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Marcus Garvey honrado en un monumento en Amador

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Marcus Garvey
                      Marcus Garvey fue el primer Rastaman…   

 

Burning Spear, Not Guilty

Panamá: develan estatua del insigne Marcus Garvey

por Alberto Barrow

El miércoles 31 de agosto de 2022, en un acto histórico que ha de trascender nuestro tiempo, se realizó la develación de una estatua del gran pensador e impulsor del Panafricanismo, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, nacido en Jamaica en 1887, cuyos ideales de unidad así como la reivindicación económica, política y cultural de los descendientes de millones de personas esclavizadas, que fueron trasegados desde África a esta y otras partes del mundo, causaron un gran impacto; sus acciones tuvieron una extraordinaria resonancia , a principios del siglo XX, y aún hoy nutren las luchas de los afrodescendientes en la diáspora.

La ceremonia de develación de la estatua se llevó a cabo en la Plaza de la Cultura y de las Etnias, ubicada en Amador, en el marco de la celebración del Día Internacional de los Afrodescendientes, declarada desde el 2020 por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas (ONU).

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, escritor, periodista, poeta, activista y emprendedor visionario, generó un movimiento mundial de dignificación de los afrodescendientes, contando con amplios seguidores entre los trabajadores afrocaribeños que arribaron al istmo de Panamá, en distintas oleadas migratorias. Hoy, los descendientes de esos zapadores antillanos le rinden postrer homenaje a quien fuera un gran líder cuya influencia pervive.

 

Nota de la redacción: Marcus Garvey era anterior a la denominación rastafari. Sin embargo, les dijo a sus seguidores: “Miren hacia África para la coronación de un rey negro”, y predijo además que el fin del dominio colonial en África comenzaría cuando ese rey derrotara a un ejército europeo. Un príncipe amárico (ras) Ras Tafari Makonnen, del que se dice que era del lado de su madre de un linaje que se remonta a Salomón y la Reina de Saba, ascendió al trono de Etiopía en 1930 y, desplazado de su capital en 1934 por un invasión por parte del ejército fascista italiano de Mussolini, se fue al extranjero para reunir ayuda extranjera, regresó para liderar a la Gideon Force que resistía en Addis Abeba en 1941. Por lo tanto, los rastafaris modernos consideran a Garvey como un profeta.

 

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Bernal, A time to be neither cowardly nor naïve

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Bernal
We must not allow fear and manipulation to destroy our dignity. The dictatorship’s goons were unable to do this to Professor Bernal. Still from a video by the dictatorship-era media.

Fear and manipulation

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

Today, fear and manipulation sow in many sectors of our population a dangerous despair that we must relentlessly fight. The events our country experienced this past July made many lose their fear of the prevailing authoritarianismñ For others, government manipulations at the table of dizziness, and media manipulations, made them lose their sense of discernment about the harsh social reality.

Continuing to allow the ruling joint criminal enterprise to devalue us, with the connivance of the major media and the political parties, won’t get us to a good outcome. Even less so if we allow ourselves to believe that social problems can be resolved through individual and non-community means. We need to choose collective options, through a constituent process with full citizen participation.

The crisis we are experiencing is a real crisis because it is, above all, a constitutional crisis that does not admit such lies as an answer. Events have shown us that the system imposed by the militaristic constitution of 1972 is seriously ill. Before it’s too late, it would be better to prevent the prevailing authoritarianism from taking us to the shores of a disastrous totalitarianism.

Faced with the fear that some seek to instill in order to maintain their privileges and benefits and to continue to citizens from their necessary and urgent exercise of power, it is mandatory to react. We must also emphasize our education, our efforts at public instruction, in order to repel the media manipulation that is practiced every day.

We cannot continue to see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing. It’s time to respond as human beings, to defend our rights and to fulfill our civic duty. It’s time to protect our dignity in the face of fear and manipulation.

 

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Nito signs regulations for medical marijuana

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Jah like
Jah may or may not like it, but in any case there is no historical evidence that Rastafari, who owned a brewery, smoked the sacred ganja weed. For his own set of reasons, though, President Cortizo, in an August 31 signing ceremony, decreed regulations to implement a medical marijuana law that the National Assembly passed nearly one year ago. Photo by the Presidencia.

Medical marijuana now legal and regulated, but…

by Eric Jackson

President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen has finally signed the regulations to implement a law that the legislature passed and which was duly published in the Gaceta Oficial on October 13, 2021. With this, Cortizo boasts that Panama has one of the strongest sets of regulations in the region and that it will “give relief to thousands of patients who have waited for this solution for long years.” The fine print we will be able to read shortly, when the regulations are officially published.

There will be licenses and registrations that will need to happen before the law takes effect. Marijuana and its derivatives will be legal for therapeutic, medical, veterinary, scientific and research purposes.

Stepping well beyond the modest initial legislative proposal, so will the cultivation and processing of cannabis for these purposes. The original proposed law, now enshrined as Law 242 of October 13, 2021, had maintained the ban on cultivation and processing. Some farmers, economists, industrialists and media people who do more that just publish tales of law enforcement victories in “The War on Drugs” had urged Cortizo to at least create some productive jobs rather than entirely depend on imported products.

Anyone who is to legally produce, distribute or use cannabis or its derivatives will have to get the government’s permission. Cortizo said that the new regulations will protect the privacy of those who use medical marijuana, which is approved for treating a list of maladies that we shall see when the rules are published. These include Alzheimer’s, problems associated with cancer treatments, autism, HIV / AIDS and arthritis. Although not specified in the announcement, it would be hard to imagine that they would not include glaucoma, the high eyeball pressure that can make a person go blind.

There will be a National Directorate for the Monitoring of Activities Related to Medicinal Cannabis to oversee compliance with all of the rules, and a National Program for the Study and Medicinal Use of Cannabis with which patients will have to enroll to be legal. The Directorate will be under the umbrella of the Ministry of Public Security and apparently goes much heavier on law enforcement than medical people. Nito’s announcement made this cryptic reference to “ministry liaisons specialized in security.” Does that mean a US Drug Enforcement Administration’s attaché at the Embassy here? We may see, although if this is the case Washington may want to keep that information classified.

 

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Pascual, ¿Por qué pedimos a nuestros políticos que se abstengan?

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the pm
Sanna Marin, primera ministra de Finlandia. Shutterstock / Alessia Pierdomenico.

¿Dónde está el límite de la vida privada de los políticos?

por Ernesto M. Pascual Bueno, UOC – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

¿Nunca han participado en una fiesta en donde la música y el alcohol eran ingredientes esenciales? Quizá debieron incluso llamar la atención a alguno de sus compañeros, que empezaron a disparar fotos subidas de tono. Si la mayoría de nosotros hemos vivido estas situaciones, ¿por qué pedimos a nuestros políticos que se abstengan? Es el caso de la primera ministra finlandesa, Sanna Marin.

Los pensadores clásicos, Hegel en su Estética y Rousseau en su Discurso sobre el origen de la desigualdad, nos dan una respuesta simple: los políticos son creadores de costumbre cívica, alumbran a la ciudadanía, la guían a través de los valores éticos y morales de su comportamiento. En este asunto, en la sociedad moderna, se han unido toda clase de personajes públicos, en especial los deportistas, que deben ser (a mi entender, erróneamente) modelos del buen ciudadano.

Sin embargo, este razonamiento que servía en las sociedades preconstitucionales queda desbordado por las razones coyunturales de las sociedades posmodernas: la competición feroz por los titulares en algunos medios de comunicación –cuanto más escandalosos, mejor–, la personalización de la política en sus líderes más que en el partido y la masiva influencia en nuestras vidas de las redes sociales. Estos fenómenos han ido difuminando, paulatinamente, lo público y lo privado. De modo que, en estos momentos, consideramos la transparencia el valor universal y, por tanto, todo debe ser público.

La cultura política en EEUU frente a la de Europa

También hay razones estructurales derivadas de la cultura política de cada país. En general, los anglosajones, EEUU a la cabeza, han sido los valedores del modelo según el cual el escrutinio de la vida privada de los políticos es necesario para valorar su acción pública. Mientras que los países europeos, en especial los franceses, siempre han considerado que el comportamiento privado no debía pesar en la esfera de interés de la acción política.

Así, en Norteamérica, el congresista demócrata Anthony Weiner dimitió tras colgar en una red social de contactos fotos suyas semidesnudo. Por otro lado, los franceses se enteraron en el funeral de su presidente François Mitterrand que tenía una segunda familia, secreta y beneficiaria también de fondos públicos, o hicieron presidente a Francois Hollande tras la batalla personal y política con su exmujer Ségolène Royal.

Sin duda, otro componente estructural es la diferencia religiosa entre el puritanismo estadounidense y el catolicismo europeo. Los puritanos (protestantes) aceptan ideas opuestas a su pensamiento, pero no conductas que no entren en su decálogo moral: amantes, uso de drogas o mentiras en sede pública. En Europa, el comportamiento licencioso en los temas amorosos es aceptado, al tiempo que se admite que los políticos puedan no decir toda la verdad en su propia defensa.

Otra razón tiene que ver con la percepción de la opinión publica sobre cuáles son los roles de los políticos. Mientras la derecha parece encarnar un papel de desarrollo y goce, la izquierda es caracterizada como trabajo y sufrimiento. Solo así podemos explicar el asedio político por la “mansión” de Galapagar que compraron en 2018 el entonces secretario general de Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, y la entonces portavoz del grupo confederal de Unidos Podemos en el Congreso, Irene Montero, que en el imaginario colectivo excede los límites de una vivienda de un dirigente de izquierdas, o el diferente tratamiento público entre las fiestas de Boris Johnson y Sanna Marin. Añadiría un matiz más en este caso: es mujer.

Devaneos amorosos y función pública

Pero la pregunta es: ¿esta cooptación del espacio público por la vida privada favorece a la democracia? ¿Qué ventaja nos aporta, al meditar sobre el voto, conocer los devaneos amorosos de un político, sus filiaciones deportivas, su consumo de alcohol o cigarros? Entendiendo, siempre, que ello no influye en el recto desarrollo de su función pública.

El uso de esta información suele mermar el escrutinio sobre su acción de gobierno. Es más, es utilizada por los gabinetes de comunicación como arma de distracción. Así, todo el mundo recuerda que el presidente norteamericano Bill Clinton tuvo un romance con la becaria Monica Lewinsky, pero pocos saben que fue él quien derogó la ley de separación entre banca de inversión y banca de ahorro, lo que nos condujo a la crisis financiera de 2008.

¿Significa que los políticos y las primeras instituciones del país tengan impunidad? No, bajo ningún concepto. Lo sabemos bien en España. Los límites los marcan las leyes. El acoso sexual es una conducta perseguible en todas las esferas sociales y de ello aprendieron mucho los ciudadanos franceses en el caso del director gerente del FMI, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, acusado de violación y detenido en New York en 2011. Fue su precedente del #MeToo.

En general, en todos aquellos comportamientos no delictivos, la vida privada es relevante si se demuestra su incoherencia con el discurso político. Como aquel diputado británico abiertamente homófobo que resulto ser gay. Su castigo deben ser los resultados electorales.The Conversation

Ernesto M. Pascual Bueno, Profesor de los estudios de Derecho y Ciencia Política, UOC – Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Este artículo fue publicado originalmente en The Conversation. Lea el original.

 

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Editorials: Urban death traps; and Screeching like a wounded bird

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death trap
You can tell by the vegetation growth surrounding the hole. You can estimate in light of reports about the state of the Chinese construction and real estate industries that used to consume a lot of scrap metal from Panama and many other places. This Panama City death trap has been waiting for victims for a long time and neither the Ministry of Public Works, the IDAAN water and sewer utility nor the Alcaldia have seen fit to fix it. Photo by Allan Hawkins V.

Death traps and Panama’s economy

Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:14     

There is no need to get into religion to realize the harm in this sort of thing. It’s hardcore economics.

Panama has lost too many talented blind people to a cutthroat pseudo-Darwinian set of social values that considers the elimination of any person for any reason an opportunity for somebody else. The overall math of this is that Panamanian productivity and the attractiveness of the goods, services and culture that we offer to sell to the world goes down.

If a tourist should fall into such a hole? If there’s a serious injury we could get worldwide publicity about a legal system that gives no recourse, restores nothing that an innocent person loses due to thugs stealing sewer caps to sell for scrap to an export market, and due to the negligence of public servants who are paid to keep our sidewalks and roads in safe.

Oh yes, there will be someone to shift blame. To say that people who don’t keep their heads down, and people who can’t see, and people who walk only with difficulty or get around in wheelchairs should be eternal shut-ins.

Most of us have a better sense of justice and decency than that. Most of us are exasperated by such stuff being the norm.

There a so many things that might be, or ought to be, fixed. But let’s start with two:

  • Holes in the roads, and holes in the sidewalks, are public safety and political issues. Instead of sending out the riot squad when people block the roads over this stuff, the government should send out work crews to cover the open service holes and missing storm drain grates. In the face of such hazards police and prosecutors should be filing their first and main complaints about vandalism and neglect of our public infrastructures.
  • The National Police, as well as the bomberos and SINAPROC, have working dogs. We train dogs to sniff for drugs and explosives, to locate people buried under landslides or collapsed buildings, to help firefighter find and evacuate people from burning buildings, to guard places, to track fugitives who took off running. We have veterinarians who take care of these working dogs. Isn’t about time that Panama had guide dogs for the blind? Aren’t the police the agency best prepared to expand their protective mission into this field? With a good leader dog, a blind person isn’t going to fall into this hole.

 

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A deranged rant. The dude might set off some mass psychosis — he has and probably will again — but mostly he’ll set off a mass walkout and leave the Republican Party as an isolated and ridiculed cult.

Painful to watch, unless you get into sadism

It’s downright rude to make fun of somebody who’s having a mental breakdown, but THIS GUY went out of his way to popularize the politics of cruelty.

What has become of the Grand Old Party? It’s a con man whose life is falling apart, and his shrinking legions of the deceived, most of whom will be in denial for the rest of their days.

 

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Patti Smith performing in Oslo in 2016. Photo by Oddbjørn Steffensen.

     In times of strife, we have our imagination, we have our creative impulse.

Patti Smith     

Bear in mind…

If you see what is right and fail to act on it, you lack courage.

Confucius

There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected.

Ada Lovelace

Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway of life itself.

Daisaku Ikeda

 

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Bernal, Quotidian kleptocratic perks

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travel expenses
OECD graphic, altered by The Panama News.

Speaking of travel expenses…

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

The plutocratic kleptocracy that the ruling joint criminal enterprise has imposed on us now allows us to show — more than before — the deformation of our society.

Determined opponents of citizen participation, the heads of the executive branch, with their cronies from the legislative and judicial branches, continue to open avenues for the mediocracy to become empowered. Today we find ourselves subjected to charlatans who have become “experts” in distorting the truth through self-censorship. It’s mandatory but presented as a demonstration of cunning.

Thus we see how illegalities and illegitimacies abound more and more in the field of public administration, one of them being per diem. I reproduce for my readers something from my consultation, on the subject of per diems, with an expert in the field, the university professor and former administrative vice-rector of the University of Panama, Federico Ardila Acuña, Master in Public Management, professor of the specialty for 32 years and with more than 20 years of experience in the public sector:

It turns out that in theory and in Panamanian law, the per diems constitute the prior or subsequent recognition, made in favor of a Public Servant for the expenses that he must incur — which corresponds to him — and is due to the need he has to move outside of the assigned official workplace and stipulated in his appointment and assignment of functions, either in fulfillment of these or to attend to related matters or assignments and special assignments. The per diems contemplate transportation, lodging and food expenses, exclusively, as traditionally established by the Panamanian budget legislation.They are covered for missions abroad and within the country.

The recognition and payment for consequence is for each mission. They are NOT an add-on to the salary of the position, so they are not part of the salary. For example, the permanent payment of per diems to police commissioners and sub-commissioners is ILLEGAL.

Day by day, the outrages that are perpetrated in the name of travel expenses, as well as the improper allocation of the same with the sponsorship of the comptroller and other competent authorities, is a burden that weighs heavily and adds to the social inequality that erodes our society.

 

 

 

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Hartmann, Ronald Reagan and student loan debt

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RR
Forgiving student debt is not a slap at anybody; it’s righting a moral wrong inflicted on millions by Reagan and his morbidly rich Republican buddies. Former President Ronald Reagan addressing the audience at the White House News Photographers Association dinner on May 18, 1983. Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/via Getty images.

Student loan debt is an American
malignancy born of Ronald Reagan

by Thom Hartmann

President Joe Biden just made good on his campaign promise to forgive billions in student debt. Republicans, predictably, have gone nuts.

When you search on the phrase “student debt forgiveness” one of the top hits that comes up is a Fox “News” article by a woman who paid off her loans in full.

There are millions of Americans like me,” the author writes, “for whom debt forgiveness is an infuriating slap in the face after years of hard work and sacrifice. Those used to be qualities we encouraged as an American culture, and if Biden gets his way, we’ll be sending a very different message to the next generation.

This is, to be charitable, bullsh*t. Forgiving student debt is not a slap at anybody; it’s righting a moral wrong inflicted on millions of Americans by Ronald Reagan and his morbidly rich Republican buddies.

Student debt is evil. It’s a crime against our nation, hobbling opportunity and weakening our intellectual infrastructure. Any nation’s single biggest asset is a well-educated populace, and student debt diminishes that. It hurts America.

Student debt at the scale we have in America doesn’t exist anywhere else in the rest of the developed world.

American students, in fact, are going to college for free right now in Germany, Iceland, France, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, because pretty much anybody can go to college for free in those countries—and dozens of others.

Student debt? The rest of the developed world doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

Student debt largely didn’t exist here in America before the Reagan Revolution. It was created here in the 1980s, intentionally, and we can intentionally end it here and join the rest of the world in again celebrating higher education.

Forty years on from the Reagan Revolution, student debt has crippled three generations of young Americans: over 44 million people carry the burden, totaling a $1.8 trillion drag on our economy that benefits nobody except the banks earning interest on the debt and the politicians they pay off.

But that doesn’t begin to describe the damage student debt has done to America since Reagan, in his first year as governor of California, ended free tuition at the University of California and cut state aid to that college system by 20 percent across-the-board.

After having destroyed low-income Californians’ ability to get an education in the 1970s, he then took his anti-education program national as president in 1981.

When asked why he’d taken a meat-axe to higher education and was pricing college out of the reach of most Americans, he said—much like Ron DeSantis might today—that college students were “too liberal” and America “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.”

Four days before the Kent State Massacre of May 5, 1970, Governor Reagan called students protesting the Vietnam war across America “brats,” “freaks,” and “cowardly fascists.” As The New York Times noted at the time, he then added:

If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement!

Before Reagan became president, states paid 65 percent of the costs of colleges, and federal aid covered another 15 or so percent, leaving students to cover the remaining 20 percent with their tuition payments.

That’s how it works—at a minimum—in many developed nations; in many northern European countries college is not only free, but the government pays students a stipend to cover books and rent.

Here in America, though, the numbers are pretty much reversed from pre-1980, with students now covering about 80 percent of the costs. Thus the need for student loans here in the USA.

As soon as he became president, Reagan went after federal aid to students with fervor. Devin Fergus documented for The Washington Post how, as a result, student debt first became a widespread thing across the United States during the early ‘80s:

No federal program suffered deeper cuts than student aid. Spending on higher education was slashed by some 25 percent between 1980 and 1985. … Students eligible for grant assistance freshmen year had to take out student loans to cover their second year.

It became a mantra for conservatives, particularly in Reagan’s cabinet. Let the kids pay for their own damn “liberal” education.

Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, told a reporter in 1981:

I don’t accept the notion that the federal government has an obligation to fund generous grants to anybody that wants to go to college. It seems to me that if people want to go to college bad enough then there is opportunity and responsibility on their part to finance their way through the best way they can. … I would suggest that we could probably cut it a lot more.

After all, cutting taxes for the morbidly rich was Reagan’s first and main priority, a position the GOP holds to this day. Cutting education could “reduce the cost of government” and thus justify more tax cuts.

Reagan’s first Education Secretary, Terrel Bell, wrote in his memoir:

Stockman and all the true believers identified all the drag and drain on the economy with the ‘tax-eaters’: people on welfare, those drawing unemployment insurance, students on loans and grants, the elderly bleeding the public purse with Medicare, the poor exploiting Medicaid.

Reagan’s next Education Secretary, William Bennett, was even more blunt about how America should deal with the “problem” of uneducated people who can’t afford college, particularly if they were African American:

I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime,” Bennett said, “you could—if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.

These various perspectives became an article of faith across the GOP. Reagan’s OMB Director David Stockman told Congress that students were “tax eaters … [and] a drain and drag on the American economy.” Student aid, he said, “isn’t a proper obligation of the taxpayer.”

This was where, when, and how today’s student debt crisis was kicked off in 1981.

Before Reagan, though, America had a different perspective.

Both my father and my wife Louise’s father served in the military during World War II and both went to college on the GI Bill. My dad dropped out after two years and went to work in a steel plant because mom got pregnant with me; Louise’s dad, who’d grown up dirt poor, went all the way for his law degree and ended up as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Michigan.

They were two among almost 8 million young men and women who not only got free tuition from the 1944 GI Bill but also received a stipend to pay for room, board, and books. And the result—the return on our government’s investment in those 8 million educations—was substantial.

The best book on that time and subject is Edward Humes’ Over Here: How the GI Bill Transformed the American Dream, summarized by Mary Paulsell for the Columbia Daily Tribune:

[That] groundbreaking legislation gave our nation 14 Nobel Prize winners, three Supreme Court justices, three presidents, 12 senators, 24 Pulitzer Prize winners, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 17,000 journalists, 22,000 dentists and millions of lawyers, nurses, artists, actors, writers, pilots and entrepreneurs.

When people have an education, they not only raise the competence and vitality of a nation; they also earn more money, which stimulates the economy. Because they earn more, they pay more in taxes, which helps pay back the government for the cost of that education.

In 1952 dollars, the GI Bill’s educational benefit cost the nation $7 billion. The increased economic output over the next 40 years that could be traced directly to that educational cost was $35.6 billion, and the extra taxes received from those higher-wage-earners was $12.8 billion.

In other words, the U.S. government invested $7 billion and got a $48.4 billion return on that investment, about a $7 return for every $1 invested.

In addition, that educated workforce made it possible for America to lead the world in innovation, R&D, and new business development for three generations. We invented the transistor, the integrated circuit, the internet, new generations of miracle drugs, sent men to the moon, and reshaped science.

Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln knew this simple concept that was so hard for Reagan and generations of Republicans since to understand: when you invest in your young people, you’re investing in your nation.

Jefferson founded the University of Virginia as a 100% tuition-free school; it was one of his three proudest achievements, ranking higher on the epitaph he wrote for his own tombstone than his having been both president and vice president.

Lincoln was equally proud of the free and low-tuition colleges he started. As the state of North Dakota notes:

Lincoln signed the Morrill Act on July 2, 1862, giving each state a minimum of 90,000 acres of land to sell, to establish colleges of engineering, agriculture, and military science. … Proceeds from the sale of these lands were to be invested in a perpetual endowment fund which would provide support for colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts in each of the states.

Fully 76 free or very-low-tuition state colleges were started because of Lincoln’s effort and since have educated millions of Americans including my mom, who graduated from land-grant Michigan State University in the 1940s, having easily paid her minimal tuition working as a summer lifeguard in Charlevoix.

Every other developed country in the world knows this, too: student debt is a rare or even nonexistent thing in most western democracies. Not only is college free or close to free around much of the world; many countries even offer a stipend for monthly expenses like our GI Bill did back in the day.

Thousands of American students are currently studying in Germany at the moment, for example, for free. Hundreds of thousands of American students are also getting free college educations right now in Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, among others.

Republican policies of starving education and cranking up student debt have made U.S. banks a lot of money, but they’ve cut America’s scientific leadership in the world and stopped three generations of young people from starting businesses, having families, and buying homes.

The damage to the working class and poor Americans, both in economic and human terms, is devastating. It’s a double challenge for minorities.

And now President Biden has eliminated $10,000 of student debt for low-income people and up to $20,000 for those who qualified for Pell Grants.

The official Republican response came instantly, as USA Today reporter Joey Garrison noted on Twitter:

The @RNC on Biden’s student loan debt cancellation: ‘This is Biden’s bailout for the wealthy. As hardworking Americans struggle with soaring costs and a recession, Biden is giving a handout to the rich.

Which is particularly bizarre. “Wealthy” and “rich” people—by definition—don’t need student loan forgiveness because they don’t have student loans. How gullible do Republicans think their voters are?

Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Twitter that student loan forgiveness was “completely unfair.” That’s the same Republican congresswoman who just had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven, and happily banked the money without a complaint.

Republican members of Congress, in fact, seem to be among those in the front of the debt-forgiveness line with their hands out, even as billionaires bankroll their campaigns and backstop their lifestyles.

As the Center for American Progress noted on Twitter in response to a GOP tweet whining that “If you take out a loan, you pay it back”:

Member —— Amount in PPP Loans Forgiven
Matt Gaetz (R-FL) – $476,000
Greg Pence (R-IN) – $79,441
Vern Buchanan (R-FL) – $2,800,000
Kevin Hern (R-OK) $1,070,000
Roger Williams (R-TX) $1,430,000
Brett Guthrie (R-KY) $4,300,000
Ralph Norman (R-SC) $306,250
Ralph Abraham (R-AL) $38,000
Mike Kelly (R-PA) $974,100
Vicki Hartzler (R-MO) $451,200
Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) $988,700
Carol Miller (R-WV) $3,100,000

So, yeah, Republicans are complete hypocrites about forgiving loan debt, in addition to pushing policies that actually hurt our nation (not to mention the generation coming up).

Ten thousand dollars in debt forgiveness is a start, but if we really want America to soar, we need to go away beyond that.

Just like for-profit health insurance, student loans are a malignancy attached to our republic by Republicans trying to increase profits for their donors while extracting more and more cash from working-class families.

Congress should not only zero-out existing student debt across our nation but revive the post-war government support for education—from Jefferson and Lincoln to the GI Bill and college subsidies—that the Reagan, Bush, Bush II, and the Trump administrations have destroyed.

Then, and only then, can the true “making America great again” begin.

 

 

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A shopping and scouting errand into Anton

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Anton Dog
Usually there are more dogs around the bus stops and stores in Anton, but this was a rainy Saturday afternoon and there were not a lot of shoppers out either. So slimmer pickings for the dogs who have regular homes but come to mooch treats from folks around the stores near the highway. This dog just came in from the rain to catch a few winks at the piquera until the storm passed. Photo by Eric Jackson, waiting in the bus to go back to El Bajito.

Getting groceries in a conflicted time

A by Eric Jackson

It’s a tight budget weekend, down to the coin stash and with a few gaps to fill in order to get the livestock fed. The dogs are easier, but cats are more demanding. I can dig up some yucca from the back yard, season it with chicken and achiote powder and the dog will eat it. The cats will not.

I set out in the rain. There was a tropical storm on the way and it would get worse. I had an umbrella in my chacara, but for the time being I left it there. Colonense as I was raised, a few drop just means “viene el agua” and as I had my Detroit Tigers hat on I could be reasonably assured that I would not catch The Brain Fever from the rain. 

Plan A was to get some michita bread, lonja (slab bacon), some cheap meat, canned ground sardines and eggs. Rice, a bit of crunchy cat food, a bit of powdered milk and packages of various flavoring I had. Being a lean weekend, no cheese curls for the cats on this shopping run.

One of the early agreements in the talks between protesters and the government in Penonome was an expansion of the number of food staples subject to price controls. The deal is not to take this out of the hide of Panamanian farmers. one of the mechanisms was to eliminate the import duties on pork bellies so that the supermarkets — or wholesalers — would not have to sell lonja at a loss. But Panama has pig farmers, too, who are not thrilled about the loss of their protective tariff.

Enforcement of the price controls is under the aegis of the Consumers Protection and Defense of Competition Authority (ACODECO), which already had the job of enforcing the price limits on a few basic staples that remained controlled after a long process of whittling down a much longer list that we used to have here.

The Chamber of Commerce has always railed against any sort of price controls, and they’re talking rebellion against the new ones. As in, they were not at the table, they don’t recognized the presidential decree as legitimate and they vow to fight it. Meanwhile, some of these changes can’t be made at the snap of the fingers. That the food prices of the purportedly controlled items were going up or staying the same in many venues led the indigenous delegation to walk out of the talks, after Carlos Motta, head of the Agricultural Marketing Institute (IMA), walked out in the wake of an argument with labor leaders about the subject. (He apologized and came back.)

(As I work on an Internet connection whose price nearly doubled without prior notice and without a hearing before the ASEP public utilities authority, and as small media working in the informal sector never get consulted about anything, I am underwhelmed by the Chamber’s sense of justice).

Nito has no magic price wand, but he has sent out ACODECO inspectors to hand out fines over ignored price controls. Plus, to bring the indigenous delegation back — but not as a special favor, but because the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca is especially poor and especially got no relief from the agreed controls — the government agreed to set up IMA retail and wholesale distribution outlets in each of the semi-autonomous comarca’s nine districts.

What about Anton? This was a necessarily small grocery run, but shopping as I do at several of the places along the Pan-American Highway.

The bakery was fine about the price of michita bread. I got a dozen eggs as a penny lower than what had been the price a month ago, but found none of price controlled sardines at that place, and no lonja. At another supermarket, no lonja and the price of chicken hot dogs, one of the items to be newly controlled, was up. Another cheap favorite for both dogs and cats, went up from 79 to 99 cents a pound last week. An addition that the dogs like with the rice, lentils, are on the price control list but there weren’t any at that price anywhere that I looked. At a third place, also no lonja, and also no price-controlled sardines. I got a couple of cans of fish at the slightly higher price.

The biggest scandal with regard to the price controls? Arroz de primera — rice with few broken grains, so as to be “Grade A” — is still in short supply. Turned out that just after the price controls, the millers started packaging arroz de segunda (inferior quality) in arroz de primera bags. ACODECO swept down on those packagers and the stores carrying the misbranded rice. They didn’t put anyone out of business but misbranded stuff was taken out of circulation and the better white rice has since been in short supply in most of the stores. (Me? I’m a hippie. I’ll by white rice when I need to but both me and the dogs prefer brown rice — arroz integral — and obtain it at a higher price than the white stuff.)

Do I want to point a finger and assign blame? I do have certain suspicions about contrived shortages, but then these are hard times and people are buying up the cheaper stuff because that’s what we can afford. Plus, when price controls are imposed on things that are in the chain of commerce, the discount to the consumer can’t reasonably be expected to be instantaneous. 

While shopping the storm front moved through in its full force. This dog at the top of the page found shelter at one of the little local bus terminals and slept it off. On the ride home from Anton, there were trees blown over onto the highway, then on the road to the neighborhood where I live, which goes all the way to Altos de La Estancia and El Valle. Mostly it was teak trees that fell, shallow rooted and not endemic to Panama as they are. 

At home I was greeted by animals anxious for dinner. It was French toast with grated sardines and shrimp powder, all mixed and cooked together, for the cats. They inhaled it. For the dogs it was white rice with chicken dogs, cooked with in chicken and achiote powder, which they in their turn gobbled up. Substandard but everyone got fed.

The storm brought a lot of water onto each of my porches, but no damage at a glance. However, it brought me “free” medicine — a big fresh cecropia (guarumo) leaf was blown onto my back porch.

 

 

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Genre-bending, mostly subtitled mix / Mezcla de géneros, la mayoría subtitulada

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Canciones para adentrarse en diferentes idiomas y culturas
Songs to step into different languages and cultures

Dua Lipa – New Rules
https://youtu.be/YXFPu1wPPJQ

Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
https://youtu.be/ZxhbpA6kJHc

Bob Marley – No Woman, No Cry
https://youtu.be/2Dq33kK9nDU

Julieta Venegas – Limón y sal
https://youtu.be/Z_6PK7A3_ME

Big Mama Mae Thornton – Hound Dog
https://youtu.be/aIe78PbCMg8

Vladimir Kostadinovic Group & Melissa Aldana – Balkan Flood
https://youtu.be/QI7wNYa1Auw

Aventura – El Perdedor
https://youtu.be/fmp93hPeaSM

Kumbia Queers – Delivery de Vino
https://youtu.be/SGfNwQXv6UA

Sigrid – Burning Bridges
https://youtu.be/rgOBEcd1rD8

Samantha Fish – Twisted Ambition
https://youtu.be/G18ygqdnIcw

Lord Panama & The Víctor Boa Trio – The Bomb
https://youtu.be/4dBUizFlhu8

Carla Morrison – Falta de Respeto
https://youtu.be/5zwPDnv9Ueo

Lee Oskar – Before the Rain
https://youtu.be/tHR63C9lurI

Churupaca – No se vive feliz comiendo perdiz
https://youtu.be/TziaTPee0G0

Robert Johnson – Me and the Devil Blues
https://youtu.be/pfLGJLHGVFs

 

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Dinero

Editorials: Panama’s impasse; and MAGA gets manic

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talks in Penonome
Talks in Penonome, where agreement has been elusive on key issues. Ministry of Economy and Finance photo.

We slide toward a relatively nonviolent dictatorship

The business alliance centered around the Chamber of Commerce is demanding everything and rejecting all other forces in society. They are not at the table in Penonome and it would not help matters if they were.

The three alliances at the table with the government in Penonome are on many issues at an impasse with the government. On the issues over which agreements have been reached, the big business crowd says they don’t recognize them and some of them are openly flouting them.

So, without an agreement, the government decreed a price reduction for many medications and broke up the exclusive importer / distributor mafia. The latter, with support from most of the rabiblanco media, are raising spurious technical objections.

In some of the grocery stores, some of the price controlled items have just disappeared, and for some others the legal price limits have been ignored. So the government has sent in ACODECO to hand out fines for the egregious defiance. There is also a business-instigated rice shortage, as there was widespread mislabeling of rice quality until ACODECO stepped in about that, too.

In the Ngabe-Bugle Comarca there was hardly any food price relief at all, which led the indigenous alliance to walk out of the talks. But then, the government stepped in with a promise to set up state food stores through the Agricultural Martketing Institute (IMA) in each of the comarca’s districts.

Perhaps President Cortizo might be personally persuadable to move against corruption, but his own party’s legislative caucus, local officials and patronage beneficiary base are unlikely to go along with the serious changes to the constitution and laws needed to deal with it.

There are this and that real technical issues, and some legitimate concerns, but what’s happening is that the privileged, asserting high-sounding principles, are digging in their heels to defend the untenable.

They don’t agree, they weren’t at the table, so forget that? Were any of the micro-businesses that make a living using the Internet in the room when wireless Internet rates went way up? Was there even a hearing? And what about the largest economic sector of all, in terms of the number of people involved – are the informal businesses in which about half of the economically active population labors ever consulted about anything?

Look at the structure of things here. There is a series of impasses, largely driven by a few family businesses that have called dibs on the national economy. Those jams are broken by presidential decrees or by commands to public institutions. It might be necessary to work that way under the circumstances. Nito may not be cut from the Benito Mussolini or Fidel Castro mold. However, democracy and civil discourse are being sidelined by presidential decrees. Perhaps necessary, but it’s not a good sign.

  

The social media screech of an already disturbed man falling into madness.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad

There are still more than two months to go before US Election Day, but that things would be turning as they are was foreseeable months ago.

After all the preposterous lies and the January 6 stunt, a guy who lost the popular vote by some seven million votes in 2020 had a weak hand for starters. He managed to overplay it at about every turn.

The big blunder was by the GOP-packed Supreme Court, not only by repealing Roe v Wade by threatening such privacy rights as legal contraceptives, and same-sex couples being able to marry. It delighted the zealots and bigots, but annoyed most Americans and set of some serious organizing that handed Republicans unexpected defeats in a Kansas referendum and an upstate New York special election.

They made waving assault rifles around one of their usual gestures, then blame shifting after each day’s massacre the next part of their routine.

They put up a gallows in front of the Capitol to threaten Mike Pence into going along with their plans to overturn the 2020 election result. They wiped Secret Service and Pentagon cell phones. But snobs that they are, they let the people they deluded into assaulting Congress fend for themselves. Also the lawyers that they sent in to make unethical motions and who are now being disbarred. Of course some of the people who did their dirty work are turning state’s evidence against them. The MAGAs who haven’t completely lost their minds will see justice coming and some of them have good reason to fear it. Today that side of the political equation is being scattered by winds for which they had not prepared.

In the meantime, the MAGAs by and large “won” the Republican primaries. It’s likely to cost them in November. Especially so, because a con man from the bizarre universe of “reality TV” has recruited a dumb jock, a quack TV doctor and other unsuitable candidates to lead a Republican charge to take back the houses of Congress. Theirs is a hardened but shrinking base.

Democrats need to do their work between now and then to pull off that rare midterm election where the president’s party picks up seats in Congress. Nothing is to be taken for granted.

Then, are there stateswomen and statesmen in the Democratic ranks? Those sorts of people will not be looking to “reach across the aisle” to those who would hang them so much as create the conditions for a working majority and a loyal opposition, a good country rather than a would-be great empire, a calm country with reasonable fact-based arguments among people who will never fully agree, and with fair elections to decide the issues that can’t be compromised for the time being.

Papa Madiba. ILO Photo.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

Nelson Mandela

Bear in mind…

There are times when dreams sustain us more than facts.

Helen Fagin

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.

Pablo Neruda

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Maya Angelou