Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Suburbs may die out –like a ponzi scheme

I have had lots of problems with overdevelopment in the town of Maize where I live. The area is being overdeveloped, gentrified and any kind of nature, plant or animal, is being wiped of the map. The quality of life in this town has gone down since I moved here almost 20 years ago.  Here is a story that agrees that suburbs need to go. Most leaders in Kansas are slow to learn from these kind of mistakes, but I will post this anyway.
- សតិវ អតុ

From Time: 

If you looked up “Minnesota nice” in the dictionary you might see a picture of Charles Marohn. Affable and mild-mannered, Marohn, who goes by Chuck, grew up the eldest of three sons of two elementary school teachers on a small farm near Brainerd, the central Minnesota city best known as the backdrop for the movie Fargo. Marohn (pronounced “mer-OWN”) graduated from Brainerd High School, entered the National Guard on his seventeenth birthday, and went on to study civil engineering at the University of Minnesota. He now lives with his wife, two daughters, and two Samoyeds in East Gull Lake, a small city north of Brainerd. Marohn, forty, likes the Minnesota Twins, reads voraciously, and is a proud Republican. He’s the friendliest guy you’re likely to meet. He’s also a revolutionary who’s trying to upend the suburbs as we know them.
After graduating from college, Marohn went to work as a municipal engineer in his hometown and spent several years working with the small towns around the greater Brainerd area, putting projects together that would build roads, pipes, storm drains, and all kinds of infrastructure. It was the mid-1990s, the area was booming, and Marohn was laying down the systems that helped the area grow. “I built sprawl,” he now says.
Often his work required him to knock on the doors of residents, many of whom he knew from growing up, and tell them about changes that might impact their property. In order to make the town’s roads safer, he would explain, engineers were going to have to widen the road in front of their house or cut down a tree in their yard. When his neighbors would get upset and ask why or try to protest—the roads were hardly trafficked at all, and sparse enough to almost be rural, they would point out—he’d explain that the town was required to make these changes in order to comply with the book of engineering standards to which it had to adhere. The code, put in place by the town but derived from state and national standards, dictated that roads must have an ample “recovery zone,” or a wide berth to accommodate cars that veer off the road, and that drivers have improved “sight distance,” the distance a driver needs to be able to see in order to have enough room to be able to react before colliding with some- thing in the roadway. When residents pointed out that the recovery zone was also their yard, and that their kids played kick ball and hopscotch there, Marohn recommended they put up a fence, so long as it was outside the right-of-way. He was sorry, he told them, but the standards required it. The trees were removed, the roads widened, the asphalt paved and repaved. “I never stepped back from my own assumptions to consider that I wasn’t making anything safer,” Marohn says. “In reality, I was making their street more dangerous, and in the process, I was not only taking out their trees, I was pretending I knew more than them.”

For the rest click here.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Petition to stop the Tea Party

For those who are tired to the stupidity of the Republican Party—this article is for those who want to sign a petition:
-Otto


Speaker Boehner is taking his partisan games to the next level and suing the president over health care reform!!

That's insane –Boehner can clearly no longer lead Congress and instead is going to resort to political stunts and attacking the president –we've got to fight back.

Click here and add your name to stand with the President
The Tea Party (formerly the Grand Old Party) is putting commonsense aside to do everything in their power to attack the president these next two years and trying stop all the progress we've made. Even the laughable Sarah Palin has gotten in the mix, and she's called for the president to be impeached!!

Stop the Tea Party



Thursday, July 10, 2014

Wichita protesters respond to the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court ruling


In Wichita, as well as across the country, protesters have taken on Hobby Lobby since their victory handed down from the U.S. Supreme Court this week. The court ruled that Hobby Lobby does not have to pay for their employee’s birth control, because of their religious beliefs. People marched in front of the Hobby Lobby at Ridge and Central, here in Wichita.
“They (Supreme Court) really did overreach,” said Jessica Nellis, one of about 20 protesters present at 1:30 in the afternoon. She said she was surprised when the ruling was announced. The protest was scheduled from 9:00am to 8:00pm, this Saturday.
“The Supreme Court left it opened to interpretation,” Nellis continued. “What if these people were Muslims and they didn’t want to hire non-Muslims?” 

Hobby Lobby will no longer have to pay for coverage of the two contraceptives (IUDs and Plan B) that they consider abortifacients, (reported by National Catholic Reporter).
The 5-4 ruling only applies to the federal mandate. State-mandated contraceptive coverage was not changed by the decision.
The court majority ruled that "persons" with religious beliefs protected by the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) include "closely-held" corporations -- those defined by the Internal Revenue Service as having 50 percent of their stock owned by five or fewer individuals. This means that if the federal government wants to force such corporations to do something contrary to their religious beliefs, then it has a series of legal hurdles to overcome.

Nellis, as with many people concerned about this action, plans to boycott Hobby Lobby.
“I used to shop here and now I don’t,” Nellis added. “It’s a shame. They have it wrong on IUDs (intrauterine device). If anything it gets rid of the need for an abortion to happen.”
This protest was organized by a few individuals using a Facebook page they created. Charli James was one of the protesters on hand who help organize the event. She said the turnout had been pretty good so far.
“We had one group of guys who showed up and got in our faces,” James said. “They didn’t think we were right. There were a few antagonists.”
She added that many other people who passed them had a positive attitude towards the protest.
“One guy showed up with a gun,” she added.
Someone took a picture of him and posted it on the Facebook page. James said he was vague as to where he stood on the issue.
“He said he was there to protect us,” she added.
That person wrote into Facebook and said his name was Sam McCrory. His presents at the rally and on Facebook sparked heated discussion. Otherwise the protest went peaceful the rest of the day.

Friday, July 04, 2014

Fireworks mark our 4th of July celebration

Despite all this country’s negative sides we spent the day celebrating our independence day, July 4, 2014. We had the all American meal, including hot dogs, potato chips and other fine food. We went to my brother’s house in Douglas, KS.
We celebrated the birth of our country—the beginning of the end of the feudalist era and our independence from Britain. We celebrated the end of British imperialism.
Not celebrated where nearly a century of slavery, genocide of Native American Indians, countless invasions and meddling in Latin America , the many US capital punishment executions and imperialism on a world wide scale, as of these later years.
Most of all we just shot off a lot of fireworks. And we had lots of them. There were three different families there and each brought a large box filled with fireworks.

- សតិវ អតុ
John Otto lights a smoke grenade to celebrate this holiday.

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Happy 1/4 - Now we need a 1/5 (revised)

The most important thing about the US revolution was that it served as a turning point from Feudalism to capitalism, one of the shifts that Karl Marx believed was important in his stages of human economic and political development: From Feudalism to Capitalism, from Capitalism to Socialism, from Socialism to Communism.

The Republicans (anti-aristocrats at that time) included both Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. They differed from Hamilton and his Federalists who wanted to create some kind of aristocracy.  In his later writings, Paine condemned the Federalists for trying to reverse the US revolution and what it stood for.
Paine went to France to take part in the French Revolution, for which he wrote “The Rights of Man.” He fell out of favor of France’s first non-aristocratic leader, Maximilien Robespierre.
Paine remained in France until 1802, when he returned to America on an invitation from Thomas Jefferson, who had been elected president.
He condemned Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory, calling him "the completest charlatan that ever existed."
Now fast forward almost 230 years and there is only a skeleton of the original revolution. The now, not-so-young country, United States of America has, condemned the Sandinista revolution against a dictator, supported Saudi Arabia, one of the most complete feudal societies on earth, and the US is now attempting to be the next Roman-like empire, controlling all of the Middle-East.
Today our country has a skeleton left of what was really never overly democracy. We have president, barely elected by people who have instituted torture and concentration camps.

It’s time for the next move—from capitalism to Socialism.
- សតិវ​ អតុ

The Beatles - Revolution

Jefferson Airplane - Revolution (Live, Woodstock 1969)