Part 6: What's going on in America (and what's wrong with America.)

QUOTE from Satchel Paige: "I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation."

LEARNING about what's going on and what's wrong with  TEXAS and WISCONSIN. (Info from Jim Hightower's LOWDOWN.)

TEXAS: Rick Perry is the Republican governor of Texas. He brags that he's made Texas "corporate-friendly." Here's what that friendship buys you. Wages in Texas are the 44th lowest in the nation. Texas is at or near the top when it comes to the poverty rate, near the top in the percentage of people with no health insurance. near the top in the income gap between rich and poor, and near the top with the most regressive tax system, the cost of electric bills, and the rate of high school dropouts.

Then there's the $27 billion budget deficit Perry has run up - the second-highest in the country. So who's expected to bear this deficit burden? Guess who? It's the middle class and the poor, of course, including at least 100,000 teachers who are now getting their "excessed" notices. And Perry's budget chops current school spending by nearly $8 billion, even as student enrollment soars. Texas Rick is making teachers and kids absorb the shortfall because he can't bear to hike the meager taxes paid by corporations and the rich, nor will he stand for eliminating their tax loopholes and state subsidies.Texas budget writers admit that they will not begin to meet the state's basic needs and that Perry's stripped down budget will cost Texans 335,000 more jobs in the next two years.

Texas is another example of what's wrong with America.

WISCONSIN: I'm not going to spend any time on Wisconsin. With all the publicity Wisconsin got this winter most of us know what going on there. But it is another Koch Brothers supported effort. Governor Wal;ker is described in the LOWDOWN as especially arrogant, autocratic, and abusive in trying to ram his bills into law, essentially operating as an above-the-law, tinhorn tyrant.

(This ends my Six Part Series with what's going on in America and what's wrong with America. It boggles my mind that conservative Republicans always expect the middle class and the poor to bear the brundt while the rich and the corporations have no responsibility to improve the situation. The middle class and the poor did not create the economic mess we're in. It was created by conservatives with the Bush tax cuts, too much spending put on the credit card by the Bush administration and their unquenchable thirst for greed and money.)

HUMOR for today: These are some Yogi Berra comments about the game of baseball. Yogi said:

"Ninety percent of this game is half .mental."
"Baseball ain't nothing like football. You can't make up no trick plays."
"Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time."
"Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting."
"Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the street."
"So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face."