Jonathan's blog

Congressman Martin Olav Sabo of Minneapolis authored the Income Equity Act that would deny companies a tax deduction for excessive executive compensation, that is, the portion of the CEO's salary that is more than 25 times the salary of the lowest-paid full-time company employee. If starting pay for the lowliest file clerk is $18,000, then the CEO's salary in excess of $450,000 is not deductible as a business expense. The act has been kept bottled up in the House Ways and Means Committee...

That's a quote from p. 170 of Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America by Garrison Keillor.  I read it during our get-away trip to the UP.  Get yourself a copy or ask to borrow mine.

Apparently, Detroit is the most segregated metropolitan area in the U.S.  "More than 80 percent of Detroit's population is black; in the sprawling suburbs that surround it, less than 4 percent of the population is, according to the most recent surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau. In a region so polarized by skin colors, race is almost inescapable."

America has a democratic heart. It is a generous and redemptive land where you can lift your head and know that justice and equality and a decent sympathy for the underdog are part of the music and poetry of people. We honor openness of heart, a democratic style. You are polite to the checkout girls at the Piggly Wiggly and to the shoeshine man. You do not lord it over them as if you were the grand panjandrum of Mushti and they your serfs. You don't expect people to bow in your direction. Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, once ran into Frank Sinatra backstage at the Grammys and said, "And what is it you do?" He honestly didn't know. Sinatra wasn't insulted. It's a big country, not some little comic-opera aristocracy, and if people don't tip their hats when you walk into the room, well, don't take it too hard.

That's a quote from p. 148-149 of Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America by Garrison Keillor.  I read it during our get-away trip to the UP.  Get yourself a copy or ask to borrow mine.

25 % of men leave public restrooms without washing their hands.  10 % of women do.  Therefore, it's probably a good idea to use a paper towel to protect your hand from the door handle when you leave...there's not telling what germs were left there by the previous person.  For example, "...viruses can stay alive for two hours on hands, and for 20 minutes on hard, dry surfaces those germy hands touch."  The most delinquent hand washers were at the Braves' baseball stadium in Atlanta, where 37 % of men left without washing.

We live in a culture that so exploits sexuality that little kids grow up in a red-light district, even suburban and small town kids. Kids get wired early on into sexual roles, girls of 9 and 10 dress like streetwalkers, and it isn't left-wing academics who are selling this to them, it is corporate America, and it's the symbiotic link between puritans and pornographers (similar to that between prohibitionists and bootleggers) that makes the game go round. Janet Jackson's right tit, exposed on national TV at the Super Bowl, was the talk of the nation, more in bemusement - after all, the woman had products to promote - but the usual voices of shock and dismay were raised, thus raising the promotional value. Why do Republicans not get this? Their sulfurous views about sex, their obsession over it make the prize more attractive, and so, in the United States, girls under 15 are at least five times more likely to get pregnant than girls the same age in Old Europe where sex is viewed as an ordinary part of life and nothing to huff and puff about. A little secularism might help.

That's a quote from p. 111-112 of Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America by Garrison Keillor.  I read it during our get-away trip to the UP.  Get yourself a copy or ask to borrow mine.