Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Jim Michaud and "rap sheets."

I hear that Jim Michaud, working in cahoots with crooked and corrupt Leech Lake tribal leader Carri "all I can steal" Jones, likes to distribute "rap sheets" of other people.

These goddamn thieves rob the people blind and then they cry about having to pay people decent wages.

Carri Jones and Jim Michaud became millionaires just off their their tribal salaries and yet they are so greedy they still have to steal from the people.

I wonder what kind of kick-back scam Michaud and Carri Jones are running now?

What I can't figure out is why this felon, Jim Michaud, doesn't distribute and post his own rap sheet... I bet John McCarthy could make him a real deal printing his rap sheet:

Ojibwe News, The
10-02-1998
Arrest of former Leech Lake tribal officials well worth the wait

The arrest and arraignment today of former Leech Lake tribal secretary-treasurer Jim Michaud and 5 others by federal agents on 14 count indictment for allegedly stealing $1.1 million in tribal funds, sounds only to familiar to the insurance scam of Skip Finn and company of a few years ago. No wonder the Leech Lake people have had such a hard making ends meet in the early to mid 1990's Bob, Charlie and Jim Michaud, Bob Gotchie along with David Murray and his wife Donna are charged in the indictment with allegedly conspiring to steal nearly $1.1 million of tribal funds, money laundering and tax offenses.

Ojibwe News, The
01-29-1999
Fosston husband and wife plead guilty in Leech Lake fraud scheme

A couple implicated in the diversion of $1.1 million from the Leech Lake Band of Chippewa has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud programs receiving federal funds.

Federal prosecutors said David Murray, 55, and his wife, Donna, 52, of Fosston, Minn., participated in a scheme involving the misuse of Leech Lake tribal checks. Indicated along with the Murrays was former tribal leader James D. Michaud, 42, of Bena, who allegedly agreed to send Donna Murray checks labeled "donations," for her to cash and kick back money to him.

Michaud later asked David Murray to send him an invoice for payment of construction work that hadn't been done, the indictment said, alleging that "Murray would cash the tribal check and give the proceeds back

A "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity."


I think we need to be bringing forward into the public square via "letters to the editor," forums, debates, tabling and leafleting some kind of demand for a "package of reforms" expanding on the New Deal as part of our participation in the 2014 and 2016 elections.

When I write about this I call it the "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity."

While I believe raising the Minimum Wage to a real living wage based on actual "cost-of-living" is very important, this alone won't solve the problems of working class poverty.

Workers without jobs are going to be poor.

Workers paid poverty wages are going to be poor.

Part-time employment has become the "new normal" along with massive unemployment.

The "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" would legislatively mandate the president and Congress to work together to attain and maintain full employment, make the Minimum Wage a real living wage based on actual "cost-of-living" factors, include a Basic Income Guarantee in line with the Minimum Wage and include creating massive job-creating universal social programs like a National Public Health Care System (12 to 15 million new jobs) and National Public Child Care System (3 to 5 million new jobs)--- free health care and free child care together with re-establishing the WPA, CCC and C.E.T.A. programs. Pay for everything with a Peace Dividend obtained from ending militarism and wars--- what this won't cover, tax the hell out of the rich.

Living in the wealthiest country in the world, is this too much to expect?

Why is it so difficult for some people and most politicians to understand that if you pay a worker poverty wages they and their families are going to be poor?

There are other things that should be included in this package of reforms, too.

Things like:

Earlier retirement with expended Social Security benefits.

A shortened work week with forty hours pay.

Four weeks vacation for everyone.

All of this creates jobs.

All of this combined makes every job a good, decent job.

Politicians talk about "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" when they are running for office; but once elected they run away from anything that provides these jobs and a better and improved standard-of-living for working people.

We need to understand that militarism and these dirty wars are killing our jobs the same way they kill people while squandering the wealth of our Nation created by labor... we need to "beat swords into plowshares" and this is what a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" would be all about.

Democrats have created the most massive job creating program since FDR's New Deal employing almost two-million people in over 350 communities spread out across the country...

These jobs are in the hideous Indian Gaming Industry where workers are employed in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws...

All of this created under the terms of special "Compacts" agreed to by politicians and the mobsters who own the slot machines.

Just like with the Minimum Wage, these Democratic Party politicians have used the levers of government to provide employers with cheap labor to enforce poverty when the objectives of government should be just the opposite--- to eradicate poverty by raising wages and putting everyone to work in safe and healthy workplaces.

There is a reason the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association has spent over fourteen-million dollars lobbying--- bribing politicians--- not to raise the Minimum Wage.

Poverty wages mean super-profits for employers.

The chronic sectarianism of the left is going to have to go.

These left-wing leaders had it right...








It's time for some roundtable discussions to sit down and talk these these through to get a meeting of the minds.