Here is a little musical interlude.

Here is an email I got about their Kickstarter Campaign to fund a new CD.

North America’s only touring Russian-American balalaika-piano duo! Click here to watch Russian Duo’s Kickstarter Video! Dear Friends, We would like to thank all of you who have already backed our Kickstarter Campaign to record a new album. And we want to invite everyone else to join the fun. Time is of the essence to reach our goal. We have raised $3,215 of the $5,400 needed to record our new album. (That’s 60% with 15 days to go.) If we don’t reach our goal by December 3, the project will not be funded and we will not receive any of your heartfelt pledges. This new album celebrates our 7 years of collaboration. We get to share our beautiful new repertoire with fans, friends, colleagues, supporters and future audiences. In exchange, depending on your pledge, you will receive a digital download, a real CD, a Dalcroze Eurhythmics session, chamber music session, Oleg’s solo concert or a Russian Duo house concert! On the career side of things: we need a new album to represent our current level of performance, we need new material to apply for a prestigious grant from Chamber Music America, and we need professionally recorded repertoire to enter juried showcases around North America. By the middle of December (with your help!) we will have spent time in the recording studio and will be well on our way to a finished product. In just 2 short weeks our campaign will be over. We hope you will partner with us – soon! – to make this project a reality! Watch our Kickstarter video for a glimpse of Russian Duo in action and to learn about the process. With Best Wishes, Terry & Oleg Terry, after a recent concert in Ohio. Oleg singing a Soviet song in concert. www.russianduo.com Our mailing address is: 3003 Euclid Heights Boulevard Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118

Our Time has the article Our American Nightmare? The New American Dream Is Much Different Than It Used To Be. (Sorry, I just couldn’t stand to post as my subject line the title the way it was written.)

We learn to view the world through the lens of our environment, which explains why neighborhoods have such a large impact on one’s future financial situation. A study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that the economic segregation of neighborhoods effected mobility; in particular, urban areas with distinctly separate wealthy and poorer sections had lower levels of success among the underprivileged. Logically speaking, this makes sense – with no peers or neighbors to serve as examples of a different lifestyle, people living in areas of concentrated poverty have no reason to believe that their actions can impact their lot in life.

As I read this, I kept thinking that there was nothing new here.  We learned this all in the 1960s.  Then I remembered that I am always telling people that we need to keep repeating these lessons for the people who weren’t around in the 1960s to learn all this stuff.  How are these new people supposed to understand the problems we are trying to solve if they don’t go through a learning experience like some of us did?

Slate has the article Why Democrats Can’t Win Over White Working-Class Voters. I’ll give you the ending paragraph to think about as you read the article.

But the United States doesn’t have a political party to support that kind of social democracy. Instead, it has the Democratic Party, a collection of disparate interests which—at its best—is nervous about economic liberalism and hesitant to push anything outside the mainstream. And worse, it has a presidential frontrunner who—more than anyone else—is connected to the kinds of elites and the kinds of policies that would push the party away from the muscular liberalism it needs.

From the tone of the comments (and even the article itself) it seems people are still wondering.

For those that are wondering what the Democrats ever did to convince the white folk that the Democrats don’t care, why not think about this?  During the Obama administration, the incomes and wealth of the bottom 90% or income earners declined.  This is the first time in recent history where this decline kept happening during a “recovery” of which the Democrats are so proud.

Obama’s refusal to even charge a single criminal executive in the financial sector only made the great shift of wealth to the wealthy seem more unfair.  Oh sure the corporations that were defrauded by their high ranking executives were made to pay fines, but those executives didn’t pay a nickel.  They got to keep the great transfer of wealth that came their way.  The share holders got to pay the fines.  Worse yet, the corporations took tax deductions for the fines so that the tax payers had to pay more in taxes to make up for what the corporations got to deduct.

The front runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is closely related politically with these fraudsters, Do people really think she will help them recover from their declining wages and wealth?  Her husband was the great welfare cutter, budget balancer, and financial fraud promoter.  Perhaps some working class sense that what Clinton did is not helping them at all.