Germany sets Minimum Wage at $11.54, lowers retirement age

Germany sets Minimum Wage at $11.54, lowers retirement age

by fladem

 

From CNN:

Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel signed aprovisional government program with the center-left Social Democrats, which secured her a third term in office in exchange for policy compromises. The coalition said it would introduce a minimum wage of €8.50 an hour from 2015 -- a move some experts say could help 17% of the German workforce, mainly in the service sector. Most wages are currently set in negotiations between companies and unions, and there is no statutory national minimum.
Germany will also improve pension benefits -- from July 2014, workers who have paid social security contributions for 45 years will be able to retire on a full pension at 63, two years earlier than currently.

There is much to discuss here. First, it will surprise people here that Germany had no minimum wage before this deal.  One thing to understand about Germany is that for the last 20 years it has been in the process of absorbing the old East Germany.  This process has been monumentally expensive, and it was one argument I heard in Germany (I go there frequently) against introducing a minimum wage.  8.5 EU translates into about 11.54 an hour (versus 7.25 an hour in the US).  This effects a whopping 17% of all German workers - a large group.
It is important to understand when discussing Germany just how much they benefit from the Euro.  If they had their own currency it would have gone up dramatically - and caused big problems for German exports.  This is what drives other Europeans - who have to listen to the Germans drone on endlessly about austerity - mad.  But for the Euro the Germans would be in a far different place than they are now.
Second the lower of the retirement age for workers who have been working since they were 18 is a very usefull lessons for Americans to learn.  One of the more absurd aspects about the retirement age debate is the argument that "people are living longer and want to keep working".  For many professional workers this is probably true - but I doubt many janitors would agree.
More broadly, though, it is important to remember that American workers are actually more productive than their German counterparts by some measures.  Raising retirement ages for pension plans given this is simply a product of the power of the right to create the impression of poverty.
Here is the ultimate lesson to learn: US workers are productive, and the United States is a rich country.  A rich country with productive workers should be talking about lower the retirement age, not raising it.
Changing the discourse around these issues is one of the fundemental challenges for the left of center.
8:34 AM PT: By way of comparison, 26% of private workers in the US make less than 10 an hour.
http://thinkprogress.org/...

Originally posted to fladem on Wed Nov 27, 2013 at 07:50 AM PST.

Also republished by In Support of Labor and Unions and More and Better Democracies.

Former KKK leader and his mother indicted in Alabama cross-burning and cover-up

Former KKK leader and his mother indicted in Alabama cross-burning and cover-up (via Raw Story )

An Alabama grand jury indicted a former Grand Cyclops in the racist vigilante group the Ku Klux Klan in the town of Ozark on Wednesday. The man was charged with burning a cross at the entrance to an African-American neighborhood. According to the U.…

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How America Continues to Suffer the Male Rage of the 'White Wing'

How America Continues to Suffer the Male Rage of the 'White Wing'

The era of assumed male entitlement to all the positions of power and wealth is coming to an end, says an author of a controversial new book.

Truthout / By Mark Karlin
 

November 25, 2013 

 Is there hope that the ugly, hateful era of the angry white male might come to an end in the United States?
Michael Kimmel, author of Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, believes that the incendiary rage of many resentful white males will ultimately succumb to an altered cultural context.

"Angry white men rage for our attention, yes, but that era of assumed male entitlement to all the positions of power and wealth is coming to an end." Kimmel told Truthout. "Men can be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or we can accept it and ask what it means for us."

Truthout recently interviewed Kimmel, who is a sociology professor and executive director at the Center of the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University in New York.

Mark Karlin: What is the demographic you refer to as angry white males in the US.  The stereotypes are that they are generally Southern, or rural, or less educated or residents of exurbia?  What is your breakdown?

Michael Kimmel: Angry white men are everywhere geographically! I look at some groups, like the extreme right wing, who might tend to be more small-town, exurban.  Many are suburban, from those sprawling suburbs that extend far into what used to be "rural America." But many of the men I discuss - say men's rights activists or fathers' rights activists, or the men who are violent against women, or guys who go postal - come from all over the country.

You talk about the transition from anxiety to explosive emotional anger among the actual and perceived growing loss of entitlement and privilege among white males. You use the phrase, "the cultural construction of aggrieved entitlement."  Does that translate to, "white males are mad as hell that women and minorities aren't kept in their place anymore by white men, and the white men are losing their jobs and patriarchal status as a result"?

Nicely put! Some white males are mad as hell not that minorities or gays or women aren't "kept in their place" anymore, but more that they feel that "they" are taking places that were "rightfully ours." Race (being white) and gender (being men) are the frameworks they use to describe what I think is actually a phenomenon that has more to do with class.

You dissect "The Rage of the American Working Man" in Chapter Six. Of course, the inevitable question is why is so much of that rage aimed at minorities instead of upward at primarily other white males who are exploiting them?

Good question, I ask myself this all the time. Sometimes, in my interviews, I felt like I was listening to a gendered version of Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas? as I listened to men blame those below them on the socioeconomic ladder for problems that were caused by those far above them.  Such misdirection is massaged and manipulated. Men's anger is real - in the sense that they have often been badly done by.  But just to say that it's a real feeling doesn't make it "true" - that is, it is not an accurate analysis of what caused their situation. Just remember that the anger of men who feel (or who actually have been) dispossessed can go to the right or the left. Timothy McVeigh or Tom Joad.

Given that factories and blue-collar jobs continue to be sent overseas to low-wage sweat shops, combined with stagnating wages for hourly workers, isn't the tinderbox of anger more likely to explode among the lower working-class white male?

Well, yes and no. There are lots of middle- and upper-middle-class men who are angry that "their" positions have been stolen from them, as well. And the ranks of the extreme right are populated less by lower-working-class guys than downwardly mobile lower-middle-class guys. They are sons, literally, of independent farmers, small shopkeepers of the Ma and Pa variety, well-paid, union-protected manufacturing workers, independent contractors. When we focus on those white men who are angry because of economic displacement, they feel entitled to the lives their fathers and grandfathers had. They look back nostalgically at a world now lost.

You write about many white men perceiving themselves as victims? A lot of people, on the other hand, find that incomprehensible coming from a group of angry white men who deride minorities for allegedly perceiving themselves as victims? When it comes to emotions, it appears reality doesn't have a chance.

I try very hard to be empathic and compassionate towards these guys, in part because I think they are right to be angry, but the targets of their rage are manipulated. I think we get nowhere just telling them to "get over it." Some of these guys have bought into the system, and now feel they've been screwed by the system they passionately believed in. I honor that feeling, but I don't think the cause of their miseries is the enormous strides made by women, or gays or people of color.

You write a chapter on angry white men targeting women, often violently. Yet, you have at least 40 percent of the Tea Party composed of women - and many women supporters of the angry white male social agenda. How do you explain this phenomenon?

The Tea Party is an outlier among my groups of angry white men. There are some good analyses of Tea Party women that suggest that they are motivated not as "women" - to advance their position as women in the marketplace, let's say - but as "mothers" and especially as "stay-at-home mothers," which is what they wanted to be. They resent having to work, they resent losing their ability to be homemakers and wives. They believe, as do the men in the movement, that what they call "big Government" or the "Nanny State" has feminized their men and kept the men from being the responsible breadwinners and providers to which they, as women, also felt entitled. The other thing is that the Tea Party is well financed and choreographed from above by financial elites who used the rage of the rank-and-file to further dispossess them.

What is the connection between the angry white male and guns. As you point out, all school shootings are by males, whatever their age - and almost every mass shooting is carried out by a male. Guns appear to be a welded emotional appendage to the angry white male. Is that likely to change in the foreseeable future?

Well, you know that gun-lobby phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people? Well, what's more true is that "guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people." Surely guns play a role, but not the only one. But men's love of their guns is, as you say visceral. They symbolize the last ability of many men to be providers and protectors of their family, for one thing. They are about autonomy, power, and they are "great equalizers" in a world that feels suddenly unequal. This is unlikely to change as long as that deep emotional connection of masculinity and guns is maintained. There was a brief moment, after Sandy Hook. But that passed quickly.

Can you describe what you call the "White Wing"?

The "White Wing" consists of somewhere around 200,000 members of extreme right-wing organizations: white supremacists, neo-Nazis, skinheads. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks active hate groups and estimates about 1,200 such groups nationwide, a 400 percent increase since President Obama was elected. They're the most obviously racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, and often anti-Semitic guys I discuss in the book. Yet they are also "true believers" in the system - fiercely patriotic (although they hate the government) and passionately pro-capitalist (though they don't much like big corporations).

Some of Truthout's readers might be surprised to read your chapter on the so-called men's rights movement. It appears, angry white males are more concerned about taking rights away, particularly from women and minorities.

I don't know that they'd agree with taking rights away from women necessarily. I think they believe that a switch has been thrown and that women now run the show - control corporations, courts or government policy initiatives. They don't want to take rights away from women as much as to "restore" the rights to which they believe themselves entitled.  They see evidence of reverse discrimination everywhere they look, from "Ladies' Nights" at bars and clubs, to custody decisions in divorce proceedings, to hiring and promotion at work. They do believe that women are in power now, and that they are suffering because of it.

You refer to the current outbursts of white entitlement as being "the end of an era."  But how can you be so hopeful when you emphasize that we are dealing with emotion not reason here?

I tend to be hopeful because I listen to the voices of younger men - yes, younger white men too. Most men are gradually accommodating themselves to greater gender equality in their personal relationships and in their working lives - and finding that they actually like it.  They like having better relationships with their friends, colleagues, children, wives and partners. As a nation, we are more gender equal and more racially equal and more sexually equal than we have ever been in our history (this is not to say that we are "there" yet, just that we are unlikely to move backwards). We are, not coincidentally, more class unequal than we have been in about a century.

Angry White Men rage for our attention, yes, but that era of assumed male entitlement to all the positions of power and wealth is coming to an end. Men can be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or we can accept it and ask what it means for us. And I'm optimistic because if you take a long-term historical perspective, angry white men may be very loud now, but as men live these more equal lives, they will find that they are healthier and happier for it.

Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.

Politifact Mailbag: "You guys are a bunch of morons"

Mailbag: "You guys are a bunch of morons"

 

By Louis Jacobson
Published on Friday, November 29th, 2013 at 4:00 p.m.

The latest batch of mail brings both criticism and kudos for our Truth-O-Meter rulings.

One of the things PolitiFact gives thanks for is for our readers, who often provide us with thoughtful commentary about our work, even when they disagree with us. We’ve recently gotten a bunch of reader feedback by email or Facebook -- so much interesting discussion, in fact, that we’re splitting what’s normally one Mailbag column into two.
First, we’ll look at reader letters on health care policy. In a separate piece, we’ll look at everything else readers wanted to sound off about.
Lots of readers sympathetic to the Obama administration brought up concerns related to our fact-checking of the president’s pledge that under his health care law, if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.
Referring to our False rating for presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett’s claim that "nothing in Obamacare forces people out of their health plans," one reader wrote, "It's funny how many of you idiots keep bringing up Obama's broken promise when it was a promise that was actually broken by the insurance companies. Calling that false shows you guys are a bunch of morons who shill for the Republicans."
A similar claim, by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that the health care law "does not demand that all of these cancellations go out" earned a Mostly False but drew the scorn of several readers.
"By your own admission, in the text of your write-up, what she said is technically True," wrote one. "The key word is ‘demand.’ You may not like that she ‘downplayed’ the effects of the law, but her statement was true nonetheless. You are fact checkers, not downplay checkers."
Meanwhile, one critic of the law questioned our ruling of Mostly False for the claim by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity that "new mandates are already reducing full-time employment."
"Your analysis refers to existing anecdotal evidence that supports the claim, and you cite reports that conclude only that the recession was the ‘key factor’ in keeping part time employment high, but apparently doesn’t refute the possibility of some loss of full time employment as a result of ACA," the reader wrote. "You say it’s ‘plausible’ but ‘speculative,’ but in this case, the statement was so modest as to be almost impossible to deny. … If PolitiFact cannot determine whether a statement is true or false, then you should either leave it alone or at least call it Half True and explain that why you consider it too speculative (or potentially misleading) to be verified."
Several readers criticized our Pants on Fire ruling for the claim by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that "if I have affordable coverage in my workplace, I'm not eligible to go into the marketplace. ... It’s illegal." Many said we unfairly minimized a department spokeswoman’s statement Sebelius had meant to say "that marketplace plans cannot be sold to a Medicare enrollee, and the secretary is a Medicare enrollee."
"She doesn’t deserve a Pants on Fire if her statement was technically incorrect, even if her reasoning was faulty," wrote one.
Meanwhile, we gave a False to a claim by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, that "hidden" in the healthcare.gov code is language that means users "waive any reasonable right to privacy of your personal information." We concluded that the website’s markup does include a sentence along these lines that isn’t visible to the user, but because it’s not displayed to the public, it carries no legal weight, and consumers can’t consent to it.
That inspired a postscript from Jeryl Bier, the author of the Weekly Standard article that first addressed the issue Barton raised.
"Although I would not take it as far as Rep. Barton did, I found Kathleen Sebelius’s comments interesting," Bier wrote. In the hearing, "Sebelius assured Barton that the language would be removed. It could be argued that Sebelius was simply trying to mollify an irate Congress, but she did commit to removing the statement, and shortly after her testimony, it was."
Several readers said our True ruling on a claim by Rep. John Fleming, R-La., was incomplete. Fleming said that in Massachusetts -- a state that implemented a precursor of Obamacare -- "half of the primary care doctors are not accepting new patients."
Fleming may be accurate, one reader said, but "it’s a strawman, a bogeyman, a factoid designed to inspire fear without concern for context or effect. What would be meaningful would be to know the following real contextual and comparative values. How many doctors are there in Massachusetts per capita compared to other states and countries? How many people do not already have a primary care physician, especially considering that Massachusetts’ universal coverage law has been in effect for more than six years? How many people have sought a primary care physician and have been unable to get one? What is the new-patient acceptance rate of doctors in other states? To give Fleming’s claim any attention is to elevate an empty balloon."
Another reader added, "You have left out a critical point. If medical schools accepted more students, this would not be a problem. Those who say they are for free enterprise seem to have no problem restricting the market when it comes to physicians."
One reader took issue with the False rating by our colleagues at PunditFact for Sean Hannity’s claim that "in July 2010, the government said small businesses -- 60 percent -- will lose their health care, 45 percent of big business and a large percentage of individual health." We found that Hannity was not correctly framing what the government report looked at.
"You need a  new category -- ‘Too Soon to Tell,’" the reader wrote. "Things may in the end be a lot worse than stated."
Finally, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee took issue with PolitiFact New Hampshire’s Half True rating for his claim that "you've got more people wanting to go moose hunting in New Hampshire than want Obamacare."   
On his radio show and in a Facebook post, Huckabee called our ruling "a lot of weasel words for people who claim to deal in facts. Well, I don’t like being accused of telling a half-truth when even they admitted that my numbers were correct." So he proceeded to review the math. He added, "PolitiFact needs to learn the difference between an assumption and a fact. They might also want to look up the definition of the word ‘joke.’ And the word opinion. As in, ‘It’s my opinion, from personal experience growing up poor, that most families would find a pot of moose chili to be a lot more useful than an overpriced insurance policy their doctor won’t take."

WATCH: Richard Simmons Gives Emotional and Awkward Interview to Fox News

From crying to crooning, Richard Simmons may have given Fox News its most awkward interview of all time.

BY Jase Peeples

November 29 2013 4:04 PM ET

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Richard Simmons appeared on Fox News for an unforgettable interview that’s raising eyebrows across the internet, reports Joe My God.
The interview immediately swerved into uncomfortable territory as Simmons began flirting with Fox News host Neil Cavuto, saying, “You look so handsome tonight, I can hardly keep from climbing over this desk.”
However, it’s the emotional rollercoaster that followed which could land the segment on Fox News’ list of all time most bizarre interviews.
As Simmons discussed his passion for fitness and the need for portion control during holidays like Thanksgiving, the exercise guru bounced back and forth between emotional extremes. From crying over his desire to “make people feel good and laugh” and his experience being bullied as a young boy, to celebrity impersonations, yoga poses, and braking out in song, Simmons routinely sailed the interview into the seas of strangeness – despite Cavuto’s best efforts to keep the conversation on track.
Watch the full interview below.

Rafael Cruz: God told me to wake up the pastors so they will warn the people

Rafael Cruz: God told me to wake up the pastors so they will warn the people (via Raw Story )

The father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) says that pastors in the United States who refuse to stand up for Christian values are to blame for the country’s misfortunes. “Political correctness is killing us,” Rafael Cruz said at an event in Texas hosted…

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This Is Why Poor People's Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense

Linda Tirado 

Posted: 11/22/2013 5:18 pm

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to have a poor person actually explain it on their own behalf. So this is me doing that, sort of.
Rest is a luxury for the rich. I get up at 6AM, go to school (I have a full course load, but I only have to go to two in-person classes) then work, then I get the kids, then I pick up my husband, then I have half an hour to change and go to Job 2. I get home from that at around 12:30AM, then I have the rest of my classes and work to tend to. I'm in bed by 3. This isn't every day, I have two days off a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the house and soothe Mr. Martini and see the kids for longer than an hour and catch up on schoolwork. Those nights I'm in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I won't be able to stay up the other nights because I'll fuck my pattern up, and I drive an hour home from Job 2 so I can't afford to be sleepy. I never get a day off from work unless I am fairly sick. It doesn't leave you much room to think about what you are doing, only to attend to the next thing and the next. Planning isn't in the mix.
When I got pregnant the first time, I was living in a weekly motel. I had a minifridge with no freezer and a microwave. I was on WIC. I ate peanut butter from the jar and frozen burritos because they were 12/$2. Had I had a stove, I couldn't have made beef burritos that cheaply. And I needed the meat, I was pregnant. I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent enough to eat protein and iron whilst knocked up.
I know how to cook. I had to take Home Ec to graduate high school. Most people on my level didn't. Broccoli is intimidating. You have to have a working stove, and pots, and spices, and you'll have to do the dishes no matter how tired you are or they'll attract bugs. It is a huge new skill for a lot of people. That's not great, but it's true. And if you fuck it up, you could make your family sick. We have learned not to try too hard to be middle-class. It never works out well and always makes you feel worse for having tried and failed yet again. Better not to try. It makes more sense to get food that you know will be palatable and cheap and that keeps well. Junk food is a pleasure that we are allowed to have; why would we give that up? We have very few of them.
The closest Planned Parenthood to me is three hours. That's a lot of money in gas. Lots of women can't afford that, and even if you live near one you probably don't want to be seen coming in and out in a lot of areas. We're aware that we are not "having kids," we're "breeding." We have kids for much the same reasons that I imagine rich people do. Urge to propagate and all. Nobody likes poor people procreating, but they judge abortion even harder.
Convenience food is just that. And we are not allowed many conveniences. Especially since the Patriot Act passed, it's hard to get a bank account. But without one, you spend a lot of time figuring out where to cash a check and get money orders to pay bills. Most motels now have a no-credit-card-no-room policy. I wandered around SF for five hours in the rain once with nearly a thousand dollars on me and could not rent a room even if I gave them a $500 cash deposit and surrendered my cell phone to the desk to hold as surety.
Nobody gives enough thought to depression. You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired. We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. We don't apply for jobs because we know we can't afford to look nice enough to hold them. I would make a super legal secretary, but I've been turned down more than once because I "don't fit the image of the firm," which is a nice way of saying "gtfo, pov." I am good enough to cook the food, hidden away in the kitchen, but my boss won't make me a server because I don't "fit the corporate image." I am not beautiful. I have missing teeth and skin that looks like it will when you live on B12 and coffee and nicotine and no sleep. Beauty is a thing you get when you can afford it, and that's how you get the job that you need in order to be beautiful. There isn't much point trying.
Cooking attracts roaches. Nobody realizes that. I've spent a lot of hours impaling roach bodies and leaving them out on toothpick pikes to discourage others from entering. It doesn't work, but is amusing.
"Free" only exists for rich people. It's great that there's a bowl of condoms at my school, but most poor people will never set foot on a college campus. We don't belong there. There's a clinic? Great! There's still a copay. We're not going. Besides, all they'll tell you at the clinic is that you need to see a specialist, which seriously? Might as well be located on Mars for how accessible it is. "Low-cost" and "sliding scale" sounds like "money you have to spend" to me, and they can't actually help you anyway.
I smoke. It's expensive. It's also the best option. You see, I am always, always exhausted. It's a stimulant. When I am too tired to walk one more step, I can smoke and go for another hour. When I am enraged and beaten down and incapable of accomplishing one more thing, I can smoke and I feel a little better, just for a minute. It is the only relaxation I am allowed. It is not a good decision, but it is the only one that I have access to. It is the only thing I have found that keeps me from collapsing or exploding.
I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing.
Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.
I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. This is what our lives are like, and here are our defense mechanisms, and here is why we think differently. It's certainly self-defeating, but it's safer. That's all. I hope it helps make sense of it.
Additions have been made to the update below to reflect the responses received.
UPDATE: The response to this piece is overwhelming. I have had a lot of people ask to use my work. Please do. Share it with the world if you found value in it. Please link back if you can. If you are teaching, I am happy to discuss this with or clarify for you, and you can freely use this piece in your classes. Please do let me know where you teach. You can reach me on Twitter, @killermartinis. I set up an email at killermartinisbook@ gmail as well.
This piece has gone fully viral. People have been asking me to write, and how they can help. After enough people tried to send me paypal money, I set up a gofundme. Find it here. It promptly went insane. I have raised my typical yearly income as of this update. I have no idea what to say except thank you. I am going to speak with some money people who will make sure that I can't fuck this up, and I will use it to do good things with.
I've also set up a blog, which I hope you will find here.
Understand that I wrote this as an example of the thought process that we struggle with. Most of us are clinically depressed, and we do not get therapy and medication and support. We get told to get over it. And we find ways to cope. I am not saying that people live without hope entirely; that is not human nature. But these are the thoughts that are never too far away, that creep up on us every chance they get, that prey on our better judgement when we are tired and stressed and weakened. We maintain a constant vigil against these thoughts, because we are afraid that if we speak them aloud or even articulate them in our heads they will become unmanageably real.
Thank you for reading. I am glad people find value in it. Because I am getting tired of people not reading this and then commenting anyway, I am making a few things clear: not all of this piece is about me. That is why I said that they were observations. And this piece is not all of me: that is why I said that they were random observations rather than complete ones. If you really have to urge me to abort or keep my knees closed or wonder whether I can fax you my citizenship documents or if I really in fact have been poor because I know multisyllabic words, I would like to ask that you read the comments and see whether anyone has made your point in the particular fashion you intend to. It is not that I mind trolls so much, it's that they're getting repetitive and if you have to say nothing I hope you can at least do it in an entertaining fashion.
If, however, you simply are curious about something and actually want to have a conversation, I do not mind repeating myself because those conversations are valuable and not actually repetitive. They tend to be very specific to the asker, and I am happy to shed any light I can. I do not mind honest questions. They are why I wrote this piece.
Thank you all, so much. I don't know what life will look like next week, and for once that's a good thing. And I have you to thank.
This post first appeared on killermartinis.kinja.com

Follow Linda Tirado on Twitter: www.twitter.com/killermartinis

Jan Brewer Under Fire Over Her Administration's Child Abuse Failures

By BOB CHRISTIE 11/29/13 06:43 PM ET EST

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 22: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer visits 'David Webb's American Forum' at SiriusXM studios in New York on April 22, 2013. (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images) | Robin Marchant via Getty Images

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer could be politically damaged by revelations that her administration ignored thousands of child abuse and neglect reports that prompted calls for her to replace her hand-picked leader of the state's social services agency.
While Brewer has made reforming Child Protective Services one of her top priorities in the past several years, critics of the Republican governor say the failures show her administration continues to shortchange kids.
Brewer is so far rejecting calls to replace the agency's leader, and supporters say the governor ensured the botched cases were made public and has called for accountability.
Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, which oversees CPS, revealed last week that more than 6,000 reports generated by the state's child abuse hotline hadn't been investigated since 2009, most in the past 20 months. The CPS plan to clear those reports was released early this week and has been widely panned as inadequate and short on specifics.
Carter promises every case meriting a full investigation will be handled by the end of January. He's assigned more than 200 CPS supervisors and program managers to the job, employees who don't currently handle a caseload.
Carter has declined to comment through a spokeswoman since Monday.
Last January, Brewer personally took credit in her State of the State address for "overhauling" the hotline system so urgent calls received priority. But that overhaul apparently included simply closing thousands of abuse reports.
Now, criticism is coming from both Democrats and members of Brewer's own party, who appeared blindsided by the news.
"I have to ask the question, what else might not be working?" said Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, a Phoenix Republican who co-chairs the Legislature's CPS oversight committee. "Is it a systemic problem?"

Republican Sen. Nancy Barto, the committee's other co-chair, said the problem was system-wide. And while neither GOP lawmaker called for Carter's ouster, both were harsh in their assessment.
"The public must know that this neglect of duty will never happen again and that the people responsible for this disturbing practice are held accountable," Barto said in a statement. "In addition, a long-term reform of the agency is warranted to restore public confidence."
The controversy is certain to become a major source of debate when the full Legislature returns in January, and the attention focused on the social service agency could deflect from Brewer's other priorities going into the final year of her last term.
Brewer spokesman Andrew Wilder brushed off the calls for Carter to resign.
"The calls for Carter's resignation have come from largely predictable people," he told The Associated Press Wednesday. "She's not entertaining calls like that right now, because her first concern is to ensure that every child whose case went uninvestigated is safe. That's the immediate task at hand."
The leader of minority Democrats in the state House of Representatives blasted Carter, saying Brewer needs to take responsibility for the problem.
"The bottom line is Carter needs to go. He needs to go yesterday; he's failed in every aspect of this job," Rep. Chad Campbell said. "Either the governor or Carter — one of them needs to go. This is another state agency that's failing under her.
"The other agencies are bad, but now we're talking about protecting children," Campbell said. "Enough is enough."
The head of a leading Arizona child advocacy group sent an open letter to Brewer demanding that Carter be removed.
"Since this practice of leaving reports uninvestigated has continued over several years from different units within the Department of Economic Security, it's clear it was not one or two rogue employees, but a systemic policy," wrote Dana Naimark, president of the Children's Action Alliance. "Director Clarence Carter is responsible for this lapse and we urge you to ask for his resignation."
Brewer has made reforming CPS a priority, establishing a task force in 2011 to recommend changes, and making it a key part of this January's State of the State address.
She took credit for overhauling the hotline system "so the most urgent calls are directed for faster response," all the while apparently not knowing that the team responsible was labeling thousands of cases unworthy of investigation.
Wilder said Brewer ensured the failures were publicized and has called for accountability once an outside review by state police is completed. He also said Brewer should be credited with creating the special investigation team within CPS that discovered the cases were being neglected.
"If it wasn't for the reforms that Jan Brewer fought for successfully, it is a question when and if these cases would have been exposed," Wilder said.

Pope Ramps up Charity Office to Be Near Poor, Sick

Pope Ramps up Charity Office to Be Near Poor, Sick

VATICAN CITY November 28, 2013 (AP)

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press 

Pope Francis has ramped up the Vatican's charity work, sending his chief alms-giver and a contingent of Swiss guards onto the streets of Rome at night to do what he usually can't do: comfort the poor and the homeless.

A few times a week, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski takes a few off-duty guards with him in his modest white Fiat to make the rounds at Rome's train stations, where charities offer makeshift soup kitchens that feed 400-500 people a night. Often they bring the leftovers from the Vatican mess halls to share.

"Aside from their vitality, they know at least four languages," Krajewski said of the guards in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. "Above all, poor people need to be listened to."

"And when we say we're from the Vatican, and that we're doing this in the name of the Holy Father," he said, "their hearts open up more."

Krajewski is the Vatican Almoner, a centuries-old position that Francis has redefined to make it a hands-on extension of his own personal charity. When he was archbishop in Buenos Aires, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio used to go out at night, incognito, to break bread with the homeless on the streets of the Argentine capital to let them know that someone cared for them.

He can't do that so easily now that he's pope, so he has tapped Krajewski to be his envoy, doling out small morsels of charity every day: sending a 200 euro ($260) check to a woman whose wallet was stolen, visiting a family whose child is dying.

"My job is to be an extension of the pope's arm toward the poor, the needy, those who suffer," Krajewski said. "He cannot go out of the Vatican, so he has chosen a person who goes out to hug the people who suffer" in the pope's place.

Larger and longer-term charity works are handled by the Vatican's international charity federation. The almoner, Krajewski explained, is more a "first aid" compassion station: quick, small doses of help that don't require bureaucratic hurdles, but are nevertheless heartfelt and something of a sacrifice.

"Being an almoner, it has to cost me something so that it can change me," he told journalists a day earlier. He contrasted such alms-giving with, say, the unnamed cardinal who once boasted about always giving two euros to a beggar on the street near the Vatican.

"I told him, 'Eminence, this isn't being an almoner. You might be able to sleep at night, but being an almoner has to cost you. Two euros is nothing for you. Take this poor person, bring him to your big apartment that has three bathrooms, let him take a shower — and your bathroom will stink for three days — and while he's showering make him a coffee and serve it to him, and maybe give him your sweater. This is being an almoner."

Krajewski gets his marching orders each morning: A Vatican gendarme goes from the Vatican hotel where Francis lives to Krajewski's office across the Vatican gardens, bringing a bundle of letters that the pope has received from the faithful asking for help. On the top of each letter, Francis might write "You know what to do" or "Go find them" or "Go talk to them."

One recent letter caught the attention of the pope: The parents of little Noemi Sciarretta, an 18-month old suffering from spinal muscular atrophy — a genetic condition that has no cure — wrote to Francis in October. They were desperate because doctors could do nothing for their daughter.

A few days later Francis called the father. On Nov. 1, Krajewski spent the day with the Sciarrettas at their home near Chieti, in Abruzzo. Five days later, with the child's condition worsening, the family traveled to the Vatican and met with Francis in person, spending the night in the same Vatican hotel where he sleeps, eating with him in the hotel dining room where he has all his meals.

Moments after they met, the pope headed out to St. Peter's Square for his weekly general audience. He started off by asking the tens of thousands of people there to take a moment of silence to pray for little Noemi.

"It was a very emotional meeting because Pope Francis was close to Noemi," her father, Andrea Sciarretta, said afterward. "We could talk and pray together for Noemi. It was an emotional gift."

The existence of the Vatican Almoner dates back centuries: It is mentioned in a papal bull from the 13th-century Pope Innocent III, and Pope Gregory X, who ruled from 1271-1276, organized it into an official Holy See office for papal charity.

Until Krajewski came along, the almoner was typically an aging Vatican diplomat who was serving his final years before being allowed to retire at age 75. Francis changed all that, tapping the 50-year-old Pole who had been a close assistant to Pope John Paul II in his final years, to be a more vigorous, hands-on extension of himself.

The almoner's duties are two-fold: carrying out acts of charity and raising the money to fund them.

Krajewski's office funds its work by producing papal parchments, hand-made certificates with a photo of the pope that the faithful can buy for a particular occasion — say a wedding, baptism or priestly ordination — with the name of the recipient and an apostolic blessing written in calligraphy.

The parchments range from six euros ($8) to 30 euros ($40) apiece, plus shipping and handling. All proceeds go directly to the works of charity. Last year, the office spent 1 million euros on 6,500 requests for help. Krajewski says the numbers have more than doubled this year.

But Krajewski's chief role, under Francis' new vision, is to bring direct solace to the suffering.

Last month, Krajewski went to the island of Lampedusa after a migrant boat capsized, killing over 350 people. Over four days on Lampedusa, Krajewski bought 1,600 phone cards so the survivors could call loved ones back home in Eritrea to let them know they had made it. He also prayed with police divers as they worked to raise the dead from the sea floor.

"This is the concept: Be with people and share their lives, even for 15, 30 minutes, an hour," Krajewski said.

Krajewski demurred when asked if Francis himself had slipped out of the Vatican on his own — "Next question!" he said.

———

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Corporate Elites Are Witnessing a Growing Wave of Resistance to the ‘Walmartization’ of Our Economy

AlterNet / By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

The fight for more worker rights and wages is gaining a critical mass.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Glynnis Jones / Shutterstock.com

November 29, 2013  |  

The struggle of working Americans took center stage as Black Friday protests covered the country.  The struggle for wages that do not leave families impoverished is one that affects us all and highlights the unfair economy created by a class war waged by the wealthy for decades.  The ‘Walmartization’ of the US economy has created a downward spiral in wages and destroyed small businesses and communities while heightening the wealth divide that is at the root of so many problems.  The war on working people is a war on all but the wealthiest Americans.
The people are fighting back and the elites recognize it. We have seen how aggressive they are in how they responded to Occupy and other protest movements. Thousands of Americans have been arrested exercising their Right to Assembly, more than 7,500 in Occupy alone.  There is fear in the investor class as they see people organizing and mobilizing.  Corporations are now investing more time and money in preparation to protect themselves from investor actions and legal challenges. The actions of corporations and governments against the people are a sign of their fear, and a sign of our unrealized strength.
Noam Chomsky writes in his new book, Occupy: Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity, that the “business class” is always engaged in class warfare. They continually act to protect their interests, wealth and power. The class war manifests itself in every aspect of our lives from the attack on our public institutions and civil liberties to climate change and the global race to the bottom and racially unfair police enforcement and mass incarceration.  It defines our foreign policy including trade agreements rigged for big business and wars for resources, cheap labor and the positioning of American Empire.
Active Fronts of Struggle in the Class War
There are many active fronts of struggle. In last week’s report we emphasized the bold and creative protests against climate change, extreme energy extraction and toxicity in our environment. This week we focus on another critical front, worker rights and wages; and highlight the necessity for persistence, solidarity and transformation.
Henry Giroux recently spoke with Bill Moyers about his book Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism. Giroux said, “The real changes are going to come in creating movements that are longstanding, that are organized, that basically take questions of governance and policy seriously and begin to spread out and become international.”
An area in which this is happening to a great extent is in global trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) will meet in Bali, Indonesia on December 3. Ever since the Seattle protests in 1999, the WTO has been unable to move forward on their agenda. This week WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo announced they were unable to move forward once again.  U.S. Ambassador to the WTO Michael Punke expressed “great sadness,” while we applauded the failure of corporate trade. Activists and small countries being bullied should be wary, this could be a negotiating ploy and they need to continue to fight back.

We are on the cusp of a new era of fair trade instead of rigged corporate trade. Our tasks are to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which is reaching completion and the new Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TAFTA) from being signed into law and then go on the offense to demand a trade process that is inclusive, democratic and transparent.  Protests were held every day last week in Salt Lake City where the TPP negotiators were meeting and 250 showed up to protest the TPP in Beverly Hills at a high dollar fundraiser featuring President Obama, Majority Leader Reid, and Minority Leader Pelosi. Opposition is growing.

We can keep building momentum on Tuesday, December 3, a day of international protests against toxic trade agreements and for a new era of trade that puts people and the planet before profits. The Flush the TPP campaign signed on to the December 3 day of action called by people in Indonesia and around the world. Protests will be held in cities from Hawaii to New York. And we will deliver a petition to the Office of the US Trade Representative in Washington, DC. telling them to stop their bullying.  Sign that petition here.
The TPP is an example of a phenomenal corporate power grab that will accelerate the global race to the bottom in wages and worker safety as well as in protection of the environment and human rights and public health. It shows how all of our issues are interconnected and we need to act in solidarity. Walmart is one of the corporations that is really pushing the TPP so that it can move its factories into countries like Vietnam where the minimum wage is $0.36 per hour. Stopping the TPP would be a victory against Walmart and all transnational corporations.  We can stop the TPP and are making tremendous progress.
Workers and Communities Unite Against Walmart
Why are the Black Friday mass protests against Walmart important? We can think of no other corporation that has caused as much damage to the working class, communities and the overall economy as Walmart.  Poverty wages, destruction of local business and the obscene wealth divide are at the door of the largest retailer in the nation. The six Walton heirs have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. Walmart is the largest private employer in the world and has extensive supply lines but its unethical business practices are driving the world economy in the wrong direction.
The Walton family wealth has come at a tremendous price for the rest of us. They’ve gained this wealth by squashing worker rights, lowering wages and draining our local tax dollars, and they show no signs of changing course. After the disastrous collapse of the factory in Bangladesh which killed over 1,000 workers, many companies signed on to a new accord to prevent it from happening again. Walmart, along with GAP, refuses to sign the accord.
Walmart’s low price guarantee has effectively made them into a monopoly that forces their suppliers to fire workers and move overseas to drive down costs. Walmart is such a behemoth that it has no competitor in the world. And despite massive profits, each Walmart employee requires around $2,000.00 per year in public assistance for health care and food stamps. That doesn’t include taxpayer investment in infrastructure for Walmart stores and corporate tax breaks.  We are all forced to subsidize Walmart’s unethical business practices that undermine the economy. This year, Walmart went so far as to request food donations for their own poverty-wage employees’ Thanksgiving meals.
In addition, as Walmarts have popped up across the country, they have left a path of destruction to small businesses and have ravaged communities. Local businesses simply can’t compete with Walmart’s prices. And Walmart sucks local dollars out of state to the corporate headquarters in Arkansas.  When Walmart comes to town you can expect poverty to increase, local businesses to fail, more public assistance for food stamps and healthcare as well as a constant drain on local taxes.  There is a very high cost to Walmart’s’ low prices. Local politicians who do not stop Walmart from coming to their city are doing a public disservice.
Over the past few years, Walmart workers have been fighting back through the organization OUR Walmart and their For Respect Campaign. They’ve staged strikes at stores and warehouses, rallies at the Walmart headquarters and this year they escalated to road blockades and mass arrests. Workers are speaking out and telling their stories. This Black Friday, protests at 1500 stores have been organized and community members are standing in solidarity with the workers. Here are tools that protesters can use to educate and increase the pressure by “rebranding” Walmart with the truth.
Walmart could easily provide a living wage. A recent study by Demos shows it would even be in their best interest to do so because it would stimulate the whole economy. And there are signs that Walmart is feeling the heat. The CEO, Michael Duke, announced this week that he will step down. And Walmart hired a public relations firm to smear Walmart protesters. Our sense is that this effort will backfire as it shows the desperation of this Goliath that will fall to mobilized Davids. We hope that you will support the Walmart workers and press for real transformation. Imagine what a better place the world would be if Walmart began to pay workers at a living wage and had to compensate communities for the damage it has done.
In fact, Walmart is not the only corporation that mistreats its workers; it’s just the largest one. Here is a list of ten American companies that pay the least. In addition to Walmart employees, other workers are fighting for a living wage. Fast food workers and those who make supplies for the fast food restaurants have also been holding strikes and rallies. Airport workers from Seattle to Minneapolis to New York are organizing for higher pay and winning in the case of Seattle.
The situation in Seattle is particularly noteworthy. Seattle just elected its first socialist at-large council member, Kshama Sawant.  Sawant recently urged local workers to resist Boeing’s “economic terrorism” and threaten to take over the factories rather than make concessions to the company that has been squeezing the workers and the city. Boeing workers voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract that would hurt younger workers even though it puts hard won pay and benefits at risk. Sawant urged them to go further and take over the factories.
Persistence and Solidarity are Key Ingredients
Younger workers are in a tough position and it is great to see solidarity rising up. Graduate students in California showed solidarity this month by pledging to strike alongside campus workers who were planning a strike. And after an eight year campaign that was supported by students, graduate students at New York University won a significant concession: they will vote in December on forming a union. Their goals, like so many impoverished U.S. workers, are better pay and working conditions.
Other workers who need our solidarity are postal workers. The Postal Service is under a severe and unnecessary attack, probably because the bi-partisans in Washington want to privatize this public service, and turn it into a profit center for their donors. In this video, Carl Gibson describes an idea that helps the Postal Service at the expense of large financial institutions by sending their pre-paid junk mail back to them.
Persistence and solidarity are key ingredients to social transformation. On December 2, the people of Bhopal will mark the 29th anniversary since the Dow Chemical disaster that has killed 25,000 so far and continues to cause harm. Though their struggle is ongoing, they have had some important victories for clean water, pensions for widows, environmental monitoring and more. They are asking for people to join them by holding actions at Dow Chemical offices.
Other Highlights From The Week
The resistance movement continues on many fronts, beyond labor – militarism, spying, coal, climate change and protecting mountains and forests were among those we’ll highlight here.
On the antiwar front, our colleagues at Vets for Peace finished their three week action in Palestine, standing with Palestinians subjected to Israeli ethnic cleansing, with a protest at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv.  Out of fear, they closed the embassy until the vets left. Also, the School of the Americas Watch held its yearly vigil at Fort Benning last weekend, more than one thousand participated. They welcomed newcomers and held a Peoples Movement Assembly for the first time to discuss new strategies and nonviolent direct action tactics.  They covered the fence of Fort Benning with crosses signifying the deaths caused by torture and militarism. Next week we will see the SOA’s impact as graduates of the school are now in Honduras enforcing what looks like a corrupt election result.
The Free Marissa Now Campaign just announced a major victory. Marissa Alexander, an abused wife who defended herself by shooting a gun into the air to prevent an attack, was released from jail the night before Thanksgiving pending her next trial in March. And NYPD officer Anthony Bologna, infamous for his brutal treatment of protesters, especially the pepper spraying of woman under arrest, will have to testify before a Civilian Complaint Review Board, as a court ruled against his efforts to avoid testifying. Let’s hope that Bologna is held accountable for his abuse of constitutional rights and the Rule of Law.
Mountain top removal activists are protesting in the West Virginia state capital. They are in Day 3 of "The Coal Dust Vigil," highlighting how coal dust is killing people and making others ill in their community. And, in Connecticut, there have been spectacular protests against UBS bank for their financing of mountain top removal -- banner drops, sit-ins, lock-downs and blockades. In Cambridge, Harvard students disrupted a Bank of America recruiting effort over their financial support for coal. Our most inspiring protest of the week is ongoing in California, this amazing 16 year old young woman is in her third week of a tree sit to protect ancient forests.
While the NSA fretted over what else is coming from the Snowden leaks, telling reporters “the worst is yet to come” and there could be two years of stories still ahead, buses in the nation’s capital were adorned with large advertisements thanking Edward Snowden and saying “no” to the security state, thanks to the Partnership for Civil Justice. And, in Utah, the massive NSA data center was the subject of a protest, with the Backbone Campaign flying a massive weather balloon sign proclaiming: “Water, Energy, Tax $, NSA Guzzling Billions To Steal Our Liberties.”
A Cultural Transformation
We are in a war that reaches into every aspect of our lives. Giroux describes it as “a war on the mind. The war on what it means to be able to dissent, the war on the possibility of alternative visions.” He goes on to say that we are in “A war on the possibility of an education that enables people to think critically, a war on cultural apparatuses that entertain by simply engaging in this spectacle of violence….”
In addition to building a global movement, Giroux calls for a cultural transformation. We need to find places where people can connect to talk about the world they want to create and then strategize about how to make it a reality. We need to move outside of the constraints inherent in our current economic structure and use our collective wisdom and power to build new systems based on values that lift up communities and heal the planet.
The cultural transformation begins with dispelling myths and facing the truth.  We published multiple stories this week on the Thanksgiving Myth.  S. Brian Wilson vividly described the truth of the genocide of Native Indians, which he called the “defining and enabling experience of our nation.”  Robert Jensen wrote about how we should be atoning for that genocide and reflecting on what it means about us and how it still affects us today, rather than feasting.
But, most important on this are the views of Native Indians.  We reported on the annual National Day of Mourning recognized by Indians every year since 1970 on the fourth Thursday of November on a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock.  This year hundreds attended and their message was one that relates to everything we’ve written in this article and much of the work of the resistance movement. They criticized the Plymouth Company’s values of corporatism and profit which brought the Pilgrims here. They said corporations should not have greater rights than people and called on us to “reject the corporate and corrupt values of materialism and competitiveness which were causing harm to fellow human beings and to the earth.”
The Indians urged everyone who attended to go back and work to protect the planet, people and all living things. We see people doing creative resistance that reflects these values on a daily basis and report on much of it at Popular Resistance.  There is so much going on that we cannot cover it all, and we know the potential is even greater.
Connect with people in your community. One person suggested forming a Popular Resistance meet-up and others are joining struggles for workers, the environment, youth, to end war, end police abuse and so much more.  There is room for you in this movement. When you get involved, you will find that your frustration at the mis-direction of our country lessens because you will see that you are not alone. Many are working for the transformation we know we need with persistence and in solidarity.
This article is produced by PopularResistance.org in conjunction with AlterNet.  It is based on PopularResistance.org’s weekly newsletter reviewing the activities of the resistance movement. Sign up for the daily news digest of Popular Resistance, here.
Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are participants in PopularResistance.org. They also co-direct It’s Our Economy and are co-hosts of Clearing the FOG, shown on UStream TV and heard on radio. They tweet at @KBZeese and MFlowers8.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry to be Investigated for Abusing the Powers of His Office, Bribery and Coercion

Texas Gov. Rick Perry to be Investigated for Abusing the Powers of His Office, Bribery and Coercion

 

Posted by: Sky Palma 

on AATTP August 16, 2013 

This week, a Texas judge said that he plans to have a special prosecutor look at charges that Gov. Rick Perry broke the law when he cut funding for state public corruption investigators.

The watchdog group Texans for Public Justice filed a complaint that stems from an April drunk-driving arrest of Travis County District Attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, who oversees the state’s criminal ethics department. The department’s cases included the prosecution of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and an investigation into the state’s $3 billion cancer research agency.

After her arrest, Lehmberg pleaded guilty and served a reduced sentence of less than 45 days. Amid loud demands from Perry and the state’s GOP for her to resign, Lehmberg refused. In response to her defiance, Perry threatened to eliminate $3.7 million from the state’s annual funding if she did not step down.

Lehmberg remained in office — and Perry made good on his threat, vetoing the money in June.

According to the two-page complaint that was filed shortly after Perry’s actions, the governor was accused of violating laws regarding “coercion of a public servant, bribery, abuse of official capacity and official oppression.” 

“Governor Perry violated the Texas Penal Code by communicating offers and threats under which he would exercise his official discretion to veto the appropriation,” 

the executive director of Texans for Public Justice Craig McDonald wrote in the complaint.

Gov. Perry’s office claimed that they haven’t heard anything in regards to an investigation.

Arizona Violent Crime Down, Except Under Tough Anti-Immigration Sheriff

First Posted: 07/14/10 03:34 PM ET Updated: 05/25/11 06:05 PM ET 

A chart circulated by a leading immigration reform organization makes a basic, but compelling case that the new law passed -- though not implemented -- in Arizona could cause an increase rather than a drop in crime.
The non-profit group America's Voice sent out a chart on Wednesday, documenting the change in violent crime levels in various Arizona police jurisdictions from 2002 through 2009. The numbers tell two interesting stories.
The first is that, by and large, crime is down across the board. In Arizona as a whole, it has dropped 12 percent in the past seven years. But in major Maricopa County cities with their own police forces -- Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale and Tempe -- the rate has dropped even faster. (The group measured within Maricopa County because it is the epicenter of the immigration debate. But in Tuscon, which is not in the county, there has also been a drop in the crime rate since 2002, according to law enforcement statistics).


ArizonaCrime


Those findings alone suggest that the systemic violence often cited as the compelling argument for stricter border laws may be overblown.
But the more telling number may be the crime statistics for the portion of Maricopa County that is under the purview of controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio. According to data compiled by America's Voice, crime in that area has actually increased 58 percent since 2002.
Arpaio is considered something of a visionary among conservatives with respect to his approach to immigration. Many of his reforms, indeed, have served as a basis for the law that Gov. Jan Brewer tried to implement statewide. But he has clashed with other sheriffs over his methods, with some complaining that such broad anti-immigration policies put an overwhelming burden on law enforcement officials while producing social friction rather than safety.

America's Voice's chart isn't perfect. For one, Arpaio's domain is much smaller than those of the major cities within the county. Crime as a whole remains lower under his watch than, say, in Phoenix (only it's increasing as opposed to decreasing over time). Moreover, not every factor responsible for the violent crime level can or should be tied to immigration.
But the group's underlying point is that the discussion around immigration policy both in Arizona and the United States at large needs to be reoriented. And the raw percentages of violent crime statistics shown in the chart have that effect.

 

Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com

Right-Wing Christians Put Out Their Top-10 Favorite Racist Attacks on Obama (VIDEO)

 Right-Wing Christians Put Out Their Top-10 Favorite Racist Attacks on Obama (VIDEO)

November 24, 2013 | Filed under: Barack Obama,Racial Issues,Videos | Posted by: Mindy Fischer

The outright hatred for President Obama by right-wing groups who call themselves Christians and Patriots is just astounding. This website called “Americans Who Hate Obama” is one of many that proudly displays their racism and bigotry. Americans Who Hate Obama has put out a video with their top 10 favorite racist attacks on Obama.
This video proudly features things like calling the Obamas monkeys, terrorist Muslims, non-Americans, incompetent, and fried chicken and watermelon devouring negros.
It also features many unbelievably offensive slurs and signs. One says, “Send Obama back to the jungles of Kenya.” Another reads, “Don’t Re-Nig in 2012.” A girl shows off her new t-shirt that says, “Obama is my Slave.”
But, perhaps the most disturbing things in this clip are the pictures of nooses, including one with Obama literally hanging by a noose.

Rush Limbaugh: “This Is Just Pure Marxism Coming Out Of The Mouth Of The Pope”

Rush Limbaugh: “This Is Just Pure Marxism Coming Out Of The Mouth Of The Pope”

FreakOutNation

opinionated politics | we inform, you decide.

November 27, 2013

By Anomaly

 We knew this would happen after Pope Francis called for renewal of the Roman Catholic Church and attacked unfettered capitalism as “a new tyranny”, while writing of income inequality, and urging global leaders to fight poverty. One by one Republican talkers will trickle in, to voice their negative opinions of the Pope.
Infamous bigot, Pamela Geller asked when the Pope became an Imam.
And now here’s Rush Limbaugh declaring,”This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.”

Listen to Rush’s objections as he mentions the Pope’s fight against poverty.

Rush Limbaugh would call Jesus Christ a CINO.
Courtesy of Media Matters. 

Is a Neurotic Form of Christianity Destroying America?

July 12, 2013  

Posted by: Robert De Filippis

 

 
“The deconstruction of Christianity is not an attack on the church but a critique of the idols to which it is vulnerable – the literalism and authoritarianism, the sexism and racism, the militarism, and the love of unrestrained capitalism with which the church in its various forms has today and for too long been entangled, any one of which is toxic to the kingdom of God.”
“Strategically, diplomatically, socially, politically, morally, economically, evangelically, in every possible way we are witness today to a low point in American leadership, an ethical, social, political and biblical catastrophe.”
These passages from the book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture) by John Caputo, taken out of context, might suggest that religion is the singular cause for the continuing trajectory of a deepening dysfunction in our society. But a twisted popular form of Christianity catalyzes two other more powerful ingredients; predatory capitalism and a government that serves the interests of big money.
These three powerful components work together to drag us down the slope to more and more dysfunction in the name of a more moral society – a moral society based on a set of values that are so misapplied as to become destructive.
In other words, these three components create a moral society that destroys its own villages in order to save them.
For instance, while we hammer home the lessons of radical individualism in the guise of moral virtue, we reduce the resources or opportunities required to become self sustaining for great portions of our citizenry.
Just to be sure no one mistakes our moral lesson of self-sufficiency, we raise the interest rates on student loans, and the vital college education needed for success in the future becomes less accessible to the masses.
To be sure our moral lessons continue,  we keep our taxes low and maintain our spending on defense against an imagined enemy and our educational system is gutted to balance the budget.
We are cursed with near sightedness. We can’t seem to see the long term effects on the country when a low skilled, minimally educated workforce must shoulder the tax load of the future or compete with highly educated citizens of other nations.
We have an amazing ability to blame the victims in our troubled society and justify our accusations on a revisionist Christian morality which would be unrecognizable to the Christ himself. Not so much because Christianity was St. Paul’s invention, but because of the absurdity of present day revisionist interpretations.
This modern form of Christianity has become an expedient for the infiltration of a radical form of capitalism intermingled with our public institutions. The very same institutions that were formed to protect the interests of the citizenry, who are now doing the bidding of the mega wealthy, while pointing to the moral failure of the masses they were intended to serve.
Yes, Mr. Caputo, we have many idols. And although I’m encouraged by your efforts to  deconstruct Christianity, I doubt our ability or willingness to take the same actions with capitalism and governance.
It would never get through the Republican led House of Representatives. That’s the one with all the good Christian Tea Party moralists.
Rather, they are satisfied to keep Americans dancing around the golden calf, with the improbable hope that eventually some of capitalism’s largesse will trickle down into their laps.
We are minimum wage, millionaires-in-waiting, fully immersed in this form of idolatry, trusting our day will come.
If there is an unpardonable sin, it’s using religion to separate and discriminate rather than to connect and make whole.
On America’s behalf, Mea Culpa!
Robert De Filippis