Disqus - Latest Comments for StuartH

Re: Our leaders need to take a longer view

StuartH — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 16:23:41 -0000

Climate Change is the real dynamic at work. However, most politics is informed by attention spans that are very gnat-like. I fault the Democratic Party, of which I am a long term member, for really failing to address the long term concerns that most affect us all. We just saw a frontal assault by billionaires able to buy up the entire landscape. Even so, this spending of money to buy elections, as awesome as it is, gives them a Pyrrhic victory. That is, we still have to deal with conditions in a world with 7 billion people and increasing carbon in the atmosphere that will become more and more real to more and more people.

Re: Apocalypse Now: Seriously, It Is Time for a Major Rethink About Liberal and Progressive Politics

StuartH — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 19:12:02 -0000

The problem with media is that the editorial geniuses that are behind it make choices based on media-genic experience, which is not the same as taking up an activist perspective and going deeper into it. The solution at this point is to take more personal responsibility and keep trying. The fact is that the people who sit out the game tend to be making it less likely that solutions can go through because the support is lacking because people choose to sit it out.

Re: Apocalypse Now: Seriously, It Is Time for a Major Rethink About Liberal and Progressive Politics

StuartH — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 19:08:46 -0000

That is the comic book version.

Re: Apocalypse Now: Seriously, It Is Time for a Major Rethink About Liberal and Progressive Politics

StuartH — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 16:52:24 -0000

I am currently on the board of a local Democratic Party organization. But i am going off the board. I find that all too often, people attracted to positions with titles in groups like this have no idea what is going on or what to do about it. The fight with others all the time over this and think exerting personal status is the point. Activists who may have a better sense of direction stay away because they don't engage. I think that the larger problems have to do with setting up new structures that center around the problem of public education about really basic things such as citizenship. Many people are more like TV watchers who think the ultimate role they have is to complain. They don't understand citizenship and this could be because the education system avoids issues and because the 24/7 media environment we live in specifically demobilizes people. Media is something people seem confused about. How can it be that the media plays stories in such biased ways? Maybe we should write a letter to the editor. People don't realize that billions have been spent since the 1950s to create this very situation. We need to educate ourselves and then we can engage with others in our families and communities. Editors like those at AlterNet don't actually support truly alternative knowledge. The preference is for ways to reinforce what is conventionally understood already. You can't make a breakthrough without really looking deeper.

Re: Libraries and Stanwood city seek annexation

StuartH — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 14:52:37 -0000

There will be libraries in 25, 50, 100 years. If we are so myopic as to not see how important it is that we provide a place for children to learn literacy and the love of learning in a community context where there is a chance of learning how to be a human who can interact with other humans, then we ensure that the kids with the bright futures are those who grow up in China or Singapore.

Re: Libraries and Stanwood city seek annexation

StuartH — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 14:13:34 -0000

Google is not ALL. For one thing, it is only one research tool, and for another there are now many databases that comprise the world of academic research. Whether you might be a PhD student or a first grader, a librarian could be very helpful in this virtual landscape of human knowledge. Besides which, it requires a lot of study to become fully versed in enough different aspects of literature to help make early literacy a successful and rewarding experience rather than a frustrating one. Children are the future and libraries certainly are there for families with children. People have to be able to have empathy with the full spectrum of community needs and interests and not just one narrow focus.

Re: Libraries and Stanwood city seek annexation

StuartH — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 13:02:09 -0000

Vote for Annexation if you live in Stanwood. The reason the Sno-Isle district was founded fifty years ago, is that smaller cities have not been able to support a library building or its operations for a long time now, in a stable and predictable way. Consider that what makes the library possible is really a national system of education at the graduate school level and all the professionalism that goes into managing a system such as Sno-Isle, with its 20 libraries. When the Stanwood library began a century ago it had one librarian making about 300 dollars a year and a total collection of 1,000 books. It has become infinitely more.

Re: Libraries and Stanwood city seek annexation

StuartH — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 12:57:16 -0000

There is a reason that librarians need a Masters in
Library and Information Science now. People with early readers and school age children want help with the body of literature for young adults and a librarian has to master this area. Same for various adult interests. Research into whatever area is both and art and a science. A reference librarian has to be an expert at where to go for various avenues of inquiry, which can be at any level and for any possible interest area. Besides which, a library is a place of community and a place that supports life long learning in all its dimensions. As an adjunct to what schools do, it boosts early literacy. Libraries have made the middle class possible through the past century.

Re: America is About to Lose One of Its Best Public Resource: Public Libraries

StuartH — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 02:26:09 -0000

A lot of cities are places where libraries are being cut, sometimes to a crippling extent. Albuquerque, NM is one such place. Over the years they have replaced something like 25% of the library staff with temporaries. These can work two years as temps, without benefits. Since they city would have to offer them benefits after two years, they are simply out of work.

Re: Thanks to NAFTA, Conditions for Mexican Factory Workers Like Rosa Moreno Are Getting Worse

StuartH — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 13:50:49 -0000

Most US citizens are pretty ignorant about the connection between policies that our government has implemented over the years and the consequences that affect both foreign workers and our own. This article will never appear in the mainstream media because it precisely goes against the blind consumerism that the media was established to promote. I hope it opens some eyes.

Re: Why Is There So Much God in America's Politics?

StuartH — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:21:09 -0000

I think the good professor, Alternet, and the commentors are uninformed about the current situation which is that right wing evangelicals have had, for about the past forty years, a relationship with big money special interests like oil. It isn't really about the Bible or Jesus. People like Karl Rove have strategically, methodically and persistently built a carefully orchestrated drive for power using born again Christians' lack of questioning what is really going on, and the need oil and other interests have in using them as a political wedge. There are enough churches in enough small towns and rural areas across America that this could wind up being a Trojan horse that will make a lot of people wonder how the GOP was able to put such crap over on the American public. If Romeny wins the White House based on this strategy, it will get a lot worse.

Re: Martinez: Sell the jet, but not the other planes

StuartH — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:07:55 -0000

This is a great issue for grandstanding, but the reality is that there are long distances between places in this region. No governor could possibly afford to be spending hours in traffic and on long road trips, and certainly not frequently.

Once you contemplate that, then the next question is whether anyone would even allow a governor to get on board a cheap plane that is the equivalent of an old used car. Would anyone want to even think about a crash? Not even. Therefore we are back to the best kept up state of the art equipment to assure safety and efficiency of time spent. There are places to economize that might matter. This isn't one of them.

Re: Trading Sex for Survival: What It's Like to be a Street Prostitute | | AlterNet

StuartH — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 16:16:37 -0000

I think it's true. Most people, unconsciously, buy into media stereotypes much more readily than they go out of their way to understand what is actually going on. We haven't really evolved all that far, as a species, or as a civilization.

Beautiful young women are very likely to get victimized because they are very compelling in many ways. Sometimes I think that if I was asked if I wanted to be born into another life as a woman, I would lack the courage. Life isn't easy for anyone, really. But it shouldn't be conditional on being able to escape the entrapment of misfortune heaped on one by others who are extremely keen on various kinds of exploitation.

The value of diary notes by this young woman is that it asks others to open their eyes to this and reflect. The conclusions ought to be reached through an opening consciousness in response to it. That is all that literature can really ask, in any form.

Re: Trading Sex for Survival: What It's Like to be a Street Prostitute | | AlterNet

StuartH — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:28:22 -0000

Some years back I was living in a cheap rooming house in San Francisco. A friend introduced me to this girl. She was like other girls except for the needle tracks down her arms. She was beautiful and she drew little flower headed people in her notebook. She asked her friend to find someone to sign her will as a witness because she was afraid of being kidnapped and killed. She had gotten into this because she had to leave home as a young teenager for one of several typical reasons, and was making it on the street.

I felt that this circumstance was very complex. On one level I really admired her for being brave. I could see that the freedom she got from being entrepreneurial was part of why she did what she did. The money was better than working at a hamburger joint. She dreamed of cashing out and starting a dress shop. I hope she did. The last time I saw her she had entered a drug rehab program. It is very hard to overcome lack of family support, lack of education and the way society treats beautiful young women and makes their vulnerability count against them. I hope she made it. I really hope she did.

Re: Campaign Ad-Watch: No ceasefire in gubernatorial race

StuartH — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 10:56:09 -0000

What has been happening in other states, notably Texas, is that Republicans have found that negativity works. It reduces out of the voter population people that don't see through the tactic and instead are demobilized by it. That makes it more likely that reactionary, emotional voters will come out to vote, and less likely that issues-oriented voters will. That is utterly cynical, but from a strictly tactical perspective, if it works, it works. Denish, in going negative early has shown that she knows what she is really and truly up against and is not naive about the situation. It isn't New Mexico politics as usual. Martinez does not have an appeal based on a positive program, but rather, on attack politics.

Re: my.barackobama.com

StuartH — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:43:33 -0000

Recently, I moved to NM after working for some years in local politics in a couple of other states. NM is a small state that is delightfully isolated, so it can be different from either Arizona or Texas. On the other hand, there is enough "manana" attitude in the general environment that getting people mobilized may not be so easy. I have seen how the Republicans campaign and how Democrats that weren't sufficiently prepared got surprised and defeated - like Ann Richards and Jim Hightower.

I think the problem for the fall may be that a lot of people in NM haven't yet seen the full Republican negativity machine and may not know what is going on until it is too late.

Re: Denish says new AZ immigration law is “racial profiling”

StuartH — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:39:45 -0000

This issue highlights how important it is at this time that we elect a governor who is not given to grandstanding. I moved here recently from Arizona. Jan Brewer was a secretary of state who, faced with criticism of irregularities produced by electronic voting machines, dug in her heels and made a Christian crusade out of sheer stubborness. She was the Republican chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign and at the same time Secretary of State, just like Kathleen Harris. Unfortunately, grandstanding for the votes of the radical right wing will have consequences for the US, as the President of Mexico has indicated. It is silly to say that racial profiling will not come out of this. It already happens.

Re: Colon is push polling, Ortiz y Pino charges

StuartH — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:57:07 -0000

I always press those calling for polls to answer my questions about who they are doing polling for. To me, this is what everyone ought to do. Push pollsters, however will generally not own up to who they work for. If you ask up front, you can refuse to answer questions if they refuse to divulge.

Colon obviously has the money to do polling. If he is using push polling, then one would have to wonder why. Not a smart campaign tactic. What he mainly has accomplished is putting a spotlight on the idea that Colon is afraid that Ortiz y Pino may actually be threatening his perceived lead. Otherwise it calls into question how come Colon has so much money to spend. In other states, that might be the issue.

Re: Wiener and opposing crowd face off on Civic Plaza over email

StuartH — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:49:45 -0000

Having grown up in Texas, around real racists, I think that there should be zero tolerance for people in public office who do stuff like this and then play the game of apologizing. Denial and minimizing are the public face of racism.

What a slip like this reveals is the true character of mind. One of the reasons that there should be zero tolerance is that it is evidence of a level of cynicism that calls into question whether or not there can be public trust. Representatives of the people should never even be tempted to think something like this is funny.

Re: Rasmussen: Denish leads GOP opponents

StuartH — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:34:01 -0000

One of the big lessons from the Karl Rove/George Bush playbook is that if you have nothing to offer, if your opposition has all the ideas, then just go negative. As much as possible, from as many different sources. This causes voters to get disgusted.

The point of this strategy is to reduce the turnout so that maybe the reactionaries become a plurality. I hope New Mexico is not vulnerable to this. But the polling numbers indicate to me, that there is some prospect. This could usher in an era of negative politics that could make solving problems pretty much impossible.

Re: Opinion of one

StuartH — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:55:49 -0000

Thank you for renewing my faith in journalism. I have been an avid reader of newspapers, a reporter, an editor of a small weekly, and have crossed the line into political campaigning and have been back and forth over many years. I lived in Austin, Tx for a long time and the Seattle, Wa area.

What you describe, which by the way has something in common with the story at the Seattle Times and other papers, is a tension that has been deepening over the years between a journalistic ideal born of the hope of the Fourth Estate and the First Amendment - and special interest efforts to dominate the Body Politick.

I suspect that this tension will continue, but this election shows that the greater public exchange about what the truth really is can supercede special interest control over the flow of information.

The so called "red states" seem to me to be largely places where information flow is very limited to small, struggling and not-too-competent newspapers, hardly any diversity in terms of perspectives or culture, and conglomerates such as Clear Channel dominating through mass market economics. The
internet has begun to alter that equation, especially in the younger and college educated demographics.

I see blogs such as this and the future technological expansion of the internet in general as helping to break down the limitations that the economics of media production imposes. I hope newspapers have a future, but they will mostly if owners and other leaders within those institutions see that their value comes from putting greater investment into actual journalism.