Let Them Eat Cake?

Well, 100 years before Marie Antoinette, a princess in the French aristocracy said, "qu'ils mangent de la brioche." This has been incorrectly translated as, "let them eat cake." "Let them eat brioche" was callously uttered by an aristocrat when there was not even enough plain bread to feed the poor people, never mind the delicious, butter-rich brioche. One way or another, this kind of callous disregard by the idle rich towards the working poor of those times led to the French Revolution. In fact, Marie Antoinette was dubbed "Madame Déficit" for her active role in overspending the people's tax money. Therefore, I believe it completely appropriate to dub George Dubya "Monsieur le President Déficit" for taking a surplus and overspending the people's money to create the huge deficit that President Obama and the people of the United States have inherited.

George Bush, et al are responsible for the mortgage and financial meltdown crisis, recession and layoffs we now face. The road to our current recession and deficit is long. Phil Gramm began removal of the regulatory protections put in place after the last Depression. Then Enron officials both laughingly and greedily began the recent power surge in unregulated profit dollars, followed closely by other power companies, Big Oil, and the mortgage and financial industry.

When government and industry conspire to grasp more and more of the people's money, the people will throw the "cake" back into their faces. The American Revolution began with the Boston Tea Party because colonists were being taxed without any representation. When government and corporations conspire against the people, they also seem to think the people don't know or notice they're not being represented.

Whenever unfettered greed and abuse of power create a huge gap in income between the rich and the poor, accompanied by the disappearance of the middle class, there is often a revolution. The US government was afraid of a revolution during the first Depression. I’m surprised it’s not worried now. As a teacher, it never ceases to amaze me that people never seem to learn from history, but keep repeating the mistakes of the past. I am noticing many troubling signs, such as tea parties, comments all over the internet, and hearing talk on the street. Oh, I also noticed that the traditionally served little tea cakes were conspicuously absent from the many and very recently held tea parties.

I absolutely do not want to see a similar, violent history lesson repeated in this country. Honestly, I believe people should resort to non-violent means to effect social and political change. I truly hope the current government rapidly takes the proper steps to close the current income gap, and that President Obama and his administration also address the many other horrors of the Bush/Cheney “Reign of Terror” on the common person.

NV Council for History Educators Conference on Public Lands Day

What a great day! I attended the Nevada Council for History Educators Conference at the Boulder Dam Hotel in Boulder City, NV. The conference, coordinated by Dr. Linda Karen Miller, was about Boulder City and Hoover Dam: Then and Now: Teaching and Writing Local History. Senator Harry Reid was originally scheduled to speak about his book on the history of Searchlight, NV. However, as we all know, he is busy on Capitol Hill taking care of more important matters relating to our nation's economy.
Former Nevada State Assemblywoman and current Nevada State Assemblyman Lynn Stewart, both representing Boulder City spoke about past history and current issues facing Boulder City.

Former Nevada State Assemblywoman Gene Segerblom

Nevada State Assemblyman Lynn Stewart

Following these two wonderful speakers were National Park Service Ranger Amanda Rowland, who spoke about historical resources around and at the bottom of Lake Mead, and Dr. Fran Campbell, who spoke about the history of African-Americans and the building of Hoover Dam.

Dr. Fran Campbell

National Park Service Ranger Amanda Rowland


Conference attendees from both northern and southern Nevada also toured the Boulder City Museum in the Boulder City Hotel and cruised on Lake Mead to Hoover Dam on board Forever Earth.


Also while on board, Dr. Linda Miller spoke about using the Library of Congress to teach with primary sources. All-in-all, it was an informative and enjoyable conference.

I also enjoyed watching people take advantage of Lake Mead National Recreation Area on Public Lands Day, where the weather was partly cloudy and the temperature was approximately 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Lake Mead is about a 40 minute drive from the center of Las Vegas. Lake Mead's water originates from a combination of snowmelt from more northerly states into the Colorado River, and runoff from rain along the river's entire meandering path through 9 western states.

The runoff is the reason it is so important not to put anything on your plants, lawns or on the ground that you wouldn't want to drink. Any chemical you put on things outside, gets washed into storm drains and eventually flows into the freshwater rivers, lakes and streams that people and animals use for drinking water. This is another reason we shouldn't be using the planet's freshwater - which is less than 1% of all water found on earth - as coolant, especially for nuclear power plants that leave it contaminated for many half-lives or thousands of years. That is not clean energy!

The lake is now 115 feet below it's highest level, as shown by the more lighter-colored "bathtub ring" in the second, third, fourth, and fifth pictures below. There is great concern about the possibility that Lake Mead will be dry in the next few decades. This will directly impact the availability of potable water in the highly populated, arid, desert Southwest and the bountiful farmlands Southern California, further downstream, that produce a percentage of our nation's (and the world's) fruit and vegetables. Here is a great example of something that, when it happens in Vegas, will absolutely not stay in Vegas. It also serves to illustrate how a change in precipitation patterns in one part of our country greatly impacts the entire country and beyond. We desperately need to do something about global warming.