Part V of VI

The Truth & Its Consequences

Allow US to repeat & recall that none of the great industrialists ever seriously tried, to create an ever larger Middle Class with sufficient income for spending which would assure the best, most assured & lastingly – healthy economy which would also make the rich richer without depriving the majority. That optimum condition would remove any fear of a catastrophic end of our democracy, our capitalism & our Nation.

I repeat: It was Labor alone & by itself which made the USA a lasting success a permanent Great Empire, a relatively free super power in all respects for sometime. And it was the meanness, the greed & the stupidity of most of our entrepreneurs, their jealousies & their evil intentions, which determined that only the captains of industry should enjoy life to the hilt, the hilt of their swords, & that only they had created the Constitution, the Union of their political, social, economic glory – that Labor was only a tiny cog in their machinery; that they could create an overabundance of jobseekers. They could fence off the poor & wretched former owners of half of this Country but let in secretly, on the slyest, as many of those starving as strikebreakers & perpetual threat to general security.

Only working men put their lives, the life of their family & the Life of the Land at risk to our Nation. With a little but decent give & take & greater real democracy, we can revive this kind of privileged economy to make it real for US All, for our admirers & for our deadly foes too. Let all the antiquated Muslim Arabs know this Fact of Life, Livelihood & Love of Humanity.

Lies cover up history’s great disappearing acts. Greater lies lie entombed before rectified by historians. Who & what made the USA a great country? Corrupted teachers tell already the grade schoolers that the famous Captains of Industry created a great & powerful Nation to be proud of, until recently the only superpower which could boast of a very large & very – well – to – do middle class. Sheer lies, abominal untruth, a criminal cover-up of what was good, great, permissive & even politically mighty – for a long while.

Sure most of the world’s greatest invented for US alone what made many of them rich & socially, economically & political riding on the high horse. Certainly the factory constructors, the railroad entrepreneurs, the mining undertakers, canal builders & ship owners created hundreds of millions for themselves & some of them their billions. But they all hated to pay their work-slaves a living wage. They rather employed their children to enrich themselves even more & also enjoy their tiny workforce as sexual objects while fathers often remained unemployed or even abused in workhouses, church-almhouses or debtors’ prisons.

After too much sinning against their people of the lower class, some of the worst characters had enough control over the federal government, to do a few good things which helped many to survive peacetime.

But the workers’ union bashing, murdering organizers, jailing identified unionists, mauling & killing them by paid hoodlums like Pinkerton Guards, state militias of the middle – classmen & even the Federal Army until the worst labor & labor union hater, Henry Ford, had problems keeping in step with General Motors & all the other daring investors in the motor car phase of our civilization.

Ford would have been the last to recognize a union or allow them to organize Labor for greater impact on their work. When he paid $5 a day while his wealthiest competition got away with $1 as the day’s reward for 12 – 16 hours of hard labor, he meant all his workers to be able to buy a car of his own handiwork. The gimmick worked. Henry got richer faster. His employee could almost make a living, have his family fed & live in cheap company housing. That led to more massive mass production, more spending, with the entire economy off to a better restart, when even the shopkeepers had no middle class income & allures yet.

Sidney Hillman (1887 – 1946) arrived from Lithuania not to tempt again the Tsar’s hatred for labor organizers. A Chicago garment worker, he led the strikers against Hart, Schaffner & Mast as an upcoming leader of U.G.W., United Garment Workers”. Needed in N.Y., his activities led to the creation of “Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America”.

An enemy of the sweatshops with long working hours on 6 days at low pay, he agitated for the 40 – hr week & for a generally accepted & publicized minimum wage scale. F.D.R.’s New Deal hired him as labor counselor for the “National Recovery Act”.

After W.W. II he helped found the CIO, “Congress of Industrial Relations”, while it antagonized the less radical AFL, “Am. Fed. of Labor”, as being too tame. Shortly after, he helped to give birth to the “World Federation of Trade Unions”. He died a sudden death. Where are you now that the weak U.S. trade unions need you again?

George Meany (1894 – 1980) wasn’t far behind as the more radical successor of Samuel Gompers (1850 – 1924) whose British lay – back, unpolitical labor love made him a cigar maker in New York & a union organizer. He founded & confounded the AFL the “American Federation of Labor” (along with a few lax allies).

President of the AFL for 37 years long years, in W.W. I & its peace, he was more an American patriot than a warrior for Labor rights. Meany was slightly moving the movement to the center & when uniting with the C.I.O. (Congress of Industrial Organizations), he was also demanding better pay, also health & retirement to be added for the good of still underpaid workers & their family woes.

Meany thought I was anti-Labor when I suggested he demand an additional wage – increase in bonds & shares of the employing corporations. He suspected me of enmity because I was never allowed by San Francisco trade unions to join them & share their better pay. As a teacher, I also never joined the meek American Teachers Association although I later represented it at an Idaho Conference. When Meany finally decided to follow my advice, the sharing corporations bribed him with watered stock which often turned into ditched water.

Robert Shanker radicalized N.Y. City’s Federation of Teachers. He tried to improve public schools with little success even as he became their National President.

Walter Reuther (1907 – 70) became the model of an honest dedicated & self-fulfilling labor leader. From 5 year of working for Henry Ford he dared working in the Soviet “Gorki Auto Fabrik”. Without him the United States Autoworkers, UAW, might not have co-ruled General Motors. He remained also a responsible & responsive plant co-producer at G.M. during WW II. Thereafter he easily qualified as President of U.A.W.

Still, he didn’t find it easy to deny Communists leadership roles when the UAW became a strong member of CIO. For the sake of Labor’s leadership, he tried hardest to rejoin the AFL. But he also quit again the larger union because of misunderstandings with President George Meany.

I met George only once when he ruled supreme over AFL. I thought he got plumb stuck in his plumbing union past. My suggestion of fighting for a profit-sharing plan instead of struggling against wage deduction during the lee-period when the Ayn Rand – Milton – Friedman – Ronald Reagan enemies of unions strove to abolish workers’ put-in in the administration. That was suspect to him. Only when it was too late, Meany let me know that he & his had missed a last opportunity at power – sharing. He was no meany but did feel a bit sorry for himself instead of having all laboring men & women at heart.

A strong letter of mine which my travel companion, one of President Ike’s col. lt. secretaries, laid before Ike 8 years too late almost convinced the expresident (on his way to his Gettysburg address) that he was wrong calling a national health insurance socialism. I remembered that he willfully delayed the statehood of Hawai’i because he insisted that the Australian Catholic, Harry Bridges who controlled the Longshoremen Union also presided over the fate of Hawai’i.

As an afterthought I wondered why I never joined a labor union. I had belabored that thought in different places & different time but always imagined that I was strongest standing alone as a talking & writing mechanism when there was a fight for fairness to be fought. These internet pages are late expressions of disgust with destroyers of a decent capitalism, a large middleclass, earning enough to support a great economy of a great Nation. I can think of no more savage barbarians & atrocious terrorists than President Reagans, Bush II, Dr. Frist, Gingrich, Milton Friedman & other disciples of the Russian – trained – Communist Ayn Rand.

Ford’s $5 a day for 8 – to 10 hour’s work was the beginning of Labor’s interest in good work & much work for the owners advantage. Only occasional sit – down strikes to force wage increases impeded a little the boast of proprietors of great productivity.

But all school text books for all levels of education preach the untruth. They lie when they repeat the old prevarication that the captains of industry made US wealthy, & that those stockholders, private entrepreneurs & partnerships created the large American middle class. I repeat: That is the eternal, hellish & damnable biggest lie.

All the above bosses desired & hired the cheapest available workers. If fathers wanted livable wages, the big ones hired kids, teenagers, poor girls & too often preschool slavekids of whitest skin. The father was good only for carrying his tots to factories & mines to be exploited there for 10 or 12 hours, 6 days a week & bodily humiliated & often raped.

The Homestead Act created some thousands of unemployed owners of ¼ section, up to 160 acres but most of them never paid off their small debts. What was meant to save Civil War veterans for pioneering duties didn’t end the woes of workmen who were always replaced by cheaper new immigrants.

It was only the daring & often deadly unionizing dedication of some radicals among immigrants which finally enforced improvement of workers semi-security. The sharp shooters among state troopers & private armies of Pinkerton Guards could not forever stop justified demands for freedom from fear.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election taught the 2 Hoovers that Unions were free to organize. The New Deal gave employment to many with no manual skills even if Keynes’s borrowing & spending theories made only for bare survival. Social Security was only meant as a safety net, so no deep depression could ever happen again because there would always be some spending money available to the unemployed & the retired, enough to keep our consumer economy breathing.

Then in World War II, even women by millions became unexpected wage owners, & men in the war industries made good & better money even if corrupt corporations started to earn billions instead their millions. But best of all was the Democratic struggle for the “G.I. Bill of Rights”. Quite a few million veterans got their monthly $75 while they trained in industrial schools or were educated in colleges.

This Great Act, so vigorously apposed by “Mr. Republican”, Senator Taft, became the greatest law which made ours the greatest land. In the beginning over 7 million better trained & best educated became teachers, supervisors, directors & well – paid citizens. Within a decade, we had millions who earned enough, had priority positions & could threaten the boss to start their business by themselves. Some 60% of the population began to feel like well-off & rather secure middle class persons.

Those who made plenty of money, forgot that Democrats had made them rich & became Republicans for most selfish reasons. They turned anti-labor union sufficiently to try to destroy all the rights trade unionists gave their lives for.

The Silver Lining?

After all, Robert Owen’s socialistic or utopian farming community in U.S.A. was a failure. In contrast, Christian Metz (1794 – 1861) must be considered a success. A carpenter of the German Rhineland, he reached into Pietism & pious revival. In Germany his groupies were considered “inspirationalists”.

Nearly a thousand of his religious followers found too little work on only 5000 acres in the Great Lake area. Their frugality had saved enough dough to buy 18,000 acres in Iowa. The new name, Amana Church Society, covered ever more communistic villages of unselfish dedication to God, hard work & Bible studies. To agriculture they added manufacturing. All was good; all did well until the Great Depression destroyed them & many more moneyed free enterprises. Regrounded as a joint stock corporation, they kept producing well-working appliances which were also affordable.

George Ripley (1802 – 80) was a Unitarian transcendentalist with sparks inside “the you & me” like Quakers. Since William Penn’s stab in America turned into profit & subject – making enterprise, Ripley tried his experiment with more goodwill. Near Boston he inspired friends & followers to agricultural commune. “Brook Farm”. In its form it was an elaborate imitation of the French Socialist, Charles Fourier. Great at the start, some parasites wanted to live in an Eden where others have to do all toil. 6 years long, Brook Farm pained. But Ripley helped Horace Greeley to edit his “NY Tribune” & took it over completely after heroic Greeley’s death after long, honorable fights against competition. Ripley had also taken the time to co-found Harper’s of which I became very fond after it got into Laphan’s superior guidance in our time.

Robert Ripley (1893 – 1940) was a Californian who also worked on publications & continued his odd ways by publishing the unspeakable “Believe it or Not”.

Horace Greeley (1811 – 72) made his politics the content of his “N.Y. Tribune” after literature & daily news didn’t make his “Gazzette” attractive to the masses. Although in Congress for one term, he suffered under old Republicans the way Hearst did under old-fashioned Democrats. But he made money enough to enjoy traveling & gave the world a piece of his mind.

John H. Noyes (1811 – 80) would have US believe that Christ’s second coming had recently happened. Thus some of US could use a holy life without worrying about livelihood. Fired by Yale or losing his preacher’s license, he secured his own survival by his Bible Communism & wife sharing commune of workers even while adultery was a severe crime. Only the richest were allowed to indulge. In the 19^th century, this John the Baptist established the “Oneida Community” which liberals called utopian. But when he would only allow the élite, himself included, to procreate the germ of life of the future, the USA was becoming a humming hive of Wasps. Only Canada was open to public rapists at that time.

Robert Owens (1801 – 77) had inherited from his good father Glasgow Cotton Mills & his social sentiments. Cooperatives, later the ideal of all the Scandinavian countries, tended to become socialistic. Together father & son, founded in 1825 the New Harmony Colony in Indiana. No labor but teaching was the son’s task. Within 2 years the good Scots fell victims to crooks & returned home for a while.

Then the son went back to New Harmony & helped it to carry on his public education ideas. Unbelievable, he was twice elected & the US House of Representatives as an important abolitionist, or in spite of it. This Scot became US diplomat in Naples where he revealed his enthusioam for Garibaldi, a most revolutionary character whose “exile” on his island north of Sardinia made idealistic real politician, Robert Owens, an ethical & spiritual thinker & writer.

All agricultural workers everywhere were mistreated in all respects. Local social souls tried their best to supply simple inexpensive success. In California, Governor Reagan helped his American grape growers who contributed their fortune to his election. So labor leader Cesare Chavez (1927 – 93) an Arizona – born Mexican, led the strike of the too – much – abused & too – little – paid grape pickers.

He founded the “National Farm Workers Association” which was soon a fighting segment of Chicanos & Filippinos as members of the AFL. His call for a national boycott took 5 years to meet some success. Partly it was the fault of the Teamsters Union which wanted the poorest as paying members but their affiliation with Reagan re-Publicans was a double – crossing institution. As said elsewhere, Reagan campaigned against infiltration of our borders by poor Mexicans but helped the big farm biz to hire thousands of “illegals” at wages below the minimum required for survival & nothing for health care, retirement pay & accident victims.

Cesare told me that he modeled his struggles for abused manual workers, especially those at stooped, labor on the activities of Mother Jones (Mary Harris). She had left the Cork Irishness just before the potato disaster. From Canada to US was a short but providential step. She became a lonely widow at 37 after the yellow fever took her husband & 4 kids. She lost what was left in the Chicago Fire. Dressing in clothes as a member of the revolting & outlawed “Knights of Labor”, she soon began organizing miners in Virginia & Colorado. Even at the ripe age of 89 she led strikes. Her fame mounted on the papers of Mother Jones magazines. Clever was the right man who dared following in her footsteps of courage, devotion to their cause & sacrificing is life in her good causes.

John L. Lewis (1880 – 1969), & Jimmy Hoffa , were equally daring but not unselfish like the 2 above. The lobbyist became the dictator of the “United Mine Workers of America” without remaining in the AFL. When the union of all trade unions was essential, he controlled the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). While often betraying his miners to the corporations, he went as far as betraying his nation during WW II. His speeches remained ferocious to his end & that of go – it – alone CIO.

Jimmy Hoffa (1913 – 75), too, played games with his followers & often sided with the Republican exploiters; even worse, he racketeered with Mafia & similar criminals. Just 20 of age, he helped organize the “International Brotherhood of Teemsters”. As president of it when 44 of age, he pushed out those who protested his corruption. Declared a criminal by a jury for 3 serious crimes, he only served a few years. His restoration was short-lived & his life too. Without a corpse, no autopsy no certainty. But the hatred of the Kennedys of him may be the solution to the 2 enigmas on both sides.

Like the Labor Unions, Ralph Nader made himself into a huge institution which tried & tried again to make US capitalism a bit more human, give it the appearance of some occasional honesty if not fairness in all its dirty deals. This is one Lebanese Arab who is a true American patriot. But like all the other “Muckrakers” before him, his condemnation of murder motorcars (“Unsafe at Any Speed”) led to legislation which industry kept circumventing. All his condemnatory books made him & his “Nader’s Raiders” many admirers. But no Republican Administration felt bound by partial politics of pity with Man & Nature.

An embittered Nader became his own obstructionists when he ran for the presidency, he knew he could never win. But he wilfully made his former allies & the Democratic Party the big loser. It seems that the Devil is not just in details but in charge of our entire structure.

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All our main Broadcasting enterprises, living entirely on the billions of capitalism’s advertizing “needs”, charity and sufferance, had their muckraking programs narrated by leading broads & other broadcasters. Teachers, Social Workers & people with hearts loved these hours of castigation of the evils of greed, over-charging & constructing tools of murder by shoddy materials. The regular warnings though of repair people in all sorely needed jobs was just considered name-calling. The big guys as the little ones who pretended that their wares, their work & whole whirl were wonderful were hardly ever fined, never jailed for cheating their customers by fake advertizing, fake handiwork & fake usury. Great are the muckrakers for pleasing the National Conscience. But where the profit motif is the only determinator, humanity descends back into the subrace of monkeyish primates. Could it be that our present – day muckrakers are paid for their indirect advertizing the availability of pseudo – repair – shop owners; if they are willing to do or undo what desperate consumers wanted to be fixed by fixers, all could add to the legitimate cost of carrying on life and livelihood.

The Great Depression depressed wages – fewer jobs, more & more unemployment & the old – new misery until the moron Hoover – Mellon financiers declared mental, economic & political bankruptcy.

But before all the leading, crest falling speculators, brokers & bankers had to commit suicide, the real Messiah had His First Coming. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the most trying from their fabulous Ivory League Colleges, F.D.R. made an obedient Congress legislate a chain of New Deal Trials & Errors & really saving grace, too. His only mistake was to kill off surplus pigs & burn some feed & food instead of feeding hungry school kids with them.

But the so – so – employed built roads, bridges, all the not affordable underpinnings of a recovering economy. We cannot discuss here all the great medium & negligible attempts of investing all non-existing cash, credit vouchers & ideas into jobs for survival although the Social Security Act was his masterpiece. In future, the injured, the permanently sick & the retirees did not have to starve to death. Their meager nest-egg would ensure that there could never again be a so-wretched Depression because there were to be millions of people to invest their small life insurance in bread, clothes & rent. This made a Democrat the greatest saver of our Nation, our Democracy & whatever capitalism the most evil among us would vote for.

Of greater impact though was F.D.R.’s freeing Labor from legal suppression by the old slavocracy which had taken over even the Union – North because of the eternal seniority of Confederate Senators & Members of the House.

Even under President Wilson, Henry Ford had to recognize Labor Unions whose power to press for higher wages kept growing by leaps & bounds. Through F.D.R. all bounds & binds were cut. The ever more powerful Labor Unions enforced wages which were high above those of “bourgeois” clerical workers. Within a few years, more than 10 million manual workers earned middle class pay & more than that. Strong Labor Unions got their President elected 4 times, even after war work doubled & tripled wages & salaries. Some thought that most Americans were Middle Class even when the Great War bombed its course to peace & unemployment.

But Congress had felt Democratic pressures & enacted the “G.I. Bill of Rights” under various memos & chapters. The gist of it was the gift of true middle class status of each of the ex-fighters if they went to study or endow themselves with training, all paid by US. Government, with cash left to raise a family but time left for studies while leaning on a broom or other supporting job devices. This greatest legislation made us 80% middle class.

The most conspicuous result was that those who were helped the most by taxpayers & boasted of the best job turned Republican. Their children too turned the tables on their benefactors, the Democratic Government & the Unions who fought for them. First some 25% called it conservative reaction. An equal number called themselves born – again religionists & became the worst haters of their people even as they blabbered about Love & Heaven for the meek, wretched workslaves here on Earth. This evil boisterous hypocrisy is getting us back to the same kind of capitalism which had killed in the 19^th & part of the 20^th century our Democracy, our community interests, our struggle for all & especially the most down- trodden. A more feeling world hates all our government stands for. Our have – it – all kill their customers. But there is no renewal in sight unless the capitalism of Adam Smith & the Mills is restoring decency, fairness & national pride. Away with greed, selfishness & doglike attacks on civilization.

The G-8 nations are, of course, the economic masters of the world. With new progressive Communist and the presidents rotating, what Moscow dictates from St. Petersburg, is the petrol law of the West. Indirectly, we of the same gang could dictate the price of fossil fuel even to those who could rinse their jaws with oil oleowise. Had we a fuel-conscience leadership, we cold get along on all oil substitutes of the renewable, economical & wise anti-petroleum alliance.

Once good Republicans were among the leaders of the solar – wind – water – dominated clean air fuel. Now, that the greed of so-called religionists monopolizes the oil-ointment heaven, they make life a living hell.

I repeat that F.D.R.’s gigantic Tennessee Valley enterprise gave a million workers good jobs during the Great Depression. It regulated a dozen streams, so that their inundation didn’t ruin so many lives, homes & businesses. It also started modern recreational sports & brought general welfare to the centers of starving & backwards Southerners. Heil Roosevelt the Great & the Democratic Party to whom our Nation owed her salvation & near-discarding of the Hoover criminals who nearly destroyed the Western civilization then shared by only a few citizens. Within the help of Organized Labor, our authentic American hero & re-founder of these United States of America, we could restart the growth of the largest middleclass as a model for all humane humans.

Jokichi Takamine (1854 – 1922) slipped out of Japan’s closed door to marry an American & our beginning biochemistry industrialization which really won WW II & Germany’s many good patents. Even while the U.S.A. built his paradise & his research spirit which had him isolate first a few enzymes & the hormone adrenaline. Yet, he didn’t become Americanized. On the contrary, he strengthened his Nipponese emperor with it. In effect, this Takamine helped Japan win its part of WW II (after smashing China, Korea & Russia) & led them foolishly against U.S. into WW I; with his inheritance, after his death.

Fascistic Hirohito, a bit of a biologist & poet, learned from Mussolini to become insanely power-hungry because he “owned” a few flying aces similar to Italian Balbo. Knowing that only surprise & good luck promised a measure of success, he, Tojo & a few German – trained admirals & generals could get him more & more needed raw materials. He treacherously planned for the attack on U.S., British & Dutch targets.

Success went to the emperor’s head. He over-extended his brutal, untutored & dirty forces so that oil, tin & food additives couldn’t pull him out of is self-chosen disaster. General McArtur did. After his self-glorious take – over as king over the emperor, he saved this throne, a bit of the imperial prestige & the suffering, overcrowded islands under the now sinking sun.

He invited scores of U.S. entrepreneurs to refound Japanese industries & personal, slavish industriousness. As a fortress against our Communist allies, he & our men recreated Japan in our image. Even if Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Mazda & Nissan needed first American specialists for a head start, their lighter, fuel-wise & cheaper automobiles became the fashion in Hawai’i, where loyal Sansei, 3^rd generation Japanese, were proud of Tokyo’s renaissance.

Of course, as a borderland to our wartime friend & immediate archenemy, the USSR, our wise guys saved the smaller Germany which rebuilt its “Volkswagon” superiority before Japan’s hegemony in low price, low gas expense replaced German recovery. Now Germany & Japan own us almost as powerfully as the Arab Muslims. Sony proves Nippon leads in modern technology.

The Second Industrial Revolution could have ended the world as we knew it.

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) stemmed from the Danube where it refused to be blue, at Ulm, in whose neighborhood another desert fox was born, General Erwin Rommel. Albert became Swiss, always with some holes in him like that proverbial cheese.

He left the Newtonians & their mechanics in a hole when he discarded the old, gray theory & replaced it with his “General Theory of Relativity” while the entire neighborhood tried the first big world suicide attempt, W.W. I. His formula of E=Mc² related energy to matter. It also determined that all matter could be converted into energy if we were smart enough to discover all the methods to explode or implode all matter.

Hitler was a greater & more successful teacher who started & ended his revolting life with the destruction of people who mattered a lot. But both had simulated anatomizing effects.

For Japan that was the end of the 2^nd Industrial Revolution & the beginning of the Third Industrial Revolt. Japan & Germany owe their resurrection from nearly thorough destruction to the USSR. Only because we feared the retarding Reds more than friendly Fascists, did we restore our deadly enemies & made each the #1 in the industrial world to the private profit of just a few selfish Americans.

But our Korean & Vietnam bloodbaths renewed our & their half-dead industries, vastness of well-paying employment & the enormity of war profiteering. The unusual big shares the common workers accidentally received were soon annulled by several directed inflations. Then, the European & Asiatic consciences reestablished their social safety net & let the greediest of the greedy here at home recapture the lead of our banks & other financial profiteers who couldn’t stand the dollar & yen world leadership of 19 Japanese & 2 German banks.

Freedom of Thought

Our Free Press, once very dependent on the post offices almost removed US from the English pressure press before we were the U.S.A. Peter Zenger (1697 – 1746), a German print devil, was not yet 20 of age when he left the great Printer Bradford & established the “New York Weekly Journal”. Backed by many radicals, he wrote out stinging attacks on Governor Cosby.

A high-handed libel judgment made his jail cell a quiet place for continued editing in his political struggle via a free full court press. His courageous lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, finally made a jury free this champion of a free press. Zenger called it “Liberty of the Press”.

Since that time, owners or their editors, learned to abuse this greatest of all privileges, once thought to be the best tool for safeguarding a democracy. Benjamin Franklin’s (1706 – 90) “Pennsylvania Gazette” became a great teacher to the entire world by his publishing great words, good one-liners & wonderful, instructive materials. His yearly “Poor Richard’s Almanac” alone was worth founding a library for all. He, all alone kept adding discussion & learning institutions. This led to the “American Philosophical Association” & the “University of Pennsylvania”. Everyone knows his monumental contributions to our Nation, her freedom & our Constitution. At least the French will worship him forever & try to remain libertarians in spite of their Church, De Gaulle & their policeman President, Chirac.

Great that France never had college programs to train journalists, reporters or editors. They wanted them to be born as such. That was mostly true for our own press-men until the such. That was mostly time for our own press – men until the slave question made partisanship unavoidable. One had to learn to lie.

The Hungarian, Joseph Pulitzer (1847 – 1911) was a great Union partisan when he wrote only for the Germans in Missouri. Americanized in St. Louis, he acquired the “New York World”. His intelligence kept it rolling. But having to fight the “Yellow Press” so well contorted by William R. Hearst’s “Journal” he was only #2 or #3.

At 22 he was elected to the Missouri State Legislature. To underwrite his progressive ideas, he acquired the 2 local papers. He was hero – worshipped at his new home. That made him wish for more influence. New York became his final home & its “New York World” his mouthpiece, but Hearst drove him crazy with more liberalism & political activism. Hearst changed when his natural appeal didn’t elevate him to the presidency, a position a foreign – born genius cannot dream about although I know a few great new-Americans who believed that the U.S. was smart enough to change the Constitution for their benefit. Now Schwarzenegger hopes that his “possession” of California will get him to the chief command post.

Hearst (1863 – 1951) had inherited his father’s “San Francisco Examiner” and made it influential with his cheap sensationalism. He got super rich and established his press-power in all big cities with crazy, dishonest short careers in politics & Hollywood. His empire of thousands of servants is not yet dead, & his huge investments in Art & Architecture control his heirs as they control them.

His sensationalism, mixed with anti-corruption politics, made him famous & rich enough to buy the “N.Y. Money Journal” beating Joseph Pulitzer at his own game. New acquisitions made him control popular papers in L.A. , Chicago & Boston. Next he took his “Yellow Journalism” to “Harpers Bazaar”, “Good Housekeeping” & ever more weeklies & monthlies.

Two terms in Congress didn’t endeer him to fellow Democrats or any Republicans until his wealth made him the right-wingiest Republican. He moved away from all but movie ladies in his imported castle – monestary at San Simeon but died so as not to witness the downfall of his heiress Patricia, a Hearst daughter of his son Randolph.

Voters no longer follow the advice of editors, especially since even big cities have only one paper surviving the storm & drang of multiple revolts.

James G. Bennett (1841 – 1918) was an earlier heir of a well-reputed “New York Herald”. He caused sensations without applying cheap tricks. He loved to deal with famous people which made his reporters famous & competitive. He sent soon – to – be – famous Henry M. Stanley to search for missionary Dr. David Livingston who had been cut off from his Egyptian relations by an Arabic – Islamic born-again movement in the Sudan. Their “Messiah”, the “Mahdi”, believed like our Saudi “friends” in enforcing baptism or their head off in glory to merciful Allah. Oh, my God! Mon Dieu, mein Gott, mi deo, etc.

His recognition “Livingston, I presume” made Stanley a household name. Bennett’s Parisian English edition of the “Herald Tribune” gave Bennette world power but not riches.

Our leading reporters, editors, radio broad casters & T.V. anchor persons have now “incomes” in the millions, &, therefore, they are respected by leading politicians & corporation C.E.O.’s & chairmen of the boards. Most of these top earners think they equal in reputation our millionaire movie stars & sportsters. You can have them all. What are they worth per pound as smelly corpses unless they can sit with the late billions right at the side of Jesus or in Paradise with teenage whores.

But due to their financial standings & sitting as directors at many corporation tables, they all have inside information on stock & bond developments. Therefore any of their timely purchases or sales by the hundred millions are illegal, real crimes, but nobody is punished for “clever” transactions like Dr. Frist’s family medical health corporation, Bush’s & Cheney’s secret trust funds or the dumb – playing exchairman of Enron, Kenneth Lay, and other crooks like these.

They are my slew of stereotypes, my favorite hoodlums, the real terrorists to their slavish adherents, disciples or defenders of these defendants. They are out of control as they control you & me. How long? How long must the U.S.A. suffer them & suffer under them?

If the Knowlands, father & son, publishers & editors of the “Oakland Tribune” had known that a Barbados Negro of highest caliber & integrity would one day become majority owner, publisher & editor of their once so rightwing political standard, they might not have died when the conservatives of Central California needed them.

This Robert Maynard (1937 – 93) advanced with flying colors through Columbia University where he soon was a director of its School of Journalism. He arrived in California too late, to meet the “Black Panthers” when those few represented revolutionary masses. But he was the one to ask political questions of Ford & Carter when they debated their presidential ambitions.

Although never a millionaire, his Oakland Tribune went down into insignificance, he remained the poster “boy” of the liberal establishment & the sponsor of many poor fellows & girls who hoped to write their way out of the remaining ghettos.

American journalists of world-wide experience & significance, Dorothy Thompson (1894 – 1935) was the greedy master, or mistress, of entreating & of magnificent style. As wife of Sinclair Lewis before WW II, she became the best-known warner against Hitler’s aggressive ambitions. Churchill & England were most grateful when she lanced her beautiful but only epochal warning in favor of Churchill’s England. The masculine appeal of a beautiful female & pre-feminist is part of political poetry & model patriotism (in spite of her ethnic prejudices).

I am sure it gave student John F. Kennedy the material & élan to reverse some of her greatness & have it co-authored as “While England Slept”. He entirely forgot that his father, sent to threatened St. James by an understanding F.D.R., detoured by way of Germany’s Hitler before the Irishman was welcomed by London. Somebody with a better memory can quote Joseph’s excitement as he asked young John F. to “shake hands with a great man”, Adolf Hitler. What a great honor for the college boy! What an endowment & propaganda for the greatest mass-murderer in history!

Among publishers, Henry (China) Luce (1898 – 1967) was a leader with big ideas & huge success. With a classmate from Yale he founded “Time”, the most popular weekly of his time. With the fortune he made he served business when he established “Fortune” magazine right during the Depression. After W.W. II he added “Life” & “Sports Illustrated” to his publishing empire & used his editors to publish shortened successful books.

This missionary boy took on his 2^nd wife as helpful coeditor who was also a wilfull partisan of Republican causes. Her sharp tongue got her into Congress, Catholicism & an Italian ambassadorship to the pope’s liking.

I remember my tourist bus on my tour by way of San Marino. Our chattermouth guide insisted that his Italian republic was so tolerant of the tiny uphill republic, & that the world should honor Italy for that.

I interrupted the loquacious local when I asked first in his Italian lingo: “Why did your army march into San Merino when Ambassador Clare Luce scolded your nation for allowing a Communistic (city)government in this tiny Republic?” When he didn’t answer my question I shouted it loud & loudest in English. No answer either. But he shut up for the rest of the day as I was told, when I was the only one to climb up to take close-up photos of the 3 spectacular fortresses on 3 steep hills.

All Luce magazines suffered from midlife crises but were revived in new splendor after his & her death.

There are more learned & actively involved critics of our piratical capitalism. I never heard these named muckrakers. I am certain that our 3 biggest TV networks programmers of that harsh attack on the decency, honesty & non-criminality of our repair people, immobile car salesmen & other crooks were aware of Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944), Lincoln S Teffens (1866 – 1936) & Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968).

They truly made their mark on the history of our economy of evil leaders. Ida enjoyed her taking on the oil of Rockefeller’s, “Standard Oil”, in her articles for “McClure Magazine”. Others learned from her the blame game.

Lincoln’s sensational job for that same magazine was later published in book form, “The Shame of the Cities”. His powerful condemnation of state government involvement in many shameless business deals led him on the wrong track, now so often expressed by anti-government thieves who appear to indulge in their struggle for self-government while they command the biggest central government contracts even without bidding for them in fair competition.

Lincoln Steffens’ biggest blunder was committed after he saw a bit of the Soviet Russia de-velopment & postulated too loudly: “I have seen the future & it works.” Even Socialists lost faith in him. Otherwise this Lincoln could have guided FDR in his difficulties.

Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” exposed the Chicago meatpackers & brought about the “Pure Food & Drug Acts”. Trying, as he did, to run for public office didn’t help a Socialist to win in New York or California. The only Socialist to become Governor of California was Olson. Smartly, he didn’t admit he was one of those because “nobody asked me.”

His namesake though became governor of Minnesota because his Socialism ran under the name of “Farm – Labor Party” which also developed a Hubert Humphrey & many of my temporary friends. Governor Olsen forced his Republican legislature to pay for his unemployed relief. He made them legislate a 2 – year moratorium on farm foreclosures in which Banker Giannini specialized in California against its governor’s wish.

I looked at the face & related features of reporter-counselor Jeffrey Birnbaum on the educational T.V. program & recognized his mother Lucy or Lucille Birnbaum. As a first-year U.C., Berkeley graduate, she fell in love with my clever writing & made me date her a few times.

One evening, after a seminar, she introduced to me her 2 sons, aged 6 & 7, I think, & her husband too. She also insisted that she had to see me in the cafeteria between 2 morning classes. She was on time, carrying a large leather briefcase. She opened it while we sipped a bit of coffee & pointed at piles of news paper clippings. All featured the same Italian names.

“Why do you show me these Mafiosos? I’m not interested in them”, I interrupted her joyous referring to one central figure. “That is my father. In my parochial boarding school I was treated like a princess & didn’t know why. When I went home on vacation, I was also treated well. I received all I hinted at. I wondered why Mother & my sisters spent long hours in church. Father & my brothers handled some business at that time.”

“I graduated age 16. My father then confessed that all my relatives were leaders of the Mafia in St. Louis & Kansas City.” Only the males were deeply involved in corrupting officials, blackmailing shop-keepers & occasionally killing some suspected spy or unreliable member.”

“You are too smart & beautiful to be part of these dirty deeds. Why don’t you go to college, find some nice friends & marry a Jewish student who may give you a great, peaceful & prosperous future. I’ll pay for your education & his.”

“I guess you wondered about my German Jewish name. If my teachers knew that I don’t care for their religion, they would all report sick. I believe in Trotzky’s world revolution.”

Shortly after I lost sight of lady Birnbaum while I taught for a few years in the blizzard countries of Montana & Idaho. When I tried to get back to Berkeley, all history positions had been taken by younger men. Birnbaum was Assistant Professor of Sociology or, perhaps, of Socialism. The McCarthy threat had vanished & Berkeley had gone from White to Black. But the influentious professors of U.C. & Stanford were already Germans of Hitler’s persuasions.

Nobody seems to remember the closeness of the “Peace & Freedom Party” to Lucille Birnbaum’s thinking & teaching. Nor do they know who drove most of the rambunctious leaders from Berkeley to become the majority of the “Chicago Seven” who organized the destruction of good Hubert Humphrey during the Democratic National Presidential Nomination Convention.

I was later told that Lucille herself couldn’t get there. As the tired driver of the Berkeley revolters, she hit a tree which didn’t move out of her way. Her passengers found willing drivers to keep their date with destiny. I still worry about this one-time admirer of mine & friend.

Who remembers the time of the first general upgrading of Negro enterprise? John H. Johnson was one of the great firsters to force respect on Whitey. During WW II he founded “Johnson Publishing Co.” & immediately rolled to great success.

His “Negro Digest” became not only the Reader’s Digest of the Blacks. It was needed & forced ever more readers among the black elite & forced others to become literate & get interested in more mass circulation. Johnson’s “Ebony” became readers’ prized treasure. Its popularity ws guaranteed by the expanding middleclass, we call entrepreneurs, whose output & money input began to rival long-existing ghetto shops, restaurants & ghetto developers of different color.

John took advantage of his rich earnings by buying radio stations, book publishings & cosmetic enterprises. No doubt he soon became the first millionaire to leave his family an ever-expanding share of our entire economy. No doubt he soon became the first millionaire to leave his family an ever – expanding share of our entire economy. No barrier or glass ceiling for this big business.

James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938) made himself a great educator, poet, folksy organizer & to me & my taste, a good historian of his race. He played his part in politics with great success in spite of the enmity of Confederate Congress Senior officers who wanted to keep the great man segregated.

The Harlem Renaissance owes to him a birthright & some cultural success. To nobody’s surprise, he became a wonderful leading man in the NAACP, the “National Association of Colored People”. In knowledge & its expression only W.E.D. Du Bois, Prf. Dr. of several better universities & world reputation was co-founder of this NAACP. But his temper & superiority feeling through our U.S.A. made him an ultimate failure & politically extreme leftist who chose to live & die in self-freeing Africa. Together these 2 supermen created large libraries & educated half the world. Their interpretation of this “dismal science” has to remain part & parcel of the old & the latest political economy.

When his wife Blanche held Alfred Knopf (1892 – 1984) to high standards, he concentrated on publishing only the works of 16 Nobel award winners & 26 Pulitzer Prize laureates, even those who had no chance for becoming best sellers. Not caring for high income, so unusual for businessmen, Knopf Publishers were swallowed by Random House which had efficient agents, book reviewers & rich resources. Still Alfred Knopf had influenced the course of literature.

James Harper (1795 – 1869) needed the help of his brother to found an important publishing firm. Many of the mid-century works owe their publication to this innovative printer & publisher. “Harper’s Bazar” also became a best seller of the polite society and spinster schoolmistresses. I wish I knew whether present – day Harper’s monthly magazine is a legitimate descendant of James Harper’s. As a high-brow intellectual product it is above anything conservative childishness can produce.

It seems that reporting honestly, admits that nobody can disguise partisanship in the inborn mission to convert the rest of the universe to his or her views. The reader is a good judge if he accepts all news as somehow true. But objectivity never had a permanent place in the human mind. Personally, I don’t condemn subjectivity, especially if I know in advance what the writer stands for & fights for but tells US what he saw, heard & vouches for. Good lies have always been sacrosanct. Indeed, I have met & talked to many freedom fighters, revolutionaries & terrorists & found lots of them nice, trustworthy to a certain point as long as I was on my guard. Politicians could try most cautiously to get at their failures, weaknesses & trickeries too. As long s you talk very civilly & keep smiling, even a rabid dog only barks without biting. Sheath your sword. Banish the shooting iron & hide your preparedness from all but those with poison-speeches. Example (perhaps): Israel wants combined water cultures with its enemies. It heals their sicknesses & wounds & let live all who want to live on. That is a promising start for a surviving democracy.

A dozen decent demons of book publishing, made a huge & prosperous industry.

Alfred Harcourt (1881 – 1984) was a New Yorker who liked reading, writing & editing & thus was most eligible to head Harocurt, Brace, Jovanovich.

After John P. Zenger & Ben Franklin, many took advantage of a free press also for wholesale book publishers. Soso readers took to looking at newspapers, magazines & cartooney stuff. Others felt responsible for good taste. In our time Hugh Hefner introduced sex as an attuner for reluctant readers. Some big book firsts must be added to the Harcourt outfit:

Frank N. Doubleday (1862 – 1934) learned aggressive salesmanship at Charles Scribner’s & Sons. With a good partner he established Doubleday & McClure. The ever changing heads of this group of publishers of talented writers & owners of bookstores remained at the top of the trade.

Charles Scribner (1854 – 1936) needed famous editors to publish the works of recognized stars. George Santayana & Earnest Hemingway found millions of readers as had the earlier books written by President Theodore Roosevelt & Edith Wharton.

Bennet Cerf (1898 – 1971) did much of his own editing in good taste. His choices for sale were great successes under the label of Modern Library & Random House over which he presided for 4 decades. He trained many young men & women who became fierce competitors.

Today the big book agents are offsprings & partners of these & other book publishing monopolies.

Alfred Guinzburg (1899 – 1961) was the distinguished co-founder of Viking Press. His guys learned to compete with the biggest bookies by publishing first only the most controversial authors whose works were generally rejected, mocked or put on the Papal “Index of Prohibited Books”.

Alfred & companions thus bought success for James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, August Strindberg & ever more of society’s rejects. He ended his career as a wealthy author of the “Literary Guild Book Club”, thus pushing his clients on the mass publication listings of top newspapers & their special Sunday editors.

As the result, poets, writers & artists were no longer starving while they lived even when they earned immortality in death.

Cyrus Kotzrchmar, later called Curtis (1850 – 1933), founded the greatly influential “The Ladies Home Journal” & “The Saturday Evening Post”. Even without his dailies “New York Evening Post” & “Philadelphia Inquirer”, he led his publications to a political & literary influence san pareil. He allied himself with great editors, writers & business managers. Without doubt, the great causes of his time owed him their temporary success of women, Blacks & other social & political aims. Money did not seem to give him his place in our economy.

Now, there are hundreds of guide names in all publishing houses as editors, critics, journalists & reporters. Man doesn’t live by bread alone; he needs women to butter it & butter him up. Some thousands broke through the proverbial glass ceiling. But are most of them really happy with their professional preponderance? How many keep giving up their positions as presidents, managers & department heads to try marital success & child-bearing happiness before years creep up on them.

Today most publications are tainted by mean partisanship which entails the innovation of new, down-grading essential features & omitting important happening which could, or should, affect our conscience. Truth is no longer the first victim of war. In peacetime, or when thinking, one can serve hidden masters; plenty of journalists, reporters, editors & publishing victimizing again victims of evil doers. My recent case serves as illustration of local chicanery of our “press”.

The records, the press & police statistics disclose only part of the truth. One private example: On Friday, November 4, 2005, I limped towards the South on Alii Drive in Kailua – Kona. For a moment I was happy to get away from the narrowest part of the “sidewalk” without a protective curb. People behind me were impatient of slowly – moving nonagenarians. Then, lots of room to the left of the dividing line in front of the driveway to St. Michael’s Church. But a careless black-frocked driver had his hands on his cigarette while he must have put his foot on the gas pedal. His eyes looked straight at me who was frozen between people right behind me and those coming in my direction. No stopping of that terrorist.

But an angel offered his life for mine & possibly, kept the pariah of the parish from murder. It was a young man in ironman triathlon uniform, wearing a helmet who forced me back against warm bodies, as he pedaled in front of me where there was no space left. The murderous “driver” hit him & his bicycle hard to put both out of functioning. I could only ask: “Do you have lots of pain? Thank you for saving my life….”

I was pushed across the pedestrian line by one of the 2 policemen who seemed to have run from the church & had already called an ambulance. Good that all traffic was at a standstill, or else another moron – driver would have got me to paradise or heaven if only to get away from this pious hell.

As the lawmen pushed this aged cripple across the line, that uniformed terrorist mumbled something like: “Go away, we have all the witnesses we need.” My walking cane helped me to make it across the street where I could lean on a few sturdy supports. Lying too long on the crippled bike before the many bystanders helped him to straighten out on the dusty sidewalk, the body did not move.

This murderous accident on the pestrian right of way took place between 8:20 & 8:30. My guess, was that the ill-treated body of my savior arrived at the Emergency Ward by 9:00 a.m. or a little later. I tried hard by phone to get my angel’s name, so I could thank him if he was alive. The moment I mentioned my name, the police answering service & a dozen hospital offices would hang up on me. No way for me to learn whether he was still speaking or breathing. Also not a mention in police reports by or West HI Today. I wrote them a letter to the editor with the same negative results.

I don’t know how many of these terroristic culprits had known me as the Kona Liliko’i Man when they were kids & had loved Bruno’s Candy, dried papayas, bananas, mangos, figs etc. without hardening & denaturalizing the good fruits. There always seems to be a trinity of conspirers hiding the crime of a pious hoodlum: church, press and police are in this together like in many other unmentionable crimes against humanity.

As we may approach general peace against the will of all the beneficiaries of war industries & moneyed corruption, the police will be strengthened by armies, militias, security agents & other speeders, drunks, smokers & drug addicts. The press will have to dig for news even if they have to invent it to nourish thousands of reporters, editors & their political & police allies. The churches will find ever new ways to earn political dividends & do the business of the states as long as anti-government criminals control the mass of political gangsterism. Along with the big farm firms and food processors these will all be in natural alliance, consuming half of our economy & earning 90% of the money which foreign powers lend to our bankrupt system.

Personally, I don’t trust our police. They certainly hardly ever proved that they should be the protectors of those who cannot protect themselves. Is it possible that some of them are habituals of ice (Methamphetamine) when they confiscate it from our many drugdealers & local users?

For an aged pedestrian they create dangers by the dozen, or more: Let drivers stop their vehicle right in a pedestrian lane. Three times I noticed an officer park his car right next to such a violator to shake his or her hand. Two turned the traffic light off to deny me the green light when their apparent acquaintance or ohana member plugged my escape route. My complaint was rudely rejected: “I am in charge here. You can wait until I order you to cross the road.” No reproach for the traffic violator. No decent treatment for the anguished.

No reproach ever for the huge Coca cola, Pepsi, Bud Light & Suisan trucks which take too often part of the adjacent lane & create perils of a collision with light & more vulnerable traffic. Many months since the latter delivery truck killed the student body president of Kealakeha High School, no court proceeding has been heard of. Could the reason be that so murdered Japanese Senior had the name of Rosenberg? The gifted are too often mocked as nerds.

Over 30 year ago, a Kona policeman ticketed me for speeding when I drove very slowly to point out a landmark to my students. A month, or so, later, he dropped by my small school. He complained that he was overworked & needed a short rest. Could he use my couch? For many months, he napped there regularly. Finally he insisted that I should defend this new activity as being asked by me for his help. He overheard one of the meek students who loudly whispered: “Do police officers also lie?” We never saw him again.

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Hallmark Cards for all occasion proves that the incapacity or laziness which prevents US all to draw our own message can offer gigantic opportunities to become an undeserved huge section of our economy.

Staples is another big manufacturer, beginning with steely ideas of holding papers together. What don’t they own these days from stations of many sorts to stadium?

Xerox also proves that what you don’t need if you use old-fashioned carbon-paper can make you rich & influential if you know how to risk all in the most expensive advertizing campaign.

Above 3 monsters prove that capitalism knows no limitation. Freest enterprise freezes the air all around until it ices a big cake for the celebration of the joy of success. “Winning is everything”.

Theodore Vail (1845 – 1920) probably was an organizer superior to the McKays, Mackays & Western Union as US Post serviceman, he thought of faster mail service by special mail trains. For Bell Telephone he made local service more efficient. Of course, if Vail had not unveiled the combination of multiple offices of communication such as the American Telephone & Telegraph Corp, this AT&T would have been midwived by other capable & zealous communicators.

He blessed Argentina with his communication as the super means of military dictators. His zeal got the transcontinental phone going. Maybe, he looked over his cousin Alfred’s shoulder who had shouldered some burden for Sam Morse.

J.K. Mackay came from Ireland to show US how to timber mines to make them safe. He made millions but didn’t beat Western Union’s world communications monopoly. His son indulged in philanthropies before he lost his shirt in the stock market. His offspring spent the riches of this S.F. – based firm. As his janitor, I collected 100% of receipts he wrote out to himself which bankrupted his firm. Had I used my documents to make some money, I could have got him jailed. I was too forgiving.

They were quartered in the same building at S.F. Mission St. across the K Train Terminal, where the 3^rd competitors also lodged. Its President was the pride of Boys Town & an alcoholic too. Thus Chatterton promised me a million dollars if I could get his company a monopoly at Truman’s & Dulles’s Japan Peace Conference which forgave all Japanese wartime crimes against China, the Philippines & all other WW II occupation zones. I succeeded in getting the monopoly on all telegraph communications for the Cow Palace for Mackay’s Chatterton.

When the Dulles brothers thought they had thus defeated our Communist wartime allies, I asked for my reward. Mr. Chatterton gave me a bottle of whisky. I smashed it over his head as my only short-term satisfaction. Here also this janitor had preserved all his thousands of receipts of hundreds of even $1000s of withdrawals at a time. His private secretary, a big fellow hikers, saw to it that I received my miniscule wages & that the typists under her charge copied my Ph.D. dissertation. The ruin of 2 great companies at nearly the same time became my long – guarded secret. Thus more proof that the suposed efficiency of our billionaire entrepreneurs established my, more, social & socializing endeavors without ever exerting influence & more positive, decent & honest capitalism in the USA.

Of course, the previous monopoly of the AT&T, Am. Telephone & Telegraph Company, was a more grandiose achievement. Also Western Union prospered for decades. Only recently they stopped delivering telegrams. They were loved in peacetime. During our wars, a telegram from our Defence Department usually contained condolences on the death of a loved one.

It took a William G McGowan (1927 – 92) to break it up with the help of his friends at court. The deed was done by his Microwave Communications Inc., MCI. Only this Harvard gent as chair & president could garner the largest anti-trust settlement. Are destroyers also creators? MCI has been for sale since McGowan retired in 1991.

Only little industry, tobacco growing & selling & indigo growing to dye homespun & woven primitive dresses, could be mailed thanks to Ben Franklin’s British-government mail service. Like in other countries, US were proud of mail delivery in spite of nasty Acts of God & seasonal complications. With the help of tow-boats, steamers, pony post, penny post, telephone, telegraph, rail & air shipping, US created a splendid mail service although separate from those countries which united it with their equivalent of our phone & telegraph service which we privatized in their very beginning.

That our US Mail Service was great government power, irked anti-state Republicans. They ruined postal savings banks & then used powerful military Anthrax to try killing a few great Democrats & more postal employees because the evil ones suggested that our national mail service had become a haven for Blacks who could, by long loyal & legitimate service, climb the civil-service ladder to enter, & be paid, like middleclass service people.

A little earlier they made this our greatest non-military segment of industry a private one, with corporation-style salaries for their top politicians who started at the summit of evil service ranking. Wasteful also otherwise, like sponsoring our Olympians & giving this former government monopoly competition, they defeated & obliterated nearly all of this once greatest institution.

In the old Confederate South started the overnight delivery of parcel post by privateers & private hands. Fred Smith wanted it to urge out the United States parcel post in Memphis as recently as in 1971. Eventually, he modernized it as Federal Express, with computers checking all activities & where to find a parcel of his new riches at any time, day or night, even when post officers slumbered or slept. First all was local. Soon trucks were used for short distances. For longer ones & developing international routes airplanes flew world wide.

This competition found more competition in UPS & smaller downs too who would be eager to tear the old postal delivery apart. Possibly this upstart was subject to offers of selling the whole works because it operated in the beginning on credit alone. The quotas in legalized gambling with it on the stock exchange, brokes no good. Sprint had also a good start sprinting in the same directions, but in Hawai’i we trust the US Postal Service’s old & trusted service especially because it is less expensive than the new creations. Once there was this decent monopoly which made US great.

When new creations competed with our ancient U.S. Post Office, the best service before Social Security & Operation head start, I instantly knew that the founders wanted easily – saleable industries as soon as they “went public”& got high, speculative stock – exchange quotations.

I stuck to “priority mail”, the safest in Kona, even when the half-privatized U.S. Postal Service spent hundred millions on sponsoring Olympics, other charities & paid all the big, actually political appointees, enormously high salaries as all other corporations do.

Of late, this same Postal Service went into all business leaders’ apparent business of persecution of the old, the cripples & all other under the federal & international laws of the offices for the Protection of the Aged & Handicapped.

In this new year they gave a mid – nonagenarian chest pain & near – death experiences: In our remote home for the aged, I received in my mail box 2 pamphlets explaining how I can order mailstamps. But these paperfolds gave me the price for a letter to Europe at 80¢ & local letter at 37¢, on January 6, 2006.

I was, therefore sure that the new increased rates didn’t apply yet, On January 8 (Sunday), I placed into the general mailbox a local letter with a 37 – cents stamp & a 80-¢ stamp on my letter to Germany, stamp prices I had so recently received without asking for the 2 folders.

On Friday, Jan. 13, 06, that letter to N.Y. was returned to me because I used the 37¢ which the postal pamphlet had quoted. I placed that letter back into my mailbox at this old-people’s retirement home with a sealed envelope in which I placed 4 dimes for 20 2-¢ stamps taped to the letter. Both letter & envelope, were taken out but another letter was left in it on Saturday, Jan. 14 which had spent almost a week in Honolulu. Why didn’t the letter carrier who took back the one letter & the 40 cents use 4 cents to add to the 80¢ stamps & settle all that Saturday at the Kailua – Kona post office?

I had no choice but placing another sealed envelope with 42¢ in it taped to this important letter to the Berlin German Post directors asking to use 2 - 2¢ stamps of the 2 times 20¢ I paid. That was on Sunday 1-15-06 to be sure the letter would go out the next Monday. But that was a 2^nd M.L. King Holiday. I found again that letter with a note attached: “You owe 40 cents, Karen”

That was when I phoned the post office a second time, complaining about such mistreatments which are crimes under the Clinton & Bush legislation for the Protection of the Aged & Handicapped. But since the U.S. Postal Service went political, that service is not worth our postage. The over-paid political heads don’t care for real people, let alone the very aged, crippled & helpless ones. They are tied to the right for life of every sick & unwanted semen & egg but do all in their power to make unfortunate women & oldsters utter death wishes, just to save themselves from the poisonous crawls out of archconservative big bosses & lazy monsters.

On Monday Jan. 23, 06, I finally received the new stamp price lists with my 40 cents in an envelope. But the evil idiots had taped to it one of my letters, returned perhaps because one letter to Europe was mailed out. But the one to the directors of the German post office was returned to me again. Apparently those postal servants did not believe in the federal laws requiring special treatment to the aged & handicapped.

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In 1925, the Nation’s 1^st motelinn was inaugurated in San Louis “Obispo”, a creationism the “bishop” didn’t divine. Immediately after, thousands of new & larger inns & hotels started their mass spurt in chain reactions & accumulations of hotel chains.

By that time, Conrad Hilton (1887 – 1979) started buying hotels in Texas. Right after W.W. II, he took over prized & high-priced Palmer House in Chicago & Waldorf – Astoria in New York. First in our U.S.A., next allover the world, his chain of hotels was immense, immensely rich & powerful in spite of many others who founded similar chains of popular hotels.

Willard Marriott (1900 – 1985) started drive-ins as soon as he heard of this Californian novelty. Marriott hotels followed his motels. His son of like name bought & built big hotels while he included catering & airport business.

The Sheraton Hotel empire was built up similarly although often taken as luxury hotels which they are not.

Now a hundred new hotels big & small, have to cater to this leisure industry. The richer the upper middleclass becomes, they never leave their money at home. All their pleasure trips can be called business expense & made tax-deductable. Holiday Inn competes in travel luxury & prices.

Until recently, the most expensive nightclub dinners were tax deductable from the enormously high earnings. And their good President accords these multi millionaires & billionaires freedom from taxation including more tax refunds. The explanatory excuse is that these outsourcers bring all their cash, credit & futures to interesting countries where all branches of government here & elsewhere, the rest of US & foreign workers are the slaves who despise us, hate US & threaten US. Thank you Mr. Bush, Dr. Frist, Dr. Gingrich & Coach Hasterd. You get it all & can’t get anything more into your pockets.

William Zeckendorf (1905 – 76) was one of the greatest & wealthiest real estate developers. At the end of our Great Depression, he seemed to own real estate from our far North to his far South. He began to specialize in the first urban renewal. The greatest architects like Le Corbusier & Pei, where his favorite architects. But he also paid consulting fees to many others. Buckminster Fuller told me that he received Zeckendorf’s cheque for $10,000 for just drawing some ideas with a sketch on scrap paper.

Not knowing the destructive power of unguarded kids of mere renters in large buildings, Zeckendorf dug himself in a big excavation hole. Few ever watched his boom turn to bust & dust. I don’t think that the United Nations paid his debts when the Rockefellers donated valuable real estate for their magnificent construction, favor of the bankrupt Zeckendorf, the end of all Zeckendorf ventures came in 1965. Since then we have seen bigger ones turn to zero. Free enterprise is no business; it is a dangerous gamble, just like all stock exchange activities via loudmouths, loudspeakers or cell phones.

The thousand present biggest realtors dispose of billions of dollars, dispose of a million good jobs & of thousands of corpses too. Are the Hensleys & Trumps different from the mass of these hungry millionaires?

The jail slowed down the acquisitive zeal & fervor when the lady of the house H. tried to do what her late male lead got away with. But Trump got his big failures after huge successes & rules the super-rich hotel-palace & gambling industry personally & defiantly. It seems he cannot get “fired”.

Louis H. Sullivan’s name (1856 – 1924) made the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893) famous & useful. Looking up to his older partner, Dankmar Adler, Louis quickly took over the great Chicago master – school of architecture. Not only Chicago is littered by his fantastic creation of a modern age of buildings which remain great for all times.

His mid western style of sky scrapers stands fast as a symbol of solidity, honest & yet experimental research skywards. “Functionalism” cannot be outdone by flimsy temporary picturesque dishonesty. Even in 1944, he was still worth being awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects. His student Frank L. Wright had a great start when he still imitated the great one. What a pity that Louis Sullivan was sitting on his laurels since 1909.

Frank L. Wright (1867 – 1959) needed only 5 years to copy some of his teacher Sullivan’s creations before he thought he could do even better. His Wisconsin Prairie School of Arts & Crafts had to fit local building materials.

When the U.S.A. was too slow to accept his new style during the Great Depression, he built the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Many famous museums & other (semi) public buildings present the great man’s changing styles. In Idaho he was considered the lord of creation.

His actress grand daughter visited me, the school superintendent in the adjoining county. She complained that she had to neglect her Hollywood movie career because the old man needed her to be around in his declining years. She got me on “Linkletter’s Houseparty” as the psychologist because she had heard of my vain endeavors to save Bob Crosby’s career from his alcoholic devil. I did too well for one day on both shows to Linkletter’s disgust & Bob’s relief but had to leave both to their own resources to be on time for the reopening of my schools.

Among modern architects, Ludwig Mies (Yiddish for “ugly”) was the most creative leader of a mass of builders of a world-imposing school of disciples. Reborn under Hitler’s threat as Mies van der Rohe, he became a famous Bauhaus (in Dessau) prophet & teacher. Running for his life & that of his organization, his Illinois Institute of Technology was a good place for his designing & designs. His skyscrapers featured less cement & more metal & glass. There seemed to be no end of his & his disciples’ look-through architecture. Even his competitors, since the Barcelona International Exposition borrowed his ideas.

Moissief (1872 – 1943) had studied at the Rige Polytechnic Institute before he fled Russian prejudice. His civil engineering studio in NY. got him into the local Department of Bridges. His designs for the Manhattan & Queensboro Bridges got him into construction of suspension bridges over the Deleware, the George Washington Bridge, Triborough, the Tacoma Narrows & Mackinac Straits. I read only one of his manuscripts on long-span bridges.

My own appreciation of fancy construction got me the accidental friendship of Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983). I never heard of him or understood his creative approach to practical construction until he came to Berkeley for a 2 or 3 weeks’ seminar. Why did some of my best friends who were no architects tell me to go & see for myself? It was in my favorite Wheeler Hall. The man of the hour was scheduled to give an introductory lecture at 8:00 p.m.. But when I arrived, by mistake, just before 7:00, every seat was already taken. I sat down on the steps in the middle aisle although some friendly youngsters offered me good seats.

The beginning was unattractive like Buckminster’s clothing & his clumsy movements back & forth on the stage. Awful, I thought, as I prepared to sneak out before 8:30. By that time the fumbler & mumbler got into his element. He tackled all the scientific philosophies, their realities & their meaning for designing, engineering & construction. By midnight he was interrupted many times by bravos & all sorts of applause. Around 3 o’clock a.m. he had us all as disciples of his geodesical dome buildings – all free for our Armed Forces. Early in the morning we became friends in poetry, philosophy, history, astronomy, etc. He was a true polyhistor who knew everything, did everything but found time to send me a few holiday greetings. Nothing clumsy about that greatest of modern minds.

The Finn, Eero Saarinen (1910 – 61): With his less erudite father they designed super modern public & commercial structures. In St. Louis their Gateway Arch was pure stainless steel. With new partner Saarinen built magnificent structures for large corporations & biggest airports, sports arenas & university buildings. As his end approached, he despised his only skyscraper the CBS Headquarters in N.Y.

But nobody in the USA would employ a Communist like Niemeier (?) who constructed Brazilia, Brazil’s modern capital, at the behest of a Socialist president & the delight of his fascistic successors. Strange hyper modern but inexpensive vast inside – room structures of Niemeier are still fancied in several modern countries but not in our America.

Hotel & homes need furnishings. This old anecdotist remembers too well when he traded his school & 60 acres in South Kona for Paladine’s, Richard Boone’s, estate on Palani Rd. I could have bought fine furniture for $5000 which I didn’t have. I had to do for some time with a few steel chairs & tables & 2 camp beds.

Then the first furniture store made its appearance. They offered only a few awfully heavy beds with steely mattresses at the price of $20,000 because of my shabby credit rating, I think. It took years before competition arrived with more practical, lighter and more beautiful furnishings.

Now Loweys are well represented, I am sure. A huge store with a large storage area near Walmart, Safeway & Borders above the Crossroads, a mile from our village center beckons moneyed men & the prettier sex.

On T.V. we hear a lot of the all-present Home Depot & their grip on this essential segment of our economy. They alone can, like Walmart & the oil-based base industry, keep us going for a while & spite the Arabs who threaten all the time to invest in some of our monopolies to give them ever more of a stranglehold on our life. Dhubai alone owns too much of US. At this moment it seems that these oil sheiks are with Saudi Arabia & Iran the ones who reward suicide bombers & all others who hate us & the Danes for their many freedoms. Why not offer those foes of freedom all that which fills our landfills, streams & bottom of our seas? As these worst of all business apostles control already 6 of our unsafe ports, they need no more of US to finish US off.

Candido Jacuzzi (1903 – 63) came to Berkeley from Italy with several big business ideas. He propelled our tiny airforce in W.W. I as a good ally. Because he tried to relieve his son’s arthritis, he invented the whirlpool we all used & loved at some time. Mine cost a fortune, but I used solar power to make a whirl. Almost new when I donated that place to a charitable organization, they trashed all solar installation which had avoided my paying electricity bills. The nearly – new Jacuzzi too was trashed. Candidly, what would Candido have said in his lingo, & what curses did I use on finding this out? Only God knows.

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I have pestered 3 governors of Hawai’i with the advice to make a train system completely run on solar energy: Roofs of trains & their sides between windows as well as the entire sides of dividing shields of the noisy trains from houses or both sides of these electric trains must be entirely “walled” by solar receptacles & solar batteries; likewise the roofs & sides of the stops & the garages on both sides of the lines.

If federal government, the state & the country along with the power company should contribute their part of the costs as a great business investment & the beginning of the local independence of the fossil oil which pollutes the U.S.A. & enriches undeserving insolent terrorists. More power to U.S. & cleaner air, lungs & homes too!

No “streetcar named Desire” but desires to name sun, wind & sea our prime movers. Everyone would be employed, and we shouldn’t mind helping our poor neighbors even if they came illegally to their former country to work for it. For Hawai’i, California & Florida this solar, wind & water industry would be the latest Declaration of Independence. The term “unemployment” would become obsolete. Thereafter we will be rich enough to overhaul our entire infrastructure. Honolulu needs new sewers & waterlines.

All historians overesteemed Frederick S. Turner’s (1860 – 1932) influence over USA expansion to the West & way beyond all bounds. If I remember it correctly, he didn’t expand his westwards call (by Berkeley, the philosopher) beyond California or its nearby islands. Far West is Hawai’i, the Philippines, American Samoa & the islands farther West. When the U.N. made us create independence for the little bit islands of U.N. Trust Territories, we gave them all our social welfare institution as gifts toward influence to the big guys in the little islands. Economically we still own them all like Guam. Even independent Philippines crept back under our umbrella as the great protector against the Islamic terrorists who have no economy & don’t wish to economize life wisely. Why not use the older term “Protectorates” for explanation, at least by a few American bigshots who are well-connected with our plutocrats & beneficiaries of tax – Republicansism?

The United Nations did its best for our Trust Territories in the Mid-Pacific Ocean. They declared their independence with the exception of Guam which we conquered easily after beating the hell out of wretched Spain. But try a close look these days when our form of government is threatened by born-again, suicidal Moslems.

We have bought lots of protection by buying out the freed island states of Micronesia, the Carolines & all the other associated independent little nations. Each of them has some 20 US offices whose construction, administration & employees we paid in full plus a lot more. From pre-school Head Start to post school college stipends all is authentic U.S. & paid by US.

Therefore the islanders help us man our Security Stations at ports & airports. You can see that also in formerly British possessions like Bermuda, Bahamas & even Toronto. This power grab makes me feel very safe but out President safest.

This assured “big” income of the extended families in warm Polynesia & thereabouts stopped their once wonderful agriculture of tropical vegetables & fruits.

Wild bananas, coconuts & Bethel nuts cannot yet be exterminated. And why should anyone labor so hard & dangerously to catch fish for family support? Only a few trained fish catchers use speedboats to entertain foreign fishermen & a few fishy women. Otherwise, old cultures there die off because of our rich alms & arms.