Daveparts3
Daveparts3's JournalThe War of Terror
The U.S. War On Terror
Or A Conspiracy From Within?
By David Glenn Cox
Malcolm X once said,
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses,”
“A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
“Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies. Aristocracy with the meaning – the best are ruling. Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its “people’s sovereignty” the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don’t want to be recognized.” ~ Joseph Goebbels
Franklin Roosevelt added,
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
So these voices from the past cry out to us in unison, all is not as it appears. We live in a historic age, with an explosion of media power and contraction of corporate ownership. We live in an historic age of near perpetual war, with the slyest cheaters still hiding, with accidents, near accidents, amazing spectacles and subtle slights of tongue.
With amazing subtlety President Obama during his State of the Union message said, he was committed to assisting “responsible borrowers.” By adding that one simple adjective “responsible,” Obama had justified helping very few, while at the same time, justified the ignoring of the many. However, the Federal government had made no such distinction of responsibility in assisting the banking aristocracy, now did they?
In the United States, if you suggest or propose that there are any aristocracies, hidden hands or slyest cheaters in hiding, your voice is quickly relegated to the ranks of the tin foil hat society. In this country alone, prominent men are always murdered by a lone nut with gun.
On February 27, 1933 the German Reichstag building mysteriously caught fire and was nearly destroyed. Just three weeks before, Adolf Hitler had become the Chancellor of Germany. Just ten days before the fire, the new chancellor had had told his lieutenant Joseph Goebbels, that he would, burn the Communists out of Germany.
In this new government, Hermann Goering was named as President of the Reichstag. Goering resided across the street from the Reichstag building in a home with an underground passage leading into the Reichstag. On the night of the 27th, Goering was the last of the government officials to arrive on the scene. He was described as red faced and out of breath and immediately declared the fire to be the beginning of a Communist uprising.
http://www.thelosangelespost.org/war-terror/
Dickensian!
Dickensian!
By David Glenn Cox
Somewhere between the lies and the rage lives sanity. It lives oppressed and abused in a land which has quite literally, lost its soul. It lives in a cold dingy room; it lives on hope and food stamps. It lives on memories of the past which grow smaller in the rear view mirror as time whizzes by.
Without any further introduction, the November Bureau of labor Statistics jobs report filled with wishful fantasies resplendent with excuses, a turd polished to a fine, high gloss luster. From the commissioner’s statement;
“Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 146,000 in November,
and the unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent. In 2012,
job gains have averaged 151,000 per month, essentially the same
as in 2011. In November, employment rose in retail trade,
professional and business services, and health care.
Before providing the details of this month’s data, I would
like to comment on the impact of Hurricane Sandy on our November
estimates. On October 29, the storm made landfall on the
Northeast coast, causing severe damage in some states.
Nevertheless, response rates in the affected states were within
normal ranges in November. Our analysis leads us to conclude
that Hurricane Sandy did not substantively impact the national
employment and unemployment estimates for November. We will
release the November regional and state estimates on December
21st.
For weather conditions to reduce the estimate of payroll
employment, employees have to be off work for an entire pay
period and not be paid for the time missed. In our household
survey, persons with a job who miss work for weather-related
events are counted as employed whether or not they are paid for
the time off.”
Wonderful, the largest utility in New Jersey estimates damages of over 300 million dollars calling it, the largest power outage in the state’s history. The Bureau of Labor Statistics crosses its fingers declaring that storm related unemployment doesn’t count. They will of course, count all of the workers hired to repair this damage as proof positive that our economic recovery polices are working.
Civilian non institutional population – up by 191,000 new workers
Civilian labor force – down by 350,000
Participation Rate – down .2%
Employed – down by 229,000
Unemployment rate – down .2% (7.7%) U-3
Not in Labor Force – up by 542,000
A city the size of Raleigh, North Carolina or New Haven, Connecticut disappeared from the government’s radar in the last 30 days. Only, this 542,000 were just workers, 542,000 Americans who have given up the search for gainful employment. 542,000 Americans who face a holiday season bereft of government assistance.
Just abandoned, just fuck off and die, we no longer care about our own people.
Let’s use conservative numbers here, shall we? Let’s assume for a moment that each of these 542,000 have only one other member in their immediate family. Suddenly, the number of Americans affected becomes a city the size of Columbus Ohio. Now image, not just a mom and dad, but two children as well, facing the holidays with very little, as we have now reached a city of over two million souls, a city the size of Baltimore Maryland abandoned. Can you see the good news as it is proclaimed to us? 146,000 new jobs!
Number of Americans employed October 2012 – 143,384,000
Unemployment rate October 2012- 7.9 percent
Number of Americans employed November 2012 – 143,262,000
Unemployment rate November 2012 – 7.7 percent
Officially unemployed;
September – 12,088, 000
October – 12,258,000
November - 12,029,000
Before we move on, one more factoid from ‘Not in Labor Force”
Not in Labor Force November 2011 – 86,503,000
Not in Labor Force November 2012 - 88,883,000
You see, it’s like a sausage factory, they just grind them up and spit them out and don’t you dare ask what's inside, because you don’t want to know. 2,380,000 Americans no longer in the workforce, but life goes on, doesn’t it? So they live on Food Stamps, but Washington is going to fix that as well, aren’t they? They have a plan, don’t they, to cut that Food Stamp budget, because as you can plainly see they have fixed the unemployment problem.
The U-6 unemployment rate, the closest figure we have to real and semi- accurate stands this month at 14.4 percent, last November it stood at 15.6 percent. A decline of 1.2 percent in twelve months and with a straight face, they call this good news. Because as the workers burn through their unemployment benefits the numbers appear to improve and states can now cut extended benefits to the unemployed.
The number of Average Weekly Hours – Total Private; this November – 34.6 and last November 34.6, no improvement, just the same as before, the new normal.
Then this little ditty is attached at the end of the commissioner’s statement;
“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +148,000 to +132,000, and the change for October was revised from +171,000 to +138,000.”
Construction and extraction occupations:
Employed – November 2011 - 7,440,000
Employed – November 2012 – 7,178,000
A loss of 362,000 jobs
Unemployed – November 2011 – 1,151,000
Unemployed – November 2012 - 1,066,000
Down 85,000
“Employment in construction declined by 20,000 in November, with much of the loss occurring in construction of buildings (-11,000). Since early 2010, employment in construction has shown no clear trend.” - Bureau of Labor Statistics
The bureau might not see a trend, but I damn sure do, People are being driven from their fields of employment by an inability to make a living at them.
The number of “Goods Producing” jobs declined by 22,000 this month. Manufacturing fell by 7,000 jobs and primary metals shed 1,700 jobs in thirty days. Semi conductors and electronic components lost 2,300 jobs this month. Miscellaneous manufacturing lost 1,300 jobs and a real surprise, Food Manufacturing lost 12,300 jobs in the last thirty days.
On the plus side of the ledger, retail trade added 52,600 jobs, they pay low wages and they usually don’t have any benefits but what are you going to do? Starve all at once or take your sweet time about it?
Professional and business services – up by 43,000 jobs
Finance and Insurance – up by 5,100
Credit intermediation – up by 1,600
Insurance carriers and related activities – up by 4,000
Real Estate and rental and leasing – down 5,000 jobs
Educational Services – down by 3,700
Repair and Maintenance – down 1,800 jobs
But if you would, I would like for you to mull these last two categories over in your mind for just a moment. Think about what these numbers really say and really mean to us as a people,
Amusements Gambling and recreation – up by 12,200 jobs
Child Day Care services – down by 6,200 jobs in thirty days.
To me at least, this is a Dickensian picture which says without looking up, “are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? The treadmill and the Poor laws are in full vigor then?"
These numbers tell us a story, only, they aren’t numbers, they are a people. They are our own people and these are their lives. It is easy enough to understand why a government or government official might want to bury, twist and obfuscate these numbers. Only, they fail to understand that while the numbers themselves are shameful and disgraceful, the twisting and obfuscating of them is abominable and criminal.
Tens of millions of Americans unemployed, affecting millions more still. Pushed out, pushed down and denied the opportunity to make a decent living. Demonized and vilified for their own poverty, marginalized and minimized by those responsible, ignored by those paid to do something about it, abandoned in a society of pure greed and pure evil.
“Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.”
– Charles Dickens
Average weekly earnings- Construction, Manufacturing, Durable Goods, $1007.65
Average weekly earnings- Retail, $518.24
The Secret Bridge
The Secret Bridge
By David Glenn Cox
There is a hint of a chill in the air as the leaves of the trees bleed out their spectrum colors, fall is culminating and succumbing. The Hallows eve approaches, as the land of mythical and magical, fearsome and fanciful. I was shown something special, something of which I can only share a part of,
Hollywood couldn’t make up such a story as this. A ways off in the woods, not too far from here, lost in an urban wilderness there in an obscurity, a curiosity, an item left behind and almost forgotten. A historical relic, like a civil war belt buckle, only this belt buckle covers many acres. Traversing the grounds we would find the odd bits and pieces of a buried past, sleeping covered by a moss, and pine straw blanket, old red bricks mixed in with cob rough pieces of mortar and concrete.
But first, you must first drive up the hill about a half a mile on an old brick road. A road laced with red brick pavers which should more rightly be painted yellow for they lead up to a ridge of fantasy, mayhem and magic. When you reach the end of this brick service road, there is an aging rusted steel guard rail separating yesterday from today, signifying the beginning and the end of our realm. The forest canopy was lush when I first saw it, turning a bright sunny afternoon to the light of shaded overcast. It was dark, with just a hint of moisture in the air, some how just enough, to let you know that this story is going to involve water.
Climbing up to the top of the ridge you can see we are surrounded by water on three sides, bordered by a steep terrain. To me at least, this says, that whatever the purpose of this facility, confinement was at least a peripheral issue. Stepping beyond the rusting monument and into the deep foliage, in a near ten steps she stands before you in all her raging glory. She is a crumbling concrete bridge, fancy, with all the trimmings. She’s at least a hundred feet long spanning in an arc pattern with concrete sconces build onto alternating arched bridge pilings.
This isn’t just your everyday walking across the creek bridge, she is beautiful and ornate. And with just a tiny leap of fantasy she becomes, a bridge in medieval France, or the bridge to Frankenstein’s Castle. That’s the kind of bridge she is all right, a right fancy bridge that someone built up on a ridge, out in the boon docks to do something, to someone. To do what and to whom, are merely your first opportunities for conjecture.
At first, I thought this secret bridge might have been built by the W.P.A. there are numerous examples of W.P.A. & C.C.C. construction works still around in the area and I assumed that this might just be one more of them. When I came back to visit for a second time, I examined underneath the bridge and around the other structures. Underneath the bridge on either side are large rooms built in and on the far side of the bridge. On the far side, the room has an old iron fuel tank of some kind; I’d guess the tank held maybe five to six hundred gallons. The tank is very old, as its seams are riveted, but to hold what and for why, I can’t say really, this is a cafeteria ghost story, so you may take from it whatever you like.
So there’s this elaborate bridge built to connect a remote ridge top to the community. A room with an old riveted fuel tank, and since commercial arc welding didn’t come along until the 1920’s, maybe, we can date the bridge by the tank. Just guessing, I’d say the turn of the century to prior to WW1, but what if, let’s say, the bridge could be fifty years earlier? That would put the bridge’s age somewhere in the 1850’s or sixties. According to secret bridge folk lore, this place was originally a camp built during the civil war, possibly for the insane and shell shocked of battle, or perhaps, it was just wounded men recuperating.
As we continue investigating these relics, we find among them the teen hangouts, complete with Flintstone benches and logs dragged into a community square for communal beer, bowls, bonfires and teenage benedictions. We already knew they were here, we weren’t surprised by them. If anything, we are the interlopers, adults going back in time, going through their perfectly wonderful teen theme park in the woods and remembering our own. But what is it? And what was in the room above the tank, because in the room where I found the tank, I also found a collapsed floor from above. What was its purpose, a big iron fuel tank under a big ornate bridge out in the woods?
On the ground beneath the secret bridge are the remains of a concrete footpath, complete with a concrete and stone footbridge to cross the body of water flowing under the secret bridge. The flow of water is so small you can almost leap across. The mystery deepens, why build this elaborate and ornate bridge for such a small body of water? At some point in time in the past, people were working under this bridge or else they wouldn’t have needed the concrete foot paths. The secret bridge is an amazing and thought provoking spectacle even now, what must it have looked like back then, in all its newness and splendor?
Could this have really been a civil war camp for the insane? The lore says, that after the war wounded had all passed away, it became a children’s home. A children’s home with a Hollywood past, according to the legend, this children’s home one night had a terrible fire. Many children were supposedly burned and died running in terror in these woods fleeing the fire. They say, their souls still haunt this place, and well, you can’t prove it by me, but I’m not just ready to spend the night up there yet. We continue scouring the woods for relics, we find many small building foundations with two or three rows of brick still paying attention, while the rest lie scattered and lost in the weeds and moss of the undergrowth.
We also found a concrete sidewalk going to and from invisible destinations, just a mysterious sidewalks out in the woods, pretty cool huh? This sidewalk led us to where we could see there was once a road which had been cut from out of the terrain, now overgrown, the road led us directly to a steep chasm with a creek at the bottom. Soon we discovered, down the hill a bit, pilings for another bridge. This one, of a much lighter construction than the secret bridge, perhaps a footbridge which was now lost to the past. Where do you suppose it would takes us? With lost history right under our feet, in a strange cacophony of calamity or who knows, maybe it’s just nothing at all, except an old bridge out in the woods. But I wouldn’t want to think about this secret bridge like that, she is way far too cool a relic to waste on the mundane in last week of October.
Walking through these ruins, it was clear there was something up here alright. Too many foundations, cisterns and septic tanks, which all have that distinct look of being government overbuilt. On the far side of the ridge, almost inaccessible from our direction, are the ruins of an old cabin. It was a large and elaborate cabin with a concrete foundation and a large stone fireplace which I have named Frodo’s ruin. In these thick dark woods, on this forgotten relic of a complex, it just can’t be mundane; it just can’t be, so it is Frodo’s ruin.
Standing at one end of Frodo’s ruins, a complete chimney, fire brick on the inside and round stones outside. You can see the fire stains on the bricks from heavy usage and you can also see the effects of fire where the roof joist had once connected. So now, we have evidence of a fire, in a substantial building, could this have been a kitchen or a mess hall? Could there have been a fire which spread to a dormitory? The elements are all there, it’s a mad libs story, like a Barbie Doll, dress it up any way you like.
We do have proof that during the 1930’s the facility was called a sanitarium, and oh, isn’t that a wonderful word to find in the waning days of October? During those, way back days there were many types of sanitariums out there, sanitariums to dry out, sanitariums for TB or VD or crazy Uncle Charlie sanitariums, as well. Times were different and people didn’t wash their dirty laundry in public.
But there is more to this story, what good is a ghost story that isn’t without more, we went to Google Earth and looked up the location of the secret bridge. At the top of the ridge, there was displayed on the screen a very old and very large old home. It’s hard to say exactly, what style of a home it was from a Google Earth photo. Hard to make value judgments on such things, but I would say at best, this house was, your least favorite Grandma’s house, the one who called you Herbert when your name is Dave. The Grandma that had butter mints congealed into a pile like civil war cannon balls in her candy dish on the coffee table, The one all your relatives told you to be nice to kind of house.
At worst, the house has a mean and hard look about it, dormitory dreary. A kid dropped off in state car at two in the morning and given a bed in a dark room look about it. Only, a funny thing happened, when we went back to look for this old house. We had assumed that we had simply missed the path to the house before. But when we returned, no amount of looking could locate it; there was nothing, no sign of a house. We returned to Google Earth and there, once again, was the old house. We speculated between us, the possibilities that the house had been removed in say the last four or five years. If so, you couldn’t tell it by me.
So there it is, a do it yourself ghost story, good at camp fires every where and like Tinker Toys, you can build the story differently every time.
So there was this old Civil War hospital for the insane, one night during a full January moon, the inmates all went crazy and rioted. They burned down the house and the footbridge after they had murdered the staff, but they was crazy see, and they didn’t know the foot bridge was the only way off the ridge. The escaped lunatics wandered aimlessly in the woods, all night, until they froze to death. One of the inmates was found right over there, his body frozen to a tree. When they broke his body loose from the bark, one of the old man’s hands was missing, all they found just an empty bloody coat sleeve. Then in a serious and calming tone of voice, you ask your victim, preferably a small child, “and do you know where they found the old man’s hand?”
Then as your victim looks up at you with innocent and trusting eyes, you shout, “Right Here!” as you grab the victim menacingly.
The secret bridge is a playground for the mind, for those tiny little bits of us left over from childhood. Creepy dark woods, strange buildings both real and imagined, a strange, strange ornate bridge built way out in the woods for some different purpose other than just crossing the crick. Where is this secret bridge? I can’t tell you or it won’t be secret, but I am sure there are many more bridges out there, wherever the imagination is allowed to play. On the week of Halloween, we all need our own secret bridge where we allow our imagination and inner child run wild and fall is complete.
Socialism
Socialism
By David Glenn Cox
It is an easy enough exercise to point and laugh at the deficiencies of capitalism, but still, always remembering that it is impolite to make fun of cripples and the lame. Socialism has gotten really terrible publicity; most likely from hanging around in some bad neighborhoods. The American idea of socialism is of some dogmatic commissar standing over us as we inventory our underwear, making sure we don’t have too many pairs of drawers. Or, that Socialism is some subversive foreign plot, hatched by enemy agents designed to break down the moral fiber of America, to weaken us, for conquest through either rock and roll or through comic books, video games or both.
If you would want to demonize something in the United States of America, simply tie it together with socialism and before long, you too could raise an angry torch-carrying mob or small army of ministers on phone-trees calling up the faithful to fight back the Red Menace.
Do you want to know what socialism is about? I mean, do you really want to know what socialism is about Charlie Brown? Socialism is a traffic light; it says the traffic stops for three minutes going this way and for three minutes going the other way. It doesn’t care what kind of car you drive or where you live. It divides the usage of the intersection fairly without standing or class. It is really a very simple solution to some very complex problems. Of course to conservatives, I suppose it does carve into that blessed freedom of theirs, which they are always so concerned about.
I imagine to a libertarian traffic lights must appear to be an abomination. Do they lay awake at night wondering, why can’t entrepreneurs and job creators like me, just run those pesky traffic lights? They have places to be and important work to do; while you, you’re just running to the grocery store for milk and Cheetos. Why can’t the rich purchase a sticker from the state which allows them to run traffic signals and stop signs? Think of the revenue a state might earn from a program like that! What, you don’t think that is a good idea? Or do you mean some things are more import than money? Like public safety. Are you coming around to our way of thinking, comrade?
http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/10/17/socialism/davidcox/
It Sucks to be You!
It Sucks to be You!
By David Glenn Cox
It has been a strange weekend, fabulous, interesting, maudlin, magnificent and informative. Sometimes, even though you already know something you still need to have it explained to you. A tiger’s claw education, swift and remorseless and though we feel the blame, we cannot in good conscience blame the tiger.
In 1925, a new ore ship was added to the Cleveland – Cliffs Iron Company line plying the Great Lakes hauling, coal, iron ore or grain. She was six hundred and eighteen feet long and sixty two feet across. She carried the wealth of a nation and her nickname was “The ship that built Cleveland,” because of her frequent deliveries of iron ore to Cleveland steel mills.
Her keel was laid in Ecorse, Michigan. And as I walked her decks I read from her name plates. Johnson Winch Company, New York, New York her electrical power supplied by a Caterpillar Diesel Engine, Chicago, Illinois mated to a General Electric generator, Cleveland, Ohio. She had the first automated boiler system on the Great Lakes supplied by Bailey controls of Cleveland Ohio.
In 1941, the Mather led a flotilla of ships to Duluth Minnesota to break ice and return with a cargo of badly needed iron ore destined for America’s war plants. Her crew risked their lives in frozen dangerous waters because the country asked them to take the risk. Her crew of thirty had good jobs and a strong union to protect them.
The work was hard dirty and thankless, hot in the summer and frozen in the winter and the William G. Mather plied the Great Lakes for over fifty five years. Her cooks serving the crew sit down meals on china plates. Meals served with salads and with pie with ice cream for desert. As I walked her decks it occurred to me that two generations of American men had lived their lives her decks. These workmen who made the three AM deliveries in Detroit, Buffalo or Toledo.
She impressed me most with her Americanism, she was all American from stem to stern, American built, American owned and American sailed. She was stout and well constructed with a handmade sign scrawled on the door in the tool room with a magic marker. “Don’t mess up this tool room, OR ELSE.” I could see the grousing boiler chief writing this on the back of the door. Not a company bulletin or a TPS report but a message from an American to other Americans.
As I left the Mather, I was somewhat sad, because she was wonderful and welcoming. Just think, there was work for a six hundred foot ore freighter for fifty five years and now she was a museum, a relic for our children to try and understand an America which they would never, ever, ever, be able to fathom. Eight and a half tons of steel molded by American hands into a cargo ship. A ship built without a single foreign made part, every nut and bolt, every piece of her fabricated by American hands and installed with American workmanship.
We wandered past the plastic guitars outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame headed for the USS Codfish, a gato class WW2 submarine which is also a museum. This was a WW2 high tech weapon of war. She was the equivalent of today’s stealth bomber. She was loaded from stem to stern with high tech weaponry manufactured in places like Connecticut, New York and Philadelphia. She achieved what the German Kriegsmarine only dreamed of doing. She swept the seas of Japanese vessels.
As we followed the tour we entered the rear torpedo room and there sat a 90 year old veteran who had served as a motorman on the Codfish, and in his honor they cranked the ships engines. In less than five minutes and with just a few minor adjustments they started up the 70 year old Cleveland built General Motors diesel engines. The thought of spending 74 days on a standard patrol inside a tiny iron box would drive me right over the edge. Yet this man did it, he was depth charged and he lost ship mates but he did what was expected of him.
The crew was served the best food in the Navy, because they deserved it. His ship was air conditioned because his government thought it necessary. He served his time aboard her right in the enemy’s backyard, facing death each day but she was an American ship, every bolt and every weld American and the only foreign label you can find aboard her are the flags of the enemy vessels she sank.
At the war’s conclusion, her sailors left the service eligible for a full college education, gratis, from a grateful nation. But was it that simple? The G.I. bill was a jobs program. If all twelve million men under arms were to join the workforce at the same time we might have ended up back at 1932. Instead, government offered education delaying entry into the workforce by four years.
These soldiers, sailors and airmen became chemists, engineers and doctors. They earned higher salaries and paid higher taxes and they didn’t complain because government had kept its bargain with its people. Those without degrees, worked in the steel mills, or they loaded the ore boats and worked the docks. They were fishermen or office workers who earned a decent living.
I had a lunch date with a very nice lady and for a blind date she was definitely all that and a slice of pie. Only, it very quickly became apparent that we were from different worlds. She was from the world of new cars and twenty five dollar lunches and I was from the world of food stamps and the broke ass poor. Several times she referred to my “lifestyle” and both times I corrected her. “This isn’t a life style,” I explained, “I didn’t ask for this.”
“Do you keep a home in Atlanta?” I was torn, as no man wants to meet a nice lady and explain, “I’m broke ass poor.” Our meeting ended soon after, and I don’t blame her. She was looking for full stockings and presents under the tree not some rough character from the wrong side of the tracks. We were as different as race horses and humming birds. Strange isn’t it, I could listen to her problems and empathize, but my problems only horrified her.
But I am the SS William G. Mather, I am an American. I am the USS Codfish and I can do any job I’m offered. Yet I am tied off to the dock and laid up as a curiosity. This isn’t a lifestyle, it is a punishment, from a government which no longer keeps its promises, it is purgatory from which there is no escape.
There was a time three years ago when this purgatory began when I just wanted to just curl up and die. A time when I thought this was all about me. Then I found my true calling, to explain this purgatory and this existence to anyone who will listen but more and more, there are two kinds of Americans. The Americans who are waiting for Santa Claus and the Americans who know Santa ain’t coming. From my experiences this weekend, I take great pride in my people and great pride in myself because no matter what, I won’t quit. I’ll continue until I die or until this plague is lifted from us.
If that means I shall spend my days alone, I shall be alone. If that means I’ll spend my days broke ass poor, I’ll be broke ass poor. Those of you, who understand living the Santa less universe, understand. Those of you who don’t understand, never will, some things are bigger than our egos or our feelings. Some things are bigger than our desires and even our lives. Some things need to be said, shouted from the roof tops, recorded for posterity and this is one of those events. The story of a people debased, impoverished and robbed. The story of children without a future and a story of those who have plenty who say, it sucks to be you.
“It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”- John Steinbeck
What Is The Meaning Of Labor Day?
What Is The Meaning Of Labor Day?
By David Glenn Cox
A Historical Reconstruction
It’s cold most mornings in the Rocky Mountains, especially when you are living in a canvas tent with nothing but a cast iron stove for heat. I reckon a fella sort of gets used to those sorts of things, but it’s most a hardship on the wives and the youngins. It all began in September of 1913. Many of us colliers had had enough of Mr. John D. Rockefeller and his C.F & I coal company. The death rate in them mines was seven per thousand, we lived in company housing and had to shop in company stores, cause we was paid in script stead of real money. Weren’t no one to check the weights on the coal we was hauling cept for company men.
We’d had enough. Why in 1913 alone, 110 men got killed in Colorado mines and they left behind 51 widows and 108 orphans. Being paid on the tonnage system made some of the boys reckless with their lives, cause they was desperate for money, cause they had hungry children, but sometimes their recklessness got others hurt as well, I reckon.
We began to listen to the union men, who was telling us how the death rate in union mines was about forty percent lower. They was telling us how the company was breaking the law by not paying us in real money. The boys and me, we didn’t know nothing about such things; most of us couldn’t even read. Even so, we reckoned we had a right to be paid for “dead work.” I mean, if in you ask a man to cut down trees and clear right of way and lay down railroad track he got a right to be paid for it, don’t he?
The company over the years had tried to make things some better for us, with some better housing and a doctor every once and a while. We was uneducated, but we weren’t stupid, they was trying to buy us off, and that don’t feed no widows, nor orphans. So we was stuck, we didn’t have no place to turn. There weren’t no government to speak of, and the law, if you could call em that. Well, they was all company men, they weren’t no copper button blue coat policemen but toughs, just roust abouts with guns, so we was stuck.
The boys decided to throw in with the United Mine Workers of America and it weren’t long before the company hired the Baldwin–Phelps Detective Agency. They was from back East, but we knew who they was, they was strike breakers and when they arrived they begun putting the strikers out of their houses. It was snowing like hell that morning, but they didn’t care nothing bout that. They had writs, don’t even know if they was legal or even what they said, but them detectives they began emptying out our houses stacking our belongings into the street, snowstorm or no snowstorm. The union had leased some land off of the company’s property and we began moving our stuff there. It was located in a small canyon where we could keep an eye on the mine. We was all in it now, but we’d made our demands and we would stick by them.
Recognition of the union as bargaining agent:
An increase in tonnage rates (equivalent to a 10% wage increase)
Enforcement of the eight-hour work day law.
Payment for “dead work” (laying track, timbering, handling impurities, etc.)
Weight-check men elected by the workers (to keep company men honest)
The right to use any store, and choose their boarding houses and doctors.
Strict enforcement of Colorado’s laws (such as mine safety rules, abolition of scrip), and an end to the company guard system.
Course the company rejected our demands out of hand and as soon as the strike began, the company began hiring scabs. Fore long, them detective boys set up searchlights and was shining them down into our camp all night just to make us mad trying to disturb our sleep. That weren’t so bad, but every now and again they’d fire a stray rifle shot into the camp. So the boys began to dig pits under their tents where they could put their women folk and the youngins to protect them from the flying lead. Well, it didn’t take long for them harassment tactics begun to take affect. Some of the boys, well, they was ready for an out and out shooting war, but we talked’em down from it. But just you let us catch a scab by his lonesome, and then, you just wait and see what would happen.
Them union men they had their hands full trying keeping the boys calm. They splained it, we had to follow the law and not let the company goad us into a fight, cause the big city papers back East would paint us as a violent mob disrupting an honest business. Didn’t make no sense to me, but I reckon it was so. They was shooting into our tents where there was women and kids, and didn’t care none, all they cared about was their money and their coal. Them detective boys built themselves an armored car out of a big old sedan car and mounted a machine gun on top of it. It was getting just plain awful when Governor Ammons sent in the National Guard at the end of October, trying to calm things down. At first, it helped a might, but then the Guard just became more cops rousting the strikers and backslapping the company men. It weren’t no surprise really, we’d already been warned bout the general in charge of the Guard.
They said, ole John Chase had been a real hard ass in the Cripple Creek strike ten year ago, but what he done to us was down right criminal. He weren’t no Christian nor honest man. The searchlights and shootings continued in the camp and then on March 10th 1914 the dead body of a scab was found on the railroad tracks near Forbes Colorado.
Well sir, General Chase, he ordered our camp destroyed, he didn’t hold no hearing nor investigation, he just went ahead and ordered the only lodgings for poor and hungry men women and children destroyed, cause one man had died someplace on company property. On April 10th the day after Easter, the National Guard appeared on the rim of the canyon. A lot of the Greeks was attending a funeral for a baby what had died the day before. Then Guardsmen appeared at the camp entrance, claiming we was a holding some fella against his will, but there weren’t no truth to it. Our leader, Louis Tikas asked for a meeting at the Ludlow train depot, less than a mile away with the head of the militia.
http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/08/31/what-is-the-meaning-of-labor-day/davidcox/
Portland is Like Algebra
Portland is Like Algebra
By David Glenn Cox
Portland is like Algebra, it is hard and it’s complicated and I just don’t get it. This has been a hard one for me, my luck had been changing, I’d got an ID and a cryptic letter from the state of Georgia which promised hope when out of the blue, I lost a dear friend. I lost a friend while trying to be one, by telling the truth when they didn’t want to hear it. When you leave out of Portland all is lush and green, by the time you reach The Dalles, the scenery is tan and golden brown covering over the volcanic basalt rock which pops through periodically.
It wasn’t until I reached Baker City, Oregon before I’d finally figured it out. The Cascade Range shields Portland; it is like a Shangri-La unto itself, separating its self, from the real West waiting, just on the other side of the mountains. By the time you reach Umatilla County, the land is sandy brown and dry on undulating hills frozen in time. They made it into an Indian Reservation, if that helps sharpen the image. But now, Baker City is famous from Oregon Trail fame. It conjures up images of covered wagons, pioneers and John Wayne movies.
I guess what upset me the most, was watching my friend dismantle her own life. Not through drugs or alcohol, that would be understandable, this isn’t. You can stop drinking and dry out, but this? I don’t know, maybe something snapped, maybe it was chemistry, or stress or paranoia or dark demons from the past come to call. Whatever it was, it hurt, because I don’t have much real family besides my son and I loved her like a sister.
Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw, but there is a full moon out tonight over the high desert, seems I always travel on the full moon, maybe its astrology, or maybe just dumb luck. We rumble along in this rattly Greyhound bus, which is far from the pride of the fleet. That’s a funny story in its self, I stood outside gate number eleven for about a dozen hours and right on the other side of that door sat this beautiful rich blue and grey shiny new bus. It proudly advertised WiFi and electrical plugs and I got all excited, then at the very last minute, I mean the absolute, very last minute, as we stood in line waiting to board they pulled it away from the gate and pulled in this bus. Which I suppose was the pride of the fleet a dozen or so years ago. The overhead lights don’t work, the air conditioner fan rattles and outside of the window passes some of the most extraordinary panoramas the human eye can ever experience.
We’re headed for Boise, Salt Lake and Denver now, funny thing, the last time I was in Denver I snuck up on it from the other side. It gets really dark when the mountains block the full moon; through the dusty windows it appears to shine two searchlight beams. When it hides, I can’t read the road signs like, Dead Man Pass or Old Emigrant Hill, the last one made me smile, conjuring up images of old Emigrants sitting up on a hill in rocking chairs. The roads are twisty and the turns are sharp, it feels as if we’re following the Chef Boyardee route. Foothills on both sides of us, as the moon pops over a hill once in a while, just long enough to wink.
We are out in the high desert headed for Boise, a haze now covers the moon, and it’s a spatial filament letting off a warm and comforting glow, like a night light, which watches over us but doesn’t listen. Boise appears to be a city of consequence with a five lane Interstate highway, sound barriers and billboards advertising gambling casinos. It’s really too dark to tell much more or perhaps is it too light? The Interstate has homogenized our cities with the usual assortment of fast food joints and only occasionally something odd. As we pulled out of B town, there was a neon lit marquee sign for a funeral home and it just struck me as less than somber or subdued. Out of the dark, off to the left, ghostly mountains appeared, at least the way the light played on the shadows they looked like mountains to me. The lights of civilization stopped right where the shadows began, so I have named them the Phantom Mountains, at least until the sun comes up. As I look out the other side of the bus I see my other dear friend the moon, is also slipping away, I will miss her, hell, I’ll miss them both.
As the new sun rose in the morning, we were headed for the land of Mormons and murder. It appears some of them Mormons beat me to naming those mountains. You get a little loopy after hours on a bus, but you know what? You only live once, and it’s a fair trade for a full immersion in America. They’s real folks on a bus, ain’t no sissified dandies here. They’s folks going home or moving on, going to a job or leaving one or leaving someone. You start as strangers and in a couple hundred miles, your pals. We hit all the high spots in the Mormon holy land with their nice bus station with a lousy intercom. The station was filled with last nights overflow and so, I began to worry.
Two lines divide the station from front to back, with some folks who’d been waiting since I began my relationship with the moon the night before, but it all ended well. They brought us out a shiny bus with WiFi, enabling me to catch up with my E-mails. Before long, we were into the lunar landscapes of Wyoming, shining with glass shards from broken beer bottles. Kind of like sticking a wad of gum on the Mona Lisa, nothing but scrub, greasewood and sagebrush as far as the eye can see, and still, man finds a way to fuck it up.
They’ve got snow fences put up and signs which read, “Interstate 80 Closed when flashing.” Way off in the distance I can see downpours, cloudbursts maybe twenty or thirty miles away. It’s the closest I’ve been to rain in months, as even soggy Portland has dried out for the driest August on record.
Perfect silhouettes of ancient nature made pyramids arise, as the blue grey down burst shimmer off in the distance like flowing curtains. The color of the land cannot be described; it is sand and tan, brown and black, tinged in pale illusive greens. It is all so humbling and awesome and magnificent in its own special splendor that it makes you weep for the blind. Ancient palisades capped with cell phone towers as the pallet plays out in colors Crayolla never dreamed of. It’s is so beautiful, I’d ride on top of the bus just to see it. The down pour has been here, but we’ve missed the show as it appears to be going the other way.
I’ve heard too many conversations about people late on the rent and folks looking for a couch, small world, ain’t it? Fence posts, telephone poles and open land, that’s it, but I can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s ten in the morning but it feels like ten at night and it is overcast and around every turn is a new vista and a new pallet of color. Strange sights peculiar names, Green River, Rock Creek and Covered Wagon Road, Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter, in the land where old cars go to kill time.
We just crossed the Continental Divide at 7000 feet, while above me, white whale clouds swim by in a deep blue sky. The railroad has on its sidings hundreds of grain cars which won’t be used this year. It is a strange dichotomy, an ocean above a desert below. The high water mark of a continent, being crossed by a bus carrying the bottom 10% of the 99%. We are all lost here, lost in a continent, lost in a government and lost as a people.
Then, just as suddenly, a cloud burst gets us, ten maybe fifteen seconds of spitting rain which appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quick, just a reminder, if you close your eyes here, you might miss something. Isn’t that just the way of things, how much we miss while looking at nothing in particular? How many roses we might pluck when not worried about the thorns.
The sun rose slowly over Minden Nebraska, a beautiful fiery orange sphere burning off the night’s gathered haze. Exposing the lush green rolling hills and the specter of dwarfed and dead corn plants, all stunted between three and five feet tall. I’ve never seen a total crop failure before so, now I have and there is something almost apocalyptic about it. Maybe I use that word too much and perhaps, I must learn a new word. Because yesterday, before this sun fell, we rolled into Denver and amidst the glass and steel towers, amidst the beer drinkers on the warm Café patios there was this rescue mission and directly across the street, a small concrete plaza.
The plaza was filled with several hundreds of people of all ages and descriptions. They were poor, so poor that they were ragged. They weren’t just down on their luck, they were down to their last, and it reminded me for all the world of a scene out Mad Max, Beyond Thunder Dome. I’ve never seen a total crop failure before so, now I have and there is something almost apocalyptic about it. Maybe I use that word too much and perhaps, I must learn a new word.
It is all the same, isn’t it? One, ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million, ten million, twenty million on and on. Come spring we shall replant our corn, but what of the people, what of their lives? I travel across thousands of miles of this amazingly beautiful land with a beneficent sun by day and reassuring moon by night. I see something which cannot be described nor quantified, something like a cancer, something like a feeling in your bones, something you can’t describe, but you know it when you see it.
Mitt accepted the nomination for President of the Suicide Party last night and now he and his evil little co-conspirator must go out and convince the populace to elect him and to commit societal Hara-kiri. What Mitt doesn’t know and what his grubby little brown noser can’t see, you can see from a bus window, in America, the ponds have dried up. After the show is over, because that’s all that this is really, is a show, the comedy team of Romney and Lewis will return to their fine homes, they will eat their sumptuous food and live their sumptuous lives. Maybe they will look back and reminisce, saying, “gee whiz, where did we go wrong?”
Never, have so few, been so wrong about so much. Never has a nation’s leadership been so blind as to have not ended up with their brain trust riding on a pike. The sand flows through the hourglass and tells a tale of time, the bough breaks and the limb falls and down will come baby, cradle and all. The mobs will grow in number and intensity, legions of the hungry and dispossessed and today they call for food, but if left unmitigated, will someday call for blood.
Kingfish
Kingfish
By David Glenn Cox
How often the name of Jesus Christ is commonly bandied about, and for a fictional or faith based character, I suppose that’s all right. I mean, well, Jesus allegedly cast the money changers out of the temple and he healed a few lepers and cured a couple of cases of blindness. He was, after all, a carpenter by trade and a messiah only by a calling later in life. Jesus received much well deserved praise for siding with the poor, the uneducated, and the troubled. The common folk loved him for it. But the rich folk, as rich folk often do, perceive any such individual who avows a mission to assist the poor as a threat, and so, as the story goes they nailed him into the sky.
Funny thing about these religious messiah’s, they always want to help the poor but they always tell’em there’s a better world a waiting for them somewhere else, tomorrow, if you’ll only believe today. The Buddha traveled through the land and met with kings and potentates and told the poor people it was their desire which was the cause of their suffering. Politics has long been called the art of compromise, give and take or what’s commonly referred to as log rolling.
What if there was a politician who wouldn’t compromise on his principals? What if there was a politician who dedicated his life to aiding the poor and unfortunate. A politician who didn’t just rub spit and mud into the eyes of the blind, but instead built hospitals for the blind and trained doctors for the sick, schools for the children, night schools for the illiterate. What if there was a politician who cut taxes for the poor, abolished the poll tax and instituted a foreclosure moratorium, built a medical school, doubled the size of the state university and built a public hospital for the mentally ill? Not to mention, over nine thousand miles of paved roads, 111 bridges including three major bridges.
What would you call such a politician in America? He was called a scoundrel and a crook, a demagogue and a dictator.
“A man is not a dictator when he is given a commission from the people and carries it out.” – Huey Long
Everybody gather ’round
Loosen up your suspenders, hunker down on the ground
I’m a cracker, you are too. Gonna take good care of you
Who built the highway to Baton Rouge?
Who put up the hospital, built you schools?
Who looked after shit-kickers like you?
The Kingfish do
Who gave a party at the Roosevelt Hotel?
Invited whole north half of the state down there for free
People in the city had their eyes bugging out
‘Cause everyone looked just like me
Who took on the Standard Oil men and whipped their ass
Just like he promised he’d do?
Ain’t no Standard Oil men gonna run this state
Gonna be run by little folks like me and you
Here’s the Kingfish, the Kingfish
Friend of the working man
The Kingfish, the Kingfish
The Kingfish gonna save this land
– Randy Newman
More at The Leftist Review;
http://www.leftistreview.com/2012/08/20/kingfish/davidcox/
Stagnation
Stagnation
By David Glenn Cox
Statement of
John M. Galvin
Acting Commissioner
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Friday, July 6, 2012
“ Nonfarm payroll employment continued to edge up in June
(+80,000), and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2
percent. Employment growth averaged 75,000 per month in the
second quarter of the year, compared with an average monthly
increase of 226,000 in the first quarter. Slower job growth in
the second quarter occurred in most major industries.
Employment in professional and business services grew by
47,000 in June. Since the most recent low in September 2009,
employment in the industry has risen by 1.5 million. Much of the
growth occurred in temporary help services, which added 25,000
jobs over the month and 776,000 jobs since September 2009.”
Civilian Labor force - May 2012, 155,007,000 - June 2012, 155,163,000
Unemployed- May 2012, 12,720,000 – June 2012, 12,749,000
Not in the Labor force- May 2011, 86,080,000 – June 2012, 87,992,000
Job losers who completed temporary jobs – May 2012, 6,989,000 – June 2012, 7,207,000
Reentrants into the economy – May 2012, 3,439,000 – June 2012, 3,227,000
New entrants – May 2012, 1,367,000 – June 2012, 1,331,000
Terrible job numbers pour out over a holiday weekend news dump. 108,000 new workers joined the workforce, which by the governments own admission only added 80,000 jobs this month. That by itself would be pretty Goddamned awful but is instead the sunny side of the street. More than a quarter of those 80,000 jobs are temporary jobs. They are jobs without any benefits or healthcare, without retirement or future.
Floor malting/warehouse
Floor malting/Warehouse position. . .
Rxxx Ales is looking for a few people willing to work slightly odd hours to do a relatively physical job. So must be able-bodied. The hours will be. . .
5am-8am and/or 5pm to 11pm Monday-Friday,
Plus 5am-11pm Sat-Sun.
Hours will be split between 3 people. Should work out to around 25 hr/week. $9/hr. Contract position.
For the best, this job might morph into a full time warehouse position later in the summer.
Interviews will be Tuesday July 3rd from 10:00am-1pm.
Just come by and ask for Brandon.
U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate) June 2011, 9.1 % - June 2012, 8.2%
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force. February 2012, 14.9 % - June 2012, 14.9%
Pretty Goddamned awful especially considering the even more accurate U-6 figure still does not include the more than two million no longer counted as in the labor force. One of these two millions includes a man I met in Minneapolis, Johnny lived in a homeless shelter, he was a Vietnam vet and he worked outside everyday in the Minnesota winter. He spent his January days searching for scrap metal which he hauled in a shopping cart. He was neither on drugs, a drunk or crazy. His mind was sharp as a tack, sharper than most as he said, “I’m 62 years old, they aren’t going to fuck me out of what I’ve got coming. I’m not going to file for my social security until I’m 65 even if it means I have to push that shopping cart for ten years.”
Yet that is the case as millions are forced by poverty to give up their full Social Security benefits. These are not just numerals or empty digits but real flesh and blood people and these numbers describe a hellish existence. They expose how they live and how they die.
Fly Fishing Plumber Wanted
Mxxxx Fxxx Fly Fishing Club looking to get our water system from the river to our bunkhouse working. We supply materials and access to our property for you to fish. You supply your pump and plumbing knowledge and labor to get the system up and running.
If interested Call Rick @
• Compensation: Trade for Club Membership Only
Connecticut mother-daughter die in murder-suicide
Connecticut Post STAMFORD — A middle-aged woman killed her elderly mother with a double-barreled shotgun and then killed herself inside their foreclosed Long Ridge Road home, Stamford police said.
Officers found their bodies just after 1 p.m. Friday while checking on the mother and daughter who lived at 1214 Long Ridge Road following reports from concerned neighbors, according to Stamford police Capt. Richard Conklin. The neighbors told police they hadn’t seen the mother and daughter recently and were worried for their well-being.
Three Dead in New Years Day Foreclosure Murder Suicide
CUCollecter.com; After World Savings Bank denied a man’s loan modification request, the gravity of his financial woes was too much to handle. Three bodies found at the scene of a foreclosure suicide and murder in Santee, California.
On New Year’s day San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies responded to 8567 Clifford Heights Road in Santee, after receiving a call to 911 from a man who gave his name and address and stated that “he was going to kill his cancer stricken wife, burn his house down and shoot anyone who approached the residence and then kill himself,” According to the caller, World Savings Bank had refused to renegotiate his loan and filed for foreclosure on Dec 6th.
The 60-year-old man told his neighbors that he and his wife had lost their jobs and home to foreclosure and that his wife had cancer. Police are now trying to discover the identity of an extra burned body.”
Wanted people in all phase's of remodeling
Gutting homes, sheet rock repair, roofing, installing tubs sink's and hardwood flooring, Lawn Mowing house's every 10 days
Ele and plumber Lic as well.
Leave a Number and what you are good at.
• Compensation: Bid's for labor
Blueberry Pickers Needed
We are a small, organic family farm looking for help hand picking blueberries.
We pay .50 cents per pound picked. Start time is 7:30am, we will pick until noon.This gig is best for those who live close in to the Mcxxxxx area, it may not be worth your time if you have more than a 15/20 minute drive to our farm. Children must be 16 years or older to pick. Families, silblings, and friends welcome.Your may call xxx-xxxx for details and directions
Or please come to our farm at 7 am tomorrow morning, Friday July 6th.
Thank you
PART TIME CLEANING PERSON FOR TRADE
Busy medical office in Lake XXXXX is looking for someone to clean two times per week to trade for spa services. Flexible days and times, but this would normally be done during regular business hours. As far as services, we do laser hair removal, chemical peels, Zerona laser, skin tightening, lip plumping.
Please send resume if interested.
Mow Small Lawn $10
Need someone to mow my grass for $10 each time, twice a month. I have a real small front lawn (approx 7' x 9') and back lawn (approx 16' x 20'). You supply the mower and gas.
• Compensation: $10 each time
Helper/ Partner..used retail
I own a buy sell shop / repair shop......looking for a helper / possible business partner.....strong sales and computer knowledge a must.....must be friendly and understand used retail......willing to train, however i need someone independent and dependable. female preferred......Fun, interesting and not your average job....fairly new business and the pay is based on percentage of sales and repair.....so if you need a job to support your family there is no guarantee of base pay at this time, however there is a ton of opportunity here and possible great pay........sound like fun ?
• Compensation: no pay
Looking For Sign Holder
North XXXX Coffeehouse is looking for an energetic, fun student type who would be interested in trade in coffee and food for sign holding. May turn into a paid gig for the right person. Also very negotiable.
Thanks,
North XXXX Coffeehouse
• Compensation: Trade and possible pay
This is no less than a criminal economic holocaust, millions out of work with millions more struggling just to get by, scratching and clawing, not to improve their lot but just to hang on, and I guess some make it and some don’t as the future promises only more of the same.
“Agitation is the order of nature. Nature abhors quiet as it does a vacuum. Someone may abject and point to the “everlasting hills” in proof of their theory, forgetful of the fact that the hills are a product of agitation. The sea is never still. The tides forever ebb and flow. The “dead calm” presages the storm. Air in motion is the demand.
The peacefully disposed, the quiet, inert, lethargic souls, those who glory in stagnation, have never had their way. Nature prefers agitation, hence the hurricane, the tornado, the cyclone, the lightening and the thunderbolt; hence the volcano and the earthquake. Call them evils, it matters not, they are ceaseless protest against stagnation.
“Men cry “peace,” but there is no peace. The elemental war goes on. Indeed, those who clamor for peace are agitators.” – Eugene V. Debs
The Columbus Dispatch- The body of an unidentified man was pulled from the Olentangy River about 9:30 this morning (Friday).
Anne Pennington, a Columbus homicide detective, said the man was white and in his 40s.
The body was fully clothed and probably had been in the water for at least a day, she said. The Franklin County coroner’s office will do an autopsy.
Police were called at 9:12 a.m. The body was caught in debris under the King Avenue bridge, southwest of the Ohio State University campus.
Sun –Times LINCOLNWOOD — A person found a dead body Thursday in the North Branch of the Chicago River in Lincolnwood. A caller reported the body at the North Branch of the Chicago River near the 6800 block of North Kedzie Avenue to Lincolnwood police about 12:30 p.m. and the Illinois State Police crime lab and the Department of Natural Resources responded, said State Police spokeswoman Monique Bond.
The unidentified man, believed to be in his 50s, was dead on the scene, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, which will perform an autopsy Friday.
KOIN PORTLAND, Ore. – “Officials still have not identified a body of a man found floating in the Willamette River Tuesday morning. Just after 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office River Patrol responded to a call from a nearby fisherman of a possible body floating in the Willamette River, about a half-mile from the St. Johns Bridge. Deputies arrived on scene around 10:20 a.m. and recovered a body of a man. He is described as a white male, between 45 and 60 year old.”
Strange that over a family holiday weekend three unidentified middle aged white men suddenly forget they know how to swim. Three in four days, three men who died alone with no one looking for them, lost in America, no longer in the labor force or a life force.
“I’m gonna find me a river, one that’s cold as ice.
And when I find me that river, lord I’m gonna pay the price,
I’m goin down in it three times, but lord I’m only comin up twice.
She’s long gone, and now I’m lonesome blue.” – Hank Williams
Carroll Shelby 1923 - 2012
Carroll Shelby 1923 - 2012
By David Glenn Cox
This country isn’t going to be as cool as it used to be, Carroll Shelby has passed away from us. Carroll was what it was like to be an American back in those halcyon days of the mid-twentieth century. He was a doer, a tinkerer, part bullshit artist, part genius and all American. He was iconic like John Wayne iconic. He was born in1923, in Leesburg Texas with a bad heart spending several years of his childhood bedridden.
He bought his first car, a Willys, while still in high school and after graduating in 1940 enlisted in the Army Air Corps serving as a flight instructor, this gangly kid from Texas with a heart condition became a test pilot serving with Chuck Yeager. He married Jeanne Fields in 1943 and had daughter, Sharon Anne Shelby. At the wars conclusion Carroll starts a dump truck business in Dallas and in 1946, his son Michael Hall Shelby is born quickly followed by Patrick Burke Shelby in 1947.
Shelby was now young father and a family man, operating his own business. In 1949, Shelby goes into chicken farming; earning $5,000 on his first brood then going bankrupt when the second brood dies from disease. He drives in his first race in January of 1952; behind the wheel of an open wheeled flathead V-8 Ford hotrod in a quarter mile drag race. History doesn’t tell us whether Carroll Shelby actually won that first race, but I’d like to think that he did.
Later that same year in Norman Oklahoma, Shelby drives an MG- TC to victory in his first road race. Later the same day, he drove the MG again outside of its class against Jaguar XK 120’s and the wry Texan again took first place. In November 1952, he wins an early SCCA road race, back in those days Shelby was still splitting time between chicken farming and auto racing. He would arrive at the track still wearing bib overalls from the farm and endured much good natured ribbing. Shelby answered, “If they want to think I’m a rube, that’s just so much the better for me.”
By January of 1954, this farmer in bib overalls running good ole boy road courses in Texas catches the eye of Aston Martin team manager John Wyer. Wyer introduces Shelby to Grand Prix racing greats Juan Fagio and Peter Collins. On the strength of his record Shelby drives an Aston Martin DBR3 finishing… second. By April of 54, Shelby is named to the Aston Martin factory team as a co-driver. By June, he is driving in Le Mans, stop and think of that. If you were to see something like this in a Hollywood movie you’d think it was all too improbable, all too far fetched.
From a chicken farmer driving dusty drag races to driving for a factory racing team in Le Mans in just two years, how cool is that? Carroll Shelby returns home to the United States driving for Austin- Healy setting world speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats. In November, Shelby is driving in Carrera Pan Americana race in Mexico where he loses control of the car flipping it four times, breaking his arm. Shelby returned to racing in August of 1955 while still undergoing reconstructive surgery on his arm. He drives 3.0-liter Monza Ferrari with his arm still in a cast and with his hand taped to the steering wheel. Later that same year, he defeats driving great Phil Hill at Torrey Pines.
Shelby then drives the new 4.9 liter V-12 Ferrari to victory in his first outing, then wins the 1956 Mount Washington hill climb race before turning his sights on Formula One racing. Carroll Shelby was named “Driver of the Year” by Sports Illustrated in 1956 and 1957. He races the Formula One circuit in 1958 and 1959 winning the 24 hours of Le Mans with co-driver Ray Salvadori. Throughout these times Shelby is eating nitro glycerin tablets to control his chest pains. Shelby recalled a factory sponsor commenting on his pill intake during a pit stop, “I don’t like the idea of you taking those pills while you’re racing.” Shelby answered, “You’d like it even less, if I didn’t” then roaring off to victory.
1960, Carroll Shelby retired from auto racing; the pain was getting too great for him to continue. For most people that would have been enough excitement to fill a lifetime. In six short years, he had raced against the best in the world and had beat them all. He had raced them on asphalt, on dirt, on the flat and uphill, he drove them all, succeeding at them all. By1960, he is one of the foremost auto racers in American history. Yet this was only the beginning, in retrospect his racing exploits are almost forgotten today, dwarfed by what lay ahead for him.
Late in 1959, Carroll Shelby and partner Jim Hall build three Scarglietti Corvette concept cars. GM legend Harley Earl likes the cars, but GM management gave the project a thumbs down. In 1960, Shelby was operating a driving school and a Goodyear racing tire distributorship and as is so often the case, his marriage to Jeanne disintegrates.
Shelby learns in 1961, that AC cars of England had lost its source of engines and Shelby proposes using an American V-8. He contacts Ford Motor Company about using their new 221 cubic inch V-8. He plays fast and loose, asking Ford to front him the power plants using the AC bodies as collateral then reversing the gambit with AC. Shelby dreams about his new car, and in this dream it drive up to him and on its hood he sees the name “Cobra.” AC airfreights the first chassis and along with friend Dean Moon they test the car. The 221 engine is quickly replaced by a 260 cubic inch attached to a four speed manual transmission.
Carroll Shelby is now in the automobile business; he ships a prototype to the 1962 New York Auto Show and begins setting up dealers and taking orders from Shelby-American’s offices in Venice California. Shelby promotes the car, by offering test drives to the automotive press. Then repainting the car to give the impression that he had a larger number of these vehicles available. The 260 engine is then replaced by Ford’s new 289 V-8, the first Cobra’s have an MG steering box and VW beetle steering column. Shelby offers the car to GM, but GM fears any competition with its Corvette model and declines his offer.
When the Cobra takes to the track for the first time it breaks a rear hub and doesn’t finish. Yet over the next three years the Shelby Cobra loses only one race in competition in the United States. In Europe, the results weren’t as good; the tracks there had higher sustained speeds putting the coupe at a disadvantage. The sales were also disappointing but the iconic legend of the Shelby Cobra still looms large. I was at a car show several years ago and the participating cars had been roped off from the rest of the parking area. A man pulled his Shelby Cobra into the parking area as the patrons at the car show knock down the rope barriers flocking to see a Shelby Cobra in the parking lot. In its various incarnations the Cobra beat Corvettes and even Ferraris, like Carroll Shelby himself, the car was a winner, raw and powerful.
In 1964, the Ford Motor Company introduced the Mustang; it was an inexpensive sporty car aimed at the growing twenty something market. The 1964/65 Mustang was actually only a retooled Ford Falcon; the Falcon was hardly sporty and decidedly was not a sports car. While the new car was a sales sensation selling 22,000 copies on its first day, Ford Chairman Lee Iacocca realized that to build on the initial success of the Mustang, Ford would have to build a fastback model. The car would then need to be entered in competition, and so Iacocca approaches Carroll Shelby about tuning the new Ford fastback model.
Shelby runs the new car around the test track reporting back to Iacocca the numerous flaws and handling deficiencies. Management dispatches racing champion Bob Bondurant, one of their top trouble shooters to fly down and meet with Shelby, but by the time he arrives Shelby has fixed most of the deficiencies. He’s changed the steering sector linkage and moved the front shock absorbers mounts. This was the genesis of the Shelby Mustang GT 350. Why did Shelby name the car the 350? Because he estimated that was distance, 350 feet from his building to the next.
The huge success of the Mustang created two competing camps inside of Ford Motor Company. Some wanted to make the Mustang faster and more race ready, while others wanted to add on more profitable luxury options. The 65/66 models were the lightest and most race ready of the Shelby Mustangs, the company pushed each year for more comfort over speed and by 1970 the Shelby GT program was finished. Like the AC Cobra before it, the Shelby Mustangs are iconic, genuine pieces of American industrial art. At the same time Shelby-American was building GT’s it was also managing Ford Motor Company’s GT-40 program and once again, Shelby was beating Ferrari and all comers.
This is less than twenty years from Carroll Shelby’s life and in it, he changed the automotive world forever. He was a giant and larger than life legend, he made and lost a lot of money, obviously he didn’t do any this just for the money. I never heard him bitch about paying his taxes, he raised lots of money on his acclaim for charity. He made things work; he made them work better than they’d worked before and better than when the engineers were finished with them. He took his high school diploma and the kind of an innate genius that one must be born with to change the automotive world forever.
March 1965 – Shelby GT 350 production moves to larger Los Angeles facility. GT 40 Mark II (427 big block) begins development.
Cobra Daytona Coupe finishes first overall at the 12 hours of Sebring.
April 1965 – First street model 427 Cobra is completed.
May 1965 – First Shelby GT 350 drag car is built.
July 1965 – Shelby-American team scores enough points to win FIA world championship in the GT class.
August 1965 – First 15 competition model 427 Cobras are delivered for SCCA class A- production racing.
Production begins on 1966 GT 350.
October 1965 – Shelby proposes a special GT 350 Hertz racer
November 1965 – Hertz orders 200 GT 350 H (Hertz)
FIA certifies the 427 Cobras for the 1966 racing season
The 1966 GT 350 wins second consecutive championship in class B production car road racing in the Sports Car Club of America.
December 1965 – Hertz raises its order of GT 350’s from 200 to 1,000
February 1966 – GT-40 Mark II wins at Daytona.
Shelby- American builds prototype Mustang for Trans-Am series.
June 1966 – GT-40 Mark II’s win at Le Mans finishing, first, second and third; the first time an American team had ever won Le Mans. The third place car had spun off the track during the night and had come back from being a lap down to finish third.
September 1966 – Ford wins Manufactures title in Trans-Am series with Shelby-American Mustangs.
June 1967 – Under team owner Carroll Shelby, Ford wins 35th running of Le Mans in a GT-40 driven by A.J. Foyt and Dan Gurney.
October 1967 – Shelby – American wins 1967 Trans-Am manufactures title.
January 1968 – Shelby enters the NHRA Drag Racing Series. Don Prudhomme's Ford Cammer-powered rail makes its debut as Shelby's Super Snake at the 1968 Winter nationals.
June 1968 – Team Shelby’s GT-40 wins at Le Mans once again.
Isn’t this enough success for one lifetime, you might think so, but this is only twenty years of Carroll Shelby’s life, he went on after all of this developing performance cars for another forty years. The name of Carroll Shelby was already legend, it is now immortal.
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