First Citizens’ Opens its 16th Annual Scholarship Application Period »

FAIRHAVEN, MA -- FEBRUARY 1, 2012 – For the 16th consecutive year, First Citizens’ Federal Credit Union announces its Barbara Whitehead Silva & Champion Family Scholarship Program and is now accepting applications. In total thirteen $1,000 scholarships will be awarded.

5 Quick Tips to Get Your Home Ready for Winter »

It may not be winter yet, but do not wait for it to arrive to start getting the house ready for the coldest months of the year.

Preparing a home for winter will take time and should not be rushed. Neglecting certain projects or carelessly completing them can lead to major system failures, extensive damage and in extreme cases even health problems.

"Procrastinating can cost you when it comes to getting ready for winter," says Rhonda Hills, of Kudzu.com. "Systems that are not ready for heavy use can falter or even fail. This can be a recipe for disaster."

Restaurant Week Cape Cod »

A superb selection of the Cape's finest dining destinations let their creative juices flow this week! Three-course exhibition menus offered for a fixed low price throughout. Check our website for complete info. Hope you're hungry!

Where Did the Music Go? »

By TRB

I remember Kenny, the sales manager at a large Boston FM station and how pivitol he became in bringing Reggae to America's shores.Of course we used to drink a little too much back then, so maybe some of this isn't as accurate as it could be. But at the time, I was sitting outside someplace across from the Casablanca restaurant on Mt. Auburn St. in Harvard Square, where it seemed the city fathers and mothers were erecting monuments to the invention and existence of the red brick.

I don't remember what month it was but all that academia-loooking red brick was heating that square up like a skillet. I think I was on leave fromThe Stars and Stripes European Edition in Darmstadt Germany. But I had known Kenny since I was a longhair getting my butt kicked by the Cambridge police for being a longhair. I was just about to leave this sidewalk cafe when Kenny appeared with reggae singer Peter Tosh and another man, who took a lot of notes.

Kenny had fallen in love with this music while down on the islands and he wanted every person in America to have a chance to listen to it. There was some kind of game plan that involved getting reggae songs onto the play list at the station where Kenny worked. Of course there was no money exchanged.This was a straight deal where Kenny wanted reggae on the air and was talking the DJs to death until they agreed. They agreed. Reggae took off in America and that is how Kenny got a lot of gold albums in frames on the walls of his dining room.

But naturally the story had to begin sooner, way back in the culture of the islands. It was imbued with politics from the beginning. It was the poor and the downtrodden on the island of Jamacia turning their pain into music. Just as the American blues was the African American in Jim Crow America transforming his grief and anger into the blues. Music comes from people and their feelings or it really isn't music. It is something else. Something like disco was.

We have it coming now from three directions. First there is this thing called Romantic Music, which is so bad I wouldn't mind if they brought disco back as long as they took Romantic Music away. Then there is this "almost Disco" thing that is emerging with stars like Mark Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. And, even more bizarre and removed from humanity than the other two is Trance Music.

It is the worst music I have heard in my lifetime. It is exactly what they call it. Music that might put you in an intellectual trance if you listen to it long enough. Drugs are not required, but I am sure the experience would be enhanced with them. The drug woud probably have to be be administed by an anesthesiologist. We're not talking magic mushrooms here. Trance Music will drive you crazy then drop you off on the corner.

The Good Old Days of Food and Sanity »

By TRB

Finally we can say there were good old days. For the longest time in my life, I have heard "good old days," talked about. But someone was always quick to point out that they were not good old days at all. There was no television, that computers did not exist, that cars were poorly made, that most people could not afford to purchase a house and lived in apartments, that hardly anyone went to college folllowing high school, that medicine was in the Dark Ages and that many died of preventable illnesses, and on and on.

But that has finally changed. Changed completely. There are good old days in back of us now. We have begun to sink as a society, to not quite make it up to our own standards. And the proof of this is in every direction you look. Forget that the life expectancy rates are dropping and that infant mortality has increased. And don't even bother to bring up that it is easier to die in a hospital of some exotic infection than it is if you were to blindfold yourself and go walking in traffic. The crime rate is staggering, the job market is dead, the price of an education is beyond the means of most people. But, for a moment, let's forget about all that blather.

Just walk into any supermarket. Look closely at the food. All of it, the meat, the greens, the milk, the bread, the staples as we used to call them. What in the world do all these labels on them mean? Some are organically grown, but only 70 percent organic. Who knows how they grow the other 30 percent of the same vegetable? Farmers have become quite knowledgable about antibiotics and growth hormones and preservatives and anti-pest preventatives, and even genetic engineering.

I don't know that they have learned that much more about food, except how to make it very unfood like. Some of this stuff might be downright dangerous. The Food and Drug Administration, who couldn't be trusted to deliver your groceries on time, has decided to allow farmers to do just about anything to our food. And they have. Now when you eat a piece of chicken, you are also digesting something that has been shot full of growth hormones and antibiotics, and in many cases has been eating food laced with chicken. That's right, you are eating a doped up, cannibalistic chicken.

Same goes for your red meat. Again, you are eating something that is the product of men who have done everything they could, both chemically and with antibiotics to get an edge on their compitition. Are you beginning to remember the good old days yet?

The Clowns Who Rule »

By TRB

Remember the guy, he was in every class you had. He always sat at the back of the room because he thought, he truly believed, sitting there would make him invisible to the teacher. He was the class wise guy the class bully, the class clown. He had many jobs. He wasn't in school to get an education because in his mind he already knew it all. He was there to entertain, to talk, to create havoc and to terrorize other students.

Did you ever wonder what happened to him? Well, I believe I have found him. He is resting comfortably in a mahogany armchair, he is wearing a $4000 suit. He is making deals that will diminish your social security, evaporate your retirement fund, close the doors on AIDs prevention centers in most major cities, see to it that you have to pay more co-pay for your prescriptions. And he is not through. Because while he is doing this, he is also ripping to shreds any regulations that might have made it easier to expect our corporate government to do right by you.

It is the guy who used to sit at the back of the class. Except he is not hiding anymore. He is right there on your television news every night bragging about his "austerity" programs, but failing every time to mention that if they are implemented they will have terrible consequences for your life and those lives of the people you love. He is failing to mention, for example, that some of the cutbacks, especially the medical ones, will probably result in the early deaths of some people who might have lived longer.

What could be so important, so essential that the U.S.would risk the deaths of some of its own citizens to accomplish? Is it a war? In a way it is. It is a class war. The middle class and the poor will have their lives further down-graded so that the wealthy can maintain their low tax rate, so corportions can hire tax lawyers to go through the many loopholes Congress provides for them every year. Our corporations practically write our tax law as it is. Yes, the so-called private sector is doing the job we voted these clowns into office to do.

That is why it is necessary - even if it takes a few election cycles and some recalls - to get them all out. That means every holder of political office in the Senate and the House of Representatives. They have to be replaced and this has to be done soon. Because they are replacing you.

What's more is that finally the stupidly wealthy are realizing that their tax break is not doing them any good. In fact, if things keep going in this direction on the world markets, their tax rate could be one of the reasons they wind up in the poor house with the rest of us. All because of a little thing they taught to us in school a long time ago, back when today's politician wasn't paying attention, maybe he was trying to get his hand up Mary's dress, or he was sticking his gum on the bottom of his neighbor's shoe. In any case, when the time came to discuss the ins and outs of supply and demand, he just wasn't paying attention.

Television Newsman Tells Truth On-Air »

By TRB

It was tough for newsman Dylan Ratigan earlier in the week when for some unknown reason he just couldn't hold it back any longer and came right out and said what everyone is learning is the truth behind this financial mess the U.S., England and much of Europe finds itself in. Suddenly the veteran newsman exploded with the truth.

On the air.

Saying things like, "The banking system is fully corrupt and defrauding us,"  the journalist seemed to want to get it all off his chest. And so the following, or most of it (I had some things to say, too) is a word for word transcription of journalist Dylan Ratigan; his interpretation of what went wrong and when with our financial system.

Citing our almost $70 trillion in liabilities, Dylan Ratigan began his monolouge. The other guests on the show, not acquainted with anyone actuallly telling the truth on a  news program looked like they wanted to dive under their seats.

"The president doesn't get it," Ratigan said of the current problems. "The democrats and republicans are equally to blame." And then the truth spilled out as Dylan Ratigan addressed our leaders who have been sitting on their hands or trying their best to sink the ship for a long time now. "You have lied and misrepresented the overall structure," Ratigan began. "There are misaligned interests in the banking system, in the trade agreements and in the tax code that have been extracting (stealing) money from our country for decades and it has been covered up through money printing and all the rest of this nonsense. . .

"Why am I less able to understand that my nation is being extracted systematically by millions of multi-variable mathematical equations (like derivative trading) that are happening constantly every day to my country. Why do I have to stay on the edge of my Bloomberg terminal monitor to understand the root of the problem?"

At this point one of his guests, Barry Ritholtz of Equity Research and the author of "Bail Out Nation," said "We used to be a democracy.Now we are a corporatocracy, and as long as the banks own Congress, the public is going to continue to get angrier. That the Supreme Court has given them permission to do this (to own Congress) is a radical change in our system."

"America is suffering from a vampiric extraction of wealth driven by the tax code, banking policy and trade, Ratigan chimed in, "And whoever the president is has to acknowledge that and reconcile that before we can move forward."

Ratigan was not through with getting things off his chest. He listend for a while to the musings of his "expert" guests, none of whom seemed to have any new ideas about anything. Meanwhile riots were at their height in London, the stock market was on the way to losing 4 percent of its total value and bond markets in Europe and America were in an uproar.

One of his guests pointed out that we seem to have a failed presidency. Speaking of the health care plan she said it was hard it was to believe that Obama would not even say whether or not he supported a single-payer plan. That has been the problem with Obama all along. He seems to believe he can sit on his one billion dollars in campaign funds and do nothing for four years straight. So far, he has done zip. The U.S. Navy got Osama bin Laden, it was just a matter of time. Obama can take credit for only one thing. He gave the banks everything they wanted, including their own executives to run the government agencies that are supposed to regulate them. This might help to explain why he is sitting on one billion dollars in campaign funds.

Half a Million of Us »

By TRB

Jimi Hendrix once had this apartment, or maybe it belonged to his girlfriend  in NYC not far from several clubs. He would keep his guitars there and do some practicing. He found some strange ways to occupy himself. One was to read Bob Dylan's songbook from cover to cover. He loved Bob Dylan.

Sometimes when Jimi was feeling a little restless at night he might show up at a club or two and just naturally the manager would clear the stage and let Jimi loose. It was during one of these occasions that he played Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower."           

"Yes, "two riders were approaching and the wind began to howl," and then Jimi would make it howl on his guitar. He could re-create the weather right there for you. When the "bombs, were bursting in air," he would put those bombs up there for you. And he would flicker his long dark fingers downward as they fell upon the audience.

But Jimi wasn't weird or anything, He was just another musician from that generation who was trying to make something happen.The Allman Brothers would arrive a few months later in NYC, a group of absolute country homeboys from Florida, and occupy the Fillmore East for a couple of nights. And producer Tom Dowd would sit in an allyway next to the building and record them live right there at the Fillmore East and people would hear Duane Allman for the first time, unless they knew that was him playing the session behind Aretha on her album "Lady Soul." Eric Clapton is responsible for some overdubs on that same album,

People, mostly press, kept calling the Allmans "Southern Rock, as if there were such an animal. Well the blues originated in the South and so did Rock, "So," Gregg  Allman said sarcastically to a news interviewer one night, "Why don't you just call it Rock Rock. It's all from the South."

There was the experimental group in Englend called  Pink Floyd which was pushing forward with a sound that today would be called "trance music" because that is the only way to describe it. Of course Pink Floyd offered up a bit more difficult menu, one drenched in American Blues and something called Psychadelic music that they couldn't even describe. There was the meeting of the minds that had taken place on a train platform just a year before between Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, where Richards found his Muse carrying a dozen or so American blues albums and a band - the best traditional Rock group in history - was all but created before the train even arrived.

There was the pop group called the Beatles who wrote some interesting music, especially Harrison and Lennon. It was said The Beatles were millionaires on paper already. Then there were these guitarists Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and yes, you can add Jeff Beck to that, who were playing something new something singular, it was theirs. I am not going to try to explain it all.This is a column not a book. And when the book of Rock is finally written, it will consist of many chapters.

There were great bands everywhere, and I won't try to mention all of them either. Just too many.

But there was the African American Motown artist named Marvin Gaye who was working on something he would call "What's Going On," and it would include some prophecy about the environment in a song called "Mercy Mercy Me"  that could be written today and would be just as fresh as the morning dew if you can  still  find any of that stuff. Marvin Gaye had created a new kind of socially conscious Rock which, since his death no one has been able to replace. In fact, black artists, like Sly and the Family Stone, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and a dozen Motown artists (just to name a few) were just as responsible for the remarkable change that occured in the sound of music in the 1960s.

Tomorrow’s Lies - Today »

By TRB

For those of you with the stomach to vote for or against these remarkably inept members of Congress in the next election, or for Presidential candidates, let me clue you in on some of the script before it is completely written and regurgetated to the masses.The lies are being prepared at this very moment, they need several things before they can truly be effective lies, You just can't throw them out there like Sarah Palin or some other Tea Party roach.

No this all has to be choreographed. It requires experts and fundations and skewed statistics that can be skewed so perfectly that you might not even notice they have been skewed. Then there's the phone banks with the questions worded in such a way as to receive the answer they want. Maybe you will fall into one of those traps.

Fake polls are big. Anyone can have a poll. All you have to do is publicize it in such a way that the local news dingbats can't resist it. For example, Say you've got five people in town who are 100 or older. Why not get them together and find  out who they are voting for, especially if it's your candidate. Well they are voting for your candidate. But that proves nothing, since three of them are senile and haven't known the president's name in 20 years. But the public eats up this kind of stuff, and that's worth some votes.

By far the hardest part of any election is the lying. Campaign's don't have lying departments. They pretty much lie whenever they get a  chance though. Still the skill of lying your way through political races has to be tweeked. There must be a way to lie with more sincerity for example. And someone has to devise a method that will prevent a lie from catching up with you.

One of the shortcomings of lies of course is that they are not the truth. That makes them especially hard to work with if you can't keep a straight face. But successes have been recorded. For example, if you play your cards right you can convince a government agency to back up your lie. The FCC, the FAA, the FBI, the CIA, the EPA, Homeland Security (they will lie about anything, the AG. Really, pick your agency, someone inside will feed you a lie or take something out of context that will help you with your campaign. Why? Because all of these agencies are politically motivated to survive and prosper.

You always have to keep one thing in mind though. If you don't you will be fooled every time. The lies begin when the campaigns begin and intensify as they get closer to election day, at which point you don't know anything true about either candidate.  

Mideast Make-Over, No More Jobs, Debt Ceiling Cracked »

By TRB

Jobs, The U.S. government will dangle the prospect of the creation of new jobs in front of our eyes now. Of course there are no new jobs.That is why that farcical and pathetic argument about the debt ceiling lasted as long as it did (since early April) so neither side had to talk about jobs. Jobs is a bad one, the worst tooth in your head, and it is getting ugly.There are three reasons why this is happening and they are intresting, because the President and the Congress can't or wont do anything about jobs.

So they lie about the "creation "of new jobs. this is why that won't happen:

I.) It is far more profitable for the U.S. banking system to trade money overseas and not lend it here. So, no growth.

2.Trade deals that make extraction of money from the U.S.the main part of the deal. Extraction of money from the foreign nation is in the footnotes and small print and never seems to make it to our treasury.

3.Tax codes that make it more profitible for wealthy individuals to keep U.S. money out of the country.

The three things above mean no jobs. Oh, there are more. But the major reasons are stated above.

So how low can we go? We're at a realistic 20 percent unemployment now. The future, which used to be something to look forward to, tells us that things will get worse, maybe a lot worse, before they get better.