1952 Steel Strike

Striking America

By Richard E. Noble
On April 9, 1952 the United Steelworkers of America planned to walk out on strike against U.S. Steel and nine other steel makers. But on April 8 President Harry Truman had ordered his Secretary of Commerce, Henry A. Wallace, to seize most of the Country’s steel mills. Truman’s argument for this action was the protection of the nation’s security.
This was really nothing new. During World War I the government had nationalized the railroads, the telegraph lines, and the Smith & Wesson Company. Then again in World War II the government had nationalized the railroads, the coal mines, the midwest trucking operators and others. And in April of 1945 and in August of 1946 Harry had seized twenty-eight industrial properties - sometimes entire industries, the railroads and meat packers for example. But Harry Truman was no FDR or Woodrow Wilson for that matter. And the Korean War was no World War I or World War II.
By 1952 neither Harry nor his political party was all that popular. On February 9, 1950 McCarthy denounced the Truman administration on the grounds that they were allowing known communist to run free through the corridors of Washington. But also in 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea and the Korean “Police Action” followed.
On September 8, 1950 the Congress passed the Defense Production Act. This gave the president the power to requisition any facilities, property, equipment, supplies, component parts or raw materials for the nation’s defense. The bill also gave the president the power to enact wage and price controls. None of this was new. This was all wartime procedure. But this was Truman’s war not FDR’s or Wilson’s. And was it even a “real” war?
The steel owners sued. The steel mills involved included Armco Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Great Lakes Steel Corporation, Inland Steel, Jones and Laughlin Steel, Republic Steel, Sharon Steel, U.S. Steel Wheeling Steel and Youngstown Sheet and Tube and numerous small manufacturers.
Even though a few years earlier Harry had threatened to draft all the striking railroad workers, after he had nationalized the railroads successfully, on this occasion he was in total agreement with the workers. On April 8, 1952 he made a radio broadcast from the White House. He told the American people that the steel industry could not be allowed to shut down. “It is vital to the defense effort. It is vital to peace ... We do not have a stockpile of the kinds of steel we need for defense. Steel is flowing directly from the plants to our soldiers at the front in Korea ... If steel production stops it won’t be long before we have to stop making engines for the Air Force planes ... A prolonged shutdown would bring defense production to a halt and throw our domestic economy into chaos.” He went on to inform the public that he was taking over the steel mills and demanding the mill owners and representatives of the mill workers meet in Washington immediately and settle this dispute with the government’s arbitrators.
He explained about the wage and price controls that had been put in place to counter inflation. “The union has accepted these rules. The companies have not accepted them ... On November 1, 1951 the union gave notice that in view of the higher cost of living and the wage increases already received by workers in other industries, the steel workers wanted higher wages and better working conditions in their new contract for 1952 ... The steel companies meet with the union but the companies never really bargained ... They said there should be no changes in wages and working conditions - in spite of the fact that there had been substantial changes in many other industries and in spite of the fact that the steel industry is making very high profits ... About three weeks ago on March 20, the wage board recommended certain wage increases and certain changes in working conditions ... The Wage Board’s recommendations were less than the union thought they ought to have. Nevertheless, the union accepted them as a basis for settlement ... When you look into the matter, you find that the Wage Board’s recommendations were fair and reasonable ... The steel workers have had no adjustment in their wages since December 1, 1950. Since that time the cost of living has risen, and workers in such industries as automobiles, rubber, electrical equipment, and meat packing have received increases ranging from 13 to 17 cents an hour ... the steel industry has been lagging behind in these matters, and the improvements suggested by the Board are moderate.”
Truman went on and on in defense of the union’s actions but owners still resisted. So Harry nationalized the steel industry. The Supreme Court sided with the mill owners and against the president nevertheless - Youngstown Sheet & Tube co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).
The union went on strike and the strike lasted 53 days and ended on July 24, 1952.
The steel mill owners it seems were happy to get their mills back and consequently they settled with the union. The union got pretty much what they had asked for, four month earlier.

The Hobo Philosopher

Supply and Demand

By Richard E. Noble

I just bought 50 gallons of LP gas. It was half the price of the 50 gallons that I bought last time. It is now December, winter! The demand for home heating fuel is up. The price should have been higher. It was lower.
I filled my car with gasoline yesterday. It cost me half as much as it did a few months ago. The price for a barrel of oil is under 50 dollars. The Arabs have cut production, lowering the supply, but yet the price is going down.
John Kenneth Galbraith, decades ago, warned about putting too much faith in classical economic theories like supply and demand. He claimed that we didn’t really live in a capitalist system and that the market system was a misnomer. He described our system more appropriately as a corporate system. He wrote a book about the crash of 1929. I’ve recently read that book. Somebody should reprint it. It’s like deja vu all over again.
But in recent months I’ve learned about the stock market’s effect on supply and demand and prices. It seems that speculators can buy future commodities or commodity futures, or whatever they are called and with no change in either the supply or the demand they can change the whole price structure. Oil was 140 dollars per barrel and I am told that maybe 40-60 percent of that price could have been due to stock market speculators.
The Arabs and OPEC have cut production yet the price of oil at the pump and for the furnace is dropping. What’s going on? Have the speculators stopped speculating? A few months ago they were buying corn and rice futures and the prices were going up. It doesn’t seem to matter what the supply or the demand is. It is more important to know where the speculators are going to “bubble up” things next. Could it be that we have too many people with too much money?
Our domestic automobile companies are going to the government for help. Some politicians are suggesting that Toyota and Honda will be lining up next. How can they make automobiles and sell them when General Motors and Ford can’t? Don’t they deserve a kickback from the taxpayers too?
Well, from my reading they have already got their kickback. When they negotiated to build here, they got free land in many cases from the communities that they settled in. They were given tax immunity from the counties and states where they settled. They demanded that there be no unions in their plants.
I read an account by Robert Reich who was once Secretary of Labor. A Toyota plant was breaking the law with regard to labor practices. Robert Reich and a team of Washington labor experts rushed to the area to straighten out the situation. They told the manager of the plant to straighten up. The next day a big announcement appeared in the local newspaper. Toyota was going to close down their plant in this neighborhood due to harassment by the federal government. Reich and his team rushed out of town with their tales between their legs.
But what about federal taxes? Well, the Japanese import most of their parts from Japan. They only assemble their cars here in the U.S. Japan charges their American based plants substantially for these parts. Consequently their federal income taxes are low or non-existent. In some cases the American government may even owe them money.
Their executives defer their pays, and collect when they return to Japan in the form of pensions and bonuses. The only people paying taxes at the foreign car plants seem to be the American workers who assemble the cars there. On top of all that the Japanese government is involved in the finances of their companies.
The American car producers receive none of these benefits.
Whenever I go down to the post office, the lot is usually filled with SUVs and pickup trucks. I’ve even seen a few Hummers down there. Americans were buying these gas guzzlers just a short while ago. People have told me time and again that they wouldn’t buy a little car like the one I drive because they are not safe.
So now we hear that the paychecks and the retirement of the workers at the “domestic” production plant should be cut or forfeited.
Unions at their peak only represented 30 percent of the American labor force - today they are under 10 percent and dropping fast. It seems to me that there is more than supply and demand going on here.
If workers in our economic system cannot be paid living wages and in some cases “good” wages, then what good is our economic system? When it comes to labor, supply is virtually unlimited and demand almost always inadequate. We call it full employment in our system when over 10 million people are unemployed. And our chief defense against inflation is to layoff or fire employees. If capitalism only benefits the rich, the super wealthy and the corporate executives and the vast majority of people must live either in poverty or mediocrity then what good is the system? Where is the American dream? Maybe that is the answer. The American dream is a dream and only an attainable reality for the few and not the many. Maybe that is the way that it has always been, the majority only thought it to be otherwise.

“A Little Something”is R.E. Noble’s first book of poetry and it is now on sale at Amazon and locally at Downtown Books along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Farther and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer who has lived here in Eastpoint for nearly 30 years.

Cocktail Sauce Syndrome

The Eastpointer

Cocktail Sauce Syndrome

Paved Roads and Telephone Poles

By Richard E. Noble
“Another example of the Cocktail Sauce Syndrome,” I mumble to my wife Carol as we sit and watch the nightly news.
“Exactly!” my wife will answer.
We met many, many years ago in a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale where I devised the original Cocktail Sauce Theory.
The Theory evolved from the General Manager of the restaurant chain that employed me.
This guy was a cocktail sauce fanatic. Every time he would walk into any of the chain’s thirty-seven family style seafood restaurants, he would pick up a platter from the waitress station then wander around to any unbussed (not yet cleared) table and gather up all the unused 1oz cocktail sauce containers.
He would then cart them over to the manager and give his usual speech. “You see this? Now these all would have gone into the garbage even though they are unused and unopened because nobody cares. Now you want to see that food cost of yours go down and get this restaurant making money? Save the cocktail sauce.”
I went into the office after closing time and sat down with all the cost and analysis sheets. I added up all the costs of the cocktail sauce that the restaurant used in one month.
If I didn’t give out any cocktail sauce to any of the customers, I could not lower the food cost even one point. It required, like a $2,000 drop in my cost per month to lower the food cost one point. I could run around all night gathering cocktail sauces and I wouldn’t accomplish poop. They wanted me to lower the food cost by about 20 points.
This was not very hard to figure out, I had to find some big expenses and cut them down and stop sweating the small stuff. And I did. I lowered the food cost in about six months by more than 20 points. When the general manager came in with my analysis figures he couldn’t believe it.
“What the heck did you do?” he asked.
I told him that I had all the waitresses saving the cocktail sauce.
He had me promoted shortly after that.
Now that brings me to paved roads and telephone poles.
They finally paved my road, against my will, and I have never estimated the cost but, way back then, when they finally paved it, there were probably ten or fifteen homes on my road - and they were all trailers. There wasn’t a regular house on the street. I will bet that they could have come up to each of us and gave us a million dollars each in place of paving that road.
People lately around here are saying, “Where did all my tax money go. I don’t see anything new around here.”
Well I do. There are paved roads everywhere. Even the Island had dirt roads when we first came here. And now all these paved roads have to be maintained and kept up and that’s only a half a million dollars a foot, instead of the original million dollars a foot.
Most everybody who came and settled here 20 and 30 years ago got the seafood poverty dividend. Things were for nothing around here compared to the rest of the coastline of America and all because Franklin County smelled bad.
When people came here to visit me they would say; What the heck is that smell. I’d tell them it was the spent oyster shells from the shucking houses and spoiled fish guts - this is a seafood town.
“How can you stand it?”
“Well the folks around here are all seafood workers and they made a choice a long time ago. They could either have oyster shells and fish guts and a livelihood, or they could have fancy-butts like you running around trying to clean everything up and complaining about the smell. They chose the fish guts and oyster shells.”
My friends would always laugh.
So in those days we had no paved roads, no fire plugs, no cable TV - no TV reception at all - in fact you could barely hear the local radio station while oystering out on Catpoint. And shortly before that there was no radio station at all.
There were very few rules and codes that anybody gave a darn about. And that was because poor people buy a piece of property because they are tired of paying rent, not because of its “curb appeal” or who lives next door. They are happy they finally were able to have a place to live rent free. They don’t even know the meaning of the word “equity” and they usually don’t care.
So the Cocktail Sauce Theory is that while everybody is sweating the small stuff, the big stuff kills ‘em.
Instead of taking jobs away from county workers, I would suggest that we stop paving roads for a couple or three years. Firing workers is not only tragic for the people who get fired but it hurts the local economy. Putting more people to work is the solution, not the problem.

“A Little Something”is R.E. Noble’s first book of poetry and it is now on sale at Amazon and locally at Downtown Books along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Farther and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer who has lived here in Eastpoint for nearly 30 years.

Hitler and Conservatism

By Richard E. Noble

Making no appologies and accepting the notion that "Liberal" is to Communism and Socialism as "Conservatism" is to Nazism and Fascism, I took up the assignment of investigating and researching Aldolf Hitler many years ago. I did so because I wanted to know where my counrty was heading - and how I could prepare. I did this casually - I never realized how quickly the transformation would be upon us.
I have read many people accusing the Bush administration of Hitlerism. But how true is this accusation? I think that I have read and studied enough on the subject to write an objective and informed essay on such a comparison.
First, Adolf was an advocate for war. Adolf was pro-war. He was not a reluctant warrior. He was unabashedly in favor of conflict. He not only favored conflict as a method for solving politial problems, but for changing social conditions. To put it very bluntly, from Adolf perspective war was not only good but absolutely necessary. It fulfilled God's demands for the eventual perfection of the species; it built character in the individual; it turned boys into men; it promoted national unity and patriotism; it expanded the values of courage, honor and country; it gained the respect of the other nations of the world.
Many philosophers, kings, conquerors and rulers before Adolf felt exactly the same way - along with many of America's famous leaders and generals.
I think that the Bush administration here in the United States speaks a slightly softer rhetoric but I would have to say that philosophically they are in agreement. They believe in war and conflict as a means of resolving "problems." I think this is a bi-partizan policy. I think that both parties believe in war or aggression as a political tool. They disagree only on the technicalities - who, where and how - not whether we should or whether we shouldn't. And Like Adolf no one is concerned with whether it is ethically right or morally wrong. Politicians are already telling us that this will not be our last war either. No more are we fighting the war to end all wars. We are fighting this one as a learning experience and training ground for the next one.
I would say that Adolf was more of a purest in regard to war than president Bush. He approved of war and violence first in an idealistic way. He believed that he could bring "peace" through war. Once he controlled the world - he could then insure peace to the citizens of the world - as the Romans had done. He accused Woodrow Wilson of espousing the very same doctrine. Woodrow was going to make the world safe for Democracy - if you will remember. I have read other people who have quoted Ronald Reagan as saying the very same thing - peace through war.
I feel that Adolf liked war in and of itself. He felt that it was morally, philosophically, and ethically righteous - the fact that it could be economically beneficial and stimulating to the industrial development and general prosperity of the nation was important to his cohorts but secondary to him.
I think that the Bush administration has those same priorities but in reverse. But whatever, the behavior turns out the same.
Secondly, Adolf believed in militarism. He wanted to turn his nation into an armed camp. His idea for his State was rather Platonic - a la Plato's Republic. The soldier would be held first and in the highest esteem. Everybody in the nation would eventually be a soldier in one shape or another. Pure Arian women would breed children for the Fatherland - children would be "little soldiers." Adolf established military youth groups - our Boy Scouts was an offshoot of this notion. Adolf believed in a militarized State or nation. I would have to say that in the heart of every Conservative exists a similar notion. The idea of a draft or some sort of mandatory service to the State has not been mentioned too often recently. The "draft" has a rather turbulent history here in the United States and already those who oppose the idea are organizing. But if the conservative notion that all that is needed in Iraq is more troops and victory is at hand - I think that it could very easily be re-instated especially in a Republican dominated legislature.
But all through our nation the police state has been growing. We have a whole Central American country housed in our prisons today. No country in the world today has more people in their prisons than we do here in the land of the free. And the emphasis on rehabilitation and humane treatment is getting less and less. Americans want to punish criminals. We have prisons now in the United States that are housing prisoners in tents, providing inadequate health and dietary needs, promoting violence and indecency. The American people are agreeing to this on the grounds that a prisoner should not have better living and social conditions than the lowest of the law-abiding. So as the social conditions of the law-abiding drop due to unemployment and poor economic policy the conditions inside our prisons get worse and worse. One day soon we may be providing the setting for the re-make of the movie "The Midnight Express" or "The Gulag Archipelago."
Americans now believe that there are certain criminal types that are incorrigible and incurable and do not deserve a second chance. People who have drinking and drug problems and end up killing someone are held in the same regard as employees of Murder Inc. or thought of as similar to a perverted serial killer. Many people are serving life sentences in our prisons for multiple petty theft crimes - three strikes and you're out. In fact 80% of those in our prisons are there because of drug related crimes.
Adolf Hitler felt exactly the same but he carried his conservatives a step further. He felt that supporting incorrigible, anti-social individuals with taxpayer’s dollars was a waste of decent people's money. Eventually he turned his prisons into work camps and finally added incinerators to expedite the disposal and eradication of these type people. As time went on he expanded on the types to be considered incorrigible. Eventually the disposable included gypsies (homeless?), mentally ill, homosexual, radical, communist, various religious types, union organizers, prostitutes, the retarded, non-producers of all sorts - and of course you all know about the Jews.
Prisons under conservative regimes have been known to foster a tendency for people to "disappear." You will remember not too long ago in Argentina, mothers were holding pictures of their sons and daughters who "disappeared." Militarism and disappearing seem to go hand in hand.
We have recently been exposed to people "disappearing" here in the U.S - people who were citizens; people who had businesses or jobs; people who were professionals.
Our current administration has just admitted to hiding people in foreign countries - of course these people were deemed to be international terrorists. But nevertheless the comparison to Hitlerism can not be avoided. Granted Hitler was a bad guy and our leaders are good guys. But when the behavior for the bad guys and the good guys is the same, how do us simple children know good from evil? Obviously we must make our white hats whiter and our black hats blacker.
In the future we will justifiably increase our police, our intelligence, and our "homeland" security guards all over America. I, like you, agree with all of this - but really do we have to call it "homeland" security. "Homeland" and "Fatherland" are just too heil Hitler-ish for me.
The Jews are building a wall along their northern border and we are building one along our southern border and the last report on Baghdad a wall is being planned there also. You know it didn't seem all that long ago that at least once a week I was seeing an old flim clip of Ronald Reagan saying; "Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall." I haven't seen that clip for awhile lately. I don't mean to sound paranoid but is something happening here?
Militarism ... inordinate adulation for soldiers, huge military industrial complex expenditures; maximum moneys for bombs and bullets and minimal allocation for health and education. Extreme patriotism ...
In Nazi Germany, German soldiers would gather around a table of citizens in a restaurant; they would then start in singing the German national anthem. If the people at the table didn't join in they would interrupt their song long enough to pounce on the diners and beat the hell out of them.
I saw an American on the TV the other day. He was traveling around the country painting American flags on the roofs of buildings. He said that he didn't think that any country could have too much patriotism.
During the Nazi period in Germany the German people were willing to kill anybody and everybody in the name of the Fatherland. This may seem bold of me, but I think that is a little too much patriotism.
Osama bin Laden may not have a Country so I guess that we can not call what his followers feel patriotism. He claims to be fighting for the "Arab Nation" - wherever that is. But whatever it is that you would like to call this type of loyalty or devotion that gives people permission to kill and destroy anybody and everybody - I think that it is a little bit too much of something. You can call it whatever you like. It is really difficult to distinguish between the philosophy of Osama bin Laden and the philosophy of necessary "collateral damage." In fact, if I am not mistaken, these fundamentalists Arab terrorists use this Western tradition established so vividly at Dunkirk and Hiroshima as a basis for their reasoning. Adolf Hitler believed in all out war. Unfortunately all out war can go both ways. Today the Conservatives are debating the necessities of the Geneva Conventions - even torture - this point of view is fundamental Hitlerism
Militarism ... I read any number of comparisons on this idea but the last one was the most dramatic, I thought. The author stated that the United States spends more on it military budget than all the rest of the world combined.
I don't want to sound like Andy Rooney here, but I think that's too much. Couldn't we at least cut back to half as much as the rest of the world combined? Yes we may have to invade fewer countries because we don't have the means - but let's share this responsibility with some of the other free and conscientious countries of the world.
I would also say if we are not a militaristic state - we are certainly spending enough to be one.
Third ... torture? Adolf believed in torture, but torture has been a fundamental of the established conservative order for as far back into history as you want to go.
After World War II Allen Dulles and cohorts incorporated Reinhard Gehlen and a host of other german nazi war criminals into our intelligence network and eventually into our CIA. Today's conservatives believe in torture - as conservatives always have.
Reinhard Gehlen probably retired at the expense of American taxpayers. He lived a long and happy life as a part of U.S. intelligence - most likely training our boys and girls in the CIA to torture and interrogate Nazi-style. To incorporate these types into our intelligence system was a conservative program - torture and American conservatism are nothing new. You can read the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen in a book entitled "The Service" published by the World Publishing Company in 1972.
Of course we all know that Adolf had no problem with torturing people. I can honestly say that I would never have thought that I would see the day that a president of the United States of America would be making the case for this country's right to torture people - any people - on national TV. I may be naive but I thought that we were above such behavior. The Japs and the Kruts did that type shit - not America. But, argues Alan Dersherwitz - a man who claims to be a JEW of all peoples - torture in the name of saving lives is justifiable. This man is a famous "liberal" lawyer. I must say Alan, a Clarence Darrow you are not. A Francis Bacon you very well may be but a Clarence Darrow you certainly are not.
When we declare torture as legitimate practice for U.S. interrogators does not the conservative and the liberal sympathizer have to look into his Mein Kampf and take a deep breath? Please ... give me a break!
Hitler actually gave lectures to his troops the goal of which was to immunize his soldiers to the necessity for brutality. Killing and brutalizing the enemy was good and necessary, Hitler explained. Jews for example were not to be considered as human beings. They were to be classified as parasites and vermin. They were plague carriers. Therefore no German soldier should feel any guilt in torturing or brutalizing any Jew - women, children and babies included.
As time went on this immunization was carried over to consider all enemies - internal and external. These people were all needless and unnecessary - consequently expendable. Adolf went so far as to tell his soldiers that they were doing the work of the Creator whose goal it was to eventually breed the perfect human species. So eliminating the imperfect was doing God's work on earth.
This is not too far off from the present conservative Evagelical notion that to bring on World War III and therefore precipitate the return of Jesus Christ and the destruction of all sinners is a good thing and a part of God's plan. In effect, right wing Christian Evangelicalism is certainly the stepbrother to Nazism. And I seriously doubt if Jesus Christ would have anything to do with any of this business.
Unfortunately this did not work. It seems that many German soldiers were having mental breakdowns from being forced to kill or machine-gun too many innocent or unarmed people. Adolf then went into training super loyal, super patriot killer squads. These soldiers followed the invasion forces and then dealt with the mass exterminations after an area was occupied.
This was followed by new scientific techniques to more efficiently exterminate people with a minimal of German soldiers participating.
Hitler believed in "all out" war. The only rule of war was winning. If you win the war, you will write the history books and you will tell the world what happened. If you lose then clearly you were not God's chosen elect. If you lose then you were wrong. If you win then whatever you chose to do will be justified. The goal of a nation at war is then to concentrate solely on winning - no talk or actions to the contrary should be tolerated.
Hitler was even annoyed that the German press printed love letters from home from the wives and sweethearts of the men on the front lines during World War I. He accused them of a kind of treason through ignorance.
So we have Hitler and our conservative agenda ... 1) War is good; 2) Militarism and the expansion of the military are the policy; a) expand domestic security - police etc.; make prisons harsher; 3) torture is good. a) immunize the soldiers and the general public to cruelty, killing and the nobility of dying in battle for their Fatherland and later for the Fuehrer.

The Burning of the Reistag and 9-11.
The Reistag burnt down mysteriously. The Reistag was the Capital Building, the seat of the German Government. This horrified the German people. It was like the Pentagon had been bombed - can you imagine! A great symbol of the German society had been destroyed by some crazy "terrorists." This convinced the German people that their tolerance and understanding of radical groups had gotten out of hand. An internal crackdown was necessary. This led to the accepted establishment of a German police state and purges of Adolf personal and political enemies.
As it turned out Hitler himself may have authorized the burning of the Reistag for the very purpose that he had planned. Now he would have the support of the "masses" to eliminate all opposition; to arrest anyone he wanted; to remove restrictions on the police and enhance state control of the nation. And that is exactly what he did. Who would believe that anyone could be this cleaver or nefarious? But history is full of such examples - Nero, Caligula, to mention just a couple.
So far only a few extremists have accused the Bush administration of being complicit in the destruction of the Twin Towers but a recent poll indicated that 32% of Americans believe that the U.S. Government was somehow involved in the catastrophe of the Twin Towers for the sake of precipitating a war.
Could it be possible? Well, there is certainly more circumstantial evidence in associating the Bush family and the Conservative movement and the Republican Party with Arab Terrorist than there ever was in associating Franklin D. Roosevelt with Japan or the Axis powers. Yet at least four investigations were held investigating the Roosevelt administration during World War II. There were additional investigations after the war and accusations are still being made today by authors, writers and journalists.
I hesitate to even venture an opinion on such an inflammatory accusation but that the 9-11 event is being used to instill fear in the general public for the purpose of increasing state and police power is obvious. Not only is the state and police power being advanced but "rights" long regarded as unalienable by the American people are being abandoned - wiretapping, spying, unauthorized search and seizures, torture, the right to a fair trial and to be confronted by your accusers; the sanctity of one's home; to be informed of the charges and the evidence against you; denial of rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
The abandonment of the Bill of Rights as something only tolerable during times of peace is being proffered by the administration directly to the American people - and they are accepting it. This may be the most blatant attack on the fundamental principles on which this government was founded than ever before in the history of this nation.
Preemptive striking of an enemy.
Of course Adolf Hitler was a proponent of preemptive striking. He believed in out right aggression and defended this notion of the survival of the fittest in his book Mein Kampf. But even he was not as bold as the Bush administration.
Adolf provided the world excuses for his initial aggressions. He made up stories of German citizens being harassed or of territories really belonging to the German people in the first place. In one incident he actually took German prison inmates to a desired invasion site; dressed them in German military uniforms and then executed them and left their bodies at the site. He then put their pictures in the paper and told his people and the world of the terrible atrocity that had been perpetrated against the "Homeland" and the German people.
This administration simply announced their right to strike preemptively - and then did it. Even Adolf Hitler didn't have that kind of balls - at least until Poland anyway.
The American people were then told by several TV apologists that the U.S. had always had a preemptive strike policy and what the present administration had done was nothing new or unusual.
Preemptive striking prior to the present administration referred to our response to a possible nuclear attack. In other words if the U.S. detected that there were nuclear missiles on their way to our shore - we would launch a response before these missiles even landed. This would be termed preemptive because we would technically not have been attacked ... yet.
It did not mean that we could strike out at another nation because we were suspicious that they were planning an attack against us or because we thought that they would attack us if they had the capacity - and certainly not because of the opinion that the world would be a better place without "their kind."
In the cold war with Russia we had a policy of mutual destruction - not a preemptive strike. What were we supposed to do; "Wait until we see a mushroom cloud?" Ahh ... kind of. Yeah, that was the plan - wait until we saw the rockets coming anyway. In today's world we would say that would be too late - we should attack Russia immediately. We didn't do that and no one said it - at least not publicly.
An act of this nature (preemptive) has always been considered an act of aggression. It was in accordance with this notion of aggression - the one who strikes first is the aggressor - that we convicted the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg after World War II. In fact, it was at these Nuremberg trials that it was decided for the first time in all human history that he who strikes first would be considered the aggressor and that such an act of aggression would be a violation of international law.
It was the United States of America that paid for and orchestrated these trials at Nuremberg - supposedly to define for the world once and for all who is the guilty party in a war.
We and our allies executed many of the remaining German elite on the charge of initiating a war of aggression. It was decided by studying documents that the German leadership had planned, orchestrated and initiated a war of aggression and they were found guilty and executed.
When the Bush leadership says that they preemptively attacked another country and they were wrong and had acted on inadequate information, I find it very difficult to believe that the American judges at Nuremberg would have accepted any such excuse from Herman Georing or any of the other defendants back in 1946. But, we have always believed that a man is innocent until proven guilty in this country - but I don't know if that still counts in this 9-11 "new world." But are there grounds for prosecuting the present administration for starting a war of aggression under international law?
I would say if the present American leadership is ever brought to trial on this regard - things do look bad for the "good" guys. They certainly cannot deny that they initiated the attack. It has been plainly recorded in all the newspapers. But they may have one ace in the hole. From the way this war has been conducted it may be difficult for the prosecution to prove that this war had been "planned." The Germans were convicted for initiating and "planning" a war of aggression against Poland. Having no plan or a stupid plan may not be an excuse but it is worth a try.
Hitler also believed as a point of leadership that any decision was better than no decision. Even a wrong decision was better than vacillation or making no decision at all, according to Adolf.
I think that when Mr. Rumsfeld said; You go to war with the army that you have, not the army you wish you had - He was agreeing with Adolf's idea of any decision is better than no decision. And when we consider that we have no exit strategy; we don't have adequate forces; we didn't anticipate that the Iraqi people might not look at us as "liberators"; that we didn't anticipate a gorilla war once we got to Baghdad; that we could go it alone if we had to; that we might unite the terrorists; that disgruntled Arabs might then attack Israel; that Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and whoever might work against us if things didn't work quickly; that our boys didn't need armor under there vehicles; that depleted Uranium could kill our soldiers as well as theirs; that maybe our young people would stop joining the military because they can't go to college if their dead; that we don't have the money to sustain a never ending war; that we can't afford to take care of all the injured and damaged who return home; that we would make our oil dependency problem even worse; that violence begets more violence ... you can continue, I'm tired.
On the other hand Adolf was an extreme nationalist. He believed in Germany for Germans. In fact, he believed in the whole world for Germans - eventually. He believed in good wages for German workers; he believed in full employment; he believed in health care and education for all Germans; he sponsored paid vacations and free holiday cruises for business and their employees; he didn't believe in homeless Germans; when Adolf substituted "foreigners" in his factories they didn't replace German workers at lower wages. They were prisoners or "undesirables" who were worked to death in order to make life easier for Germans. Adolf did not believe in birth control. On the contrary - he encouraged German motherhood and it mattered very little if the mother was married or not. If she was German she and her baby were paid and cared for by the state. He encouraged German businesses to work for the betterment of the German state and the German people. He hated "internationalism." He would not be a fan of the "Global Economy" - nor would he participate in any "Free Trade" agreement that undercut the Homeland. If it didn't benefit Germany and the German people, he didn't do it.
Neither of our two political parties would be considered Hitler-like in any of the above.
Adolf as we all know did not like the Jews. He considered the Jews to be an international pariah. Although he criticized the Jews for not having a homeland, he did not care much for the idea of Zionism. He considered a Jewish homeland to be nothing more than a pirate’s hideaway - a place where the Jews could hide their ill gotten gains.
I don't think that either of our political parties could be considered to be against Zionism or the nation State of Israel. Although I have just finished reading a book entitled, the Secret War Against the Jews, which attempts to make that very case. I suppose that the authors of this book might equate the current situation to be a roundabout venture by the U.S. to unite the entire Arab world against the Jews - which would have a certain amount of credibility. As far as I can see though the general opinion is the exact opposite. If anything, it may be that the American people are of the opinion that the U.S. government is too cozy with the state of Israel at the moment.
Adolf had a bitter hatred for the press. He not only censored the press but eventually he took over the press. It does seem that the Nazis invented the word propaganda. I interpret this word "propaganda" to be what is referred to today as "spin." Propaganda would also be the leaking of false information. It could also be the misdirection or falsification of information (intelligence). It could also be the suppression of true information. The controlling of the news, the press, and information in general was a foundation stone of Nazism.
Conservatives have always had this same animosity - especially during a war. The British conservatives went bonkers when William Howard Russell, the first war correspondent, started sending his dispatches from the Crimea in Russia back to the British press. His version of the "Charge of the Light Brigade" was not nearly as romantic, patriotic or heroic as Rudyard Kipling's version. The British people were shocked at the ineptness of their military leadership and other facts of the war. Not only hadn't the British government sent any doctors or nurses, the soldiers didn't even have bandages. The whole war was a sad story of ineptitude and bad planning.
This administration has been criticized as the least accessible and most antagonistic to the press, possibly in all of American history. That is a pretty rugged statement when we consider the Nixon administration. But it does seem to be true. The so called "embedded" press in these present invasions is credited with doing a horrid job of reporting; though they are getting great marks for "propaganda." Even with no pictures of blood or dead bodies, and no returning caskets of American soldiers the conservatives are still complaining that not enough "positive" images of the wars are being reported.
At home we are indulging every type of illegal search and seizure; every type of spying on civilians; confiscations of property, secret arrests; reporters being discharged, staged press conferences, phony questioners and questions, administration officials being fired or being forced to resign, and most recently the president’s appeal to the people to approve of torture as a necessary tool for interrogators.
To say the least the current administrations attitude and tactics towards the press could very easily be considered Hitler or Nazi-like.
Hitler did not put the rights of the individual or of religion ahead of the state. The rights of the State trumped all in Hitlerland. If the State made a law and you felt that this law was against your natural right as a human being or your faith in a Supreme Being - you lose. Order came first in Hitlerland.
In America this view is rapidly on the rise. People are once again challenging anyone's right to take the Fifth Amendment or to refuse a polygraph, or to allow their person or home to be searched, or to testify against themselves, or even the admissibility of a forced confession. I have been reading a good deal of American history in the last few years but I do not find that the American people have ever in the past acted this cowardly in the face of any danger. This may once again be a first for America.
So to re-cap our comparison of Hitler and conservatism: We have War - not merely necessary but good; militarism is the desired state policy; torture is necessary; slanted propaganda is "fair play"; Police state is desirable for security and order; freedom of the press is a ridiculous notion - censorship is mandatory; complete state control is even better; patriotism to the point of elitism and racism is the "way things should be"; 9-11 and the burning of the Reistag - suspicious to say the least; Prisons should be more brutal and fearful - rehabilitation of diseased, sick minds is a waste of taxpayers money; War reporting should be totally of a positive and patriotic nature; any decision is better than no decision
Where Adolf differs from present day conservatives: Adolf favored "nationalism" and opposed "internationalism"; Adolf favored good jobs, good education and good health care for German workers. To Adolf the German people came first - to American conservatives the American people come last. Republicans have now adopted the old Tom Payne liberal adage - We are citizens of the world.
Now let's continue. Adolf as I said hated the international minded. He considered "internationalism" synonymous with treason. In fact he placed it all as a part of the "International Jew Conspiracy.” He more than likely got this notion from that American hero Henry Ford. For those of you who may not be aware, Henry Ford was an avid anti-Semite. He published a book in the 1920s entitled "the International Jew" which he had disseminated all over the world. But consequently Adolf was very strong on German domestic production. He supported the business community one hundred percent. Initially he didn't like the stock market, banking, or capitalism in general - but as time went on he came around. He had to, because as he rose in power it was these very capitalists who were buttering his bread.
Hitler loved entrepreneur-ship and individual wealth and control. He was very much in favor of the "One Great Man" idea. He did have one criticism of Big Business which I read about in William Manchester's "The Arms of Krupp." It seems that Mr. Krupp was not only manufacturing bombs and bullets for the domestic market but was also selling them to Germany's enemies or potential future enemies. Hitler actually considered such a practice treasonous.
Most Conservatives today consider this practice as simply good business or at the least unavoidable. But Hitler in his naiveté thought selling weapons and technology to the enemy to be unpatriotic. He supposedly tried to get Mr. Krupp to stop doing it. He went to talk with Mr. Krupp personally, claims Mr. Manchester. Krupp supposedly told Hitler that he would sell his weapons and technology to anyone he damn well pleased and if Mr. Hitler didn't like it, he (Mr. Krupp) would move his entire armament operation to Soviet Russia. We have almost no - and very possibly none - of our large corporations who are not international - usually receiving more of their profit and revenue from foreign investments.
Supposedly Hitler negotiated a compromise and convinced Mr. Krupp to only sell last year's "models" to the enemy and this year's models to Germany. This seems to be the present day U.S. policy but, of course, most of our defense contractors have already moved the bulk of their operations to foreign countries - labor cost being so much more reasonable. I have also read that this has been done for "strategic" reasons also - we don't want to have all our eggs in one basket, it is claimed.
So though the American people pay dearly for their arms and arm technology - most of the related job employment has been shipped over seas - Americans still get to be the soldiers though. Many Americans think this to be a benefit. I would personally rather have the armament jobs performed in this country by Americans and the soldiering farmed out to foreign countries - but that is just my opinion. I think that making the bullets is much safer and more lucrative than shooting them. But then again I was never much of a one for soldiering.
So Hitler liked and supported the business community much like our present day conservatives. The difference being Hitler supported the "national" defense by employing the workers and industrialists of his nation - not the international, Global economy - at least where he had the power to do so.
Hitler not only believed in "Peace through War"; he also believed in "Wealth through War." Hitler and his associates were salting themselves away a personal fortune. When reading about Hitler and his friends one seriously has to wonder if all their aggressive behavior was not a matter of their personal desire to amass wealth and fortune. This was once the goal of all great conquerors. It is said that even as late a Napoleon the promise to the soldiers was the opportunity for rape, pillage and plunder. Hitler and his friends were certainly in favor of pillage and plunder.
Form what one reads in the newspapers the present administration and friends could very well be of a similar mind set. We have Halliburton, Unical, Zapata oil and a host of "Privatization" war technologists who seem to be doing very well lately. In any case, the days for our presidents ending up bankrupt in their post presidential years seems to have died out with a few of the early forefathers.
U.S. Grant, a good Republican tried his best - but it seems with all his military wit, wisdom and courageousness, he still managed to go bankrupt. It seems that he had a good mind for war but not for business - very un-Republican of him.
Most people do not think of Adolf Hitler and God or religion but Adolf was certainly messianic. He was born a Roman Catholic. He mentions the Creator, the Prince of Peace, Divine Providence, and the Divine Plan in Mein Kampf. Their is no doubt that he felt himself to be fulfilling The Creator's Divine Plan here on earth; he was fulfilling Nature; he was purifying the races; he was "inspired"; he heard "voices" and felt intuitive inspiration. He never claimed to be an atheist or an agnostic. Adolf was a believer and not a non-believer. I remember no reference in Mein Kampf to any particular religion - but Adolf was certainly a believer. He felt himself to be inspired and to be doing the work of the Creator. In this respect he is certainly in line with the present conservative leadership and the conservative movement.
Elitist vs. Populist
This is another one of those confusing areas. As I see it, Adolf preached an elitist philosophy that had a resounding appeal to all class levels of the German population. He was not a "populist" preaching "demagoguery" in any American politically comparative interpretation. He was not a man of, from and by the people. He was not "Mr. Citizen." He was not Harry Truman or William Jennings Bryan or even Huey Long as I see it. He was no Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was not for the common man. He was without doubt a "trickle down" kind of a guy. He appealed to all the various classes of the German people because the German people for the most part were all elitist who considered themselves to be superior to the rest of the human race - any German of the lowest rank was superior to the best of any other race or society.
In this respect the present administration and the present conservative movement is exactly the same. Certainly George W. Bush and the present conservative movement appeals to the same type and class of individuals as did Adolf Hitler. They think of themselves as superior, hard working, patriotic, pragmatic, unsympathetic, stern, disciplined, self-sufficient, self-made, persevering, members of the elect ruling class and deserving of all they have and everything they may stumble upon in the future. They are the ultimate in individualism. "There, but for the grace of God go I," is not a part of their understanding.
But as with Adolf Hitler they are "plain folk" who consider George W. to be a "regular" guy. The kind of a guy that they would like to sit around and drink beer with; he's the Mr. Malaprop of the presidency; he's the guy-next-door president; the common American supposedly feels one with George W. Clearly today’s American conservative is very much like the "regular guy" in Hitler's Germany.
This is the same type of popularism that Adolf had. It is just that no German citizen thought of himself as a "regular guy." Adolf spoke for the "regular" German. It is just that the "regular" German was elitist at heart. This is very much the same in the conservative movement of today in America. Conservatives today speak elitist, authoritarian, dogmatism in a very common every day manner.

Unionism
Adolf spoke out of both sides of his mouth when it came to the "working man" and unionism. The first group that he attacked when he got into power was the unions. He shut them down; he wrecked their offices and burnt their files and put their leaders in prison - or killed them on the spot. The present day conservative and the conservative movement have done much the same thing only in a much more sophisticated manner. The last stage of the American anti-labor movement took control immediately after the death of FDR. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bushwacked II - I don't think anyone can find any real labor heroes in that group. Even the Labor unions that survived into the second half of the 20th century were not workingman unions. The AFL was elitist. Samuel Gompers stood up more for the business community than he did for the working community. John L. Lewis of the CIO was a Republican - need any more be said. The Teamsters were gangsters and Mafioso. Labor unions in today's United States are either dead or dying. Public support for unions is nil to nothing. Everybody whether they are right or left, young or old have the same single phrase when it comes to unions in this country; "The Unions at one time were good but then they went sour and in today's world they aren't necessary." And I suppose that they won't be necessary until the middleclass is in the dumpsters with the lower class; then we may see some turning around. As more and more Americans loose their good jobs and their retirement promises and their health care and insurance benefits we may then start to see some sort of a gradual return. But the business community has become a lot smarter and they certainly have not lost their ruthlessness - it will be extremely difficult for the union movement to ever rise again. It is going to take some creative imagination and some new ideas by those who are so inclined to help reverse this type of deterioration.
No unions were allowed in Germany after Adolf. Unions were built, controlled and organized by Jews according to Adolf. They were destroyed not because they were unions but because they were a part of the Jewish Conspiracy. Of course everyone that Adolf didn't like was a part of the Jewish Conspiracy.
Another fundamental of Hitlerism was the principle of the consolidation of your enemies.
Adolf as I just finished stating had very little respect for the common man - the masses. He felt that they were basically stupid and could not grasp a complicated enemy. He advised his Kampf that all of their enemies should be consolidated under one title. And all the problems of the society should be accredited to this one simple to understand group. Adolf chose as his symbol for everything evil and troublesome - The Jew. Adolf was truly unique in this regard. He had Jews everywhere. He had the hated rich Jew capitalist up in the window of his successful factory, cheering the Jew labor leader down in the factory yard who was inciting a strike. The Jewish capitalist didn't really care about all the money that he was losing because of the labor strike - because the main goal of the International Jew was to promote chaos and discord. The International Jew's main goal was to collapse and undermine the stability of all nations so that they could eventually rule the world.
The conservatives unfortunately do not have the International Jew these days - instead they have the Liberal. The American Liberal like the Hitler International Jew is all hated things under one simple heading. Liberals are traitors; liberals are cowards; liberals are social deviants who want to undermine the basic principles of the established society. Liberals hate God; they hate women, and liberal women hate men; liberals even hate themselves.
Just as Adolf was able to place every hated thing under the dog-tag of the Jew, so today the conservative has categorized the Liberal. Liberal is a bad word in today's American Society. Even Liberal's won't admit to being Liberal any more.
Amazingly, with the fall of Communism, Liberals have even become today’s fascists. Once upon a time the Liberals were Communist and the Conservatives were Fascists. You would think that when the Communists collapsed the Liberal would have collapsed with it but no; the Conservatives went from fascists to patriots and the Liberal went from Communist to Fascists. There should be absolutely no doubt who inherited Adolf's propaganda gene. But Adolf claimed to learn the techniques of propaganda from the capitalists warmongers; and I must admits the capitalist warmongers still maintain the edge in this field.
It should go without saying that Adolf believed in a "Secret Agenda." The general public had no need to know anything other than what Adolf thought was best for them. This notion is still basic conservative policy.
Adolf was not a fan of Thomas Jefferson in this respect. There was no amendment protecting the public's right to free speech in Nazi Germany.
Conservative's today certainly do not believe that an informed public is the best safeguard for a democratic society. They believe in secrecy - they believe that even the truth is not absolutely necessary, especially when half the truth would be sufficient and more acceptable to the "common people."
Adolf was a conservative and many of today's conservatives have great difficulty in distinguishing their philosophy from that of Adolf. Not too long ago we had David Duke running for something. Many of my Republicans friends and associates thought that he had many good points - although they didn't agree with his "basic racism."
Conservatism was not born of Fascism or Nazism - but Nazism and Fascism were born of conservatism. There is no doubt about that.

The Eastpointer

Poverty and the New Depression

By Richard E. Noble

When my wife and I rented our first apartment together, it had no furniture. Our first purchases as a new couple was not a living room suite or a kitchen dinette, it was a set of carpenter tools. We bought a circular saw, an electric drill, hammers and nails. Neither of us had ever built anything but very quickly we had a kitchen table, a bed and a chair - and my wife built them with very little help from me. She is a "builder-bee." If you give her three consecutive days to rest and think - she starts building something.
But this type of practical creativeness is what has been the driving force behind our entire lives together. We didn't sit around dreaming about what life would be like if we only had more money. We asked ourselves how we could do what we wanted to do with the money we had.
Next we were off in a homemade or "Carol-made" van camper touring America. One of our big problems on this adventure was eating. How do you eat food everyday with very little money? We lived while on the road with a combined gross income of less than $5,000 per year.
One of our creative innovations was with purchasing meat. We decided that we would search each grocery store in every new town and make something out of whatever was selling for the cheapest price at the meat counter. This experience led to the possibility of a new and different cookbook. We were going to entitle it "One Hundred and One Different Ways to Cook Chicken Necks." Have you ever eaten a sliced bar-b-que chicken gizzard sandwich? Actually it isn't bad.
My wife had never eaten a beef kidney. How do you cook one, she wondered. Being an old butcher, I had the standard reply - It's easy, you just boil the pee out of it, honey.
While camping on an American Indian reservation in Arizona we ate kidney mutton chops and roast mutton leg for a week. Mutton is an adult lamb. It tastes like lamb but much more so. The Indians raised sheep - any cut of mutton in their grocery store was 69 cents a pound.
Then we discovered fishing. In my big city environment many people fished but they never caught anything editable. My wife bought one of those $3.99 rod and reels one day when we were camped on this beautiful lake in Kentucky. By the end of the day she came walking back to the camper with a whole stringer of crappie - I couldn't believe it. I immediately upgraded the budget to include fishing poles and artificial baits. We ate free fish all over America.
As professional fruit pickers we never ran out of fruits and vegetables - or orange juice. Every farmer, no matter what his cash crops, always had a vegetable garden - and they were always willing to share with the helpers.
In Eastpoint as "oyster people" we ate a lot of oysters, shrimp, fish and crabs. I think we had a few years where we never ate a hamburger or a beef steak.
Our little ice cream parlor in Carrebelle was also a personal act of individual creativity. Initially Carol built all the tables and counters. We knocked down walls and hollowed out closets.
But the real creativity came once we got open. When you have a simple idea that takes imagination and very little money, it sounds good - but it's not. The trouble with having an idea that takes very little money and a bunch of beginner imagination is that once you do it and everybody sees it, then they can do it too.
After a couple of years of making practically no profit and fending off a host of copycats, we were almost ready to give up. But once again our poverty creativeness kicked in and we devised a plan. We cut our loses by closing down every winter. We weren't making enough money in Carrebelle to pay the light bill during the winter. We actually made more money closing up shop.
While we were closed we changed the entire store - inside and out. Every year when our old customers came back, our store was different and our menu was different. It was a lot of work for Carol and me but it kept us "new" every year and it kept our competitors hopping.
I must admit, I was quite proud of my wife. By the end of each season she would be so frustrated and tired that I wouldn't have blamed her if she just gave up. But all winter long she just kept thinking up new things to do next year. I really think that she liked making the changes better than running the business.
As I sit here thinking all of this over, it occurs to me that our whole life has been one big creative experience. For the most part it has been a continuous effort to adjust, adapt or try and beat the odds, but what else can you do when all you have is your dreams?
We're both getting a little frustrated with "dreaming" at this stage of our lives. We're supposed to have "something" by now. But I sometimes think the real challenge for us today and maybe for all older people is trying to keep those dreams alive - no more dreams, no more life!

“A Little Something”is R.E. Noble’s first book of poetry and it is now on sale at Amazon along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Farther and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer who has lived here in Eastpoint for nearly 30 years.

Rice Cakes - Yummy, Yummy

The Hobo Philosopher

Rice Cakes – Yummy, Yummy.

By Richard E. Noble

My wife, over the past 30 years, has probably been on every diet known to mankind. For the first 15 or 20 years I went along with her. I've eaten almost anything in the name of fidelity and loyalty. But in recent years I have become a follower of Omar Khayyam. Omar's bible is the Rubaiyat. You know ... A loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and thou; Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow you die.
I don't know exactly what it was that my wife did that brought me to my first serious reading of Omar Khayyam's the Rubaiyat but I think it was the rice cakes.
A rice cake was the first food product that ever made me regret eating. I found myself, not only reluctant, but annoyed by the act of chewing. For the first time in my life I truly understood how hunger could be a bad thing. The rice cake is a food engineering failure. Those scientists who work at the artificial, commercial, synthetic food laboratory are true geniuses. They can make cardboard edible and even digestible and most of the time they can make almost anything taste like chocolate. But they failed with the rice cake.
As I was chewing my first rice cake my brain was asking my mouth; What is going on here? Aren't we supposed to be spitting this out? My teeth and tongue had a slowdown strike. My stomach, small intestine and duodenum went into a huddle. The conclusion that they arrived at was a question that they forwarded to my brain. Their e-mail said; If this guy decides to start eating mud, AstroTurf, or plastic wrap are we required to digest it? Do we have any rights here?
It seems to me that along with an immune system and all those other involuntary type things we have going on in our bodies there should be a this-is-repulsive system.
I started putting peanut butter, jam, jelly and real butter on my rice cakes but somehow the rice cake was able to contaminate even these few of my favorite things. I tried to wash it down with a cold Miller's. Can you imagine going to a bar and instead of peanuts they put rice cakes on the bar for snacking?
A rice cake is an anti-food. It can annihilate other food and destroy a person’s desire to eat. If you eat only rice cakes you will die. Rice cakes drink all the water in your body, dehydrate your internal organs and then kill you.
I have read that they are working on a spinach flavored rice cake. These people are sick.
I think that I could eat a cup of uncooked, bleached, white flour and enjoy it more than eating a rice cake.
In Japan they have made eating into a suicide sport. They eat these fish that are poisonous and will kill you but they eat just a little so that they can dangle on the edge of life and death. They like to feel the "tingle" of the unknown - the hand of eternity on their shoulder. If I was the manufacturer of rice cakes, I would send them to Japan. In Japan eating is "to die for." Eating rice cakes might become a competitive spot in Japan.
Has anybody thought of a rice cake tossing festival? Are rice cakes biodegradable? I'll bet rice cakes don't go bad. If you made a bird feeder out of rice cakes, I'll bet no bird would touch it. My cats won't eat rice cakes. For that matter I'll bet that rice cakes don't grow mold. I think rice cakes are a bi-product of Styrofoam. I don't believe that rice cakes are really a food.
I think if you handed out bags of rice cakes to the starving around the world, the poor would lie down on the bare ground, cover themselves with the rice cakes and die. Either that or they would bust all the rice cakes open hoping to find food inside.
Compared to rice cakes soy protein burgers are delicious. I even tried frying rice cakes in bacon fat and mixing them with scrambled eggs and melted cheese. Even the dog wouldn't eat it.
I've been thinking of bringing rice cakes to the nursing home. Old people can find a use for anything - plastic bags, used aluminum wrappers, old string, paper clips, plastic bottles, oyster shells, maybe the old people could do something creative with rice cakes.
Hey what about powdered rice cakes on a fire ant hill?

“A Little Something” is R.E. Noble’s first book of poetry and it is now on sale at Amazon and locally at Downtown Books along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Farther and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer who has lived here in Eastpoint for nearly 30 years.

Check Stations

The Eastpointer

Check Stations

By Richard E. Noble
The most difficult time that I remember in my career as an oysterman was not caused by Mother Nature. It was brought to us oystermen by the State of Florida in the form of “check stations.” Of course the State was trying to help us out. And as strange as it seems most oystermen and dealers agreed with the State’s premise as to why these check stations should be established.
Historically most oystermen in Franklin County caught oysters that were two and a half inches or larger despite the three inch size limit law. But as the season went on and the beds got scrappier and scrappier, the oysters started shrinking.
The catching of small oysters was always a hot topic among the dealers and the oystermen in Franklin County. Many oystermen wondered why so many dealers bought the tiny oysters. Some oystermen went so far as to charge the dealers with calling the Marine Patrol on occasions to “tighten” up all their catchers. With this technique, instead of a dealer simply refusing to buy small oysters from a sorry catcher, almost any oysterman could get a stiff fine for not catching all three inch oysters. Even the best oystermen couldn’t make a living catching all three inch oysters at the traditionally low boat price for oysters of $4.00 to $4.50 per bushel. Finally for the benefit of us all, the State was going to step in and make things right.
Their plan was to set up check stations. Every boat’s oysters would have to be checked and tagged before they were brought to a dealer house. For a time on Catpoint there was a check station at the old ferry dock and at another time they had the check station in the channel behind the breakwater.
All at once the positive attributes of oystering for a living were stripped away. No longer could an oysterman work any day of the week. It was Monday through Friday - just five days a week. In the past it often took seven days to pick out four or five days that were tolerable for oystering. Now you had five days. If it was stormy two of those five days, you were just out of luck. Often times after bad weather oystermen would work seven days or even fourteen days straight to make up the losses in their paychecks. Now if you got behind you stayed behind. And if I’m not mistaken for a time the bay was only open four days per week and there were restrictive bag limits.
Another alternative was to work from sunup to sundown - maybe twelve or thirteen hours in a day. But this was no longer possible either. The check stations closed at four or five. The hourly wage earners working on the check stations couldn’t be allowed to earn overtime. Consequently five hundred to one thousand independent businessmen (oystermen) were forced to work the hours of the State’s hourly wage workers.
But this aggravation was small compared to the social consequences. We had more Marine Patrol stationed here than they had in Miami. And I know that the Marine Patrol who were here at that time will not agree but many of them became overzealous in their duties. Some of the Marine Patrol officers were actually local residents and relatives of some dealers. Their tendency was to settle up old grudges if at all possible. Some of the hired hands working on the check station barges got somewhat intoxicated with their new positions of power. The oystermen called them “Rambos.”
It was a very lack-luster period in the history of oystering. And after all was said and done, it turns out that the basic premise of the three inch oyster was invalid. The mortality rate of the oysters after reaching two and a half inches is substantial. Just to make the point for example, if 90% of oysters reach the two and half inch size only 30% or 40% might live to be three inches. The number of bags caught per oysterman dropped appreciably. Consequently the price of oysters went up considerably. I think at one time they were as high as $25.00 per bag or bushel.
During this period, many oystermen actually made more money. But there were many others who were not capable. Some started hiding bags of undersized oysters under their floor boards. Others started a late night shift - going out in the evenings.
The Marine Patrol had their hands full and, of course, this led to some of their abusiveness. Overall, I would say that this time period was the worst memory of all my oystering days. The fun was gone from the job. Police were everywhere and oystermen felt like criminals. Every oysterman was suspect. There were so many Marine Patrol officers that Eastpoint felt like a large prison.
After all was said and done I don’t think the dealers were happy. I know the oystermen weren’t happy. I really don’t think that most of the Marine Patrol were happy either. They had a dirty job and they got very little praise or support. It was a bad time all around. The attitudes of everybody involved in the seafood business soured.

“A Little Someting” is R.E. Noble’s first book of poetry and it is now on sale at Amazon and locally at Downtown Books along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Farther and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer who has lived here in Eastpoint for nearly 30 years.

Bloggin' Be My Life

Tom Paine and Silas Deane

Silas Deane and Colonial Arms

By Richard E. Noble

Silas Deane was born in Groton, Connecticut. His father was only a blacksmith but he managed to get the boy to Yale where Silas received his law degree. Silas was a very ambitious young man. He married well, not once, but twice. His first bride was a widow and her late husband was a merchant. Silas took over the business. After his first wife died he met and married the granddaughter of a former governor of Connecticut. This must have peeked Silas’s interest in politics. He became a delegate to the first and second Continental Congress.
In 1776 Congress sent Deane to France. He was the first American to represent the American Colonies abroad. He also had a rather clandestine mission. The Americans wanted him to purchase war materials and arms for the upcoming battle. In France, he was secretly hooked up with a playwright, named Beaumarchais and a dummy company called Hortalez and Company. The French were on shaky terms with the British. They wanted no publicity with regards to their helping British Colonies to revolt. The French King was not ready for a war with England at the moment.
Beaumarchais ... The courtly gentleman of ‘wit and genius’ as Deane called him, sold gunpowder to Americans at a 500 percent markup and sent bills of lading with the shipments indicating these were not gifts. Muskets discarded by the French army and given to Beaumarchais for nothing were passed along to the United States at half their original cost. Robert Morris, another well known Patriot, told Deane before he left Philadelphia ... “If we have but luck in getting the goods safe to America the profits will be sufficient to content us all. Late in 1777 Congress got the bill from Hortalez and Company for 4,500,000 livres. It was authorized by Deane. The Congress decided to call Deane home for a little talk.
Congress, through the year 1778 had been having a little difficulty with scandals of a similar nature. A Dr. William Shippen, head of the medical department, seemed to have a good deal of extra money from his negotiations in hospital supplies. Then there was Thomas Mifflin an army quartermaster-general who had done a little too well at his post. And good old General Nathanael Green was rumored to be making a rather quick fortune. “By late 1778 the American Revolution for many had lost the quality of a crusade. Those who had prospered on wartime contracts now rolled about Philadelphia in gaudy coaches.
While the ragged continental army survived on half rations, slim supplies and often no pay, the city’s rich, many of them friends of Deane, dressed their women in finery and loaded their tables with delicacies. John Adams was worried. He feared that the publicity from all these money scandals and profiteering could result in an actual civil war.
Deane had a couple of other scams going at the time. Deane would use his political connections in France to ship goods without declaring what the cargo was. If the ship would arrive safely, he would declare it private - his personal goods. If the ship sunk, or the goods were damaged, he would declare it a U.S. government cargo. On top of that he seemed to have a little gambling problem. One of the more interesting gambling casinos of the day were the insurance companies. The insurance companies would insure anything. They would even give you odds on current events. You could “insure” yourself on the possibility of an upcoming war, or who might win or lose the present war. Deane being an “insider” in the political shenanigans going on between France and the Colonies had been doing quite well in many of his “insurance” ventures.
When Deane got back home a big brouhaha erupted. The inspectors asked to see the account books, only to find that Deane had “forgotten” them in Europe. Tom Paine who had proudly taken the position of Secretary for Foreign Affairs to Congress in the American War, at no pay I might add, had privileged information in his files. These privileged files clearly stated that the King of France had donated the bulk of these materials to the Colonial war effort, free of charge. When Tom pointed this out to the investigating committee, he was called a liar. Deane not only called Tom Paine a liar, but he went to the newspapers with his side of the story. Paine demanded an apology from Deane. When Deane refused, Paine went to the newspapers himself. Deane then demanded an apology and a retraction from Paine. Paine proceeded to document his allegation to the committee and the newspapers with information from his privileged files. This mess caused the president of the Congress, Henry Laurens, to resign and the French ambassador, Mr. Gerard, to have convulsions. If the King of England found out that the King of France had been supplying arms to the Colonists, the English would attack the French immediately.
Now Mr. Gerard entered the committee room and the newspaper columns. He demanded that Paine denounce all such accusation about his beloved France and its proper King. The French government would never, never do such a thing, and certainly not the King. Tom Paine had made this whole thing up. In private, Mr. Gerard was not at all upset with Mr. Paine. He even offered to put Tom on the French payroll as a propagandist for French causes in the Colonies. In public, though, he was “hot.”
Paine had P.O.ed a number of other people besides Mr. Gerard; both Robert and Gouverneur Morris where not happy with Tommy. Gouvernouer Morris was a friend of Deane and Tommy had insinuated that such notables as Robert Morris might actually be in on some of the ill-gotten gain themselves. Needless to say Paine was asked to resign. Paine resigned from the committee, but not as a journalist. He continued to defend himself and attacked publicly several prominent members of the committee who had forced his resignation; Gouvernor Morris, John Penn, William Drayton, and others.
Paine was disgraced and ostracized and Deane went back to France. As Deane bumped about Europe, he was approached by the British to write home to some of his influential friends encouraging the Colonies to capitulate with the British. The British double-crossed Deane and had the letters printed in occupied New York. Immediately Deane became a traitor and Paine, once again a hero. Deane was forced to remain in Europe. He took to alcohol and most likely gambling. He went broke. Finally, after a number of years, a relative in the Colonies agreed to pay his passage home. He died mysteriously aboard the ship. Some say he committed suicide; others say that he was poisoned. If he was poisoned, it was probably by a guy named Edward Bancroft who is alleged to have been a double agent.
Bancroft was an old friend. They were involved in many an “insurance” deal together. Bancroft had done quite well in the espionage game and may not have wanted the publicity that an old, wimpy, soul searching Deane might have engaged in upon returning to his home land. *

* “Paine” David Freeman Hawke. . . Harper & Row
* Ibid
* Ibid
* Three works used in this essay; “After the Fact”, James West Davidson & Mark Hamilton Lytle.... “Paine” David Freeman Hawke... The Oxford History of the American People, Samuel Eliot Morison.

Bloggin' Be My Life

Roosevelt, 1932-1936

Roosevelt and the Great Depression

By Richard E. Noble

Roosevelt comes in with a bang. He wins the popular vote by over seven million and the electoral vote 472 to 59 - not only that, but the Democrats sweep the house and the Senate. They now control two thirds of the Senate and three quarters of the house. Why?
The U.S. government, the capitalist system, and all of its institutions are in the state of collapse. The American monetary system has failed, the banking system has failed, the Stock Market has failed, agriculture has failed, industry has failed, the educational system has failed, labor and management are at war, housing has failed, and medical and hospitalization has failed. No matter where one looks out upon the horizon, one sees chaos, collapse and corruption.
Whether this is all a part of a super-wealth conspiracy to bankrupt the middle class and thus control them, the poor, and the rebellious working class; or the built-in inevitability of an unrestricted competitive system; or just the workings of fate, the people of the United States were desperate.
Since Hoover took over the reigns of state everything had degenerated and the Republicans seemed to have no answer.
They weren’t in favor of reform, relief, or revolution. Their only answers were poverty, police and Providence. The Republican Party had been in a state of known and visible corruption since the days of Ulysses S. Grant.
Roosevelt not only had the hearts and minds of the people but the Congress and Senate also. He was given the powers of a president at war and for the first four years they passed just about everything that he proposed.
Roosevelt had promised to try anything and if it didn’t work, try something else.
Hoover didn’t leave the vault as low as Benjamin Harrison had left it for Grover Cleveland, but he did his best to leave Roosevelt with as little as possible. In the four months between Hoover’s loss at the polls and Roosevelt’s inauguration, it seems that Hoover and his buddies did their best to leave Roosevelt with out a dime to work with.
The first thing Roosevelt did was to take hold of the money supply. He took the nation off the gold standard which even had Europe screaming foul. He stopped all gold from leaving the country, and pulled all gold certificates from circulation. He made owning gold illegal. He reduced the gold reserve backing on the American paper by nearly fifty percent, thus enabling him to double the amount of paper money in circulation.
The rich were now taking all of their money out of circulation and hiding it, or investing it in more prosperous foreign countries. If that Communist, Socialist, Dictator Roosevelt was going to take up the side of those lazy, poor, good for nothings who were trying to ruin this country, he wasn’t going to do it with their money.
Roosevelt did everything he knew to increase the revenue of the Federal Government, even cutting government salaries and wages, and then spent it as fast as he could on programs to put people to work or relieve those without work opportunities. By 1938 he had put all of the 15 million unemployed to work temporarily and half of them permanently.
He set up federal mortgage and loan companies that basically bought up mortgages and loans from the banks and returned them to the borrowers at rates of payment that they could afford. He did the same for small businessmen and farmers, plus guaranteed the sale prices of farm commodities. The government even bought the farmer’s surplus and gave the excess pork, butter, and bread etc., to the unemployed.
He got the banks straight and guaranteed deposits up to five thousand dollars. He subsidized medical care and tried to establish federal health care insurance. He plugged the holes in the Stock Market with a Securities and Exchange Commission that guaranteed a stock’s legitimacy. He put Joe Kennedy in charge of the operation. When critics asked him why he put the biggest thief the business world and the Stock Market ever knew in charge of the whole deal; the big bad wolf right inside the chicken coop ... he laughed and told them that it takes a thief to catch a thief.
He passes a National Industrial Recovery Act which set up public works projects, fair trade practices among business, and gave workers the right to strike and demand that bosses arbitrate grievances. Prior to this, strikes by workers were considered illegal and troops were sent in to break strikes and punish workers.
He opened up trade relations with Russia by recognizing the Soviet Union, the existence of which had been denied by the U.S. since 1917. This puts fire to the notion that America really had a communist in the White House.
He set up an emergency housing division that cleared slums and built public and private homes.
He tried to build up the Navy and the Air Force by proposing the Vinson Naval Parity Act but congress refused to appropriate the money. The country is so much against war or our entry into a war that in 1938 they try to pass the Ludlow Resolution. This resolution would not only deny the executive, but the congress the right to declare war without a national referendum except in case of invasion.
He passed a graduated income tax - charging millionaires up to 75% on every million after their first.
He starts a Federal Arts Project, a Federal Theater Project, a National Youth Employment Project; he even commissions history and science research and a writer’s project. He regulates the health and sanitation of food and meats, and drugs.
He starts building dam and river projects in Tennessee, Colorado and in Michigan, the Saint Lawrence Seaway; and in 1936 even the beleaguered Bonus Army that Hoover had beat-up gets the adjusted Compensation Act passed over F.D.R.’s veto, and over 1,500,000,000 in benefits are paid out to over three million veterans.
It seems that up until this period in time the country was allowed to progress without rhyme or reason or rule and regulation. There had been no referee, no judge of fair play, and nobody who cared or who could do anything about it. Roosevelt came and America had its Moses, the law giver. He had a law, a plan or a program for everything.
In his first eight years his only opposition seemed to be the Supreme Court. They had been placed in their positions before he got control. They tried their best to declare unconstitutional everything that he attempted. But as fast as they declared it unconstitutional, the legislature passed a different but similar law to replace it.
By 1938, the Right wing Republicans had finally gotten together with the Klu Klux Klan Democrats from Dixie and the tide began to turn. In the 1936 presidential election Roosevelt won by the largest electoral victory in a contested race in history ... 503 to 8. And even though 80% of the nation’s newspapers came out for and supported Governor Landon, Roosevelt won the popular vote by over eleven million. But with the mid-term elections of 1938 the Republicans recovered 81 seats in the house and 8 in the Senate.
War was coming.

Oystering the Old Fashioned Way

The Eastpointer

Oystering the Old Fashioned Way

By Richard E. Noble
If I'm not mistaken, it was after hurricane Elena ran back and forth off the Florida panhandle that we were forced to seek work elsewhere once again. By this time we had a new flat-bottomed Hatfield built boat, a roll-on boat trailer and our trusty Johnson 40 Workhorse model motor.
Our Johnson Workhorse was a pull start, with no tilt and trim, but it was the best working motor we ever had. It took some power to pull that crank rope but it cranked every time on one good pull. It was simple and easy to repair. It even came with an on board tool kit. That was my favorite motor. I'm sure they don't make it any longer. It was too simple and too practical. It was like the old model T - it never stopped. You could fix it yourself, repair parts were cheap and like the old model T, it bored everybody. So they improved it. Now you can buy one that needs to be repaired every time you want to use it, the parts are unaffordable, and no one in the neighborhood can fix it. It fact the man who can repair it has to be a certified electrical engineer. But the worse they make them the more Americans seem to buy them. The miracle of marketing, I guess.
In any case, Cat Point was closed, and the word around town was that the beds were like concrete anyway. One old timer told me that the cure was for a bunch of oyster boats to get out there and pull bedsprings back and forth across the bottom. He said that is what they did back in the “olden” days.
We packed up and went down to Horseshoe Beach. We could have gone to Alabama or Mississippi, but we thought that we would run into fewer problems in Horseshoe. The dealer down there allowed us to park our van camper out in back of his oyster house.
There was a little village of Eastpointers down there. They were in the bushes, out in the woods and out on the islands - any place that could be had for free. Nobody bothered us.
The tides were really something down there. You had to time your trips in and out. If you weren't up early enough in the morning, and the tide had gone out, you didn't get out. If you worked too long into the evening and the tide was gone, you slept out in the woods or on your boat. Carol and I watched the tides. We had some close calls both going out and coming in where we had to climb out of the boat and push it over the shallow areas. But with our new Hatfield flat-bottomed boat, we could float in 6 inches of water with twenty bags of oysters on board. We had a big advantage there.
They had no problem with any of us oyster people down at Horseshoe because they really didn't have any oysters there. They had no cultivated beds, I guess I should say. You had to rig yourself up a rope and chain with a bobber tied to the end that didn't have the chain. You would go out into the bay and then putts around for an hour or two dragging that chain behind your boat. When the chain started grabbing and pulling, you threw out the marker. Then you turned the boat around and pulled up on your marker and dropped in your tongs and scrapped around.
Amazingly enough sometimes we caught 10 or 15 bags on a spot two boat lengths long and one boat length wide. It was oystering the old fashioned way - you earned it.
I don't remember much about the Horseshoe Beach area because, for the most part, all we did was work. But the man down there paid us regularly and the bank cashed his checks. There was a grocery store and a barroom and that was about it. The people who lived there fished, they didn't oyster. So we were no problem to them at all. Most of them couldn't believe how many bags of oysters us Eastpointers brought in every day. They thought we were growing them out there.
As soon as we heard that they were going to let the oystermen back out onto Cat Point we came trucking home. For at least one week, I think we were the only boat out on Cat Point. The bottom was like concrete and it was mighty scrappy - but it was as good as Horseshoe and we were home.
One day channel 6 News pulled up along side us. They wanted to do a story. We told them that we were catching a few - maybe 8 to 12 bags a day and that evening we were on the TV.
Well, everybody from Eastpoint must have been watching in Horseshoe, Alabama and Mississippi because by the end of that next week the oyster boats were once again scattered all over Cat Point. Within a month or two the bottom seemed pretty much back to normal. Oystering was scrappy - but everybody was home. It felt good to see all the boats out on the bay once again. Eastpoint had been like a ghost town for a few months. I don't know what the few local businesses did, but they had to be hurting. In those days Eastpoint and oyster boats was synonymous - no oyster boats, no Eastpoint.

A Little Something is R.E. Noble’s latest creative output. It is a book of poetry with prose. It is for sale on Amazon along with Hobo-ing America, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. Richard Noble is a freelance writer and has been a resident of Eastpoint for 30 years.