We don’t like debtors in this country, even if those debtors are ourselves. This is why former bankrupt turned anti-bankruptcy personal finance guru Dave Ramsey has a career. (Ramsey, if you are wondering, also promotes the canard that the federal budget is like a household budget.) We think we should be punished for debt, like a small child who has misbehaved. Then all will be well.
Tracks
“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.
Assata (via michellehuxtable)
I tell my students this every single semester.
(via notesofanativesister)
A group of photographers and artists asked inmates at Illinois’s Tamms Supermax Prison to request one image of anything in the world, real or imagined—and then they photographed it.
Here are the powerful results.
(photo via Creative Time Reports. Photo by Chris Murphy, 2012.)
Take a few minutes for this one. It’s… important.
According to new data out last Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of the ten largest occupations in America now pay less than $30,000 a year.
A full-time food prep worker — the third most-common job in the U.S. – earned $18,720 last year. Cashiers and waiters pocketed less than $21,000.
The trend is in the wrong direction – toward even more of these jobs, and lower pay.
The real median wage of Americans is already 8 percent below what it was in 2000.
A full-time food prep worker — the third most-common job in the U.S. – earned $18,720 last year. Cashiers and waiters pocketed less than $21,000.
The trend is in the wrong direction – toward even more of these jobs, and lower pay.
The real median wage of Americans is already 8 percent below what it was in 2000.
I get the feeling not enough people are following Robert Reich.
Mention George Soros anywhere on the far-right and you’ll get fulminations. To Republicans, Soros is an aristocratic mastermind who swore to “spend whatever it takes” to end the Bush-Neocons’ grip on political power in America… a vile plutocrat, striving to trample the will of plain-folks, along with the populist GOP that protects them. Glenn Beck railed to his audience, calling Soros the “Great Oligarch” and a master manipulator “who toppled eight foreign governments.” (The one thing Beck never mentioned, and that - tellingly and symptomatically - not one member of Beck’s vast following ever asked, was “which eight foreign governments did George Soros help to topple?”…) … Have you guessed yet (or looked up) the eight foreign governments that master-mogul-manipulator George Soros “toppled”? How telling that (to my knowledge) none of Glenn Beck’s viewers or listeners even roused themselves with God’s greatest gift - curiosity - to ask which governments those were. But you know, by now, what those toppled governments were, right? They were… … the communist dictatorship of Poland … the communist dictatorship of Czechoslovakia … the communist dictatorship of Soros’s birthplace Hungary … the communist dictatorship of Lithuania … the communist dictatorship of Estonia … the communist dictatorship of Latvia … the communist dictatorship of Romania … the communist dictatorship of Bulgaria… … and that’s erring on the low side. Some credit Soros with having major effects in Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine…. Yep. It is pretty clear why Glenn Beck never likes to get specific. Facts kind of interfere with the narrative.
Heh. Not sure where the Republican Party of Wisconsin got their mailing list, but this plea for donations isn’t starting out too well for them.
“In 2012, the world’s 100 richest people became $241 billion richer.
They are now worth $1.9 trillion: just a little less than the entire output of the United Kingdom.
This is not the result of chance. The rise in the fortunes of the super-rich is the direct result of policies. Here are a few: the reduction of tax rates and tax enforcement; governments’ refusal to recoup a decent share of revenues from minerals and land; the privatisation of public assets and the creation of a toll-booth economy; wage liberalisation and the destruction of collective bargaining.
The policies that made the global monarchs so rich are the policies squeezing everyone else. This is not what the theory predicted. Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and their disciples – in a thousand business schools, the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and just about every modern government – have argued that the less governments tax the rich, defend workers and redistribute wealth, the more prosperous everyone will be. Any attempt to reduce inequality would damage the efficiency of the market, impeding the rising tide that lifts all boats. The apostles have conducted a 30-year global experiment, and the results are now in. Total failure.”
If you think we’re done with neoliberalism, think again | Guardian
It’s not just in the US that “trickle-down” economics has proven to do the opposite.
This past week in Portland, two men walked the streets with assault rifles slung on their back just to make the point that they could. They caused panic and multiple calls to 911. Nevertheless, they were not stopped by the police because they were doing nothing technically illegal. Frankly, their walk through Portland was one of the best arguments I could think of for banning assault rifles. In a modern American city, and given our tendency toward violence in America, the thought of many people walking around with assault rifles openly is a frightening thought. Their extreme actions actually may become one of the centerpieces of why we need to impose some control on the situation. Courts have ruled more than once that the Second Amendment does not require that we allow situations like those two men.
OrthoCuban (via azspot)
Really. Two guys walk around with rifles to make a statement, nobody dies, and that’s “one of the best arguments I could think of for banning assault rifles”? Because that image is a “frightening thought”? On the heels of Newtown, “their extreme actions actually may become one of the centerpieces…”?
I award you no points.
a.) These appear to be semi-auto AR-15s, likely not automatic M16 assault rifles which require rare and expensive Class 3 permits.
b.) Would people have been any less alarmed if they were traditional-looking hunting rifles, which are typically much more powerful and accurate?
c.) Disturbing the peace is still an offense, right? This is why a concealed-carry handgun permit requires you to keep it concealed. Freaking out the general public is neither courteous nor tactical. I’d think disturbance of peace charges could be made here, but likely the authorities just didn’t want to play into their point-making political exercise.
d.) Note that despite the provocative disturbance, neither of the rifles achieved sentience and began committing crimes of their own volition.
e.) With actual shootings and murders fresh on our minds, getting the vapors over theatrics seems a bit insulting to the families of crime victims.
To all you stupid restaurant owners
Stop punishing your loyal, hard-working employees to make a vapid political point.
Your message would be much better sent without costing your business if you did the following:
Raise your menu prices 5¢ an item (that will cover the cost of providing insurance for all your employees) and then ADVERTISE THE REASON FOR THE PRICE INCREASE. Tell the customer they are now paying more for their food in order to provide the employee with health insurance.Better:
Raise your menu prices 15¢ an item (that will cover the cost of providing insurance, a liveable wage, and paid sick leave for all your employees) and then ADVERTISE WHY YOUR PRICES INCREASED. Tell the customer you are charging more so your employees will be healthy when they touch the food the customer eats.Your business will increase because we customers like the thought that we won’t catch a cold, the flu, hepatitis, or some other communicable disease from your sick, stressed employees when we eat at your establishment. It’s a win-win-win situation—you win because of increased business and therefore more money coming in, your employees win because of higher wages, health care, and sick leave, and we customers win because happy employees make tastier food and healthy employees make safer food.
This makes me wish I owned a fast food franchise, because I’d do this in a heartbeat, set an example, be successful, and slowly change things for the better.
America is a huge country, so there has got to be at least one owner somewhere who’ll do this, right?
I’d like to see this happen, but doubt it will sway any of the aforementioned tantrum-throwing owners. They’ve already decided their priorities.
There’s only one group to blame…the House majority, and their Speaker, John Boehner.
N.J. Gov. Christie on House GOP holding up the hurricane Sandy relief bill.
(via @intelligencer)
(Source: brooklynmutt)
…when fundamentalists say that their God is excluded from public schools, they are speaking the truth. The God they worship is not the true God, the one that is omnipresent and ultimate, but political power and coercive imposition of their views on others. That is what fundamentalists worship and serve. That is what they lament seeing expelled from public schools. And that is what they opportunistically use tragedies like the recent one to promote. Those who know or seek the true God will not bow before such idols, and will call those who do so out, and seek to expose them for what they are, namely worshippers of false gods
What Fundamentalists Worship (via azspot)
Read this, Huckabee, you colossal nitwit.
Congress created the FCC to make available to “all the people of the United States” a “rapid, efficient, Nation-wide” communications service “at reasonable charges.” But we have failed in that task when it comes to the basic communications need of our time: high-speed internet access. Reliable information access is central to every policy we care about, including education, health, and even national security.
Bottom line: For $30 a month, we must be able to provide high-speed internet access to every American. This fiber connection service should include voice, data, and basic broadcast channels at speeds that meet global standards. It’s embarrassing that one of the most innovative nations in the world can’t do this.
Bottom line: For $30 a month, we must be able to provide high-speed internet access to every American. This fiber connection service should include voice, data, and basic broadcast channels at speeds that meet global standards. It’s embarrassing that one of the most innovative nations in the world can’t do this.
Republicans: You lost. Pretty badly, in turns out, the more we see these official results come in (just yesterday, Obama’s margin of victory in Ohio went from roughly 103,000 to 166,000). Your ideas are unpopular. Americans don’t want them. And they do not work. The rising tide of the free market does not lift all boats. Ryan—you don’t do a good job of laying out that “vision” because there is no vision. A man who makes his staff read Ayn Rand and got into politics because of her doesn’t have a vision for poor people, or at least a positive one.
Either that, or he has an exceedingly poor grasp of that sententious drivel he’s making those poor saps read. Or perhaps he’s just not really all that smart…
Either that, or he has an exceedingly poor grasp of that sententious drivel he’s making those poor saps read. Or perhaps he’s just not really all that smart…
Michael Tomasky on the Ridiculousness of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio - The Daily Beast
I still like pointing out whenever Ryan gets so rightly skewered.
Why won’t Obama give Republicans what they want?
Greg Sargent:
Why won’t Obama give Republicans what they want? Also note this remarkable quote in Milbank’s piece from one of Boehner’s deputies, Rep. Pete Roskam:
“President Obama has an unbelievable opportunity to be a transformational president — that is, to bring the country together,” he said. “Or he can devolve into zero-sum-game politics, where he wins and other people lose.”
After a four-year scorched earth campaign to render Obama a one-term president explicitly through denying him compromise, Republicans want him to bring the two parties together by agreeing (in exchange for unspecified loophole closings) to give them both the entitlement cuts they want and the tax rates they want.
It would be really, really great if just one national network news journalist pointed out the appalling hypocrisy from the GOP on … anything, really … but specifically these pearl-clutching calls for “compromise” after being clearly repudiated by voters at the national and state level.
Annnnnd my disgust with the GOP and with lazy, superficial “news” reporting continues unabated.
This is the difference,” VanDenPlas said, “between a well run professional machine and a gaggle of amateurs, posing in true Rumsfeldian fashion, who ‘don’t know what they don’t know.’
How Team Obama’s tech efficiency left Romney IT in dust | Ars Technica
Interesting details about how the Obama team’s IT strategy dominated over Romney’s outsourcing, cronyism, and hiring “cheap and young”.
(Interesting to this marketing/techie type, anyway.)
