Vonnegut, I fear, as a teacher at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is working with adults who have a reasonably solid conception of their career path. They were, after all, paying no small sum of cash for the privilege of working under his tutelage.

As a teacher, I was usually pretty good at helping people become what they wanted to become. I didn’t try to make them resemble me.
—to Mark Vonnegut on 20 March 1972, p. 180 Kurt Vonnegut: Letters.

One of the frustrating aspects, for me, of working with adolescents on the cusp of adulthood is ferreting out exactly what they wish to do after graduation. I confess that I did not become, ultimately, what I thought I would after I left Warren High School in 1973, but what I am today is a natural outgrowth of those embryonic imaginings. What I find most often among my students is a wish to become magically famous (and rich, why that is second is another story). They seldom have any idea of how they may progress from poor student to famous person other than, well, someone recognizes their genius and makes them famous.

Good luck with that.

I’ll be watch8ing Sunday night. You should be too at or a watch party near you, too.

Our Revolution emails:

Our Revolution is thrilled to host an energizing national livestream event this Sunday, April 23rd to kick off our summer of organizing. In a showcase of our grassroots organizing efforts since our work officially began last August, we will present our vision to transform American politics and implement our progressive agenda.

Sign up to watch the April 23rd State of the Revolution livestream at a watch party near you and help grow our movement for the next phase of the political revolution.

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• Celebrate our victories at the local, state, and national levels;
• Outline the integral role you will play in building our movement; and
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Our movement has the potential to be the largest force for progressive political action this country has ever seen — but it will take all of us getting involved at the grassroots for it to be successful. Will you join a State of the Revolution livestream event on April 23 with progressives in your community?

Our political revolution relies on people like you. Your dedication makes our work possible.

In solidarity,

The Team at Our Revolution

Perhaps Governor John Richard Kasich would have been smarter to deploy those 37 Ohio State Troopers he sent to North Dakota to protect Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access Pipeline to watch another of the company’s pipeline projects—The Rover Pipeline—which may have dumped millions of gallons of toxic liquids into Ohio’s farmlands, wetlands and rivers leading into Lake Erie.

I confess that I was ignorant of the pipeline until this week. I’ve been watching states far away while Energy Transfer Partners (which donated $250,000 to President Donald John Trump inauguration fund) was setting up shop to poison the water in my own backyard.

The pipeline crosses, in part, Ashland, Wayne and Stark counties. All of Wayne, and part of Stark counties fall under the protection of my representative, Jim Bupkis* Renacci. The reports I’m checked this morning are imprecise as to whether the spill south of Navarre is in the 16th congressional district or not. In any case, the Rover Pipeline is Jim Renacci’s problem.

As of this morning I’m shifting my attention from DAPL to Rover.

Other related headlines include: Rover pipeline’s 1.5-Million-Gallon Spill Was Near, But Did Not Contaminate, Canton’s Water Source; Rover Pipeline drilling fluid spilled into wetland; The Rover Pipeline leaked millions of gallons of drilling fluid into Ohio wetlands; Rover Pipeline work dumps 50,000 gallons of drilling fluid in Mifflin Twp. wetlands ; Residents Against Rover Pipeline Expand Fight Through Strategy and Support; and Monroe continues oil and gas development.

*After extensive searches, I have been unable to determine what Renacci’s middle initial stands for. Until I can find a reliable reference to Renacci full name, Bupkis will do.

Previously…

The hometown Boston Globe offers a litany of reasons because, well, it’s complicated, but you got to protect the brand, right?

Here’s what The New York Times had to say:

During a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday, President Trump singled out several members of the New England Patriots, including wide receiver Danny Amendola, calling for them to raise a hand or step forward for acknowledgment. But Amendola was not there, nor were two dozen or more other players for the Super Bowl champions.

The customary White House visit for sports champions has become especially fraught since Trump was elected, with some athletes saying they would reject an invitation for political reasons. The issue was stark on Wednesday, when a relatively small contingent of Patriots players flanked the president.

A Patriots spokesman, Stacey James, said Wednesday night that 34 players had attended, similar to the turnout when President George W. Bush hosted them in 2004 and 2005. He said that more than 45 players attended the ceremonies in 2002, after the franchise’s first Super Bowl, and that in 2015, when Barack Obama was president, the number of players approached 50.

James said that one reason substantially fewer players showed up this time as compared to 2015 was that some veteran players did not see the need to go twice in three years.

Bostonians are pissed but even the Bill O’Reilly enabling Fox News noted the diminished crowd size in general and Tom Brady’s nothing-to-do-with-President-Trump decision to be elsewhere.

For a president who fanatically reminds us that size does matter, you would have thought that a competent media staff would have looked at the 2015 photo and realized that they could not permit any tiny-hands comparisons to be made.

Oops, too late.

Best line (from Stephen Colbert): By moral standards [Bill O’Reilly] was a self-righteous landfill of angry garbage.

Maybe. I suppose. I feel really uncomfortable with that idea.

If there was one central trope to the 2016 campaign to make Senator Bernie Sanders President of the United States, it was that Bernie was not supported by the billionaires. He made no distinction between bad billionaires and good billionaires. That was, and I think continues to be, the smart move.

Ralph Nader, writing in What are the Super-Rich Democrats Waiting For?, disagrees:

Democratic Party loyalists are always complaining about the big-money fat cats behind the Republican Party’s candidates and platform. Over the last few election cycles, the Democratic Party has lost most state legislatures, governorships, the US Senate, the US House of Representatives and the White House. Republican control of the Senate is also leading to control of the US Supreme Court. It is time for Democrats to up the ante big time!

Instead of complaining constantly about the Koch brothers’ zillions pouring into the political system, the Democrats need to start asking what their billionaire supporters are willing to do in the era of the authoritarian Trumpsters. Democrats Continue Reading »

From the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus:

It’s Still On!

Tonight, Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelly, realizing he didn’t have the votes to pass the Q Deal as an “emergency ordinance,” chose to postpone the vote another week. He hopes that he can buy off one of the six council members that have, thus far, stood with us in opposition to this deal. We say enough is enough! Kevin Kelly’s backroom deals with billionaires about how to spend OUR tax dollars needs to stop. Thank you to those who have stood up for the people and against this bad deal. The training is still on for this evening at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church.

In addition, we are disgusted with some pro-deal leaders who have made threatening remarks towards some of our members. They have bullied the people for the last time! We strongly denounce their crass and vulgar actions and will only fight harder for what we know is right, as a consequence. If anyone receives threats from labor leaders, Q employees, Cleveland or county government officials regarding this issue, please let us know immediately.

Steve Holecko
CCPC Political Director
440.220.1874

Tristan Rader
CCPC Operations Director
440.315.2852

Yvonka Hall
CCPC Outreach Director
216.802.8101

While the members, like myself, and leaders of the CCPC are unpaid, there are costs associated with the organization. Please consider making a donation to help keep the fight against the billionaires alive. Thanks.

This is NOT another meaningless city election.

In 2017 it can’t be.

Cleveland is a Distressed City. It must change.

Too many of its citizens are under extreme distress. One can feel it. Read it in the daily headlines. See it in the statistics of need. From lead poisoning, to gun downs, to infant mortality. Hard to not see or feel.

And that has to be the major theme of any campaign to defeat Mayor Frank Jackson. Step one. He must go. Stress.

Preparation of the political soil has already started.

Ironically, the forces that have had a strangle-hold on the city for the past 25 years made a critical mistake. It has helped trigger a demand for change.

The reigning cabal overreached. Too sure of itself. Comfortable in the lack of any opposition for so long.

So it moved without considering any revolt to its plans possible.

It had been on a real roll.

Look at how high they were flying.

Not satisfied with a quarter percent sales tax (to 8 percent) for of 20-years worth $800 million for a convention center and a county-built hotel (doomed to lose money); or the passage of a 20-year, $260-million extension of the sin tax; nor with a $330-million distressed neighborhood Opportunity Corridor by-pass; or a $50-million transit-diverting Public Square; or a voted 25 percent increase in the city payroll tax to 2.5 percent, the ruling clique simply wanted more!

It thought it could get away with another grab at no political cost. Everything going our way, they thought. Why not more?

They were rolling the dice and winning. Why stop?

What more did they want?

They brazenly reached for a multi-million dollar tax infusion for the Quick Arena. It was a grab by those accustomed to getting what they want when they want. Some free bucks from Cuyahoga County; some gratis dollars ($88-million) from the City of Cleveland. Big bucks. Who’d stand in their way?

So they saw their chance and they took it.

They did not count on two things. They hadn’t had to worry about opposition since the White Knight Dennis Kucinich left office. No real opposition. Of any kind. A docile populace. Just roll over them. Black politics ascended but satisfied or decayed.

And they made their overreach just as their boy at City Hall Mayor Frank Jackson made his overreach. Wanting to ride his mayoral horse to another four years. To extend his reign to a record 16 years. Too much for any such job. Especially, when he has done such a poor job.

They saw their chance and they took it.

What they didn’t count on was the rise of any opposition. They had bought everyone, they thought.

But some were not as submissive as the cabal believed.

Up rose the Greater Cleveland Congregation, a community organization of religious and other community groups. And organized.

The times, seasoned by national dissent, fertilized the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus. Protesters.

Together they rebelled. Their motto of rejection: “Not All In.” Open rejection of the arena deal. The big boys thought all was under control. It wasn’t.

The protests told them (and their bought politicians) this sale was not to be that easy.

They saw, felt, and knew of the distress in so many parts of the city.

Still the cabal—made up of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Downtown Alliance, and when needed such entities as the Cleveland Foundation, the Gund Foundation and the offshoots from the Plain Dealer to the Forest City gang, construction labor (of all sellouts) and others too numerous to name—was caught off guard.

What they thus produced was a vocal enemy.

So where does that put us?

In a better position. I’ve just heard that Council President Kevin Kelley, fearful of losing more than the six votes, didn’t present the arena legislation for third and final hearing Monday evening.

Sorry Danny but maybe you helped wake up this community.

They just couldn’t swallow this one.

By Roldo Bartimole…

First published by Have Coffee Will Write on DATE.

Also by Roldo Bartimole…

As I was walking through the teachers area one day I overheard an English teacher lament: Gawd I hate grammar!

While I continue to post daily updates on important stories concerning the Dakota Access Pipe Line under the Keep Carbon In The Ground banner, two stories popped up this morning that I feel deserve front-page treatment. The first concerns our governor John Richard Kasich and his decision at the beginning of November 2016 to send 37 Ohio State Troopers to confront protesters at Standing Rock.

Carrie Blackmore Smith, reporting in Kasich: I sent Ohio troopers to assist with security at Dakota Access Pipeline for the Cincinnati Enquirer writes:

As his administration continues to withhold details about the roles 37 troopers played at the pipeline protest in North Dakota last fall, Ohio Gov. John Kasich confirmed last week that he approved sending them.

“They can’t go there on their own, they have to ask me,” Kasich said, referring to Ohio State Highway Patrol, during an April 10 meeting with The Enquirer’s editorial board.

It might seem obvious for this power to rest with the governor, but until Monday, Kasich’s office had not provided a straight answer as to who authorized the mutual aid trip.

Ohio governors do not have a great track record when the topic of deploying force against protesters. That, perhaps, is why Gov. Kasich is hesitant to let Ohioans know what those 37 troopers did in our names.

As the highway patrol has refused to release details and records about Ohio’s role in the situation, tensions have grown.

The state denied requests for information from both The Enquirer and the Columbus Dispatch, based on claims by state lawyers that the officers were undercover and providing security in a situation that could “prevent … or respond to acts of terrorism.”

Troopers undercover at Standing Rock? Experts say no.

Since then, videos have emerged of troopers spraying the protesters with chemicals and arming themselves before rushing in riot gear, in their state-owned cars, to clashes with protesters.

Last month, the Dispatch learned officers had used force against protestors.

A record was released “showing that a review by superiors found that the troopers’ use of force on the protesters was appropriate and within patrol policy,” according to the Dispatch article.

The state contends, however, that the public is not entitled to know either the frequency or type of force used, despite recommendations for transparency issued by the Ohio Collaborative Police-Community Advisory Board in 2015. The advisory board was organized with an executive order by Kasich, in response to clashes in Ohio and around the nation between police and the public.

When force is used in our names, we absolutely have the right, the obligation to know what our elected officials are doing and how that endangers all our lives.

Which brings me to the lie-fest that is the Presidency of Donald John Trump. Writing in Bold promises, fewer results: Trump’s executive orders don’t always live up to his claims, the Los Angeles Times‘ David Lauter reports:

It’s been one of President Trump’s favorite boasts since he took office: By his order, new oil and gas pipelines built in the U.S. will be made from American steel.

As is often the case, Trump has wrapped the claim into an anecdote he often repeats. Referring to his orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, Trump recalled last month that he interrupted the signing to ask, “Who makes those beautiful pipes for the pipeline?”

“Sir, they’re made outside of this country,” came the response.

“I said, ‘No more, no more.’ So we added a little clause—didn’t take much—that [if] you want to build pipelines in this country, you’re going to buy your steel, and you’re going to have it fabricated, here. Makes sense, right?”

The story has proved effective with Trump’s audiences, but it’s not an accurate description of what he did. It took the White House only a couple of weeks after the signing to acknowledge that the “Buy America” rule would not apply to Keystone. That would be unfair, officials said, because TransCanada, the company building the line, had long ago bought its pipe, some of it made in the U.S., and the rest in Canada, Italy and India.

Even so, White House officials have insisted that all future pipelines will be covered.

That’s not true, either, according to government documents and interviews with officials in the affected industries.

The actual number of pipelines covered by Trump’s Buy America rule could well be zero.

I have to remember this story the next time I encounter a Trumpist wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

I never imagined myself saying this privately, let alone in public, in print, but here I go: Thank you House Speaker Paul Davis Ryan and President Donald John Trump for awakening the sleeping giant and making Universal Healthcare a real possibility in America.

Ralph Nader, writing in Crash of Trumpcare Opens Door to Full Medicare for All explains:

You can thank House Speaker Ryan [who continues to avoid his constituents, JH] and President Trump for pushing their cruel health insurance boondoggle. This debacle has created a big opening to put Single-Payer or full Medicare for all prominently front and center. Single-Payer means everybody in, nobody out, with free choice of physician and hospital.

The Single-Payer system that has been in place in Canada for Decades comes in at half the cost per capita, compared to what the U.S. spends now. All Canadians are covered at a cost of about $4,500 per capita while in the U.S. the cost is over $9,000 per capita, with nearly 30 million people without coverage and many millions more underinsured.

Seventy-three members of the House of Representatives have co-signed Congressman Conyers’s bill, HR 676, which is similar to the Canadian system. These lawmakers like HR 676 because it has no copays, nasty deductibles or massive inscrutable computerized billing fraud, while giving people free choice and far lower administrative costs.

Often Canadians never even see a bill for major operations or procedures. Dr. Stephanie Wohlander, who has taught at Harvard Medical School, estimated Continue Reading »

Jesus and Mo explain the whole cruciversary thing…

*English is the only (at least European) language that uses a special word instead of the language’s version of Passover.

Meeting the expectations, or the imagined (ours not theirs) expectations of others is a fool’s errand. Most people, I’ve found, are too busy dealing with their own craziness and if they’re not, they ought to be. We all just need to get on with what we thing is right and let the rest of the world deal.

That, to me, seems to be what Kurt Vonnegut was getting at in this letter to Don Farber. Vonnegut wrote:

I know it is the place of the man to do brilliant things with money, but this manhood thing has me completely worn out. I just want to be a writer.

—to Don Farber on 7 January 1972, p. 179

Can there be a better way to spend our brief time here?

This may be the most extreme example of a personal marshmallow test I have ever come across. Nadeem Aslam, writing in I take delight that my initials in Urdu look like a pen by an inkwell for The Guardian relates his experience:

There are afternoons when I don’t write, using the internet instead. I see the internet as a beautiful resource. Next to my writing desk is a blank sheet of A4 paper on to which I jot down things I need to look up – some to do with the book I am writing, others completely unrelated. Only when the sheet is full—on both sides—do I log on: it can take up to 10 days to fill the sheet. Then I go through the items one by one. A particular scene from a half-forgotten movie; the contemporary reviews of a classic novel … I stay logged on for as long as it takes to look everything up. Afterwards I pin a new sheet next to the desk.

My own practice is similar, but I don’t know that I could follow Aslam’s example of not looking up information until both sides of my paper were full. I find waiting until I’m done with the task at hand, at most a matter of an hour or two, difficult enough. This could be an interesting experiment.