Life in OUR America, Volume 2, The Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

Yes, we are capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice.

The majority of Americans exercised their right not to vote.

Maybe by next election they will realize that was an error.

SO!

jeffmoskin, what I take from all of this is that at one time, we might have been capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice, and then times changed, and now, we no longer are, and so we now have the worst government that I can ever recall this nation having, in my lifetime, anyway!

And you think that we can reverse this in what is left to us of OUR lifetimes?

[Livyjr]

SO!

jeffmoskin, what I take from all of this is that at one time, we might have been capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice, and then times changed, and now, we no longer are, and so we now have the worst government that I can ever recall this nation having, in my lifetime, anyway!

And you think that we can reverse this in what is left to us of OUR lifetimes?

The other day, I happened to have to be in a public place, and there was an older man there, pontificating on and on about how everything wrong in this country, INCLUDING 9-11, was the fault of "BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS"!

"Excuse me", said I, "but that is the biggest load of Horse S*** that I have ever heard!"

WHO IS THIS BLEEDING-HEART LIBERAL THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR 9-11?

WHO?

The discussion that ensued with this man was then quite illuminating with respect to HIS thought processes, and yes, he was for George W. Bush and the murder!

In his words, America has to rid itself of BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS, and then clean up the world of "undesirables", before things will ever "be right" again, here in his America, and so, the sooner the clean-up begins, the better.

And to him, that is just that!

I was trying to get him to tell me what his ultimate solution was for all these BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS, but he was non-committal!

Gas chambers?

Put them all on a boat and send them to Africa?

What?

No answer!

Just get rid of them, however.

Now, that is a conversation held up here in the vicinity of Albany, New York, in the shadow of the capital of one of the most unpopular governors in America, outside of the governor of Ohio, who holds firmly to the "bottom-of-the-basket" position right now, I am told, and so, this conversation might not be typical of how the POWER PARTY sees life in OUR America, all over OUR America, but up here, it is!

And somehow, out of this person, and his bigoted like, we are supposed to be able to establish "good government from reflection and choice!"

Well, I just don't know, because I personally don't think that bigots do much reflecting!

Rather, they hate, and that certainly is not a product of any kind of reflection that I can see, or discern!

And when you take a look at these haters, these bigots, the thought that comes to my mind is that if they were to reflect a bit, maybe by standing in front of a mirror for a moment, they might find that instead of looking for faults in anyone else, maybe they should look to home, first!

But that is a different subject and so .....

One of the points of this discussion with this man was a statement that he made about his daughter, an honors student at a local high school, who did not know we were ever at war with Viet Nam, BECAUSE THEY DON'T TEACH THAT IN HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY, at least up here, where she went to school, in Niskayuna, New York, near Schenectady, just west of Albany!

The point that this man was making, from what I could understand of it, is that in his opinion, BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS are being somehow created in the first place by OUR own government, through OUR school system, which, according to him, is just saturated to overflowing with BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS, and now, as a result, we are "flooded" with them!

The cure, of course, is for CONSERVATIVES who "know right from wrong" to "TAKE BACK" America, and that is what he and they are now intent on doing!

And part of that attack by them has to be on the CONSTITUTION, which just gives us too much liberty, in his estimation, and it is that excessive liberty which led directly to 9-11, because these BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS extended too much protection to the hijackers, who were poor and non-white, and not enough to the people in the World Trade Center Towers, who were apparently white and well-to-do, in his scenario, anyway!

SO!

jeffmoskin, there is "reflection", for you, CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN-style, up here in the corrupt EMPIRE State of New York!

Can any kind of "good government" come from this man's pen?

I personally wonder at that myself, and he does vote!

SO?

What happened to all these other ones then, who did not vote?

Are they just ignorant?

Lazy?

Or scared of this man, and his kind, if they go near a polling place?

Any thoughts, America?

After all, it is YOUR FUTURE that we are discussing in here!

Or don't you care?

[jeffmoskin]

BLEEDING-HEART LIBERALS

An expression straight out of the 60's!

Where did it oriignate?

It has been in the American Lexicon for SO LONG that even an old geezer like myself cannot remember who coined it.

But it is, to use the more modern (George Lakoff) term for it, a "frame."

Once it has been uttered, all meaningful discussion stops.

Anybody out there know?

[jeffmoskin]

SO!

jeffmoskin, what I take from all of this is that at one time, we might have been capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice, and then times changed, and now, we no longer are, and so we now have the worst government that I can ever recall this nation having, in my lifetime, anyway!

And you think that we can reverse this in what is left to us of OUR lifetimes?

In OUR lifetimes?

Well, these BULLS have been breaking a lot of china in the china shop, so the inevitable repair work that must be done (if we are ever to achieve peace and equality) will take a little longer, say, than had we prevented them from stealing Ohio.

I have to be an optimist and say I will live to see it. Even better, I want to be part of making it happen.

I think that history (which once was more than just a channel on TV) will show that we had, under FDR, a government that truly cared for the common man, which is important, because nobody else does. I think that government can be as good in the future as it is terrible right now. And, yes, I believe that 50 years from now, historians will look upon this period in OUR history as one of the worst ever.

There is a good series starting today in the NY Times about "Class in America."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national...VIEW-FINAL.html?

I wonder what readers of this thread think about it.

[Livyjr]

In OUR lifetimes?

Well, these BULLS have been breaking a lot of china in the china shop, so the inevitable repair work that must be done (if we are ever to achieve peace and equality) will take a little longer, say, than had we prevented them from stealing Ohio.

I have to be an optimist and say I will live to see it.

Even better, I want to be part of making it happen.

And as always, jeffmoskin, thank you for your continued participation in here, and for your continued inputs, as well, from your own perspective as an older and politically-experienced American living on the opposite coast of OUR America from myself.

And I think where we are, here in OUR America, certainly can and does "color" OUR perspective of just how life on a day-to-day basis is really going, and here, I am talking about the collapse of that retaining wall down there in New York City the other day that blocked off a chunk of major highway, and apparently put some buildings above in some kind of jeopardy, and that is something that I would say is a direct result of what I am going to call one more time, THE STSTEMATIC LOOTING OF OUR NATIONAL TREASURY by the REPUBLICAN crowd that is in control in America right now, with the attendant degradation and ultimate DESTRUCTION OF OUR INFRASTRUCTURE, as a direct result!

WHO are these REPUBLICANS that they were able to funnel an obscene amount of OUR money into their own pockets so that they could then hold this ORGY OF PREJUDICE AND BIGOTRY in New York City that they called the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION?

WHO ARE THESE TREASURY LOOTERS, and where does their power over OUR treasury come from, other than the barrel of a heavy machine-gun mounted on an armored personnel carrier?

How many millions of dollars were looted out of the treasury of New York so that this ORGY could be held in New York City, at the expense of the infrastructure of the city, part of which just tumbled down, and closed off a major artery or thoroughfare in that city?

And how, jeffmoskin, do we, THE PEOPLE, make up this money?

How many BILLIONS have been siphoned out of OUR treasury in the last four years alone for export to Iraq, where God alone knows where that money is really going to, WHILE OUR AMERICA, like Bloomberg's and Pataki's and Giuliani's city of New York crumbles down into the Hudson River?

The LAYING LOW of OUR America has just begun, jeffmoskin, and I don't think we are barely in to what is yet to come, when there is no money for anything in OUR America but a massive security force that will be OUR enslaver, at least economically, which is really all that matters, to the enslaver!

[Livyjr]

As access to that New York Times article jeffmoskin mentions requires "registration", which some people understandably might not want to do, and as it is germane to OUR discussion in here, and in the JUDICIAL thread as well, I have "captured" the article in here for further discussions on its contents, which are interesting from the perspective of pointing out "opinions" held by various factions, here in OUR America, that might be to OUR detriment as the "common folks" of this nation, or at least me, who is a disabled veteran, and so, occupies that "LAST CLASS" here in OUR America, those who get nothing, because they "DON'T WORK", like everybody else has to, and so, should not get anything, here in America, as a result!

THE LAST CLASS!

The "class" in America worth nothing, at all!

Avoid it at all costs!

"Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide"

By JANNY SCOTT and DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: May 15, 2005

There was a time when Americans thought they understood class.

The upper crust vacationed in Europe and worshiped an Episcopal God.

The middle class drove Ford Fairlanes, settled the San Fernando Valley and enlisted as company men.

The working class belonged to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., voted Democratic and did not take cruises to the Caribbean.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

This is the first in a series of articles examining the role of social class in America today.

A team of reporters spent more than a year exploring ways that class - defined as a combination of income, education, wealth and occupation - influences destiny in a society that likes to think of itself as a land of unbounded opportunity.

Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness.

Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents.

Social diversity has erased many of the old markers.

It has become harder to read people's status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin.

The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared.

But class is still a powerful force in American life.

Over the past three decades, it has come to play a greater, not lesser, role in important ways.

At a time when education matters more than ever, success in school remains linked tightly to class.

At a time when the country is increasingly integrated racially, the rich are isolating themselves more and more.

At a time of extraordinary advances in medicine, class differences in health and lifespan are wide and appear to be widening.

And new research on mobility, the movement of families up and down the economic ladder, shows there is far less of it than economists once thought and less than most people believe.

In fact, mobility, which once buoyed the working lives of Americans as it rose in the decades after World War II, has lately flattened out or possibly even declined, many researchers say.

Mobility is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream.

It is supposed to take the sting out of the widening gulf between the have-mores and the have-nots.

There are poor and rich in the United States, of course, the argument goes; but as long as one can become the other, as long as there is something close to equality of opportunity, the differences between them do not add up to class barriers.

Over the next three weeks, The Times will publish a series of articles on class in America, a dimension of the national experience that tends to go unexamined, if acknowledged at all.

With class now seeming more elusive than ever, the articles take stock of its influence in the lives of individuals: a lawyer who rose out of an impoverished Kentucky hollow; an unemployed metal worker in Spokane, Wash., regretting his decision to skip college; a multimillionaire in Nantucket, Mass., musing over the cachet of his 200-foot yacht.

The series does not purport to be all-inclusive or the last word on class.

It offers no nifty formulas for pigeonholing people or decoding folkways and manners.

Instead, it represents an inquiry into class as Americans encounter it: indistinct, ambiguous, the half-seen hand that upon closer examination holds some Americans down while giving others a boost.

The trends are broad and seemingly contradictory: the blurring of the landscape of class and the simultaneous hardening of certain class lines; the rise in standards of living while most people remain moored in their relative places.

Even as mobility seems to have stagnated, the ranks of the elite are opening.

Today, anyone may have a shot at becoming a United States Supreme Court justice or a C.E.O., and there are more and more self-made billionaires.

Only 37 members of last year's Forbes 400, a list of the richest Americans, inherited their wealth, down from almost 200 in the mid-1980's.

So it appears that while it is easier for a few high achievers to scale the summits of wealth, for many others it has become harder to move up from one economic class to another.

Americans are arguably more likely than they were 30 years ago to end up in the class into which they were born.

A paradox lies at the heart of this new American meritocracy.

Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children.

But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based.

Parents with money, education and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards.

When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned.

The scramble to scoop up a house in the best school district, channel a child into the right preschool program or land the best medical specialist are all part of a quiet contest among social groups that the affluent and educated are winning in a rout.

"The old system of hereditary barriers and clubby barriers has pretty much vanished," said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, a social science research group in New York City that recently published a series of studies on the social effects of economic inequality.

In place of the old system, Dr. Wanner said, have arisen "new ways of transmitting advantage that are beginning to assert themselves."

Faith in the System

Most Americans remain upbeat about their prospects for getting ahead.

A recent New York Times poll on class found that 40 percent of Americans believed that the chance of moving up from one class to another had risen over the last 30 years, a period in which the new research shows that it has not.

Thirty-five percent said it had not changed, and only 23 percent said it had dropped.

More Americans than 20 years ago believe it possible to start out poor, work hard and become rich.

They say hard work and a good education are more important to getting ahead than connections or a wealthy background.

"I think the system is as fair as you can make it," Ernie Frazier, a 65-year-old real estate investor in Houston, said in an interview after participating in the poll.

"I don't think life is necessarily fair."

"But if you persevere, you can overcome adversity."

"It has to do with a person's willingness to work hard, and I think it's always been that way."

Most say their standard of living is better than their parents' and imagine that their children will do better still.

Even families making less than $30,000 a year subscribe to the American dream; more than half say they have achieved it or will do so.

But most do not see a level playing field.

They say the very rich have too much power, and they favor the idea of class-based affirmative action to help those at the bottom.

Even so, most say they oppose the government's taxing the assets a person leaves at death.

"They call it the land of opportunity, and I don't think that's changed much," said Diana Lackey, a 60-year-old homemaker and wife of a retired contractor in Fulton, N.Y., near Syracuse.

"Times are much, much harder with all the downsizing, but we're still a wonderful country."

The Attributes of Class

One difficulty in talking about class is that the word means different things to different people.

Class is rank, it is tribe, it is culture and taste.

It is attitudes and assumptions, a source of identity, a system of exclusion.

To some, it is just money.

It is an accident of birth that can influence the outcome of a life.

Some Americans barely notice it; others feel its weight in powerful ways.

At its most basic, class is one way societies sort themselves out.

Even societies built on the idea of eliminating class have had stark differences in rank.

Classes are groups of people of similar economic and social position; people who, for that reason, may share political attitudes, lifestyles, consumption patterns, cultural interests and opportunities to get ahead.

Put 10 people in a room and a pecking order soon emerges.

When societies were simpler, the class landscape was easier to read.

Marx divided 19th-century societies into just two classes; Max Weber added a few more.

As societies grew increasingly complex, the old classes became more heterogeneous.

As some sociologists and marketing consultants see it, the commonly accepted big three - the upper, middle and working classes - have broken down into dozens of microclasses, defined by occupations or lifestyles.

A few sociologists go so far as to say that social complexity has made the concept of class meaningless.

Conventional big classes have become so diverse - in income, lifestyle, political views - that they have ceased to be classes at all, said Paul W. Kingston, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

To him, American society is a "ladder with lots and lots of rungs."

"There is not one decisive break saying that the people below this all have this common experience," Professor Kingston said.

"Each step is equal-sized."

"Sure, for the people higher up this ladder, their kids are more apt to get more education, better health insurance."

"But that doesn't mean there are classes."

Many other researchers disagree.

"Class awareness and the class language is receding at the very moment that class has reorganized American society," said Michael Hout, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

"I find these 'end of class' discussions naïve and ironic, because we are at a time of booming inequality and this massive reorganization of where we live and how we feel, even in the dynamics of our politics."

"Yet people say, 'Well, the era of class is over.'"

One way to think of a person's position in society is to imagine a hand of cards.

Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class.

Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class.

At first, a person's class is his parents' class.

Later, he may pick up a new hand of his own; it is likely to resemble that of his parents, but not always.

Bill Clinton traded in a hand of low cards with the help of a college education and a Rhodes scholarship and emerged decades later with four face cards.

Bill Gates, who started off squarely in the upper middle class, made a fortune without finishing college, drawing three aces.

Many Americans say that they too have moved up the nation's class ladder.

In the Times poll, 45 percent of respondents said they were in a higher class than when they grew up, while just 16 percent said they were in a lower one.

Over all, 1 percent described themselves as upper class, 15 percent as upper middle class, 42 percent as middle, 35 percent as working and 7 percent as lower.

"I grew up very poor and so did my husband," said Wanda Brown, the 58-year-old wife of a retired planner for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard who lives in Puyallup, Wash., near Tacoma.

"We're not rich but we are comfortable and we are middle class and our son is better off than we are."

The American Ideal

The original exemplar of American social mobility was almost certainly Benjamin Franklin, one of 17 children of a candle maker.

About 20 years ago, when researchers first began to study mobility in a rigorous way, Franklin seemed representative of a truly fluid society, in which the rags-to-riches trajectory was the readily achievable ideal, just as the nation's self-image promised.

In a 1987 speech, Gary S. Becker, a University of Chicago economist who would later win a Nobel Prize, summed up the research by saying that mobility in the United States was so high that very little advantage was passed down from one generation to the next.

In fact, researchers seemed to agree that the grandchildren of privilege and of poverty would be on nearly equal footing.

If that had been the case, the rise in income inequality beginning in the mid-1970's should not have been all that worrisome.

The wealthy might have looked as if they were pulling way ahead, but if families were moving in and out of poverty and prosperity all the time, how much did the gap between the top and bottom matter?

But the initial mobility studies were flawed, economists now say.

Some studies relied on children's fuzzy recollections of their parents' income.

Others compared single years of income, which fluctuate considerably.

Still others misread the normal progress people make as they advance in their careers, like from young lawyer to senior partner, as social mobility.

The new studies of mobility, which methodically track peoples' earnings over decades, have found far less movement.

The economic advantage once believed to last only two or three generations is now believed to last closer to five.

Mobility happens, just not as rapidly as was once thought.

"We all know stories of poor families in which the next generation did much better," said Gary Solon, a University of Michigan economist who is a leading mobility researcher.

"It isn't that poor families have no chance."

But in the past, Professor Solon added, "people would say, 'Don't worry about inequality'."

"The offspring of the poor have chances as good as the chances of the offspring of the rich.'"

"Well, that's not true."

"It's not respectable in scholarly circles anymore to make that argument."

One study, by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, found that fewer families moved from one quintile, or fifth, of the income ladder to another during the 1980's than during the 1970's and that still fewer moved in the 90's than in the 80's.

A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also found that mobility declined from the 80's to the 90's.

The incomes of brothers born around 1960 have followed a more similar path than the incomes of brothers born in the late 1940's, researchers at the Chicago Federal Reserve and the University of California, Berkeley, have found.

Whatever children inherit from their parents - habits, skills, genes, contacts, money - seems to matter more today.

Studies on mobility over generations are notoriously difficult, because they require researchers to match the earnings records of parents with those of their children.

Some economists consider the findings of the new studies murky; it cannot be definitively shown that mobility has fallen during the last generation, they say, only that it has not risen.

The data will probably not be conclusive for years.

Nor do people agree on the implications.

Liberals say the findings are evidence of the need for better early-education and antipoverty programs to try to redress an imbalance in opportunities.

Conservatives tend to assert that mobility remains quite high, even if it has tailed off a little.

But there is broad consensus about what an optimal range of mobility is.

It should be high enough for fluid movement between economic levels but not so high that success is barely tied to achievement and seemingly random, economists on both the right and left say.

As Phillip Swagel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, put it, "We want to give people all the opportunities they want."

"We want to remove the barriers to upward mobility."

Yet there should remain an incentive for parents to cultivate their children.

"Most people are working very hard to transmit their advantages to their children," said David I. Levine, a Berkeley economist and mobility researcher.

"And that's quite a good thing."

One surprising finding about mobility is that it is not higher in the United States than in Britain or France.

It is lower here than in Canada and some Scandinavian countries but not as low as in developing countries like Brazil, where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but frozen in place.

Those comparisons may seem hard to believe.

Britain and France had hereditary nobilities; Britain still has a queen.

The founding document of the United States proclaims all men to be created equal.

The American economy has also grown more quickly than Europe's in recent decades, leaving an impression of boundless opportunity.

But the United States differs from Europe in ways that can gum up the mobility machine.

Because income inequality is greater here, there is a wider disparity between what rich and poor parents can invest in their children.

Perhaps as a result, a child's economic background is a better predictor of school performance in the United States than in Denmark, the Netherlands or France, one recent study found.

"Being born in the elite in the U.S. gives you a constellation of privileges that very few people in the world have ever experienced," Professor Levine said.

"Being born poor in the U.S. gives you disadvantages unlike anything in Western Europe and Japan and Canada."

Blurring the Landscape

Why does it appear that class is fading as a force in American life?

For one thing, it is harder to read position in possessions.

Factories in China and elsewhere churn out picture-taking cellphones and other luxuries that are now affordable to almost everyone.

Federal deregulation has done the same for plane tickets and long-distance phone calls.

Banks, more confident about measuring risk, now extend credit to low-income families, so that owning a home or driving a new car is no longer evidence that someone is middle class.

The economic changes making material goods cheaper have forced businesses to seek out new opportunities so that they now market to groups they once ignored.

Cruise ships, years ago a symbol of the high life, have become the ocean-going equivalent of the Jersey Shore.

BMW produces a cheaper model with the same insignia.

Martha Stewart sells chenille jacquard drapery and scallop-embossed ceramic dinnerware at Kmart.

"The level of material comfort in this country is numbing," said Paul Bellew, executive director for market and industry analysis at General Motors.

"You can make a case that the upper half lives as well as the upper 5 percent did 50 years ago."

Like consumption patterns, class alignments in politics have become jumbled.

In the 1950's, professionals were reliably Republican; today they lean Democratic.

Meanwhile, skilled labor has gone from being heavily Democratic to almost evenly split.

People in both parties have attributed the shift to the rise of social issues, like gun control and same-sex marriage, which have tilted many working-class voters rightward and upper income voters toward the left.

But increasing affluence plays an important role, too.

When there is not only a chicken, but an organic, free-range chicken, in every pot, the traditional economic appeal to the working class can sound off key.

Religious affiliation, too, is no longer the reliable class marker it once was.

The growing economic power of the South has helped lift evangelical Christians into the middle and upper middle classes, just as earlier generations of Roman Catholics moved up in the mid-20th century.

It is no longer necessary to switch one's church membership to Episcopal or Presbyterian as proof that one has arrived.

"You go to Charlotte, N.C., and the Baptists are the establishment," said Mark A. Chaves, a sociologist at the University of Arizona.

"To imagine that for reasons of respectability, if you lived in North Carolina, you would want to be a Presbyterian rather than a Baptist doesn't play anymore."

The once tight connection between race and class has weakened, too, as many African-Americans have moved into the middle and upper middle classes.

Diversity of all sorts - racial, ethnic and gender - has complicated the class picture.

And high rates of immigration and immigrant success stories seem to hammer home the point: The rules of advancement have changed.

The American elite, too, is more diverse than it was.

The number of corporate chief executives who went to Ivy League colleges has dropped over the past 15 years.

There are many more Catholics, Jews and Mormons in the Senate than there were a generation or two ago.

Because of the economic earthquakes of the last few decades, a small but growing number of people have shot to the top.

"Anything that creates turbulence creates the opportunity for people to get rich," said Christopher S. Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard.

"But that isn't necessarily a big influence on the 99 percent of people who are not entrepreneurs."

These success stories reinforce perceptions of mobility, as does cultural myth-making in the form of television programs like "American Idol" and "The Apprentice."

But beneath all that murkiness and flux, some of the same forces have deepened the hidden divisions of class.

Globalization and technological change have shuttered factories, killing jobs that were once stepping-stones to the middle class.

Now that manual labor can be done in developing countries for $2 a day, skills and education have become more essential than ever.

This has helped produce the extraordinary jump in income inequality.

The after-tax income of the top 1 percent of American households jumped 139 percent, to more than $700,000, from 1979 to 2001, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which adjusted its numbers to account for inflation.

The income of the middle fifth rose by just 17 percent, to $43,700, and the income of the poorest fifth rose only 9 percent.

For most workers, the only time in the last three decades when the rise in hourly pay beat inflation was during the speculative bubble of the 90's.

Reduced pensions have made retirement less secure.

Clearly, a degree from a four-year college makes even more difference than it once did.

More people are getting those degrees than did a generation ago, but class still plays a big role in determining who does or does not.

At 250 of the most selective colleges in the country, the proportion of students from upper-income families has grown, not shrunk.

Some colleges, worried about the trend, are adopting programs to enroll more lower-income students.

One is Amherst, whose president, Anthony W. Marx, explained:

"If economic mobility continues to shut down, not only will we be losing the talent and leadership we need, but we will face a risk of a society of alienation and unhappiness."

"Even the most privileged among us will suffer the consequences of people not believing in the American dream."

Class differences in health, too, are widening, recent research shows.

Life expectancy has increased over all; but upper-middle-class Americans live longer and in better health than middle-class Americans, who live longer and in better health than those at the bottom.

Class plays an increased role, too, in determining where and with whom affluent Americans live.

More than in the past, they tend to live apart from everyone else, cocooned in their exurban chateaus.

Researchers who have studied data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 censuses say the isolation of the affluent has increased.

Family structure, too, differs increasingly along class lines.

The educated and affluent are more likely than others to have their children while married.

They have fewer children and have them later, when their earning power is high.

On average, according to one study, college-educated women have their first child at 30, up from 25 in the early 1970's.

The average age among women who have never gone to college has stayed at about 22.

Those widening differences have left the educated and affluent in a superior position when it comes to investing in their children.

"There is no reason to doubt the old saw that the most important decision you make is choosing your parents," said Professor Levine, the Berkeley economist and mobility researcher.

"While it's always been important, it's probably a little more important now."

The benefits of the new meritocracy do come at a price.

It once seemed that people worked hard and got rich in order to relax, but a new class marker in upper-income families is having at least one parent who works extremely long hours (and often boasts about it).

In 1973, one study found, the highest-paid tenth of the country worked fewer hours than the bottom tenth.

Today, those at the top work more.

In downtown Manhattan, black cars line up outside Goldman Sachs's headquarters every weeknight around 9.

Employees who work that late get a free ride home, and there are plenty of them.

Until 1976, a limousine waited at 4:30 p.m. to ferry partners to Grand Central Terminal.

But a new management team eliminated the late-afternoon limo to send a message: 4:30 is the middle of the workday, not the end.

A Rags-to-Riches Faith

Will the trends that have reinforced class lines while papering over the distinctions persist?

The economic forces that caused jobs to migrate to low-wage countries are still active.

The gaps in pay, education and health have not become a major political issue.

The slicing of society's pie is more unequal than it used to be, but most Americans have a bigger piece than they or their parents once did.

They appear to accept the tradeoffs.

Faith in mobility, after all, has been consciously woven into the national self-image.

Horatio Alger's books have made his name synonymous with rags-to-riches success, but that was not his personal story.

He was a second-generation Harvard man, who became a writer only after losing his Unitarian ministry because of allegations of sexual misconduct.

Ben Franklin's autobiography was punched up after his death to underscore his rise from obscurity.

The idea of fixed class positions, on the other hand, rubs many the wrong way.

Americans have never been comfortable with the notion of a pecking order based on anything other than talent and hard work.

Class contradicts their assumptions about the American dream, equal opportunity and the reasons for their own successes and even failures.

Americans, constitutionally optimistic, are disinclined to see themselves as stuck.

Blind optimism has its pitfalls.

If opportunity is taken for granted, as something that will be there no matter what, then the country is less likely to do the hard work to make it happen.

But defiant optimism has its strengths.

Without confidence in the possibility of moving up, there would almost certainly be fewer success stories.

[Livyjr]

"Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide"

By JANNY SCOTT and DAVID LEONHARDT, NY Times
Published: May 15, 2005

There was a time when Americans thought they understood class.

The upper crust vacationed in Europe and worshiped an Episcopal God.

The middle class drove Ford Fairlanes, settled the San Fernando Valley and enlisted as company men.

The working class belonged to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., voted Democratic and did not take cruises to the Caribbean.

Well, this is quite an article, for sure, but it betrays a lot of ignorance the authors really have about America, and Americans, is what I think, especially this thing of "class" which to me, is a distinctly UN-AMERICAN concept in its entirety!

"Class" today is about arrogance, largely, or that has been my impression, anyway, having had people's "class pedigree" jammed down my throat by some snob or boor on several occasions, so as to let me know in no uncertain terms how inferior I am to them, and then to know, again in no uncertain terms, how lucky I am in the first place to have these people there to explain to me exactly how class structure does work in OUR America, so that I can then be impressed that I am in their company, however temporarily that might be!

Being non-materially-oriented as I am, and favoring a true meritocracy over any alternatives, I am not impressed by how much money someone has, and to be truthful, I really don't care, nor want to know!

To me, it means absolutely nothing at all that Donald Trump has x-dollars, or Bill Gates has y-dollars, because that is a measure of nothing at all to me, and certainly not success of any sort that I recognize!

Out in Wyoming, a land that I dearly love, they say, from experience, that IF you are going to go around judging men by the horses that they ride, then you must always take into account that the very best horses are always being ridden by either rich men, or horse thives, so the real art is in knowing the difference, and sometimes, well, it is just not that awful clear!

And there is my measure, I guess!

Who you really are, and not some class crap that you are trying to lay on me, to impress me, like that tall horse that you are now riding, as if it were really yours, meaning that you were the one who went out and caught it, and broke it, and trained it, when such is not the case, at all!

When I was young, I went to high school in an ordinary concrete block building, and I rode a school bus to get there, or else I walked!

Today, that same school building is all camoflaged with fancy work so that the kids won't be stigmatized by the "ordinariness" of their school building, and they drive Lexus' and BMW's to school!

And what does any of that really mean?

Ask ten people, and you'll get twenty or thirty different opinions, probably!

Ask a hundred people, and you'll be up to ten thousand opinions, and so .....

Has America where I am changed?

Most certainly!

And how so?

Stay tuned!

That is just too dynamic a question to answer with a static answer, and the real answer is, that no one really knows!

Because it has not really happened yet, the events that shape that answer, and to me, this series of events has really only just now started to begin, and so ....

[Livyjr]

Well, this is quite an article, for sure, but it betrays a lot of ignorance the authors really have about America, and Americans, is what I think, especially this thing of "class" which to me, is a distinctly UN-AMERICAN concept in its entirety!

"Class" today is about arrogance, largely, or that has been my impression, anyway, having had people's "class pedigree" jammed down my throat by some snob or boor on several occasions, so as to let me know in no uncertain terms how inferior I am to them, and then to know, again in no uncertain terms, how lucky I am in the first place to have these people there to explain to me exactly how class structure does work in OUR America, so that I can then be impressed that I am in their company, however temporarily that might be!

Being non-materially-oriented as I am, and favoring a true meritocracy over any alternatives, I am not impressed by how much money someone has, and to be truthful, I really don't care, nor want to know!

To me, it means absolutely nothing at all that Donald Trump has x-dollars, or Bill Gates has y-dollars, because that is a measure of nothing at all to me, and certainly not success of any sort that I recognize!

Out in Wyoming, a land that I dearly love, they say, from experience, that IF you are going to go around judging men by the horses that they ride, then you must always take into account that the very best horses are always being ridden by either rich men, or horse thives, so the real art is in knowing the difference, and sometimes, well, it is just not that awful clear!

And there is my measure, I guess!

And as a part of that article, there is a "test" that you can take to see where in OUR very obvious class structure here in OUR America you might be!

In OCCUPATION, I would be in the 78th percentile, whatever on earth that really means to anyone!

In EDUCATION, I am in the 97th percentile!

In terms of income, I am in the 56th percentile and in terms of material wealth, I am down to 37th!

My AVERAGE, for whatever that might be worth, is 67th percentile!

Now, all I have to do is find my own crowd of people who are impressed by any of this, and who knows, I just might be the next president of the United States, or maybe I'll own Trump Towers!

And if pigs had wings, they'd be eagles!

[Livyjr]

This above, of course, is a glimpse into the "WORLD VIEW" of that "christian's CHRISTIAN", Mr. George W. Bush!

That is what he calls "democracy" in action!

That is what he is spreading in the world, at the same time that he is telling all of us, here in OUR America, and in the world as well, that he is "full of Jesus", and that "GOD", some god or other, anyway, wanted him to be not only president of America, but likely KING OF KING, and LORD OF LORDS, of all the world, and the solar system, was well, which, of course, IS a job suited for someone like him who is, well, "FULL OF JESUS"!

As to this following, it is also the world of George W. Bush, and don't worry, America, soon, you won't have to travel all the way to Afghanistan to get a dose of it yourself; likely, it will be coming to an American community near you, real soon!

If OUR George has his way, anyway, as is the case with this story directly above, where his views on "human rights" are hanging right out there for all the candid world to see!

washingtonpost.com Highlights

"A bitter winter for Afghans - Extreme cold leaves at least 300 dead; children vulnerable"

By N.C. Aizenman
Updated: 5:33 a.m. ET March 3, 2005

ALTAMUR, Afghanistan - Eight-month-old Gulmina was the first to die.

Her tiny chest heaved with every breath for more than a week in November, until her uncle Nasrullah Niazai realized she needed medicine and bundled her into a battered car for the two-hour drive to the nearest doctor.

But relief came too late, and the baby died soon after they returned home.

Next, in late January, Nasrullah's 18-month-old daughter, Shirina, fell ill.

This time he quickly recognized the signs of pneumonia and wanted to fetch help right away.

But by then, snowdrifts as high as 14 feet had completely sealed off this alpine village in Logar province, just 50 miles south of the capital, Kabul.

A second child was lost.

By last week, when the men managed to dig a path out of Altamur, Nasrullah had buried another relative: his uncle, Nawab Khan, a former anti-Soviet fighter in his late nineties who died of untreated respiratory illness.
 
"I walked eight hours through the snow to find a doctor for him," Nasrullah said.

"But no one would come back with me."

As Afghanistan struggles to cope with its harshest winter in years, more than 300 people have been reported dead from cold-related causes, while hundreds of thousands of people in villages across the mountainous central region remain cut off from help after weeks of freezing temperatures and steady snowfall.

While it has not reached crisis proportions, the suffering caused by this winter's weather underscores how vulnerable Afghanistan remains, three years after U.S.-led forces toppled the extremist Taliban government and launched a multibillion-dollar international effort to rebuild the war-ravaged nation.

According to a report released by the U.N. Development Program last week, Afghanistan ranked a dismal 173rd out of 178 countries in human development during 2004.

And speaking of democracy, George W. Bush style, let's go back to Afghanistan to see what OUR George has wrought over there for those folks, in the image of him and his pack of REPUBLICANS here in OUR America, like Frist and Tommy DeLay:

From the May 13, 2005 edition of the Christian Science Monitor:

RAW MATERIAL: A farmer opens a poppy head in Zhera district, west of Kandahar, Afghanistan. Lucrative opium production is flourishing in the country.

"Afghanistan riddled with drug ties"

The involvement of local as well as high-level government officials in the opium trade is frustrating efforts to eradicate poppy fields.

By Scott Baldauf and Faye Bowers | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN; AND WASHINGTON – The case of an Afghan village police chief, named Inayatullah, is a small example of a much larger problem.

Is Commander Inayatullah a courageous law-and-order crusader responsible for smashing the drug mafia in his hamlet?

Or, is he an opium smuggler?

Or, as his bosses say, is he both?

It's a question that hangs over more and more public officials here.

The post-Taliban boom in opium production means that drug money now permeates every stratum of Afghanistan's society - from the farmers cultivating poppies in the east to those in the highest levels of the central government of Kabul, according to senior Afghan and European officials working here.

"We are already a narco-state," says Mohammad Nader Nadery at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has studied the growing impunity of former military commanders and drug dealers who now work within the Afghan government.

"If the governors in many parts of the country are involved in the drug trade, if a minister is directly or indirectly getting benefits from drug trade, and if a chief of police gets money from drug traffickers, then how else do you define a narco-state?"

Abdul Karim Brahowie, Afghanistan's minister of tribal and frontier affairs, says that the government has become so full of drug smugglers that cabinet meetings have become a farce.

"Sometimes the people who complain the loudest about theft are thieves themselves," he says.

In the past two years, the UN reports that poppy cultivation increased by two-thirds in 2004 to 51.7 million acres.

The US estimate was even higher - at 87.5 million acres.

Afghanistan now produces 90 percent of the world's opium - most of it ends up on the streets of Europe and Russia as heroin.

European officials warn that this fledgling democracy is being undermined as Afghan officials make decisions based on what's good for the drug trade, rather than the electorate.

"There is a danger that all the stabilization and reconstruction efforts will be neutralized unless the narcotrafficking problem is addressed," says Ursula Müller, political counselor at the German Embassy in Washington.

"We have to fight this corruption ... those guys involved in the drug business [who] are in all levels of Afghanistan's government," adds Ms. Müller, who has been actively involved in rebuilding Afghanistan since the US toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

The Afghan government of US-backed President Hamid Karzai has made countering the narcotics trade - over fighting terrorism - its central aim.

And the international community, with Britain taking the lead, is planted firmly behind him.

Germany, for example, is training local Afghan police, and the US has budgeted $780 million this year to support the antinarcotics battle.

But the opium trade is deeply rooted in Afghan society.

Many regional warlords and opponents of the Taliban are now top officials in the Karzai government.

One of the most complicated - and delicate - tasks is to get corrupt officials to turn away from the drug trade as a source of personal income.

Müller says it can be done.

She tells of a former Afghan provincial official who was nominated to become a deputy minister in Kabul.

"We had doubts, and the [Bush] administration had doubts about him," Müller says.

"It was an open secret that he was heavily involved in the drugs business."

But, she says, he has turned his back on his former trade and has become a responsible government official leading efforts to staunch the illicit drug business.

The effort in working with local governors has been mixed, though, according to Steve Atkins, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington.

Britain provided funding and advice to Afghans on an eradication program in 2004.

Governors who participated claimed they eradicated 37,000 acres, but a verification team found that only 13,000 acres had actually been eradicated.

"We have always been clear of the limitations of the governor-led eradication, given that many governors are themselves implicated in the trade," says Mr. Atkins.

The problem, as illustrated by Commander Inayatullah's case, starts at the lowest levels of government.

Three months ago, the Afghan police chief made his biggest drug bust yet.

In a village in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, the commander arrested a suspected smuggler named Safiullah, and at the time confiscated 80 kilos of opium.

But Inayatullah later refused to hand over the opium to the provincial police as evidence, say police officials.

He was fired.

The provincial police officials also say that Inayatullah may have arrested Safiullah only to get rid of competition from a fellow opium trader.

But Inayatullah steadfastly maintains his innocence.

"I cannot see the minister of interior directly to ask him what the evidence is against me," says Inayatullah, who is in Kabul awaiting reassignment in another district.

"I'm the only police commander who has arrested smugglers in Badakhshan."

"Why am I accused of smuggling?"

Afghan officials interviewed say that Inayatullah's case isn't an isolated one.

They say that the people facilitating the drug trade are often the very people who have been assigned to stop it - the police.

But these police would not be able to act alone, they say, without the knowledge or consent of their superiors, including governors, provincial police chiefs, and even deputy ministers.

"Whatever number of police cars there are in Kabul, I can tell you that more than 50 percent of them are carrying drugs inside from one place to another," says a senior police commander in Kabul, requesting anonymity for his own safety.

"The problem is that Afghanistan is training police to stop drug smugglers, and when they go out into the field, their police commander tells them how to protect the drug smugglers."

Those who confront the drug lords often find themselves in danger.

Syed Ikramuddin, former governor of the northern province of Badakhshan, was nearly assassinated by a roadside bomb last October, as was vice presidential candidate Ahmed Zia Massoud in Faizabad.

Mr. Ikramuddin survived, but the person sitting next to him was killed and two others were injured.

"Except for the minister of the interior himself, Mr. Ali Jalali, all the lower people from the heads of department down are involved in supporting drug smuggling," says Ikramuddin, who now serves as Afghanistan's minister of labor.

Ikramuddin says that many of these policemen and commanders are former warlords who have disarmed and reintegrated into government jobs, and are now using their position to facilitate the drug trade and get rich.

Among those corrupt commanders, he says, is Inayatullah, the police chief from Yawan, a district in the former governor's province.

"Commander Inayatullah is a smuggler, I know him well," Ikramuddin says.

"There is a competition among smugglers, that is why Inayatullah arrested Safiullah and the others."

"It's not to do his job honestly, but just to weaken a competitor."

The police chief who replaced Inayatullah is involved in the drug trade, according to several interior ministry officials.

Kabul officials have ordered that he be removed from the position but say he is being protected by provincial police authorities.

One senior Interior Ministry official says that the new chief paid a $60,000 bribe to get the job.

Despite corruption in the police ranks, many Afghan politicians say that Afghanistan's drug problem can be solved.

"People inside the mafia should be introduced to the power of law," says Yunous Qanooni, a former presidential candidate in last year's elections and a top leader in the northern-based mujahideen party, Shura-e Nazar.

"I'm sure that this will solve 70 percent of the problem, and the remaining 30 percent will be solved easily, step by step."

Minister of Labor Ikramuddin agrees that Afghanistan's drug problem is solvable, both with outside help and a little more political will from within.

"If the world could not tolerate Afghanistan as the center of terrorism, then the world is not going to tolerate Afghanistan as the world's biggest producer of drugs."

"If we have good and honest people in this government, then gradually this problem can be solved."

"The carpet of the smugglers will be rolled up forever."

But Commander Inayatullah, the former police chief of Yawan, warns:

"If we don't solve the problem now, there will be a day when all decisions will be made by smugglers."

end quotes

Ah, those REPUBLICANS!

Anything for the BID-NESS community that they can do, well, they're just happy to do it, and well, in Afghanistan, it looks like they're succeeding alright, so, they must know their stuff, yessiree Bob!

And how about that alleged $60,000 bribe to become a Police Chief over there, will you?

Good old Republican values, coming to the fore!

The REPUBLICAN MERITOCRACY in action!

If you just have the money, why, you can be as upwardly mobile as you want to be, so long as you have the money, and of course, you know whose pocket to stuff it into, but, well, folks, that's BID-NESS, Republican style, and I guess that's just what they like, and so, we and the Afghans got a dose of it, and that is for sure!

[jeffmoskin]

To me, it means absolutely nothing at all that Donald Trump has x-dollars, or Bill Gates has y-dollars, because that is a measure of nothing at all to me, and certainly not success of any sort that I recognize!

I regard dollars as I do toilet paper.

First, you NEVER WANT TO RUN OUT.

Second, you always want to have enough to last you until you can get more, or if your getting more days are over, then for the rest of your life.

Any more than that just takes up space. It is of no use.

[Livyjr]

And speaking of George W. Bush, and the "boot" coming down on these people over there in Uzbekistan who want their own "Orange" or "Rose" Revolution like the people George W. Bush is praising in Georgia had, we have as follows:

"Uzbek Protesters Killed As Soldiers Attack"

By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA, Associated Press Writer

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan - Soldiers loyal to Uzbekistan's authoritarian leader, a U.S. ally, opened fire on thousands of demonstrators Friday to put down an uprising that began when armed men freed 2,000 inmates from prison, including suspects on trial for alleged Islamic extremism.

The prison raid and the soldiers' fusillades were in sharp contrast to the largely peaceful uprisings that sparked regime changes in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in the past 18 months.

President Islam Karimov is regarded as one of the harshest leaders in the former Soviet Union and apparently favors quick and decisive action against any threats to his regime.

Uzbekistan is a key Washington ally in the war on terrorism and hosts a U.S. air base to support military operations in neighboring Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

But it also is frequently denounced by human rights groups and Western governments for torture and repression of opposition.

The White House urged restraint by the government and the demonstrators.

"The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government."

"But that should come through peaceful means not through violence, and that's what our message is," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

From the April 15, 2004 edition of the Christian Science Monitor, some background on this situation in Uzbekistan, where the thug who is the ally of George W. Bush just had a bunch of his freedom-seeking citzens over there machine-gunned to death, for wishing for democracy for themselves:

"US counterterrorist strategy held hostage in Uzbekistan"

By Eugene Rumer

WASHINGTON – A recent string of bombings, suicide attacks, and assaults on police in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, have shattered the relative tranquility that settled over Central Asia since the arrival of US troops there in 2001 and the defeat of the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan.

The violence is a telling sign that one of America's key allies in the war on terror is in danger of falling prey to the very terrorist forces it was enlisted to help defeat.

The most difficult question about the recent violence in Uzbekistan is not why the violence has occurred, but why it has not occurred more often.

Key socioeconomic indicators in Uzbekistan have long been at crisis levels.

The effects of poverty and environmental degradation inherited from the Soviet era have been compounded by haphazard attempts at economic reforms pushed by foreign donors and international financial institutions.

Corruption and wanton disregard for basic human rights - from torture of detainees to the propensity of officials to brand and squelch all dissent as Islamic militancy - have produced an oppressive society.

President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Uzbekistan since 1989, pledged at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992 that he'd take his country along the path already charted by the "Asian tigers" - East Asian nations that undertook vigorous economic reforms, while holding off on political liberalization in the interest of domestic stability.

Today, more than a decade later, economic reform in Uzbekistan is a myth, and political stability has been squandered.

But Uzbekistan remains important to the US.

It borders on Afghanistan - and has hosted US military facilities ever since the 2001 US war on the Taliban.

A loyal partner in the war on terror, Uzbekistan is the perfect illustration of the challenge the US faces in its long-term antiterror strategy.

The Uzbek regime is key to the task of defeating terrorists and thwarting their operations - yet it is an intractable part of the terror problem because it contributes to the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit.

The Uzbek regime has already portrayed itself as a victim of Islamic terrorism and will continue to do so, seeking to justify its oppressive actions at home.

The US has condemned the recent terrorist acts in Uzbekistan - and it should request that Uzbek authorities allow US law enforcement agencies full access to the investigation.

Without such access and full public disclosure upon completion of the investigation, its results will be automatically suspect.

Public scrutiny will be essential to the credibility of Uzbek appeals for US assistance to combat terrorism.

The US can't afford the perception that it is propping up a corrupt and oppressive regime.

The US can make clear - publicly and privately, in blunt and certain terms - that the reactionary policies of Uzbek leaders are creating conditions ripe for extremist exploitation.

The Uzbek leaders are thus failing their own people in this critical aspect of the war on terror.

As seen from Tashkent, the US is beholden to Uzbekistan as an indispensable ally, and for as long as the US maintains a military presence there, warnings about domestic reform can be ignored.

Uzbekistan's leaders must be disabused of this notion.

The US has other options in Central Asia.

No country there has a perfect record, but some have gone a long way toward modernizing their economies and preserving a degree of political freedom that makes them look like reasonably healthy democracies when compared with Uzbekistan.

Uzbek leaders will continue to turn a deaf ear to US appeals for internal reform for as long as they think that when all else fails, they can fall back on the safety net of the US military presence in their country.

• Eugene Rumer is a senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. The opinions expressed here are his own.

[Livyjr]

I regard dollars as I do toilet paper.

First, you NEVER WANT TO RUN OUT.

Second, you always want to have enough to last you until you can get more, or if your getting more days are over, then for the rest of your life.

Any more than that just takes up space.

It is of no use.

And then, jeffmoskin, you do what is most important to me as a fellow American citizen, you don't talk about it!

You are not your money!

YOU, are simply you!

A big difference, I think!

Especially where this thing of "class" is concerned!

SO?

I wonder what Donald Trump thinks of class, and I wonder if he wishes he had some, instead of just a lot of money?

[Livyjr]

From the April 15, 2004 edition of the Christian Science Monitor, some background on this situation in Uzbekistan, where the thug who is the ally of George W. Bush just had a bunch of his freedom-seeking citzens over there machine-gunned to death, for wishing for democracy for themselves:

"US counterterrorist strategy held hostage in Uzbekistan"

By Eugene Rumer

WASHINGTON – A recent string of bombings, suicide attacks, and assaults on police in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, have shattered the relative tranquility that settled over Central Asia since the arrival of US troops there in 2001 and the defeat of the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan.

The violence is a telling sign that one of America's key allies in the war on terror is in danger of falling prey to the very terrorist forces it was enlisted to help defeat.

The most difficult question about the recent violence in Uzbekistan is not why the violence has occurred, but why it has not occurred more often.

Corruption and wanton disregard for basic human rights - from torture of detainees to the propensity of officials to brand and squelch all dissent as Islamic militancy - have produced an oppressive society.

Today, more than a decade later, economic reform in Uzbekistan is a myth, and political stability has been squandered.

But Uzbekistan remains important to the US.

From the April 05, 2004 edition of the Christian Science Monitor:

JAILED: Latifa Nabieva holds a photo of her imprisoned sons, charged with membership in an outlawed Islamic group.

"Why Uzbek women opt for bombs - Amid crackdown on Muslims, wives and mothers joined last week's attacks."

By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN – Angry and hopeless, Latifa Nabieva threatens to set fire to herself - like an increasing number of frustrated Uzbek women - unless her men are released.

Ms. Nabieva says she has had enough, following the arrest on terrorism charges of two sons and a nephew - all devout Muslims - since 2000.

The final straw came in January, when police smashed in her front door, beat her husband bloody, and imprisoned him, too.

Shortly before a wave of suicide attacks shocked Uzbekistan last week, leaving 42 dead - several of the 33 militants who died were female suicide bombers - Mrs. Nabieva fired off a letter to the authorities, vowing to immolate herself in front of top police officials.

A government crackdown against Muslims has led to the arrest of some 7,000 accused militants; torture, using a term of the United Nations, is "systematic."

The result is a growing level of anger among Uzbekistan's Muslim wives and mothers that may serve as a funnel for more female suicide bombers.

"I am very angry, and feel hatred toward the police and government ... and I am ready to burn myself," says Nabieva.

"There are thousands of women like me; [some] may be willing to protest in this way."

So far, Nabieva has drawn a line:

"Suicide is not allowed in Islam, and it is one of the things that holds me back," says the head-scarved matriarch, adding that taking other lives with hers is not an option.

She condemns the recent attacks as "terrorist acts" forbidden by her faith.

Analysts draw parallels to the recent phenomenon of female suicide bombers deployed by Palestinian militants against Israel, and Chechen rebels against Russia - the so-called Chechen "black widows," whose husbands have been killed by Russian forces.

They also point out that Uzbekistan has a history of female suicide - as an extreme way to protest domestic violence or fiscal hardship - that goes back centuries.

Not all angry Uzbek women draw the line where Nabieva does.

Across town, another mother with imprisoned relatives declined to give her name for fear of retribution from the regime.

She says:

"If I'm going to kill myself, I'll take one of those [police officers] with me."

Such sentiment does not surprise Uzbeks, since uncompromising government efforts to stamp out any sign of Islamic militancy date from the late 1990s, and were stepped up after 1999 bomb blasts in the capital killed 16.

It remains unclear, however, who may have been able to link such distraught, ready-to-die Uzbek women with an armed militant network.

"We condemn [the attacks], but whoever was behind it, we can only blame the government," says Husniddin Nazarov, the son of a well-known religious cleric who disappeared in 1998.

"If they start again this kind of repression, there may be an even bigger reaction."

"Many religious people have been arrested, and now the government should stop and think [how] they've pushed people to the edge."

"If dozens are committing suicide now, maybe later there could be thousands."

"It's a real threat to the government."

Changing gears may not be easy for a former Soviet republic that inherited its communist party boss as president.

Mr. Karimov has been feted by Washington since the 2001 Afghanistan campaign as a "strategic partner" that provides a key logistics base to American troops.

The US continues to condemn widespread human rights abuses, but so far with limited effect.

"The political elites in Uzbekistan were trained in the Soviet period, and there is still a belief that repression can work to hold onto power, to keep potential rivals afraid and at bay," says Acacia Shields, author of a Human Rights Watch report released here last week called "Creating Enemies of the State."

Choosing that tactic may stem from the regime's success in crushing all political opposition in the early 1990s, by banning and forcing key players and groups into exile, says Ms. Shields.

Public reaction has been muted.

"Western observers look at levels of Uzbek repression, and expected some uprising, but what we've seen in the last six years is a very quiet population that is not ready for that," adds Shields.

Accused Islamists have been killed in custody, and their relatives threatened with rape.

"Uzbekistan has almost become synonymous with torture," Shields says, but until last week, "we've seen no violence so far."

"It would represent a dramatic departure."

But some Uzbeks may now have been pushed to that point.

The country's prosecutor general Friday night displayed an array of explosives, ready suicide belts, several hundred detonation devices, cash, and fake passports meant for use by the 33 dead militants.

"I think the Chechen [black widow] phenomenon can happen here," says Iskandar Khudayberganov, a pro-democracy activist.

"Now people are so repressed there is no other choice - [they think] it's better to die than live such a life," says Mr. Khudayberganov.

"Before, the government believed that repression and spreading fear will help them keep control."

"But ... you can only be frightened so far."

While there is widespread anger among Uzbek Muslim women about the fate of their relatives - and even a history of suicide, that has in the past translated into cases of self-immolation in police offices - hooking up with militants was not easy.

"Where could an ordinary woman find these explosives?" says Rana Azimova, a human rights activist.

"Muslim Uzbek women do not commit such acts."

"Women with men arrested ask God for patience, and expect a better life in Heaven."

Still, rights activists say that female suicide is prevalent.

Some estimate a yearly toll of 60 suicides; in the province of Djizzakh alone, Ms. Azimova says there were 27 cases last year.

Such incidents usually occur in private, as a result of domestic violence or financial hardship.

In one case, a woman killed herself in protest because her husband refused to let her watch Western soap operas.

Uzbeks say such actions with fire have pre-Islamic Zoroastrian roots, the religious system of the Persians dating back to the 6th century BC.

Connecting the dots may not prove too difficult in a nation where Uzbeks say that many applauded the attacks on police forces despised for corruption and a heavy hand.

The regime's reaction - to crack down, or to moderate - will frame the long-term result.

"This is the government's product," says Tolib Yokubov, head of the Uzbek Human Rights Society.

"Cursing the president has become common; many people feel sympathy toward the attackers."

"It doesn't matter who is behind those blasts, but now people know how to confront the government, to protest."

end quotes

And why am I not surprised to hear that George W. Bush is right there in bed with this guy, as his Pap and Donald Rumsfeld were with Saddam Hussein and Tariq Assiz?

[theglobalchinese]

Straw at odds with US over brutality of terror war ally Telegraph.co.uk

[Morambar in TX]

Since I wrote those words, I have been thinking quite a bit about what meaning I intended to convey by them, and why, and that comes from the perspective of this on-going attempt by people like this James Dobson above here, to "re-establish" the "church", here in OUR America, some 250 years, give or take, since it was "dis-established" by the original thirteen colonies, BY THE VEHICLE OF TAKING OVER OUR FEDERAL JUDICIARY WITH HIS PEOPLE, who will then change the course of OUR national history, and heritage of religious liberty, by re-writing American history as they issue their decisions, which is how the history of Constitutional law is written here in OUR America, by judges!

And this is a pretty slick gambit, when you think on it, since "dis-establishment" of the church happened under the "Articles of Confederation", when each state was sovereign unto itself, and so, could take action within its self as sovereign, to do that, which was to rid "society" of the control of a small group of priests!

At the time of dis-establishment, of course, the church could have the civil authorities try people for heresy, which severely restricted one's right to free expression, if your free expression was going to get you burned at the stake on the orders of some priest!

Thomas Jefferson himself was for dis-establishment of the church, which was a parsitic thing, living off of the people's taxes, but providing nothing to the people in return!

NO REVISING OF AMERICAN HISTORY to put the "CHURCH" back on the public payroll! 

NO BIASED AND PREJUDICED CONSERVATIVE JUDGES in OUR America, please!

Pass it along!

Thank you!

And to tell your Senator, click on this url, now:

http://www.congress.org

In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The biggest threat to America in 1800: outgoing conservative President John Adams' attempt to revoke the Bill of Rights before the ink was dry with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and antidisestablishmentarianism. Biggest threat in 2000: incoming Resident George Bushs attempt to revoke the Bill of Rights with the Patriot Act (OK, that was in 2001, but you get my point,) and antidisestablishmentarianism. And they talk about the founding fathers....

Edit to add: I actually clicked on the link before I remembered that after contacting a number of Senators and one Representative, the only one from whom I have yet to receive a response are Senator Clinton and BOTH of my own Senators, who have received by far the most contact. I've gotten apologetic notes from Boxer and Reid explaining that they can't provide a specific response to non-constituents due to volume. I can't even get that from Cornyn and Kay, and I AM a constituent. So, for whom would ya'll say they work? I'll stick to writing Senators from OTHER states; they represent me better, and want to more.

This post has been edited by Morambar in TX: May 16 2005, 01:04 AM

[Morambar in TX]

One of the points of this discussion with this man was a statement that he made about his daughter, an honors student at a local high school, who did not know we were ever at war with Viet Nam, BECAUSE THEY DON'T TEACH THAT IN HIGH SCHOOL HISTORY, at least up here, where she went to school, in Niskayuna, New York, near Schenectady, just west of Albany!

I should let this go because

1) I took AP American History in TX, not NY, and

2) It was fifteen years ago,

but, in fairness, we weren't that we were at war with Vietnam because, despite being involved in armed hostilities with them for a length of time similar to what has passed since I sat in that class, we WEREN'T at war with them, we just sent folks like you over there to kill and be killed by them. To my knowledge, Congress hasn't declared a war since 8 December, 1945, and for good reason. Why we and they allow Presidents to fight undeclared wars is a good question.

We did cover Vietnam rather extensively, though perhaps they'll be some bleed through for me, since the Academic Decathlon history topic that year was the sixties. I remember a question about where Kent State happened, the fact that most didn't know the answer, and the fact that those that did knew because of CSN&Y, not the eductational system. Just another in a long line of examples of how liberals tend to know history better than conservatives who try revising it (usually why they're liberals.)

If you see the fella again, you might tell him that little story, and ask him why, if he agrees with us liberals that the educational system is in such a moribund state, why the Resident doesn't fund NCLB. Or why his solution to the problem is not to build and modernize schools, PAY TEACHERS A LIVING WAGE (how many Masters holders do you know making <$30,000 after five years who AREN'T teachers?) and provide more and better educational resources to kids, but to facilitate the closing of schools and the dismissal of teachers. We've all heard the old adage: "those who know do; those who can't teach" but has anyone (or any conservative) ever asked why? Put another way: todays schools may be responsible for the ignorance of that fellas daughter; what's his excuse?

[Morambar in TX]

But it is, to use the more modern (George Lakoff) term for it, a "frame."

It's a "frame" in more ways than one. Same old Republican garbage: "our actions are your fault!" How can one argue with something so irrational?

[Morambar in TX]

I regard dollars as I do toilet paper.

First, you NEVER WANT TO RUN OUT.

Second, you always want to have enough to last you until you can get more, or if your getting more days are over, then for the rest of your life.

Any more than that just takes up space. It is of no use.

Very astute, particularly the last part. This "too much is not enough" culture is destroying the country and the world.

The biggest thing I got out of the article, btw, is a reminder of what we already knew: wealth is a function of education, but education is, in its turn, a function of wealth, and thus it's a self fulfilling prophecy. The current climat in America just exacerbates the problem: we are told the solution to outsourcing jobs is "better education" but it's hard to pay for college when you're poor (which is why I'm not there) and it's also difficult to make it to school when your time is all spent trying to feed your family, whether you're a minor or not. Most of the creature comforts PERCEIVED to have improved the lives of the middleclass are illusory; they remain for as long as their employment and ability to pay the interest on debt, as the article relates.

Meanwhile, the folks that have it all want more, and if the liquidation of America will destroy it, well, what part of America are Switzerland and the Bahamas in? If the value of the dollar sinks through the floor as a result of borrowing and debt, that's not where their wealth is anyway, right? For us, the prosperity of America is essential to both our personal well-being and our patriotism; to them, Americas success is a liability.

[theglobalchinese]

Gunfire continues in Uzbekistan USA Today

[Livyjr]

In other words, the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

Perhaps it should really be said that it is the way, or manner, in which things ALWAYS CHANGE, that remains the same!

Change, Morambar, is constant, CONSERVATIVES and their attempts to have it be otherwise, to the contrary!

Depending upon who you listen to, and how you apply the "model", there are perhaps five generations to a "rotation", where the last generation "rotates back", in essence, in order, and becomes the "first, again, and so, a pattern is said to repeat, and over expanses of history, that is indeed observable!

The trick for us, here in OUR America, as I see it, and of course, this is only my view, is to be able to discern future trends in OUR America, now, when they are in their formative states, and so, be able to be a positive influence on the seeds of those future trends now, by the force of OUR character, and by OUR will to effect positive change down here on earth, during OUR individual lifetimes, without expectation of gain!

This forum now gives us that opportunity, and I think that it is now incumbent upon us, and especially your generation, Morambar, to figure out how to use this forum as an INTELLIGENT POLITICAL FORUM, which means not only making a statement about out-going "conservative" John Adams in 1800, but perhaps developing that thought so that someone else would even know what it was in the first place!

Don't assume that your points are obvious is what I am saying, Morambar!

If you have an insight into history, that "insight" is not automatically universal, and so, you should spend some time on development of what your theme really is, and how it might educate us today as to a potential threat to OUR liberty, tomarrow!

People don't know American history, Morambar, and so, you should not assume that they do.

Instead, you should use American history as a pallet upon which to paint vivid pictures of what life in OUR America has really been like down through the years since the days of OUR nation's founding back in the 1770's.