I Remember When…again

These blogs I write are for you …they are things I remember and may serve in some small way a doorway to the past long after I am gone….

In 1968 I was appointed city manager of New Smyrna Beach. During the course of events I was reunited with Harold Cole, founder and president of Truxmore Industries. We first became acquainted in Princeton, WVa. He was a traveling salesman for a truck building corporation and made a lot of money..enough to start his own company. He specialized in garbage trucks and had a plant in Richmond, Va.

In New Smyrna he presented the city with a side loading unit at a modest price to get us started on his system. It worked well and we bought more. Some of my ideas were used in the trucks he later manufactured. We became close friends and June and I often shared dinner at his house. We also visited him in Richmond and toured his factory.

Harold liked New Smyrna and built a mansion on the beach (north side).  During Race Week he was host to the sister of the Shah of Iran. Many Iranians were in Daytona Beach taking flying lessons at Embry-Riddle, part of the state department’s policy to prop up the Shah militarily in his troubled land. We had a feast….Oysters and crab claws flown in from Chesapeake Bay, shrimp, steak and lots of booze.

I found the Iranians to be a warm and friendly people and am dismayed that our relations have soured since the revolution . I still believe today that most of the ordinary people of Iran like Americans. The religious nuts who have taken over the country rule on uneasy terms with the populace.

I Remember When

My grandmother Davis was a republican….not the run-of-mill republican, but a mover and shaker in her small community. She was an organizer, a school teacher and the mother of nine children. In those days everybody practiced birth control…one birth at a time….and it is impossible to say how many miscarriages she had because no one spoke about it.

So as her children grew they became republicans and the grandchildren became republicans. I do not know why but that was the way it was, No one questioned it until my dad married Gladys Davis, and he was a democrat. I remember the spirited talks between my dad and grandma Davis. Dad, who grew up in mining towns in southern West Virginia, was an avid democrat who supported the coal miners and even fought with them in the battle of Blair mountain when they tried to organize a union in Logan county. He cut timber as a contractor for the mines.

When I was a young man I was employed by the Charleston Daily Mail as a writer. It was a republican newspaper and I felt right at home with their position and I registered as a republican. It was a part time job and I attended Morris Harvey college under the GI Bill of Rights. While in college I shared classes with Bob Byrd from Sophia. He was a democrat and expressed some puzzlement as to why I was a republican. I did not have an explanation but I also began to wonder why. Bob later ran for the US Senate and served our country well until his early nineties when he died.

I will always remember Bob as a kind and generous person who liked me well enough to offer his car whenever I wanted to take June for a Sunday drive. I had sold my car to pay for our first born and rode the bus to and from work and/or college. We were very poor and lived in Washington Manor, a low income unit.

When we moved to Florida in 1955 for a better paying job as a writer with the Lakeland Ledger I took with me the many memories I had of Bob Byrd and his thoughtfulness and I thought this may be the way democrats function…and I liked it. In fact, I registered as a democrat and hoped in some small way that I could be a better person….one who cared for others.

In Lakeland we started a new life and a new attitude. I looked for ways to help others and noted that the old Morris Memorial hospital was in sad shape. Patient were lined up in the hallways waiting for beds and it was always overcrowded. I suggested in an article that the community needed a new hospital but was told the people would not vote a tax on themselves and that I was wasting my time. I persisted and when an election was called for a general obligation bond issue it passed by a large majority. A new hospital was constructed which later became a regional medical center for Central Florida. I was convinced that people are willing to tax themselves for necessary improvements. On reflection I believe that being a democrat helped that process along.

The War on Women

Republicans flushed with success in many states have just shot themselves in the foot by attempting to deny women the right to control their bodies via birth control, and a host of other demeaning mandates. As a result both republican and democratic women have expressed outrage.

I predict that democrats will win by landslides in many states that have been GOP dominated.

The November election will return our president to office for another four years.

A time for action

President Obama is casting around for a position that will get him re-elected for a second term….and it is staring him in the face, if he will only act .

When he ran for election he promised me and millions of other voters that he would get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He has not and he is losing the support of those who put him in office.  What should have been his first objective was moved to the rear of the line and replaced with health care, etc. Now his aim is to create jobs and protect medicare and social security, all worthy programs but not the first need we wanted so desperately.

The two wars he inherited from the Bush administration has drained our coffers. Iraq cost us more than a trillion dollars. The war in Afghanistan is funding a corrupt government and millions are being wasted funding the building of infrastructures in that land…money that is sorely needed in our own country. What’s more, their people do not want our support and they want us to get out. The US has lost its objective and we are not winning the hearts of the Afgans. In fact, they hate us, and have said so. The US must get out immediately.

President Obama is losing his base support simply because he has not done what he had promised when he ran for election. the polls show his drift is  downward and it will continue unless he fulfills his pledge to the American people.  It is time for action now.

The aliens are winning

In these troubled times it is apparent that the minds of Americans have been taken over by aliens. This is particularly true of members of the tea party, who have an unrealistic view of what government is all about.

It is apparent they are angry over job loss, federal debt, a black president and the thought that they just may be wrong about the religious belief system they embraced years ago. It is a nagging fear to hear that this world was not born 5,000 years ago and the God they profess to love may not return the favor.

The newest information we have on aliens creates a climate that suggests god was never real and that we just made him up as a sop for those without hope. Yes aliens are real and they have been on this earth long before Baptist were born. What’s more aliens may be in charge without ours knowledge or consent. Perhaps they have even brainwashed our politicians to such extent that we are on the road to self extinction.  Yes, the aliens are winning.

Who can you believe?

Florida Governor Rick Scott is the typical republican who believes that government should be small as possible and stay out of the people’s business. That’s ok with me but I find a lot of  fuzzy thinking when it comes to the real deal.

Our esteemed leader has signed a bill that requires welfare folks to submit to a drug test so they will not use taxpayer’s money for a “hit”.  It’s the same thing we have seen in the past when people used food stamps to buy tobacco and booze.  We can agree that it is not the right use of our money but it flies in the face of the republican creed to stay out of other’s business. We also find this strange attitude with the abortion issue, in which the republicans try to mandate how women should manage a crisis in their lives.

Mr. GOP, I have news for you. You cannot have it both ways. Do not talk out of both sides of your collective mouths. If you want to downsize government, that includes staying out of private  domains. #end

In defence of Weiner

Just about all of the news for the past four days has been about Rep, Weiner's picture on Twitter and thepublic should be sick of it by now. For those few who may not know, a photo of a penis was sent out for public view, reportably one belonging to Weiner. He says he cannot say with certitude that it is apicture of his penis, but it occurs to me that lack of certitude can only mean that he has had a photo taken of his penis.  If that had not happened in the past he would know with "certitude" that it was not his.

In defence of Weiner I must point out that his name is so suggestive of a penis that it is no wonder that he would have taken a picture of it. So let the matter rest, news media.

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Corruption here and abroad

We Americans are so caught up in correcting corruption in other countries that we have ignored a more pressing problem at home.   Our system of government is more corrupt than most because we have paved over the obvious and have deceived ourselves into believing we are the good guys and all the others are at fault.  The current conversation on the airways deals with the problems in Libya and what we can do tohelp the poor citizens achieve a more stable government. But what about us?

Our elected representatives have been bought by the millions being pumped into their "campaigns" by those with a heafty wallet.  One of the most blatant examples is the Koch brother empire which sends millions into politicl campaigns in order to secure a strong voice in Congress,  And the sad part of this whole fiasco is that many representatives see nothing wrong with taking money from special interests in order be elected. It is the American way.  As a result we have a Congress that listens to those who finance them instead of the millions of working people who make up the middle class. These people comprise the engine that drives the wheel of commerce yet they are ignored. 

Unless we can devise a way to correct this problem we are headed for an autocracy and "democracy" will be nothing but a faint whisper of the past. The present group (both democrats and republicans) are so entrenched in their thinking that working people are facing drastic reductions in social programs, including medicare, social security and good working conditions.

The long battle the unions have fought over the years to improve job safety and wages will be lost if the monied class has its way.  They obviously have nothing but contempt for working people and it shows in many ways during the election process. Frankly I am puzzled as to why anyone would vote against their best interests, yet we see it at every ballot.  It is perhaps our own fault  because we have been content to let others do the heavy thinking when it comes to sorting out the mess of candidates who offer themselves up to public service.

I would favor a drastic correction to this unbalance in government by changing our constitution to provide for a more orderly way of selection.  Let us consider a form of government patterned after the city manager system, in which a president is picked based on his (or her) qualifications rather than heavilyfinanced fampaigns designed to sway (and deceive) the voters. It is something to consider.