A Fragile Economic System

  Just the other day there was a fake tweet on the Twitter account of the Associated Press. It said there had been an attack on the White House that injured President Obama. Within two minutes the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 100 points. “And it wasn’t just the stock market. It was the bond market and commodity market and everything,” said Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of the equity-trading firm Themis Trading. In February, hackers infiltrated the Twitter accounts of Burger King and Jeep, spreading false posts that each company had been sold to a rival. These hackers are exposing how vulnerable and volatile the markets have become. Add in bank failures and the fact that the first thing the Bush administration told us to do after 9/11 happened was to go shopping and you can see we really have a weak economic system.

  Did you know it now costs 1.26 cents to mint a penny and 7.7 cents to mint a nickel? Does that make any sense (pun intended) to anyone? The national average bank interest rate in the U.S. for savings accounts is only .21 percent. You would feel like a fool trying to teach your children that they should bank their paper route money so they can watch it grow in the bank. In the ongoing class war the wealthiest in our nation want to continue to control our economic system. If this frail pathetic economic system is something they think is worth fighting for I say we let them have it. We need to keep our money in our pockets and sit back and watch the powers that be greedily cannibalized one another.

  The problem is we are being dragged into this fragile economic system. The corporations in this system have replaced our pensions with 401K retirement funds involving us in their economic system. Workers and unions around the country should be fighting for worker owned businesses and co-ops that put workers and the environment before greed. Instead unions are setting up lower tiers for the next generation of workers and pushing workers to take concessions. Workers who stand up to a company and turn down bad contracts are being chastised by fellow workers. Look no further for this example than at the GE plant in Warren, Ohio. Workers were asked for many concessions with no guarantee the plant wouldn’t move in a year anyway. The workers turned down the contract and the ones who voted for it started attacking their brother and sister workers who voted against it. The local corporate owned media were more than happy to interview the angry workers who voted for the contract. These workers would have worked for anything and voted yes on a blank contract. Such workers with no fight and self-worth are exactly the kind of workforce corporations long for. If you add in conservative politicians and business chambers that are willing to weaken corporate regulations and let them pollute then we can have Third World sweatshops coming back to the USA. It certainly isn’t the “American Dream” but it is the “Corporate Dream.”

  Every ten years there is talk of raising the minimum wage and you’d think by the outcry that the country was going to sink into the sea like Atlantis if it were raised. We should be talking about how jobs should pay a livable wage and put the idea of a minimum wage in a 100 year-old tomb where the idea belongs. Conservatives tell us that if businesses have to pay higher wages they will just charge consumers higher prices. Most of the U.S. shoe companies went overseas years ago to sweatshops for lower wage workers. I have yet to see those lower wages translate into the drop in the price for any shoes I’ve bought. The attacks against raising the minimum wage are just the bottom rung of the class warfare being waged against our poorest workers. I want to talk more about what it means to be the working poor next week.

  A new award this week is “Dumbest Local Criminal of the Week.” First up is convicted drug trafficker Stanley Reed Jr. of Warren, Ohio. He was sentenced to four years in prison and was then patted down by deputies before being taken to Trumbull County Jail. He was discovered to have near $5,000 and suspected cocaine the size of a baseball. Stanley only earns the runner-up because of an even dumber criminal. That would be Dennis J. Griffing who was caught putting money in a newspaper coin box to buy one Warren Tribune Chronicle and stealing 15 copies. He admitted stealing 15 to 20 newspapers from various machines over the last year. He had been suspected so the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office set up a stakeout at Griffing’s home and followed him catching him in the act. Other stakeouts have taken place at various newspaper boxes in the Warren area. I applaud the 97 arrests of drug dealers recently in Warren by area police agencies but I question the use of manpower to bring down a newspaper thief. At best Griffing will get a misdemeanor charge of theft.  I think Griffing could plead insanity because after all the rag he was stealing was the Warren Tribune Chronicle. The “Trib’s” editor Frank Robinson hates unions and public sector workers so he must really be angry that Mr. Griffing is a city employee. If I was a police detective my first suspect would have been a pet store owner who needed bird-cage lining.

I have a message to Editor Robinson from my neighbors in Vienna, Ohio. “Quit telling us what to do with our tax money.” Vienna had their wealthiest resident die awhile back and got a large settlement of taxes on his estate. It was held up awhile because of a battle with Warren, Ohio who tried to claim the deceased as a resident. Editor Frank has made several suggestions since the windfall about what Vienna should do with the money. I’m sure his next editorial on the subject will suggest the money go to getting each Vienna resident a lifetime subscription to the Warren Tribune Chronicle. Let me state one more time Editor Frank, MYOB it is not your money.

  I see where Tracey Winbush the host of “Tracey and Friends” on WSOM radio was going to be a speaker at a forum concerning among other things the Youngstown. Ohio Community Bill of Rights.   Tracey was going to be speaking in support of fracking. Tracey ended up being a no-show at the event and I’m not surprised. That is because on the radio Tracey can control the conversation but it would be a different ballgame at a debate. On the radio Tracey yells over those with opposing views. You hear her shouting, ‘Whoooo, hey, stop, yo, yo, hold on, hold on, listen, listen, whooo, yo, stop, stop, hold up, yo, whooo, hey, hey.” If she pulled that crap at a debate people would laugh in her face. I will hence forth refer to her as “Tracey No Show Winbush.” Then again maybe she didn’t show as her check from the gas company didn’t arrive. As a unionist I have to say I am ashamed of the Pipe Fitters Union that wants to put jobs before the community’s safety. They have been the ones putting up money for ads attacking the Youngstown, Ohio Community Bill of Rights. I suggest the Pipe Fitters Union spend some of that time and money doing some research about the dangers of horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Here is a very good source of fracking information: “People’s Virtual Library” A Project of the Northeast Ohio Affiliated Occupations. 

401Ks are a Disaster.

Talib Kweli: “Beautiful Struggle”

“Get By”

Area band: Punk Willie

“The difference between try and triumph is a little umph.”  ~Author Unknown

Better Than the Welcoming Arms of Lady Liberty

  Last week I mentioned a list of great singer/songwriters who wrote songs that really matter and yet they never made it big. To add insult to injury something happened this week to further slap talented singer/songwriters who never made it in the face. Aerosmith’s Steve Perry and Joe Perry will be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June and will receive the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ Founders Award next week. These two have written such meaningless turds as “Dude Looks Like a Lady” and “Love in an Elevator.” Aerosmith are just a third-rate Rolling Stones. They really aren’t needed as the ‘Stones” have been third-rate Rolling Stones for a least the last 30 years. All this proves there is not much justice in this world.

  This weeks national buffoon of the week is Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Rand went to at the historically black college Howard University to help with  the Republican Party’s outreach to the African-American community effort. It seems odd the GOP would want Rand to try to appeal to black voters as he has said he would have voted against the civil Rights Act of 1964. Rand also spoke about how it was the Republican party of Lincoln that ended slavery. He expected then to forget the GOP’s Southern Strategy of 1968 that set out to gain Southern white conservative voters by appealing to racism against African-Americans. John Steward’s Daily Show did an excellent piece on Rand Paul at Howard here.

  That brings me to the local buffoons of the week winners. That would be constant winners Tracey and Jeff from the “Tracey and Friends” radio show at WSOM. Tracey and Jeff are two African-Americans who are proud to be members of the GOP. They have not only bought the GOP’s revisionist history they try to sell that spin every day on their show.  I really am getting tired of picking on the “Friends” every week but someone needs to acknowledge how hard they work at being the best local buffoons.

  I think it is time for a poem so here is my latest:

Better Than the Welcoming Arms of Lady Liberty

 Reality shows like Jersey Shore,

the Real World, the Bad Girls Club,

Celebrity Rehab, the Kardashians,

Paris Hilton and the Real Housewife’s

of Orange County, New York or,

Beverly Hills, Atlanta, New Jersey

 or Mob Wives all set even lower standards

of what it takes to be a skank in this country.

This entices would be skanks

from around the world

to step up their skankiness

come to the U.S. and dance proactively

at a LA bar and have lecherous strangers drink

Yegermeister shots off their belly button piercings.

The skanks gets shit faced drunk and head

to the nearest reality TV producer to get

one of these trashy shows for themselves.

On their way to the producers they will star

in a Taxicab Confessions HBO show segment.

They will all have the background

to end up on MTV’s 16 and Pregnant

or end up on Maury Povich’s Show

with a dozen men getting tested

to see who is the babies daddy.

In the end it won’t be any of the 12

and she will be asked for a new list

and soon come back and do part two

with the same results leading to part 3.

The slowly vanishing nomadic Tofa

a Turkic tribe that lives in Russia

have the ability to mimic sounds of the environment

they can imitate almost any animal’s voice

enabling them to be great hunters.

In the USA a family of hillbillies

invented a wooden duck call and are now

millionaires with a current reality TV show.

Hillbillies unlike the Tofa tribe

are not a vanishing people

as they now are popping up

in reality TV shows on every channel.

Swamp People is now in its fourth season.

Louisiana swampbillies hunt alligators for a living.

It has set viewer records for the History Channel.

In Zimbabwe in 2005 the number one cause of death

in humans where wildlife was involved

– was crocodiles killing 13 people.

When a show has become very popular

and producers can’t think of anything new

it quickly leads to  a spinoff which sent us

from Swamp Hunters to Outback Hunter

which hunts crocodile in Australia.

Just because the media like to milk popular things to death

there has been two mobile app game tie ins with Swamp People.

A fisherman landed a reality TV show making sport

of fishing for river monster size fish around the globe.

In parts all around the world people fish for food

hoping they won’t be the food of these monster fish.

A group of Reality TV stars have been avoiding

getting real jobs by being Bigfoot hunters.

People keep tuning in to see bigfoot captured

even though no one on the show has seen

neither hide nor hair of him

for two years and counting.

The TV show, Storage Wars

proves many people in the USA

are so wealthy they own extra stuff

and pay to put these items in storage.

These are possessions they end up needing so little

they are forgotten about and are put up for auction.

People in other countries wish they had a house

that was as nice and large as the storage unit.

All their extra things in life would fit

in a grocery bag let alone a locker.

The Big Brother show has a dozen people live

in a big comfortable home for three months.

They then set about backstabbing one another

and vote off each other for a chance to win

half a million dollars in prize money.

The Real Housewives of several U.S. locations

have excess martinis for lunch and cat fight each other

over the pettiest crap you could ever imagine.

It’s amazing that many of these women are mothers.

How do such shrews ever attract a man to marry them?

Thank God most of these women have enough money

to hire help to raise their children as these Housewives

have a lot of growing up to do themselves.

Meanwhile, in East Africa reality it’s rare

for a child to have both a mother and father.

Men live on average to 40 and women to 42.

You are fortunate to still be alive at 6 years-old.

Most children have already died by AIDS,

malaria, dysentery, starvation or malnutrition.

The most lucrative job is casket making.

There is so much death about that businesses

refuse to give their employees more

then one day a month off for funerals.

East African women don’t have the time

to drink and squabble at country clubs.

They are busy watching their children die.

Big Brother TV has half a million dollars

in prize money for being more of a slime

than other obnoxious aholes in the same house.

This while 12 million people are in dire need of food,

clean water, and basic sanitation in East Africa.

I don’t oppose immigration but those that do

should immediately shut down these TV shows.

How else you going to keep them down on the

plains, deserts, jungles and rain forests

once they’ve seen U.S. Reality TV?

Dear Aerosmith this is what real songwriting sounds like: Graham Parker:“Syphilis and Religion” 

“The Tree Martini Lunch”

“Did Everybody Just Get Old”

“But sometimes, talent isn’t worth shit. There are tons of talentless people out there making zillions of dollars. And unfortunately, an equal number of brilliant artists whose name and voices you’ll never hear. – Paul Hudson”

Life During Class Wartime

  The film, “Searching for Sugar Man” won the Oscar for best documentary feature at the 85th annual Academy Awards. It is the Cinderella story of Rodriguez, a singer/songwriter from Detroit who moved a generation of young people in South Africa 40 years ago. He never sold more than a handful of albums in the U.S. and didn’t know until recently that he was bigger than Elvis in South Africa. He’s a humble and hard-working man who is trying to make his hometown of Detroit a better place. He ran for councilman and mayor without getting elected. I urge you to see this movie that is available on Pay-Per-View on your cable. The movie made me think about all the musician I love that I thought would really hit it big in the U. S. musicians like; Mike Stout, Anne Feeney, Terry Reid, Root Boy Slim, Tonio K, The Remains, Gang of Four, The Alarm, Graham Parker, New Model Army, The Flamin Groovies, The Dictators, Greg Brown, Wayne Kramer, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Swamp Dogg, Kevin Coyne, John Cale, Robert Wyatt, Shawn Phillips, Eno etc. I think it’s sad that these musicians didn’t make it big not just for themselves but for the public who missed out on some really great music. I’m sure you have your favorites who didn’t make it big and the film will refresh your memory about your list of should be stars. The film also made me realize it is a loss to all of us when people like Rodriguez who truly love their hometown are not elected to office. This is a must see movie and a long overdue tribute to Rodriguez who embodies the “working-class hero” tag. See a preview here.

   I saw a documentary on PBS recently that I also high recommend. It’s called “As Goes Janesville” and is about the future of our middles class. The film recently won awards at the Milwaukee Film Festival and Columbia Gorge International Film Festival. The story follows what happened to three workers who lost their job at when Janesville, Wisconsin’s 100 year-old GM plant closed. It also tells the story of local business leaders who want to throw corporate welfare at any business (proven or not) that is willing to locate in Janesville. The local business leaders formed a regional chamber type of group called, “Rock County 5.0” to promote the area to business interests. One of the businesses they sought to attract with $9 million in corporate welfare was Shine Medical. The city manager, Eric Levitt, was critical of the town’s giveaway to Shine Medical who promised 125 jobs. Mr. Levitt doubted Shine because they didn’t have a product to bring to market. That didn’t matter as in the end Janesville council voted to give Shine Medical the money.

   Janesville’s business leaders like the governor are out to take away worker’s rights and bust unions. They are offering tax incentives, cheap vacant building and a labor force that with the help of the governor will have their unions destroyed and be willing to work for low wages. In the film you see Diane Hendricks the co-chair of 5.0 meeting with Gov. Walker. She greeted him saying, “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions and become a right-to-work state?” Hendricks continued. “What can we do to help you?” Walkers said, “Well, we’re going to start in a couple of weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer.” I know this is how conservatives think about working people but I was surprised to hear them say it in front of a camera. The next year Gov. Walker needed money to fight against a recall to get rid of him as governor. Diane Hendricks donated half million dollars to help Gov. Walker fight the recall and he remained governor.

  Mary Willmer-Sheedy of M&I Bank is also a member of Rock County 5.0. You will see by her comments that 5.0 isn’t really a community group out to better Janesville resident’s lives. You’ll see they are politically driven right-wingers out to break unions, lower wages for workers and destroy the middle-class. A member of Forward Janesville an organization of area businesses made an interesting statement. He said this to companies they were trying to entice to locate in Janesville, “The fact that so many people are out of work is a benefit because you can pay them less.” This film will show you about the class war going on in this country. If you are middle-class and this film doesn’t outrage you then you’re already a fatality in this war. It really is us against them and I urge all you us’s to see this film. Here is trailer for the film.

  Remember this prank showing that Governors like Scott Walker answer to the Koch brothers? In this call Walker admits he’d trick Democrat legislatures and shows he’d not be above planting troublemakers among those protesting him.

  This week’s award for biggest area lying spreaders of B.S. is of course the “Tracey and Friends” radio show at WSOM. As if the Friends crew isn’t crazy enough now they listen to caller’s paranoid dreams. A caller said she dreamt she was escorted out of the mall with others and put on a bus with dark windows. The bus riders were taken to a warehouse where they were implanted with a micro chip. The Friends crew interrupted and said the implant is the mark of the beast (Satan). The Friends expressed that this implanting was going to be part of Obamacare but was discovered and taken out. As usual the Friends are spreading lies that they will never fact check if it meets their hate filled mindset. Here are the facts disproving their B.S.

  Biggest national hate monger scumbags of the week are Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin. You can see why here as they defend a violent coach who abuses his players. Sean Hannity said, “My father hit me with a belt, I turned out OK!” No, Sean there is nothing OK about you. Hannity and Malkin like to get off on being politically incorrect. Being politically correct essentially means using some common sense and manners. Sean nor Michelle has any commons sense or manners. No one takes Malkin serious after she wrote a book that said that Japanese Americans enjoyed being interned during WWII. Malkin hates immigrants and anchor babies (children born to immigrants in the United States). That is odd as her parents are immigrants from the Philippines and she is an anchor baby. Her own hypocrisy, self-hatred and revisionist history writing supporting Japanese internment during WWII has made her popular with white supremacy nativist types. Here is a typical example of Hannity in action doing his usual spin on the facts.

  I have been proud to feature on my blog some of the musicians I listed above as musicians that should have been big in the U.S. I will continue to do in the future.

  The Lenny Bruce of the Blues, Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band: “Hey Mr. President”

  also: “Rich White Republican”

  Local band: Tongue in Groove

  “The opposite of poverty is not wealth….the opposite of poverty is justice” ~Bryan Stevenson

For the Best Solution Do Nothing

 

  I recently ran into someone who told me I need to suggest ways to fix the problems I address in my blog. After talking for some time we agreed that the simplest most common sense solutions have the best chance of working. I told him that quite often the best answer to a problem is simply to do nothing. I told him I had addressed just that solution about four years ago in a post and would reprint it here.

  From October 2009 here is: For the Best Solution Do Nothing

  One of my FW’s (fellow workers) mentioned that the gas station nearest work was selling gas for only $2.88 per. gallon. It’s a shame that we are to the point we think paying under $3.00 a gallon is a bargain. I replied, “I don’t buy Shell gas.” One FW replied, “OK what’s wrong with Shell?” I replied, “I don’t like how they have destroyed Nigeria by aiding the corrupt government that runs the country. I also don’t like that Shell has dug mass graves with their equipment to bury indigenous people who the corrupt government has killed for trying to stop Shell from taking their lands.” Shell also has a horrible environmental record in Nigeria. See boycott info: Shell info

  Info on turmoil and corruption in Nigeria: Vanity Fair

  One of my fellow FW’s said, “I don’t care what a company does as long as its product is the cheapest. “I came back with, “Some people go to church on Sunday and pray for a better world when they made decisions all week-long that contributed to the injustices and destruction of the world.” I thought of a few of my present and former FW’s who actually have sent their kids to Christian schools to supposedly get better moral values. Yet the same parents don’t give a good Hannity (my word for shit) what values the companies who make the products they use have as long as they’re cheap. Sounds like a waste of money on that Christian school when the kids come home to parents who don’t care about standing up for a more moral and just world.

  I also have a beef with fellow FW’s who pick up their check from Public Education while they put their kids in private schools. This is a hypocrisy George H. Bush brought up when he ran for president. Bush talked about the NEA teacher’s union and made fun of how 30% of its members had kids in private schools yet the NEA was fighting against school vouchers. I wasn’t working in Public Education at the time and thought Bush was full of Hannity. I have been ashamed to now learn that Bush may have even been a little light when he said 30%. I am puzzled why my FW’s in Public Education don’t see this hypocrisy as detrimental to their job in Public Education.

  I truly believe parents and grandparents all would like to see a better world for their children, grandchildren, and the next generation. The world is fraught with problems pertaining to social justice, sweatshops, racism, misogyny, poverty, the environment, human rights, respect, dignity, etc. I’m sure most people are overwhelmed in their daily life just trying to earn a living and get by to feel they can spend any time being an activist on even one of these issues. Mother Theresa told us we should “just do what’s in front of you.” Even if people did as little as that, just working on an issue that confronts them daily, it would make a better world. What if I told you how you could take a role in fighting for all the social justice issues I mentioned above without even lifting a finger? As a matter of fact, not lifting a finger, not moving a muscle, being an armchair activist as it were is exactly what is called for.

  It’s not really about doing anything it’s about doing nothing. By that nothing I mean we can make major changes by holding corporations accountable. The easiest and best way to do that is by closing our wallets and purses to their anti-human, anti-environmental agendas. The sound they most fear is the silence those wallets and purses make when they don’t open. Nothing in a capitalist society speaks louder than the silent sound of wallets not opening.

  I have spoken out in my workplace about the evils of WalMart and Sam’s Club. Both of them don’t pay livable wages, seldom promote women (when they do they pay them less than men), they use Third World sweatshops, use child labor, pollute, are anti-union and get millions in corporate welfare. They are on the wrong side of just about every issue you can imagine. Because as I’ve said I work in Public Education I brought to work information like the following about WalMart trying to wipe out public education. Folks I work with said, I know WalMart is evil but I have to go to Sam’s Club. It’s as if going to Sam’s is some kind of religious experience. Don’t take my word for how evil WalMart is; take the word of The Methodist Church and 30 religious, labor, consumer, and human rights groups that have urged WalMart to improve the company’s social and environmental performance. The groups organized by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, said it feared the company’s strategic vision to achieve success in the marketplace comes without an ethical standard.

  The first and only time I went in a WalMart was over thirty years ago as I accompanied a friend who entered the new store in Hermitage, PA. What I saw inside the front door made me turn around and leave and never come back. The terror that drove me from their store was the Wal-Mart greeter. It was Louie who had been a boss at a grocery store I worked in while attending YSU. He was the vilest, lecherous, evilest boss I have ever worked for in my life (and that’s saying a lot). This was a man who actually made fun of and imitated a handicapped employee at the grocery store. Here it was decades later and this boss was now a senior citizen and a greeter at WalMart. I imagine he probably kicks canes out of the hand of elderly women and disconnects the batteries on the scooter buggies while the handicapped ride them in WalMart. I knew very little at that time about WalMart. What I realized though was that if they actually had Louie out front representing their store they truly were “Satan’s store.”

  As for Sam’s Club I’m not shopping anywhere that I have to pay an annual membership to. That just sounds plain dumb to me. I tend to buy from small stores in my community and buy things at second-hand stores so I believe we do have alternatives to companies that are not good world citizens. Truly, do those products we buy at soulless corporations give us so much comfort and pleasure that we will pay such a high moral cost for them? When we buy gas at Shell and enter WalMarts and Sam’s Clubs with our children, we are telling our kids we think little of the world they will inherit. In the end, we must ask ourselves: do we want bargains or values?

  My local hero this week is Lynn Anderson who went on WKBN radio’s Dan Rivers’ show and  addressed the problems of fracking. When I heard Lynn was going on I was worried for her. That is because Dan believes corporations are sacred beings and he can be quite rabid in defending them. Lynn had a rabies shot before hand and had her facts down and was prepared. Lynn did a great job pointing out damages that have occurred around the country by the type of chemical fracking that has existed about the last five years. The downside is that Dan’s conservative audience is highly allergic to facts. When the callers phoned in they stated things that just weren’t true and missed most of Lynn’s facts. Paul Lyden of the Lyden Oil Company was one of the callers. He also runs a weekly show on WKBN touting fracking. Paul’s family has been in the oil business for 90 years so he has an agenda. He is not really interested in alternative energy like wind and solar because oil and gas puts money in his pocket. Lynn also has an agenda which is keeping our valley safe which puts no money in her pockets.

  Lynn and other activists have managed to get an issue on the ballot concerning whether fracking should be allowed in Youngstown. These activists are saying fracking in a community should be up to the residents. Mr. Rivers (who does not live in Youngstown) and most of the people who phoned in have a problem with democracy because they don’t believe people should be allowed to vote on such issues in their community. Lynn said she didn’t want to chase away jobs in the oil and gas industry. She said that if a community accepts fracking the process should be made as safe as possible to protect everyone who lives there. She called for the latest safety equipment, for telling the public what chemicals are being used and for the end of exempting gas & oil companies from the Clean Air and Water Act.

  Dan had Lynn and the other guests leave before the last hour of his show. That was so that he and his callers could take pot shots at Lynn and the other environmentalists without them being there to use facts to fight back. Mr. Lyden made the stupidest attack on Lynn and those that accompanied her on the show. He said she was a hypocrite if she drove a car to the show or was wearing any oil based clothing. Lynn Anderson never called for the end of the oil and gas industry only that it be as safe as possible and that we not export our gas and oil to places like China. Mr. Lyden being outraged over her saying that only tells me that it is an unsafe industry and that he has no problem with our oil and gas being exported as long as he is making a buck. Mr. Lyden who gets rich off of the oil & gas industry and dismisses alternative energy is a hypocrite because he called himself an environmentalist. I was trying to keep from choking when I heard him say he was an environmentalist. The next thing I heard was Dan Rivers agree and say he also was an environmentalist. Mrs. E then had to give be several hard hits to my back to keep me from choking to death. My attempted murderers Paul Lyden and Dan Rivers win the area buffoons of the week award.

  Local Musician: David Mayfield Parade: “I Just Might Pray”

  “What Do You Call It”

  “The best angle from which to approach any problem is the try-angle.”  ~Author Unknown