"I Don't Really Care Margaret"--J.D. Vance and 77.3 Million Voters in the USA

 https://youtube.com/shorts/Sl9H27eEHfY?si=MWwtUBmoHX3kp9NG

A perfect response.

Sluggy

Takes a Slime Bag to Know a Slime Bag

 Go read my post HERE from 2009.

When I heard that among the 1,500 people President Biden granted clemency to it just made my blood boil that these two despicable judges were among that number that were released from their sentences.  I know for a fact that one of these corrupt judges never admitted they did anything wrong and has ruined many a young person's life.  One young person he sentenced ended up committing suicide!  Where is his justice?

My older two kids were in the same grade and school with a few of these young victims.
It figures that someone who pardons his own son of offences he has been convicted off would let these slimey corrupt judges go free too!

I am so done with NON COMPOS MENTIS Joe Biden.

Sluggy

The 150th Anniversary of The Perfect Powder Keg

Having come down with the "Genealogy Bug", I am enjoying not only discovering my own personal ancestry roots, but I'm also getting into delving deeper into the history of the US.

This week....July 13th-18th.....marks the 150th Anniversary of an important event in American history.
A shameful event that has been mostly ignored since it happened all those many years ago.

Many Americans look down on the racism evident in the pre-war Southern states of this country.  The economy that took root in those states, that required the implementing of the plantation system in the early dates of our country's founding, which ended up driving the slave trade to our shores.

Though Northerners have always been portrayed as morally superior to their Southern counterparts,  racism, as well as hate toward immigrants, existed and thrived in the North up through the end of the Civil War.

1863 marked the date when the 1st National Draft was instituted in the US.  All men were required to register for the draft at this point during the Civil War.  If you were between the ages of 20 and 35, no matter your marital status and if you were single between the ages of 36 and 45, you were part of the Class I list of draftees.
If you were outside of those parameters, you were put onto the Class II list or Reserves.
This Draft was only for whites, as even free Northern dwelling blacks were not considered full citizens of this country.

I have found 1 ancestor so far, on my paternal lines, that was called to register for the Draft in 1863.
His name was Robert Spencer Bowman.  He was born in 1826 in Ireland and self-reported coming to the US in 1852, as a married man, in the 1900 Census.

Here is a shot of a piece of the Class II Book from 1863, for the 11th Congressional District of NY, with his name in it.  His is the last name in the shot.  It lists his "color"(white), his age(36), where he was born(Ireland) and in the remarks section it says "Alien".

Thought the year he actually arrived is split between 1848 and 1855, we do know that he arrived aboard a ship from Liverpool that came into the Port of New York City.
So he came to American right around the time of the opening of the 1st of the 2 great immigration processing centers of the 19th century.

Everyone knows of Ellis Island but the first center was called Castle Garden.
It was located where Fort Clinton stood, a fort constructed for defense purposes during the Revolutionary times to protect the southern part of Manhattan island.  It is where a resort and park had been built in the 1820's.  By mid 1850's the resort was in disuse so it was selected to be the disembarkation/processing point for all immigrants into NY harbor.
Castle Garden saw the first large waves of immigrants, mostly from Ireland and from Germany.
My ancestor was part of this migration from Ireland due to the Great Potato Famine that plagued that isle from 1845-1852.

But I digress......
My ancestor arrived in New York City between 1848 and 1855.  After the arrival of his wife and children who had been born in Ireland in 1856, the family migrated from the city and by 1860 they are found in Montgomery, NY, 60 miles northwest of NY city, with 5 surviving children. 

Lucky for Robert Bowman & family that they weren't still in New York City at the time of the implementation of the War Draft in 1863.

Massive numbers of Irish immigrants flooded New York City, to the tune of 200,000 by 1855.  The problem was that a great many of these new Americans were the poorest of the poor from Ireland and had barely the resources to pay to get on a boat, let alone any monies to support themselves once on this shore.  They likewise, had no monies to transport themselves out of NY City and into the great expanses of the country outside of the harbor town to find a farmer to work for and in time, find their own piece of land to call their home.  The  majority of immigrants were trapped in NY City.  Imagine what it was like.....people everywhere, not enough shelter for everyone, no employment available so no way to earn a wage to feed yourself.  Overcrowding, poverty and an unchecked birth rate, which led to filthy and unsanitary conditions in the city streets that bred disease and death.

Gangs of desperate people sprung up and banded together to take care of their "own kind" and operate outside of the law since they couldn't feed themselves within it's parameters.  The Boss Tweed era of NY politics began during this time as well which added another layer of corruption onto the society.  New ships of immigrants were about as welcomed during this time and in this place as a case of dysentery.
Murder and mayhem were simmering just below the surface in the New York City of 1863.  The film, "The Gangs of New York" did a fairly good job of showing the violence that permeated Manhattan during the mid 1800's.

 The native-born Whites were not happy with these immigrants elbowing into their country.  The rich ran the government in a way to pit the native-born lower class against the newly immigrated, thus keeping the power and riches in their hands and keeping all the citizenry under their thumbs. 
The native-born Whites and the Immigrants took to forming gangs for protection. It was a lawless time and while the government couldn't be counted on, your gang was your last resort for protection.

Though free men, the Blacks in NY City were relegated to holding the jobs on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.  With the influx of this wave of foreign immigration, they saw massive competition for the few jobs available to them, as the Irish were kept out of all desirable employment.  The Irish competed with the native-born Blacks for life sustaining jobs and the labor force already here was none too pleased.  The newly arrived Irish were often not viewed as "white", but as a different race, along with the "blacks".  Both groups were looked down upon.

The immigrants as well weren't very happy once they stepped onto this shore.  Yes, they were glad to be out of Ireland and starvation there, but this new place was full of men ready to swindle you out of your last penny, to perpetrate violence and intimidation onto you at every turn to keep you from finding employment or shelter.  It was tough being a new immigrant in 1850-1860's NY.
Not only did you have to fight for your very life at the hands of your fellow citizen but you had the government making you sign up to fight and probably die in a civil war you had no hand in making!
What must they have thought in the face of all this hostility they stepped into?

For those new immigrants from Ireland it was a choice......a choice between an inevitable death by starvation in Ireland and a scratching to survive hand-to-mouth existence in America.  While not a great alternative, it was better than certain death back home.
My ancestor stepped off a ship from Ireland, after spending weeks in steerage, to be greeted by the sort of conditions I've described above.
Robert Spenser Bowman must have had a strong spirit to make it through all that to get past the New York City of circa 1852.

By the time 1863 rolled around the Civil War was in it's 3rd year of conflict.  Add in to the usual hostilities of one group toward another, the deprivations of goods available for sale to the public at large. Wartime means less food, cloth, lumber for the people.  Inadequate resources become even more limited and the scarcity drives prices out of the reach of all but the richest people.

1863 was also the year of the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation.   The government had been warning the citizenry in the North for 2 years beforehand, that once the legislation for freeing all Southern slaves was law, that they should prepare for an influx of newly-freed blacks.  This meant more people streaming into the North, to compete for the few jobs, housing, food and goods of all kind in a city already busting at the seams with humanity.

And just when conditions couldn't possibly get any worse in NY, they did.
When Abraham Lincoln instituted the Compulsory Northern Draft in 1863, it included a clause that caused the violence to boil over.
The $300 Clause held that any man who was required to register for the Draft could, for the price of $300, pay his way out of having to serve.  Adjusting for inflation, $300 in 1863 is over $5,000 in today's money.

The common man saw this as the last straw, that anyone of the elite class could buy his way out of harm's way and and avoid fulfilling his patriotic duty.  So much for the creed of all men being equal!
Three now famous cowards who bought their way out of service to the North were a young John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carneige and Junius Spencer Morgan(of JP Morgan fame).

This clause smacked of classism and even spawned many an outraged letter to the New York Times in the day before being stuck down in 1864, when it was replaced with a Bounty for Service Clause.

The Draft was physically begun on July 11th and by the morning of July 13th, the violence had begun.  The mobs of angry whites limited their attacks to military and government targets....police, government buildings, soldiers.  As the mobs grew they attacked anyone who was in their way.  Soon the anger turned toward Blacks unlucky enough to be in the streets and "black" businesses.  In the end an orphanage and school for black children was set afire and destroyed along with numerous other homes and businesses.
It is said that some of the fire departments in the city(many of which were formed by gangs of native-born whites), fueled the riots by setting fires themselves rather than putting them out.



When order was finally restored 5 days later, 11 Blacks had been  lynched and those others dead included a child from the destroyed Orphanage/School and areas of the city lay smoldering and destroyed.  Many Blacks were forced to flee or left the city by choice, never to return to Manhattan.

I am thankful my ancestor was clear of NY City and safely living his life in a small town Upstate by 1860 that didn't see this sort of violence take hold.
Looking around at the climate today, it is sad to see that in many ways, things in this country have not changed much 150 years later.

Sluggy

Be Careful What You Wish, er....Vote For!

Before I go off today to participate in the local political process I want to tell you this.....
I have a dilemma of sorts.

Our little township(which is 1/5th of the legal entities that comprise my "town")is run by an elected Board of 3 Supervisors. Other elected officials are 1 Zoning Officer, a Tax Collector and 2 Tax Auditors. Other employees of the township are the Township Secretary and a Police Force of 2.
Nice and small limited government.
Just the way I like it except for when it doesn't work right.

Ya see, our Board of Supervisors use to be the "old boys club".  The same group of people ran and were voted in year after year.  And they hired their friends and nothing much got done or changed for the better around here.
Except we had an awesome Secretary.  She did a lot, picking up the slack for the BofS members who did nothing of note to better our community.  She also was an experienced Grant Writer who was able to snag Federal funds for our township.

Well 2 years ago, things changed around here.
New people ran against 2 of the 3 supervisors who were up for reelection.  People who actually called out the old BofS members and detailed what was being done wrong and/or inefficiently with the finances.  They actually cared about spending taxpayer money when it went to no good purpose or was wasted due to oversight or redundancies.
Somebody who said they cared about how our money was spent.....gee, that spoke to me!

So Sluggy voted for these 2 new people who weren't part of the OBC(old boys club)that ran things.
And they won.
And the way money was handled by our township government around here got better.
As a result, taxes didn't go up and services didn't go down.  What is not to love about that?lol


Then these new Supervisors decided to fire the 20 year veteran Secretary who basically ran things here for 20 years when the "old boys" weren't minding the store but still collecting their paychecks and hanging out at their hunting cabins or down at the bar.
They trumped up charges to get rid of her.  Maybe because they considered her part of the old regime, or because she stepped on their toes when they tried to make her do things their way.

It soon became clear they fired her without just cause because they wanted their crony to have the job.
And then they appointed another crony to take over the Zoning Officer job when the old officer quit during his elected term.
Soon after 2 more cronies were put into Tax Auditor positions mid-term when the old ones resigned.

A change in leadership is good.
Except when the 2 new Supervisors install their friends and then proceed to abuse their power.
Monthly Board Meetings have become reminiscent of Nazi Germany around here.

If you have a gripe with how things are run around here, you go to the meeting and air your grievance or ask qustions.
Good for the political process, right?

Not anymore.
Seems people who go and complain or question this Board end up having problems.

They become targets.
They get surprise visits from the Zoning Officer who proceed to fine said property owners for any violations the can trump up.  Even when nobody has called the Township to complain about anything this owner did or is doing.
These people also get visits from the Police Force and get pulled over while driving township roads, just to be harassed and intimidated.
Their bags of leaves get conveniently forgotten when the municipal truck goes around to collect them in the Fall.
The roads near their homes get plowed last in the winter and not kept up and repaired in a timely manner.

So I got what I asked for(the finances to be right), but I also got mini Muammar Gaddafis in the process.

Luckily some people who see what is going on and care to be part of the Board have stepped up despite the wrath of the current BofS and are running for one of the 3 seats, the Zoning Officer position and for the Tax Auditor positions.

And what is driving these 2 Board Nazis crazy is that the former Secretary is running for a seat on the Board.  No, she is not taking this lying down!

There is also an initiative on the Ballot to enlarge the Board from 3 to 5 members.
While this will cost us more(more members=more tax $ for salaries) and goes against my Limited Government ilk, in the long run, it may keep anybody else who wants to be a Board Dictator from being one, or at least slow them down in their campaign for Ultimate power.
Because it is harder to get 2 other Board members in your pocket than just 1.

So I have to make some hard choices.......voting against what the current Board wants is the easy thing!
The hard part comes with the Ballot Initiative.
Larger government=less likely to have a mini Nazi-ish leadership.
Smaller government=less taxpayer money spent.

Wish me luck that I don't get more than what I want!

In other news, we get to vote for new County Judges too.
Oh, how I could go on and on on this subject!
We are, after all, the  Seat of Corruption in this country(outside of D.C. that is!), here in Northeastern PA.
Home of the recent KIDS FOR CASH Government Scandal.
Move over Washington....here comes Luzerne County PA!

Make your voice heard.....go vote today!

Sluggy