Business owners most culpable on sidewalks after blizzard!

I do find fault with many main street business owners. They quickly plowed out their spacious lots in the interest of MAKE-A-BUCK. Their sidewalks neglected in the spirit of contempt for pedestrians. If they could only charge a sidewalk toll!

Just a helpful suggestion.

Submitted To: letters@providencejournal.com

Submitted To: Gene@630wpro.com

London mayor slanders Islamic males

I just read this on the BBC internet news: "London mayor Boris Johnson: Extremists PORN DRIVEN." He says that Islamic males driven to acts of terrorism have low self-esteem and are unsuccessful with women, "likely to be severe Onanists."

This is not meant to be a discreet profile of potential terrorists. It is meant to smear ALL young males of the Islamic faith. Reading this, I recalled how Islamic males were sexually abused and raped at the U.S. controlled Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. We are just getting the details from the CIA torture report.

REUTERS: Saddam Saleh, a former prisoner at Abu Ghraib, shows a photograph at a 2004 press conference from the scandal that includes him in the middle of a group of naked prisoners being mocked by Lynndie England. Eleven American soldiers, including three women, eventually were convicted in the case. But it was a woman named Lynndie England -- a U.S. Army Reserve specialist in the 372nd Military Police Company -- who became the face of the scandal.   

Does the Honorable Mayor of London care to comment on the OWNERS of the multi-billion dollar porn industry? Are they so well adjusted themselves and quite "successful" with women?  To be sure, Islamophobia is as much a growth industry as anti-Semitism.

To: letters@usatoday.com

No, Uncle Sam isn't Charlie. How about Orwell's Big Brother?

 

I think too many journalists in the so called capitalist democracies have deluded themselves about the ideal of FREE SPEECH in these societies. May I recommend leftist professor Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" for a more sober perspective on all civil liberties here?

Wikipedia link to Zinn's book

Was the McCarthy era paranoia all about FREE SPEECH rights even for moderately liberal scholars or political activists? It is well documented how a leftist party with which I was a presidential elector in 1980, The Socialist Workers Party, was harassed, sabotaged, and illegally spied on. The SWP did finally win its lawsuit against the FBI. But the damage was done.

Presently numerous activists who protested Bush's criminal war in Iraq and Afghanistan have their own tales of persecution to tell. And Talk Radio in America is particularly odious for its 24 hour right wing thug view of the world. They always rant about creeping socialism. But they would also silence any intellectually honest-and courageous-militant socialists.

Yes, if they could, the American FBI would love to obliterate my comments here rather than defend to the death my right to say this.

The talk of FREE SPEECH is mostly cant. When the ruling class does not like it they call it HATE SPEECH or just un-American and subversive and unpatriotic.

Even the famous Ralph Nader- now associated with the Green Party–can barely get a fair hearing in the capitalist news media.

And I must point out that too many individuals -even conservative types-have lost their jobs just over something they said.

As Professor Zinn pointed out, free speech is very problematic here. After suggesting that our Memorial Days just might glorify war more than they honor our war dead, he lost his column in a major newspaper. So much for FREE SPEECH in America!

And with the president of Israel coming to America to address the Congress, can anybody here criticize Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians without being branded anti-Semitic?

And so I hear: "Karl Marx was a self-hating Jew!

Forget about democratic DIALOGUE in the United States. Uncle Sam isn't Charlie. He is Orwell's Big Brother!

( published in Le Point ( France ) on Jan. 12, 2015 by Michel Colomes:"Obama Isn't Charlie", WATCHING AMERICA)

The folly of nationalism ( WATCHING AMERICA )

The great spiritual gift of the Jews to human civilization was Monotheism. If ONE GOD rules the universe, if one moral code can serve all humanity, why fight over wretched pieces of earth? In the 1930s here in the United States-with growing darkness in Europe--many educated Jews embraced international socialism. They are still wiser to identify with the have-nots of the world than with treacherous privileged classes in any country.

Many educated Jews are atheist-humanists. So where is the metaphysical support for modern Zionism? Israel should be reconstituted as a secular nation with great respect for all the world's religions. All any of us can hope for in a cruel, indifferent universe is human kindness and sympathy.

Syrian War Victims: Photo by Manu Brabo (AP)

Albert Einstein, a socialist, was wise to decline the presidency of Israel. He could appreciate the Relativity of Truth. It is obtuse human arrogance-absolute CERTAINTY– that is felt by any sensitive visitor standing in the very ashes of Holocaust victims at Auschwitz. This point is made by the kindly Jewish scholar-scientist in the TV series: "The Ascent of Man."

The mountain of bones at the battleground of Verdun warn us today about the folly of ALL nationalisms: "Here lie our heroic French soldiers". . . "Here lie our heroic German soldiers."

What rot! All those bloody idiotic patriotic phrases. Rotting corpses everywhere "making the world safe for democracy." The young person should shout "Non Serviam!" to the military killing machines of the world. You will not find an honest atheist in a foxhole.

( Comment on article published in Die Welt ( Germany ) on Jan. 15, 2015 by Hannes Stein , " The U.S. should open its gates " [ to European Jews ]   )

Social Justice - "dead in the water" ?

French President Francois Hollande is surrounded by Heads of state including Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Donald Tusk, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Switzerland's President Simonetta Sommaruga as they attend the solidarity march in the streets of Paris January 11, 2015.   PHOTO: Reuters

Well known Rhode Island radio-TV news anchor Gene Valicenti (630wpro.com) says this morning -in passing- that President Obama's plan to TAX THE RICH is certainly "dead in the water."

What, the ONE PERCENT won't hear it?  But we are all one united patriotic family in the struggle against Islamic extremism and terrorism?

Should we working class people of the United States forge a fatuous alliance with our own exploiters and oppressors to punish the downtrodden Muslims of the world?

Shall we join hands with the bloodsuckers of this world in order to make the world safer for their bloodsucking? Bought and sold bourgeois intellectuals babble about international terrorism as if it had no connection to imperialism and global capitalism.

Is social justice "dead in the water" under Republican political domination? Just what kind of "democracy" does the U.S. prescribe for the world? Worth dying for?

Submitted to: letters@providencejournal.com
 

Joining hands with the bloodsuckers against Islamic terrorism?

As a democratic Socialist well aware of the evils of capitalism, I know how hopeless are terrorist strategies to bring about a more just world. But your last sentence here rings false: "a call to collective solidarity against the menace" - of international terrorism.

In the capitalist news media commentaries there is not an iota of scientific insight into the root causes of this world's disorder. Do they think that for some  unknown reason normal individuals mysteriously become intoxicated with a deranged religious ideology? Bought and sold bourgeois intellectuals babble about terrorism as if it had no connection to imperialism and global capitalism.

Should we working class people in the United States forge a fatuous alliance with our own exploiters and oppressors – the infamous ONE PERCENT – to punish the downtrodden Muslims of the world?

I will never forget what that famous Black Muslim, Malcolm X, said about this rotten economic system: "Show me a capitalist and I'll show you a bloodsucker."

Shall we join hands with the bloodsuckers of the world in order to make the world safer for their bloodsucking?

A right wing radio news anchor here in Rhode Island, U.S.A ( Gene Valicenti , 630 wpro.com ) tells me this morning that President Obama's plan to TAX THE RICH is certainly "dead in the water." But we are all one united patriotic family against Islamic extremism and terrorism?

Just what kind of DEMOCRACY does America recommend to the world? Ask WATCHING AMERICA !

(comment on article in Les Echos ( France ) on Jan. 12, 2015 , by Dominique Moisi , WATCHING AMERICA)

No, don't make the same mistakes as the Americans ( WATCHING AMERICA )

As a citizen of the United States and a democratic Socialist , I agree with you completely that you don't need a Belgian version of the Patriot Act or a European Guantanamo.

The FREE SPEECH as ABSOLUTE chants in recent Paris demonstrations were also demonstrations of exquisite French hypocrisy. Could their "socialist" president be completely oblivious to the Marxist view of the limitations of bourgeois "free speech"? And what about the ringing call for the workers of the world to unite? Did the old socialists exclude poor downtrodden RELIGIOUS people of the world? Nothing could be less in the spirit of revolutionary socialism than to mock the great faiths of human civilization.

Those "scientific" socialists -influenced by historical materialism- simply believe that a people freed from the nightmare of capitalist oppression and misery would be more free to rethink their religious beliefs. Of course, it was a great error of the Russian Bolsheviks to make their state officially atheist. Here, America has a better idea: separation of Church and State!

( comment on article published in Le Vif ( Belgium ) on Jan.14, 2015 by Hubert Van Humbeeck , "If Jan.7 was the European Equivalent of Sept.11, we can't make the same mistakes as the Americans")

"The Socialist" -Barack Obama or Francois Holland?

A while back I noted in my blog ( http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ ) that the aging pop singer Pat Boone accused President Obama in a Fox News interview of being a Marxist because  he does not want anybody to get rich. (link to blog article)

In his Jan.19 letter,  Class Divisions won't help America", Lewis A. Prescott thinks Obama is "once again trying to take us down the road to socialism". The Providence Journal editorial Jan.20 "Mr. Hollande's super tax opus" implies that even a very tamed, housebroken socialist is more than a little dangerous and foolish in high office.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was very familiar with all varieties of bourgeois socialism. He would have dismissed France's Hollande as "the ideal socialist leader for successful dentists."  The fate of the assassinated leader of Chile, Salvadore Allende, proves once again that real socialism can only be established by a powerful mass movement of the WORKING class.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the very idea of SOCIALISM has been kept alive by its fanatical ideological opponents. I get a strong dose of anti-socialism any time I turn on Red Eye Radio. Your editorials are more polite: anti-socialism for successful and prosperous used car salesmen.


To: letters@providencejournal.com

Foot note to ProJo article "Nobody should be homeless" ( Jan. 14 )

Link to Providence Journal article

Last year there was one truly odd guest at Harrington Hall in Cranston. My homeless friend, described as " Ragged Dave " in a letter to the Providence Journal, had spent a nightmarish night there. Dave was tired of sleeping in his broken down Lincoln Town Car. Oddly enough he was once a millionaire, related to the Alpert family here in Rhode Island. Brown University Medical School is named after this family.  Dave is the only surviving blood relative of his aunt Grace Kennison Alpert. Grace died in August 2013, and is survived by her husband, Wesley Alpert, former CEO of Alpert Brothers Inc.

Photo: Bob Thayer: ProJo link

I wrote a letter of complaint to the Rhode Island Public Health Department about conditions at the Howard Ave. shelter. ("The shelter listed as accommodating 88 people, housed 145 the night before") They say they will quickly respond to all complaints via e-mail. But I never heard from them. Should they not be held responsible for these deplorable conditions? Should 71 year old Gerard Martineau (front page photo) be living there? Dave also observed a guy in a wheel chair and noted much coughing that reminded him of an old time tuberculosis ward.

Why should homeless people get less respect than convicted criminals in the nearby ACI prison?

Yes, "nobody should be homeless." But capitalism puts profits before people.
I will blog this message to you.

To: dnaylor@providencejournal.com

                                                                                                     

An odd guest at Harrington Hall

Photos: Steve Ahlquist

I did not vote for Gina Raimondo-the best of the three pro-capitalist candidates. I wrote in MOTHER TERESA, inspired by own conscience, not by that registered Republican (and I hope not an Ayn Rand fan) Bishop Thomas Tobin.

But your first sentence here rings true: Her inauguration last week "left many with a sense of hopefulness for the future." Providence Journal front page yesterday: "Nobody should be homeless".

The governor, and other state officers, took a tour of Harrington Hall, R.I.'s largest shelter. In the photo Gina Raimondo has a softer than usual facial expression. No, she is not a Planned Parenthood battle ax.

Last year I wrote a letter of complaint to the Rhode Island Public Health Department about conditions at the Howard Ave. shelter in Cranston. A homeless friend of mine, described as "Ragged Dave", in a letter to the Providence Journal, had spent a nightmarish night there. Dave was tired of sleeping in his broken down Lincoln Town Car. Oddly enough he was once a millionaire, related to the Alpert family. Brown University Medical School is named after this family. His aunt's name was Gracie Alpert. She is survived by her husband, Wesley Alpert.

The R.I. Public Health Dept. says it will quickly respond to complaints via e-mail. But I never heard from them. I will blog this post.

(Comment on Warwick Beacon editorial, 1/13/15, "Atmosphere of unity offers opportunity of action")

A truly Orwellian paradox

I am presently staring at today's Providence Journal front page -pondering a truly Orwellian paradox: "After attacks, crackdown on hate speech" (Jan.15)

And it seems that pure HATE can be combated by the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, on its way to terrorize not the fanatical few but the religious many in an Islamic country. But just days ago there was a multitude of people in Paris crying out that free speech is ABSOLUTE.

 

But the good Pope Francis disagrees. Don't insult MY mother! Well I am certainly not holier than the Pope. But I would dismiss any insult to my dear departed mother as being simply uninformed. At least I thought she was a peach.

Does he also mean: "Don't insult Holy Mother Church"? In the good old days there was the not so Holy Inquisition. But the Church has finally repented  of this extravagant solicitude for the Faith. As the late radical professor Howard Zinn said, this FREE SPEECH is very enigmatic in the most democratic countries on earth.

To: letters@providencejournal.com

Refreshing H.L Mencken , old Baltimore sage

Meet the Mind of H.L. Mencken

As a U.S. citizen and a registered voter, I commend the writer of this article for his astute insight on presidential politics here. Even though I am a democratic Socialist, I must say that no American journalist surpasses that deceptively "conservative" curmudgeon, Baltimore sage, H.L. Mencken, in describing the hollow souls of successful American politicians.

Just the other night I read his scathing assessment of President Woodrow Wilson: "Archangel Wilson." Wilson's hollow rhetoric got us into the Great War- "the war to end all wars ... the war to make the world safe for democracy."

And no socialist writer wrote with more bone-deep contempt for our own American plutocracy than H.L. Mencken. They had money and nothing else, he thought. He believed in a "natural aristocracy" of brains and breeding. But don't look for it here!

izquotes.com

( WATCHING AMERICA, comment on article published in Die Zeit (Germany) on Jan.12, 2015 by Martin Klingst , "Romney Should Drop Out for His Own Good" )

But Charlie Hebdo was indeed Islamophobic trash, John

Link to Charlie Hebdo Magazine

John, I did do a background check on this cynical and nihilistic Charlie Hebdo magazine group in France. They did not belong to any great journalistic tradition, falling below American junk news tabloids in standards of accuracy and decency.

One comment rings true for this socialist- not interested in maliciously offending one fourth of the human population: "Charlie Hebdo wrote and drew about many issues but lost many readers over recent years because of its Islamophobia and racist content."

All the socialists with whom I associate completely reject terrorism as a sane political strategy. But we won't idealize these hateful New Atheist types, on the left or on the right.

And a lot of phony cant phrases in that huge demonstration in Paris. "Free Speech?" As American historian Howard Zinn points out in his "People's History of the United States," capitalist ownership of the news media tends to smother the free speech of ordinary people and nearly all third parties. I should know. I was a presidential elector for the Socialist Workers Party here in Rhode Island in 1980 and 1976. And a presidential elector for the American Communist Party way back in 1972.

Red Eye Radio is always unmasking sinister socialist plots-hatched even in the White House! But they never let any socialists speak for themselves.

Ron Ruggieri, Cranston

To: John DePetro <john@630wpro.com>

Obama right to snub mass hysteria Islamophobia

 As a socialist I can only encourage mass action in the streets in defense of democratic values. But beware cant phrases like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: And "Free World." Can't we at least make our world safe for our ONE PERCENT plutocracy?

Forget about Equality and Fraternity. Not long ago our very patriotic Cold War fanatics wanted to end Godless Communism with a nuclear bang. I just heard right-wing Red Eye Radio here in Rhode Island ( 630wpro.com ) suggest the same thing for quickly ending the scourge of international terrorism. "Obama is weak!" they rant.

President Obama is wise to snub mass hysteria Islamo-phobia – in France or here in the United States. Cant phrases start wars- as in the Great War, the war to make the world "safe for democracy... the war to end all wars."

Would Ayn Rand ask you to die for bourgeois Free Speech? That is not in keeping with the "Virtue of Selfishness." And it is so cozy in your Wall Street office. $$$ is the business of America. Let working class suckers fight your wars!

( Comment  on Houston Chronicle article: "White House: U.S. should have sent other officials to Paris",  Jan 12, 2015 )

Cant phrases start most wars: like FREE WORLD

Even professed atheist humanists like the late great science writer Isaac Asimov show prudent hesitation in publicly mocking God. Asked why he could not find HIM, Asimov replied: "Why can't HE find ME ?" Shortly afterwards Asimov had some bad luck with his health. He reasoned that a kind God would tolerate his intellectual confusion. "But would HE tolerate a wise guy?" he wondered.

But if the terrorists were exposed to Isaac Asimov in their more educable youth, they might have grown up-under the influence of scientific rationalism-to be harmless and oh-so-beloved socialists rather than suicidal, homicidal maniacs.

Right wing talk radio here in Rhode Island, USA, is suggesting that a few well placed atomic bombs will quickly end international terrorism. Let's save the FREE WORLD, they rant. But FREE WORLD was a cant phrase even at the height of the Cold War-when we were fighting GODLESS communism.

Cant phrases inspired our entry into the First World War-which was the "war to end all wars... to make the world safe for democracy. " Thank God the Russian Bolsheviks were not fooled!

And yes, what ringing eloquence in French: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." THAT is what global capitalism is all about.

Can we at least make our world safe for our ONE PERCENT plutocracy? Forget about EQUALITY and FRATERNITY!

(comment on article published in Die Tageszeitung ( Germany) on Jan.9 2015 by Dorothea Hahn , WATCHING AMERICA)

World wide terrorism: is real life all about lifeless phrases? (Coming Providence Journal demonstration)

Like every other half-alert American citizen, I am following the latest terrorism news from France. Local radio reports that a group headed by a benevolent physician of the Muslim faith will soon demonstrate outside the Providence Journal building. The group supports FREE SPEECH rights everywhere. And so does the newspaper -within the limits of sound business considerations, of course.

But is real life all about phrase mongering? Do real life human beings become terrorists just because the damned majority do not insist that "God is great!" every minute of the day?

Link to "Los Caprichos" – A collection of 80 prints which were an artistic experiment:
a medium for Goya's condemnation of the universal follies and foolishness in
the Spanish society in which he lived.

 We are reducing these terrorists to comic book images. All the better to continue to wage an Orwellian war against perceived enemies of the American Way of Life everywhere? Will our obtuse arrogance end this eternal war?

Did not Marx make a good point when he suggested that eating, working, producing and reproducing were the fundamentals of human society? The human struggle for existence pre-dates any holy texts– secular or religious.

Our own Just Judges sit in judgment on these pathetic terrorists as if they never read a word of Marx or Darwin or Freud.



To: letters@providencejournal.com

                                                                                                                                                                                                 

A different slant on Boston Marathon and other Islamic terrorists

Wikipedia link to "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair

What little personal history I can read in the daily newspapers about the brothers Tsarnaev suggests to this old socialist less esoteric motives for them than possession by some maniacal Islamic terrorism demons. There is simply the immigrant experience in America. Coming here, or even to a similar capitalist democracy like France, can be bitterly disappointing. The young daydreamers do not escape oppression and exploitation and the alienation that Marxists often write about. And what can be more embittering than a humiliating failure to support your own wife and children?

Some readers may recall the Upton Sinclair classic "The Jungle." I think the Tsarnaev brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan, and their immigrant family, have a lot in common with Sinclair's character, the Lithuanian Jurgis Rudkus. But at the end of this great American novel Jurgis is prepared to fight for Upton Sinclair's vision of socialism- still in dreamland perhaps but a lot more constructive than blowing up innocent people.

In a strange way is 21st century terrorism partially explained by the collapse of the old Soviet Union?

Submitted to: letters@usatoday.com

WATCHING AMERICA , China not against the World Order?

As a citizen of the United States I think that China should be seen here for the great and populous super-power that it is. But as a democratic Socialist I often wonder if modern China has lobotomized itself on its Red China past.

Would the avowed communist Chairman Mao have expressed such an un-radical solicitude for global capitalism? The working class has not disappeared from modern China. Are they now taught that communism-socialism was just a delirious daydream of half-mad drunken young Red Guards?

Link to The Revolution Betrayed

How can the New Rich be justified in any society run by a Communist Party? Is there a Chinese translation of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky's book "The Revolution Betrayed"?

Here in the United States I would be content with the passionate liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. But History and Class Struggle have not ended in any country on earth.

( Comment on article in Huanqiu ( China ) Dec. 29, 2014 by Zhong Ying Pang )

A pedestrian unfriendly state

"The Pedestrian" by Ray Bradbury: Quote from Book Review by Robert M. Woods: link

Please don't blame the pedestrian victim here: Crazy pedestrians or a brainless disregard for them? I am a veteran walker in both  Warwick and Cranston. When I lived on Church Ave. with my dear departed brother Ray, a radio technician for the Warwick Police Department, I was annoyed how frequently pedestrians at crosswalks were ignored or endangered even with a blinking WALK sign.

In general Rhode Island is not pedestrian friendly. Ray Bradbury wrote a funny story "The Pedestrian": In the future U.S.A. any walker is considered suspicious by the police. A man showing this "regressive tendency" is followed by a police car and questioned by a Robo-Cop. And I recall a cop car invariably in sight whenever I hiked up Church Ave. on my way to scenic Conimicut Point.

There must be more crosswalks on major streets and intersections. And the cities are getting cheap on lights. And drivers must be warned frequently to be alert  for pedestrians-even those CRAZY ones. I recall one car that did stop for me at the Church Ave. crosswalk. The driver behind him vented his rage by blowing the horn. The Car is the modern Moloch! 

( Comment on Warwick Beacon editorial, (1/6/14 ,"Improving pedestrian safety")

Ayn Rand made her husband wear bells!

Interesting comment from: eachorn@providencejournal.com:

"I try to limit writers to 1 per month but I am enjoying this Ayn Rand debate greatly. Extraordinary that her novel still sells vast quantities -- I found it just dreadful."

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 12:47 PM, Ron Ruggieri <rlnruggieri@gmail.com> wrote: "Fondness for Ayn Rand is sinister." Just thought this was very funny-even if you can't publish it.

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Achorn, Edward <eachorn@providencejournal.com> wrote:
What was the headline of your letter?

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Ron Ruggieri <rlnruggieri@gmail.com> wrote:

To be brief: Did I resort to the discredited ad hominem argument to discredit the virago Ayn Rand ? ( LETTERS, Dec.30 ) Then let me add this ad feminam  one: Ayn made her legitimate husband wear bells on his shoes so she could hear him coming and going from the house. Well "let freedom ring!" as Mike Stenhouse  shouts at the now smeared R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

( several credible sources for this story )

WATCHING AMERICA: Workers of all faiths unite!

As a citizen of the United States, I must emphasize once again the CLASS connection here to the extraordinary oppression of black Americans. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the world  seems to have forgotten the meaning of CLASS STRUGGLE.

The U.S. ruling class would like to make it almost impossible for ordinary working class people of every race, ethnic group, and nationality even to IMAGINE a world much different from this enduring nightmare of global capitalism. Socialist Internationalism once cried: "Workers of the world unite!"

Today right wing fanatics here would like us to accept the possibility of a nuclear attack on Iran. For an old guard socialist, workers who embrace the Islamic faith have more in common with workers who embrace Christianity or the Jewish faith than they do with advocates of a smothering theocracy anywhere.

Only MASS ACTION-peaceful protest-can save the world now. Just what do you think a Republican Senate and a Republican House in the U.S.A. are planning for the world?

(Comment on article published in Shargh (Iran) on Dec.14, 2014 by Sudabe Rakhsh. Translated from the Persian by Michelle Quay. )

It is capitalism that wastes human potential

 

The idea of socializing private means of production sounds like FLAT EARTH SOCIETY stuff and nonsense to individuals brainwashed by Ayn Rand drivel.

Human civilization is now more than 10 thousand years old. Human society is not a machine that does or does not "work." It EVOLVES organically like everything else in the natural world. It is not FIXED for all time. How did we ever cope before capitalism and private property?

Science and technical skill are not anybody's PRIVATE PROPERTY. Things can be produced in abundance-but RATIONAL abundance- under socialism. Full employment is quite possible-even more probable-without the profit motive. It is capitalism that wastes human potential.

The present government must attend to a decaying infrastructure. But it takes TAXES to do that. Not paying taxes seems the sacred obligation of the Ayn Rand billionaires -who should pay the most taxes. Yes, they love their country as much as I do. But they don't want to give it anything. Let the working stiffs pay taxes and offer their children as sacrificial lambs to the military-industrial complex.

The Ayn Rand cranks have no problem with the military budget and now ENCOURAGE a nuclear attack on Iran. No problem with BIG GOVERNMENT here as long as it is used to oppress and kill the insignificant hordes of ordinary people not celebrated in "Atlas Shrugged" the novel and "Atlas Shrugged II" the movie.

       ( Comment on same Cranston Herald  article, Dec. 31 )