Guy T. Sturino
The country was riding high. Sure, times were tough. Both my parents worked fairly regularly, but still we moved often and we spent a few of those early years in government project housing. TV came to our house when I was eleven.
When I was twelve I became an alter boy at Holy Rosary Catholic Church. Like all alter boys, I even thought someday I'd become a Priest. By the time I finished high school that illusion was gone and with it my fondness for the Catholic church. But, that's another story all by itself.
In high school Civics class we learned that we were the greatest. We learned that Democracy meant capitalism and Communism was the same as socialism. We were taught that Democracy was good and that socialism was bad. At the same time Joe McCarthy was telling us that Communists were hiding under our beds and if the bomb didn't get us those Commies sure would.
I took all that with me when I joined the Marines in '59 when my education really got started. In Thailand I learned about Buddhism, and how people who had very little and worked from dawn to dusk every day were the happiest and most sharing as a group that I had met up until that time. In Japan I saw and lived in a culture built around working together to achieve great things as opposed to the do-it-yourself rugged individualism expected in the American culture. Along the way I got to visit the Philippines and South Korea.
When I came home in '63 I drove a bread truck for a while and then hand poured aluminum in a foundry until the GI bill was signed in '65. I got a degree in Applied Science and Technology and went to work for American Motors. After a few years as a chassis engineer I moved over to quality control and eventually traveled Europe assessing quality systems in supplier manufacturing facilities. By the time I had interacted with workers in England, Ireland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy, as well as China, South Korea and Japan, I had a totally new perspective on what was a fair return for a days work.
I worked for a couple of other companies before vacationing in Virginia Beach with my daughter and deciding that the tickets in my pocket for Riyadh and New Deli were simply too much after just returning from Beijing. I found a pizza shop for sale and bought it. Unfortunately I wasn't very successful as a restaurateur, and took a job as a substitute teacher for a year.
Undaunted, I applied for a job as a teacher assistant the next year and got it. Two years later I was teaching algebra in an alternative high school where, at 62 years old I retired.
I already had a serious interest in politics, but having the time to actually watch the House and the Senate on Cspan really got my interest. I learned things about our government that I certainly never heard about in school and I had to wonder why not. About 2005 I decided to begin sharing my thoughts on the web. By the middle of 2007 I sort of lost, not the interest, but the drive to communicate.
Recent events have changed that.
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Articles by Guy T. Sturino
November 08, 2011
The fallacies which are the underpinnings of political and economic discussion are intentional. Each lie creates a false philosophical argument which is destructive to the United States and every other industrialized nation. The purpose of the lies has become clear.
August 11, 2011
What kind of a country are we anyway? When was the last time you heard the cry, "One for all and all for one" other than in a movie? Calming people down doesn't sell anything but Prozac, so you certainly didn't hear it in the news. What kind of country are we? The kind that is destroying itself from within.
October 23, 2010
Watching political discussions/debates on Cable TV can be a painful experience for anyone who is the least bit critical of logical connections between cause and effect. The ideas of sanity and wisdom seem to be lost on an audience that is waiting for someone else to do their thinking and provide them reasons for what they already believe. The consequences can be horrendous.
September 23, 2010
When a poll suggests that 40% of Americans believe that Obama is not a U.S. citizen or that Obama is a Muslim, a person has to wonder about a couple of things. One, if people really believe what they say, how did they come to that conclusion and two, do they really believe what they say or is it code for something else? The answer to both questions, I believe, can be found on FOX News.
September 20, 2010
Here we are,gasping for breath because the Tea Party is sucking all the oxygen out of the air, and it's hard to get fired up without it. But if we don't get moving the Hooverville's and Hoover Flags which have been sprouting up around the country could be just the beginning.
September 14, 2010
Boiling capitalism down to it's basic properties gives us a good perspective on what our legislators tax debates mean to us in the middle.
September 11, 2010
Talking with friends and family about politics often makes me wonder about what passes for political news these days. Each issue has a life of it's own totally independent of all other available information. The result is that many people have opinions about some things which are in direct opposition to what they believe about other things. Often the words we use mean different things to us than the person who´s listening. The result is anything but communication.
September 02, 2009
Senators Grassley and Enzi, for several months, told us they were looking for ways to achieve bipartisan health care reform. Last week they both told us, in no uncertain terms, that they have no intention of voting for any reform and were proud of having slowed down the process. Also, last week Se...
July 22, 2007
Recently I listened to a speech by one of my favorite Senators, Byron Dorgan D-SD. He was angry at what he described as the incompetence of the current administration. It made me angry, too - at Senator Dorgan. The truth is that this administration, since its ordination by the Supreme Court, has...
May 07, 2007
It was another less than stellar performance by the Senate. The Dorgan/Snowe amendment to allow re-importation of prescription drugs passed the Senate on a voice vote. Unfortunately it was fed a poison pill by supporters of the pharmaceutical industry prior to being passed. An amendment by Thad C...
May 02, 2007
Today a visibly emotional Senator Robert Byrd stood to say, “Thank God for Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont. Thank God.” That was all he said - it was all he had to say.
The reason for his remark was the speech Senator Sanders had just delivered. In a scathing rebuke of the nine-year co...
May 02, 2007
It's hard to think about President Bush's veto of the military spending bill without thinking about all we have recently read here in Virginia about the Magna Carta. Briefly, it was England, and by January 1215 the anger toward King John had reached the boiling point. The king had stretched his army...
March 26, 2007
While it is true that the Democratic tent is very large and lock step politics is unlikely at the best of times, there are some issues that, historically, have enjoyed wide and solid support. Differences of opinion within the Democratic party on the issues of abortion and the war in Iraq are expec...
January 22, 2007
With the Supreme Courts upcoming review of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform which tries to keep people who are outside of a candidate’s campaign out of the electoral process, maybe it’s time to reflect on a different approach. Let’s face it, there is no law that will ever stop rumors, an...
January 12, 2007
Yesterday Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina proposed an amendment to S1, the Senate’s Lobby and Ethics Reform bill. The DeMint amendment concerns the definition of earmarks, and essentially includes all of the allocations to government entities which in turn pass the money to contractors. Witho...
November 10, 2006
Yes, the Democratic party is in charge, but coming out of the election it’s a different party than it was going in. This Democratic victory was in no small measure due to those who managed to overcome their personal identification with a political team in order to cast a ballot for “the other guy....
October 25, 2006
It seems now that I have no choice but to accept the fact that I’ve gone mad. It’s the only possible explanation for it. There can be no other. No matter how hard I try, I can’t arrange the pieces of the puzzle to look the same as the picture the editors of my local paper come up with.
When I ...
October 02, 2006
So, you think the leaders of the Administration are short a few high cards do you? Think again. It takes brilliance to appear totally incompetent while advancing a hidden agenda. This Administration is incredibly adept at creating situations in which singular, highly emotional events dominate our...
September 07, 2006
The past two days in the Senate have been so full of things to write about that it’s impossible to pick just one. In fact, there was so much to baffle the reasonable mind over the past two days, that by the end of the day yesterday viewers had to have been in a state of “Shock and Awe.”
We got s...
June 27, 2006
How can people with incomes less than $100,000/year continue to vote for the Neo-con regime in opposition to their own monetary self-interest? This is probably the biggest question any progressive has today. How can people with low paying jobs and a high cost of living continue to vote for the par...
April 28, 2006
For five hours yesterday, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) stood his ground demanding a vote on his amendment to the Emergency Spending Bill now before the Senate. He says that his amendment will generate more than twenty billion dollars in revenue from oil companies to partially offset the 97 billion in e...
April 05, 2006
Yesterday, those who regularly watch the Senate on C-Span got to see one of those poignant movie moments when the 98-pound weakling, after much prodding and encouragement, finally kicks sand in the face of the bully. Senator Reed finally used his right-to-object to keep a majority amendment from b...
April 01, 2006
This morning I received a very honest and passionate email in response to my article, Borders and Immigrants: Whatever shall we do?. Here is the text of that email from Mr. Thomas Gisler:
?I think the borders/ illegal immigrant issue is a symptom of our current political / social conditions. Our ...
March 31, 2006
The Senate has been awash in high sounding rhetoric this week as the issues of what to do about border security and illegal immigrants are the subject of sermons. As usual, far too many diatribes purposefully mislead, and a lot of Senators refuse - absolutely refuse - to engage in honest debate.
...
March 11, 2006
The game was not going well on Thursday, when Billy had a tantrum. He had gathered with his friends for a little game of give and take, but they just wouldn’t follow his rules. So, little Billy rained crocodile tears, ranted that the other side wouldn’t play ‘fair’, and stopped the game. Since he...
March 02, 2006
Thanks to Senator Russ Feingold, now we know. It isn’t just a few malcontents who find the Patriot Act to be a danger to inherent American civil liberties. Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana and Vermont legislatures have all passed what can reasonably be termed anti Patrio...
February 17, 2006
One of the few movies I?ve seen in recent years was The Horse Whisperer. I really enjoyed it. But, it was enjoyable only after having turned away from much of the first fifteen minutes. The visual description of events leading up to the horrific accident, which was the foundation for the movie, w...
February 15, 2006
Where you get your news can cause you to reflect, or cause you to react.
Yesterday the Senate voted to uphold a point of order on S852, a bill addressing problems with asbestos litigation. The result of the vote returns the bill to committee for reassessment. A comparison of the reports of two...
February 15, 2006
Elected in November 1932, three years into the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the 32nd President of the United States in January 1933. Beginning with a nation of farmers and wage-earners permeated with a sense of hopelessness, he ended with a nation filled with hope. In twelve shor...
February 14, 2006
In an interview on cspan this morning, Senator Kyle defended the President’s initiative of warrantless wiretapping by the NSA. He did so in the same fashion as has been evident in much of the press coverage. What’s wrong with wiretapping in a search for terrorists, he asked? The answer to that qu...
February 13, 2006
Who was it that tattled on the President for spying on us? The Neocons are hot on the trail. When they find that despicable individual who couldn’t keep his mouth shut I hope he gets just what he deserves – The Congressional Medal of Honor. While we wait for that to happen, though, we are getting...
February 11, 2006
The Senate Judiciary Committee finally launched S852 on the sea of the Senate last week. After days of assault from all sides, asbestos or not, S852 is burning badly, and there may be just too many holes in it to keep it afloat. A juggernaut, S852 was commissioned to conquer the many problems asso...
February 08, 2006
Like most Americans, I get a lot of requests for donations to political campaigns. Every day someone is telling me what’s wrong, and how they need my money to fix the problem. Each letter or email addresses one or two issues that happen to be in the limelight at the moment. Not one of them addres...
February 06, 2006
An article in the New York Times on February 6, 2006, Calling Clinton ‘Angry,’ G.O.P. Chairman Goes on the Attack, is a story in itself. It reports an event, an interview of Ken Mehlman by George Stephanopoulos. It is news because the speaker is a prominent political figure. There is nothing in ...
February 01, 2006
At times it looked like a High Catholic Mass with all those well-dressed folk sitting, standing, sitting, standing ad nauseam while the preacher spread the word. That’s as far as the analogy goes, however. There was a lot of colorful content in the President's speech. And, since the audience was ...
January 31, 2006
Today will be a day to remember. A coronation rehearsal will be held this evening in the Royal Round House. All five hundred-thirty eight members of the new parliament are commanded to attend. This prestigious event marks the culmination of the efforts of Lord Cheney, Royal Regent of New Christen...
January 29, 2006
This from ABC News, January 29, 2006, regarding a recent poll. “. . . A better result for Bush . . . is the apparent lack of traction for critics of the warrantless NSA wiretaps. A clear majority now says such wiretaps are acceptable, 56 percent, compared with 43 percent who call them unacceptable...
January 29, 2006
Why is America so politically divided? Could it be that a game mentality has replaced wisdom in our government? This should be a rhetorical question, but unfortunately it is not. Winner-take-all may be good for baseball, but definitely not for a democratic government. Far too many citizens seem ...
January 24, 2006
Today’s meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee went exactly as expected. Ten Senators voted to confirm Judge Samuel Alito as Justice of the Supreme court, and eight Senators voted to deny his confirmation. Those who voted to deny his confirmation spoke to Judge Alito’s judicial leanings as esta...
January 23, 2006
Due to our public schools failure to prepare young adults for participation in our government, the phrase, “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” is little more than a collection of pretty sounding words which convey a warm, fuzzy feeling. Our constitution tells us we are ...
January 13, 2006
After eighteen hours of listening to Senators question Judge Alito, very little has changed except that what was once just hearsay is now first hand evidence. Judge Alito, if given the opportunity, will vote to decimate Roe v. Wade. He will, if confirmed, support the Presidents? power to ignore th...
January 03, 2006
This morning each one of us woke up as one of 300,000,000 citizens of the United States. Two hundred twenty million of us are old enough to vote, and are supposedly responsible for our own well being. Five million of us are old enough to fight and possibly die for our country, but not yet old enou...
December 23, 2005
Have you ever gone to a movie you wish you hadn’t, but you knew that to have missed it would have been worse? Well, I just finished watching three days of the U.S. Senate, and what I saw and heard was both riveting and repulsive. As irritating and angering as it was, I wish that every American cit...
December 11, 2005
The rantings of the fundamentalist fringe are stunting our growth as a nation and hindering our passage to maturity. The incessant repetition of claims that the Bible is the literal word of God by the radical fringe of Christian leadership has managed to maintain control over the thoughts and actio...
November 28, 2005
We the people of the United States are presently embroiled in a serious cultural war. A war which is being waged daily in the news, in the courts, and in school systems across the nation. It?s important to note that in this war only one side has generals, lieutenants, and foot soldiers. The oth...
November 27, 2005
Recently, former Senator Bob Graham of Florida told us what he knew, as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence before we invaded Iraq. It was a lot more than most Senators and Representatives knew. Because of what he knew, he voted against the invasion of Iraq, but, unfortunately ...
November 19, 2005
Friday, November 18, about 3:00 P.M. on the floor on the U.S. Senate, an elderly white-haired, straight-backed, distinguished looking gentleman made his way slowly to the podium. He began to speak haltingly about changes in the weather, the beauty of the countryside, and the colors of the leaves. T...
November 18, 2005
Yesterday I wrote about how the Congress works under the rules of the Majority Party. In that article I highlighted portions of the current spending measure in the House which extracted a major portion of the savings from those least able to afford it. Just as I was about to submit the article, a ...
November 17, 2005
If there was one mandatory obligation for each registered voter, it should be that each is required to watch a minimum of five hours of Congress per week on Cspan. After sixty-two years of believing everything I was taught in civics class about how our representative government works, I have had an ...
November 15, 2005
Since the day the Supreme Clerics ordained George W. Bush the unelected president, he has taken on the role of the anointed speaker for Born Again Christians. Using the office of the president to advance his particular religion, Bush has taken on the role of Ayatollah, making proclamations based o...
November 07, 2005
I grew up during the time that our elected leaders were promising things like, “Two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot.” Our high school Civics lessons included grand visions of the future for the vast middle class. We were being prepared for a life of an honest day’s pay for an hones...
November 01, 2005
The militant fringes - those who would have government, of them, by them and for them - are marching across the country. As they do, they leave behind them the ravages of a social war. Disillusionment, despair, disgust and distrust are heard in the voices of those who write letters to the editor...
October 27, 2005
Yesterday on Public Radio I heard the statement, ‘Senator Kerry, who supported going to Iraq, now has a plan to begin pulling troops out’, or verbiage very close to that, I can’t remember exactly. I was driving, and didn’t stop to write it down verbatim. What was said did not get my attention as ...
October 22, 2005
You are a good citizen. You find out all you can about the important political issues. You research candidates. You put signs in your yard and stickers on your car to encourage others to see your side. You contribute time and money to political campaigns. You brave weather and long lines to be ...
October 16, 2005
Natural disasters such as the tsunami in the Bay of Bengal, the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and the earthquakes in Pakistan always bring out statements such as "It was God's will," or "It was God's punishment." Whenever I hear statements like this I wonder what percentage of people really bel...
October 15, 2005
What?s the big deal with paying taxes? After all, it is our government. And the things we want have to be paid for somehow. Whether it?s garbage collection at the local level, or defense of the nation, there is a cost. And, what?s so hard about budgeting within our means. The 90% of us who have ...
October 12, 2005
On October 12, 2005 the Associated Press published an article with the following quote attributed to President Bush as he spoke to White House reporters about his decision to appoint Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court:
"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers. ... Part of...
October 12, 2005
The U. S. Constitution is undoubtedly the finest social contract ever written. Hopefully it will withstand the battery of tests it will receive from both fringe whirlwinds. In the meantime the voices of reflection and compromise are being drowned out by the high-pitched noise of the gale.
The lo...
October 06, 2005
A belief in a god, whether it was Apollo, Ra, the God of Abraham, or simply the Great Spirit, has been part of humanity for all of recorded history. Every culture has developed a religion of some sort based on the existence of a supernatural power. In each case, the premise of the existence of the...
October 02, 2005
You know, a person can wait a long time for what, in education, they call the “teachable moment”. I think I’ve been waiting now for about six years. Actually, I’ve been waiting since the Bush campaign began to denigrate John McCain. That campaign was the beginning of a new era in American politic...
September 25, 2005
Somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 people showed up in Washington, D.C. yesterday, to protest the war in Iraq. There were people who traveled from as far as Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, and Vermont. These folks made the trip, many at considerable expense. These demonstrators came: not to be heard...
September 23, 2005
The dictionary says that to be civilized is to be in an advanced stage of social development, and to be polite and good-mannered. But, the dictionary also says that to be barbarous is to be exceedingly cruel, primitive and uncivilized. These definitions lead to a paradox. Every one of us has seen ...
September 19, 2005
Anyone with as much as one eye half open and one ear uncovered over the past weeks has seen and heard the Senate struggling with trying, with little success, to determine what drives John Roberts. What has become evident is that we can be intimidated and even frightened by the power vested in one pe...
September 17, 2005
Like the Pied Piper’s flute, the siren’s song of a religious choir draws the faithful to prayer. With music so beautiful, and words so comforting, the songs of the choir tell of a wondrous and personal god who will reward the faithful with an eternity of bliss. There is, of course, a price to pay...
September 07, 2005
As the city of New Orleans is beginning its recovery from the deluge of Katrina, the whole country is being deluged by a flood of news pointing out the governments incompetence and outright malfeasance. Even at that, what’s coming from the corporate owned outlets is only the outer edge of the storm...
August 30, 2005
There are a lot of issues that have to be dealt with today. New Supreme Court Justices, Intelligent Design in schools, ending the war in Iraq, and preventing war elsewhere. All serious issues, to be sure, but there is a single overriding issue that is screaming for attention. The overriding issue is...
August 25, 2005
Sometimes what we do in support of an idea does more to undermine our position than help it. Intelligent Design is an incredibly good example. I recently published an article titled A class on Intelligent Design. The idea was to follow the process of applying the basic principles of science to the t...
August 20, 2005
Imagine a science classroom in the year 2010, and the Intelligent Design theory is the topic under consideration. Since it’s a science class, the students are required to apply the scientific method to any points of discussion or experimentation. Before we can begin the students must know what the...
August 18, 2005
I can’t remember the first time I said it, but over time the feeling has become stronger. My dear friend Ed and I have been discussing the state of the world for several years. “What has happened to us?” I would ask. “How did we get this way?”. Ed, the eternal pragmatist, would simply say, “It’...
August 14, 2005
Someone needs only to read my articles and visit my website to quickly realize that I am a very disturbed person. I am very disturbed about the state of the union. I am clearly a malcontent, a rabble rouser, a frustrated poet, a preacher looking for a congregation, a knight in the army of the commo...
August 10, 2005
Yesterday my wife and I were discussing the Virginia Standards of Learning. Before I retired she and I worked at the same alternative high school, where she has since been responsible for overseeing the SOL testing program. Our discussion was about graduation requirements, and she mention...
August 06, 2005
Naivete: a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. Experience: having had practical contact with and observation of facts or events. Wisdom: an ability to use all experience to make good judgements. Judgement: the ability to make considered decisions or form sensible opinions.
Anyone discoveri...
August 02, 2005
Due to what has been happening in the Senate and the recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN I had to let my Senators know what I was feeling and thinking. This is what I sent.
Dear Senator Allen and Senator Warner,
The Presidents’ appointment of John Bolton during the congressional recess ...
August 01, 2005
Last week I watched helplessly as the Senate passed legislation to protect the gun industry from the people. Since the constitution was written on behalf of “We the People,” and not “We the Corporations,” this action was absurd. The congress has passed another “Fair Trade Agreement” which again i...