My Family Makes the Addams Family Look Like the Cleavers

When I was a kid, I lived in that golden age of Camelot.

Actu­ally the warm and fuzzy glow of its after­math, just as it was turn­ing into some­thing else.  I was born in the Sum­mer of Love (1967 right before RFK and MLK got shot and Amer­ica began to turn mean and para­noid about the idea of “equality”).

Or at least more so, on the edge of a promise never fully real­ized.  This is the book above that you can still buy at both Alib­ris and Ama­zon that won the Calde­cott Medal in 1971.

Ded­i­cated to me.…and a few oth­ers you see.  Because we weren’t racists in our family.

And the War, that would be Viet­nam, Megan McCain, I know you weren’t born yet, took another turn for the worse.  But I remem­ber how dis­traught my par­ents still were over the shoot­ings of JFK, RFK and MLK, and I was pretty appalled at Obama’s about face in the after­math of the elec­tion and his reluc­tance to pros­e­cute the CIA, with NO PROTEST FROM TEDDY KENNEDY.  You see those things made me a life long pacifist.

How­ever naive this may sound in today’s Amer­ica, I was brought up to believe that equal­ity in reli­gion and gen­der, race and dis­abil­ity or able bod­ied was a given, and that dis­crim­i­na­tion, as much as my mutt of a reli­gious upbring­ing makes me, was the great­est sin of all, short of mur­der and mass geno­cide. And I mean DISCIMINATION AGAINST ANYONE. Black, white, those with dis­abil­i­ties, Latino, gay, straight, women, trans­gen­dered. It became part of my DNA in a way that I wish the rest of Amer­ica got. We’ve got a long way to go.

These are some of my father’s works, that you can still buy.  Includ­ing the clas­sics that he loved me to read as a child.  About how play­ing games and read­ing with your chil­dren would ulti­mately save them from vio­lence, and make them decent human beings.  You can still find them today.  They’re worth read­ing.  Take a look.  They’re worth the price of the book.
Vio­lence and your child
Pic­tures and Sto­ries From For­got­ten Children’s Books

He knew alot about vio­lence unfor­tu­nately.  It’s what doomed our fam­ily. But he was a pro­lific writer as well as an indus­trial designer and game strategist.

I was taught the Con­sti­tu­tion was a flawed doc­u­ment that could be made bet­ter, like amend­ments that made the slaves free and gave women the right to vote.  Born three years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, oth­er­wise known as Title VII, and raised by a South­ern mother who told me one too many sto­ries of seg­re­gated school buses going the other way to crappy and unequal schools, and watch­ing kids drink from dirty drink­ing foun­tains, and live in hor­rific con­di­tions and work and live in hor­rific lives, and watch­ing U.S. cor­po­ra­tions pour chem­i­cals into the air, water and even the food we eat, made me a com­mit­ted and life long envi­ron­men­tal­ist.  And that vio­lence was hor­rific; both on TV and that war was in gen­eral fought for profit.  Both from what I was taught at home and through my parent’s ground­break­ing work.  Still con­sid­ered clas­sics to this day.  And still used as the basis for both teach­ing teach­ers them­selves and in class­rooms.  Nation­ally.

One of my late pater­nal uncles, Peter Drucker is known to EVERY U.S. CEO at a For­tune 500 com­pany today — par­tic­u­larly the ones who go to Ivy Leagues.  He is known as the Father of Man­age­ment and the per­son who coined our work­force today “the infor­ma­tion econ­omy and worker.” And reor­ga­nized GM the first time around in the 1940’s.  And prac­ti­cally put on a pedestal by Jack Welsh and George Bush, who gave him the Pres­i­den­tial Free­dom Award.  For a White House sup­pos­edly look­ing for the best, my phone has remained remark­ably silent.

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman.  There aren’t too many in what is already being called a “boys club.”  And cer­tainly none in their for­ties who are white.  Gosh, what a change I can believe in.

NOT.

Peter’s wife is a pretty tough cookie too. Check out her own auto­bi­og­ra­phy here.

Of course she’s not the only one. There are a lot of other women in my fam­ily.  Although don’t hold Bush’s love of Peter per­son­ally.  I think of Bush kind of like the char­ac­ter of Otto in the film “A Fish Called Wanda” in that he read all the greats, but he just never under­stood them.

Much like the major­ity of cor­po­rate Amer­ica, and that includes you Sum­mers, who still don’t under­stand what “man­age­ment by objec­tive” really means, because they love the tri­an­gle struc­ture of power where white men, or in Obama’s case, an ego­tis­ti­cal black man, gets to boss every­one else around, and get paid gazil­lions, while under­pay­ing every­one else and treat­ing them like slaves.  Even when they ruin the worlds’ econ­omy and steal your tax dol­lars to do it all over again.

My other pater­nal uncle is a still well renowned scholar, for trans­lat­ing the Dead Sea Scrolls.  A man who might be rather famil­iar to any grad­u­ate of say Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity.  He was a leg­end in his own time for not only that, but for his abil­ity to speak 32 lan­guages.  Flu­ently.   So I may be a mutt, but I have a healthy respect for reli­gion and a very good his­tor­i­cal feel­ing for the region.

Plus of course my own 11 year career in DC. Plus another ten plus in New York.

Did the White House ever call on me, despite my get­ting in touch early on in the cam­paign?   No.

I could never get my foot into the Obama cam­paign, as hard as I tried.  Or the Clin­ton cam­paign before it.  Because this time, I was a white girl in her for­ties who didn’t go to Harvard.

And last time I was poor, and the Clinton’s don’t really like women except for Hillary’s career.  Or ones who’s dad­dies don’t donate alot of cash.

Look at Mon­ica Lewinsky.

And appar­ently, accord­ing to Obama’s head eco­nom­ics advi­sor, the ex pres­i­dent of Har­vard, Mr. Sum­mers, women don’t know any­thing about any­thing except mak­ing babies.  An atti­tude appar­ently shared by Obama if you look at his actions and not lis­ten to his pretty speeches.

I was taught that mak­ing money was a good thing, but not the end all and be all of what to do in life.  And cer­tainly not the mark of “the best and the brightest.”

I’m not say­ing my par­ents were per­fect.  They weren’t by a long shot.   In fact they were pretty screwed up in the end.

But they were right about a lot of things, includ­ing what we are see­ing right now in Amer­ica.  They pre­dicted it in many ways, and my dad tried to pro­tect us from it by mov­ing to Eng­land when I was a kid, a plan that became unstuck dur­ing a very messy sep­a­ra­tion, and my mother, I don’t know what she was think­ing, came back to the United States.  About six months before the elec­tion of Ronald Rea­gan.  I wore black to school in eighth grade the day he got elected.  My class­mates always thought I was weird. But I was polit­i­cal even then.

And I suf­fered from the anti Semi­tism of the Kennedys in a way most Democ­rats never did.   Thanks to the late Sen­a­tor Kennedy’s father, my father suf­fered from war wounds all his life, being forced to fight in the U.S. army to gain his cit­i­zen­ship.  He was a Ger­man Jew who escaped first to Eng­land less than a year after this pic­ture was taken,

.…spent the next ten years as an unhomed per­son with no citizenship,

and then only allowed Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship if he joined the army…

…and was sent to fight on the front lines of France and Ger­many because he spoke flu­ent French and Ger­man, thanks to Joe Kennedy’s hor­rific immi­gra­tion policies.

My dad was hor­rif­i­cally wounded on the front lines…even though they didn’t exactly make a big deal over it…notice that veteran’s ben­e­fits sucked back then too.…

but he was sent to the front lines of France and Ger­many, despite the fact that he was Jew­ish, thanks to Joe Kennedy’s anti Semi­tism, because he spoke flu­ent Ger­man and French.  Notice his com­mand­ing offi­cer cared more about the jeep than the fact that my dad almost lost his leg after dri­ving over a landmine.

My dad is also known as one of the lead­ing thinkers in game strat­egy, and indeed designed many games him­self, (as well as the clas­sic swirl trade­mark for Parker Broth­ers as described in this pub­li­ca­tion on the sub­ject below about clas­sic trade­marks in Amer­ica) which as every idiot grad­u­ate from an elite high school, even one in Hawaii, much less a BA recip­i­ent from Colum­bia in polit­i­cal sci­ence should know, is the basis for much of polit­i­cal strat­egy and so-called “real poli­tique.” I started beat­ing my father in games of strat­egy by age 10. And this is the work of a man with a dis­abil­ity and Pur­ple Heart. My dad lit­er­ally had to have his leg bolted back onto his body and was on crutches for a year. Wel­come to the way we treat our vets. And always have.

I lost him when I was 11.  This is the last pic­ture I have of him.

My life has inter­twined with the Kennedys all my life, in a weird and very bizarre way.  From the fact that my mater­nal great rel­a­tives in the South were also boot­leg­gers (although with­out the finan­cial edu­ca­tion and smarts, they never were ter­ri­bly good at pol­i­tics and finance until sev­eral gen­er­a­tions later) to much more per­sonal rea­sons and ways.

Even though the Kennedies loved my mother’s work, and who bought 100 copies of one of my mother’s first books, The Mag­i­cal Won­der­ful World of Mar­guerite, the book I was named after, now a collector’s item for a birth­day party for Car­o­line, there is a sort of bit­ter­ness too.

Not to men­tion the real­iza­tion of the hypocrisy of time that makes the lion­aza­tion of the Kennedies as sup­pos­edly the great “lib­er­als” one of the great lies of all time.

While Kennedy died of a brain tumor, he earned it the old fash­ioned way.  He drank him­self into it.  While I’m sym­pa­thetic, let’s not get too maudlin here.  I know alot about alco­holics too.  I lost my sec­ond par­ent to that dis­ease and the undi­ag­nosed dis­abil­ity that causes it too many times.

What will ever make up for the loss of MY dad?  Emo­tion­ally?  Finan­cially?  As a role model?

As my Dad?

The Kennedies were directly respon­si­ble for his untimely depar­ture from my life.  And for which I will never for­give them.  Even though I’ve been a reg­is­tered Demo­c­rat all my life and fought for pro­gres­sive causes. At great per­sonal sac­ri­fice, I might add.

It cost me a lot. My dad was not only well known in his life­time. He helped both his wives become famous too. See he did in the end get a bit jeal­ous, but in the begin­ning he believed in equal rights for women. That’s how his first wife, Eve Arnold, OBE, ended up becom­ing the first female pho­tog­ra­pher for Magnum.

While her first pho­tographs are what got her in the door…fashion shows in Harlem…

…Eve’s real claim to faim was that she dis­cov­ered Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. dis­cov­ered Marylin Monroe.

My eldest brother played soft­ball in the surf with her when she was still mar­ried to Nor­man Mailer and they were neigh­bors in Long Island Sound.

I know sto­ries about JFK and Mar­i­lyn that I’ll never share.  I don’t dish the gos­sip easily.

But as for the Kennedies?  It’s time for Amer­ica to get over it’s fas­ci­na­tion with roy­alty and remem­ber why we have a Con­sti­tu­tion and pres­i­dents instead.

A les­son Obama would do well to remem­ber.  And lib­er­als, when they get bent out of shape when their so called Mes­siah turns out to be more Repub­li­can than George Bush.

And gets elected by the very cor­po­ra­tions and even cor­rupt black orga­ni­za­tions like ACORN who would indeed rather play king­maker than allow elec­toral democ­racy speak for itself instead.

Are we doomed to repeat the mis­takes of the past?  Or can we remake our­selves in a bet­ter and more per­fect union?   Where the votes and the voices of the peo­ple actu­ally count?  Not the machi­na­tions of back­room pols who now are usu­ally bought and paid for by cor­po­ra­tions instead of built on the ille­gal gains and for­tunes of drug lords, patient dumpers, slum lords, or other law break­ers turned “respectable.”

Or at least they want you to think they are.

But like my father used to love to say, fruit doesn’t fall too far from the trees they grow on.

It’s up to you Amer­ica.  Repeat the past and we get the same results.  Last time I checked, keep repeat­ing the mis­takes of the past and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results is the def­i­n­i­tion of insanity.

Which, trust me, I know alot about.

It runs in my fam­ily, along with alot of sexism.

Most of my fam­ily died in the camps thanks to the anti-Semitism of Joe Kennedy, patri­arch of the Kennedy dynasty.  Buchen­wald to be spe­cific.  And I have the dis­turb­ing dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing more rel­a­tives on the Inter­na­tional Holo­caust Insur­ance Claims web­site than any­one in either Switzer­land or New York had ever talked to.

But I’m “priv­i­leged”, right, accord­ing to for­mer col­lege uh, “com­mu­nity orga­nizer” and anti-apartheid col­lege col­league Ms. Butts, who sat her over priv­i­leged ass in a well paid job at the White House until she got fired and this is what she told me the day I called her to con­grat­u­late her on her new gig.  I guess she learned her les­son when she got canned (Obama is loyal to nobody but him­self) when she never even both­ered to show up for more than ral­lies at col­lege and I even pushed for her to speak at a few (but always lists her involve­ment with the group on her resume).  Melody Barnes, another White House ding dong, didn’t even do that, I sup­pose because they would have inter­fered with soror­ity par­ties, and of course being on the Best Dressed List is far more impor­tant than social change, and has always has been, accord­ing to her.

Nei­ther one of them, as far as I know got a merit based schol­ar­ship to Car­olina, faced the kind of fam­ily I did, or had to deal with the lack of fund­ing, sex­ism, and down­right dys­func­tion that was present in my fam­ily, so I had to make up for it some­how.  With no places to work on cam­pus (a pre­req­ui­site of my schol­ar­ship), and no place in Chapel Hill except bars to work in (I was under­age), I still have scars on my veins from sell­ing plasma to eat.  Given three times a week for which I passed out every time I gave blood.  And the scars on my arms make me look like a junkie to this day.

But of course, despite both black girls’ absence from a real fight for the rights of peo­ple of color with both local and inter­na­tional con­se­quences and their sub­se­quent hypocrisy, racism against African Amer­i­cans is the worst kind of dis­crim­i­na­tion there’s ever been, right?

And of course schol­ar­ship stu­dents who lead suc­cess­ful move­ments that change state pol­icy could never have over­come their own dis­abil­ity and a fam­ily so dys­func­tional that peo­ple still don’t believe me when I tell them sto­ries about my child­hood because peo­ple like me could never have over­come those kinds of chal­lenges.  AND accom­plished the things I have so far.

Plus I’m white so that all doesn’t count.

Right?

Because of course being black is the high­est bar­rier you ever have to climb, appar­ently, accord­ing to the sex­ist, hyp­o­crit­i­cal, elit­ist and racist bup­pies who now sit their under­qual­i­fied, ego­tis­ti­cal asses in offices at 1600 Penn, but have done NOTHING in com­par­i­son to what I have done and bar­ri­ers over­come, to achieve what I have to accom­plish social jus­tice and equal­ity for many peo­ple of all col­ors and gen­ders, and of dif­fer­ent sex­ual ori­en­ta­tions, and for the envi­ron­ment than they have.

Tell me, have you ever saved an Indian tribe? I have.

Have you ever done any­thing on your own or just been a staffer?  They are all staffers who do what they’re told.

I’m the embod­i­ment of free think­ing entre­pre­neuri­al­ism.  I guess that’s what so threat­en­ing.  They don’t want a white girl show­ing them up.

God this is sick­en­ing.  First it’s the white boys and now it’s the black com­mu­nity.  When the hell are women, besides rich cor­rupt ones like Mrs. Clin­ton, EVER going to be taken seri­ously or have doors opened or given chances?  Or let our accom­plish­ments speak for ourselves?

When are those with dis­abil­i­ties ever going even to get affir­ma­tive action (we don’t have it).

Explain how being black is the worst dis­crim­i­na­tion there is to my third cousin Rudy, who I found when I traced my fam­ily tree with the help of Man­fred Lahn­stein, who helped me trace my pater­nal roots back to the 1600’s.  He’s not Jew­ish, but his last name is Lahn­stein, which is a small town in South­ern Ger­many where my fam­ily set­tled too.  And like many Ger­mans took their home town as their last name.  And one of my rel­a­tives built the first syn­a­gogue in the neigh­bor­ing town of Idstein that was destroyed by the Nazis, but still has a street named after Felix Lahn­stein, the founder of that syn­a­gogue, that I would like to visit some­time. You should read about him in Chan­nel­ing Melville. It might change your mind some­time about tor­ture, not to men­tion dis­abil­ity and gay rights.

Who knows if I’ll ever get that chance to visit. I will. If I ever have a chance.

If you talk to my cousin Rudy, who is a very gen­tle man, you will hear sto­ries that will make you change your mind rather quickly.  Rudy would wake up scream­ing in Ger­man lit­er­ally for decades (and he for­got how to speak the lan­guage while con­scious after he escaped to Amer­ica) about the ongo­ing night­mares of the tor­ture he went through and wit­nessed as a lit­tle boy dur­ing Kristall­nacht.  Until he was inter­viewed by Stephen Spiel­berg in his doc­u­men­tary about the Holo­caust.  And then the night­mares went away.  But that is what tor­ture does to you.

And of course, then there is my father.

Unlike Obama and Butts, I’ve paid my dues and taken a lot of crap because I lost my father at the age of 11, and had an alco­holic mother, a series of appallingly abu­sive step­fa­thers, plus many of her boyfriends to deal with and duck who share remark­ably sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics, and have worked in a coun­try that is still appallingly discriminatory.

On all levels.

Let’s put it this way.  The only way I sur­vived it is that I learned early how to defend myself.  And sur­vived the best way I could.  Actu­ally self defense was one of the last things I remem­ber my dad teach­ing me.  There have been a cou­ple of men who tried to rape me, par­tic­u­larly in the cir­cus of the house of my teenaged years, who found out very quickly that they should prob­a­bly change their plans or suf­fer severe consequences.

Which, trust me, they took very seriously.

Being black is not the worst dis­crim­i­na­tion you can face today. Being stuck with a rare dis­abil­ity is. This site has many resources for every­one. But I want to raise the con­scious­ness of every­one who comes across it of the plight of what I call the Amer­i­can Apartheid. Those TWENTY PERCENT of Amer­i­cans with dis­abil­i­ties, which is about what it is glob­ally too, who live mostly in poverty, because they don’t seem to mat­ter to YOU.

I would sug­gest to those who feel this way that they widen their hori­zons and change their per­spec­tives.  FAST.  And def­i­nitely drop the ‘tude.

Because 1 in 3 Amer­i­cans will develop a dis­abil­ity in their life times, or have a child or a par­ent who has one. With a health sys­tem that isn’t designed to cope. And Wash­ing­ton doesn’t care. Nei­ther does Obama.

So I’m going for­ward with my plan, which helps both the able bod­ied and those of us who are GIMPS, because it helps the entire AMERICAN PEOPLE.

And from what I’ve seen so far of THIS ADMINISTRATION, I don’t see a sin­gle per­son on the White House staff who has accom­plished as much, over­come as much,and has authored a plan that STILL beats the pants off any of the eco­nomic and clean­tech pro­pos­als the White House is push­ing.  Plus has a plan for TBI, the ONLY ONE IN THE COUNTRY, and sav­ing a huge amount of fed­eral money and putting the entire econ­omy into overdrive.

And I have got­ten no breaks, from affir­ma­tive action to help on any loans, much less grants.  Or any men­tors.  All I get is sex­ism and “sorry, the boy with the Ivy League gets the job.  Or the money. Or the loan.”  And now I get “you’re a gimp, and worse, white, go away.”  And beaten up.  By Obama’s Goons for America.

I’m fed up.  This has crossed the line.

And it’s WAY OVERDUE for a change.

I’ve always been a com­mu­nity orga­nizer and social activist, start­ing from early on in my life.  My back­ground in work­ing to end vio­lence against women in both soci­ety and in biases in the judi­ciary and media in cov­er­ing such things as date rape and the pun­ish­ment of it, of course my col­lege anti-apartheid activ­i­ties, and also my work for social and eco­nomic equal­ity, equal rights for the LGBT com­mu­nity and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties started rather ear­lier than most, thanks to a really dys­func­tional family.

Oh, and a con­science. You can read about my work in the other tabs.

And a refusal to turn my head away.

And knowl­edge, based on a good under­stand­ing of his­tory and sus­tain­able eco­nom­ics, to quote Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, that “no man is truly free in a slave-holding state.”  Or for that mat­ter a vastly socioe­co­nom­i­cally unequal one where less than 1% of the coun­try con­trols about 95% of the wealth of this coun­try.  Which Obama is rapidly accel­er­at­ing, despite the promises of the campaign.

Well guess what?  Twenty per­cent of the coun­try right now are basi­cally being kept in legal­ized slav­ery by a gov­ern­ment who doesn’t give care.  But is cost­ing you a for­tune.  Like the national debt ($1.4 Tril­lion a year) just in dis­abil­ity pay­ments alone.  Which keeps mil­lions of Amer­i­cans at poverty level.  But this sit­u­a­tion, per­pet­u­ated by our gov­ern­ment, keeps mak­ing poli­cies that makes bil­lions for their bud­dies and finances their cam­paigns, so it must be okay then, right?

Start­ing with Obama and Congress.

Who, despite what they say, haven’t done jack since the Rehab Act, passed in 1973 or the ADA, which was passed in 1990, despite all the fan­fare over the redo of the ADA last year and the sign­ing of the UN treaty.  And don’t even hire peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties as staff in their own offices.  Less than 1% of the fed­eral work­force has a dis­abil­ity, and is on aver­age employed two grades below, at grade 8, what their able bod­ied col­leagues are.  Sim­ply because of dis­crim­i­na­tion.  The pri­vate sec­tor doesn’t hire you at all.  You’re a lia­bil­ity remem­ber?  And nat­u­rally inferior.

You know it sounds just like if your skin is a dif­fer­ent color you don’t deserve to have equal­ity too, doesn’t it?  But black politi­cians and the elit­ist bup­pies at the White House are, excuse the pun, tone deaf to that analogy.

Just your health­care pre­mi­ums alone, not to men­tion pesky things like hav­ing to fol­low fed­eral law and imple­ment accom­mo­da­tions are a pain in the ass, so why bother?  Don’t hire the gimp.  Go for the able bod­ied can­di­date instead.  Prefer­ably male white boy.

That’s why our unem­ploy­ment rate is so high.  Notice how many staffers on the Hill have disabilities?

The White House only has one.  And he bought his job with daddy’s money.  So that doesn’t exactly count now, does it?  With no DC expe­ri­ence.  And who’s cur­rently call­ing for a study when he has my pro­posal and refuses to return my phone calls because his boss doesn’t want to do any­thing but give out all the best grants to his cronies.

No mat­ter what you say about pass­ing leg­is­la­tion, it doesn’t do any good until you change the atti­tudes of the judi­ciary and employ­ers, and stop cut­ting our damned pro­grams.  Not to men­tion leav­ing us until last and leav­ing us until last.  Do you really think a treaty means a damn?  It’s just a piece of paper.

Where’s Con­gress’ rat­i­fi­ca­tion of it?  Where’s your hir­ing pol­icy and when is it going to change to be more reflec­tive of our pop­u­la­tion in the coun­try?  And when are you going to stop nom­i­nat­ing and approv­ing judges with appalling records on dis­abil­ity employ­ment law?  Like the one Obama and my ex pal Butts nom­i­nated to the fourth cir­cuit court of appeals and the Sen­ate just confirmed?

Where’s our minor­ity sta­tus with the SBA, our abil­ity to get loans and par­tic­i­pate in gov­ern­ment set asides, just like vets with dis­abil­i­ties get?  There are lots of ways of hon­or­ing vets with dis­abil­i­ties, but exclud­ing civil­ians with them from pro­grams that help wounded vets out of poverty is not only a vio­la­tion of Title VII, since most vets are men, but appalling.

And called redlining.

You don’t “earn” a disability. And typ­i­cal, yet again. Of the appalling and dis­crim­i­na­tory atti­tudes towards the abil­i­ties and open­ing doors of oppor­tu­ni­ties to peo­ple with disabilities.

Who at present have pre­cisely NONE.

Oops.  I guess our mighty pres­i­dent hadn’t con­sid­ered that. Or maybe he did and he didn’t care. It takes much more work to accom­plish than photo ops and speeches.   Much less, dol­lars to donuts he even “for­got” to fac­tor in the cost of treat­ing TBI in your health­care deform bud­get, not an unrea­son­able assump­tion to make, since Obama and Con­gress don’t even have a coor­di­nated national strat­egy to deal with the prob­lem yet.  Even for vet­er­ans, much less civilians.

I do, and accord­ing to the TBI Cen­ters for Excel­lence am far ahead of them.  With the ONLY plan in the coun­try to do so. MINE. See the Work Fair Tab for it. I’m going to do what­ever I can to launch it.

But I still can’t get a call from the White House.  Appar­ently because gimps are so worth­less they have noth­ing at all to con­tribute.  Because we’re all retards with poor bowl­ing skills, no mat­ter what our dis­abil­i­ties are.  I mean even the Pres­i­dent knows that, right?  And it’s so funny he makes jokes about it on national TV.

Even when DoD gives the idea an enthu­si­as­tic thumbs up.

What’s wrong with this picture?

You’ll find exam­ples of my work through­out this site. I have the fam­ily, the edu­ca­tion and the edu­ca­tional chops to launch the pilot. Where it goes from there is up to my fun­ders, my staff and the via­bil­ity of the project, which I think has legs of its own.

But think about it for a minute. I have so much expe­ri­ence, how can it fail, and we have to do some­thing to address these prob­lems. Why not let me try? And save money in the process?

No gim­micks, no tricks.

Just fix­ing the 508 com­pli­ance prob­lems with ONE AGENCY in New York, by my con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates, is in the neigh­bor­hood of about $5–10 mil­lion.  Plus dam­ages.  And a cake­walk to win in light of the Tar­get decision.

It may sound dan­ger­ous, but I warn those now who get in my way, you’re screw­ing with the wrong per­son.  In the words of MLK, I have noth­ing to lose. Seth Har­ris over at Labor doesn’t know the mean­ing of “dis­abil­i­ties terrorist.”

I’m not a rad­i­cal per­son. But my life has now been defined by this. I refuse to let it be destroyed. Along with the hun­dreds if not thou­sands of oth­ers I know are in my posi­tion if not worse. YOU, as the bank that fired me, and YOU, the Con­gress of this Coun­try, and YOU, Obama, made this Frankenstein.

So I guess that makes me unwor­thy of hold­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with ANYBODY at the White House either, right?

Unless I hold out a wad of cash?

As I seem to remem­ber that was exactly what Obama promised to END when he got to Wash­ing­ton, but he’s only per­pet­u­at­ing it.  Because so far it’s only kids and lob­by­ists who are get­ting any access. And we all know that teleprompters are required for six year olds. Guess what. When I get my meet­ing, no telepromters allowed. It’s going to be mano a mana. If you can meet with your best buddy after a scream­ing match with a cop, your Gestapo beat me up. I think you owe me a lit­tle bit more than a beer.

Oh, and male movie stars.  Like Brad Pitt.  Who are break­ing envi­ron­men­tal law. But then I hear you’re related.

You know in the south there’s this say­ing that “incest is a game the whole fam­ily can play. Is that the game the White House is playing?

Because I sure get no credit for my accom­plish­ments.  And some of them are here. There are alot more of them that should get me a pas­sage to the Oval Office, no ques­tions asked.

I know that sta­tus and Har­vard are labels that peo­ple in DC and New York just love.  But is it labels or the work you actu­ally accom­plish that really makes a dif­fer­ence?  I mean does it make you a bet­ter per­son to wear Izod or J. Crew?  Or go shop­ping in a thrift store?

It’s a label, not an accom­plish­ment, you stu­pid twits.  Do you really want me to remind you that Bush went to Har­vard too?

How about that ol’ Abe Lin­coln, who made one hell of a lawyer, and a pretty good Pres­i­dent, but didn’t go to law school, much less Har­vard.  Uh, is there a dou­ble stan­dard here or what?  Oh, I for­got, he’s a guy and of course nat­u­rally genet­i­cally supe­rior.  I guess my leg hair will have to sub­sti­tute for Lincoln’s weird facial hair fashion.

Brand­ing does not make you a bet­ter per­son.  It’s a sta­tus sym­bol.  Isn’t that what Ivy League degrees are good for?

BUT NOTHING ELSE. Espe­cially when us gimps spent most of last sum­mer track­ing down the soil sci­en­tists in Staten Island so we could get the organic test­ing we needed done for the pro­posal that’s been sit­ting in the White House for months, and ignored.  But I guess since I didn’t go to an Ivy League I’m stu­pid and I don’t count.  That’s how women are always treated, right?

Why oh why did this hap­pen to me?

And Mrs. Obama hasn’t both­ered to hire a sin­gle per­son with a dis­abil­ity to her staff either.  Or invite a kid with a dis­abil­ity to the White House.  Or even visit Gaulludet, one of the best uni­ver­si­ties in the coun­try for peo­ple who are deaf, less than five miles from the White House, who pio­neered wire­less online mobile polit­i­cal and com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing way before Obama even got into the race.

And as for her con­cern about mil­i­tary families?

Right.

She didn’t even know that ser­vice per­son­nel are so badly paid that their fam­i­lies live on food stamps.

And appar­ently doesn’t give a rat’s ass that their num­ber one con­cern, apart from see­ing their loved one come home alive, is that they come home in one piece, so I guess that’s why she hasn’t hired a sin­gle per­son with a dis­abil­ity to her staff either.  So much for dou­ble degrees from Ivy League insti­tu­tions.  Was she asleep dur­ing class or is she just dumb?

And cor­rupt.

I’ve also done a lot of work on national secu­rity and habeas cor­pus deform.  And touched almost every aspect of Con­sti­tu­tional Law.  Even if it was to watch the flag burn­ers on the steps of the Supreme Court — yeah, that was au courant then. I may not agree with burn­ing the flag, in fact my great grand­daddy Mon­roe raised the flag faith­fully every morn­ing out­side his house, and took it down every night before sun­down.  But I absolutely sup­port the right of protest, which includes the right to burn it.

See the Constitution.

Or watch as your con­fer­ence room was rou­tinely used for vic­to­ri­ous lawyers and their clients in Supreme Court Cases the ACLU had been involved in and either had pre­sented well or won.

Those were the days that the ACLU leg­isla­tive office was in the old Mott Build­ing, right across the street from the Hart Sen­ate Office Build­ing, and even more con­ve­niently, also across the street from the Supreme Court.

It was a good learn­ing expe­ri­ence, even if my boss, a Wash­ing­ton leg­end for those in the know, and who’s claim to fame in Belt­way cir­cles was that he was the per­son orig­i­nally sus­pected of leak­ing the Pen­ta­gon Papers, was an abu­sive, sex­ist twerp, who told me I never deserved to go to Har­vard law because I didn’t go to an Ivy League under­grad (because I was a girl).  Never mind I had just changed state pol­icy or faced dis­crim­i­na­tion and a hor­rif­i­cally dys­func­tional fam­ily that lim­ited my choices.  Or that given the oppor­tu­nity, like if I had still been in Lon­don, when I tested into the best school in the coun­try at the age of 11. If I’d had the same oppor­tu­ni­ties here as there, Har­vard or any of the Ivies would have been a breeze.

But no, in Amer­ica, it’s all about money.  Mer­i­toc­racy doesn’t count.  And gen­der doesn’t hurt if you’re a man.

Some things never change in Belt­way culture. Much less Amer­ica as a whole.  Just look at the “boys club” in the cur­rent White House.  The Mas­sah may be black, but all the chief deci­sion mak­ers are men.  And most of them still white.

What a change.

But unashamed, unabashed, and bla­tant dis­crim­i­na­tion is a trait my for­mer boss seems to have passed on to at least one of his sons.  A news direc­tor at a major TV net­work in DC that rou­tinely pro­duces appallingly biased and sex­ist cov­er­age of women.  And even dresses his reporters that way (for exam­ple dress­ing Diane Sawyer in blue, as in nun, for a story she did on pros­ti­tu­tion).  This is how the visu­ally skilled manip­u­la­tors enforce sub­tle mes­sages of behav­ior and belief.  From Madi­son Avenue, to polit­i­cal ad mak­ers, to the cor­po­rate owned giants sell­ing the news and how we are sup­posed to think about the sub­tle mes­sages they impart about the biases in such report­ing (or in the case of net­works like Fox, they dropped the pre­tense long ago).  For an inter­est­ing doc­u­men­tary on how the Pen­ta­gon uses this tech­nique to sell its wish list of weapons to Con­gress, albeit a lit­tle dated, check this out.

The tech­niques they use are not new, and actu­ally pio­neered by the Nazi’s.  It’s also called brain­wash­ing using sub­lim­i­nal visual tech­niques, and one of the first tricks of the trade taught to film­mak­ers.  And used fre­quently and often dur­ing polit­i­cal cam­paigns.  And used espe­cially adroitly by Obama.

But despite my expe­ri­ence, over at 1600 Penn, the Pres­i­dent prefers to be an elit­ist and go golf­ing with Tiger Woods and meet with the UNC bas­ket­ball team than deign to block out some time on his cal­en­dar for some­one like me.  And prefers to meet with Brad Pitt, the biggest builder in New Orleans, who funded his project with vio­lent movies and porno­graphic pic­tures of his wife, who has no expe­ri­ence in eco­nomic devel­op­ment, none in clean­tech, none in sus­tain­able eco­nom­ics, none in envi­ron­men­tal law, none in civil lib­er­ties, none in poverty issues on a sys­tem­atic, pol­icy level, none in DC pol­i­tics, not to men­tion, who’s vio­lat­ing SEVERAL major envi­ron­men­tal laws, and has no ongo­ing stim­u­lus effect, but “looks good” because they’re both celebri­ties.  And pulled off “in secret” just to dou­ble the intrigue.

Give me a break.  With the North Pole ice­cap melt­ing in about six years, do you want a dumb movie star hav­ing meet­ings with the pres­i­dent about these things, or a per­son with real experience?

Many peo­ple still also remem­ber my father’s work and fre­quently cite his writ­ings.  Michelle’s parent’s prob­a­bly read, and non­fic­tion book writer (you should look him up some­time Axel­turf, if you haven’t already), and even fre­quent tele­vi­sion inter­vie­wee (a very big thing in the six­ties and seventies) and a well known critic of Sesame Street which was an effort to cut down on spend­ing on pub­lic edu­ca­tion by the Nixon gov­ern­ment, increase the role of rote learn­ing in edu­ca­tion, pre­cisely the kind that does not encour­age cre­ative out of box think­ing and prob­lem solv­ing, cre­ated epilepsy in chil­dren (some­thing not dis­cov­ered widely until almost twenty years later).

And used tech­niques also used by fas­cist film­mak­ers and sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage spe­cial­ists.  There is a way that the brain can be fooled visu­ally.  It’s one of the first film­mak­ing tricks you learn.  And used by every cam­paign polit­i­cal strategist.

But it’s exactly anti­thet­i­cal to the kind of train­ing that we need now if Amer­ica is to regain its foot­ing.  Sorry Michelle, but that’s another thing you don’t have a clue on.  And if you’re going to teach the Mup­pets how to gar­den, please don’t do it on a HAZMAT site, like your ill fated exper­i­ment on the White House lawn.  You really need a decent aca­d­e­mic advi­sor if you are going to ven­ture into edu­ca­tion, because so far, you’re look­ing stu­pider ever step you take.  Were you asleep dur­ing both your Ivy League adven­tures or just feel­ing sorry for your­self that you were black?

And sorry Rambo.  You can’t have both.  Because a brain that ques­tions, ques­tions every­thing.  Includ­ing the Gestapo tac­tics of “Demo­c­ra­tic con­trol at all costs.”  No mat­ter how odi­ous the candidate.

No way.  No how.  And go screw yourself.

And if not, go join the Repub­li­can party.  That is not what the Democ­rats are about.  And if they are, I’m leav­ing the party.   And so will a lot of other people.

We don’t need brain­less fol­low­ers and sheep.  We need a coun­try of inno­v­a­tive, out-of-box thinkers.  Which you are sti­fling in this effort that, I’m sorry, looks down­right fas­cist.  Espe­cially after what hap­pened in mid-August.  I was pre­pared to give you the ben­e­fit of the doubt when I showed up at a town hall meet­ing in New York City on the lower East Side, before Obama’s goons beat me up.  Sounds like what hap­pened in Nazi Germany.

So much for Democ­racy.  So much for the Demo­c­ra­tic Party.  They’re worse than the Repub­li­cans because they’re hypocrites.

So you failed.   With an F-.

This absolute gravedig­ger of a review, cri­tiquing my dad for his actu­ally very on the mark obser­va­tion about the func­tional illit­er­acy of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion is absolutely fatu­ous and absurdly ill informed, par­tic­u­larly as it was writ­ten in the early sev­en­ties when school seg­re­ga­tion was still a hot but­ton issue in the courts and African Amer­i­cans even today still have prob­lems get­ting their GEDs, not because they are lazy, but because of the appalling state of pub­lic edu­ca­tion, thanks to con­tin­ued cut­backs by the very elites who send their own chil­dren to pri­vate school (like Obama), but cut back gov­ern­ment help for those who need it the most, have aban­doned pri­vate edu­ca­tion almost com­pletely, and chan­nel ear­marks to friends and rel­a­tives and then blame the poor for being lazy, when in fact they’re just not being given any oppor­tu­nity. And if you think that’s bad, wel­come to “Spe­cial Ed.” New York State is so out of com­pli­ance that it’s break­ing Fed­eral Labor Law. I’m say­ing that now, because I’m call­ing them out.

And uh, I think Obama just said the same thing.  Forty years later.  He’s a bit late on the uptake, don’t you think?  Not to men­tion those ideas come from some­where.  I know Obama likes to take credit for his own bril­liance on every­thing, but sorry honey, no dice.  There’s evi­dence on this web­site that proves it.

I doubt if any mem­ber of Con­gress has vis­ited a pub­lic school in DC, where paint rou­tinely peels from class­room walls, leaks in the ceil­ings are com­mon, com­put­ers are nonex­is­tent (and trust me they don’t have them at home), and the teach­ers barely lit­er­ate them­selves.  Not to men­tion use text­books that are at least thirty years out of date.

Apture, a pro­gram pro­moted on this web­site is fully 508 com­pli­ant. Along with Green prod­ucts, this web­site will pro­mote any fully 508 com­pli­ant prod­uct we can find.

For those of you who don’t know what that means, it’s a sec­tion of both the FEDERAL dis­abil­i­ties laws (the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act or ADA) and the 1973 Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Act, the first of which applies to the pri­vate sec­tor, the sec­ond to the gov­ern­ment, which MANDATES that every web­site is now cov­ered and acces­si­ble to those with dis­abil­i­ties. It’s sort of like the cyber­space ver­sion of curb cuts.

I am mak­ing every effort to make all of my web­site 508 com­pli­ant, and Apture is a pro­gram that is.

As of today, at least 30 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, or 1/10 of the pop­u­la­tion lit­er­ally can­not read, mostly due to dis­abil­ity.  Add that to tech­no­log­i­cal illit­er­acy, or the so called dig­i­tal divide, and the num­bers are much higher than that, and in fact much closer to my dad’s pro­jec­tions, a fact that the idiot reviewer at Kirkus and in fact the equally idi­otic and dis­crim­i­na­tory elected elite in DC refuse to address even today.  Because it’s to their advan­tage to keep the major­ity of the pop­u­la­tion une­d­u­cated and not under­stand what they are really doing.

So along with the fact that I’ve always been a paci­fist, I’ve always been opposed to things like wars, which make even more peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. Which is why I’ve always been opposed to the ones we are fight­ing now.  Not to men­tion opposed to Pres­i­dents and arm­chair gen­er­als who love to send kids to fight them, but don’t give a shit about what hap­pens to them.  But feel really macho and butch about invad­ing other people’s coun­tries, and killing their women and children.

It reflects in how we relate to our own selves and soci­ety.  And why we as as a soci­ety are so damned sex­ist. And vio­lent.

But I’m also opposed to arm­chair pres­i­dents who feed the mon­ster known as the mil­i­tary indus­trial com­plex, which Obama is just doing as blindly as his pre­de­ces­sor. That’s why I devel­oped Work Fair. That’s why I’m fight­ing so hard for access, and to launch the pro­gram, one way or another. That’s why it was even more galling to the niece of Peter Drucker who reor­ga­nized GM the first time around in the early 1940’s to have the White House com­pletely ignore my plan.  Which also deals with the reor­ga­ni­za­tion and green­ing of GM.  And I have a plan to do it again in a hurry that the White House has stu­diously been ignor­ing for almost a year.  And this time green Amer­ica.  Fast.  While pro­mot­ing Amer­i­can prod­ucts abroad. And putting Amer­i­cans back to work now. With no gimmicks.

You can read about Work Fair on the tab next door.

But I’m not going to go away.

And excuse the rant, but this is my life.

If you want more infor­ma­tion about my work, my project, or any­thing else, this blog is an open book.  If you want to join me in Work Fair, I’m look­ing for some good peo­ple.  If you want to con­tribute to my legal defense fund, check out Chan­nel­ing Melville on the tab next door.  Your con­tri­bu­tion won’t be for charity.

But this is me.  Real fighter for rights, righter of wrongs, and yes, I know I swear like a sailor some­times, but uh, com­plain about that to Rambo and see what reac­tion you get.

I thought peo­ple might like to know a lit­tle more about me.  Sorry if it’s bor­ing, but you can skip it.

Work Fair is one of the most excit­ing projects and far ahead of ANY clean­tech pro­posal in the coun­try.  If you want an adven­ture, get in touch…..as soon as I fig­ure out how to put a mail­ing list on my web­site.  We can’t do it all.  Or know it all.  The def­i­n­i­tion of genius, as I was always taught, is know­ing when to say “I don’t know.”

This is Mar­guerite unplugged.  I thought you ought to know.

Or even might want to.  There aren’t many labels peo­ple can accu­rately stick on me.

That’s why indi­vid­u­al­ism and free think­ing, com­bined with com­mu­nal instincts and a love of what is good about this coun­try make what is hap­pen­ing right now so utterly tragic.

And why I am doing what I am doing and saying.

I hope you will join me, if not directly, then in your own per­sonal fight for the free­doms that have been slowly eroded in our own life­times (and I’m Gen-X folks, with lit­tle respect for peo­ple like Megan McCain, who’s igno­rance I find appalling) but not quite so much as the media’s con­tin­ual usage of her as a spokesperson.

Can’t you find ANYONE more intelligent?

Not to men­tion dis­gusted at the appalling hyp­ocrite Obama has turned out to be.

Fight back, fight back, FIGHT BACK.

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