I got a postcard from former Lorain Mayor Joe Koziura. Joe is selling equities and he's open for business here in Lorain, if Oskar or any of his friends want to make an investment?
Joe lost his mayor's election last fall because of rain, low voter turn out and his strenuous efforts to clean up and beautify Lorain. The anti-environmental forces were gunning for Joe; and of Joe's friends I was the only one who wanted to turn the campaign into an environmental contest. Viewed that way by the voters, I have no doubt Joe would have won. Matter of fact one of the things that I wanted to do was chain Joe to a tree in King's Woods(the ancestral home of Admiral King the victor of the Battle of Midway) and call in all the media. Joe then could read an over my dead body statement about preserving King's Woods. Unfortunately, I was the only one I know of who liked the idea. And my crony "Tatoo" did a bunch of really syrupy no bite "Joe's a nice guy" advertising. "Tatoo" even managed to get the back of his head in the TV commercials the little egomaniac. I was able to copy edit the newspaper/print stuff, and, I got "Tatoo" to drop the words "has been" in the print ads.
Tom
Johannes Schneider wrote:
> Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 4 Jul 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think of German democracy as very lively.
> >
> > In comparison to what? Have you ever visited Germany, studied its
> > politics, and looked over its welfare state? There's remarkable amounts of
> > local and regional activism there, a proportional representation system
> > which enables small parties to elect legislators, lots of Left parties to
> > choose from, and even fiery unions like IG Metall (none of which gets
> > reported in the business press, but that goes without saying). They make
> > the US look like the pathetic Second World oligarchy which, well, we
> > indeed are.
>
> I think Yoshie made it quite clear what she meant: there is little
> opposition to the revival of militarism and the neo-liberal economic
> policies in Germany. In fact the Red-Green government is the ideal executor
> of a bourgeoid agenda.
>
> To me it seems Dennis is preserving the kind memories of a Germany decades
> away. Most of the grass-root activism of the 70ties and 80ties have faded
> away. A few of the former activists are now in top government positions.
>
> When it comes to elections there is not much to choose from beside the PDS.
> Proportinal representation sounds good, but actually parties have to get
> over a 5% percent barrier in nation or state-wide elections to get anyone
> elected. Thus small parties are more or less banned from elections.
>
> Beeing a disciplined union member I would like to apply the old Roman motto:
> 'Nihil, nisi bene' when it comes to my union, the IG Metall.
>
> I can only agree with Yoshie about the her recommendations of the films of
> Fassbinder and Verhoeven. One a I would like to add is 'The lost honour of
> Katharina Blum' made after a novel by Heinrich Böll. BTW all of Heinrich
> Bölls writings give an excellent impression about post-war Germany.
>
> Since Dennis prefers a more scholary approach, this one is the standard work
> on democracy and occupational politics:
>
> Schmidt, Eberhard: Die verhinderte Neuordnung 1945-1952. Zur
> Auseinandersetzung um die Demokratisierung der Wirtschaft in den westlichen
> Besatzungszonen und in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, mit e. Vorw. von
> Wolfgang Abendroth, 7., um e. Nachw. erg. Aufl. Frankfurt/M. 1977 (1970)
> (Theorie und Praxis der Gewerkschaften)
>
> The life of Viktor Agartz is an example of what happened to Marxist unionist
> in the 50ties. There is an exellent website with a short introduction and
> some of his writings:
> http://www.hbv-online.de/agartz_index.htm
>
> Johannes