The Return of Debtor’s Prisons

Here.

Adding to the Hellish sewer that is the modern day reactionary Third Worldization of once-great America, people rolling through stop signs and speeding on streets are charged with criminal offenses, and then they are turned over to “private probation services” to pay the fines. The fines are paid in monthly installments of ~$40, plus various start-up fees, photo fees and a $10/day probation monitoring fee. As you can see, $300 fine ends up costing a Hell of a lot more over time. Over a year’s time, the fine may double, and then if you can’t pay the doubled penalty, you get sentenced to jail.

This diabolical law was passed due to corruption by these evil private probation services paying off legislators, one of whom was later jailed for corruption. They have an interest in having as many people as possible convicted of crimes, jailed and sentenced to probation, so they have been lobbying the state to create more new artificial criminals to drum up business.

Good God, America is a turning into a 3rd world shithole, Jesus Christ.

Poorhouses. Debtor’s prisons. Welcome to Shithole America, the world’s first 3rd World 1st World country.

Answering the Libertarians and Their Lies

Repost from the old site.

I decided to make a post about libertarians, radical free market fundamentalist religionists, and Far Right economics in general.

On Libertarianism, I think it is very important to answer some of the nonsense that is being parroted nowadays by the free market fundamentalists – libertarians – right wing extremists – amongst us. As the center of the US Right has gotten more and more extreme since the 1970′s, their arguments and policies have gotten more and more insane, irrational and ideological.

With the Right nowadays we are dealing with a nation of robotic ideologues – they no longer care anything for fact, theory, or science. Rightwing doctrine, more and more, resembles a kind of religion for its ideological adherents, and in that way it is similar to the leftwing orthodoxy that continued to enrapture some the Left in recent decades, even as it developed serious problems before their very eyes.

Into the 21st Century, the Right is bolder and wilder than ever. Formerly, the more honest ones at least used to acknowledge that socialism was better at providing for basic needs, health care, education and social support than capitalism. No more. Now total libertarian free market capitalism has become some sort of miracle nostrum that will cure all ills.

Poor health figures, health system doesn’t meet the needs of the people? No problem, just totally privatize the health system and all the problems go away. Problems with distribution of water, electricity, sewage, roads, parks, day care? Not a problem. Just get the state out of the way, deregulate, and let the corporations run it all.

The debacle of electricity deregulation in California is simply the typical result of privatization and deregulation of electricity the world over, for decades now, since the 1930′s.

We have case study after case study, with predictable results each time the “new experiment” is tried. The California experiment saw service plummet and investors get screwed, precisely the failures that led to the creation of public utilities in the 1930′s.

Utility companies maliciously rigged markets, cut off supplies to the starving state, formed monopolies and engaged in gleeful price-gouging of helpless consumers.

Deregulation of the financial industry and stock market is likely to cause financial panics, stock crashes and both economic recessions and depressions. It has in the past, it will in the future.

Deregulation of telecommunications in the US put the public system into the hands of a fewer and fewer people and sent cable prices through the roof.

It has facilitated a wild crime spree by major telecom firms, as these firms engaged in an orgy of out-and-out robbery of consumers, blatantly deceptive and unintelligible calling plans, deliberate over-billing, bumping consumers into other calling plans without telling them, and other outrages.

Privatization of water in Bolivia was a catastrophe – prices shot up, service was terrible, and many lost access to water.

Airline deregulation saw massive concentration in airlines, many cities lose air coverage and service go into the gutter. The price structure of airline flights became seriously disturbed to where a flight to a city 350 miles away might cost far more than a trip all the way across the country to a major hub.

Deregulation of trucking saw prices climb, service suffer, safety regs get tossed out the window, the accident rate go up, roads get destroyed by overloaded trucks and thousands of small firms get wiped out while a few super-firms took their place.

The last effect caused the peonization of the US independent trucker, a cultural icon. Self-regulation of any industry has meant no regulation, and consumers, workers and society are harmed every single time it’s done. Every time, every place, no exceptions. Got it?

The much-maligned OSHA regulations save 10,000′s of lives every year and we can prove it. Pollution regs do the same and clean up the planet besides, and we have the darn statistics to prove it.

Reducing environmental regulations dealing with water, air and toxics means lots of injuries and deaths, time after time, in place after place, in society after society. We are talking about effects so predictable here that if we were scientists, we could almost describe them as natural laws.

The latest insanity is the line that the way to solve health care problems is to totally privatize the health care system, because, as we all know, “socialism fails”.

This slander, this canard, against socialist health care, that it fails to meet the basic needs of human beings, needs to be answered forcefully, for the Libertarian Big Lie continues, ranting louder and louder, despite figures all over the world that conclusively show “socialized medicine” outperforming more private systems time after time and place after place.

In Nicaragua, after the Sandinistas took power in 1979, the health figures showed great improvement (along with education and literacy figures). When the Sandinistas were thrown out of power in an election cheered by liberals across America, the first thing the liberals’ hero, the ultrareactionary Chamorro, did, was wipe out government health care and free education.

At $30 a year, many parents could not afford to send their kids to school, so the kids dropped out. The health figures started going down right away. “Socialized medicine” fails again.

Cuba’s health figures have long been tops in Latin America and in 2002, for the first time, Cuban infant mortality figures actually beat US figures, where income is 20 times higher. The Latin state that often comes closest to Cuba is Costa Rica in health, education and housing figures, and as such, Costa Rica is bandied about by enemies of the Cuban Revolution.

But Costa Rica’s figures are due to the fact that Costa Rica has the most highly-developed social democracy in all Latin America, which it seems to have retained, despite frantic, bullying efforts, starting with Reagan’s orders to Arias in the 80′s, by the US to force Costa Rica to dismantle its social programs. “Socialized medicine” fails again.

In India, the state of Kerala, run by Communists off and on for the last 30 years, has developed a good state health system compared to the rest of India. When comparing Kerala to the rest of India as a whole, Kerala’s health figures are much superior. “Socialized medicine” fails again.

The social democracies in Europe have the best health figures on Earth, due to their evil, failed, inferior “socialized medicine”. “Socialized medicine” fails again.

Japan’s high health figures are accounted for by the fact that Japan has long had a virtual social democracy, with a lifetime employment system and generous benefits, including health care, taken for granted by Japanese corporations. “Socialized medicine” fails again.

And on and on and on and on.

The fact is, capitalism is bad for your health, period, exclamation point. It’s a rule of nature, like gravity or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

What would a libertarian health care system look like? Simple. Like the health care system we had in most of the past few centuries on much of the planet, where only the well-off could afford to go to the doctor or buy medicine and the poor were left to beg for succor or sicken and die, which they did, by the hundreds of millions.

Want some examples, close to home? I know a number of folks who are disabled and therefore simply cannot work at any real job in the real world (they could maybe get by on a severely pampered part-time job with friends or family, but that’s not real life). Their disability check every month is the only thing that enables them to survive at all.

Without that check, they would need to depend on the kindness of friends or family, or, lacking that, they would go homeless, live on the streets, lack for food, shelter, medical care, etc.

I have known many poor workers who lacked for health insurance and had such a low income that they felt they could not afford to go to the doctor. So, they ignored health problems until they got worse and worse, and now they have chronic health problems.

One of them was thrown off Medicaid when he and his wife (both workers) earned just over the limits. Consequently, he stopped going to the doctor for months and felt he could not afford to buy his prescriptions. He lacked his meds, including a blood pressure drug and a blood thinner needed for a blood clot, for 5 months.

Another railed against “socialized medicine” but felt she could not afford insurance so she never went to the doctor or dentist. Now she has severe chronic knee problems and serious teeth problems.

She may need to have all her teeth pulled since she never went to the dentist because she felt she could not afford it. The knee problem may also have been exacerbated by lack of medical care. The reality is that this is what will happen to many people if we do away “state health care”.

This is what happens all over the world. I have friends in the Third World who tell me stories about their countries. It’s clear that people are dying in these places all the time because they cannot afford doctors or medicines. Their stories are true; I hear them with my very own ears.

What would a radical free market system do for education? Prices would go through the ceiling and quality would go down in many cases. Every teacher I know who taught at both private and public schools told me the quality of the program was much worse at private schools, where the owners scrimped on everything and shafted the teachers while flying around on their private jets.

I suppose the radical free-marketeers would like to get rid of public roads too. Let me tell you a story about roads. Up here in the mountains, we have private and public roads. Every single private road is utterly terrible and many are outright dangerous.

They are full of potholes, if they are paved at all. Why? Because in order to fix the road, each homeowner on the road would have to pitch in to fix it. No one wants to pay, so the road never gets fixed. Never, ever.

If you want to know what the libertarian vision looks like, just go to the Third World, where the state doesn’t pay for anything and the public sphere is decrepit, abused, nonfunctional, dangerous, inadequate, nonexistent or for the rich only.

Look at America pre-1900, where schools, doctors, hospitals, roads, electricity, sewage, and old-age supports did not exist or were luxuries for the moneyed only. The elderly, sick, poor and jobless simply sickened or died, in huge numbers. Tens of millions of Americans never went to school.

That’s the libertarian dream, or nightmare. We know what it looks like because it’s been tried in the past for centuries, the world over, in culture after culture. We can see its devastation in the 3rd World as we speak.

There need be no illusions at all about what radical free market fundamentalism will really bring, and we need to shout down the free-market ideologues and religionists with every lie they shower us with. Loud. Often. In their face. And never stop until we turn their dishonest roar into a whisper in the background.

Stanislaus National Forest Ordered to Redo ORV Plan

Here.

A court has ruled that the Stanislaus National Forest’s approval for its ORV plan is illegal.

What happened is that ORV users will simply never stay on trails or roads. They always go off road (hence the name ORV) cutting new trails all over Hell and high water. Instead of shutting down the roads, the Forest Service typically authorizes them posthaste after they made as new ORV trails.

I can tell you right off the bat that ORV use in local national forests is simply a disaster. Even authorized trails are usually eroding very badly. ORV’s are just fine if they stay on dirt roads, but of course they never do that.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone with an ounce of environmental consciousness would want to ride a destructive ORV either on ORV trails or much less off ORV trails rampaging through unroaded lands.

My experience with the local forest service is that the FS is 100% beholden to the ORV Lobby. They even have a special worker set up as an ORV coordinator. This person’s job is to suck up to the ORV Lobby as much as possible. All FS plans do nothing but suck up to the ORV crowd and almost never do one single thing to address ORV abuse in our national forests.

It is true that the ORV crowd is a bunch of vicious and savage rednecks. They are scary and can appear violent. In rural communities near national forests, almost 100% of the population is made up of toothless backwoods rednecks who are completely in bed with the ORV crowd. I remember once I went to an FS meeting where they planned to close some roads on the national forest. Now one might argue why they needed to do that, but honestly it needs to be done.

This is the problem, and this deals with real roads, not even BS ORV trails and whatnot. The forest service has cut all manner of roads through a typical national forest, typically for logging purposes. Now if the FS maintained these roads, that would be one thing. But they don’t. And the roads simply must be maintained. If you don’t maintain a road, you need to close it off so it doesn’t erode anymore than it already is. Because an unmaintained road is going to be eroding. And the more people that drive on it, the more it is going to be eroding.

The FS lacks the funding for road maintenance for obscure reasons. Probably the main reason is that Washington has been starving FS budgets for a good 20-30 years now. Whether the FS starves its own budget by making low budget requests is not known.

Even a modest attempt to shut down even 6 miles of roads way back in the furthest backcountry was met by howls of rage from those attending.

The Real US Forest Service: Dishonest, Connving, Anti-Environmental Political Hacks

The Forest Service main goal is to suck up to the resource abusers like the ORV crowd, the grazers and the loggers. There are specific positions for grazing specialist, forester and ORV coordinator. Their job is to appease the grazers, the ORV crowd and the loggers by maximizing grazing, ORV use and logging on the national forest.

There are many “environmentalist” positions also set up on the local national forest. These include positions like wildlife biologist, fisheries specialist, archeologist, botanist, etc. 100% of these types are complete hacks whose job it is to go along with the environmental abuse by the abusers detailed above. The wildlife biologist will never find that any proposed project harms any wildlife. The fisheries person will never find that any project harms the streams or rivers. The botanist will never find that any project harms sensitive plants. In fact, I saw the local botanist routinely sign off on projects that destroyed 1000′s of sensitive plants.

The archeologist will always find that there are no significant archeological projects in the way of the project. Once you get them alone, these “environmental scientist” types will typically start blasting away at the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws. The local ranger station had Rush Limbaugh on all the time, and it was the wildlife biologists favorite station. What kind of wildlife biologist listens to Rush Limbaugh?

The only pro-environmental regulations and work done on the forests was done above the local forest level. Around here that means the Pacific Southwest Research station. These guys were true environmental scientists, possibly above the political pressures of the local forest,  and quite a few nice proposals came out of that office. They issued some great regulations for the California spotted owl, for instance.

I must say though that on the local forest level, I met some of the worst and most disgusting political hacks I have ever met in my life. Bureaucrats who would do anything to keep their jobs and would never stick their neck out. In addition, I have seldom seen so much overt lying and dishonesty as I saw with the local forest service crowd. Their lying simply had to be seen to be believed.

I also spoke to “environmental scientists” at other forests and frankly they were exactly the same as the ones at my local forest. Political hacks every single one of them. Basically disgusting people.

The Horror, the Horror: A Katrina Tale

Repost from the old site.

This post was written by Patricia Deamer, a Math professor at Skyline College in San Bruno, California, explaining why she was in Baton Rogue for five weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Check out this appalling tale about Patricia’s forlorn, heartbreaking and terrifying quest to find and identify the bodies of her father and aunt who were killed in Hurricane Katrina.

I am in Baton Rouge now. I have been here for five weeks. I have attached the reason why. I will be in Baton Rogue until I can finish the gruesome tasks ahead of me.

September 29, 2005

My news is not good. I am in Louisiana. There was a body found in the house where my father and aunt lived and we do not have confirmation on whether it is my father or my aunt. It took three and a half weeks to get this information and we have no official statements at this point. I did a DNA test today which will take some time for any type of confirmation.

After four weeks, my hopes have been reduced to a minuscule fraction of what it was a few weeks ago. I need closure. I need some type of confirmation. The “body is your father’s” is one unofficial statement we received but because of the time that the body has been in water, it has probably deteriorated terribly…a memorial service is what will more than likely occur…when I don’t know.

We did get a response from a lady that taught with my aunt and she said that my aunt was on the cell phone going to her attic…that was the last of any messages that were received from her. If someone saved her we do not know who or where she was taken.

All bodies are supposed to be in St. Gabriel. I will have to wait on a release if the body found is my father. I will be here for a month, maybe. I have my lap top with me, so let’s keep in touch. I am going crazy…officially.

October 1, 2005

I have completed the DNA test. It will take about three weeks to identify the body that was found in the house and we are 90% certain that it was my father. He was found laying in the bed. I hope he was in such a deep sleep that he never saw the water coming. I pray that he was simply at peace. Aunt Ella has not been located…she must have been air lifted from the house but we can’t find her anywhere.

New Orleans is dry now. OB took me into New Orleans on Friday and Saturday. Friday we went just to confirm that my Aunt Ella was not in the house somewhere where the search team had not looked. There were tracks all over the buckled wet floors and all around the heavy furniture that the water moved to the center of the rooms. That along convinced me that the team did do a thorough search and look.

The sad and frustrating part is that we can not find Aunt Ella in any shelter or hospital. She did make it up to the attic because there were some found wrappers and a jar of tea up there. I would not wish this waiting game on any enemy. My aunt’s house is destroyed. The family will have to totally gut the interior and start with fresh hope.

Pictures on the internet can not describe the smell of mold and decay. People are trying to get back to their homes and some have started clearing away the debris. There are numerous refrigerators and freezers lining the streets of the better neighborhoods…such as the St. Charles area.

St. Charles street looks like a tree pruning company has invaded the area and cut indiscriminately anywhere and everywhere they wanted to cut. There are limbs so high that you can not see some two story houses…this is in the better areas!

Furniture is piled high with antiques and other personal belongings that are no longer precious. This is not the New Orleans I grew up loving and wanting to leave as soon as I could. This is not a city of joy and family. But…all that love it says that they will be back!!!! Keep my family in your prayers and thoughts.

October 5, 2005

This is the worst day of my life. I had dreaded the fact that my father might not be with me because of the hurricane disaster. After doing a DNA test to identify the body that was found in the house where he and my Aunt Ella lived…the worst of any worst happened.

One of father’s sisters (Aunt Pearl), his brother (Uncle Joe), my cousin Chris (Uncle Joe’s grandson), and I went to New Orleans today to start clearing the debris from the house. We were there for more than two hours as we proceeded from room to room. My cousin Chris went into the guest bedroom for a second trip to remove small furniture and he found my father’s body stretched out in a prone position on his face.

Chris screamed a horrible sound that shocked both my Aunt Pearl and me.

Yes, after 25 days, the body that was found in the house…was never removed. This level of incompetence is unacceptable. To leave my father in all of the sooth, muck, and settlement is a “sin against God“. His siblings are so angry that I can’t describe it clearly.

I am at this time experiencing the most gruesome level of hate that I have ever encountered or imagined. The pain of being in the house and finding my father is indescribable. I need help . I need to get it together. I need not to hate. Today was the first official day for residents to enter New Orleans. The news said that all bodies had been recovered. Not!

Every bit of info about my father was researched and investigated by me and my family. Even the information about the gender of the found body was discovered by my cousin in Illinois. The DNA was for a body that they did not have in custody. All of the official work that was supposed to be completed has been a lie!

And on top of all of this…we still have not found my Aunt Ella…and it will still take three weeks to identify a body that we found…even with the matching description that we gave the removal team. I am so angry that I could bite through a nail. Whatever you hear on the news, forget it.

October 6, 2005

My Aunt Pearl and I did an interview with WBRZ and it aired today. The mistakes here in Louisiana are gargantuan. The newscast started with our story and showed a picture of Aunt Ella…she is still missing. I am tried of crying.

Thought I would bring you up to date.

October 16, 2005

Thank you to all of my friends and family members that wrote to say that they were praying for me and all of the other family members. Well, the wait is over. I thought that last week was the worst day of my life when we found my father’s body still in the house where he and my Aunt Ella lived. It wasn’t.

Today my Aunt Pearl, Uncle Joe, my cousin Chris, my cousin Wayne, OB and myself went back to the house to try to remove more debris. My cousin Wayne used to live with my father and aunt. They were like his second set of parents all through his high school and graduation days.

Wayne had been evacuated to Milwaukee but decided to return to New Orleans to live in his apartment in the French Quarter which was spared any flooding. Wayne, knowing the house better than any of us, search every nook and cranny. He kept smelling a bad odor from the attic. I refused to enter the house. I had them hand me articles through the window.

We tried to convince him that the Kenyon people, the body removal team, had searched the house ” thoroughly” and there was nothing to be found. They were wrong! From the attic we heard this horrific scream. He screamed, started running and bruised his legs trying to run down the fold down attic ladder. Wayne found Aunt Ella’s body in the attic far back in a corner.

She lay there as if she were asleep and at peace. It’s a shame that even after we asked the Kenyon group, whose official job it was to retrieve bodies, to double check the house when we found my father’s body…we had to find our loved ones ourselves. The wait is over for finding Aunt Ella…we found her.

Now to deal with the bureaucratic processes…we still have to wait until the bodies are released after official identification. Three individuals identified the body before it was removed. We had to show them where to look in the very front of the attic. But we still have to wait for the release from the state coroner. It will be at least four weeks before I return to my own home.

If we are lucky, the bodies will be released for a memorial service in three weeks. However, the news today had the state coroner saying that in some cases it may take up to six months to identify remains. This has been a tough time for all of us. It’s not just the lost of family but the sheer inhumane way the people of New Orleans have been treated. Remember the hurricane was in Mississippi when the levees broke.

We were told that the force of the water was strong and fast. Writing has been cathartic again…I am writing what I feel, disregarding the English language and trying not to curse. Wish me luck and keep including me and all of my family in your prayers.

October 28, 2005

We are still waiting for the state coroner to release the bodies. They are checking Aunt Ella’s dental records even though three people identified the body before it was removed from the house.

“Oil Patch Blues,” by Alpha Unit

The Williston Basin lies beneath parts of Montana, North Dakota, and Saskatchewan. A rock unit called the Bakken formation occupies about 200,000 square miles of it. Originally described in 1953, it’s named after Henry Bakken, a farmer in Williston, North Dakota. He owned the land where the first drilling rig revealed the rock layers in 1951. As you may have heard, there are significant oil reserves in the Bakken.

The US Geological Survey has estimated that there are about 3.65 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken. More recent estimates suggest there could be up to 18 billion barrels.

The oil is wrapped in layers of shale, which initially frustrated extraction attempts. But petroleum engineers devised a fracturing method that overcame this problem. What they do is drill down and then horizontally into the rock, then pump water, sand, and chemicals into the hole to crack the shale and allow the oil to flow up. It was first used in 2007, quite successfully.

The result has been a population boom as people from neighboring areas, other parts of the country, and even overseas have rushed into North Dakota and Montana in pursuit of oil field jobs. John McChesney paints a picture of how life has changed for some residents of North Dakota.

Imagine you live in a small rural town worried for years about depopulation, and suddenly, overnight, the population doubles, and the newcomers are thousands of young men without families. Imagine that you live in a tiny town with one main street that doubles as a state highway.

That’s the situation in New Town, N.D., population 1,500 – at least, it was a couple of years ago. Today it’s anybody’s guess how many people live here, and no one knows how many 18-wheelers roll through every day, either. They just know it never stops.

McChesney says that for the people of New Town, it seems that every big tank truck in America is on the road here, making tens of thousands of trips a day hauling water, fracking fluid, wastewater and crude oil – and tearing up the roads.

It’s been described by one county official as the complete industrialization of western North Dakota. And it’s placing an incredible strain on the community there. Dan Kalil, chairman of the Williams County Commission, told McChesney:

They’re consuming all our resources. They’re consuming all our people looking for jobs. All the employee base is used up. Our roads system is being used up. All our water is being used up. All our sewage systems are being used up. They’re overwhelmed. All of our leadership time as local public officials is consumed with this.

And for the newcomers, life in the Bakken isn’t exactly what they had in mind, either. They often arrive with no money and nowhere to live. There’s not enough housing for them. Homeless shelters and churches are taking in some of the job-seekers but the need is overwhelming.

Some of the men are sleeping in their cars. Some have sleeping bags they roll out in the woods or in abandoned buildings. There are camps where people park RV’s they’re living in. But the water pipes and waste tanks on standard RV’s can’t handle the freezing temperatures. Super-insulated campers and trailers are just as hard to find as actual housing.

And let’s not forget: this is North Dakota, after all. One taste of winter in the Bakken sends some job-seekers back to where they came from.

In the meantime, housing prices are higher than they’ve ever been. Some of the local residents can’t afford to pay rent anymore. And crime used to be nearly nonexistent. Now crime rates have spiked across western North Dakota and eastern Montana, with an increase in vagrancy, “drunken and disorderly” charges, burglary, assault, property crimes, and prostitution.

“Men need servicing just as much as their machines,” one oil patch worker told Adam Luebke.

There have even been a couple of violent crimes that have made headlines in the area. A hitchhiker was wounded in a drive-by shooting while on US Highway 2, a major route in and out of the oil patch. A teacher from the oil patch town of Sidney, Montana, was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by two Colorado men on their way to the Bakken.

The oil industry is aware of what locals are going through and is making some PR efforts to keep people on their side, but their efforts aren’t as successful as they’d like. As John McChesney explained:

Back in New Town at a gathering of a few local residents, we met rancher Donnie Nelson, who had just paid $7 for a gallon of milk, one example of a price inflation here. He says patience here is wearing thin.

“Just about anybody I talk to that’s a neighbor – and some of them are getting wealthy – are sick of it. It’s never going to be the same in this country, and they’re starting to realize that we had it kind of good, even though we weren’t No. 1 in oil and we weren’t the No. 1 state economically,” Nelson says. “We had a good life up here.”

911 Operator Hangs Up on Caller

Who is right, and who is wrong in this case? Is she right and he wrong? Is she wrong and he right? Are they both wrong? If so, is one more wrong than the other?

Watch the video and discuss. There will be a short quiz at the end.

How Did Republican Mayor of New York City Stop Welfare?

Conquistador writes:

New York was like any other major city destroyed by diversity. Blacks and to a lesser extent Hispanics were becoming the dominant force in the city enabled by all the liberal bigwigs in the Democratic machine who embraced the Kumbayaa leftist rainbow dogma. NYC even elected a black mayor (not a widely known fact).

However crime was astronomical, bums littered the streets, prostitutes and sex shops dominated downtown. Watch films depicting NY from the 1970′s to early 1990′s. It was a hell hole.

Things were so bad that finally a tough on crime, no nonsense, anti-welfare, mayor was elected. The guy was accused of being a tyrant by minority groups but he made the streets safe, he was accused of hating the poor but he enabled the first waves of gentrification, he was accused of being a prude but he made NYC tourist friendly again. Rudy saved NYC from descending into Detroit or Oakland status. NYC has been firmly Republican ever since.

I have some questions for Conquistador.

Please explain how Republican New York mayors were anti-welfare as you put it. What kind of welfare does the city of New York dish out anyway?

Please lay out the types of welfare that the city of New York dishes out. Show me how the Democratic mayors dished out said welfare. Then show me how the Republican mayors cut back on said welfare.

Show me how the Democratic mayors embraced Kumbayaa Leftist diversity, and more importantly, how embracing this diversity caused the ruin of the city? Show me how embracing this diversity presumably allowed more NAM’s to move into the city.

Do you mean that they had a liberal pro-Black mayor and this meant a lot of NAM’s thought, “Hey, cool, let’s move to New York.”? And then when they elected a mean Republican mayor, the NAM’s said, “We’re out of here. We are leaving this town. There’s a mean White man in charge.”?

You telling me that NAM’s actually do this? If New York has a nice Black mayor who is NAM-friendly, then NAM’s will move to the city, but if there’s a mean White Republican mayor, the NAM’s will all leave the city in droves because it’s run by a mean White man. Human beings, even NAM human beings, actually do this? I don’t believe it.

Now, granted the crime crackdowns definitely led to some very serious crime reductions, and you will find no argument from me there. Are you saying that the Black liberal mayors were soft on crime?

And yes, the Republican mayors cleaned up the smut-filled Times Square area. I have nothing against smut of course, in fact, I used to hang out in adult bookstores all the time myself to watch the porn movies in the arcades. But the smut scene was creating a lot of crime and general social degradation, so cleaning it up was a good idea.

“The Golden Gate Bridge: Beautiful Under All Light Conditions,” by Alpha Unit

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, the technical and artistic marvel that is one of this country’s most famous landmarks. It’s been declared one of the modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers – and seen by some as possibly the most beautiful bridge in the world.

Before the bridge was built, the only practical way to get from San Francisco to Marin County was by ferry. This began in the 1800s. Southern Pacific Railroad came to operate the ferries – a profitable and vital operation for the regional economy.

People had long considered building a bridge to connect San Francisco and Marin County. The first proposal to really take hold was made in 1916. An engineer named Joseph Strauss made a pitch to local authorities, designs and all. A suspension-bridge design was considered most practical.

Strauss actually spent over 10 years trying to gain support for a bridge. The Department of War was afraid it would interfere with ship traffic. Southern Pacific Railroad didn’t want any competition for its ferry fleet and filed a lawsuit. But among allies was the automobile industry, which supported the development of roads and bridges for clear reasons.

The state legislature passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act in 1923. Construction began in January of 1933, with Strauss as chief engineer. The contractor was the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel. The call went out for workers.

Since the Great Depression was well underway by then, there was no shortage of men seeking work on the bridge. All hiring had to be done through the Ironworkers Union Local 377 in San Francisco. There weren’t enough ironworkers in the city, so men were recruited from all over.

But before any construction could actually begin on the bridge, they needed divers to begin the crucial underwater construction process. This would be especially difficult. As one author described it:

The narrow strait between Marin County and San Francisco is one of the world’s most tumultuous bodies of water. Up to 335 feet deep and only a mile and a quarter wide, the Golden Gate is the largest California coastal opening – a portal into which the Pacific Ocean surges.

Powerful currents also flow in the opposite direction as water from many of Northern California’s freshwater rivers and streams rushes into San Francisco Bay. The freshwater flow collides with the incoming Pacific, creating complex and violent currents.

Workers would have to erect a pier more than 1,000 feet out in the middle of the Gate – the first bridge support ever constructed in the open ocean. Divers had to begin by blasting away rock for the south tower’s supports.

This involved placing blasting tubes into position and securing them while trying not to be swept away in the current. They had to go as deep as 90 feet below the surface to remove detonation debris using underwater hoses that exerted 500 pounds of hydraulic pressure.

The Gate’s changing currents afforded workers only a narrow window of dive time. The men were restricted to submerging for four 20-minute periods per day.

With the construction team’s tight schedule, divers were often forced to surface before having sufficient time to decompress, increasing the likelihood that they would develop caisson disease, a nitrogen deficiency also known as “the bends.”

The divers guided beams, panels, and 40-ton steel forms into position, often having to feel their way due to murky water and fast-changing currents, and while wearing bulky diving suits. Yet the danger didn’t deter men from this underwater work. It was a steady, well-paying job – not easy to come by during the Depression.

When construction started on the bridge itself, the first workers excavated three and a quarter million cubic feet of dirt and poured enormous amounts of concrete for the bridge’s two anchorages. The 12-story high anchorages were designed to secure 63 million pounds – twice the pull of the bridge’s main cables, we are told.

In November of 1933 the first tower began to go up. Prefabricated sections were fit into place and riveted together by 4-man rivet gangs. After both towers were complete in June of 1935, workers built catwalks and started spinning the cables for the bridge.

The engineering company John Roebling and Sons oversaw cable construction. This firm had built many of the world’s longest bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge 52 years earlier. It had developed a technique of spinning cables on site.

To spin the cables, 80,000 miles of steel wire…were bound in 1,600-pound spools and attached to the bridge’s anchorage. A fixture within the anchorage called a strand shoe was used to secure a “dead wire” while a spinning wheel, or sheave, pulled a “live wire” across the bridge.

Once it reached the opposite shore of the Gate, the live wire was secured onto the strand shoe, and the wheel returned with another loop of wire to begin the process again.

Hundreds of wires, each roughly the diameter of a pencil, were bound together into strands. Hydraulic jacks then bundled and compressed 61 strands to make a cable. Each of the main cables is just over 3 feet in diameter. The work was laborious and had to be done to ensure the correct tension and balance in the cables.

As for the deck, or roadway, of the bridge, traveling cranes working from each tower laid down the steel decking that would undergird the roadway. The first concrete was poured for the roadway in January of 1937.

Opening day for the Golden Gate Bridge was May 27, 1937. An estimated 200,000 people came for the celebration. As one of them later recalled:

The weather at the Golden Gate was typical for San Francisco in May: foggy, windy, and cold, but that didn’t bother anyone. They would always remember they had walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on opening day.

You were encouraged to wear a costume or the Official Hat with its tassels. But it was the Depression. If you couldn’t afford the hat, a bandana would do just fine.

The workers who constructed the bridge were executing the design of what The San Francisco Chronicle calls an engineering dream team. Although Joseph Strauss was chief engineer, he had little understanding or experience with cable-suspension designs, so other experts were given responsibility for much of the engineering and architecture.

Charles Alton Ellis was the structural engineer and mathematician responsible for the structural design of the bridge. He did all the mathematical calculations that made the bridge possible.

Leon Moisseiff was a leading suspension bridge engineer in the 1920s and 1930s. He was known for his work on deflection theory, which held that the longer bridges were, the more flexible they could be. Ellis applied Moisseiff’s theories in the design of the bridge.

Othmar Ammann was a structural engineer who had designed the George Washington Bridge in New York. He served on the board of engineers for the Golden Gate Bridge.

Charles Derleth was the dean of the college of engineering at UC Berkeley. He served on the advisory board with Moisseiff and Ammann.

Andrew Lawson was a professor of geology at UC Berkeley. He was the first person to identify and name the San Andreas Fault. He was a consulting geologist and seismic expert for the construction of the bridge.

Irving Morrow was the consulting architect for the bridge. Morrow graduated from the newly founded UC Berkeley architectural program in 1906. Joseph Strauss hired him to design the architectural treatment of the bridge. He was influenced by Art Deco design, but his most famous contribution to the Golden Gate Bridge is its distinctive burnt red-orange hue called International Orange.

“The tone is beautiful under all light conditions,” one observer admitted.

“Where Is the California University System Headed?” by Sonia Rasmussen

A new post by guest author Sonia Rasmussen. I’m pleased to have her on board here and I hope she will write more articles for us.

The state of California has recently experienced a number of financial woes, and the poor economy has been detrimental to the state’s university system. Crowded classrooms, tuition hikes and reduced curricula plagued these schools as the recession peaked last year. Unfortunately, more state funding cuts are expected in the coming years—and experts warn the California university system may worsen before it improves.

In August 2011, Los Angeles Times reported that community college students in California would start pay higher fees for tuition, despite a dramatically thinned class list. The state reduced annual funding for two-year universities by roughly $400 million—and as a result, student fees were raised by $10 per unit.

At the time, Chancellor Jack Scott noted that 5 percent fewer classes would be offered at community colleges in California, which would leave more than 600,000 students out of the classrooms. Thousands of students are expected to turn to online universities and even accredited online doctorate programs, but hundreds of thousands are expected to remain without a university over the coming years.

Many four-year colleges in California faced similar deficits last summer, as all 23 Cal State University campuses recorded uncomfortably high enrollments, limited faculty members and increased expenses for books and classroom materials.

CSU Chancellor Charles Reed claimed he would try to avoid a mid-year tuition hike, though state funding for the university network was reduced by roughly $650 million and, as a result, student tuition rose by 22 percent from the previous year. This equated an increased annual expenditure of nearly $1,000 for all full-time undergraduates. Due to reduced classes, Cal State campuses turned down approximately 10,000 prospective applicants in 2011.

In March 2012, MSNBC reported that CSU would freeze enrollment beginning in Spring 2013 in response to further budget cuts—a shortfall of roughly $750 million. An additional reduction of $200 million could result if a tax initiative proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown fails on the November ballot. If the cuts reach their highest potential, spring enrollment could be cut from 70,000 to 25,000 accepted applicants.

Despite the cuts, KTLA Los Angeles reported last week that two CSU presidents (Fullerton and East Bay) will receive a 10 percent salary boost—the maximum increase allowed for a single fiscal year. The news sparked outrage among many students, despite claims from CSU’s Board of Trustees that the salary hikes were necessary to retain consistent leadership.

The trustees also pointed out that even after the increase, the two presidents still earned 20 percent less than their nationwide counterparts.

Though the University of California system has fared slightly better, it was also the subject of a controversial salary increase in March 2012 when President Mark Yudof defended an overall employee pension increase of more than $60 million. As California colleges continue a downward slide, their leaders are preparing for the first by padding their own bank accounts.

The future of state funding for California universities will rest on Governor Brown’s proposed tax initiative. If it passes, the state sales tax would increase by a quarter cent for four years. In addition, personal income taxes would be increased for individuals who make $250,000 or more annually.

Financial experts estimate the initial gain would surpass $9 billion, with gains of roughly $7 billion every successive year. Though the initiative would certainly help the plight of California schools, it has not yet been officially approved for the November ballot.

As the California government scrambles to save its faltering school system, students are paying higher prices for insufficiently funded campuses. The inherent unfairness of this dichotomy is underscored by the state’s uncertain future.

Even if the tax initiative is accepted and ultimately passes, the new monies will merely provide a temporary solution. In order to salvage its university program—one of the country’s largest—California must develop a sustainable, long-term plan for funding its schools and keeping students in their classrooms.