Another Season

For many years, I owned a co-op apartment in New York City an extravagance, but one which I enjoyed since the city afforded a totally blind man, opportunities for meeting interesting people, which I could not get anywhere else. I lived on Beekman Place, (the East Side elitist street where Auntie Mame lived) right across the street from the townhouse of Irvin Berlin and almost directly across from the South Korean consulate. Just two blocks from the United Nations, and as a disabled veteran and world traveler, I was invited to many receptions, never was the “Pearle Mesta” of the East Side, but enjoyed these unusual contacts. I was friends with two media presidents as well as other interesting, well known individuals.

Owning some businesses in the south, I would go to certain supply houses on the West Side in the garment district. Even though I had the dinner jackets and clothes for any occasion, when on the streets, I could easily have been mistaken for a homeless person or a bum. Anytime I felt that I was about to be robbed, I would pull my coat up around my face, try to get real small and as the person approached me, I would say, “Can you spare a dollar for an old, blind man?” One day, in midsummer, I got caught in a rain storm in the garment district. I sought shelter under a metal canopy. I was joined there by two hookers who knew one another. I pulled my raincoat up around my head and pretended not to listen to what they were saying. They were discussing clients (Johns). One, talking about a well known NYC philanthropist, said, “If he ever picks you up, get him drunk. Make sure he pays you ahead of time. Remember he always has other money in his place. You know where to look.” It has been my experience, that you cannot hide money from thieves. They always know where to look. Every escapade is another season for them. I truly believe that what keeps most people going and most businesses going is just the love of another season. The famous movie starring, Jack Lemmon, portraying a famous designer and producer in the garment district, who realized he did not have long to live, said, “I just want another season.”

My friends in the mercantile business, always just wanted another Christmas season, the time when they made all their profit for the year. When I was trying to maneuver the streets in the garment district, anyone who has been there understands the racks of clothing being taken from one building to another. The place had a life of its own. Designers, producers, shippers and the buyers representing stores from all over America and the world, came there to put in their orders. With the movement of so much industry first to the south and now out of country, the drastic reduction in manufacturing of garments amounts to 90%.

New York well deserves the reputation of financial center of the world. The finance gurus on Wall Street, the power brokers in the banking industry, the opinion molders at all the alphabet news corporations, the large network of wealth management advisors and advisor services are all in a cauldron of greed. Most escape the season of responsibility. I have here in my house computer programs, which give in exacting detail, anything that happens in my business. It is hard to believe in this season of computer programs, oversight and regulations of security agencies, a ridiculous situation such as the Madoff scam, could go on for so long. The intrigue has only deepened by the depth of the swimming pool of one of his cohorts, Jeffrey Picower, a man who had contrived $5 billion from the Madoff scandal. I realize in the sorcery and debauchery of Washington politics, the skeletons of Wall Street discovery, SEC, IRS, employees look at the big deals with a blind eye. It is well known that everyone was aware of the Madoff looney operation (parties, drugs, etc.).

It is a 7 year old girl in Florida found dead in a landfill. It is a Richmond, California high school girl, gang raped as about 15 watched. It is two stupid pilots risking lives in the skies over Minnesota. It is the death of Soupy Sales known only for catching a pie in the face, that got most of the news casters attention this week.

Here in NC, the season of democrat political control and corruption has finally come to a head with the ex governor Easley, debacle. As I well explained in my commentary about republicans, “Reproductcons and Utopiaism”, #356, explaining my life long torture at seeing total corrupt democrat control of the state and the “wallflower republicans” who were just bench warmers, we have a chance to see just how honest and if the corporate media is in default.

Someone told me years ago that there must be many expensive funerals before things would change in NC. (Many rich democrat politicians would have to die.) They did not realize that their rich inheritors would be more corrupt than their fathers and grandfathers, that corporate TV and radio would be more biased and corrupt than the long time democrat “bible” newspapers, (“News and Observer”, “Charlotte Observer”, etc.) Walter Spearman, honored Professor of Journalism at UNC-CH, Guy Phillips, longtime Professor of Education at UNC-CH, both told me fifty years ago, that journalism and education were in the “jaws” of the democrat party in NC. This was before either of these professors had ever seen a black student on the UNC campus at Chapel Hill. You would never have convinced either that black nationalism operating out of black churches, in NC, would enslave themselves to the democrat party and walk in lockstep to vote for their former slave masters.

It must be a stench in the nostrils of God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, that the season of justice has never come to the hard working, tax paying, God fearing, natives of NC, those who planted and nourished the flowers that illegal aliens, transported Yankees, and corrupt politicians pick with savage glee and disregard. I think of my aged grandparents trying to keep farms going while their only son was fighting in the South Pacific. I think of my own mother keeping a farm going while my own father was away during World War II. Still trying to recover financially from FDR's Great Depression, it was a matter of working night and day. They were in the fields during the day, churning and molding butter, and preparing produce at night to go to the local markets. All the while, politicians even then, with the use of nepotism and political contributions allowing their friends to buy their positions on every commission, every board of trustees, and take advantage of every political opportunity in the state. The newspapers would not even peak over the barrier that separated the black race, the cotton mill workers, the tenant farmers, the disabled, the dispossessed, the widespread poverty (Eastern NC from Hwy 95-301 to the ocean, the poorest area of the US.). The churches which call themselves Christian were the only hope of the these dispossessed people. But I'm sorry to say, most of the white preachers, like today's black preachers, sold out to the democrat party.

Josephus Daniels thought he had more effect on eastern NC than Jesus Christ. From his parlors at Wakestone, he controlled the eastern NC politicians. The Scotts, father and son, would surely tell you that the brown paper bags of money, greased the democrat wheels.

From the crucible of hell, petrified white, rich democrat politicians would warn their caucus “Watch out, there will be a pay day, some day.”