Dear Mr. President

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for your talk of December 4. It was wonderful.  I hope to see/hear many more such talks over the next months.

The 2014 election cycle is presenting us with an enormous opportunity to bring balance back into our systems. Balance means that the system is supporting the Common Good and the General Welfare as opposed to the insane kind of distribution we have at present.

At the breakfast table the other morning, Mary and I who have a relatively secure middle class retirement income because we worked for Los Angeles County whose retirement system is sound, and because we have decent Social Security incomes as well as Medicare, were talking about the impact of robotics on employment and how it is and will continue to be putting people out of work. There are lots of good sides to this, such as freeing individuals from tedious and repetitive labor, and not so good sides, such as how are these people going to make a living?

The employment issue can be largely solved by adding many millions of teachers and support staff to the educational systems, many millions of doctors and support staff to the health systems, and many other human relation roles that machines cannot do. Humans caring about and for each other seems kind of natural, doesn't it?

The loss of jobs to robotics, however, does affect  FICA and income to the Government from tax on wages. There is no reason corporations who "own" these huge manufacturing and distribution systems should benefit from not having to pay humans wages and support the Common Good which consumes their products.

An Idea surfaced: Each robotic device that replaces a human worker should be taxed at some level and made to contribute to the FICA system. The "owners" do not have to pay actual wages, but are still responsible for income tax and FICA for each worker replaced by a robotic device. Why Not?

lots of love

-tom

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Dear Mr. President

This is a Thanks Giving message.

Thanks to you and your Administration for "hanging in there." First, thanks for running for President, and then running for reelection. Thanks for devoting these last five years and the coming three years of yours and your family's life to working for the enduring presence of our  Nation as a symbol and model of freedom and liberty for all.

Nobody said it would be easy, and, as you know, probably better than anyone, it has been at times excruciatingly difficult. There are a lot of individual things that I could name for which I thank you and your Administration, and for which I think that most of our brothers and sisters thank you. However, just let me say that I loved your comments last Monday regarding shifting our efforts from bombs to diplomacy in order to bring rationality and sanity into the International conversation regarding how we all need to live together on this rather tiny planet.

“Tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it’s not the right thing for our security." To me your "signal" re the Shift from might to Right was the light at the end of the tunnel of ego insanity through which humanity has been plodding for centuries. It is, as you undoubtedly realize, the only way out. Thanks to the tunnel vision of fear and greed which has been driving us over the last 100 years, we can currently, and rather easily, destroy the whole planet.

With this shift I am hopeful that we can as well, rather rapidly now, shift a significant amount of our resources, that is our tax dollars, from might to Right. I have in mind our Infrastructure by which I mean a lot more than our roads and bridges. These are, as we can easily see in videos of collapsing bridges and broken highways, in terrible condition, and putting resources into their reconstruction would greatly improve the circulation of energy; i.e., money through our national body. All good!

Not so easily seen is the 30 or 40 year decay of the basic infrastructure of our Democracy, our educational systems. All of them are in pretty bad shape, but primarily the elementary systems are near collapse. These infrastructure failures are not so easily seen, but very evident in many ways that cannot compete for attention with collapsing bridges, and many, many times more destructive.

This is a problem that can only be fixed by throwing resources, our tax dollars at it. Those dollars would employ vastly more people, thus circulate vastly more energy, money, than working on the dense physical infrastructure. The reconstruction of our dense physical infrastructure is very important. I am sure we can do both simultaneously. This would solve many problems re. unemployment and so forth.

I know that you and your administration know vastly more about this than I do. So, for me it's a matter of priorities. Health care for everyone was/is a huge priority. Educating the electorate is the most significant thing we can do to further the Dream. Healthy, uneducated people are great for totalitarian systems. Democracy only works if the electorate can think.  I am urging that you make the reconstruction of our educational systems priority One

Lots of love

-tom

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

I will be brief:

I just finished reading your "hand written" letter. Wonderful! This letter carries the energy that the people of our country need to feel and hear coming out of Washington, and especially from you and your spokespersons.

I heard Senator Warren talking with Rachael Maddow about Social Security. She carries and delivers the same energy. This energy is lighted. It carries compassion, caring, concern, respect and appreciation for our country and our people, all of our people. It speaks from the heart to other hearts.

Please, do a lot more of this. We all need it, including our Republican brothers and sisters who seem to sometimes forget about our roots. The way into a dark place is to lead with the light of the heart.

lots of love

-tom

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing because I am concerned about the overwhelming emphasis that your education policy is placing on vocating rather than educating our young.

I understand the need to vocate or train individuals in the new kinds of skills that our increasingly technologically driven society demands. And I support all of the efforts in that regard. What concerns me is that this effort is being made at the expense of the educational side of the equation.

By "education" I mean being deeply exposed to the great ethical, and moral Principles which underlie our Civilizations and Cultures. These Principles such as goodwill, honesty, courage, love, and compassion are responsible for the relative success of any of our past civilizations. Their presence in our DNA is responsible for the enduring efforts of Humanity to build evermore just and inclusive systems of government that foster liberty, freedom, happiness for everyone.

Democracy is not possible without an educated people. Fascism, totalitarianism is not possible with an educated people.

Those not interested in the democratic principles have always resisted any effort to educate the general population. Their assault on our educational system has been non-stop. One of the more insidious aspects of this assault is the notion that some of our people are too stupid to learn anything other than some vocational skill, so why waste their time on history, literature, art music, or learning how to write. This notion is only a bit less ignorant than the attitude that very smart people who can operate in the technological world do not need to waste their time on such fluff.

Any educational program needs to be anchored in the Humanities. The reason for this is that these fields carry the Wisdom of what Humanity has managed to learn through our enormous struggle over many centuries. They are the archives of all that makes humanity human. To fail to equip our children with these treasures is a crime.

You spent two years at Oxy, and I know you know how important that experience was to who you are now. My view is that if we could have a nation of individuals who had the education that you had, this would be a very much different and a very much better, more inclusive, loving compassionate, intelligent, heart driven nation and model for our brothers and sisters in the rest of our world.

Can you do something about this?

lots of love

-tom 

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

Just a brief note:

I have been monitoring the problems with the roll out of the Affordable Healthcare Program. I was not surprised  that there were a lot of glitches and soft and hardware issues. As long time employees of the Los Angeles County DPSS my wife and I experienced the launch, crash, and resurrection of many of most everyone of our computer programs.

The complexity of the Affordable Healthcare program is many times greater than any of our programs for Food Stamps AFDC, Medi-Cal. I think that the issues facing us in the Affordable Care program are in reality par for the course.

That they are being blown up into a giant issue is also par for the course, typical of the retrogressors processes.

I do have a suggestion on how to fix this thing.

You simply transfer a 100,000 or so of those, probably highly paid, programmers and software program wizards from NSA to work on this problem. Probably take them about week to have it humming.

Probably do a lot more for our National Security too.

lots of love

-tom

Good Comes From Good!

Thursday, October 03, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

No doubt, it is your life experience of unquenchable striving and the will to move forward in the face of huge obstacles and power blocks that is is demonstrating in this most recent and perhaps greatest test. I can only say that I, and in that I, I am a "we" because I am part of that humanity that has a heart,  we are all ennobled and made aware of the strength of the human heart, the heart that thinks not of itself but of the common good of all humanity.

You can rest assured that WE  have your back, perhaps not in the billions of dollars sense, but in the much more powerful sense of the will to good and the determination to secure liberty and freedom and, yes, even health care for all of our people.

I was so moved by your closing remark to the UN General Assembly. When we, as a nation speaking through our President, extended the Vision, the Principles and  Guarantees of our Constitution to all of Humanity and the planet as inalienable rights, It was, I think, a defining moment in the growth of this Nation.

These closing remarks opened a huge door and turned on a bright light in the world's mind. The United States of America wants for all peoples of all nations what we have for ourselves.

"I know what side of history I want to the United States of America to be on.  We're ready to meet tomorrow’s challenges with you -- firm in the belief that all men and women are in fact created equal, each individual possessed with a dignity and inalienable rights that cannot be denied.  That is why we look to the future not with fear, but with hope.  And that’s why we remain convinced that this community of nations can deliver a more peaceful, prosperous and just world to the next generation."

Thank you for having the courage to be who you are.

lots of love

-tom

Insanity Makes Another Appearance

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Dear Mr. President:

Well, the level of insanity and ignorance that we are facing has just made a decision that indicates how much deeper it has become. As you know, our benighted brothers have just cut 4 billion dollars out of the Food Stamp Program. Their delusion is that they think of Food Stamps as a huge give away that weakens peoples resolve to work.

I am sure that you have an abundance of experience with the acts of the Stonehearted, so I won't go into the cruelty and suffering that this particular act of the insane would visit on its helpless and innocent victims. Just in terms of the damage it would do to very young children, it would  make mass shootings look like a holiday.

However, I do think it is important for us to understand that this is not cutting 40 billion from the Food Stamp Program. This action would be cutting 40 Billion from the economy. The money that goes into the Food Stamp Program goes practically directly back into the economy. It is spent mostly in grocery stores for food.

Is this fact really that hard to see? It is  not very hard for me to understand that a bloodstream has to circulate blood to be useful. Bloodstreams that develop clots cause massive, usually fatal, heart attacks. Is it really that difficult for us to understand that our economy is our bloodstream?

The real danger to our economy, ergo our citizens, is not the Food Stamp Program. The real culprit is the Trillions of dollars being sucked out of our economy and stashed in the already bloated bank accounts of the wealthy few. This greedy delusion causes the generation of clots that interferes with, and in many cases brings to a dead stop, the free circulation of energy, i.e. money, through our system. This is the generator of the the massive heart attacks we call the loss  of homes, the unemployment of millions and on and on.

The true culprits constitute a  very small group of our population. They, generated--I sometimes think, deliberately--the recent economic collapse, and, according to all reports, are the  only ones who are really recovering. These individuals, by the way, spend more money on a bottle of wine for a lunch than the average Food Stamp recipient receives for a month of food and THINK NOTHING OF IT.

Apologies for the outburst there.

The Food Stamp roles have increased dramatically over the past 4 or 5 years. Guess why. It is not because millions of individuals, who now qualify for food stamps, quit their middle class providing jobs and say "Screw you. I would rather have food stamps because, if the truth be told I am basically lazy and would rather lay back, enjoy my unemployment and get Food Stamps than work."

No. they encountered a gigantic clot, call it by its real name, GREED, in the bloodstream!

I feel pretty confident that sanity, in this case those remaining in the Congress, will stop this, "irrational"  (Irrational is a nice word; however, if anything proposed by these brothers in the last few years is just plain stupid, this is it.), event from occurring.

Understanding and appreciating the forces with which you, on the behalf of the United States of America, indeed, the Planet, have to contend, I, we send you our love and determination to create Change that Matters.

-tom