This is to thank Gary Freiberg for his opinion piece in New Times reminding us of the power of the people (“The price is wrong,” Jan. 16).
Yes! Let’s start with having fewer eggs (or none at all until prices come down). Buy some nuts at the farmer’s market. Walnuts are shaped like our brains, our brains like them, they last a long time, and no dishes. Our coffee shops and restaurants could join the parade by cooking up even more delicious, nutritious, and eggless meals and treats helping to make a tremendous impact.
While we are not eating eggs, let’s remember Margaret Meade’s famous words: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Thanks again, Gary.
Sybil P. Ashley
Morro Bay
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 9, 2025.
I’ve not been buying eggs mostly because I can’t afford $1 per egg right now (who can?!), but we should all try to vary where we get some of our food every now and then. Even if it isn’t to drive change, it can at least keep those options alive and stop us from having an entirely corporate food supply.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Ain’t that the truth. One thinks of the Depression era German Freikorp:
“Amongst the social, political, and economic upheavals that marked the early years of the Weimar Republic, the tenuous German government under Friedrich Ebert, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), used the Freikorps to quell socialist and communist uprisings.”
As we enter yet another Depression, there lies the potential for the creation of a similar gang of disgruntled ex soldiers, criminals, sociopaths, and alcoholics, all under the patronage of an unpopular government. Although no fan of mass, illegal immigration, it is easy to see the Freikorp modern counterpart start the blaming process. At present, it is illegal immigrants, next, it might be you and I.
As impoverished, working, and unemployed Americans deign to actually think that our federal government live up to its obligation, as written in the preamble to the US Constitution, to “Promote the general Welfare” of all Americans, yet find the exact opposite happening, all differences will melt away and no amount of divisive propaganda will stop it.
Neither an American Freikorp nor any demagogue will stop us. Don’t be fooled, our ruling class has run out of ideas. Identity politics go to the wayside when replaced by an empty belly.
Our economy will not recover, we have no factories other than munitions plants, our nation is in so much sovereign debt, it can never be repaid, the world is getting wise to it and not buying Treasury bills. Just look at the plans being foisted on us: Austerity to the point of closing entire federal agencies. Ending old age insurance. Ending Medicare. Sending public tax money to the states to help fund private/religious schools where children are taught that humans walked amongst dinosaurs instead of teaching mathematics, civics, or history. I for one don’t want to live amongst fundamentalists of any stripe.
Fellow Americans, beware. Don’t sell your freedom for a crust of bread. Set your differences aside and unite for a better, common future.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, wealthy Russian insiders (now oligarchs) and western corporations picked up state owned assets (everything, since there was no private sector in a communist country) and have concentrated wealth and power ever since (with huge kickbacks going to members of the governmental mafia state of course).
This is happening now and on full display as seen by America’s ultra wealthy in the gallery at Trump’s inauguration. The DOGE department is installing it’s apparatchiks in various federal agencies and departments, replacing career bureaucrats in preparation to have first dibs at controlling all future spending, going to their private enterprises first and before the public. The public can expect either nothing or, as a result of runaway inflation and extreme austerity, heavily reduced services or payments.
By the end of this president’s term everything should be in place. Worthless fiat currency, the dollar, focused on defense contractors, the Pentagon and obvious white elephant projects. Legacy media, like a vignette from Orwell’s “1984,” denouncing Oceania and members of our Inner Party (the daily PMC we have to deal with) dutifully standing for Two Minutes Hate. Their official uniforms will be the same kind of jumpsuits and hats the members of DEVO wore. We’ll be in rags.
The rest of will be living outside in cardboard boxes beating each other over the head like Cro-Magnons for a gallon of gas or loaf of bread. Christmases should be a real hoot.
A basic American social safety net/welfare state would include the following:
1. A robust, public, old age pension.
2. National, public, health care.
3. A robust federal minimum wage.
4. Free, public, education at both the primary and higher level and absolute elimination of subsidizing private, religious, education.
5: Generous food stamps for our most impoverished.
Foreign policy:
!. Elimination of nuclear weapons and elimination of a standing army. The wasted tax dollars supporting a standing army and nuclear weapons program would simply be returned to the American people in the form of robust public spending. As USMC General Smedley Butler remarked: “I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.”
2. A formal, televised, global, apology from the President for the damage the United States has done to the developed world from slavery to general exploitation and war. This would include a full, extensive recitation of our international crimes.
3. Dismantle NATO.
4. Close overseas U.S. military bases.
Domestic policy:
!. Help our small farmers and our food system. Break up big AG.
2. Break up all the various monopolies such as internet providers, gasoline, grocery stores, medicine, and health insurance for those that would still like private health insurance instead of robust public health.
3. Build massive, large scale, public housing.
4. Nationalize Amazon, Google, Facebook, Walmart, Costco, etc. Seize all publicly traded stocks associated with these companies.
5. Tax concentrated wealth and claw back their earnings.
6. Break up banks.
7. Audit the Fed.
8. Expand our court system.
9. Stop expanding our sovereign debt.
10. Create a gun buyback program that is so generous that illegal guns are turned in in inner cities.
11. Establish a national inheritance tax that is actually enforced.
This will all be paid for with the assets of what were the aforementioned private business and the complete seizure and confiscation of concentrated wealth. The levels of wealth our oligarchs have will forever be outlawed and criminalized. We will create a new Mount Rushmore with the faces of our oligarchic overlords as a monument to their greed so they are forever shamed and go down as national pariahs for eternity. Their faces will represent what happens when a political system is taken over money. They and their families will be banished from the U.S. and lose their citizenship. Their walled estates will be burned down and their land salted.
Living in the U.S. is a privilege and comes with responsibilities. One responsibility is to never acquire so much wealth that it threatens the viability of the state. What our oligarchs are doing is not benign. They and the 1% control and own everything. For them, they still don’t have enough. Since the world is no longer letting them loot their countries, our oligarchs have turned inward. They see what few dollars are used for social security, food stamps, public education, and Medicare as one of the things left to loot. Their goal is to privatize social security and send social security to Wall Street to gamble away, they see Medicare payments as money that should go into their pockets and intend to eliminate it all together, thereby forcing those in medical need to buy crappy, private health insurance from the companies they own, they public education funds as something they should possess and intend on doing so by eliminating the U.S. Dept of Education and giving state block grants instead and allowing the states to use the money to pay for private schools.
As all this goes on, their is narry a word about the defense budget. The solution to most of our problems is to cut defense spending by 2/3rds, fire all the generals, mothball the navy, shrink the number of troops we have, and close all overseas bases. And I say this as an actual veteran. CUT DEFENSE SPENDING 2/3rds.
They are going after what is ours, by the end of this president’s term, we will be living in a whole different world. This is not a partisan issue. Both parties have the same interests controlling their puppet politicians. Further, math doesn’t care who is in power, our economy is just hot air and one giant Ponzi scheme. How in god’s name are we going to pay for anything without taxing the rich? We have no industry to tax. The rich have engaged in a decades long tax boycott. Americans are sharpening their swords and pitchforks. One would thing as a matter of self-interest, our elites would enact some sort of program(s) that rejuvenates the public materially. Instead, they are doubling down on tax breaks and borrowing. What are they thinking? A people can only put up with so much, both the left and the right are impoverished. This is how people join forces.
As a secular American, I would happily join hands with the most hardened Christian if it meant creating a better world. We can settle our differences later and like adults. I suspect they would do the same thing if it meant a better world for them and their families. There is always a middle ground.
November 08, 1933
Four million men now out of employment will be put to work under a plan announced today by the President.
Two million of these will become self-sustaining employees on Federal, State and local public projects on November 16th, and will be taken completely off the relief rolls. An additional two million will be put back to work as soon thereafter as possible.
This plan will be administered by the newly created Civil Works Administration. The President today appointed Harry L. Hopkins, as Administrator.
The Civil Works Administration will be financed jointly by funds from the Public Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, but States, cities, counties and towns will be required to provide the funds to meet their share of the Civil Works program.
Secretary Harold L. Ickes, Public Works Administrator, was prepared to make available an amount up to $400,000,000 to the Civil Works Administration.
The two million men comprise those now on work relief provided by local relief administrations operating under the State and Federal Emergency Relief Administrations. These will immediately be placed on regular pay at the hourly rates prevailing for similar work in the community. The program contemplates a thirty-hour week for the workers.
Work relief divisions of the existing State and local emergency unemployment relief administrations will be modified to perform the expanded employment activities and will be known as Civil Works Divisions.
Creation of the new agency constitutes a fundamental change in the Federal program to deal with unemployment aspects of the depression. It will remove from the relief rolls a major portion of those receiving the necessities of life on the basis of public aid and place them on regular employment. It is designed to remove from relief all employable persons. Those hired by the Civil Works Administration will benefit by an immediate increase in income over their former relief allowances.
The projects on which the workers will be used will include not only the type on which work-relief is now being given, but also a wide range of employment in activities bordering on but not covered in the province of the Public Works Administration. This expanded field will enable the local Civil Works Divisions to undertake considerably more construction and to use greater quantities of construction materials. Work relief has been limited almost entirely to work involving a minimum of materials, since expenditure of emergency relief funds under this method was necessarily confined to relief allowances in the form of work relief wages.
Approximately 3,000,000 families are now being cared for throughout the country by public relief administrations financed in whole or part by Federal emergency relief funds.
Approximately 2,000,000 adult members of these families are earning relief in the form of wages for part-time employment on made-work projects. The total amount earned by the members of any one family is less than $20 a month in most of the localities.
By this one stroke at least two-thirds of the families in the country now receiving relief will be placed on a self-sustaining basis
[ Franklin D. Roosevelt, Remarks on Signing Executive Order Creating Civil Works Administration Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/207782 ]