Tea Time

Expanded a bit on 12-27-2015 and photo added, as well as a little editing on 8-19-21

Tea drinking apparently goes back at least 4500 to 5000 years in China. It wasn't until the mid 1500s that western Europeans came into contact with tea, as the Portuguese settled in Macao (also "Macau") in southeastern China, which remained as a Portuguese colony until 1999! Then Dutch traders established themselves in southeastern Asia in Indonesia in the early 1600s, which later became the Dutch colony "the Dutch East Indies." The mid 1600s brought the marriage of England's King Charles II to a Portuguese princess, who made tea drinking a prominent feature among the nobility. The price of tea in those times was prohibitive for the spread of the drink to those not in the upper classes, but increased trade and involvement in India brought more tea, and lower prices, and sugar, into England. It wasn't long before the British began to sweeten their tea with sugar from the New World and tea drinking became popular with the general population, making tea the national drink. The ancestral homeland of the English (the Anglo-Saxons) is northern Germany, and their close relatives, the Saxons and the Frisians, still inhabit the area. The similar climate to Britain along the North Sea coast of Germany, and the availability of tea from Dutch importers, made tea a popular drink with the Frisian and Saxon population of the area, where tea is still the regional beverage. In the East Frisian part of northern Germany, rock candy is used to sweeten their tea, with some cream carefully layered a bit below the surface. The idea is to provide three distinct tastes: the bitter black tea at the top, the tea/cream mixture in the middle, and then the addition of the sweetness of the melting rock candy near the bottom. The East Frisians are known for their pickiness for black tea and their brands are considered topnotch.

Russians have had a strong attachment to tea going back to the 1600s, although its high price initially limited its availability to the upper classes. Russians traded directly with the Chinese by overland route, organized in caravans. It was quite a trip and "supposedly" the tea acquired a smoky flavor from being near the campfires during its long journey,* a characteristic still common in the most popular form of black tea in Russia, although the flavoring is now added. It is the national beverage of Russia, although vodka drinkers may question that... hic! Hey, I'm a tea drinker, honest!

Chai is a spiced black tea (sometimes green tea) and is my favorite. Chai typically has a lot of milk and sugar, and you can most certainly get it in any Indian or Pakistani restaurant in the U.S. or elsewhere. I make my own, pretty much every day, although I'm sure some Indians might not approve of my recipe or technique, although from what I'm told, there are considerable variations, even in India. Generally chai is black tea in about a 50-50 milk/water mixture, but I use far less milk (I use evaporated milk). When I've bought chai at Indian restaurants, it has always been very sweet, and I make it somewhat less so. I use fresh grated ginger, some ground cardamom, a bit of ground cloves (and often some ground allspice, too), a small bit of mace (or nutmeg), and some ground cinnamon. Some Indians or Pakistanis use black pepper in chai, too, and others use fennel seed. After letting the spices steep for awhile, you can strain the tea into your cup. You can buy tea bags already with a spice mixture in them, but I've never been very impressed with the result. You can also put the ingredients into a pan and gently boil the mixture. In this case, I tend to use a cinnamon stick, rather than ground cinnamon, as well as whole cloves and crushed cardamom seeds. I prefer to add the milk after the cooking is done, but you can cook it right along with the tea. Note: A while back, I also started using black pepper in chai, sometimes ground or sometimes whole crushed peppercorns. It gives the chai that added "zip."  

* It seems a bit of a stretch to me that tea packed for such a trip would acquire the smoky flavor this way. I wonder if at some point some open tea was exposed to the campfire smoke, the users liked it, and they then chose to repeat the process?

 

WORD HISTORY:
Tea-This word comes from a Sino-Tibetan word, "sla/tsla," which likely meant "leaf." Sino-Tibetan is a large language family in Asia and Southeast Asia which is the ancient ancestor of the Chinese dialects, like Mandarin and Cantonese, as well as southeastern Asian languages like Burmese and others. Sino-Tibetan is to these modern Asian languages what Indo European is to English, German, Italian, Russian, etc. Min Nan, a dialect of Sino-Tibetan had "te." Malay, an unrelated language from the Austronesian language family^  in southeastern Asia, borrowed the word from Min Nan as "teh." The Dutch East India Company was a private company granted Asian trade rights by the Dutch government in the early 1600s. The Dutch picked up the word from Malay "teh," rendered in Dutch as "thee," which they then brought back to western Europe, along with a lot of the product itself. English borrowed the word in the mid 1600s as both "tee" and "tea," before finally settling on the latter. Many other European languages borrowed the word from Dutch, for example, German has "Tee" (pronounced "tay"), West Frisian has "tee," French has "thé." Interestingly, the Portuguese had established themselves in southeastern China, at Macao, in the mid 1500s. The Chinese dialect in Macao pronounced their form of Sino-Tibetan "sla/tsla" as "cha." The Portuguese took the term as "chá," which they have retained to this day as their word for "tea." This same Chinese term spread elsewhere, providing forms to Russian and Persian, and from Persian to Hindi and other languages/dialects in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. English borrowed the word, likely from Hindi, as "chai," a term now used more specifically for "sweetened spiced tea." It is pronounced "ch," as in Charles, and "eye."    

^ Hawaiian is from the Austronesian language family, too.

Coffee: "Grounds" For A Love Affair

This article was updated slightly on June 19, 2015.


Each day one hell of a lot of people get their day going with coffee. In fact, quite a number of people keep their day going with coffee. "Apparently" coffee plants grew wild in Kaffa, a province of Ethiopia (also known for a long time as "Abyssinia") and the locals began using the plant to make a drink around 1000 A.D., give or take a hundred years or so. People from the Arabian Peninsula got hold of some plants and began to make a regular business out of growing and making coffee, but when the Turks acquired some plants in the 1500s, they seem to have been the first to roast the berries from the plant, the "beans," which they then ground and boiled in water. Venice was a major trade center in Europe in those times, and the Venetian traders brought coffee home in the early 1600s. It wasn't long before the Venetians and other Italians opened a number of coffeehouses, the first in Europe.* Trade and diplomatic missions brought coffee to France in the mid 1600s, where the French opened "cafés," the French term for "coffeehouses." The mid 1600s also brought coffee to England, where literally hundreds of coffeehouses opened in a relatively short period of time. Of course it wasn't long before European colonists from several nations began toting coffee off to the New World, where it has flourished ever since, and several countries are among the world's biggest producers of coffee: Brazil is the #1 coffee producer and Columbia is #2, while both Mexico and Guatemala are in the top ten. Indonesia, Vietnam and Ethiopia are also major producers in the top ten. Americans are likely more familiar with Columbia, as coffee from that country has been advertised here for decades. **

The latter part of the 1600s brought the Germans into the act, as the Turks besieged Vienna, then the capitol of the Old German Empire.*** When the siege was broken, the Turks left large quantities of supplies behind, including coffee beans. The coffee business soon took hold in Vienna and it spread to other German areas. Vienna is still known for its coffeehouses, where you pretty much need to take a class just to learn the various terms for coffee served in a variety of ways. I'd venture to say that any and all German and Austrian coffeehouses have my favorite, "Eiskaffee," or Ice Cream Coffee; cold coffee over vanilla ice cream in a tall glass, typically served with whipped cream and a cookie. If you order this, you get to cover a couple of your vices all in one order. What's not to like?

* Technically, the Turks, under the name, the Ottoman Empire, occupied a part of southeastern Europe in the Balkans, including the former city of Constantinople, which they eventually renamed Istanbul.

** For more see:  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/coffee/map.html

*** The proper name was, "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation."     

WORD HISTORY:
Coffee-The ultimate origins of this word are disputed, but while I understand the desire to claim the origins of the word for this popular drink, I lean toward the word being derived from the old Ethiopian province of "Kaffa," where "supposedly" the plant grew wild and was first used for making a beverage. Trade contact likely brought Arabic speakers to borrow a form of the word as, "qahwa/qahwah." This then was borrowed by Turkish as "kahveh." The Venetians, avid traders, learned of the beverage from the Turks, giving Italian "caffe." This was borrowed into English as "coffee" in the early 1600s, again, undoubtedly the result of trade and the resulting desire for the beverage.

Reform Entitlements For Those 'Moochers,' The Rich, Part 3/Final

As income disparity has risen over the decades, the wealthiest among us, never content to be, well, "the wealthiest among us," have had an element seemingly demanding even larger amounts for themselves, including in tax breaks or government subsidies. In a paraphrasing of multi billionaire Warren Buffett's fairly recent comments, the rich have been coddled. The more they have been coddled, the more they want to be coddled. Interestingly, many conservatives have argued that poor and middle class people become addicted to government programs. The more government programs, the more they'll want even more government programs. The conservative "theory" has been, "cut off the government programs and force them to have to work, or work more." If you believe there is truth to this "theory," then you should too accept that there is truth in the above comment about the rich. After all, what we're really talking about here is human nature; you know, "give them an inch and they'll take a mile," or "give 'em a penny and they'll want a dollar," or "give 'em one of your Twinkies and they'll ask for the other one too." Of course there was that one person who became famous when he wouldn't give up his eats to anybody and shouted, "Let go o' my Eggo."

Rising profits and income for the wealthy have driven some in that select income bracket to want more. They ship jobs overseas to cheap labor countries, why? Because they can't pay their light bill? Nope, because they want .... "more money!" Then they can sit and fret over their stock prices that only rose 5 points last week* and say, "If I cut payroll even more, I'll make ..... "mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!" Naturally many of these folks are, or have been, corporate officers, especially Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). They have seen huge increases in compensation over the last decades. There are lots of numbers bandied about on CEO pay versus pay for others, but generally, about 35 years ago CEOs at the nation's top corporate headquarters earned something like 40 to 45 times what the average worker earned. I think most Americans would say that's a pretty good rate. Well today, they earn something like 350 times the amount of the average worker. The whole upper part of the American economic system is controlled by pretty much the same small group of people who sit on various boards to "govern" (cough, cough) the nation's biggest corporations; these select few out of a population of more than 300 million. Again, figures vary depending upon source, but generally, AT LEAST 80% (again, some say more than that) of all stocks and bonds are owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans. Perhaps even more disturbing, and I'm already very disturbed (should I reword that?), the 400 Americans at the top of the income pyramid earn more than HALF of ALL Americans combined. Then there's this absolute nonsense that these super wealthy people have to "plan for retirement," as if they're really on the same level with the rest of Americans. What a bunch of stuff that comes out of a bull's behind!       

So we've had some conservatives complaining about so called "Obama phones," a public relations success for them, at least at the moment, unless Americans find out the telephone program really started under that bedrock of liberalism ..... RONALD REAGAN! Some conservative politicos tried to convince Americans that Obama would give you a phone, "IF" you would vote for him. It was a double whammy; a give away to a bunch of moochers AND a vote buying scheme, all rolled up into one. From what I understand, Rush Limbaugh was on the verge of a stroke over the free phones, undoubtedly worried that any self-respecting fascist would have a tough time overcoming the odds of beating free phones. Hm, maybe the conservatives have something here..... Reagan won 49 states in his reelection, so maybe free phones do work! Or..... maybe it was the free "Reagan cheese." For those of you too young to know, President Reagan started a large effort to give free 5lb blocks of cheese to Americans. Of course, with Reagan, it was "American cheese," not any of this "Swiss" stuff or "queso blanco" from him, no sirree! It was "red, white and blue," or maybe that was just the color of the mold on it? The program covered people on Social Security or on food stamp assistance, but the cheese was a frequent item for sale on street corners, and I don't mean from licensed vendors. It was surplus cheese bought by the government, often used to feed military personnel, as I recall. Further, I believe free butter was given away, at least for a time, although not on the same scale as the cheese, but Reagan, who increased the defense budget tremendously, could properly claim that he provided both "guns AND butter" to Americans, besides huge budget deficits.    

So the idea supported by some conservatives that the wealthy need the enticements of millions and millions of bucks to spur them on is either nonsense, or a symptom of people who have become so spoiled, they think just a few paltry millions of dollars aren't worth the effort to obtain; it must gazillions. If you invented something and were offered, say a million bucks, would you then say, "Well, I'm never going to invent anything again for THAT kind of money!" The whole psychology has been turned on its head, if you'll pardon the expression (psychology...turned on its head, get it?). I guess only poor people and those "unrich," as I term it, are "moochers," since the wealthiest Americans "deserve" any tax cuts and subsides; after all, they have been dubbed, "the job creators," by conservatives. But I like the other term for them anyway. I want entitlement reform, dammit! Those spoiled moochers, the rich, are just bleeding the country dry. If this keeps going, I won't even be able to get a free "Reagan phone."

* Remember folks, if you own a few shares of stock, the chance of you getting truly rich from that stock is not terribly high, BUT if you own stocks (plural) like the wealthy own stocks (plural), in the millions of shares, an uptick of a few points in one or more can mean a huge increase in their already substantial wealth.
   
WORD HISTORY:
Strew-This word goes back to Indo European "struh/streh," which had the notion of "spread out, scatter," as it was a derivative of Indo European "stereh," which meant, "to spread, to stretch out." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "straujanan," with the same meaning. This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "strewian," which meant "to scatter, to strew." This then became "strewen," before the modern version. The other Germanic languages have: German "streuen," Low German Saxon "straien," Dutch "strooien," Norwegian and Danish "strø," Swedish "strö." These all mean "strew, scatter," and in some cases, "sprinkle." You can probably guess what German "Salzstreuer" means ... "salt shaker," literally "salt strewer." I could not find a form in either West Frisian or Icelandic, but both have forms of "straw," which by the way,  is closely related to "strew." I covered "straw" in this article (actually close to this series on entitlements): http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2009/09/yikes-were-already-socialists.html

Reform Entitlements For Those 'Moochers,' The Rich, Part Two

As to Medicare financing, besides the 2.9% contribution to Medicare from employees and employers (each pays 1.45%), recipients (largely elderly) have deductibles, co-pays, or premiums to meet for many services, but the program is funded, in part, from general revenues, which conservatives generally say provides truth to their claim that Medicare is an entitlement program. A big problem for Medicare is that the aging of the population will add millions of recipients to the program, as the percentage of those paying into the program to finance it will drop. Further, increasing health care costs have been a problem for decades, and those costs tend to rise above the general rate of inflation. When I was a kid in the 1960s there were frequent arguments on just how to control rising medical costs. Just from things I've read fairly recently, medical costs have slowed in the last couple of years, but whether this is a long term trend, or just a temporary blip, no one can truly say. A number of people believe part of the high cost of health care in America is due to unnecessary tests and procedures to run up profits, with less health benefit to Americans to show for those high costs, compared to a number of countries which have lower costs, but the same or better life expectancy rates. In my opinion too, there's an awful tendency in this country to dismiss information about how other countries do things. As soon as someone says, "In country XYZ, they do this," almost immediately we hear, "We don't want to be like XYZ." If XYZ finds a cure for cancer, will we want to remain isolated from that cure? Ignorance can come by many routes, one of which is shutting out knowledge.

I could go on and on about Medicare, but, like it, not like it, the laws of arithmetic have very much come into play, and some plan will have to be developed soon to deal with this valuable program. Conservatives have "generally" touted proposals to "privatize" Medicare, with recipients having to choose between competing insurance plans and with Uncle Sam contributing a certain amount toward the purchase of insurance. Medicare is a complicated  subject and I can only touch on it here, but I may do a separate series in the future.

A couple of years ago, President Obama proposed eliminating subsidies to the oil and gas industry. Such subsides come to somewhere between 4 and 5 billion or so a year, depending upon whose figures you check, and seemingly another 5 or more billion, if you include breaks also offered outside of the oil/gas industry. Some Republicans screamed "foul," claiming there were no such breaks for the industry, but the howls from oil executives and oil lobbyists suggest a lot of expended energy (no pun intended) for something that doesn't exist. Lots of businesses get subsidies, whether you call them tax breaks or direct payments, that's what they are, subsidies. Whether these subsidies are fair or unfair is a matter of discussion, but Republicans have made such an issue of "survival of the fittest" and "free markets," that support for these subsidies must certainly give others the right to call Republican advocates "socialists," a term they absolutely love to throw around about others. It seems to me I recall opposition from some Republicans to government help for developing alternative energy companies, like for wind and solar, and these they definitely called "subsides." And aid to the auto industry was cause for much consternation among many a Republican, including one Mitt Romney, famous for his comment about the auto companies, "Let them go broke." The President made it clear that oil company profits were astronomical when he proposed elimination of their subsidies, and that was part of his case about doing away with them.

As most of you probably already know, the complex U.S. tax system would keep Einstein awake at nights trying to figure it out, if he were still kicking and dared to take on the challenge. Folks, let me tell you something, this code would not be nearly so complex if it weren't for businesses and wealthy people turning the screws on people in both parties in Congress (and on occupants of the White House of both parties, too), either directly or through their lobbyists. It's hardly been a secret that the wealthiest Americans have done VERY well in income growth for decades, as incomes for middle and lower income Americans have grown little or actually declined. President Reagan cut taxes substantially for the wealthy. When President Clinton raised taxes on wealthy Americans, if you think the recent near miss by an asteroid was scary, we were assured this was THE END, no near miss. Of course, not only did that not happen, the country actually entered a period of growth and declining unemployment. In the latter part of 2012, the Congressional Research Service* found that giving tax cuts to wealthy Americans has little or no effect on economic growth, but that such tax cuts likely contribute to the expanding income gap between the wealthy and the rest of Americans. Some Republicans tried to squelch ... I mean, to have the report tone down its findings, which indeed happened, although Democrats made the original findings available.**

The Republican pressure is hardly surprising. For more than thirty years Republicans have embraced a philosophy of tax cuts of all kinds, tilted towards the rich, sometimes glaringly so, claiming such cuts would stimulate growth and provide prosperity for a broad segment of American society. In case you haven't noticed, it hasn't worked. Folks, all of the charts, diagrams, and statistical analysis are not always easily followed, but the main thing is, the conclusion by the Congressional Research Service is not difficult to understand. Increasing wealth has been going to the top earners for decades, often at accelerated rates, aided by tax cuts. The more money that goes to the top, the less money the rest of us have. In the end, this isn't rocket science. There has been a tremendous transfer of wealth from many Americans to a small segment of American society who already have more than enough to sustain them many times over. Now, I'm not so narrow as to say there haven't been changes in technology and such that have helped the wealthy gain even more income, but the tax cuts have been "piling on," and it's about time a penalty flag is thrown and enforced. So Republicans are on the hook for a philosophy some of them have taken as a religion, but it's a philosophy that doesn't work, except to the detriment of many Americans, and thus, to the country. No wonder they wanted the findings of the Congressional Research Service toned down.

Next, the final part.
           
* The Congressional Research Service is a part of the Library of Congress which performs research and analysis of various policy measures or proposals for Congress. 

** The report is pretty "dry" reading, but the entire report can be viewed here: http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/Updated%20CRS%20Report%2012%3A13%3A12.pdf

WORD HISTORY:
Dolt-This word goes back to Indo European "dhwul/dhwel," which had the notion "to obscure, to dim," and seems to have also been applied to things that caused something to be obscured or dimmed, such as "swirling smoke or dust." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "dulaz," which used the "obscured, dimmed" notion in another manner; that being, "foolish;" that is, "unclear, dimmed thoughts." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "dol," which meant "stupid, foolish, silly." This then became "dul(l)," before finally settling on "dull."^ The verb form of "dull" had "dolte/dulte" as the participle form, which later became modern "dulled." The verb back then meant "to make or become stupid or foolish," besides the "become blunt or lose brightness" meaning that eventually prevailed as the main meaning in modern English. This then produced an adjective "dold," meaning "stupid, foolish, silly." By the mid 1500s "dolt" had been derived as a noun from the adjective with the meaning "stupid person." The change of the ending "d" in "dold" to the noun "t" in "dolt," is not uncommon in the Germanic languages, most obvious in many, but not all, standard German words derived from Old High German, such as "toll" ("crazy, wild," but also the figurative "super, fantastic"), compared to English "dull" (the old meaning was "stupid, foolish"), or standard German "Deutschland" (Germany), compared to some German dialects "Teutschland." American English has "learned" as the proper past tense of "learn," as in "I learned the lesson," but British English has "learnt."      

^ For the "Word History" of "dull," see Part One of this article:  http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/03/reform-entitlements-for-those-moochers.html

Reform Entitlements For Those 'Moochers,' The Rich

With the nation undergoing seemingly endless battles over the budget, some Republicans have targeted programs they like to call "entitlements;" that is, programs, they say, people feel entitled to receive, with the further connotation that these programs and their recipients are bleeding the country of its wealth and financial stability. Also there seems to be this belief by some that this supposed dependence on government is just somehow awful, but that being at the mercy of greedy businesspeople is just so much better. The 2012 election showed us just what the use of the term "entitlements" meant for Republicans, as their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, clearly spelled it all out in what became perhaps THE defining moment of the campaign, as he spoke to wealthy campaign donors who paid $50,000 a plate for dinner one day at a mansion in Florida.* In his remarks, Romney said that 47% of Americans would automatically vote for President Obama, because they were dependent upon government through various "entitlements." ** Reaction was swift and generally negative, even from many Republicans, who distanced themselves from the remarks, but right wing supporters tended to rally to Romney's defense, with the term "moochers" working its way into the discussion as a term for recipients.

We often now hear Social Security and Medicare mentioned in the context of "entitlements," which is incorrect. Americans pay into both.*** Now you can argue we don't pay enough, or we haven't paid enough, into the programs, or that some Americans receive too much or too little, but these are totally different arguments. The idea with Social Security when it was established, was that if everyone paid in, there would be broad-based support for it, rather than having some sort of "means testing," which would make it more of an entitlement, as everyone would pay, but not everyone would receive benefits. So, very wealthy people, age 65 and up, receive a Social Security check each month, regardless of the fact that they don't need it. By law, they cannot give it back, or cancel it. So has the premise about broad-based support held up? Yes, in the sense that polls show a large majority of Americans support Social Security, but since wealthy people don't need Social Security, even to supplement their incomes, the idea that they will necessarily view Social Security in the same light as the rest of us is mistaken, although there are many wealthy folks, I'm sure, who recognize the need for the program. There are also those who are pretty much opposed to Social Security, and over time, there has been a concerted effort to discredit the program and have people invest money for their own retirement. That assumes people would do so on their own, or that everyone could be an investment genius (if there is such a thing). This takes us back to more survival of the fittest (actually of the luckiest), with some of the true beneficiaries being the big banks and Wall Street investment firms, in general.**** So what happens to people who make bad investments? When they get older, what, do we throw them out on the street or just what should happen to them? With falling or essentially stagnant wages for many Americans over the last few decades, what about people who can't invest much? Let's face it, left on our own, if an emergency pops up, real or perceived, many folks will choose NOT to invest if they feel they need the money at the moment to deal with whatever it is, including necessities like buying the latest IPhone, HDTV or some other gadget. Social Security has been a bugaboo for many Republicans dating back to the mid 1930s when it was voted into existence (many Republicans voted FOR Social Security back then, but there were opponents, including some Democrats, but the two political parties were not as ideologically divided back then). Further, Social Security does NOT contribute to the budget deficit; in fact, if anything, it has helped to mask deficits, as it has run a surplus for a number of years, and Social Security does not get money directly from Uncle Sam's general revenues anyway.***** I point this out only because some Republicans have muddied the deficit waters by saying Social Security has to be dealt with now, perhaps bringing some Americans to the misinformed conclusion that Social Security is part of the current problem, which is totally untrue, something the opponents of Social Security seem loathe to make clear. There will be issues about Social Security in the future, if current projections hold up, and people on both sides of the aisle agree on that. The sooner the potential problems are dealt with is undoubtedly better, but Americans should not be stampeded into changes that are NOT in their, and thus the nation's, overall interest, but are very favorable for wealthy business interests.  

As often happens with me, I intended this to be just one article, but it will take at least another installment. Hey, I'm verbose. That's okay, because these are very important issues, and I seriously doubt many Americans really even understand the basics about the debate, let alone the finer points. So I'll continue in "Part Two." 

* Candidates from both major political parties take money from wealthy donors.

** Mr. Romney said more, but that was the key line, although his further remarks elaborated about people who believe themselves to be victims, who feel it is the responsibility of government to care for them with food, housing, medical care, and "you name it."

*** I believe it is more appropriate to say "Americans contribute to both programs," rather than to say "Americans are taxed" for these programs. Opponents of both programs like to use the word "tax," because of its negative connotation, but we are paying into these programs for our own potential benefit, as well as sharing a common responsibility as a nation. If you have health insurance, I'll bet you don't go around saying, "I paid my tax to the insurance company." Or if you have some type of retirement policy or investment plan, you don't say, "I paid my tax for my 401 K." Also, contributions to Social Security are paid on up to just south of $114,000 in income and not above. All adjusted income is subject to the 1.45% rate for Medicare. Employers contribute an equal share on both rates, but their contributions to employees is a business expense, and the self employed pay the full rate on themselves, but they get to use the "employer amount" as an expense.  

**** I've told this many times before, but it's certainly relevant again here. My father was a staunch Republican, who, like many Republicans back then, criticized Social Security. Then he retired and started receiving his Social Security. A while later the Republicans took over Congress in the mid 1990s and the talk of privatizing part or all of Social Security became part of the national debate. Then my father saw it all VERY differently, even bluntly criticizing Republicans, saying big business people just wanted to get their greedy hands on the Social Security money. My father and I often had ... ah ... disagreements on politics, but in this case, he hit the nail on the head.  

***** Social Security gets money from Uncle Sam, but only because the program holds U.S. Treasury securities, just as anyone holding government bonds does. This means Social Security buys U.S. government debt in the form of these special securities. Interest is paid on the securities. Bonds, whether issued by some government entity or by private companies, are a form of debt for the issuer.

WORD HISTORY:
Dull-This word goes back to Indo European "dhwul/dhwel," which had the notion "to obscure, to dim," and seems to have also been applied to things that caused something to be obscured or dimmed, such as "swirling smoke or dust." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "dulaz," which used the "obscured, dimmed" notion in another manner; that being, "foolish;" that is, "unclear, dimmed thoughts." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "dol," which meant "stupid, foolish, silly." This then became "dul(l)," before finally settling on "dull." The meaning of "dim of mind" took on the figurative meaning "blunt" for knives and other implements, and the primary "stupid" meaning began to recede, although we still use "dull witted." A verb form developed form the adjective, meaning "to lose sharpness or sheen;" thus still today we talk about "colors dulled" by the sun, weather, or washing, usually in the case of clothing. Forms in the other Germanic languages have generally maintained the connection with "unclear in thought" or "in some manner obscured," and as their English cousin, they all once pretty much meant "dimwitted" in some sense:: German has "toll," which usually means "crazy, wild," but has the every day language meaning "great, super, fantastic" (from the idea that when you like something, you go crazy, wild); Low German Saxon has "dull" (angry, fantastic); some Low German dialect has "doll" (mad); Dutch has "dol" (mad, wild), West Frisian has "dwylsinnich" (crazy, wild); Icelandic has "dulur" (secretive; that is, obscuring something). I could not find modern versions of the word in Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish. 

The Sequester Pinches An "Essential" Service

First published in March 2013


Both political parties, or factions within those two parties, often make dire predictions of what will happen if the other side gets its way. Recently it's been the Obama administration and Democrats telling the public that the country might just dry up and blow away if the so called "sequester" went into effect, although previously Republicans predicted the whole thing would be terrible, mainly because of defense cuts. The reality of the situation then saw the Democrats back away from the terrible predictions they had been foretelling. There will be consequences due to the sequester, but unless you're one of the people apt to lose your job quickly or have your hours trimmed, there won't be excruciating pain for most Americans, at least not right away, and maybe never. Just as tax cuts and stimulus programs take time to have a positive effect, cuts take time to have a negative effect. What effect the 85 billion in cuts will have on the economy remains to be seen, and it may take a couple of months or so before we have some inkling of an answer. Presently, the most visible sign of the cuts is the halt to White House tours, a plan that has drawn the ire of some Republicans. You know the Republicans, right? They're the party that seems to want government to go away, except to fight wars. Government can't regulate Wall Street, can't protect consumers from predatory banks and credit card companies, can't help uninsured Americans with health care, can't tax the wealthy, can't regulate pollution, and a number of other cant's. Well now they're saying those "cant's" are superseded by another "can't;" that is, the government "can't" stop giving tours of the White House, obviously a life or death program, seemingly right up there with fighting wars.

After their defeat in the 2008 election, the GOP opposed President Obama at every step on the economy, predicting dire consequences if he/we didn't do what they recommended, which was what they had been recommending and practicing since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981; that is, tax cuts, especially for the "sit on their ass class," I mean, "the job creators," as they have terrible concerns for the plight of millionaires and billionaires, and they seek to help them pile millions on top of more millions on top of billions, including by blatant attempts to destroy America's unions. You know unions, don't you? They schemed to market securities backed by bad mortgages, mortgages they knew to be bad, sending the world into a financial crisis. Oh ... wait a second. That wasn't unions, was it? Well, but then of course there are those damned poor people. Can't they just go away? Wealthy people wouldn't have to listen to all this stuff about the income gap and inequality. Now there's a new Pope known for being an advocate for the poor. Look out Donald Trump, you might have to pay a little more in taxes if this Pope starts to speak out for more equality. No wonder Trump can't get his hair done right, he's overwhelmed with taxes. The Pope should be saying, "Be a Christian and help a millionaire."   

The Republicans of the 1960s were nowhere near as vicious as those of today, but some then too vehemently opposed the implementation of Medicare for America's seniors, just as some opposed the passage of Social Security in the 1930s, another program that has just bugged the absolute hell out them. The problem for them and their big business, egomaniac allies has been, the public, including many Republican voters, came to embrace these two programs wholeheartedly. Still, today's hardcore Republican opponents of these programs haven't given up on destroying things they can't get their hands on. On top of everything else, now no White House tours. The country is in dire peril!    

WORD HISTORY:
Can-This is the verb meaning "to be able to do something, to know how to do something, have the knowledge to do." My guess is, most English speakers are unaware that "can" is closely related to "know." It goes back to Indo European "gnoh," which had the notion of "to have knowledge." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "kunnanan," with the same general meaning. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon), "cunnan," which later became "connen," with the first and third person singular present being "can." The infinitive form then changed to the shorter "can." Common throughout the other Germanic languages: German and Low German Saxon have "können" (1st & 3rd person singular present tense "kann"); Dutch has "kunnen/kan;" West Frisian has "kinne," Icelandic has "kunna/kann," Danish has "kunne/kan," Norwegian has "kunne/kan," and Swedish has "kunna/kan." 

The American Melting Pot and The Electorate, Part Three/Final

First published in March 2013

See NOTE at bottom of article for an update


The U.S. Constitution is a wonderful document, but the Founding Fathers weren't "omnis... omnic...omni," ah ... they didn't know everything, and the constant modern refrains about "the Founding Fathers said," or "the Founding Fathers meant," mainly by some on the political right, but also at times from the political left, is nonsense. After all, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, "the Bill of Rights," which contain Americans' most cherished protections, were not in the original document, but rather they were added by the amendment process a couple of years later. Yes, the Constitution is the law of the land at any given moment, but it is subject to amendment, a relatively difficult process,* the difficulty of which is naturally dependent upon the issue at hand. The idea that a document written in the 1700s will provide the everlasting guiding principles in every detail ("can't discuss it, that's it, no change"), is nonsense. I'd rather have my life guided by updated and modern principles and considerations, thank you; after all, not only the Founding Fathers, but leaders since those times, could not envision the technological changes that have come about since their times, just as we today cannot envision how things will be even a couple of decades from now, let alone a couple of hundred years from now, assuming we don't blow up, or in some other way destroy, the planet before then.

The early to mid 1800s brought many an Irish immigrant to America, and many of these people were not from Ulster, which had produced the American-English term, "Scotch-Irish," generally in reference to Protestants from the northern part of Ireland, but rather they were from the rest of Ireland, and they were thus Catholic, and more often than not, they were poor. To some of the conservative Puritanical elements of New England, these new immigrants were a threat. Forget the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence or any other ideas that might protect or welcome such newcomers, they had to be held in check, lest their religious beliefs contaminate these Puritans (the "Pur[e]" part of the word wasn't there without reason). Literacy tests were used in Connecticut and Massachusetts to prevent poor Irish Catholics from voting and it took some time for Irish immigrants and their descendants to be assimilated into American society, but, unlike with race, distinguishing a Protestant from a Catholic of any ethnic background is not so easily done, and as Catholics from other nations came to America, the process of assimilation quickened, although it took until 1960 for the country to elect a Catholic president, as fears persisted among some Protestants that a Catholic would give his (in those times, there was really no chance of a woman be elected) allegiance to the Vatican.

Chinese immigrants began to come to America in large numbers in the mid 1800s. They were often treated terribly, and it is not without reason that "Chinatowns" grew up in many cities, as Chinese immigrants and their descendants were more or less forced by circumstance to live in close community with one another. American citizenship was denied them, and thus they could not vote. Chinese immigration was actually made illegal towards the latter part of the 1800s and into the 1900s! In the midst of World War Two, Congressman Warren Magnuson (later a senator) proposed a bill to repeal all of this nonsense and it passed, but it took further legislation in the 1960s to really permit more Chinese immigration and voter participation.

In today's world of technology, keeping tabs on specific voting groups is easier. The conservative movement, and I would say especially the ultra conservative part of that movement, has run up against the reality that their ideas do not appeal to several key demographic groups, thus making their attempts to win a majority of the vote very difficult, if not impossible. I've made no attempt in recent articles to call many in the ultra conservative movement "fascists," and that's what they are. Like their fanatical, furious "Führer" of old, they want to practice, "if you can't beat 'em, exclude 'em." When black athletes did well in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Hitler told some associates that blacks shouldn't be allowed to compete in the Olympics, as they had an unfair advantage over whites because of their "jungle" heritage. This from the spokesman for the "master race." The American fascists are trying their damnedest to exclude voters unfavorable to them from voting. Limiting early voting times, requiring government issued photo identification, and prohibiting voter registration by non governmental groups is just part of the effort to curtail votes by poorer or disabled voters of all races and ethnic backgrounds, all under the cover of preventing voter fraud. The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding the validity of part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which has been renewed several times since 1965 in a bipartisan manner. The act provided for the exclusion of special qualifications to vote (like literacy tests or having to know the names of the governors of each state, for example) and it gave a major role for federal supervision of elections in areas where voter suppression had been prevalent historically, mainly, but not exclusively, in the South. This part of the law provides that the covered areas must get a clearance by the Justice Department or by a panel of judges of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia before they implement any changes to voting procedures to be sure those changes won't act to deprive people of the right to vote in that area. This is the part under review by the Supreme Court. Some argue that the areas covered by the act should be expanded to the entire nation, or be done away with as discriminatory toward the more narrowly defined areas. The entire act was renewed in 2006 and signed into law by President George W. Bush. If the law is struck down, even with a recommendation that it be applied to the entire country, it will undoubtedly set up one massive battle in Congress, which can't function now, as sensible Republicans (and there are some) will be terrified to vote to expand the law for fear of the fascists they have in their party. Without such a law at all, if you think attempts to suppress the vote have been nasty, we haven't even begun to see the end of such tactics.

* To amend the Constitution, both Houses of Congress must pass the amendment by two-thirds vote, or two thirds of the state legislatures must request that a Constitutional Convention be held, which then recommends an amendment. After either case, the amendment must then be approved by three-quarters of all states in order to become law (again either by state legislatures or state conventions called for the purpose of deciding on an amendment). Only 27 amendments have been made to the Constitution, the first ten of which were the Bill of Rights, so it is not easily done. Six other proposed amendments were not ratified.

NOTE: Since I originally wrote this article, the Supreme Court, in June of 2013, voted 5 to 4 that an important section of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. That section, Section 4 (b), tied in with Section 5, which mandated certain states and local governmental entities to get any changes to their election laws approved by the federal government. Section 4 (b) laid out the particulars to determine which states and local governments would have to abide by Section 5. The majority opinion in the Supreme Court held that Section 4 (b) was unconstitutional because it was based on data from decades before and that the feeling was that times had changed (this was the Court's CONSERVATIVES saying this!!!). I guess we should all have screamed, "Hallelujah, racism is dead!" But we know better!!! (Section 5 was left untouched)

WORD HISTORY:
Me-This word goes back to Indo European "me," and it has retained its meaning throughout the centuries. This gave Old Germanic "meg/mek" and "miz/mes." These gave Old English "mec" and "me," depending upon usage in a sentence. English and the other Germanic languages once had extremely complex grammar. Over the centuries English gradually simplified to the point where English speakers did not have to change forms of words as often as many speakers of closely related languages did, and as some still do. Modern standard German, a close English cousin, has retained a good deal of complex grammar. As noted above, English once had both "me" and "mec" to mean "me," depending upon usage in a sentence, but eventually settled on only "me." German still has (and uses) the closely related "mir" and "mich," depending upon usage, although in some cases even German speakers use the two improperly, and Berliners are sort of known for using "mir" when the correct form is "mich." Anyway English speakers, be thankful English simplified many complex grammatical procedures long ago. Forms of "me" are common throughout the other Germanic languages: besides standard German "mich/mir," Low German Saxon has "mi/mik," Dutch has "me/mij," West Frisian has "mi/my," Danish has "mig," Icelandic has "mig/mér," Norwegian has "meg" and Swedish has "mig." 

The American Melting Pot and The Electorate, Part Two

This was first published in March 2013

Voting by the public is essential to a representative democracy, but voting in itself does not necessarily mean a nation is truly democratic; after all, many communist countries held elections, but there were only their own candidates on the ballots. This didn't stop them from calling their systems "democratic republics." Hitler, after suppressing all political parties except his own Nazi Party, used public referendums, called plebiscites, to validate certain of his actions. With Nazi thugs ... I mean poll watchers, stationed everywhere, a person had to be one brave German to vote "no," although many of the issues up for a vote were highly popular, and likely would have been popular in a truly free setting.*

In the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II, unrest in 1905** brought some reforms to pacify the population, which was made up overwhelmingly of peasants and workers. A Russian parliament, the Duma, was set up  with very limited powers, as the upper chamber and the Tsar both had to support any measures passed by the elected lower chamber. The upper chamber was composed of conservative elements of society, many appointed directly by the Tsar. Still, the Duma was something of a symbol of the beginnings of a constitutional monarchy in Russia. The demographics of the country were so heavily peasant and worker, the Tsar and his government limited who could vote (excluding women and soldiers, who were overwhelmingly peasants, and setting a minimum age of 25, thus excluding most students) and tilted the playing field by designing a system where more "weight" was given to votes from the upper classes (the details of the Russian electoral system are pretty complex and beyond the scope of this article, but one upper class vote was often equal to between ten and twenty or more lower class votes). Even then, the first elected Duma representatives in 1906 were heavily peasant and worker, groups that wanted far more reform of the system than had been implemented up to that point. The Tsar dissolved the Duma after only a little more than two months and some members who had strongly supported government reforms were actually arrested and forbidden to run again. New elections were held in early 1907 which still produced a reformist majority. This Duma was likewise dissolved in short order. Under the idea of  "if you can't beat 'em with a rigged system, rig it even more," the Tsarist government added even more importance to the votes of the upper classes. While this too didn't produce a subservient lower chamber, it was much more to the liking of the government and this session of the Duma lasted for several years.  

For a large part of the history of the United States, the individual states set their own qualifications for voter eligibility and some early state laws originally pretty much limited eligible voters to white, male landowners. While most black Americans back then were slaves, even free black men could not vote in most states. While state laws gradually began to change to allow more participation, the withdrawal of Federal troops from former states of the Confederacy in the post-Civil War era brought new state laws to try to circumvent then recent amendments to the U.S. Constitution disallowing discriminatory voter eligibility laws against legal "male" American citizens, regardless of race. So called "literacy tests" came into practice in a number of states to exclude blacks from voting, as illiterate whites were often exempted from the law by white officials, or special clauses in the laws. Poll taxes, really a tax required to be able to vote, were another method used by white southern Democrats to limit the vote of blacks who then were overwhelmingly Republicans. You must remember, slavery had been so pervasive in the pre Civil War South, that after the war blacks constituted a high percentage of citizens in many southern states, even a majority in some. Native Americans struggled considerably in the right to vote, as many whites saw them as almost a foreign element, in spite of the fact they were born in the United States. Similar discriminatory practices were used to deprive Native Americans of voting rights, as had been used against black Americans, but like those black citizens, the Voting Rights Act also helped Native Americans, as well as American Latinos. It is important to remember, residents of Puerto Rico are American citizens, but such residents cannot vote in federal elections, although as American citizens, they are covered by the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act for elections in their own territory. This is the same in other U.S. possessions, like Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. 

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s helped move the country forward regarding the right to vote as Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed, the Voting Rights Act in the mid 1960s, which quashed poll taxes and other such nonsense. Previously, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granted women the legal right to vote in 1920. The early 1970s saw voting rights further expanded as the age to vote was lowered to 18 from 21, much the consequence of the nation's growing dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War and the eligibility for the draft of men beginning at age 18, bringing the charge, "old enough to fight, but not old enough to vote." Remember too, as I noted above, the Tsar did not allow soldiers to vote!

Defining who can vote also can lead to who governs and who gets representation. I say "can lead," because a fairly large number of Americans DO NOT vote in any given election; so, the right to vote doesn't necessarily mean a particular point of view will win an election. In the immediate post Civil War South, blacks could legally vote, but intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan kept many African Americans too scared to risk voting. In the more modern era, the roles of blacks in American elections has shifted, as has the role of white southerners, although that change was more gradual. The Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal saw black Americans shift decidedly into the Democratic Party in the 1936 election (when FDR won a second term, winning in a landslide over Republican Alf Landon), where they have remained ever since, "usually" providing Democratic candidates with at least 90% of  the black vote in any given election. Interestingly, this situation placed both blacks and white southerners in the Democratic Party, in spite of the very troubled history between the two racial groups.*** Gradually, a number of cases, like the desegregation of schools (first enforced by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) and the Voting Rights Act (favored and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson), stirred some southern whites to abandon the Democrats for various other parties, although many often later returned to the Democratic column on the ballot, as the thought of voting Republican was just too much for a region steeped in hatred for the GOP since the Civil War. As the two major parties gradually changed roles on many issues, southern whites began a gradual change to the Republican Party, eventually making the once "solidly Democratic South," into a solidly Republican South and providing a number of major leaders to the Republican Party, like Newt Gingrich (not a native southerner, but he came to be associated with Georgia), Dick Armey (not a native southerner, but became associated with Texas), Trent Lott of Mississippi, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (a former Democrat and leader of the Dixiecrats, a pro-segregation party of southern Democrats in the late 1940s), Rick Perry of Texas (a former Democrat), Phil Gramm of Texas (a former Democrat), Richard Shelby of Alabama (a former Democrat), Jesse Helms of North Carolina (a former Democrat only in his early years), Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (although born in Alabama, from childhood on in Kentucky). This is only meant to be a sampling, not a definitive list.

I'll finish his series in the next article with what's been going on in the last couple of years up to the present.

* After Hitler's Austrian homeland was made part of Germany in the spring of 1938, Hitler called for a plebiscite. The idea that Germans would vote against that was not likely in the first place. The more important question was, if Austrians would ratify the move in substantial numbers, which they did by a slightly higher percentage than in the rest of Germany. After World War One, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up, with many regions becoming parts of other countries, newly established or existing. This left the German Austrian part as a small separate nation, initially called "The Republic of German Austria." For more on these events, see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/06/german-question-part-one-hundred-four.html

And for Austria becoming part of Germany during Hitler's rule, see:

 http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/07/german-question-part-one-hundred-twenty_30.html

** This was actually a revolution that failed, but it is often seen by historians as a sort of dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolution which brought down the Tsar. This was followed only months later by the Bolshevik overthrow of the government that had replaced the Tsar and his officials. This brought communist rule for decades. 

*** By that time, and certainly later, a fairly substantial number of black Americans had left the South for other parts of the country, often for northern industrial cities, where laborers could earn a pretty decent wage, thanks to union victories over time.

WORD HISTORY:
Minor-This word goes back to the Indo European root "mey/mei," which had the notion of  "small, little." This gave its Latin offspring "minuere," which meant "to lessen, to make smaller, reduce." From this was derived Latin "minor," with the general meaning "smaller." English borrowed the word in the 1200s as "minour/menour." The noun form developed in Latin from the adjective as a word for a Franciscan, from the Latin expression of St Francis "Frates Minores;" that is, "lesser brethren," meant to show humility for his religious order. English borrowed the noun form in the 1300s. Latin "minores" also meant "young" (lesser in age) and English took that meaning, which is still with us today, as well as the general "lesser" meaning, also later used for a secondary course of study in universities. I have to be honest, "minor" is a tough word to research, and some Germanic languages have forms seemingly going way back in time, but whether these came by way of Latin, or from a Germanic form likewise derived from Indo European root, I cannot really say, although I lean toward the borrowing from Latin, as I could not find a form in Old English, which "seems to suggest" the other Germanic dialects borrowed forms from Latin AFTER the Anglo-Saxons left northern Germany, but the term also could have died out in Old English before it was ever recorded in writing. 

The American Melting Pot and The Electorate

This was first published in March 2013

The United States has really always been a nation of minorities. These minorities have "usually" joined together to form the nation, although the process hasn't always been pretty. The original American states were a mixture of ethnic and nationality groups,* with a fairly substantial Dutch presence in New York (originally a Dutch possession), a German element in many places, especially Pennsylvania,** a substantial English presence in most of the former colonies, especially in New England and the mid Atlantic, a smaller Scottish and Welsh presence; a substantial Scots-Irish presence in many places, especially in parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North and South Carolina.*** Time only added to these numbers, as Europeans flocked to the U.S. in the 1800s and about half of the 1900s, although the variety of people expanded, as Italians, Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenians, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Swedes, Portuguese, Jews (often of Russian nationality)****, Hungarians, Rumanians, Basques, and others came in fairly high numbers as immigrants. Not only that, the other side of the world provided plenty of immigrants too, in the 1800s especially, Chinese, who formed Chinese communities, not only in the western part of the country, but also in the east, as they settled throughout the country. As the U.S. expanded westward, the number of states grew, as did the inclusion of ethnic minorities already present in some of the newly acquired territories, such as substantial Hispanic populations in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, as well as a number of people of French background, especially in Louisiana. 

There were also hundreds of thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa held as slaves (they could not vote), primarily in southern states, where they were used as cheap labor, literally slave labor, generally on large plantations. Even in the early decades of American independence slavery in northern states was limited, as laws in these states began to phase out the practice of owning slaves. This split between north and south widened so much and was so contentious, it ended with southern states trying to leave the Union, which resulted in the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln issued the "Emancipation Proclamation," freeing America's slaves, an act confirmed by the defeat of the Confederacy in the war. The 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution just after the Civil War helped form the legal basis for former slaves to vote, but at that time, the South was under Reconstruction; that is, occupation by Federal troops. When Reconstruction ended not long thereafter, southern states began to pass laws to restrict black American voting, often under the guise of a poll tax, the non payment of which deprived a person of the right to vote. Not only that, black voters were often threatened, beaten, or even killed, if they tried to vote. In those times, black Americans were almost exclusively Republicans, while white southerners of all income levels were just as exclusively Democrats, as they opposed the party of Lincoln, the Republicans.

Another group that gradually became a minority was the vast indigenous Native American population (initially, of course, they were the majority, although they were spread out). Over time, "undoubtedly" a good deal of that population simply was absorbed into the general population, although determining a number is pretty much impossible, as association of white Americans with "Indians" was often prohibited, or at least frowned upon by society. So if your great, great grandparent was involved with a Native American, which resulted in a child, they probably didn't run out and tell everyone in sight, or ANYONE in sight. The same was true of white association with black Americans, as the cases of Thomas Jefferson and Strom Thurmond have demonstrated, as both fathered children with black women. Obviously Thurmond didn't pass out cigars at the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, although he used race as a political weapon for decades. Anyway, something around a million people still inhabit America's hundreds of "Indian" reservations, although most people who term themselves as full or partial Native Americans live outside of reservations.

Then there was America's largest minority, certainly now a majority, WOMEN. They only got to first cast ballots in the election of 1920!!!    

In Part Two, where is the U.S. on voting rights now? Will we go back to excluding legal residents from voting? Obviously, some would like to do just that.

* The actual ethnic and nationality composition of the original states cannot be completely certain, but immigration records available from ports of entry, and overseas records of people leaving for America, plus early land and court records, give what is likely a good picture of what early America looked like.

** The so called "Pennsylvania Dutch" were/are really Germans, largely, but not exclusively, from a region around the Rhine River in western Germany known as the Palatinate (Heidelberg is one of the main cities), who came to America mainly in the late 1600s. The German name for themselves being "Deutsche," with dialect variations, like "Deitsch" and "Teitsch," the then American Colonists pronounced the term as "Dutch." This association with "Dutch" was further reinforced by the fact that a number of the new arrivals had traveled the Rhine River into Holland (the Netherlands) where they then boarded ships for America. Their speech came to be called "Pennsylvania Dutch," or "Pennsylvania German," an amalgamation of Upper German dialects from that general area of Germany, which then also included Alsace (on the western side of the Rhine, but now part of France), and part of the German area of Switzerland. For a little more on Alsace, see my article:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/11/german-question-part-fifty-five.html

*** Scots-Irish, often rendered as "Scotch-Irish" in America, were the people who came from what is now Northern Ireland, or Ulster, primarily during the 1700s. These people generally descend from Protestant Scots and northern Englishmen who were encouraged by King James I in the early 1600s to migrate to the general area of northern Ireland to settle on lands confiscated from Irish nobles (Catholics). The idea was, this would gradually bind more and more of Ireland to the crown and to Protestantism. King James was a Scot, and prior to his ascending the English throne, he was known as King James VI of Scotland. The confiscated Irish lands were often taken over by wealthy English and Scottish landowners and the "Scots-Irish" settlers worked for them. Tough economic times and domination by the landowners saw a couple of hundred thousand Scots-Irish emigrate to the American colonies, with more coming after the founding of the United States.

**** Until the end of World War One, Russia included a large segment of Poland, including Warsaw, as well as Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and parts of what is now Rumania. All of these areas had fairly large numbers of Jews who were often persecuted (even violently) by so called Christians in these areas. Primarily in the latter part of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s, Jews who could, left these areas, with a fairly large number coming to the U.S. Some, however, migrated to other parts of Europe, where later they or their descendants were murdered in large numbers when the Nazis controlled much of Europe. Some wisely got out before the massacre started, again with many coming to America, as did some of the survivors in the postwar era. 
 
WORD HISTORY:
Major-This word goes back to Indo European "megh/magh," which had the notion of "great, large." This gave its Latin offspring "magnus," with the same meanings, which then produced "maior," a comparative form; as in, "big>bigger," or "large>larger." English borrowed the word in the 1200s as "maiour," before the modern version. Latin "maior" was also used as a noun to mean "an elder," and from that meaning came     "high ranking official or senior officer," rendered as "major," during the Middle Ages, which was taken by French for a military officer. This was then borrowed by English during the 1600s. A verb form developed in American English, circa 1900,  meaning "to take a specific course of study in college, to specialize in a profession or subject;" as in, "to major in business management" or "to major in English." German also borrowed the military rank "major," with the same spelling, but basically pronounced.as "mah-your."