she be inclined, for example, in bringing the cost of pharmaceuticals down when they are unnaturally and unjustifiably high. Nobody but Edwards and Kucinich have taken them on….and none of the other candidates have even questioned why their costs and rates are so high. The idea of letting Medicare negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies is a good one but does it go far enough….

Right now, those who are on Medicare must accept a plan that has the proverbial “doughnut” an ugly mechanism that makes those who sign up for these government programs pay out of savings or whatever for pharmaceutical costs that exceed a certain level. I believe it’s over 2,800 for most on the plan and they have to make up the difference until the plan gets to close to 7,000 dollars on most plans before l the full payment provision kicks in; but if you are in the “doughnut,” you still have to pay the premiums. Today, many are having a real problem filling that “doughnut” or paying the part that comes down heaviest on the plan member who is typically living on his savingsthat he’s seen flowing out to cover unanticipated costs for food, energy and health care. What this health care program pushed through by the White House does is create a bonanza for the PMA..

But that isn’t the whole story. And to understand the whole story, you have to be close to what has happened in the industry over the years.

PMA members, in large part, get away with what they charge because they have an organization that tells the representatives what they claim is the cost of introducing a new drug according to their own audits. They do this through the mechanism of lobbies and Congress, itself, where money passes to the Congress person in exchange for their efforts doing the heavy-lifting, i.e. winning over their fellow Congress people. During the prescription bill passage, every Congressman who aided and abetted this rip-off was compensated by getting a lobbyist job working for a pharmaceutical company. Every single one of them! Meanwhile, the rest of us got the doughnut that pushed many of us into jeopardy..

The key here is that the industry uses its own stacked audits which include marketing and advertising costs in their projections to virtually “charge at will”—whatever the traffic will bear. And it will bear plenty, because PMA members have virtually eliminated the “generic,” instead bringing out a variant of the former drug, perhaps not as good to keep the product new and costs high.

PMA audits are loaded by the way. The cost of drug introduction is only off by something like 80=90% according to more objective sources. But nobody questions PMA’s take on their own business.…. Could that have something to do with taking money from a PMA member company? The PMA alone has three or four lobbyists for every Congressman as we speak and this is not only influence peddling at its most obscene, it is proof that their methods produce success after success. And if the PMA and the lobbyists succeed, who pays the price?

You got it!



One of the other paramount issues is Hillary’s position on temporary green cards, the H1B, the special green cards for the information age jobs that have been limited to 160,000 this past year and Hillary wants extended.

These cards have been pushed through by the government to satisfy businesses need for qualified candidates. The truth is that there are plenty of qualified candidates in the USA, it’s just that business owners don’t want to pay them what they are entitled to so they claim that they can’t find the “best trained tech people,” which is a profound lie. They claim that the H1B gives them access to the very best talent, but that’s not true either since awards are made randomly not on the basis of a special skill. Who suffers? The American Middle Class, we who have taught the Asians the business who now are willing to work wages that are 25-40% less!....


Why does Hillary want these special class of green cards extended? Doesn’t she support the middle class?

Does she not realize that they rob jobs from qualified candidates in this country.

You can’t have it both ways: you can’t be for jobs here and then promote the new green cards….

She and the other candidates have to make themselves clear on this issue…



Also Hillary has not made clear where she stands on NAFTA.

Why not? Might it have something to do with the fact that her husband stood up for it.
Many got sucked into the language which seemed to make it look like “FREE TRADE” but it’s no such thing, it simply exploits the people of another country and allows the entrepreneurs to benefit at their expense…

Moreover, it has provisions that were not fully understood. In a recent settlement between a Canadian company and California, California was forced to bite the bullet for buying a Canadian product that was harmful to the environment and leached into the aquafir only to discover that they had to negotiate the issue behind closed doors. The people were not even involved and it was agreed that California, without debate, had to pay the Canadian company 100 million dollars. These NAFTA provisions are not compatible with our democratic system and were not fully realized when the bill came up for a vote….

Most Dems who have seen what happens under NAFTA are opposed to it.

It is biased against US companies because under NAFTA the playing field is not level.
The jobs go the “lead painters;” they do not stay here where they are needed.

We need clarity as to where the candidates stand on all of the critical issues that define where we will be twenty years from today.

It is a republican smokescreen that the election will be about the war when it should focus on the many other problems of this day and age from the Immigration problem, to global warming, to the economy and jobs.

We need to hear our candidates—not only Hillary—address the critical issues of our times and we must not judge them one with the other but as to the magnitude of the job they will be called on to perform if they win the Primary election.

The glass is no longer half full….

To paraphrase that wonderous Chinese lady of 92, a woman who has been struggling for middle class values for seventy years, if we are waiting for leaders to rise out of government, we can wait forever. We must recognize that the new leaders are us!

She couldn’t have said it better….

Les Aaron
The Committee for Positive Change

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



HUBGRAM
___________________________________________________________________



FLASH

September 19 2007







A Coming Revolution In Computer Software?




Very quietly, a major change is taking place that will have if all goes as planned major implications for the computer business.



To understand what is happening, one has to go back to almost the beginning of the computer revolution in the seventies when Microsoft came on the scene and started charging for the software which was always considered up to that time “freeware” and available free of charge to black box users of the day.



IBM, at the time, played into the hands of Microsoft by farming out responsibility for its operating system and all the rest was history. Microsoft continued to build its franchise making it virtually impossible for competitors to land a foothold. Many thought that Microsoft’s expertise was more in marketing than it was in innovative products and that the industry was being held back by Microsoft’s domination of the business.



Nontheless, Microsoft has come out unscathed from competitive litigation claiming an unfair advantage and monopolistic hold on the industry.





Microsoft has been a deft competitor who packaged multiple programs in with its expensive software inveighing against equal competition and virtually gaining the upper hand in extending the reach of add-on products that resulted from “bundling.”



But now IBM may be turning back the hands of time and as most will agree, it is a welcome idea..



It has joined forces with OpenOffice.org, a consortium of computer makers and software designers who are committed to open-source strategies.



IBM reminds us that their participation was responsible for giving Linux the push it needed before.



But now IBM is jumping in with products and software to support their commitment to open-source which may have a profound impact on Microsoft’s strangle hold on the marketplace. IBM is also joining with Google which supports an open-source type of architecture.



What IBM will offer is its Lotus Symphony which will compete directly with Microsoft’s Word, Excel and Powerpoint. IBM is already competiting with Microsoft on email, messaging and work group collaborations. Some may remember IBM’s failed attempt to market OS/2 Operating System and Smart Suite. But, today, IBM is convinced of the rightness of its position, the timing, and the power of its products to seize market share in the battle to come.



Les Aaron

The Committee for Positive Change

LAAGroup@aol.com



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Subversion of the Common Law…


We are living in very dangerous times.

And, unfortunately, there is little responsible editorial to explain what has happened and is happening to the rights of man. This is the fault of our media and our government. For the most part, we are unawares that our freedoms in a thousand different ways are slipping away and may not be there when we need them; nor do we realize that there may be no going back from the unprecedented exercise of powers we are witnessing now with the establishing of precedent…

Under the president’s Patriot Act, the government can snoop randomly or arbitrarily without FISA approvals on any citizen. For the first time, we do not have the Constitution to fall back on; yet we feel that no danger could befall us because of the guarantees of a democracy.

What most of us don’t realize is that with current data mining techniques and content programs seeking key words, someone could find themselves in the position of defending themselves against shoddy, questionable evidence and having their words compete with the government’s argument….

The president through the Attorney General’s ruling can if he deems necessary pick up a citizen under suspicion of being a traitor or a would be “terrorist.” Nobody I talk to seems to understand what constitutes sufficient cause.

What constitutes being a traitor? Or a would be “terrorist?”

What is particularly vexing is this government’s ability to manipulate and interpret words for their own ends. Their intentional misuse of language to obfuscate, distract and literally mislead the public may extend to the definition of what constitutes suspicion we don’t know. Therefore, might a terrorist simply be someone who doesn’t agree with this White House and says so?

Is it enough to criticize the government to find one’s self whisked away to some unknown country where a confession could be extracted through torture?

Need we be reminded that the right to assemble and criticize our government is at the very heart of our Constitution.

Already, we have seen such rights of free discourse trampled on in the rush to judgment. It is fact that Citizens of the United States have literally been taken to foreign countries to be interrogated on the basis of suspicion only without the benefit of a fair trial. . Nor have these citizens been allowed counsel or the guarantees of habeas corpus…

It has already been discussed with utmost seriousness that under the guise of protecting the citizenry against some major outbreak, like a flu epidemic, that martial law could be invoked. One might ask whether any kind of resistance to the government’s position might justify a similar response. Anything is possible when the Executive feels free to interpret the laws as they see fit, has little appreciation for the specific meaning of language and is capable of suspending the Constitution because of the threats of ‘terrorism.’ This is a government that operates in total darkness and who says one thing and does another. It is also a government that throws accusations around liberally and sees no problem with attacking some one for disagreeing with their actions as a traitor.

. There is evidence to suggest that we may already be at the threshold of expanded new powers for the government that would give them arbitrary powers of life and death over someone charged with being a terrorist or conspirator. .

If one were picked up on “suspicion,” there would be no access to your lawyer as provided by the Constitution and no habeas corpus to assure that charges are filed through channels and little demand for proof beyond the shadow of a doubt.

No. The president’s grasp of power and attack on terrorists has resulted in a suspension of liberties that we have never seen before in this country and never thought to be possible. …

Moreover, no proof is needed, a citizen can be brought in on suspicion alone.

Several American citizens have already been charged with being terrorists but because they have not been tried in the courts, no one knows whether the government’s charges are responsible or legitimate.

What’s worse, there is no countervailing pressure for balance and objectivity. The president has assumed the normal “checks” and “balances” of congress and the courts with the citizen having little recourse.

Moreover, we were warned about such possible excesses of democracy by a French philosopher 100 years ago. The philosopher explained that while government under a democracy is a splendid thing to witness, the government may also be changed in plain sight with nobody being the wiser and transformed into a form of unilateralist government or dictatorship with comparative ease.

This is borne out by experience.

Consider data mining techniques.

What’s more, data mining techniques used by government today and relational databases make it possible for someone to be arrested on suspicion for doing hardly more than making a call to the Middle East and discussing the course of the War.

Recently, a Scavenger-type program caused the Secret Service to visit a middle class home on Long Island and demand to know who was using the computer. The housewife, frightened to death, said it was her children. The Secret Service had picked up on their computer two words, “Dead Presidents;” they did not realize that the kids were talking about a vocal group.

What is tentatively in place now is frightening because it establishes a dangerous precedent for a democracy.

Now, the president has recommended a replacement for Gonzalez who has already shown a penchant for bizarre acts including the suggestion of starting a National Court that would review the evidence against someone suspected of would be terrorism or a lack of patriotism. There is no interpretation for what such charges actually mean and there are no forms of checks and balances to review the substance of the case so that charges may be dismissed.

As a result, it appears that we are on very shaky ground here where subjectivity might rule the day at the expense of a citizens freedoms and liberties.

It seems to me that the cure is beginning to look much worse than the illness…
We should be particularly cautious as this president’s final term in office plays out….
Les Aaron

Our 600 million dollar lie in Iraq
We are putting the finishing touches on the 600 million dollar embassy in Baghdad, the biggest and most expensive Embassy in the world.

Doesn't this give the lie to a quick return for GI's?
>
> Shocking! Outrageous! The corruption and collusion never go away; and
> what's worse, this abuse of our tax money is right in your face....
>
> Are we going to say, "here, take this 600 million dollar gift for us in
> exchange for the fact that the electricity doesn't run and the water
> doesn't
> flow.?"
>
> Come on.
>
> I am sure that the Iraqis will treat this the same way they did Saddam's
> palaces the moment we were to leave.
>
> No, we shall never leave. It will be the perennial lie: "Oh, yes, we
> intend to send some troops home next year..." but there will always be a
>reason
> for our presence...
>
> Ask the Koreans after fifty years whether they still love the presence of
> America in their land.
>
> We have no reason to be there. The Koreans can take care of themselves.
>
> Policing the world is simply another aspect of Colonialism of eggregious
> eco-nationalism writ large and paid for by the people of a democracy who
>largely
> don't want to be there.
>
> Obviously, that was never in our plans.
>
> With one of the world's largest supplies of oil, we were always planning to
> stay there.
>
> Inside the Green Zone where everything is nice and comfy and only the lowly
> troopers have to go out and get themselves killed sustaining an oil effort
> heaped in lies and subterfuge.
>
> We surely need a new 600 million dollar cathedral to lies and greed like we
> do a hole in the head..
>
> Wouldn't those GI's rather see the cost of this insane Embassy put into
> catching up on the backlog of GI's who need and deserve treatment but don't
>get
> it because we don't have the money.
>
> If nothing else, this puts the cap on all of the lies we have blitzed with
> continually over the last five years about turning Iraq into
> a democracy. We don't give a rat's ass about democracy; we are just there
> to lock up the black stuff in the ground. Period.
>
> What does this guy know about a democracy; he's already destroyed ours...
>
> And nobody with half a brain should trust him.
>
> The very fact that about half of the republicans do shows how screwed up
> this country is and how far we have to go to clean this pit of stupidity,
> ignorance and collusion.
>
> I am not a believer in violence of any kind; I've seen too much of it.
>
> But I am also a history buff who realized that our founding fathers,
> peaceful people with no desire for violence, were forced to do what was
> necessary to
> bring us freedom and a government of laws and a constitution that has held
> up over two hundred years.
>
> It is time perhaps to recognize that sometimes we must stand up to end
> torture, violence, lies, corruption, soldiers for oil policies and that we
>must
> stand tall to end the government's violation of the constitution, habeas
> corpus, the First Amendment, privacy considerations.
>
> In the end, it is we who are the leaders....
> Les Aaron
>
>
>

No WMD; no involvement in 9/11; but lot’s of hypocrisy….



What should turn people’s stomachs is that the White House does not seem to
know the boundaries of good taste and honesty when it comes to the promotion
of its War De Jour the war that never had to be. To add insult to injury,
they perpetuate the idea of an Iraq that we hope to save for democracy. And in
the process, we perpetuate the lies and the misstatements that never seem to
go away. In fact, this war could stand as a study in the power of words to
create the environment for War when there was no justification. More so, in
viewing the ads that are popping up all over the screen, it is clear that the
liars will not be through until they have had their way with our democracy and
turned the world into chaos. That a few men could wield this power in a
democracy stretches the boundaries of our credulity and it is a lesson to free
men. It is a call to action that we cannot ignore .and still call ourselves a “
free” society.
The rich right, the military industrial establishment who stand to benefit
most from war and others who elevate aggression and call it patriotism have
put up fifteen million dollars plus to run advertising to support the “noble
goals of the War.”
In other words, they are saying not to turn your back on all those troops
who have given their lives for the sake of the War. They use death and
disfigurement as a way to gaim support for the war. And it is ugly and motivated
and runs counter to anyone who knows that this war was going to happen whether
or not there was a legitimate cause—which we now know never existed.
It is time to make clear that these are ads sponsored by the cabal who was
responsible for the war in the first place. And put together by Tony Snow’s
predecessor as press secretary. To use death and the depravity of war to gain
support for a war that was never justified is nothing but shameless, to use
it for political reasons, is offensive to anyone who can think.
Nevertheless, the public in all its naivety, is starting to believe what
these ads represent and there is no counterpunch provided by the democrats to
identify precisely what the Republicans are doing to perpetuate this canard.
It is time for the democratic leadership committee to bring in honest people
who are respected figures in our society to come forward and speak their
minds to counter such dreadful use of propaganda.
If we don’t step up to the plate now, when will we?
The parallels with the Nazis use of propaganda for their own ends is too
clear!
Les Aaron
The Committee for Positive Change

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End the ego trip of the man who would have us go from democracy to Empire to
quagmire...

_______________________________________________________________________
HUBGRAM
Flash Bulletin
September 16, 2007

Violations of Your Rights Boggles the Mind
An Introduction….


To protect yourself, this is an introduction to what you must know about how far the government has absconded with your rights and freedoms.

And then you can decide what to do about it.

This is a little background gathered from several sources:

To most of us with any sense of serious curiosity, it is interesting to figure out what NSA and other investigative agencies are doing with all the data being mined from telephone conversations. Many of us felt that gathering so much data from so many sources seems unproductive and a waste of time. But it would indicate that we know little about the powerful new tools that are being used to probe our lives, our relationships, and virtually everything we had considered personal and none of anyone’s business…

The end result is that there is no more PRIVACY—our lives have become open books that may be probed with permission, without the sanction of a Court of law.

What do they do with all of the information they have access to?

What do they do with it? How do they use it?

What I’ve learned is that the degree of sophistication of places like NSA goes far beyond what most of us might have suspected and is constantly evolving so that what only a few years ago may have seemed an agglomeration of data is now being interpreted intelligently sorted, sifted and analyzed in ways we wouldn’t suspect possible.

And it goes way beyond anything that was part of the inventory of mathematical tools only a few short years ago. This stuff is mostly new and generated as a result of the computer age.. In fact, entire new fields of mathematics, psychology and abstract thinking are being employed in various new and creative ways to take raw data and use it to discover relational linkages among what you believe, your friendships, your avocations, education and everything else that differentiates you as a human being. Towards that end, they employ special algorithms not unlike those used by say Google. But unlike Google, they are not looking for advertising content of some kind but the kind of messages that wouldn’t belong to a conventional subset. .

For example, in relational data base mining, the information sifters are not so much interested in content, per se, but how that content is being used and perhaps more importantly how linkages are crafted and what makes up those linkages. The mathematicians involved see this in terms of three dimensional network linkages akin to a visual kind of net with the knots representing the nodes and the string the actual relationships to different groups that may occur in non-linear ways.. And by analyzing these linkages, they can see who is connected, what are the areas that the participants are engaged in and who is talking to whom and interpret from models what that mean in the larger sense….

When asked from where do these nets appear, the subject said that all of the relationships begin with prior data mining. It begins, per se, with the conversation between one party and another. And it is the byproduct of data mining made possible by this government’s interpretation of FISA regulations that allows the president to eavesdrop randomly without direct approval by the courts in direct violation of the Constitution….

There is a whole other branch of esoteric mathematics that deals with the content. We have heard about programs that hunt for key words. This has not gone away but been expanded way beyond it was with Scavenger and other early FBI type snoop programs.

With the combination of both the data mining and relationship linking along with data analysis, it is easy to sort and prioritize data that has been elusive in the past.

The government, of course is not going to tell us what it knows but the real frightening thing is that most of this data is being generated by citizens who have not been advised of their rights, nor has the Federal courts personally approved of this kind of eavesdropping constituting what amounts to wholesale violation of individual rights under the Constitution. Entire databases are being constructed based on these findings. You may already have been a subject and have all of your file information, anything that is available on you, already catalogued and indexed in some government file, how many times you fell behind on payments, your medical condition, who your friends are, what they do that the government does not like, how many calls you’ve made to sensitive area. In short, what constitutes a circumstantial profile on you, a citizen of the United States.

While I am not against using data to find terrorists, the very fact that we are ignoring the constituting and violating our rights seems to be more laden with dangerous precedent than the threat posed by any terrorist revealed by this system.

When we overlook our rights under the Constitution, we cease abiding by that idea we call democracy.

And so, to my mind, it is a case of the cure being worse than the illness.

With no one picking up the standard who thinks that our way of government is worthy of protecting, these violations will continue perpetuated by something called precedent and unlikely to change under a republican administration, either now or in the future.

Be aware. Be very aware.….

Les Aaron

The Committee for Positive Growth
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LAAGroup@aol.com

Instruments of Change

Waiting for leadership is like waiting for Godot…

Psst! Folks, if you didn’t see the play, you wouldn’t know that Godot never shows…

And like the theatre of the Absurd, the government does a damn good job of emulating a bunch of absurdists waiting for the solutions to fall out of the sky.

And for the rest of us?

Well, if you wait for solutions from government, you can wait forever.

Let’s face it, the notion of checks and balance said ‘sayonara’ a while back when TV was recognized as an end to everything.

And that was the beginning of the end of free elections.

Now, a candidate in this race may spend a billion dollars to win…

So, what does that mean to you?

It means you have to ask yourself why anybody would lay out a billion dollars to get someone elected?

A Chinese activist who is now 92 said that if you wait for positive change to come from government, you can wait forever.

We have to recognize that the leaders we wait for are us!

We are the instruments of change.

And until we understand that and are willing to pick up the standard, there will be no change; just rhetoric.

What do you think? Make sense?


Les Aaron

The Committee for Positive Change

9/11 Redux
I can’t seem to tear myself away from it.
Again and again I returned to those awful days of Sept 11 th .

It was déjà vu for me as it was for countless others who lived through it and shared the anxieties and the fears and the unknown.

Those who belittle what happened either are insensitive to terror simply don’t know what happened or are just callus people; there is no shortage of people who will be more concerned about their own cut fingers than anything that could happen to anyone else.

But in some respects, it was the finest hour for our public servants and first responders. They gave selflessly without regard to their own needs or their safety. Clearly, it was a time of heroes; people who gave their lives hoping to help others.

Where do such selfless people come from? What makes them do what they do?

I thought these things as we went through the process on the various channels that beamed retrospectives on that awful day and I was spellbound.

You see, I saw the whole thing from my window. No, I didn’t see the painful close ups of people falling.

I didn’t see some of the details although I could see everything clearly from my apartment. I could see the planes hit, the buildings enveloped in flames, and the crowds trying to escape the rushing crowds of smoke and debris.

Later, I went out and reached up and picked email messages and memos out of the air and felt the gelatinous remains of vaporized people landing on my skin, soft and yielding and moist, a feeling that you tend never to forget. The storm that had come up from out of nowhere and changed the brightest day of early fall into a stormy, dark night carried with it the detritus of a city, a city in free fall….

I still get nightmares from the little exposure I did have. I didn’t go digging for friends. I didn’t get to the Pile but I could smell the fires that burned for weeks afterwards.

I will tell you only three of my experiences. One was that of a little girl and her mother who lived in my building. She was a single parent who worked on Wall Street. I used to see little girl all of the time downstairs in the lobby or the front of the building. She was always waiting for her mom. She was a precocious child and great fun. I used to tell her stories until her mother came down.

The other was a neighbor, too, who lived upstairs from me, who impressed me with her luxurious clothes and the finest furs. She obviously held a very high level job at an investment company in one of the Towers.

The third was a woman who my wife used to go to work with.


After the twin towers, I learned that the little girl’s mother died in the building’s collapse.
I never saw the little girl again. She just disappeared.

The second, the woman executive did not die in the building’s crash, but she came home that day, packed her bags and left just like that. A friend told me that she could never stay in New York again.

The third, the woman on the bus. Rose ran into her a week after business started to slowly return. The woman told her that her only heir and family, her daughter had left the building when the management told her to return to her desk. She never came out again! They never found her body and I volunteered to go with her to the Mayor’s office to fill out the requisite death certificates in the absence of any real proof.

Just three stories that exemplified what happened that day and I think representative of the horror that changed people’s lives for good.

Les Aaron

The Surge and Shinseki





One of the interesting ironies in this whole craziness of presemption is what our infamous government is trying to achieve now.



Think about this What our government now is trying to do is extend the troops that made up “The Surge,” an addition of approximately thirty thousand men for an indefinite period of time. Bush has realized that this added force component is essential to reporting progress in Iraq.



But wait a minute, isn’t that what the generals were trying to tell him in the very beginning: That you couldn’t go in and take over a country of 26 million with under 200,000 troops. That why General Shinseki lost his job and other generals took early retirement. At the Pentagon, the ruling consortium of Rumsfeld and Cheney would not listen to common sense.



Now, the irony is that this is “new policy.’ It is no such thing. It has been at the very center of military thinking since Vietnam and it was the fundamental basis of the First Gulf War under the Powell Doctrine, that the way to win is through the use of overwhelming force.



Rumsfeld, in his insistence on technology, cut the Army back to the bare minimum and then believed that his beloved machines would replace boots on the ground.



And just in case we forgot, here’s a little background from Wikopedia’s entry on the good general and his feud with Rumsfeld and the Administration:



Tensions with Rumsfeld while Chief of the Army
Shinseki's tenure as Chief of Staff was marked by tensions with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. As incoming secretary, Rumsfeld publicly addressed and ultimately supported Shinseki's controversial decision on March 16, 2001 to issue all Army troops the black berets that had previously been worn only by the United States Army Rangers. [4]

In 2001, Shinseki reportedly staved off suggestions by Rumsfeld and his aides that the Army be reduced in size. [5] According to one source, at their first meeting Shinseki told Rumsfeld that his orders would not be implemented [6].

Defense strategist Thomas P. M. Barnett, in a 2005 piece for Esquire magazine, captured the thoughts of Rumsfeld's aides in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Aides felt Shinseki became "too fixated on improving the Army's efficiency in combat without questioning the relevance of the capabilities he was developing, as in, Great force, wrong war." Rumsfeld and his aides believed systems like Crusader, while superb for a Cold War-era fight, were not relevant to 21st-century threats that required speed and precision. [8]

The personality clash between Shinseki and Rumsfeld was well known. Shinseki had a reputation as a quiet, reserved officer, while Rumsfeld had a history of his tough questioning and "wire-brushing" senior officers. (Barnett describes wire-brushing as "chewing them out, typically in a public way that's demeaning to their stature. It's pinning their ears back, throwing out question after question you know they can't answer correctly and then attacking every single syllable they toss up from their defensive crouch.") Shinseki and other army officers resented Rumsfeld's rough treatment of officers, while Rumsfeld and his aides felt the military had to be challenged vigorously in order for the civilians to exercise effective control of the department and steer it in the right direction. [8]”





Under Rumsfeld, the fact that the Army was in fact seriously reduced in numbers so that it could not fulfill its mission if we were to face more than one opposing power over a sustained period of time. .



And while presidential candidate McCain says that it is the best trained force in the world and that we have maintained our strength in all categories, what McCain conveniently neglects is the fact that enlistments are down, that if we did not lower the standards, we would be unable to meet recruitment targets and that although the numbers may seem the same, the very quality of our armed services has been sacrificed with major gaps in ever critical MOS.



Now, Bush is struggling to find any way to effectuate if not a win at least progress and Petraeus has come out with a policy based on adding new troops. Wow! This thing has gone full circle and the man who wouldn’t budge now sounds like Shinseki.

Both Powell and Shinseki must be laughing up their sleeve nows watching the desperation of a leader who has tried everything except listen to the real advice of his leaders until every other option failed.



It is interesting to see how we’ve forgotten what the Surge is really all about.



Les Aaron


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End the ego trip of the man who would have us go from democracy to Empire to quagmire...

Hubgram

Special Bulletin

September 11, 2007


Hey, if we were sincere about defeating terrorism, there was an easier way!....Let’s face facts. If this administration wanted to really defeat Terrorism, they have a funny way of going about it.

If you were charged with eliminating the threat, would you walk away from it and attack another country because it offered you a better opportunity to show your might and your terribly swift sword? Whatever happened to reason, argument, dialogue, debate?

The mantra of this government seems to be to put out a burning twig with a Globemaster loaded with water. On the other hand, a more enlightened government might give some thought as to how to lessen the threat; not to do that which only reinforces and perpetuates the hatreds and feelings of a people who have been blindsided by uninformed and uneducated clerics.

A clever person might recognize that there are sources for these hatreds and it might be more productive to address those than attempt to perpetuate a policy that has not worked and is not working.

A smarter president, if he or she were honest, might admit that the use of inordinate power for other trouble spots in the world is not the solution for all that troubles us.

Yes, let me cast my vote right now for putting out bin Laden’s lights but then let’s win over the people if we can before we blast them to Kingdom come…

It is surprising especially in the light of the fact that we know the answers to these questions. We know why the terrorists hate us. We know why they are so angry with what we do. And, understanding that, we could show how really progressive we are.
And perhaps begin to turn some of this around.

How do you eliminate hate?

How about doing things to help the wives and the children of those who hate us. The mothers and grandmothers who live at poverty levels; the families that don’t have water or air conditioning or don’t have enough food to put on the table; the families that did not survive the last earthquake that took 200,000 lives or the Tsunami that wiped out 400,000 people and left families without their wage earners…..

In Iraq, why don’t we prioritize getting things back on stream. Like water and energy.

Why don’t we help children by providing teachers and schools that speak to the truth.

Why don’t we do a better job of communicating.

Why don’t we build local support efforts by providing advice and money.

Sound like it costs a lot?

How much is this war costing us in real terms and in terms of the lives of our young people? Think more than one trillion dollars to date! That’s serious money.

Isn’t it time for dialogue? Isn’t time for our wise people to come up with ideas?

This is no longer a question of democratic or republican. Both of us bleed.
It is time for Americans to come together and invest some sanity into a strategy that is miscast and misrepresentative of our best interests.

Let’s get Americans together with the simple notion that we are talking about America, a united America that seeks peace and security.

Les Aaron

Hubgram

The Newsletter of the Committee for Positive Change
Sept 15th Edition
Volume 8, Sept 2007

FREE EDITION

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The Con Factor
It seems to be turning into a real test of fortitude. How many times will Bush attempt to con us vs. how many times will we allow ourselves to be conned.

According to the early polls, the people are not willing to buy the Bush-Petraeus report on the impact of the “Surge” in Iraq.

Now that the facts have leaked out via his latest bio, it turns out that Bush has no intention of bringing the troops home in January, February or even 2008! In fact, one general on the Baghdad team tossed out a trial balloon suggesting that it usually takes a minimum of nine years for an occupation to show results.

That would pretty much approximate the combined time America spent in winning WWI and WWII. If anyone needed a follow up justification for “shock and awe” this has to be it.

So, be prepared. Next week, the week we were told to wait for as if the Oracle of Delphi were to appear to address concerns; instead we find ourselves with an employee pleading his case to his boss, not to much wiggle room there I would suggest. Petraeus is between a rock and a hard place and the smart money expects to hear that things are getting better . But at the same time, don’t expect to see troops coming home any time soon!...

We have since learned that the general’s presentation will be oral for reasons, we suspect, that an oral presentation is harder to pin down, harder to pick apart than a document where back tracking is harder to do. Surely, it is not unreasonable to suspect, too, that the real report will be modified to suit the criteria of the White House….

Is there the slightest hint that perhaps this whole thing is a bit disingenuous?

What the rumor mills tell us is that General’ Petraeus’ report will suggest that “the surge” has been responsible for a 75% reduction in the insurgency.

By whose measure one might be tempted to inquire?

As it turns out, on closer analysis, we discover that the standards used to measure a reduction in insurgency seemed to have been arrived at rather arbitrarily. If you are shot in the back of the head, it was insurgency. If you are shot in the forehead, it falls into non-insurgency. These standards seem so capricious that they bear little of the gravitas needed to remediate what is really happening in different parts of Iraq and cannot be expected to be taken too seriously. .

Nevertheless, the real meat of the most recent book on George Bush is that he is really hoping to get all the candidates, both democrats and republicans, to feel comfortable with the idea of maintaining forces in Iraq until after he leaves office. And that does not mean pulling troops out. Thusly, the recent photo op that hinted at troop reductions was just that, a photo op. And that photo opportunity raised false hopes and seemed to be a disciplined effort to mislead the public, the media and the troops on the ground!

Critics amplify Bush’s remarks suggesting that there was no real intention of reducing our presence in Iraq. This is part of a consistent pattern that began with the advice of Bush’s generals and continued through the team headed up by Baker to remediate the many arguments stirred up by Bush policy in order to arrive at an Iraqi solution and it continues today—despite the fact that the War in Iraq is going badly, we are no nearer to a political solution and that the real threat is posed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan and not in Iraq.

The political party in place now has according to the GAO failed to met eleven out of eighteen bench marks and is no nearer a solution than when it was formed.

The bottom line is that we have placed considerable weight on a government that is not only illegitimate by most measures but racked by scandalous behavior. We have thrown away a trillion dollars on this sham War that has wasted a whole generation of lives and we invert the language and the facts to justify reinforcement of false hope.

A president who cannot or will not see the truth, who does not level with the people, and who stands behind something that cannot be justified does not deserve to represent America and the American people must come forward and demand that he step down.

It is time for change and we cannot afford five hundred more days of bungled policies and straight out lies.


Les Aaron

Les Aaron is the Author of A Blueprint for Winning: Taking Back the White House—2008 available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.
For more information, write LAAGroup@aol.om

Visit our website: www.lesaaron.blogspot.com

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End the ego trip of the man who would have us go from democracy to Empire to quagmire...







A SPECIAL COMMENTARY:

Congress loses; America suffers….

Re: Executive Privilege

When Bush was selected for office, he made a sea change in the way power was used and abused. If Clinton behaved in the way the Founding Fathers had in mind when they originally approved a balance of powers and “checks” and “balances,” Bush’s behavior was his polar opposite—someone who craved the trappings of power and placed his own agenda over and above the Constitution and the law.

This may be the hardest thing for most Americans to accept.

Everything else is smokescreen.

There was no way that Congress was going to dictate to this president. For him, it was not about the people; it was about privilege and special interests and his preoccupation with those two things had never wavered.

After all, privilege was the way to get things done without people looking over your shoulder.

The instrument of Executive Privilege turned out to be Cheney who in his thirty years in office, saw what happened under both Nixon and Ford and how the balance had shifted away from Nixon after Watergate.

Cheney as enabler, showed that he was no fan of “the people.” He was special interests all the way buttressed by his commitment to Executive Privilege. It was evident in his Energy policy which he conducted behind closed doors. When asked by the GAO why the information was not made public, his argument centered on Executive Privilege. And, thus, the die was cast.

The laxity of Congress in taking action on this exercise of power resulted in even greater and more extreme examples of Executive Privilege from notations on approved bills indicating which parts of the bill the president would reason as unconstitutional to the overriding extent of eavesdropping on private citizens under the new antiterrorism legislation.

All in all, it is not only a dismal record of failure but an indictment of this republican controlled Congress that showed its support for Party loyalty and disdain for the people and the Constitution. If the republican congress harbored any credibility at all, it is now lost in the plethora of excuses for ignoring the abuses of this president.

Over time, this president has either asked or seized most powers of the Congress using specious arguments such as his ability to forge an agreement or his commitment to antiterrorism legislation. In each case, he has exploited the Constitution for his own ends, reinterpreting it when deemed necessary or simply ignoring it when it was expedient to do so. .

The result has been the utter collapse of checks and balances with few exceptions…

The Congress still retains the power to conduct audits, investigations and Impeachment hearings.

The danger is that we have established a precedent here as free-wheeling genie that may not want to return to the bottle.

And that is the inherent danger of this government along with the politicizing of various departments that has not been addressed by the bulk of republican legislators with great loss of credibility and trust.

Years from now, the failure of this Congress to behave in a responsible way and their slavish ties to their party will not lessen the impact of some future government that will use this precedent to enlarge their own powers and we will find ourselves worse off because we had failed to act in this president’s remaining 500 days.

We hope that doesn’t occur and that the Congress will mend its ways; but at this juncture, it is highly speculative and fanciful to assume that it will happen.

If anything, that is the legacy of the Republican Congress that cast aside its respect for the laws in order to maintain an intimacy with the White House which has only proved skin deep. As a result, each of those who sold their souls to the company store must face their own abuse of the people’s trust. We have to believe that the eventual awareness of the people will precipitate positive change. If it does not, our prospects are not enhanced by our own failure to serve as the model for change.

Les Aaron



Setting a new standard for Chutzpah!

Through history, we have seen world leaders strut their stuff. DeGaul earned a reputation for arrogance and disdain for the rest of the civilized world; Hitler wanted the Aryan race to dominate because it was simply superior; Stalin response to most advice was the Gulag!; and Nixon like Bush thought that he was above the law….
But as it turns out, pipsqueaks on the International scene should be careful before trying to reach for the stars before being sure that they are standing on a sound foundation.

Fitting into this mold is the newly elected president of Mexico who recently announced in the most profound statement of Chutzpah that I can remember that Mexico’s does not end with its borders; that wherever a Mexican is is Mexico. He was referring to the six million or so illegal Mexicans who fled to the United States to find jobs because there weren’t any despite Calderon’s statement that he has just created more than 600,000 new jobs.

In his speech to his government, Calderon chose to pick on the United States for “persecuting” his people who traveled there in search of jobs. He didn’t mention the fact that they were here illegally or taking advantage of America’s safety net to procure medical care and education. Nor did he mention, that fraud was used to deceive employers as to the illegal immigrants actual status.

That’s what I call chutzpah of the most extreme kind….

We remark about how a mother is blind to her child’s faults and we excuse it but it is hard to excuse a national leader who sees only one side of a problem because it is convenient to do so. Can any progress be made with such a blindsided leader? Doubtful.

In the meantime, the president of this country has failed to complete the border wall as was promised and illegal immigrants continue to pour into our country further weakening the fabric of our social system and spinning it into chaos.

And our president gives a deferential nod to Calderon’s outrageous remarks.

Why? One can only assume that the president of the United States is unwilling to close the door on his friend’s major labor supply whether or not it is legal and consistent with the laws of the land.

Again, the president has said one thing and done another.

Sadly, with each passing day, our government becomes more and more a mockery.

Les Aaron



AMERICA AS EMPIRE BUILDER!...

The other night on PBS, there was a program on American Empire building. It was deceptively frank in that the theme suggested that this was how it was as if we were being handed a candid assessment and we should be happy with it.

There was no provision for discussion; it was just another accepted fact. The more interesting notion would have been to question how we allowed ourselves to get to that point without a public dialogue without debate, and without issuing a critical report card on a government that would allow us to promulgate our power around the globe. After all, the conservatives just fifty years ago and even during Clinton’s tenure demurred about the idea of sending “our boys into harm’s way.” No, here it was just another fact of life and the author even tried to put a happy face on it.

The consensus of the author was that whether we like it or not, America has become an Empire. And the question that it poses in a kind of in your face way is that if we don’t like it, just think about the alternatives. Would it better if it were China or Russia cast in the empire building role?

In other words, whether you like it or not, we are not seeking world peace, understanding, compassion for our fellow man; we are today’s premier empire builders regardless, and if we don’t like it, we should consider the alternatives.

No pithy moralizing. No ego vs. super-ego arguments here. It is simply accepted fact.. Moreover, the documentary tends to duck any philosophical treatment of whether we should be in that role in the first place. It does not suggest that we go back and look at our own moral underpinning or our motives. There is no need to do that because it is our past, not our future. It is an interesting argument and seems to project and correlate with the Rambo style of our leader posing as the heroic figure who uses aggression as a prelude to peace..

Raising no philosophical argument, this documentary suggests that this is the look of the future delivered full blown blemishes and all. And if you don’t accept it, better get out of the way. It is the strategy that has discovered its own rationale and justification kind of its own perpetual motion machine…

It avoids all talk about economic imperialism, or government’s motives in having 130 bases or missions in 70 countries. In serving as the contrapuntal opposite in this regard, one might even suggest that this is economic reality being dealt out with no accompanying apologia. Nothing it is interesting to note is said about the presence of oil and vital resources that might be critical to our notion of Empire building in extremis.

. That’s the cynical view but, of course, is our present posture any different than of say France, Belgium, England in the nineteenth century? Or we just couching conventional strategies in a new garb where we are now the friends who are there to help the people (Would we be so generous, if there were no critical resources in the ground or valuable assets to America?)

Essentially, it seems that we have masked our intentions by playing the “good guy.” Only, there is a potential counter thrust intimated at that it really isn’t so and we aren’t fooling anyone.

But the argument presented here is ‘who cares?’ because we have the muscle.
Should we advise the author that muscles this year can turn into next year’s flab?
So perhaps we should not be so callous in our assumptions because they may fall by the wayside, too. Who for example, remembers the good intentions of France in Algeria or Southeast Asia?

In short, there needs to be a moral underpinning to what we do. It should be etched in stone if we are to fulfill America’s worthy dream.

We should have learned that lesson in Iraq where we are still paying the price.

As I say, this is not an introspective piece, it is superficial enough to be alarming that something like this could become policy while the Courts and the Congress stand by in mute testimony.

What we have learned, as a result, is that we can now extend power with our super carriers anywhere in the world and since we have the most advanced weaponry, we can dominate in most places.

What the documentary did not bother with was morality and moral imperative. In fact, it made us appear as the savior of the world and operating only in the self interest of those countries where we are located. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought it was an apology for US aggrandizement and Bushian tactics to lay the groundwork for a New World Order..

The philosophical question arises in my mind, if it weren’t for our aggressiveness into the affairs of others, would we have brought down the wraith of the rest of the world on our house? What I am saying here is that whatever we do has a rub off on the rest of the world; perhaps not immediately as we’ve discovered, but the impact of what we do never slips into the ether like a wisp of smoke either.

. We are not the innocent babes in the woods bringing truth and liberty and the American way wherever we go. We have our agenda and it is not quite like it’s portrayed in this apology for what passes as doctrine. And if that is doubted, all we need do is look at our history with Iran where we tumbled their freely elected Prime Minister and took over their oil production, installed a charlatan who instituted a secret police whose name even today brings forth memories of brutality and Gestapo tactics…. We are in large part responsible for what has happened in much of the world through our meddling in places that don’t concern us. Instead, we try to make it look like we are doing the right thing while we ignore Darfur where human rights is a mere gesture and not worth the effort….

If we are to be an Empire builder, then we should at least be fair to the facts.


Les Aaron


Where does your candidate stand
on Temporary Work Visas….

It seems that while they are not readily admitting to it, the leading candidates for the democrats support an increasing number of work visas, the special green cards that do not require a foreign worker to return home periodically. …

Right now, there are over 160,000 of these temporary work visas being handed out annually.

Big business says that they cannot fill their existing job vacancies and want more visas so that they can hire more broadly abroad.

Who suffers?

The Middle Class.

These employers claim they cannot find the talent domestically to fill their needs.

What’s more, they want only “the best and the brightest.”

This is a lie supported by virtually all of the candidates.

First of all, 7 out of 10 of these visas go to Indian companies; and, secondly, they are awarded randomly, not on the basis of mastery or special intelligence.

Meanwhile, our candidates demand more of these visas for those they represent at the expense of qualified candidates here and the middle class which is being buffeted by such unfair legislation.

The real reason for these temporary visas is that those who apply for these positions are willing to work for an average of 25% less pay than American workers…

That, essentially, is the bottom line for American companies obsessed with profits!


In the last generation, the middle class had discovered that while it has contributed to increased productivity, its wages have not risen.


One of the mechanisms for effecting this wage inertia is the H3 Visa that has helped to keep wages down across the board but especially in those so called “quality of life” jobs.

This is an area that a candidate cannot be neutral about; they must declare their independence from lobbyists who are seeking to replace the middle class in the area of higher paying jobs….and show that they stand up for the American worker.

To do less, would be to condemn the American work force to lower cost jobs that would push many into poverty as we face rising costs in virtually every quarter—from food to energy.

Make them tell the truth on Temporary Visas.

Les Aaron




The End of Reading

Go to any cemetery on a non-holiday weekend and chances are, you will be lucky if you see one or two people paying respects to their departed relatives.

I think of that every time I visit a library in this day and age in the middle class Suburbia of today.

There’s no one there. No one there to benefit from exposure to ideas, science, nature, the Universe….No one to make the connections; no one to see the great quantum leaps of mind; no one there to find there own muse; no one there to take advantage of the opportunities to revisit the past or re-imagine the future ….. And that’s the saddest part of all.

. And if all of the studies are true, being locked in to Last Comic Standing or Lost or any of the reality shows puts aside our own native ability to be swept off our feet by the magic of ideas and possibilities. .


It’s painful to see these repositories of wisdom and learning so bereft of people.

Some see in this a barometer of America’s waning interest in reading.

If so, it’s supported by the leading book stores who, for the most part, are facing loses of revenue and reduced attendance.

It is interesting to note that while reading seems to be down in terms of popularity, there is a continuing flow of new books out into the marketplace.

There are books making the rounds for every interest and taste—from gourmet cooking to a biography on the Nazi raid on Moscow.

A recent study of schools, indicate that approximately 1 out of 10 of today’s youth is a reader with girls faring somewhat better.

Research into how leisure time is spent shows an up tick on TV usage averaging more than five hours a day and increased game play with the emphasis mostly on computer games.

For the most part, TV viewing is up in all categories and, therein, may be the cause for reduced reading.

First, you can only split the clock so many ways, if TV viewing is up, reading will naturally be down.

But there is another consideration: TV viewing is passive; it does not require a conscious effort; you can be virtually comatose and watch TV. Book reading requires an active response and requires the thinking reflex.

Seemingly, this is in short supply today.

Somebody I respect said that this is only a case of the pendulum swinging one way; in time, it will swing back.

I am not so sure. My college professor colleagues saw little interest in reading for the purposes of discovery, exploration and enjoyment. It was hard enough to encourage the students, juniors and seniors, incidentally, to read their nightly assignments.

It seems that the visual idiom has supplanted the contextual and it is unclear what that means except that we find an increasing lowering of analytical skills and an inability to parse language or differentiate between fact and supposition.

Not good signs for a country that is supposed to lead!


Les Aaron

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End the ego trip of the man who would have us go from democracy to Empire to quagmire...