Women Do Not Have Equal Rights

Women do not have the same legal rights as men in the United States of America!

We – the home of the brave, democracy’s virtual heart and soul, self-proclaimed moral leaders of the free world – have refused to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution. We have failed to provide a woman’s rights and legal equality.

Incredibly, most Americans mistakenly believe that men and women are equal under the law, that women already have equal rights under the Constitution. We tried before to ratify the E.R.A., but it never became a Constitutional reality. As recently as 2010, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated that the Constitution does not prohibit against sex discrimination.*

While that may be news to you, it is not news to Congress. The amendment has been proposed by progressives and defeated by conservatives for decades.

Do they think the E.R.A. is un-Constitutional? Do they think that giving women the right to vote in 1920 was all that’s necessary, or the Constitution implies their equal rights? Perhaps they think women are asking too much when they demand the same rights as men? Do they think that not ratifying the E.R.A. is somehow justifiable? Do they think?

Maybe they doubt that giving American women equal rights will make a difference to women around the world.

We have some interesting company in our non-signatory status regarding women’s human rights.  Internationally, Women’s Rights is the main objective of CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) adopted by the UN General Assembly, and described as an “international bill of rights for women.”  The only developed countries in the United Nations that have not ratified CEDAW are Iran, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Tonga – and the United States of America!

It is outrageous. Women – not just in third world countries like the other non-signatories of CEDAW, but here at home – suffer and die at the hands of violent men, from poverty and hunger, from economic injustice, from lack of healthcare, sub-standard education, and discrimination. Watch the news. Women are affected every day: unequal pay for work; the sex scandal going on in the military – where rape is considered an occupational hazard for women!

It’s time we make equal rights for women a part of our Constitution – and ratify the E.R.A.

* http://eraeducationproject.com

How To Fall 3,000 Feet Without A Parchute

First, find a high-wing, single engine aircraft. You’ll have a parachute strapped to your back, and an emergency chute, in case the main chute malfunctions. Now do exactly as I do – I have experience with this.

When the plane reaches 3,000 feet, inch forward to where the door used to be, get ready to reach out and grab hold of the strut (don’t worry, it’s easy), pull yourself out of the plane and onto the step, and jump.

But wait. You have to get rid of the parachute, remember? One way – the way I do it – I catch the emergency chute’s rip cord on something inside the plane; the back of the pilot’s seat, another jumper’s gear, anything that manages to pull that rip cord, and allows the emergency chute to automatically jump through the open door and deploy outside the aircraft.

You have to picture this in your mind: the emergency parachute is now completely open behind the plane; you are still inside, ready to jump. Because of speed, aerodynamic forces, your weight, and some other things – all this happens in an instant – you are pulled through the side of the plane, and your body falls under the horizontal stabilizer (the tail of the plane). But the emergency chute has flown back over the tail section.

You see – you and the emergency chute are still attached by the shroud lines (don’t let that name worry you), and you are caught up on the tail; flailing there, so to speak, until one of two things happens. You and the chute stop the airplane from flying and you crash, or the metal tail section, bent and broken, cuts the shroud lines and you and the chute go your separate ways. There’s a certain amount of luck involved.

If you’re lucky, you find yourself free falling! Nothing between you and mother earth except 3,000 feet of glorious open space. Here’s the tricky part. Gravity and all, you do not want to land on the highway. Preferably, you land on something soft and squishy: a hay bale, for instance, or my preference, a freshly plowed farmer’s field in Novi, Michigan.

I warned you, there’s a little luck involved. You may break several bones, crashing through the side of the plane, and you may break a few on landing. (You’ll be falling at about 90-100 mph.) It’s a dangerous stunt anyway you look at it.

You may wonder what happens to your main parachute during the free fall. Good question. For some reason, the main just never opens. You may be unconscious as you fall, or you may wake up and forget to pull the ripcord. In my experience, the main chute actually comes out of the pack and flutters uselessly overhead, along with the severed suspension lines (shroud lines, we used to call them) until they crumple beside me in the plowed field.

That’s all there is to it. Okay, you may take a few weeks to heal, but think of the stories you’ll tell. Seriously, if you are as lucky as I am, you’ll lose the use of your right arm for about a year, and have to ask girls to help you with just about everything.

And, you get to survive!

Note: Do not try this without adequate supervision. For more info, read the book.

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.

We’re Not The Only Ones Who Grieve

I only now understand and firmly believe what actually happened. When I was 14 years old, working for the summer as a veterinary assistant at a pet hospital in Richmond, Virginia, I worked in the distemper ward and went on house calls (farm calls, usually) with the then President of the American Veterinary Association, who ran the hospital and volunteered to help educate this would-be veterinary student.

Among the challenges we faced were pregnant cows, injured horses, and a variety of domestic stock that grazed in nearby pastures. (I will spare you the full description of my putting on a plastic glove, stretched from fingertips to armpit, in order to assist a reluctant calf trapped in its mother’s birth canal. It was a memorable event, I can tell you that.) My responsibilities also included feeding our canine guests and cleaning the kennels out back of the clinic.

On opening the door to that area, you were instantly greeted by the loudest yelping, barking, jumping, ear-splitting canine cacophony ever heard by a veterinary assistant anywhere. They were an excitable, noisy bunch. Except …

On the sad occasion of a dog’s death at the hospital, no matter the size of the animal, the breed, or the reason the dog had died or was euthanized (I personally despise that word), I was tasked with carrying the dead animal through the kennels to the alley in back of the hospital, where it remained until it was taken away.

From the second I opened the door to the kennels, and while I carried the body in my arms, or on a cart, past the rows of chain-linked runs, all of the dogs stood watching, noses pressed against their kennel gates … and never made a sound.

 

In Memory of Von Saar’s Essence of Marseille 1965-1976 – We continue to grieve.

 

Ronnie Could Do No Wrong, Right?

Tags

collective bargaining, Iran-Contra, Margaret Thatcher, Mental Healthcare, Ronald Reagan, Trickle Down Economics, unions

His fans seem to forget.

Reagan practically shut down the entire mental healthcare system by closing mental health hospitals in California, and later, by cutting aid to federally-funded mental health programs. He thought it would save money to empty the hospitals and let mentally ill patients fend for themselves or rely on charity. You see them today pushing grocery carts, living in cardboard boxes, napping on street benches or under a bridge – before the cops arrive.

By now, you’ve forgotten all about the Iran-Contra scandal. Although it pales by comparison to Bush’s fiasco in Iraq, the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran – to secure the release of American hostages – and a portion of the sale went to anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua. Very secretive, very complicated, totally prohibited by Congress! Reagan claimed he never knew, and blamed it on Oliver North and the National Security Council.

I am surprised that “Trickle-Down” Reagan fans hate unions and collective bargaining. What’s up with that?

You can’t say Ronald Reagan hated unions – at least not as much as his friend Margaret Thatcher hated them.* On Labor Day 1980, Ronnie said, “Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.” He couldn’t get elected today if he said that.

Ronald Reagan was President of my union, back when – SAG-AFTRA. It’s bragging to say we first met in the Oval Office. We were standing practically shoulder-to-shoulder for a couple of hours. He never knew who I was. Soon after he became President of the United States, Ronnie and his party forgot about unions and the working class. I never got to ask him why. Maybe he didn’t know that either.

* “Between them, Thatcher and Reagan enacted and enforced the economic and ideological dogmas that left Western democracies, and their workers and voters, in a straitjacket of fewer rights, lesser protection, declining incomes and rising inequality.” (AFSA, AFL-CIO)

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.

The Radicalization of America

The roots of America’s radicalization began well before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers.

Christians could have cared less how many Salem witches were hanged. White Deists in Washington were sympathetic to the idea of religious freedom, but slavery was common practice among the founding fathers. Racism was rampant, especially in the South. They were radical times.

Even after the bloody Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans had little representation in Washington, and little respect anywhere else. In 1870, they got the right to vote in presidential elections, but it was – and still is – a government of mostly white men.

Racial prejudice in America is mainly a Caucasian disease that affects the lives of African Americans and other minorities. It is a dangerous, deadly epidemic – to think otherwise only spreads the disease.

It has become poor taste, lately, to denigrate the poor, regardless of their race or ethnicity. We like to think we are politically and socially more evolved than our parents. Prejudice has become a dirty word, regardless of its continuing effect on our politics, where we live, and whom we invite to dinner.

But, there are growing, radical differences between rich and poor in America; between those on their way to college, and those on their way to jail; between those on their way to a better life, and those on their way into poverty; between the way it should be, and the way it is.

Our most recent radicalization stems from one political party calling the other “the enemy.” Gingrich designed the strategy; McCain repeated the charge. The phrase implies that you and I, if we take opposing political positions, are at war.

The “enemy” is always trying to destroy America. Forget about peace talks, or finding solutions to our problems – we aim to crush the “enemy!” The walls go up, the troops split into separate camps, positions become hardened, each side shoots down ideas lobbed by the opposition, and things get ugly. People get hurt. The American people get hurt!

So now, everything is radicalized. If you are a secularist, you’re at war with religious fanatics – forget separation of church and state. (Was that really in the Constitution?)

And, by God, you can’t fight a war without guns! Who is going to head up that “militia” the Second Amendment talks about? Whoever he is, he’ll be shooting an AK47.

A black man is President! OMG. More than 20 states petitioned to secede from the Union when Obama was elected; conservative states mostly, including, reliably, Texas. Now that’s radical thinking. (Didn’t they try that once before?)

“Immigration, my eye,” says a friend of mine. “It’s the end of white, Anglo-Saxon America. It was bad enough when the Italians overran Staten Island. We couldn’t keep the Irish out – they were Europeans at least. Then came all the Asians – a white kid can hardly get into Stanford anymore. But now: Mexicans, as far as the eye can see!”

Some Xenophobic Americans want to close the gates; build a bigger fence. It’s a little too radical for me.

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.

Everyone Should Have a Liberal Arts Degree *

Tags

education, gun control, Liberal Arts, Liberal Arts Degree, politics, religion, The Bible

A liberal arts education – literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, science, and psychology – should be available to everyone, and it should be free!

Literature

Some people never learn to write. A blog reader with limited liberal arts education recently scribbled, “The President and the Vice President are idiots!”

How inventive, how persuasive! You have to be impressed by the originality, the depth, passion, conviction, anger, and frustration of that person’s thoughtful and reasoned evaluation. At least you will recognize that his mean-spirited, dull, pedestrian, common, uninspired, uninformed and patently absurd, not to mention unfunny, unremarkable, and horribly insulting, eight-word critique … could do with a modifier or two.

Languages

To most Americans, as long as you can tell the maid what to do, and order a taco now and then, who needs another language? And, if it isn’t written in English, it isn’t worth reading.

To most Americans, there’s only one book worth reading, anyway. They don’t care what language it was written in originally. The Book has been translated, re-translated, mistranslated, edited, added to, subtracted from, and co-authored by Jews, Catholics, King James, and men with no college degrees whatsoever. Who cares?

Burn the rest of the books. Throw Plato and Aristotle in the fire first.

Philosophy

Congress can’t tell the difference between cutting jobs and increasing the national debt.

Republicans in Congress recently made two seemingly contradictory claims – that “cutting the military budget will cost jobs,” but “building roads and repairing infrastructure will only increase the debt.” Somebody has to explain that.

Democrats argue that the budget is not in crisis mode (not yet), and that closing tax loopholes for the rich (now) and reduced spending on government programs like Medicaid and Medicare (in the future), will correct our long-term budget problem. You need a college degree.

They say job numbers are on the rise, but too many people are still out of work. Some say economic austerity will solve the problem; others say economic stimulus will do the job. You need a Ph.D.

History

Apparently, history is a thing of the past – not worth remembering.

Remember the mid-term election? Remember gerrymandering? Remember the minority in Congress that foiled the will of the majority in the nation, resulting in a do-nothing, “Say No” government made up of ultra-conservative extremists who never learned to compromise?

Mathematics

Too many people can’t count.

Ninety percent of Americans want to keep our economic safety net: Social Security. Republicans can’t count.

Ninety percent of Americans want background checks and gun control laws that work. The NRA can’t count.

Almost ninety percent of Americans approve of Gay couples getting married. Red states can’t count.

People of color will soon outnumber whites in the US. WASPs can’t count.

A majority of Americans now support the legalization of marijuana. At last somebody learned to count.

Science

What were the founding fathers thinking? What were their thoughts about atomic bombs, and destroying our environment with carbon emissions? Did they know from automatic weapons?

Our planet is many millions of years old. Millions! There is proof – not simply superstition. Yet, there are members of Congress who say they believe the earth is 4,000 or so years old. They represent an uneducated constituency that believes the same, and, currently, they have evolved the “filibuster” to defeat any sane member of Congress who relies on facts, reason, and science.

A member of the Senate yesterday explained that the reason he would not vote for background checks or any other anti-gun legislation was because some people in his district would have to travel 25 or 30 miles to get their backgrounds checked – an unfair burden, said the Senator. (So, let’s everybody carry guns and let the best shots win!)  His constituents were home schooled, obviously.

Psychology

How do we stop fighting wars?

Here’s a subject that needs teaching. There have been more than 14,500 wars in recorded history. Armageddon was the first, which took place in Egypt, led by Tut Moses III. Christians are waiting for the last one – next year in Jerusalem, maybe.

All wars are driven by money and power. You’d think by now we would have learned to stop the carnage.

More schools, fewer bombs!

* Source: Mortimer Adler’s “Paideia Proposal” – liberal arts should form the foundation of everyone’s education, and should precede specialized career training and education.

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.

White Male Sexual Symbols

Tags

cars, guns, male sex symbols

Guns – Until recently, when kids were born, girls got dolls; boys got pistols. One of the first things a young boy wanted was a bee-bee gun, so he could play war or cowboys and Indians with other prepubescent boys. When he got to be a teenager, dad gave him a 22 rifle. As a young man, he got a 20-gauge shotgun, and later, a double barrel 12-gauge – so instead of playing a game, he could go out and shoot it. When he became a man, he bought a Glock to protect his family; then an AK47 to show off to his friends. At the office, he wanted to be known as a “Big Gun.”

Cars – Similarly, when he was old enough to drive, a young man wanted a spiffy little roadster to attract the girls. Later, of course, he needed a convertible. By the time he went to college (if he had rich parents) he could impress co-eds with his MG. After graduation, he bought a Pontiac GTO or one of the lesser speed demons. As a success-seeking young adult, a guy would go into hock for a sexy Jaguar XKE. (Now there’s a symbol for you.) If he became terribly rich, he drove a Bentley or a Rolls Royce. The richer he got, the more cars he bought. Men looked for speed and well built chassis. Fast cars and beautiful women – or vice versa!

It is patently obvious about men with huge Humvees and Range Rovers. They have too much money and feelings of inadequacy. Some guys take jobs driving eighteen-wheelers! We don’t even want to go there.

Girls – Detroit made a fortune by recognizing the sex and cars connection, and the NRA is well aware of the big gun thing. But, men are not their only targets. They realize that women too are impressed by the size of a man’s car, as well as his guns.

* Source: “A Man & His Drives” by Harold D. Chevrolet

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.

Your 401(K) Is Only A Drop In The Bucket

Tags

401(k), cost of retirement, middle class, poor, Retirement, rich

Few employees save more than 3 percent of their salary in a 401(k). Fewer employers even provide a 401(k). Nowadays, how does anyone save enough money to retire when incomes are dropping and older workers can’t find jobs?

I got a surprise gift on my birthday last year: a notice that I had been laid off. (Ironically, the layoff notice arrived the same day I received a “Notice of Appreciation” for my past 10 years of service; “Please accept any gift on the enclosed brochure to show our gratitude.” It was an eventful day.

Several hundred of my fellow employees received similar gifts last year, not because they had outgrown their usefulness, but because of a necessary “reduction in force.” It was necessary, of course, for the good of the stockholders and company executives, who were forced to endure only small increases in their wages for the year.

Luckily, I am still working, making several million dollars a year writing this blog. (Oh, a little exaggeration isn’t going to hurt anybody.)

“How are you doing?” my friends ask. “Well, every day’s a Saturday,” I always say. Still, I’m doing better than many people who can’t find a job regardless of their age and talents. My son and his wife just graduated college. He has a degree in business; she has an advanced degree in biology. Both have college loan debt they’ll be repaying for decades. Both are working, but neither has a job in his or her field of study.

Who is ever ready for retirement? Even 50 years ago, only a minority of folks retired with enough money for food, housing, utilities, transportation, and presents for their children’s children at Christmas. Today, a job in which any worker (skilled, healthy or otherwise) can work continuously for 30 years and then retire is practically non-existent.

Ours is a capitalist economy that rewards successful entrepreneurs and values cheap labor. So, you must own your own business, become a doctor or a lawyer … or work for whatever salary the man will pay you. With few exceptions, only professionals, business owners, political lobbyists, and heads of corporations can one day afford to retire.

Don’t count on government programs like Social Security to protect you from a perilous future. If you are a worker bee, make as much honey as you can, take care of your queen, and watch out for the WASPS!

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.

This Is (Sort of) How You Came To Have A Mind

Admittedly, and obviously, I am not a scientist or a philosopher. However, I enjoy these subjects and occasionally challenge my limited knowledge by reading. Case in point: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, by Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy at New York University. Don’t let the title blow your mind.

Nagel attempts to show that “mind” is not a Darwinian concept, not the result of natural selection, and not evolutionary. Although, he also points out, “there is no reason to assume that the only alternative is a religious one.”

Scientists claim that the mind evolved from the material world, from matter, in an evolutionary process. Nagel is less certain that consciousness originated out of matter. As a philosopher, he understands the mind to be a separate entity, different from the brain. He argues, the “materialistic version of evolution cannot account for the existence of mind and consciousness.” In the case of the human mind, he says, natural selection defies common sense.

Religious readers in the blogdom may rely on Biblical sources and name the process “intelligent design,” but the Divine concept is missing from Mind and Cosmos. Nagel’s position is that entirely different scenarios may account for the emergence of conscious life, which might be teleological rather than materialist. He claims his argument is not a religious one, although he does not specify alternatives.

It seems to me, the mind/brain came into being in a very materialistic Darwinian process of natural selection, all crunched up and curly, busily producing synaptic connections, inside a thick bony skull – sort of like this:

One of many slimy critters that crawled out of the primordial soup was attracted by something bright red and fluttery – after having developed eyes (and brain) to see, of course. It reached out to cop a feel, and got the surprise of its life. “Ouch, that burns!” it would have screamed – if it had been more evolved. (Scientifically speaking, the critter reacted to the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion called, Fire!) It may have been our first instinct: to survive, which grew to include ducking to avoid thrown objects, and reacting to loud noises. Other instincts followed: sex, fear, anger, yawning, etc. (I don’t instinctively remember the entire list.)

Then, by the time this very special critter’s progeny had grown arms and legs and learned to climb trees, they seemed to forget certain natural tendencies, which continued on without them noticing. And they began to remember other, really important stuff, including philosophy, science, and (heaven help us) religion.

That’s how it happened, I think. (Voilà: I think, therefore I am.) But, I have to do much more reading.

I look forward to your thoughtful comments on the subject – and, perhaps, your review of Mind and Cosmos, Oxford University Press, available from Amazon.com.

80 Years Ago This Month

It was quite a year! Needless to say, it was a time I find very interesting.

In January 1933, Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.

In February 1933, the US Congress voted to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, bringing an end to Prohibition, if not to the problems prohibition had hoped to solve.

In March of that year, America witnessed a revolution—a revolution in the definition of government.

The Wall Street Crash had created the worst depression in American history. In declaring there was nothing to fear but fear itself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his greatest single contribution to the politics of that time: he gave the people hope and courage. He made clear that he had the people’s interests at heart, and that he would mobilize the power of the government to help them.

Just as it does today, the Republican Party, largely supported and led by the very rich, vigorously opposed his liberal proposals.

On February 15, at a political rally in Miami, an Italian immigrant, Guiseppe Zangara, fired five shots at Roosevelt. They all missed FDR, but one hit and killed his friend, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.

On Saturday, March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as the thirty-second President of the United States.

Roosevelt’s first act as president was to deal with the country’s banking crisis. On March 6, the day after taking office as president, Roosevelt ordered all banks to be closed.

And, Ida Mae Frank Flounders gave birth to—me.

Since the beginning of the depression, a fifth of all banks had been forced to close. As a consequence, around 15 percent of people’s life savings had been lost. The American people were losing faith in the banking system, and a significant proportion of depositors were withdrawing their money.

By 1933, the needs of more than fifteen million unemployed had overwhelmed the resources of local governments. In some areas, 90 percent of the people were on relief. On March 9, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress; he suggested that only the government could solve the unemployment problem – “by direct recruiting.”

It took only eight days to create the Civilian Conservation Corps. It authorized half a billion dollars in direct federal grants to the states for relief. The CCC was designed to tackle the problem of unemployed men between 18 and 25 years old. The pay was $30 dollars a month with $22 dollars of that sent home to each man’s family. The men planted trees, drained swamps to fight malaria, worked on flood control projects and others to help conserve the environment.

Ex-president Herbert Hoover opposed Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program. He told the New York Times, “I rejected the schemes of economic planning to regiment and coerce the farmer. That was born of a Roman despot 1400 years ago and grew into the AAA. I refused national plans to put government into business in competition with its citizens. That was born of Karl Marx. I vetoed the idea of recovery through stupendous spending to prime the pump. That was born of a British Professor (John Maynard Keynes).”

The NAACP hoped that the election of FDR would bring an end to lynching. African American leaders helped Roosevelt’s election campaign. Eleanor Roosevelt had also been a long-time opponent of lynching. But, even that horror of racist bigotry was not yet ready to die.

Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Wealth Tax Act, a progressive tax that took up to 75 percent on incomes over $5 million. The tax created a great deal of hostility: “The forces of organized money are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.” Many wealthy people used loopholes in the existing tax code to evade taxes.

At the end of FDR’s historic 12 years as president, Hitler’s end was only waiting for a final bullet, two weeks later. Our nation had survived the Great Depression, WWII, and America’s social conscience and entrepreneurial spirit had combined in common purpose for a bright future.

We spent this March 6th in Sandestin, Florida—celebrating my big 8-0 with my brother, a Tea Party Republican from Virginia, and my sister, an Independent from Dallas, and our loyal spouses – discussing, what else, the current political morass. We love and respect each other tremendously, and our conversations are lively, opinionated and très politique. They are generously tolerant of my rants and respectful of my advanced years. I only hope the same of my blog readers.

Jac Flanders is the author of “What I Learned On The Way Down” – eBook and paperback at Amazon.com.