Normalization of Relations with Cuba is Long Overdue

President Obama is (finally) taking steps to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba. Why is this a big deal? We have normal diplomatic relations with our World War II enemies Germany and Japan. We have normal diplomatic relations with our Cold War enemies Russia and China.

The problem, of course, is that we have a community of Cuban expatriates in southern Florida who bitterly oppose this move. But frankly, those who oppose it most vehemently, those who actually lost their land or businesses in the Cuban Revolution, are mostly over 70 years old. Their children and grandchildren, and other younger Cuban-Americans do not feel the same way. Most of them would like to be able to exchange visits with their relatives in Cuba.

I worked as a translator at Fort McCoy, WI when some of the Cubans who participated in the Mariel Boatlift were there during the summer of 1980. Because the United States did not have normal diplomatic relations with Cuba, they were considered political refugees. Had they been from any other country in Latin America or the Caribbean, they would have been considered economic migrants, and returned to their country of origin. Not to mention that Fidel Castro would not have been able to send along folks from Cuba’s prisons and mental hospitals.

Our lack of diplomatic relations with Cuba allowed Castro to “play us” in 1980. It made no sense then and it makes even less sense now! What makes sense now is for the United States to position itself to be able to influence the political direction Cuba takes in the post-Castro era. For that we need to have normal political relations with Cuba. That’s the big deal!

Tech Support

Back in the 1990s, when AOL (America Online) was still a significant ISP (Internet Service Provider), I took a job doing phone tech. support for a company I’ll call TelCo in Madison WI. We were sworn to secrecy about who we were providing support for, so hopefully enough time has passed that they won’t come after me.

I didn’t work there very long, in fact I did their two week training and then lasted about two more weeks before I quit ahead of being fired. I don’t remember much about the training, except that the point of emphasis was to get off the phone with a client as quickly as possible. Calls of less than a minute were good; calls of over five minutes were unacceptable. I later learned that if a call went over five minutes your supervisor would come to your desk and glare at you with as angry a look as they could muster, until you hung up, and then chew you out. Fortunately my supervisor Julie was actually a decent person, so it never came to shouting or actual verbal abuse.

My problem with doing tech. support the TelCo way was that I really was interested in solving the client’s problem, whatever it was, and had enough knowledge of personal computer (PC) hardware and software (from previous jobs) to have a shot at fixing many problems presented by the clients. Of course there are those folks who are hopeless as PC users. A story I’ve heard, which is probably more urban legend than truth, is about a user who called tech. support to say the monitor on his desktop PC had gone dark. The techie asks him to check that the monitor is both plugged in to an outlet and connected to his computer. The client responds that he can’t because it is too dark under his desk. The techie then asks if he can turn on a light or use a flashlight to check the cables, and the client responds, “ I could go look for a flashlight, but the power is off here so it’s hard to find your way around!”

I never had a client that clueless, and, frankly, most folks I talked to had legitimate problems – though most had nothing to do with the AOL software. The problem that got me “fired” is a case in point.

JoAnn called to say that her PC was “stuck” at a Microsoft Word error message screen. First names only was another TelCo rule; I’m Dan, by the way. She had turned off and restarted the PC several times and it always booted normally but went right back to the error screen.

Quite coincidentally, due to personal experience, I knew exactly what the problem was and how to fix it (but not in under a minute or even 5 minutes).

An engineer designing IBM desktop PCs had come up with a new feature the company called the Resume feature. When enabled in the BIOS of a PC, this feature allows the user to turn off the computer’s power switch at any time, then turn it back on later and return right back to where they were, with all the applications and documents that had been open, open again to exactly the same application screen and line in any open documents.

Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? The computer stores a record of exactly what applications and documents are open automatically, so you can be doing your budget in an Excel spreadsheet in one window, while working on the next great American novel in another window, and when you’re done for the day you just turn off the power switch, secure in the knowledge that when you flip the switch of that PC tomorrow morning, everything will be right where you left it.

Obviously, this is the scenario the IBM engineer envisioned, and convinced his colleagues to buy in to. Great right? What could possibly go wrong?

Let me tell you. If any one of your open applications or even Windows itself should encounter a fatal error condition, your PC is stuck right there, forever, unless and until you turn off the Resume feature in its BIOS.

So, I talked JoAnn, a competent PC user who didn’t know what a BIOS was, through the fix. You turn off the machine, then turn it back on and immediately hold down the F8 key (sometimes it is F3, but hers was F8). Eventually, you will be taken to a screen labeled B-I-O-S. Using your keypad to navigate (make sure the NUM-LOCK light is on) through the different BIOS screens, find the Resume feature, select it and turn it off! Then navigate to the screen that lets you save your BIOS settings, do the save and exit.

After that the PC booted to the Windows desktop, JoAnn thanked me, and I hung up.

My supervisor, Julie, had showed up at my desk when I was in the middle of explaining what a BIOS was and why JoAnn needed to go there to fix her PC. It took a couple tries with F8 to get into the BIOS, and more time figuring out how to navigate in her BIOS, and changing the Resume setting also took some back and forth. So by the time I hung up, Julie had been standing over me scowling for about 10 minutes.

To her credit, she did not bother to chew me out. She just said, “You’re going to want to resign before next week so you won’t have being fired on your record.” I thanked Julie, finished the night and quit the next day.

Congressional Republicans Militantly Threaten To Do Nothing!

Can you poison a well that is dry? Congressional Republicans accuse President Obama of "poisoning the well" because he has (finally) decided to do something unilaterally about the nation's immigration mess.

What are these angry folks going to do about it? It sounds like they plan to do what they have been mostly doing since Obama was first elected, and certainly all they have done since his re-election 2 years ago, obstruct anything Mr. Obama tries to do and, other than that, do a whole lot of nothing!

Since they don't like what the President is doing to try to clean up the immigration mess, why don't they try passing some legislation for a change? I find it hard to believe that the American public will continue to re-elect them to keep doing nothing and blaming the President for it! They don't have Congressional Democrats to blame anymore, since Republicans control both houses.

Here's hoping that I'm wrong, and Congressional Republicans have a big portfolio of legislation ready to introduce as soon as the new session begins. But I'm not holding my breath.

Crossword

Mom was a farm wife. When they coined the term ‘hard working’, she was who they had in mind. But the last couple years of her life she spent mostly in an easy chair in front of the T.V. Congestive heart failure robbed her of the strength to walk.

The daily crossword puzzle in the newspaper was always a favorite activity. Not even her failing heart could keep her from it. The last time I saw Mom, before she passed, she was sitting in her chair, seemingly half asleep, ignoring the T.V. Unexpectedly, she sprung into action, grabbing a pen from a nearby table and folded newspaper from somewhere in the easy chair. She wrote a word on the puzzle and returned pen and paper to their places just as quickly! That’s the way with crossword puzzles, you have to write that word when it pops into your head!

John Doe probe of Walker recall proves only one thing!

What the John Doe probe of the 2011-2012 recall elections proves about Walker and his team is that they explicitly coordinated with so-called independent interest groups (501c4 groups), especially Wisconsin Club for Growth, to arrange large donations from right-wing individuals and groups. Such donations would have been illegal at the time if made directly to the Walker campaign.

But, the truth is, we have no meaningful campaign finance laws any more. Existing laws are so easy to circumvent it’s a joke. So, in all probability, Walker and his aids cannot be convicted of any wrongdoing. And the only thing Republican operatives have to say about it is, “So what, the Democrats are doing the same thing.”

So the $700,000 from Gogebic Taconite was not a bribe, just a shrewd business investment. And the fact that the company later won approval from the Legislature and Walker to streamline regulations for a massive iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin, is mere coincidence?

Get used to it. We are no longer a democracy; we are a plutocracy, which means “pay to play” is now the norm. The John Doe probe proves only that neither Wisconsin nor the United States have any campaign finance laws worthy of the name.

My Political Philosophy

Recently I read somewhere that it is important to know what you favor in terms of solutions to political problems, not just what you are against. Otherwise you are not a political critic, just a complainer.

In recent years I find that I'm mostly expressing opposition to political events I don't like, such as the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling or the passage of Governor Walker's Act 10. So I decided to spend some time thinking about what I am for (in favor of) in the political arena, my political philosophy.

To give myself some guidance, I purchased a copy of "Chomsky on Anarchism", a series of essays and interviews by Noam Chomsky. Note that I would never label myself an Anarchist or advocate of Anarchism due to the very negative reaction the word (either form) elicits in the United States. But Chomsky is comfortable with both Anarchism and the closely related term Libertarian Socialism, as describing his political perspective. I find both his vision and his goals for human society to be quite compatible with my own.

My core political beliefs start with a Winston Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Some take this as a cynical, even bitter, statement. I interpret it as just the hard-headed truth. When the people decide a question with their votes, they don't always get it right, but that is certainly preferable to some dictator deciding.

The one major problem with democracy is that the majority may decide to persecute a minority group, such as when the majority in certain states of the U.S. made it near impossible for minority African-Americans to vote. As a democratic republic, which recognizes certain rights as applicable to all citizens, even when they are in the minority, the national government eventually stepped in to enforce voting rights for all adult citizens. So my preferred form of government is a democratic republic which protects the rights of all citizens, not just those of the majority.

The United States is a democratic republic, at least when it comes to voting rights. But that is far from the complete story. The State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941, delivered by President Franklin Roosevelt described "four freedoms" which he considered as essential to obtain for all people in all the nations of the world in order to ensure lasting peace. The four freedoms are (1) freedom of speech and expression, (2) freedom of religion, (3) freedom from want, and (4) freedom from fear.

The first 2 of these are covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, though recent Supreme Court rulings have transformed "freedom of speech" into a license for rich people and corporations (legally created people) to dominate political expression with their money.

"Freedom from want", which Roosevelt further defined as a healthy peacetime life, may have been a bit of a stretch. After all, I want many things I will most likely never have!

Seriously, "freedom from want" can be seen as justifying programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and National Health Insurance. One might restate it, much more modestly, as the freedom to pursue a reasonably healthy and potentially productive life without starving to death or dying for lack of access to treatment of diseases and conditions curable by the current state of medicine.

Even this very basic level of "freedom from want" - to the extent that it may currently exist - is threatened, even in a wealthy democracy like the United States, by those on the political right who seek to dismantle what they refer to as the "welfare state".

"Freedom from fear", which Roosevelt further defined as a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world, is certainly a long way from being achieved. Maybe the pure version of this freedom was forever doomed with the advent of nuclear weapons!

I guess "freedom from fear" is what some have used to justify our huge and powerful armed forces. But our idea of defense is somebody else's act of physical aggression. So the closest we ever got to "freedom from fear" was mutual assured destruction (back in the cold war years)! Today, the world seems infinitely more dangerous and less predictable.

But I'm not without hope. Democratic, libertarian socialism flowers like a cactus in the desert. I see co-ops of many kinds, farmers' markets and community sponsored agriculture (CSA) farms as examples of people organizing themselves in positive ways at the community level. I buy my food at a co-op, do my banking at a co-op (aka. credit union), and get my health care through a co-op.

Civil disobedience was rampant in the protests against Act 10. Some folks were mistreated by authorities, but nobody was killed. Read your labor history, many have been killed trying to assert and defend their democratic rights over time!

Democracy continues to be the only form of government that gives us any hope of eventually becoming a kinder and gentler world. We learn from great leaders in the politics of social justice including Ghandi, King and Mandela.

The struggle continues and will continue for many more generations. The times they are a-changin', always!

Plutocracy Now!

de-moc´ra-cy : noun, 1) government by the people. 2) political and social equality in general; belief in this.

plu-toc´ra-cy : noun, 1) government by the rich. 2) the influential rich.

Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission, January 21, 2010

The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting political independent expenditures by corporations, associations, or labor unions.

McCutcheon versus Federal Election Commission, April 3, 2014

The Supreme Court struck down limits in federal law on the overall campaign contributions the biggest individual donors may make to candidates, political parties and political action committees.

The United States transition from democracy to plutocracy is nearly complete. Rich people and corporations can spend as much money as they want to purchase the government that they want.

The only thing left is to find a way to quietly stop all the "little people" from voting. Currently too much money is spent getting them to vote against their own interests. This is inefficient, and since they can't afford to get their ideas heard in today's expensive media market anyway, it is silly to allow them to vote.

Remembering Mom

My mother passed away December 29th. For the last couple years of her life she was almost exclusively confined to her chair, a wheel chair, and her bed. But that is not how I choose to remember her.

I will remember her as the hardest working person I’ve ever known, and one of the most disciplined. She was a farm wife, which means she was a full partner with my father in the operation of the family farm - sharing fully in all the work, but receiving little of the recognition (such as it was). She drove tractor in the fields. She washed and sanitized the milking machines, bulk tank and other milk house equipment. She could feed and milk the cows if she needed to, but Dad usually did that.

In the non-farm realm, she did just about everything. She gave birth to and raised 10 children. Included with that were cooking, cleaning, raising a large garden (from which she annually canned and froze an impressive amount of produce), baking bread and cakes, sewing (both mending and making clothes), decorating (including flowers inside and out).

Some tasks that fell to Mom would fall in the "farm-related" category, such as going to town (often a couple towns down the road) in search of replacement parts for whatever machine was currently broken down - inevitably at the time it was most needed. Another farm-related task was keeping down the population of pigeons by shooting them when they perched on the roofs of the barns or silos. Mom was a crack shot with her 22 caliber rifle. The legend that she once killed 2 pigeons with a single shot is true - I witnessed it!

Another legendary story about Mom is that shortly after she married Dad, he had her go out to the field with him to try to kill some woodchucks. He had her drive the tractor while he used the 22 rifle to shoot at the woodchucks. Within a short time of having her around he figured out that she was better with the rifle than he was, so they switched roles, and had better luck killing woodchucks!

To say my Mom sewed is a huge understatement. She mended old clothes and made new clothes using patterns which she purchased and customized. She accumulated boxes and boxes of patterns! The new clothes were primarily for her daughters and herself. She made new matching dresses for the first day of school in the fall, for each of her daughters going to school that year. I've seen the "first day of school" pictures, starting with just one daughter and continuing up to five daughters, all in a row and wearing identical dresses (her first 5 children were all female). Of course, as they grew she also taught her daughters to sew! All seven daughters and one son eventually became proficient.

Later on she became a prolific quilter, making at least one quilt for each child and grandchild. She showed off her products at quilt shows and county fairs, winning more than her share of awards over the years. Her quilts and those she made together with the other members of her Homemakers club were frequently auctioned off for charitable causes.

In addition to sewing she also knitted, crocheted, embroidered, etc. When her children were in primary and secondary school she kitted them all mittens for Christmas, every year! There were also knitted hats and sweaters. While in college, I remember being on a plane and the flight attendant complimenting me on my sweater - which Mom had made for me.

Mom was well known among her children's primary school teachers for her fruit cakes. I realize that in the many years since, holiday fruit cakes have not just fallen out of favor, but become a standard laugh line - as in: "There is really only a single fruit cake that continues to be regifted year after year". However, back then, a well-made fruit cake was highly valued (really!), and my Mom's were legendary.

Mom was a 4-H leader, and for a time ran her own 4-H club, the Lucky Clovers. We used to meet at the Town Hall.

Did I mention that Mom was the Town Clerk for the rural township in which our farm was located? She inherited the job from my Dad's mom, and served for almost 50 years, eventually passing the job on to one of her daughters. She remained involved, unofficially, in township government until her death. What I most remember is that, during the Christmas season she would work late into the night calculating the Town's tax roll - since the tax bills needed to go out in time to give folks the opportunity to pay them (or pay half) in the current tax year if they chose to. I also remember her early calculators. They were heavy enough to give you a hernia!

Mom was a legendary baker. We had home-made bread and biscuits all the time when I was growing up. From her mother-in-law she learned to make Bohemian traditional breads including Houska and Kolache (which we called Kolachas and Kukan). Her pies were incredible. My personal favorite was blueberry, but she made pies of all  kinds from rhubarb to banana cream to pumpkin, with a flaky crust few restaurants can match!

Also, Mom was chief organizer and communicator in our family. She shopped for our birthday and Christmas gifts. Later, as we scattered around the state, the country and beyond, she sent letters and birthday cards to us. She had an incredible knack for getting those birthday cards to each of us on time regardless of where we might be - including such destinations as El Salvador, Central America; Arecibo, Puerto Rico; and Paris, France.

Are you impressed yet? Mom was not a great person or a famous one. She falls into that much less recognized category of good, hard-working people. Dad used to say, "Nobody will ever do for you what your mother already has." In my case he was even more right than he knew.

Bye Mom, I already miss you a bunch. I hope you are getting a good rest and having a beer with Dad.