“My friends and I have been coddled long enough … It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” – Warren Buffett, Aug. 14, 2011, New York Times
Warren Buffett, Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway
Wow! Finally! Reality! A leader cuts through the gobbledygook of trickle down economics and tells it like it is. Warren Buffett may stand alone among the rich but he is standing up for what matters – although he may be a tad late in coming to the rescue. “The Oracle of Omaha,” as he is known, carries a big, pointy stick and he’s poking it right were it needs to be poked. But compared to Rupert Do-Anything-For-News Murdoch’s blunt stick, Warren may be over matched. Rupert and his fellow media moguls will publicly talk about Warren’s fundamental principle for a day and a sound byte and then move on. Or like Rupert’s Wall Street Journal, get into a factual pissin’ contest to try and misconstrue the intent of Buffett’s pronouncement. It’s about “shared sacrifice,” not who’s slipping through which tax loopholes. So when any rich person you meet that is against the Buffett idea, just ask them: What the hell could be wrong with the principle of shared sacrifice? This is about a different economic reality rather than the old tried and failed trickledown myth.
Perhaps Warren should buy Sarah Palin’s used (over used) bus, paint over her catchy, One Nation lie and call it, Shared Sacrifice. Or Robin Hood. And tour the country with a plan (more…)
“People are the worst”
Coming 2026
My personal history is the stuff they write books about. And that's what I am doing. The working title, "Chains of My Father: Marry White."
"The ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds." - Barack Obama
This perspicacious line from the Prologue of Barack Obama's "Dream from My Father" wrenched my aspiration into action. I started writing, furiously. Unlike Obama's perspective, my pain had been for the opposite reason: I was not seen by whites as a "tragic mulatto," rather I lived every day of my childhood hoping whites were not "searching my eyes for some telltale sign" that I WAS mulatto. This is my story.
It's historical fiction because I cannot find enough records to substantiate all facets of the story. I've combed the genealogy, traveled to my father and grandmothers' birthplace, walked the graveyards, searched the churches and ... well, all the facts aren't there. I have written three books based on the genealogy of other families but my ancestors emerged from a journey that left too few records – slavery.
My paternal, great grandmother was a "freed slave." My grandmother, Amelia, was born to a mixed race slave named Mary (we do not know her last name) and a white, French plantation owner, the Count de Poullain, in Grenada, West Indies. Amelia was raised in the "Big House" and in adulthood, in an attempt to escape her black heritage disowned her mother, telling her, "Get out and never come back." Amelia, as a mother of twelve children, enshrined into the family commandments, "Marry white." Many did, including my father. My mother was a lovely, white, Anglo-Saxon protestant born in England. They met in Canada where my dad studied and became a doctor.
It has taken five generations for the descendants of Mary to free themselves from the stigma of their black heritage but today my children embrace it. Unfortunately, the past 250 years have been a wasteland of bigotry, racism and bullying. But, on closer look, we see not only the brutality, fear, violence, and murder but also the self-respect, dignity, love, kindness, perseverance and indomitable spirit.
As of the spring of 2025, the depth of historic perspective and the sweeping inspiration of oppressed people has created a two-volume duology of which I have only arrived at the middle of the 19th century. 1840 is the year my great grandfather was born, the beginning of Volume II, and he's pushing me to make sure our story is published by the summer of 2026.
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