Re The WV Coal Mine Disaster

What taddyporter says.

George Orwell

It always cracks me up when the Right Wing quotes George Orwell (pontifically), assuming he would have been at their tea-bagging parties or voting Republican along with them. None of them seem to have actually read Road to Wigan Pier, or to have noticed he was a socialist.

I guess I should not be surprised. If they could read, they'd be Leftists.

Anyway, I was reading this, prepping the deep background for one of my 1213 classes, and came across this passage. Orwell is writing about his days at boarding school.

There was a boy named Johnny Hale who for some months oppressed me horribly. He was a big, powerful, coarsely handsome boy with a very red face and curly black hair, who was forever twisting somebody's arm, wringing somebody's ear, flogging somebody with a riding-crop (he was a member of the Sixth Form), or performing prodigies of activity on the football field. Flip loved him (hence the fact he was habitually called by his Christian name) and Sambo commended him as a boy who ‘had character’ and ‘could keep order’. He was followed about by a group of toadies who nicknamed him Strong Man.
One day, when we were taking off our overcoats in the changing-room, Hale picked on me for some reason. I ‘answered him back’. Whereupon he gripped my wrist, twisted it round and bent my forearm back upon itself in a hideously painful way. I remember his handsome, jeering red face bearing down upon mine. He was, I think, older than I, besides being enormously stronger.

As he let go of me a terrible, wicked resolve formed itself in my heart. I would get back on him by hitting him when he did not expect it. It was a strategic moment, for the master who had been ‘taking’ the walk would be coming back almost immediately, and then there could be no fight. I let perhaps a minute go by, walked up to Hale with the most harmless air I could assume, and then, getting the weight of my body behind it, smashed my fist into his face. He was flung backwards by the blow, and some blood ran out of his mouth. His always sanguine face turned almost black with rage. Then he turned away to rinse his mouth at the wash-basins.

‘All right!’ he said to me between his teeth as the master led us away.

For days after this he followed me about, challenging me to fight. Although terrified out of my wits, I steadily refused to fight. I said that the blow in the face had served him right, and there was an end of it. Curiously enough he did not simply fall upon me there and then, which public opinion would probably have supported him in doing. So gradually the matter tailed off, and there was no fight.

Now, I had behaved wrongly, by my own code no less than his. To hit him unawares was wrong. But to refuse afterwards to fight knowing that if we fought we would beat me — that was far worse: it was cowardly. If I had refused because I disapproved of fighting, or because I genuinely felt the matter to be closed, it would have been all right; but I had refused merely because I was afraid. Even my revenge was made empty by that fact. I had struck the blow in a moment of mindless violence, deliberately not looking far ahead and merely determined to get my own back for once and damn the consequences. I had had time to realize that what I did was wrong, but it was the kind of crime from which you could get some satisfaction. Now all was nullified. There had been a sort of courage in the first act, but my subsequent cowardice had wiped it out.

The fact I hardly noticed was that though Hale formally challenged me to fight, he did not actually attack me. Indeed, after receiving that one blow he never oppressed me again. It was perhaps twenty years before I saw the significance of this. At the time I could not see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in a world governed by the strong: Break the rules, or perish. I did not see that in that case the weak have the right to make a different set of rules for themselves; because, even if such an idea had occurred to me, there was no one in my environment who could have confirmed me in it.

(Emphasis added.)

What? Are There No Workhouses?

Sweet little Right-Wing Social Darwinists, you gotta love'm.

This one, South Carolina Lt Governor Andre Bauer, who is running for Governor, BTW, wants to cut school-lunch programs -- stop feeding poor children if their parents miss PTA meetings or other benchmarks.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," [SC Lt Gov. Andre] Bauer said, according to the Greenville News. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

They're all vehemently Pro-Life so long as the fetus is still pre-born.  Once the little nipper's out & running, hah, you're on your own, you little stray!

Hail Our New Corporate Overlords!

Or, Thanks, Justice Roberts, for the Shiny New Leash!



What with all the other charming evil news appearing on the landscape, the decision of the "non-activist" SCOTUS in Citizen United, well, I haven't the strength.



Luckily other blogs are taking up the slack.



Here, with Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Washington Monthly.

Text & History.

And Here, with Think Progress.

Taxing the Rich

...is socialism, as the party of the rich tells us.

But driving the rest of us into penury, as this post points out, destroys civilization.

Which is what is happening, and not just in California, although it is being played out more clearly in California than anywhere else at the moment.

In order NOT to tax ExxonMobile, Shell Oil, and other oil conglomerates that have made record profits in the tens of billions of dollars off California consumers in recent years, the Republicans blocked Torrico's oil severance tax proposal that would have provided a billion dollars for higher education. They also blocked a tax on cigarettes that would have adverted cuts as well. And they did so for blind ideological reasons with a total disregard for what is in the best interest of the state of California. They sided with Big Oil and Big Tobacco to penalize college students who are just trying to increase their skill and knowledge levels to be productive members of the state's workforce and to make California's future as bright as its past.

When those who profit from a society's goods do not support that society, who will?  Oil companies profit by this country -- use its workers, use its roads, are defended by its soldiers, profit off its natural resources, wreck its environment, grow obscenely wealthy according to its very beneficial laws -- they should support the country that makes that possible.  Thus also the timber companies, Big Pharm, other giant corporations.

Instead, what we hear is that it is not fair to tax the wealthiest among us, who have worked so hard to gain that wealth; not only is it not fair, but it will stifle their initiative.  They will stop working so hard, and that will destroy our country. (Stop drilling for so much oil.  Stop cutting down so many trees in our national forests. Stop developing so many drugs for male impotence and restless leg syndrome.)  No, no, we must cut their taxes, and, instead, those in the lower brackets -- me and you, and those sad people over there, who make fifty thousand a year, or thirty thousand, let them pay more for their clothes or their food -- because if the support from the state drops, the local taxes go up; and if the support from the feds drops, the state taxes increase; and if all the support drops, well, things like tuition and services just start costing more, or disappear entirely, and you have to provide your own books, since the library doesn't have them anymore, or pay more of your own college tuition, since the university is charging more -- though I guess you could just stop reading books and just drop out of college.

What happens if we all have to pay our own tuition, and tuition keeps going up?

What happens if we all have to buy our own books, and we don't have money for that?

What happens to the quality of education on the university level when universities can't hire new faculty (many can't now) and enrollments keep going up (people come back to school when unemployment levels rise)?  More students in every classroom, lower pay for faculty members -- do you think that equals a better education for students?

But let's not tax the rich.  Because that would be wrong.