State Workers "Share In The Sacrifice" Every Day.

Lately, when I read a piece in my local newspaper, in which some pundit or politician is yammering about the need for state workers and pensioners to “share in the sacrifice,” my general response can be summed up in one word: SERIOUSLY?

I sacrificed a fat pay check out of law school more than 22 years ago, when I took a low-paying, “at will,” state job defending poor people. I never heard anyone in government or the press clamoring to raise my salary to a level even remotely commensurate with that of my counterparts in the private sector, who, not incidentally, never seemed to tire of berating me for undervaluing my services. In fact, over the length of my career, my real income actually went down. In the last three years of my state job, my salary was completely frozen by the government, and I took five voluntary furlough days, so that the younger workers would not have to be laid off.

Since I started working for the State in 1988, my government-funded health insurance went from good, to so-so, to crappy, to “take it or leave it.” Oh, right! My required contributions to health insurance premiums, co-pays, and out of pocket expenses went up as fast as the quality of care went down. This became a series of sacrifices, always advocated by pundits and mandated by politicians.

In the last ten years, I sacrificed my pay, my benefits and my pension, because I loved my job and because I had finally fewer years of work ahead of me than behind me. Sacrifice is supposed to come as second nature to a die hard public defender. I taught so many Ivy League debutantes to practice law in the trenches of the criminal justice system and kept fighting as most of them ran away literally crying and screaming from the office, because their refined sensibilities were not attuned to the stress of the 55-hour weeks and the dead bodies and the unscrupulous police and prosecutors and sanctimonious judges and the often mentally unstable, addicted, and sometimes dangerous clients. The job was not for the faint of heart. There has been a 51% turnover rate in the public defender system in the last three years. Go figure! Colorado politicians always got way more value from their public defenders than they deserved, yet each year, we would have to beg for the minimum amount of money to do a job which  they knew full well was mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Politicians and the press knew that we carried 2-3 times the case-load recommended by the Colorado Supreme Court, but they just looked the other way while we continued to make the sacrifices necessary to do an impossible job.

The last ten years is important, because, during that period of time, both the national and Colorado state governments lowered taxes (mostly for the wealthy, but that is another story), thus revenues went down. In Colorado, the State was prevented by its Constitution from saving excess revenues from good years, to get us through years of economic down-turn. In those same ten years, our infrastructure continued to crumble, middle class private-sector incomes went down, and then went to Mumbai, and finally, we went broke  after being suckered into two unjustified wars and welfare checks for multi-national corporations.

About four years ago, I was asked to sacrifice my relatively stable metro position, for a double caseload on the Eastern plains. Since there was no money for an actual office I sacrificed by driving 80 miles from my home to court, each way. My office was a Jeep, a lap top, and a cell phone. I became the first permanent public defender in a jurisdiction that had previously suffered from a mish-mash rotation of “du jour” attorneys. My last four years in that position were by far, more challenging and rewarding than my preceding 18 years in a metro placement. Many of the police and prosecutors had seemingly never heard of the Constitution, and some of the judges had a nasty habit of putting way too many people of color in prison. No, we never got along, but I was consistently and truly appreciated by the folks whom I was lucky enough to represent. It was a huge sacrifice and it was worth every minute.

About a year before the middle class got the bill for bailing out the criminals on Wall Street, there was a Colorado government/press hue and cry about the allegedly “dire fiscal crisis” awaiting (in 20 years or so) my state pension plan. I was told by the same politicians and pundits that I again needed to sacrifice in the form of  larger worker contributions, astronomical buyout figures, and  cost of living increases that were no longer tied to the actual cost of living, but tied instead to state revenues, (ie. no increase at all).

I sacrificed every day, for 22+ years and borrowed money to buy a few more years from my pension plan, before the government completely cut that off too. Now that I have finally and fully met my end of the contract to PERA and am taking the pension THAT I EARNED, I am told, by the same politicians and pundits that I have it too good, like I am a corporation on welfare or something. I sacrificed every damned day and now the same politicians who balanced their yearly budgets on my back for 22 years are telling me that I have to “share in the sacrifice?”

Though I am on a pension, I still pay federal and state taxes and would not mind paying more in taxes, so that potholes and bridges can be repaired, children can be fed and educated, our neighborhoods can be kept clean and safe, and the right to decent, affordable, healthcare can be extended to all citizens. I would be willing to sign on for that additional sacrifice, as I believe in the responsibilities concomitant with the social contract all tacitly sign and share in as citizens of this country and of this state.

The fact that state workers are among the few who still have jobs with something resembling benefits has nothing to do with the end result of 10 years of unbridled corporate greed and government’s fiscal mismanagement. We were not the cause, and it is simply unconscionable to make us more than a small part of the solution. Rather, it is the time for the politicians and pundits to stop this pointless, mean-spirited blame game and begin a serious discussion about what we all know must be done.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Latest on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Human Rights Violations

This is by far, the most comprehensive and virtually up-to-date article written by MICHAEL WARREN
of the Associated Press:

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Police on Easter Island raided the grounds of a luxury hotel Sunday to evict the last of dozens of indigenous protesters battling for ancestral lands and a larger share of profits from the tourists who come to see the Pacific Island's mysterious statues of giant heads.

A Rapa Nui clan's claims to the land under the new, $800-a-night Hangaroa Eco Village & Spa has won support from international human rights agencies, and it poses legal and political dilemmas for a Chilean government already criticized for its treatment of indigenous people on the mainland.

The Hito clan's attorney, Rodrigo Gomez, said the last handful of about 50 squatters were hauled off and jailed by police Sunday after they had tied themselves down in the lobby.

Police Maj. Fernando Lobos said all the Hitos were processed and freed pending a court hearing. He said officers were following an order to empty the property so that federal investigators could survey its condition.

Members and supporters of the Hito clan had been squatting on the grounds of the $50 million development since August, claiming the land was swindled from their illiterate grandmother and then illegally sold into private hands by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

They initially demanded recognition of property rights from the conglomerate that now owns the land so they could earn rent from the new hotel, insisting that Chile adhere to the international indigenous peoples treaty it signed in 2008, which requires governments to pay compensation for usurped land.

Their protest inspired nearly two dozen other native families to claim ownership of government properties on ancestral land. Police moved in with pellet guns and clubs in December to remove them in violent confrontations that injured more than a dozen islanders and several officers. Pictures of native women and men with bloodied heads were published internationally, shattering the tranquil image that attracts many tourists.

While dueling civil claims wind through Chile's court system, prosecutors have sought to persuade judges to charge 17 of the Hitos with trespassing at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday on the island.

Standing against the clan is the Schiess family, which runs one of Chile's most powerful private holding companies, Empresas Transoceanica.

The Hitos have opened a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington and won support from the United Nations. A Chilean appellate court, rather than approve the evictions, recognized that the two families have dueling claims that must be resolved by Chile's Supreme Court.

U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii on Friday urged Chilean President Sebastian Pinera to order the removal of police surrounding the hotel, and to provide food, water and medicine to the Hitos inside. James Anaya, the U.N. special investigator on indigenous rights, warned Chile that forcible evictions won't help resolve the situation peacefully.

Instead, Chilean police finally moved in Sunday morning.

"They knew we were going to win in court on Tuesday. This is a desperate move by the Schiess," Gomez said.

Jeanette Schiess, who runs the hotel project and is married to Empresas Transoceanica's chief executive, Christoph Schiess, said she couldn't immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday from The Associated Press. She has said in the past that the Chilean government should be responsible for any compensation, and while her family plans to make the resort a cultural center to benefit the entire Rapa Nui community, she won't negotiate with lawbreakers.

The Hitos' great-great-grandfather was among the Rapa Nui elders whose names appear on the 1888 annexation treaty, along with Chilean sailors whose ships were built by a company that is now part of the Schiess conglomerate.

The Rapa Nui civilization once numbered up to 20,000, with a written language, a royal family and an ancient culture centered on the awe-inspiring statues, which were carved from volcanic rock and moved around the island despite weighing tons apiece.

But internal strife, European conquests and Peruvian slave ships ravaged the population, and only 111 remained before Chile annexed the island, 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) off its coast.

The Rapa Nui population has recovered under Chilean rule, to about 3,500 natives and nearly 2,000 non-native residents. But the islanders were long treated as slaves or servants, herded into the island's small town of Hanga Roa by the Easter Island Exploitation Co., which claimed the rest of the land as a sheep ranch and kept the natives isolated from the outside world.

The native people were denied citizenship until 1966, and kept on small plots in town as the rest of the island became national property - and now a World Heritage site.

Chile's government, which also struggles to cope with land protests by the Mapuche Indians in Patagonia, insists it wants to honor indigenous rights and encourage the Rapa Nui to enjoy the fruits of booming tourism, which has grown to some 50,000 visits a year.

"The government of Chile has a debt with the Rapa Nui people. And we are prepared to take responsibility for this debt," said Raul Celis, who governs the island from Valparaiso, to The Associated Press.

He said that when Chile took over, "They were clearly in the process of extinction, at the point of disappearing. And it's possible that in the 122 years since the island has formed part of Chile's territory, that there have been moments when the state hasn't paid enough attention. That's why there's a debt. But we're trying to resolve it."

Celis said the Hitos never complained until the Schiess family invested millions developing a small, government-built hotel into a first-class resort. The Schiesses have said their title to the land is clear, but the Hitos say they the developers had to know islanders had tried for years to assert property claims despite unequal access to Chile's legal system. They argue that a 1979 law says only natives can own property on the island.

Celis also blames a few islanders for refusing to accept negotiations between the government and natives on four key issues: land rights, limits on residency by non-natives, economic development and a proposed law that would give the Rapa Nui more local control over their affairs, if not outright autonomy.

But Lorena Fries, who directs the government's Human Rights Institute and has an official watchdog role in such conflicts, says Pinera's administration could have avoided force by broadening the dialogue. Instead, she said, it picked compliant locals to make deals with and found ways of jailing the most outspoken.

"In response to any social conflict, this government shows a tendency of going to the extreme and criminalizing the citizens," Fries told the AP from the island after investigating the conflict.

Attorney Leonard Crippa of the Indian Law Resource Center in Washington, which is building a case at the Inter American Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States, also says outspoken islanders are deliberately left out.

"I'm representing more than 30 clans. Most were not participating in that dialogue," Crippa said. "They don't know what's being agreed to. The Chilean government promotes this peaceful dialogue, says it's working with the Rapa Nui people and will get results. But that's not true in reality."

Addendum: Since the printing of the above article, intel has indicated that the "Schiess Family," a huge shipping conglomerate, is bent on using Rapa Nui as a strategic shipping port, and their hotel on the island as a resort for its executives. Their eventual game plan has nothing to do with eco-tourism at all, and they are presently in negotiations with the Government of Chile for a sweet deal which will guaranty them permanent hegemony over all of Rapa Nui and its people. If The Obama Administration makes the proposed Chilean/U.S. trade deal without a provision for the Rapaniu People, there will be no remaining incentive for Chile or the Schiess conglomerate to negotiate at all.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41448363/ns/world_news-americas/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/06/AR2011020602018.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-latin-america-12378736

Google The Koch Brothers...Just Once!

Or not. Not unless you want to know about the billionaire sibs who personally started and  still finance the so called “grass roots” Tea Party. You may not care that they own the prominent conservative think tanks and politicians who advocate shutting down the gummint unless we continue tax breaks and corporate welfare for the richest 2%, and force the rest of us to pay the bill. You may not be interested that Charles and David Koch, worth $21.5 billion…each, colluded with another mega-corp megalomaniac, billionaire Rupert Murdoch, a handful of other billionaires, and a couple of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, to buy the last election and that they were largely successful. To get just a taste of just some of the national politicians in Washington whom they now own, you may also refer to my post dated January 21, 2011, entitled, If We Did This, We’d Be Fired.

You probably have heard about the trouble in Wisconsin, but don’t Google the Koch brothers unless you want to know that they have bought and paid for Governor Scott Walker. Governor Walker actually created the fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, by giving huge tax breaks to mega-corps (guess who?) and then used the drop in revenue he created to justify taking away the collective bargaining rights of his 175,000, middle class public employees. Many days ago, these state troopers, firefighters, and teachers, etc. had agreed to the cuts in pay and benefits that Walker demanded, but the Republican Governor is holding out for a law that breaks the back of the only grass roots organization (public employees union) that hits the streets for Democratic candidates. This little scheme, along with political gerrymandering (redistricting) is being used simultaneously all over the country by the Tea/GOP to stamp out any and all pockets of support for Democrats. And guess who is behind all this?

You may not find it interesting that the two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, whom the Kochs have been wining and dining (Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia) are the same dudes who bestowed personal civil rights on corporations, by magically declaring them to be “persons,” under the U.S. Constitution, while taking a position that the same Constitution does not protect the rights of women.

If any of the above does not prompt you to Google the Koch brothers, you probably are not a   small business owner, a student, trying to get your child through school, unemployed, because your job got outsourced to Mumbai, a minority, a woman, retired, sick, have lousy, expensive health insurance, have no health insurance, a vet, a Democrat, an Independent, or work for a living. However, if you fit into any one or more of these categories, you might want to give it a try. You are being buggered by the Koch brothers even as you sit in rapt attention before Facebook, Dancing with the Stars or American Chopper. I can promise you that a simple Google search will provide an even more mind-blowing experience than J. Lo and Justin Bieber combined, followed by a permanent ability to smell the stench of every poop stew cooked up by Kochs & Friends. These titans of industry have an alarmingly few degrees of separation from just about every screwage coming from the very politicians whom you thought were elected to protect your interests. Each time you are once again forced to bend over and grab your ankles, you will be able to thank the Machiavellian Princes. And maybe by 2012, you might feel compelled to cast your next vote, based on the facts, instead of commercial sound-bytes and talking points.