“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” ― Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World
1.
Have you heard about a relatively new ruling in Tucson to allow casitas to be built on residential property? Thanks to architect Sharayah Jimenez and a stakeholder group who worked to make changes to city rules in December of 2021, it is now possible to build an accessory dwelling unit (or granny flat) on your property if the requirements match up. And she is part of a project that is offering grants to help local low-income homeowners afford to build a secondary casita on their own lot by involving the nonprofit Pima County Community Land Trust.
Talking about Tucson’s older barrios and BIPOC neighborhoods, land trust executive director Maggie Amado-Tellez asks the question, “How do we empower people to benefit from their home’s worth? We’ve got these investors and speculators circling like vultures, waiting to take advantage of someone’s misfortune. They are taking the wealth out of these communities and changing the character of the neighborhood. Casitas empower people to use the land they own, either to house a family member or to make some money from renting it out.”
Has this been implemented where you live? Read up on how the program works here.
2.
Just a quick note about the drawing above. I got a note from a long-time friend this week, who is a retired attorney, who wanted to give me a heads up about the possible legal problems of using images that are not mine to help illustrate my writing. Guilty. My thinking was along the lines of editorial ‘fair use’ as this is not a commercial enterprise. After some research it appears that the LAW does not agree. So, I will be peppering my salty language with my own drawings hence forth, and, to be safe, and because I have so much free time, I’ll be going through my previous 212 posts and replacing images that are not mine with line drawings, or just deleting the photos altogether. (One such exception is using Creative Commons works and giving credit, as seen in the next article) Now, where is that .0003¢ check from Spotify?
3.
Damn, I’m glad voting day is behind us. If I see one more Kelly/Masters ad I’m gonna ___________. That any Democrat won at all in our current political climate is a miracle, perhaps owing to enough voters who were able to see that it is, and will be, a race of big business vs normal working class folks. It’s also a race between wack-a-doodle and sane, but today I just want to make people aware of the fifty year campaign of rightwing, billionaire-funded infrastructure that brings together the CEOs and senior executives of America’s largest companies to loosely coordinate and provide cover for lobbying, fundraising, and other political activities.
Not to bore you with too many details but the Lewis Powell memo from 1971 seems to be the original blueprint for corporate domination of American Democracy. You can read it here if you care to. The upshot of the memo was for big corporations and the morbidly rich to create 1) a network of think tanks to change and eventually control public opinion, 2) a filtering organization to help pack the courts with young rightwing ideologues, 3) rightwing media empires that would help elect Republicans and influence political discussion across the American political spectrum, and 4) to place “business-friendly” professors in schools and colleges to train up a new generation of rightwing ideologues.
To dig a bit deeper, Thom Hartmann (progressive political commentator among other things), in his Hartmann Report newsletter, wrote:
The result of this 50-year-long investment of billions of dollars and millions of person-hours of time has been a complete shift in American politics away from reality and into the realm of dystopian fantasy.
Because of this massive infrastructure, Republican strategists and politicians can now quite literally create complete bullshit out of thin air and turn it into a national campaign strategy within a few months.
All across America, for example, Republicans are running campaigns warning voters that Democrats support “groomers” in our schools who are “recruiting” young people to drop their birth gender identity and become trans. And then those trans kids, particularly the “boys who become girls,” are unfairly competing in school sports. And while they’re at it, they’re leering at your kid in the bathroom and locker room.
His take is that all the blathering about CRT, trans kids, banning books, democratic pedophiles—all the bullshit—is because like in any classic con, they do it because it takes our minds off the fact that they’re robbing us blind. With Citizens United and it’s progenitors the Supreme Court granted the privileged few an unconstrained license to plunder our nation’s treasure and they now buy legislation, including tax cuts for themselves, the way you and I buy fruit at the grocery store. Three men today own more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans. Our 700+ billionaires are more fantastically rich than any king or pharaoh in history.
Chew on this. It’s massive. Again, how do any Democrats win? Why are Republicans voting against their own interests? Why do slugs vote for salt?
The simple answer is: billionaire and corporate greed. These guys set us up for a 40 year con that has taken more out of our pockets than any collection of grifters you’ve ever seen on any movie. None of this would have been possible if a group of fanatic billionaires hadn’t taken Powell’s memo to heart, if Powell and his Republican colleagues on the Supreme Court hadn’t legalized political bribery, or if there had been a similarly robust think tank and media effort on the left. But there’s nothing like this on the left. The simple fact is that most people who make billions do so because of a single-minded dedication to making and hoarding money, and that means keeping their regulations minimal and taxes low.
Average Republicans think they’re voting to help working people, protect their children, and guarantee liberty in this nation. Instead, they’re voting for politicians who want to destroy Social Security, Medicare, public schools, unions, and the rights of racial and gender minorities and women. Evangelicals think they’re supporting Christ’s work when they vote for Republicans but, as James Madison pointed out, merging church and state inevitably leads to the corruption of both. They think they’re being led by shepherds when, in fact, multimillionaire evangelists and megachurch preachers pitching political messages from the pulpit are ravening wolves (as we keep finding out).
A record-breaking and obscene amount of money was spent to elect our representatives in these mid-terms. According to opensecrets.org the total cost of 2022 state and federal midterm elections is projected to exceed $16.7 billion. The floodgates opened twenty-two years ago mostly due to a 5–4 majority of the Supreme Court siding with Citizens United, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections. According to the Brennan Center, the ruling has ushered in massive increases in political spending from outside groups, dramatically expanding the already outsized political influence of wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups.
An example of this media blitz is the steaming pile of horseshit that arrived in the mail last week purporting to be from the Catholic Church (see image below). Bishops in the states where the newspapers have appeared (Arizona, Michigan, Kansas, Illinois, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Nevada) have stressed that the papers are not affiliated with the Church. The man behind Metric Media, Brian Timpone, is an American conservative businessman and former journalist who operates a network of nearly 1,300 conservative local news websites. According to The New York Times, Timpone's "operation is rooted in deception, eschewing hallmarks of news reporting like fairness and transparency." This is pure right-wing indoctrination disguised as local news.
Democrats are trying to change this as earlier this year, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and once again allow for reasonable restrictions on corporate campaign contributions and other spending. Of course, bills the Dems have introduced are difficult to pass as you-know-why.
As always, JUST VOTE BLUE. (Those who voted libertarian in Georgia may well be responsible for getting Herschel Walker, the concussed and demented ex-football genius, elected as a SENATOR)
4.
Continuing the series of images from last month’s adventure, I made a day trip by car into the ‘mountainous’ region of the Algarve to the small village of Monchique. From there I made the almost half hour trek up the hill to the abandoned Convento de Nossa Senhora do Desterro. A Franciscan convent, it was founded in 1631 by Pêro da Silva and was seriously damaged by the earthquake of 1755. There was only one other person walking down the hill so I had the place to myself, except for the caretaker who mostly left me to roam. More info here on recent history of the convent.
And now…
Love your drawings!
The photos of the abandonded convent may be my favorites & how wonderful to be alone there.
xxx Kaz