Blue in the Bluegrass

Shop & Share Next Saturday, Feb. 4

2012-01-28T15:00:00.002-05:00

We all know someone who has been the victim of domestic violence, whether we realize it or not. Shelters for them are always the last to be funded and the first to be cut, despite being literal life-savers for those who can find safety nowhere else.

From Kentucky First Lady Jane Beshear, who is light years better in every way than her husband:

Saturday, Feb. 4 is our annual Shop and Share Day to benefit victims of domestic violence.

On this day, volunteers will be at Kentucky Kroger stores from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. collecting donated goods for 15 Kentucky Domestic Violence Association (KDVA) shelters across the state. We’re also happy to have 13 Food City stores in Eastern Kentucky join us in collecting items for the first time this year.

If you don’t have time to shop on Feb. 4, you can still “share” by donating goods to bins in state office buildings. Shop and Share bins are located in the central lobbies of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the State Office Building and outside the Governor’s Office in the State Capitol.

Please remember that shelters need more than just canned food to help support victims. They also need items such as toiletries, diapers and school supplies.

If you want to volunteer on Shop and Share Day, please visit http://firstlady.ky.gov/Pages/shopshare.aspx.

Our domestic violence shelters do a remarkable job helping victims to get back on their feet and regain control of their lives. Donating to Shop and Share is a simple way to help these shelters make a difference in victims’ lives.

And don't forget, direct cash donations to your local shelter are always needed and welcome.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Pretty Boy Floyd"

2012-01-28T12:00:00.001-05:00

From Down with Tyranny:

Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

-- from Woody Guthrie's "Pretty Boy Floyd" (as
published, not word for word what Woody sings here)

"We were sent here to serve the American people."

2012-01-28T09:00:00.004-05:00

This isn’t about me. We weren’t sent here to wage perpetual political campaigns against each other. We were sent here to serve the American people. And they deserve better than gridlock and games. One senator gumming up the works for the whole country is certainly not what our founding fathers envisioned.

The truth is, neither party has been blameless in tactics like these. But it’s time for both parties to put an end to them. I’m asking Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, to stop this kind of behavior by passing a rule that allows all judicial and public service nominations a simple up-or-down vote within 90 days.

Yes, Mr. President, it is too about you. You're the ni**er in the White House and they won't stop until you're gone.

And no, both parties are not to blame. You've seen those graphs of the number of filibusters staged by each party and so have we: repugs have staged more in the last three years than Democrats have staged in the last seven decades.

Stop insulting our intelligence, stop pandering to people who will never, ever vote for you, stop pretending there's some "vast middle" of voters you can win over, and get down to the real work of shoving an anti-Wall-Street agenda down the repugs' throats.

Full transcript here.

Trust Women: Join the Virtual March

2012-01-27T20:00:00.001-05:00

Trust Women was started by the late martyr Dr. John Tiller to support a woman's right to abortion.

Dr. George Tiller was an inspiration to reproductive health care professionals and advocates. We at Trust Women shared his vision of an America where women could, without burden, control their reproductive lives, have healthy pregnancies, and deliver safely.

For many women here in the United States, these basic rights are out of reach. That’s why Trust Women will expand abortion care and maternal health care to tens of thousands of women by opening more clinics.

In every state where we open a clinic, we will create model policy agendas to expand access to care. We will build deep community support for these services and the policy makers who stand up for them.

Trust Women will:

Open clinics that provide abortion and maternal health care; full spectrum reproductive health care.
Build community investment in those clinics.
Create model state public policies to expand abortion care and improve maternal health.

We will do this in the Midwest and the South, where women’s reproductive rights have been limited more than in any other region of the country. We will measure our success by the number of women in this region who can easily access abortion and who have healthy pregnancies and safe deliveries. Period.

During this anniversary week of Roe v. Wade, they are collecting signatures for a "virtual march" on Washington to support abortion rights.

Today is the last day, but they are still short of their goal of 20,000 signatures.

Join the virtual march by clicking here and signing to support the one right from which all other rights for women flow: the right to control her own body.

Of Horses, Parks, Budgets and Horses' Asses

2012-01-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

Taking $50 million away from schools and giving $40 million to a Flintstones Truther Park that will never get built is not the only way un-Democratic Kentucky Governor Steve "Pants on Fire Lyin'" Beshear has totally fucked the state budget.

The cowardly weasel has slashed the state parks budget every year he's been in office, to the point that parks employees are working so few hours that they are losing their benefits and are having to take food stamps and Medicaid.

Kentucky's second-biggest industry - more profitable and employing more people than does Big Coal - is tourism. Kentucky's state parks are the state's crown jewels, and cutting their budget is a knife to the state's economic jugular.

Ironically, the only state park likely to get more money - a bunch more money - from the state is the one state park that declared itself so fucking special a few years ago that it's not even part of the state park system, but has its own fundraising foundation.

Linda B. Blackford and Beth Musgrave at the Herald:

As most state agencies brace for dramatic budget cuts, the Kentucky Horse Park could be getting millions of additional dollars.

In Gov. Steve Beshear’s recommended budget, the Horse Park faces no budget cuts, and instead would receive an additional $3.5 million increase this fiscal year, plus another $1.6 million each year of the next two-year budget.

State officials told lawmakers on Tuesday that the funds are needed to cover operational shortfalls that stem from utility costs for roughly 264,000 square feet of new facilities built at the park in anticipation of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Lawmakers said they want to hear more before agreeing to increase the park’s funding.

The Horse Park is a fabulous place, and I strongly recommend you visit it. But it has a fundraising arm Kentucky's State Parks don't, and giving it money taken from parks that are really hurting is just plain stupid.

Kenin NY at Down with Tyranny nails it:

Here's how Jim Hightower begins this column, happily passed along by the invaluable Nation of Change:

"Sorry, we're closed." In one of the saddest signs of the times, this message is popping up all across the country, as governors and legislators are cutting off funds (and shutting off access) to one of the finest, most popular assets owned by the people of our country: state parks.

The logic is familiar by now: If God had meant for us to have amenities like parks, if he felt we deserved amenities like parks, he would have made us rich enough to afford amenities like parks -- and He would probably have probably come up with one of His famously mysterious ways to scam it so that somebody else paid for them. (Rich people just love it when they can get somebody else to pay for their stuff. And I'm sure they can direct us to any number of bought-and-paid-for clergyfolk who''ll explain that this too is part of God's mysterious plan.)

Jim takes a rather different view, as you might expect from one of those goddamn liberal class warriors. "Parks," he writes, "are a tangible expression of America's democratic ideals,"

literally a common ground for every man, woman and child to enjoy, learn, absorb . . . or just be. Especially for the middle class and the poor -- the great majority of our people who can't jet off to luxury resorts for a getaway for vacation -- these spaces offer a form of real wealth, something of great value that each of us literally "owns," knitting us together as a community and nation.

In the wonderful world of Austerity, however, it's a perfect time to hack away at this blatant waste of what should properly be Rich People's Money, the way most all money should be Rich People's Money, at least in the minds of Rich People, and goodness knows they've gone a long way toward making it so.

"Spiritually shriveled, small-minded and short-sighted" he calls the state officials who "are snuffing out this invaluable, uniting social force." (Come on, Jim, isn't any "uniting social force" by definition class warfare?)

The majority of states have been closing many of their parks, slashing hours and services at others or simply handing the public's asset to profiteering corporations. Idaho's governor has proposed eliminating the entire parks department; California shut the gates of a fourth of the state's parks last year; officials in Arizona and Florida intend to privatize their parks; Washington state has cut off most of its park funding; and Ohio has okayed oil drilling in its parks to replace state financing.

As Woody Guthrie said of outlaws, "Some'll rob you with a six gun/Some with a fountain pen." This is theft by the in-laws, the political insiders who're stealing The People's property -- stealing from America itself.

At least in the case of his home state, Texas, Jim isn't being poetic or metaphorical when he talks about those "spiritually shriveled, small-minded and short-sighted state officials" stealing The People's property." He's here to tell us a tale.

Things tend to be bigger here -- bigger hair and hats, for example, bigger money and egos . . . and bigger thievery by political con men.

Last year, the gang of GOP hucksters who control our state government pulled off a huge heist, covering it up with an equally huge boast: "We balanced our budget. Not by raising taxes but by setting priorities and cutting government spending," bragged the gang leader, Gov. Rick "Oops" Perry. How'd they fill the $27 billion shortfall that they themselves had created by their previous budgetary mismanagement? By stealing money from already poorly funded programs -- from education to parks -- that ordinary Texans count on.

People here are justly proud of their 94 parks, but many of these treasures are now understaffed, open fewer hours and in disrepair because the system's budget was whacked by 21.5 percent in order to spare the wealthiest families and corporations in this enormously rich state from paying a teensy bit more in taxes.

But that was only part of the robbery. A state sales tax on sporting goods, dedicated by law to help finance the people's parks will generate about $236 million this year and next. But the governor and his legislative henchmen raided this pile of revenue, filching two-thirds of it for the state's general fund so they could claim that they "balanced our budget (without) raising taxes."

To replenish some of the tax money taken by The Perry Gang, the head of parks for the Great State of Texas is now engaged in a shocking spectacle: public begging. In a video played at 11 December press conferences in state parks across Texas, the chief of a major state agency is reduced to shaking a tin cup, pleading for $4.6 million in donations. "Please act now to help keep our state parks open for all Texans to enjoy," he beseeches.

These right-wing politicians howl that they want to shrink government -- but they are the shrunken ones, and the narrowness of their vision is diminishing what it means to be American.

Sorry to say, it ain't just Texas.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Alice's Restaurant"

2012-01-27T12:00:00.001-05:00

I saw Arlo Guthrie perform this live in concert - the whole thing. It is well worth the time.

Uploaded by shrub555:

The FULL song all in one video...
Arlo Guthrie- Alice's Restaurant
This is on the new album called the massacre revisited.
This was originally released in 1967 off of the album "Alices Restaurant". It was used in the movie "Alices Restaurant" in 1969. This rendition of it was done by Arlo in the 90's.

Lyrics here.

"Rape the Sluts" Bill Back in Kentucky Lege

2012-01-26T18:00:00.001-05:00

What is it about "forced penetration of the vagina is rape" that these motherfuckers don't understand?

Never mind; they understand it perfectly. Go watch these perverts debate this thing. The mere thought of forcing uterine cameras deep into crying, protesting women seeking abortions gives them all massive hard-ons.

From the Herald:

A Senate committee approved two bills on Thursday that would place more restrictions on women seeking abortions.

Republican Sen. Jack Westwood of Erlanger, who is chairman of the Senate Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee, said he hopes the bills will reduce the number of abortions in Kentucky.

One bill would require women to have ultrasounds prior to abortion. The other would clarify existing law by requiring women to have a face-to-face consultation with a physician, licensed nurse, physician's assistant or physician-delegated social worker prior to having an abortion.

Sen. Perry Clark, a Louisville Democrat, said that similar proposals have been included in a single bill in years past, but the sponsors are politicizing the issue by dividing them into separate measures this year.

Don't be fooled. The "ultrasound" is not an external ultrasound with a goop-covered computer mouse rubbed on the belly. The "ultrasound" this bill requires is internal and beyond merely "invasive:" it's a camera on a probe shoved up the vagina and deep into the uterus. It's painful and horrifically traumatic. It is against her will. It's rape.

(And no, morons, you don't have to use a penis to rape. Anything that forcibly penetrates is an instrument of rape.)

Your tax dollars at work. Forcing doctors to rape their patients. For the sole purpose of shaming women into back-alley, illegal abortions.

Because making abortion illegal - or just expensive, inconvenient, difficult and/or humiliating - doesn't reduce the number of abortions. It only reduces the number of women who survive them.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy by: "Union Label"

2012-01-26T12:00:00.001-05:00

Listen up, children: not so long ago the question wasn't "is it made in America;" the question was "is it made by American union members." The competition 30 years ago wasn't between slave labor in Asia and wage-slave labor in America; it was between non-union labor in the Carolinas and Mississippi and union labor in Massachusetts and Michigan.

Uploaded by robatsea2009:

One of the classic television commercials from the early 1980s featuring members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

The ILGWU was once one of the largest and most powerful unions in the country. It earned its radical cred, having been tested literally by fire in the great Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy of 1911.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Little Boxes"

2012-01-25T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by flouridatedwater

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Words and Music by: Malvina Reynolds; Copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, Renewed 1990.

Of Course You Can Do Better - So Run for Office

2012-01-25T06:00:00.004-05:00

You've got until close of business Tuesday, Jan. 31 here in Kentucky to file for one of the literally thousands of public offices up for election this year. Every county office: constable, magistrate, city council, mayor, judge-executive, sheriff, jailer, commonwealth's attorney, district judge, county clerk, county attorney and circuit clerk. All 100 state representatives, and half of the 39 state senators. Not to mention the white whales of Congress.

Barefoot and Progressive:

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
1st DISTRICT
Edward Whitfield (R) is filed for re-election. Currently has no opponents.

2nd DISTRICT
Brett Guthrie (R), incumbent, is filed and so is David Lynn Williams (D). His 2007 race against Richie Farmer brought less-than-rave reviews from Dems.

3rd DISTRICT
John Yarmuth (D) is on file and no one has yet tried to challenge His Awesomeness.

4th DISTRICT
According to the SoS, Gary Moore is the only one filed to take Geofferson Davis’ seat, but there’s a bunch of folks coming there.

6th DISTRICT
We’ve got 8 days to convince Kathy Stein to challenge Ben Chandler. Or for someone else to step forward. Who will it be now? The only candiddate on file in this race is Randolph Vance, write-in candidate. Neither Andy Barr nor Chandler appears to have filed their papers. If Scott Jennings wants to get Karl Rove on the phone, $1 Million from the Crossroads SuperPac would almost assuredly bring Ben a challenger. $1 Million, Karl. Bring it. You’re gonna have to spend way more than that in the general so why not buy the primary.

POTUS

Mitt Romney is the only candidate on file ahead of Kentucky’s May primary that is likely to be the absolute deciding state in the Republican race to take on Barry Hussein. Newt, Rick and Ron have 8 days.

If you want to run for an office, the SoS is a good place to start for qualification information and procedures. For more local offices, check with the County Clerk’s office.

As Kentuckians For the Commonwealth says, if you’ve ever considered running for office, there’s no time like the present.

As I've written before, there is no law or regulation that says you have to spend a single dime on your campaign after you pay your filing fee. You don't have to campaign at all. Just get your name on the ballot, then go about your life as usual. You'll probably lose, but you would have made the point that nobody gets to run for office without a challenger.

And who knows? Anti-incumbent sentiment sent a shitload of newbies to Congress and state legislatures in 2010; you might be the one to benefit this year.

UPDATE II: Gingrich is now on the Kentucky primary ballot. Catch Newtmentum, Kentucky repugs!

Occupy Lexington Raided

2012-01-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

No, it wasn't violent, but neither was it necessary. C'mon, Lexington - four solid months of peaceful co-existence and suddenly you go all hick sheriff on them? What, were Oakland cops calling you pussies?

Louisville Courant:

After 118 days of continued protest on the corner of Main St and Esplanade, Lexington, Kentucky police, under the supervision of Mayor Jim Gray, came by Tuesday between 12:30-1 PM and confiscated occupiers' tents and canopies.

The police brought more trailers than they needed. All in all, it only took 5-10 officers to confiscate the property. No arrests were made and they left no officers on the scene.

Protesters were allowed to save what personal items they could quickly grab and throw in the back of Ford Ranger belonging to a huge longtime supporter, the owner of Natasha's Bistro on Esplanade.

According to occupier Steven Burt, the police have been less than cordial over the course of the occupation.

"They've complained about our sidewalk chalk. They've said we were dirty and we looked disgusting," Burt said.

Occupy Lexington is located adjacent to a 14-story Chase JP Morgan bank, on the sidewalk. The rumor is that the raid was justified by Lexington police because the protest was on the sidewalk,but that leaves protesters puzzled since that had been the case for 118 days.

Passing motorists are honking and making eye contact just a few hours later, a show of solidarity that is lacking today from Mayor Gray.

"We're not going anywhere. We're needing solidarity from our supporters tonight though," says Stacie Catlett.

Click here for photos of the so-objectionable sidewalk chalkings.

UPDATE, 6 p.m.

Barefoot and Progressive:

The nation’s longest continuous occupation continued last night after police removed all the tents. Despite earlier reports that the corner of Main and Esplanade had been raided and the Occupation was over, the Occupiers met last night to chart a course for the future.

In fact, this sounded less like a raid and more like a misunderstanding leading to a cleansing. At the time, the camp was not unoccupied but the person on watch had crossed the street to get a coffee from Natasha’s. The police saw it empty and decided it was time to break it down, seeing it as abandoned (H-L).

But that’s all neither here nor there, really, since that part is done. The question quickly became “What Next?”

During a two-hour general assembly meeting last night, that question was discussed at length. The Occupiers were of different mindsets but as always, worked toward consensus. Their quick report:

- We will continue to occupy our location at Main and Esplanade. People have committed to be there for the next 24 hours, so feel free to come by and join them, or bring by some hot drinks!

- There was a great conversation tonight about the nature of our occupation and what our next steps should be. Energy is high and there were a lot of great ideas. If you haven’t been by in some time, please come out tomorrow at 6:30 for our General Assembly!

- Stay tuned to this page for more information as we have it. Again, tomorrow’s GA will be very important, so be sure to show up!

You can join them tonight at 6:30PM. Even if you’ve never been down before — there was one gentleman last night who was attending his first meeting.

What will happen next?

Watch the video.

Elizabeth Warren Does Something Incredibly Stupid

2012-01-24T18:00:00.001-05:00

Think Progress:

The 2012 elections will undoubtedly see an unprecedented injection of third-party influence, thanks to the Citizens United ruling and the subsequent advent of super PACs, and now, “super super PACS” — groups that “not only raise mega cash to promote candidates, but give money to candidates’ campaigns” directly. Attempting to stem the tide of undue influence, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D) and her opponent Sen. Scott Brown (R) signed a ban on third-party ads. Brown had sent Warren two previous proposals but Warren objected to “some of the loopholes” that remained. Warren sent back a signed proposals with “clarifications to make it stronger.” The ad ban is “designed to control what is already prodigious outside spending on the race. By some projections, the campaign could cost at least $60 million” with at least “$20 million being spent by special interest groups with an interest in the outcome.”

Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie.

What - in the name of every repug motherfucker who publicly attacked you, sabotaged you, stabbed you in the back, tried everything under the sun to literally destroy you as a public servant, as a lawyer, as a person - are you thinking?

The Super Pacs trying to prevent you from restoring Ted Kennedy's senate seat to the party that earned it are laughing their asses off and buying up commercial time as I write this.

The Super Pacs that support you will probably respect your request, even though they know Brown's Super Pacs will not. If they don't know that, then they're even more stupid than whatever insane urge possessed you to do this.

Admit it, Elizabeth: you are too naive to run for the U.S. Senate. You're going to get crushed, and you're going to deserve it.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"

2012-01-24T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by Librarian1972

Bob Dylan's live-performance of his legendary „A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" at „The Great Music Experience", Nara (Japan) in May 1994. Dylan plays before a massive orchestral scenery, which is the Tokyo New Philharmonic orchestra -- the first time ever he played with an classic orchestra.

Show Your Love for Mountains

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

Show your sweetheart what kind of lover you really are this Valentine's by taking her/him to the I Love Mountains demonstration at the State Capitol in Frankfort.

From Kentuckians for the Commonwealth:

When Kentucky author Wendell Berry and the 13 other Kentucky Rising leaders emerged from the State Capitol to join the I Love Mountains Day rally last February, he said:

"We do not think of what we have done as in any sense a symbolic gesture. We are humbled, instead, by the realization that our effort cannot be carried to success by us, or by any other few of us. If the adventure of the last few days, by this small company of friends, is to be more than a symbolic gesture, that can be only because all of you who are here, and many of our friends who are not here, will take it up, make it your adventure and your cause, until this great house will become the true home of justice to all the people of this state, and of faithful care for the divine gifts of land and water, and of life itself."

So we'll be back at the State Capitol on February 14 with a powerful and visible presence as KFTC members continue to answer Wendell Berry’s call, You see, right now is our best chance in generations to end mountaintop removal mining and build a clean energy economy that generates good jobs in every Kentucky community. We won't stop until we have: a thriving democracy, clean energy jobs, affordable, renewable energy, and healthy communities.

All over eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia, residents in communities like Eolia, Hueysville, Benham, Lynch and Montgomery Creek are speaking up to protect their health and homeland from the destruction of coal and to create a more sustainable economy.

Will you join us and be one of the more than 1,200 people standing up for clean water, clean energy, and a just economic transition for eastern Kentucky?

And will you volunteer to bring with you at least one other person with you? If each us brings a friend, imagine how much more powerful our voice will be!

More information about the day, including a schedule, and registration information can be found on our website here.

The march around the Capitol starts at 12:30, and the rally at 1 p.m. Come early and buttonhole your state legislators inside.

The Kids Are All Right

2012-01-23T20:00:00.001-05:00

We've been wondering for a while what it would take to get the video-glazed-eyed slackers out into the streets; now we know.

Rebecca Leber at Think Progress:

Youth activists interrupted the State of the Energy Industry earlier this week to deliver the 99 percent’s message to polluters’ biggest lobbies, who were all gathered for a conference.

The annual event included addresses by American Petroleum Institute, American Gas Association, and the National Mining Association. During API President Jack Gerard’s speech, the activists yelled “mic check” and fact-checked the oil lobby. “Big Oil’s lies are hurting Americans, our economy, and our environment,” the group shouted. “API spends hundreds of millions of dollars corrupting our democracy. … Big Oil is raking in record profits at the expense of the American people.”

One of the protesters described her experience:

We all stood up. Our voices combined were deafening in that small room. I could see Gerard fuming under his smug grin. We were hurried out by Suits with nervous demeanor, but not before we were able to get a few powerful last words in. This was Big Oil’s crown-jewel forum – they’d been advertising this forum on NPR and even their top PR officials were talking it up online. It was clear they were embarrassed and totally caught off guard.

But this will not be the last one Big Oil hears from us. Oh no. We’ll be visiting them again and again, speaking truth to the lies, corruption, and corporate greed of dirty energy, and replacing it with a vision of transparent democracy and a just, clean energy future.

Watch the video here.

While the protesters promise to return, API is deploying an election-year “Vote 4 Energy” campaign to promote “drill, baby, drill” and deliver on its threat that rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline has “huge political consequences” for the president.

And yet, youth activists have spread the 99 percent’s environmental message across the world, recently. Thousands of protesters fought successfully against the Keystone XL pipeline, and youth voices grabbed attention at the Durban climate conference last month. Now, the 99 percent are taking that message directly to the doorstep of the oil industry.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "I Ain't Marchin' No More"

2012-01-23T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by davedave25

False Dawn, or a New Progressive Revolution?

2012-01-23T06:00:00.001-05:00

So, when you heard about this, did you shout and leap for joy, or did you frown and mutter because that's surely the last remotely progressive thing we'll see out of this hippie-bashing administration for a while?

Today, in a huge victory for women’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that most employers will be required to cover contraception in their health plans, along with other preventive services, with no cost-sharing such as co-pays or deductibles. This means that after years of trying to get birth control covered to the same extent that health plans cover Viagra, our country will finally have nearly universal coverage of contraception.

Opponents of contraception had lobbied hard for a broad exemption that would have allowed any religiously-affiliated employer to opt out of providing such coverage. Fortunately, the Obama administration rejected that push and decided to maintain the narrow religious exemption that it initially proposed. Only houses of worship and other religious nonprofits that primarily employ and serve people of the same faith will be exempt. Religiously-affiliated employers who do not qualify for the exemption and are not currently offering contraceptive coverage may apply for transitional relief for a one-year period to give them time to determine how to comply with the rule.

I did both, so there.

Mike Lux is the author of The Progressive Revolution, a book I strongly recommend as both inspiration and cautionary tale. He writes at Crooks and Liars about the meaning of recent progressive victories, including the appointment of Richard Cordray and the at least temporary stoppages of the Keystone XL Pipeline, SOPA and PIPA.

As Bob Dylan would put it, the times they are a-changin'. There's a storm outside and it's raging, baby. We really are shaking their windows and rattling their walls. Done deals are not getting done. Dead appointments are acting like Lazarus and rising from the dead. The establishment is getting very, very nervous. And grassroots activists, from the occupiers to the netroots to those chaining themselves to the White House fence or sitting in at the Wisconsin Capitol last year, are shaking and rattling things all over.

SNIP

Progressive activists should feel incredibly good about all they have accomplished in the last year, and should feel good as well that President Obama -- even if it is sometimes more slowly or reluctantly than we would like -- is understanding that on a range of issues, it is politically smart of him to be aligned with these grassroots movement. But it is also no time to pat ourselves on the back: over the next 72 hours, an enormous issue will probably get resolved that will be the biggest single thing that will determine whether the dead housing market, as well as the broader economy, will get a boost that will bring it to life: the bank settlement deal. How this issue gets resolved not only will have a massive impact on the economy, it will go a very long ways in whether the President can credibly run for re-election as the guy who took on Wall Street and held them accountable when the chips were down.

SNIP

I will close by noting that, as I wrote about in my book The Progressive Revolution, positive change in America happens because of the combination of big progressive movements and Presidents open to that change. The last few victories progressives have won have shown us that formula is starting to work again. Let's hope the next 72 hours show us that the progressive movement can muster its troops to make Wall Street accountability happen, and that the president remains open to change.

Stay on 'em. Join your local occupations. Harass your state legislators. Call and write your congress critters - I thought that hadn't worked since the Reagan administration, but it worked like a charm on SOPA. Remind yourself and your fellow disappointed Democrats that while President Obama may listen to us only occasionally and reluctantly, preznent Romney or Gingrich won't listen at all.

Nine months to election.

Not Dog-Whistle, Not Overt Racism, Just A Desperate Gamble

2012-01-22T18:00:00.001-05:00

David Atkins "thereisnospoon" on Newt Gingrich's real message:

What Newt Gingrich is doing here, then, is not making a coded racist argument against Barack Obama and minority communities. He is, rather, presenting himself as the anti-Obama: the Great Conservative Racial Uniter, the man who can walk into minority communities, free them from the tyranny of the welfare state, and win back their love, re-uniting them in harmony with their Southern white brethren in defiance of the liberal media and government elites trying to keep them poor and indebted to government programs.

As with Romney's statement about firing people, the key to understanding conservative statements is often to look past the initial attention-grabbing phrase, and to watch for the context that comes afterward. In this case, the key for Gingrich lies not in his lines about "food stamp" or "pay check" Presidents. The key lies in his confidence that he is the one and only conservative who will be able to make minorities love Republicans again by freeing them from mental slavery.

Republicans are not only sensitive to allegations of racism. They also know in their hearts that in their current incarnation they face demographic extinction. The Fox News demographic is literally dying. They also know that simply putting minority faces like Marco Rubio on the same old policies won't work.

In order to survive without moderating their policies, they must subscribe to the belief that if only they eliminate every program that helps poor people (including minorities), minorities will suddenly wake from a deep sleep and learn to embrace conservatives through the power of tough love.

That's what Newt Gingrich promises them. He is their answer to Barack Obama, their Savior, their Great Racial Uniter. He speaks not ignorantly, schizophrenically nor in code. He and his base have leaped into this ideological gamble with open eyes, and are attempting to take the rest of the country with them.

Read the whole thing.

As always with repugs, it's not about helping others or improving the nation in any concrete way; it's about grabbing and keeping power.

Whatever it takes.

Why Libraries Are Better Than the Internet

2012-01-22T15:00:00.001-05:00

There is nothing cooler than a library. And you don't have to go to the Library of Congress or the New York Public Library - or even the Kenton County Public Library in Covington, KY - to find treasures that no one will ever see online. They're waiting for you at your local library.

Cindy Schroeder at the Northern Kentucky Enquirer:

As the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I approaches, historians and genealogists will soon be able to use a rare series of books at the Kenton County Public Library system’s Covington branch.

“The Source Records of the Great War,” a set of seven, gold-leafed volumes on World War I (1914-18) were donated this month by the Sons of The American Legion and the American Legion Moon Brothers Post 275 in Independence.

SNIP

Compiled by Charles F. Horne in 1923, the hard-bound books with the Legion emblem embossed on the cover are known as a definitive collection providing details of the causes and various armed conflicts of World War I, said Dave Schroeder, executive director of the Kenton County Public Library system. Each volume is about 300 pages, and the chapters are written by authoritative sources, such as WWI generals and political leaders of that era.

SNIP

Because of the rarity of “The Source Records of the Great War,” the series won’t be available for general circulation, Schroeder said. However, he sees them being used by local historians and genealogists. The books will be in the history department in the Covington library “in no more than a couple of weeks” for anyone who wants to read them, he said.

“If you know that your great-great grandfather was in a particular WWI battle, this series will give you information about that battle and what led up to it,” Schroeder said.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "What Did You Learn in School Today?"

2012-01-22T12:00:00.002-05:00

Uploaded by PopulistParty:

Pete Seeger sings Tom Paxton's song live on the "Tonight In Person" Show (1964).

Here's some of the "best" lyrics:

I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody's free.
And that's what the teacher said to me.
That's what I learned in school today.
That's what I learned in school.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Rally for Kathy Stein Sunday - Today - at 4 p.m.

2012-01-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Come to downtown Lexington to show Governor Steve "Cowardly Weasel" Beshear and the un-democratic lack-of-leadership in the General Assembly what you think of them exiling the sole liberal voice in the state senate and disenfranchising the liberal voters of Lexington.

Barefoot and Progressive, which has been all over this from Day One and is not letting up.

The disenfranchised voters of the leaderless republic of Lexington, KY will gather on Sunday, January 22nd, from 4PM to 7PM at 200 East Main Street at the heart of Downtown to rally in support of Kathy Stein and this revolutionary new idea for a political system which we humbly call “democracy.”

CLICK HERE FOR INFORMATION & TO RSVP

Join us.

Tell your friends.

Share the news.

Bring signs.

Invite the Governor. I’m sure he’ll be interested in your thoughts.

Creating the Next Generation of Protesters

2012-01-21T15:00:00.001-05:00

Don't think there aren't school officials in your state who are quietly - or not so quietly - applauding this abomination and plotting to how implement something similar.

Now that it's popular.

In a page right out of Newt Gingrich’s alternate-history science-fiction wingnut-polygamy utopian epic Candyland Space Land, the school district in Tucson has completely banned Mexican-American studies, seized all the textbooks and even wall posters from the classrooms, and punished the students who protested by sentencing them to janitorial duty. The self-hating Latina lady who oversees the now-illegal ethnic studies program even comically told the kids, “Mexico is where Mexican studies is taught, not America!” Why oh why does the Newt have to be in stinky old South Carolina during such a historical moment in stomping the Mexican, for freedom?

The insanely racist Arizona law, HB 2281, specifically targets ethnic studies in the public schools. Tucson’s Mexican-American Studies program was specifically shut down to meet the law’s requirements, although administrator Lupita Garcia — who sure sounds like a Mexican to us — seemed utterly delighted to shut down the district’s program and shout racist idiocy at the students.

The students bravely marched five miles from Cholla High School (better change that name!) to the Mexican-American Studies headquarters … and as punishment for this crime against white society, they were all put on janitorial slave duty. Sounds like Tucson needs to be occupied! (Weather is very nice this time of year. It’s a good season for a Mexican-sounding revolution.)

Somebody give each and every one of those kids a full Mario Savio Free Speech scholarship to Berkeley right now.

h/t Digby.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "If I Had a Hammer"

2012-01-21T12:00:00.001-05:00

How much has the Reich Wing ruined this country? This much: in the late 1960's, in conservative Kentucky, at summer camp, I learned this song from camp counselors who taught it and many other popular songs of protest, sex and drugs to hundreds of kids with the full knowledge and approval of our very conventional parents. Nobody blinked an eye.

Try singing this song today within hailing distance of your local elementary school and see how fast you get arrested.

Uploaded by jguth3:

Live at Wolftrap, August 8, 1993. Arlo and Pete and family perform Pete's song with Pete leading the audience in his robust way. What a great concert this was!

Doing More Without Congress

2012-01-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

I don't think "extensive background checks" is the best way to attract foreign tourists, but working around congressional obstruction is a good election-year tactic.

Full transcript here.

How a Modern Democracy Regresses to the Dark Ages

2012-01-20T18:00:00.001-05:00

By empowering conservatives and freakazoids, of course.

This week, the Republican National Committee rejected 35 years of bipartisan U.S. diplomacy to declare itself in favor of genocide in the Middle East.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), at their winter meeting in New Orleans, unanimously adopted a resolution that appears to support a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"One-state solution" is neo-con for "eliminating all non-Jews from biblical Palestine and annexing the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights - and what the fuck, Jordan and southern Lebanon, too - into Greater Israel."

For more than 50 years, we liberals held up Israel as the epitome of the modern secular democracy. Israel's founders were secular socialists who despised the Orthodox freakazoid minority and worked hard to marginalize it.

That Orthodox freakazoid minority, by the way, vehemently opposed the establishment of the Nation of Israel 64 years ago, and loudly and repeatedly denied its very existence. Their objection was that according to their invisible sky wizard, only the return of the messiah could bring about the rebirth of Israel as a nation. Not even Palestinian terrorists were as shrill in their refusal to acknowledge Israel as were the Orthodox freakazoid minority.

That is the same Orthodox freakazoid minority which is now forcing its insanity on every aspect of Israeli society. Israel today is about half an inch away from being as fanatic and ridiculous a theocracy as Saudi Arabia or Iran.

Digby:

Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and contemplate how an advanced nation can suddenly take this regressive turn:

In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry.

The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough.

Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.

Though shocked that this was happening at a government ceremony, Dr. Maayan bit her tongue. But others have not, and her story is entering the pantheon of secular anger building as a battle rages in Israel for control of the public space between the strictly religious and everyone else.

At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected — the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis.

And it is centered on women.

“Just as secular nationalism and socialism posed challenges to the religious establishment a century ago, today the issue is feminism,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University. “This is an immense ideological and moral challenge that touches at the core of life, and just as it is affecting the Islamic world, it is the main issue that the rabbis are losing sleep over.”

The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards.

Without wading into Israeli politics, let's just say that this is disturbing on any number of levels. But one thing is clear: fundamentalist religious influence always leads to the repression of women.

And there's nothing that says a Western democracy can't go backwards. It's the whole point of conservatism.

SNIP

Perhaps women, racial minorities and other "traditionally" second class citizens can be forgiven for being somewhat appalled at the idea that these people could be empowered even more than they already are. It's really not all that abstract to them.

SNIP

Devolution means regressing to traditional hierarchies. It's something those who were only recently second class citizens understand in their bones.

And of course that's just the way America's Xian freakazoid minority wants it. If the freakazoids can turn back the clock to the Dark Ages in a modern secular democracy like Israel, they can do it here, too.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

2012-01-20T12:00:00.001-05:00

Because the Plutocracy feeds on war, and feeds people to the war, and needs war to survive.

Uploaded by Thespadecaller:

On July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite Pete Seeger and seven others (including playwright Arthur Miller) for contempt, as they failed to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their attempts to investigate alleged subversives and communists. Pete Seeger testified before the HUAC in 1955.
In one of Pete's darkest moments, when his personal freedom, his career, and his safety were in jeopardy, a flash of inspiration ignited this song. The song was stirred by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "And Quie Flows the Don". Around the world the song traveled and in 1962 at a UNICEF concert in Germany, Marlene Dietrich, Academy Award-nominated German-born American actress, first performed the song in French, as "Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs?" Shortly after she sang it in German. The song's impact in Germany just after WWII was shattering. It's universal message, "let there be peace in the world" did not get lost in its translation. To the contrary, the combination of the language, the setting, and the great lyrics has had a profound effect on people all around the world. May it have the same effect today and bring renewed awareness to all that hear it.

The Yankee Bull Connor

2012-01-20T06:00:00.001-05:00

Which state is, right now this minute, doing the most to deny voting rights to African-Americans? It's not Mississippi, or Alabama, or even South Carolina.

It's Michigan.

Rachel Maddow Monday night:

Governor Snyder`s administration is currently considering whether or not to use the remarkable unilateral power that the Republican legislature voted to give him last year to essentially abolish the local government of Michigan`s largest city and replace it with someone he puts in charge who has unilateral authority.

In the year of really ambitious, sometimes radical policy-making in red states that has followed the very, very Republican 2010 nomination, my personal nomination for the single most radical thing implemented by any Republican legislature and governor is what happened in Michigan. It`s Michigan`s expanded emergency financial manager law. It allows Rick Snyder, the state`s Republican governor, to essentially, effectively abolish all local voting rights.

You vote for your city council, you vote for your town mayor, but in Michigan, it does not matter who you vote for, because the results of your local election can be overruled if the Snyder administration says so. The state, the governor, will decide who`s going to run your town, no matter who you vote for. He will put in who he wants.

The Snyder administration has already taken over these cities around the great state of Michigan and now, it is considering the largest city in the state. Now, it`s considering whether to take over Detroit.

As noted a couple months ago by the indispensable Michigan politics source, Ecleto blog, as reported by us thereafter, and as noted by three members of Congress, nine state senators and dozens of state representative, as well as eight Detroit City council members in a letter they wrote to Governor Snyder recently, if Governor Rick Snyder decides that in addition to these cities he`s already taken over, he is also going to overrule local decision making, local elections, and take over Detroit,
and Inkster, which are two cities now being reviewed, approximately 50 percent of all African American citizens in the state would then be living under the authority of unelected managers.

Think about that for a second.

Congratulations, Michigan. You elected a Republican legislature and Republican governor last time around. And so now, if you are black and you live in the state of Michigan, you may soon have only a 50-50 chance of your vote counting in Michigan toward who represents you in your city or town.

I like this law. Or rather, I like the idea of President Obama using a national version of this law to strip Rick Scott of all power and give the Emergency Manager of Florida job to Alan Grayson.

Think about it. Arizona in the care of Raul Grijalva. Texas under Jim Hightower. Crit Luallen here in Kentucky. Emmanuel Cleaver in Missouri. South Carolina run by - oooh, Stephen Colbert!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Transcript here. Scroll about 1/3-1/2 way down the full text page.

My favorite part of the segment was her interview with the Rev. David Bullock, Michigan state director of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, senior pastor at Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church. Much as I hate giving credit to xians for anything, Rev. Bullock explained the voting rights battle in Michigan as clearly, passionately and eloquently as I've ever heard.

Watch the Bullock interview here.

KY Lege Exiles Liberal Senator; Disenfranchises Second-Largest City

2012-01-19T20:00:00.002-05:00

UPDATE, 7 a.m. Jan. 20: Governor Beshear has not yet announced his decision on the bill to exile Kathy Stein and disenfranchise Lexington. Read details and how you can help stop this abomination at Barefoot and Progressive.

You think congressional repugs are vicious thugs and congressional dems are corrupt backstabbers? They are paragons of legislative probity compared to the shitheads of both parties that pass for the "leadership" of the Kentucky General Assembly.

Short version, from the Herald:

Just when we thought the redistricting process couldn’t get any more ridiculous or offensive, the Senate ups and outdoes the House with a plan that would leave the heart of Kentucky’s second-largest city without an elected senator for two years.

Yep, it’s the revenge of Senate President David Williams, who was rejected 3-1 by Lexington voters in his failed bid for governor last year and is now paying them back.

The Republican-controlled Senate State and Local Government Committee has approved a redistricting plan that would move Democratic Sen. Kathy Stein’s District 13, which now includes the University of Kentucky and environs, to Mason and Lewis counties in northeastern Kentucky.

The Lexington district would become Senate District 4, which is now located in western Kentucky, and for the next two years would be represented by Sen. Dorsey Ridley, a Democrat from Henderson.

With all due respect to Ridley, no one in Lexington ever voted for him to represent them. The Senate Republican plan essentially disenfranchises 90,000 residents of Fayette County.

Shrill reaction that puts Markos to shame, from Barefoot and Progressive here, here and here.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "We Have Fed You All a Thousand Years"

2012-01-19T12:00:00.002-05:00

Uploaded by solutioncow:

(written by "An Unknown Proletarian,' Music by Von Liebich)
(First Listed Printing, Industrial Union Bulletin, April 18, 1908)

LYRICS:

We have fed you all for a thousand years
And you hail us still unfed,
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool.
Then if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in full!

There is never a mine blown skyward now
But we're buried alive for you.
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in!

We have fed you all a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share,
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We bought it fair!

Two Years Too Long for Citizens United

2012-01-19T06:00:00.002-05:00

Hard to believe it was just ~~a year~~ two years ago, January 21, 2010, that the Reagan/Bush Supreme Court let corporations openly buy American elections.

KeninNY at Down with Tyranny:

It seems overwhelmingly likely to me that anyone who's found his/her way to DWT registers proper horror upon hearing the words "Citizens United." The timing of the dreadful Supreme Court decision that has bid fair to make American elections straight purchase operations by them what's got the most to spend couldn't have been much worse, but then probably wasn't coincidental. The groundwork had been laid; the necessary justices were in place; and the rich were damned tired of having to struggle so mightily to make their clout felt electorally.

At the time, I remember some super-smart progressives pooh-poohing the panic that most of us were feeling, insisting that no, it was hardly going to change things at all. And I suppose if what you mean is that the Money People would have found other ways to make their dollars count, there's a point in there somewhere. Not an important point, but a point.

Of course the people who would have to take action to in some fashion overturn Citizens United -- legislatively, for example -- tend to be people who can see its potential personal benefits to them. Still, with the anniversary of the ruling coming up, a bunch of progressive organizations have banded together (you can see a list on the United for the People webpage, United4thepeople.org.) and will launch a "national week of action" on January 16.

As the webpage says: SPREAD THE WORD!

Protest Citizens United on Its January Anniversary

STATEMENT OF COMMON PURPOSE

The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC has focused America's attention on the dangerous influence of corporate power in our democracy and the urgency of taking all necessary measures to undo that influence, including amending the Constitution.

Generations of Americans have amended the Constitution over the years to ensure that "We the People" means all the people, not just the privileged few. The Citizens United case, which opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending to influence elections at all levels of government, has brought home the importance of amending the Constitution to ensure that "We the People" does not mean we the corporations.

We believe that America works best when our government is of, by and for the people. Although we have differences in scope and tactics, all of us are united in the understanding that the Court's decision in Citizens United must be remedied by amending the Constitution in order to restore the democratic promise of America.

From the man who's been right about this longer than anybody else:

I know that many of you are deeply concerned about the economy, health care, education, global warming and the environment, Social Security and Medicare, civil liberties, war and peace and the national debt. But here's an issue that's even more important because it encompasses all of these issues -- and much more.

Will the United States survive, in any significant way, as a democracy in which ordinary people can control their future? Or, will "democracy" simply become another commodity owned and controlled by billionaires and corporations in order to serve their own purposes?

Today, as a result of the absurd Citizens United Supreme Court decision, corporations and billionaires can spend unlimited sums of money, without disclosure, in political campaigns. And that is exactly what they're doing.

Karl Rove's American Crossroads has already pledged to spend at least $240 million in the elections of 2012. The extreme right-wing billionaire Koch brothers may be spending even more. And then there is Wall Street, the oil and coal corporations, the insurance and drug companies and the military-industrial-complex with all of their money.

The goal of the top 1 percent is simple. They will spend as much as it takes to elect candidates who support a right-wing corporate agenda. They will spend as much as it takes to defeat those candidates who are fighting for working families. And that's about it!

Please join me, Daily Kos and Democracy for America in pledging to fight to overturn Citizens United.

Our strategy must be equally simple. Short-term, we must do everything we can to support those progressive candidates in 2012 who are fighting for the middle class and the values we believe in. Long-term, we must overturn Citizens United and fight for real campaign finance reform which limits the power of big money.

Last month, I introduced a constitutional amendment, the Saving American Democracy bill, to overturn Citizens United. This amendment states that:

Corporations do not have the same constitutional rights as human beings.
The people have the right to regulate corporations.
Corporations are prohibited from making campaign contributions.
Congress and states shall have the power to set reasonable limits on election spending.

As we approach the second anniversary of the Citizens United decision, please join me, Daily Kos and Democracy for America in pledging to fight to overturn Citizens United and to counter the unlimited resources of the right-wing in 2012.

Your pledge of support today will show the Big Money interests that while they may have unlimited sums of money, we have something more important -- the power of the people. Your support could mean volunteering on local, state or national elections, organizing against Citizens United, donating to progressive candidates or running for office yourself.

Please pledge your support today. Please stand with us so that, together, we can transform American politics.

Sincerely,

-Bernie

Sen. Bernie Sanders
U.S. Senator from Vermont

It's growing:

The Communications Workers of America have joined the fight against the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, which allows unlimited corporate donations in electoral campaigns. CWA joins 60 other organizations in the battle to get corporate money out of U.S. elections. The groups, under the United For the People banner, are calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling.

If Citizens United prevails, this nation will truly become a nation of the moneyed, by the moneyed and for the moneyed. Forever.

There will be demonstrations in more than 100 cities to mourn the decision. If you're in Lexington, KY, on Friday, join protesters at the federal courthouse at Limestone and Barr from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

On STRIKE!

2012-01-18T06:17:00.000-05:00

If the HTML code works properly, this blog will be blacked out from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. today, Wednesday, Jan. 18.

The purpose of the Internet-wide strike, led by no less an Internet Essential than Wikipedia itself, is to show the world what the Internet will look like if the fascist censorship bills - PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House - pass into law.

While SOPA has been temporarily derailed, the even-worse PIPA is still alive in the Senate.

While the disappearance of Blue in the Bluegrass would not cause even the tiniest ripple in the space-time continuum, PIPA and SOPA would eliminate vast swaths of the Internet. Look for your favorite sites today, see which is showing solidarity by striking, and ponder life without any of them.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Where the Fraser River Flows"

2012-01-16T12:00:00.001-05:00

One of Joe Hill's earliest songs, about an IWW railroad workers strike in British Columbia in 1912.

Uploaded by Idonegotold:

Lyrics here.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Union Thru and Thru"

2012-01-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

Uploaded by CMEUNION:

A gutsy, rousing union song!!!! 'Union Thru and Thru' by the Eureka's- Rob Mitchell and Ken Walther (c) Walther Music- downloads available in the links section at www.cfmeuwa.com or email rmitchell@cfmeuwa.com

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "1913 Massacre"

2012-01-15T12:00:00.002-05:00

Uploaded by an3yt.

"The Italian Hall disaster (sometimes referred to as the 1913 massacre) is a tragedy which occurred on December 24, 1913 in Calumet, Michigan. Seventy-three men, women, and children, mostly striking mine workers and their families, were crushed to death when someone falsely yelled "fire" at a crowded Christmas party."

When You Let the Freakazoids Control the Conversation

2012-01-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

Even non-repug companies think it's OK to let women die. American military women serving overseas.

Tina Dupuy at Crooks and Liars:

For those of you not familiar Women on Waves, it's an international organization based in the Netherlands that helps women in countries where abortion is criminalized. They literally have a ship and dock in countries like Chile where women get unsafe abortions and die on a regular basis.

I first interviewed them about a story I was working on last year. They said they have tons of calls from the U.S. for help - notably many from servicewomen serving overseas who cannot access abortion services at military hospitals. And not at all if they're serving in a country where it's illegal. Yes, under the law we will let women take a bullet - arm them - but won't allow them to control their own reproduction while overseas ... even if they're raped.

The other issue I learned from talking to these women's health advocates is that when you Google "RU486" or "abortion pill" you will not get the actual medication. You will pay for fake pills. Sometimes more than $80 or more for pills that are not as advertized. Women on Waves counters this by providing the real information on how to safely end a pregnancy with medication that is widely available for other medical reasons. This is the image (posted above) that was taken down by Facebook.

Women on Waves sent out a press release:

Date: 30-12-2011
For Immediate release:
Facebook censors safe abortion information

Today, Facebook removed the profile picture of Rebecca Gomperts, which was text with information about how women can do abortions safely by themselves. Dr Gomperts is a well-known abortion rights activist and the Director of Women on Waves. Women on Waves is a charitable organization focused on women's health and human rights. Its mission is to protect maternal health by preventing unsafe abortions. Women on Waves sails a ship to countries where abortion is illegal. On board the ship the medical staff provides sexual education and healthcare services. With the ship, early medical abortions (up to 6 1/2 weeks of pregnancy) can be provided safely, professionally and legally. Applicability of national penal legislation, and thus also of abortion law, extends only to territorial waters; outside that 12-mile radius it is thus Dutch law that applies on board a ship under the Dutch flag, which means that all our activities are legal. Women on Waves' efforts serve to draw much-needed public attention to the consequences of unwanted pregnancy and unsafe, illegal abortion. To date, the ship has sailed to Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Women on Waves also supported the launch of safe abortion hotlines in South America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. (for more information see www.womenonwaves.org). In 2005 it founded Women on Web, a telemedicine abortion service that provides medical abortions to women in countries where there is no access to safe abortion (www.womenonweb.org)

By removing the profile picture, Facebook is in gross violation of Article 19 of the Universal declaration of Human rights. Facebook has a social responsibility to guarantee human rights Dr. Gomperts reposted the screenshot of the Facebook censorship message with the picture. She calls upon all Facebook users that support abortion rights to repost the message on their page.

We contacted Facebook for a response. Andrew Noyes Manager, Public Policy Communications at Facebook got back to us: "You can note that, according to a spokesman, Facebook reached out to Dr. Gomperts to explain that the photo that was removed from the profile was not in violation of our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and appears to have been removed in error. We apologize for the removal of this content and the subsequent warning that Dr. Gomperts received."

I emailed with Dr. Gomperts Monday morning. I asked her if the page was back up. She responded, "Yes, after being blocked for two days, I could access my account again today and i received a email from Facebook with their apologies but I believe this is because of the inquiry of journalists and reposting of the image by others during the past days. Thank you very much for your inquiry."

In either case - the press release worked.

Every day, in neighborhoods all over this country, women die because pro-choice, pro-woman, pro-abortion voices are silenced and smothered and ignored.

Stand Up and Speak Out for Choice. Stand Up and Speak Out for Women. Stand Up and Speak Out for Abortion.

Safe. Free. Easy. Accessible. Abortion. Everywhere.

How to Kill Medicare Even Faster Than Repugs Would

2012-01-14T21:00:00.001-05:00

Raise the eligibility age, that's how.

Health insurance economics is simple: If you want to make or save money, you want more young, healthy people in your group of customers than old, sick people.

The young, healthy people pay lower premiums, but you still make/save money on them because they use so little medical care and therefore cost much less than they pay in premiums.

The old, sick people pay higher premiums, but they use so much medical care that they cost more than they pay in premiums, and you will lose money on them unless you have enough paying young people to make up the difference.

So, here you have Medicare, which is 100 percent old people and about 90 percent sick people, and as you might guess it's not saving as much money as it should if it had a bunch of young, healthy people in it.

How do you get younger, healthier people into Medicare? Lower the age of eligibility from 65 to, say, 60. Or maybe even 50. Then you get people who aren't as young and healthy as 30-year-olds, but they're younger and healthier than 80-year-olds, and their premium-to-cost ratio is still in Medicare's favor.

Simple, right?

Not if you're blinded by Austerity Hysteria.

Digby:

Just keep working old man

Brad DeLong writes about this dangerous CBO report that indicates that raising the Medicare eligibility age would save money and wouldn't be a big problem for 65 year olds because they could just stay employed or buy their own insurance:

[T]he major problem is with how CBO presents its estimates. It writes:

Director's Blog: Raising the Ages of Eligibility for Medicare and Social Security: If the eligibility age was raised above 65, fewer people would be eligible for Medicare, and outlays for the program would decline relative to those projected under current law. CBO expects that most people affected by the change would obtain health insurance from other sources, primarily employers or other government programs, although some would have no health insurance. Federal spending on those other programs would increase, partially offsetting the Medicare savings. Many of the people who would otherwise have enrolled in Medicare would face higher premiums for health insurance, higher out-of-pocket costs for health care, or both.

CBO estimates that raising the MEA [to 67] would reduce Medicare outlays, net of premiums and other offsetting receipts, by $148 billion from 2012 through 2021…

What is should have written, IMHO:

CBO estimates that raising the MEA [to 67] would reduce net Medicare outlays by $148 billion from 2012 through 2021. It would also reduce tax revenue collections over that time frame by $80 billion as corporations upped their tax-shielded spending on employee health benefits. 65 and 66-year olds and the businesses that employ them would spend an extra $220 billion purchasing Medicare-level health insurance. And 1/4 of 65 and 66-year olds would find themselves uninsured.

Raising the MEA: a really bad idea.

I have a sinking feeling that this one's going to happen. It's backed by all the Republicans and the centrist Democrats and the White house has been eager to sign on. It doesn't have the dedicated funding stream that Social Security has and Democrats won't fight it because the ACA will supposedly make up the difference. Except, of course, it won't, not really. For people over a certain age, the ACA helps mitigate the highest insurances costs, but it's still going to be very, very expensive for people of average to below average means. I have a suspicion that a very large number of the people who fail to buy insurance under the ACA will be in this older age group, and they are among the sickest. Paying the penalty will be far less than their insurance would cost and they'll just try to hang on for two more years until they can get into Medicare --- as they do now. Except they'll be two years older. And sicker.

Here's more from the Incidental Economist on why this is such a destructive, poor idea:

Why it costs two times more to raise the Medicare age from 65 to 67
Why it is bad for health, regressive, and requires the ACA to be fully in effect
Why the liberal case for it is weak
What it means for certain, large unions
Why the federal savings are actually very small
A podcast on this topic

Medicare's overhead is already just one-fifteenth that of private health insurance - 2 percent compared to 30 percent. The dirty-cheap, highly-efficient "government bureaucracy" of this single-payer program is a feature, not a bug. All it needs is a youthening tweak to the group demographics and it's solid forever.

QOTD

2012-01-14T18:00:00.002-05:00

Kevin Drum, re the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists:

But it's hardly farfetched to think that the U.S. is involved, one way or another. And if we are, it means we're in the business of deliberately targeting Iranian civilians for death, with the goal of frightening their scientists and thus slowing down Iran's nuclear program. There is, needless to say, a word that describes the act of killing civilians as a way of spreading fear and alarm. We all know what it is, don't we?

How Drug War Hysteria May Save the Affordable Care Act

2012-01-14T15:00:00.001-05:00

I just love this. Scalia's freakout over pot may come back to bite him in the ass over the healthcare mandate.

Unfortunately, Scalia is smart enough, corrupt enough and hypocritical enough to pretend his own precedent doesn't exist. Never forget that in Bush v. Gore, he ignored his own claimed federalism, 200-plus years of precedent, and the original, plain-language Constitution to annoint Smirky Dear Leader.

Talking Points Memo:

On first blush, it seems like a no-brainer that Antonin Scalia will vote to overturn the health care reform law’s requirement that Americans buy insurance: the Reagan-appointed justice is a staunch conservative who’s beloved by Republicans; for what possible reason could he deliver such a devastating blow to his own side and boost President Obama?

The answer: judicial precedent. His own. And the Obama administration has noticed.

In its amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Friday, the Justice Department cited no fewer than 10 times the 2005 Gonzalez v. Raich case, in which Scalia (and Justice Anthony Kennedy) broke with the court’s conservative wing to hand down what scholars viewed as one of the broadest declarations of federal power under the Commerce Clause: a 6-3 ruling decreeing that Congress may ban a medical-marijuana patient from growing cannabis for personal use in California where it’s legal.

Raich was bound to come up either way as it’s seen as the most relevant precedent to the Affordable Care Act case, but the Obama administration is deploying it to box in Scalia specifically and conservatives broadly. Five separate times in the brief, the DOJ noted Scalia’s concurrence in the case.

But like the congressional repugs, the conservatives on the Supreme Court are there not to serve the people, the nation or the constitution; they are there to serve the Koch Brothers, the Reich Wing Freakazoids, and the anti-Obama fanatics.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Better World A' Comin'"

2012-01-14T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by MOTARDkamikaze. That's Woody, of course.

Insourcing American Jobs

2012-01-14T09:00:00.003-05:00

President Obama pulls another one out of the Executive Actions to Get Around Congressional Repugs drawer.

Full transcript here.

Foreclosing on the Dream - Literally

2012-01-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

I swear, banks have no public relations sense at all.

From Rebuild the Dream:

We’ve seen banks make some pretty audacious moves, but this one takes the cake.

Just days away from the MLK holiday, BB&T bank is attempting to foreclose on one of the oldest churches in Dr. King’s old neighborhood -- Vine City in Atlanta, Georgia.

The church, Higher Ground Empowerment Center, has been a cornerstone of one of Atlanta’s most historic and under-resourced communities for the past 108 years. After a tornado ripped through the property in 2008, the church was forced to take out a loan to cover the repairs. It has managed to pick itself up, rebuild, and continue servicing the community.
But now BB&T wants to foreclose, ignoring the church's attempts to work with the bank to modify the loan.

This church needs your help, so we've started an emergency petition.

Sign the petition and tell BB&T's CEO Kelly King to stop foreclosure on this historic pillar of the community.

BB&T took $3.1 billion in bailout money from the American people in 2008 and used it to eat up hundreds of smaller banks, acquiring another $26 billion in assets the following year.

Higher Ground Empowerment Center is not asking for a bailout. For four years, they’ve simply been asking BB&T to modify their loan to something more reasonable, based on the property's fair value. But the bank has refused.

Sadly, their situation is just like millions of other homes and properties with underwater mortgages -- banks just seem to lack all manners and decency, and often won't even return phone calls.

In this case, the reason is simple -- the church is sitting on a valuable piece of land and the bank stands to make a huge profit.

Since 2004, Vine City has been undergoing “urban renewal” efforts. Through this process, banks have foreclosed on business owners and residents in the short term, while profiting off of inflated property values in the long run.

If this church is foreclosed, it will have a domino effect on the rest of the community.

Occupy Atlanta has jumped in to support the Higher Ground Empowerment Center and the Vine City community. They've brought valuable attention to this situation, and the bank is showing that they're paying attention. Now is a critical moment to add momentum and show the bank that people across the country are watching. BB&T should be helping, not exploiting, the church and the Vine City community.

Click here to sign the petition and tell BB&T CEO Kelly King to negotiate fairly with the church.

Thank you for taking a stand,

Van, Natalie, Billy, Jim, Ian, Somer and the rest of the Rebuild the Dream team

After you sign, wash the taste of BB&T's abomination out of your mouth with the Top Ten Civil Rights Songs from The Nation.

(Note prominent omissions cited in comments, including We Shall Overcome.)

QOTD

2012-01-13T18:00:00.001-05:00

Steve M. recommending

BooMan on Ron Paul, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Stoller. A brief excerpt:

If you look at Ron Paul's political philosophy in toto, you'll realize that Paul basically opposes every progressive accomplishment since about 1913. I've never heard him oppose female suffrage, but he'd like to roll back just about every other thing the federal government has done since the creation of the Federal Reserve. The only way a progressive can reach the point where their beliefs converge with Ron Paul's is if they've basically given up on this country and on progressivism.

Amen.

Ditto.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: All You Fascists Bound to Lose

2012-01-13T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by UnAmericanBandstand:

A short song from one of Woody's radio broadcasts. (1940's?)

Featured in this performance are:

*Woody of course-guitar and voc.
*the great SONNY TERRY on harmonica, "whooops" and voc.

other musicians most likely featured in this performance:
*Pete Seeger - banjo
*Cisco Houston - guitar voc.
(pictured with Woody at :25)

Take a Critical Stand in Indiana

2012-01-13T06:00:00.001-05:00

Hard as it is for a Kentuckian to admit that hoosiers do anything worthwhile, what's happening right now in the Indiana legislature is huge - even bigger than what happened in Wisconsin last February.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Maybe we should shift our attention to the Hoosier State, where Governor Mitch Daniels and the Republican legislature is trying to eviscerate Indiana’s unions by passing a right to work for poverty wages law.

To be precise, what a “right to work” law does is makes it legal for individuals in unionized workplaces to choose to opt out of the union, not paying any dues. But the union is still legally required to provide these non-members full representation. It’s a leech law, allowing workers to suck the blood of union members. It also weakens unions by forcing them to provide services without the resources of union dues.

The minority Democrats are doing everything they can to stop this atrocious law from passing. Both sides are using the example of Oklahoma, the last state to pass a right to work law, in 2001. Oklahoma business has talked up how much the law has helped them, but the Oklahoma economy has not exactly boomed. What it has done is undermine unions, which is pretty much all the plutocrats care about here. What about workers? Didn’t making Oklahoma “business-friendly” bring in the jobs?

“There is no doubt that the law has resulted in job loss and lower wages,” said Jesse Isbell, who worked for 36 years at the Bridgestone-Firestone tire plant in Oklahoma City.

That plant closed in 2006, and he and 1,400 others lost their jobs, he said, even though proponents had said the legislation was what was needed to keep jobs from leaving the state.

“Those jobs went to Mexico and they’re not coming back.”

He blamed that in part on the “right to work” law, saying it led to hard feelings and bad morale.

“The instance of free-loaders using union resources to fight discharge and company discipline created a hostile work environment,” Isbell said. “It affected productivity, profitability and the quality of the operations at our plant.”

He and Kitti Asberry, another United Auto Workers member who lost her General Motors job when the Oklahoma plant closed there in 2005, said jobs coming in have not replaced those lost, and that the wages and benefits are lower.

Ah.

Will Democrats succeed in beating back this law? I tend to doubt it, though there is significant pressure on some Republicans in this reasonably strong union state to vote against it. Moreover, the lack of national pressure suggests the long-time Republican strategy of waiting out short-term Democratic protests, as in Wisconsin, will work in Indiana. By this I mean that liberals protest every now and again but don’t have the day-to-day organizing structure to fight these fires wherever they flare up. Let liberals focus on Wisconsin and conservatives will shift to Indiana and New Hampshire, leaving Wisconsin for a later date.

For whatever reason, even Democracy Now is coming up short on this issue. Instead of being a strong advocate for Indiana labor, it hosted a debate on the issue, allowing a Republican representative to give the 1% side of the story. Can you imagine a union newspaper of the 1930s giving a capitalist equal play? A civil rights newspaper of the 60s allowing a racist equal time? I mean, I know it’s hard for capitalists to get their message out in 2011 and all…..

Indiana should be the next Wisconsin, yet it has received almost no attention. I know our political expectations are lower in Indiana than Wisconsin, but this is war on the working-class that needs to be fought on every front. Instead, we have another 2 million tweets about whatever Rick Santorum said in some meaningless primary debate.

Later, he adds this:

By chance, I came across this article in the October 22, 1958 edition of the International Woodworker:

The following item is for the attention of those who claim that organized labor is wrong when it says that so-called “right to work” laws are aimed at weakening unions and destroying labor standards.

It concerns a letter from a housewife to the editor of the Indianapolis Star in the “right-to-work” state of Indiana. The letter was written by Mrs. Patricia Bolen of Nashville, Ind., wife of a carpenter. Mrs. Bolen wrote:

“I pooh-poohed when the right-to-work was first called a mankiiller. But it is. The man I love is being killed by it. He is a carpenter, strong, capable, hard-working, able to do three men’s work, which he does. Thereby, he keeps his job, luckier than most carpenters these days.

“He retains his job by doing man-killing work, but the rest of the crew is fired each Friday. A fresh group is brought in on Monday. There is no longer a union steward whose job it used to be to see that the company provided fresh drinking water, toilet facilities, a place to change and keep dry clothes, safety precautions, etc.

“My man comes home each day thirsty, soaking wet and heartsick because eager, hard-working family men on the job are being laid off when they can’t double or triple their output. This is not an isolated case.

“I am a school teacher. I address this to other teachers, office workers, business people, and others who know first hand what the “Handley law” really is–a right-to-work-a-man-to-death law. I plead for its repeal.”

By Handley, Mrs. Bolen referred to Republican Governor Harold Handley, who, after telling labor leaders he would veto a so-called “right-to-work” law if passed, flipflopped and let it become a law.

Today, Indiana workers are again facing a right-to-work-a-man-to-death law. It’s time we paid more attention to this attack upon working people.

Zucotti Re-Occupied! But No Sitting.

2012-01-12T21:00:00.000-05:00

Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake:

The barricades around Zuccotti Park were finally taken down after NYCLU took issue with how the presence of the barricades were in violation of Brookfield Properties’ zoning permit and wrote a letter. The removal led many Occupy Wall Street protesters to return to the park to “reclaim” it. They ordered free pizza to distribute. They brought the People’s Library back out (which bothered the Brookfield guards on duty immensely). They also sat and lied down on benches in the park and anyone who refused to get off the benches was arrested.

Here is a video that shows occupier Joey Boots being approached in the park. (h/t Gothamist ):

Following the arrest, We Are Change’s Luke Rudkowski shot this interview with Boots, who says he heard on the livestream that a cop said if you sit down in the park you’re going to be arrested. So, he got his ass in a cab and went down to Zuccotti to sit in the park.

He has a bad leg from a torn ACL. Like many Americans, he needs to be able to relax and the Brookfield guards did not want to allow that. And that is the political point here, too. This is something all Americans should be able to do and why are guards and officers empowered to keep a private and public space “secure” wasting energy and resources on people sitting or lying down on park benches?

Below is another video of the re-occupation. This one shows people getting arrested for sitting and lying down too. But, the best part comes at the end when you get to hear what a police officer really think of citizen journalists who carry cameras.

Get the fuck out of our way with that piece of shit you’ve got in your hand. You’re a regular fucking pain in the ass.

Regular Fucking Pains in the Ass Unite!

Click here to see the videos.

Guantanamo Bay By the Numbers

2012-01-12T18:00:00.001-05:00

Eli Clifton at Think Progress:

The 10-year anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, offers few opportunities for celebration. The prison has been described as “arguably the most expensive prison on earth” and human rights activists have voiced concerns about detainees’ lack of access to the U.S. court system and a steady stream of reports of abuse and torture. The 10-year history of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp can best be evaluated through the human and economic costs imposed on both the U.S. taxpayers and detainees. Here are some relevant numbers:

10 years since the first 20 detainees arrived at Guantánamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray

1 year, 11 months, 21 days since President Barack Obama’s deadline to close Gitmo

779 detainees incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay since 2002

600 detainees have been released

242 detainees at Gitmo when Obama took office

171 detainees still held at Guantánamo Bay

89 detainees still held after being cleared for release

92 percent of prisoners were never al Qaeda fighters according to the U.S. government

86 percent of detainees were turned over after payment of a bounty

13 years old, the age of the youngest detainee

89 years old, the age of the oldest detainee

8 detainee deaths since 2002

6 detainee deaths by suicide

3 alleged detainee homicides from “dry boarding”

$139 million per year to keep the Guantánamo Bay prison open

$800,000 per year to house each detainee

6 detainees convicted by military commissions

6 detainees currently charged by military commission prosecutor

0 detainees released in the past year

Click here for links to the numbers.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Solidarity Forever"

2012-01-12T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by Red Celtic:

Solidarity Forever sung by Pete Seeger & The Weavers, with old photographs of the labor movement in US History.This is a tribute to all the workers who sacrificed to make a better world for their children and grand children.

Sixteen Tons

2012-01-12T06:00:00.001-05:00

The really great thing about Mitt Romney is that despite all of his constant, desperate, obvious lying about President Obama, the Democratic Party, the economic crisis, the nature of capitalism, his own history and what he had for breakfast, he just can't hide the truth. The reality of who he is and what he stands for keeps leaking out around the lies.

David Atkins "thereisnospoon" at Hullabaloo:

The key part of what's off-putting about the gaffe isn't the first part about liking to fire people, so much as the second part about "who provide services to me." Liking to fire people is bad enough, but this is the real kicker.

When it comes to basic services like healthcare, almost no one in America sees the relationship that way. Most of us wouldn't speak of "firing" our health insurance company. No matter how much we might detest our insurance company, we probably wouldn't describe the experience of removing ourselves from their rolls an enjoyable one.

But most of all, we don't see the health insurance company as providing us a service. We see ourselves, rather, as indentured supplicants forced to pay exorbitant monthly rates for a basic need that responsible people with means can't get out of paying for if we can help it. We don't see ourselves as in control of the relationship with them. They are in control of us--and no more so than when we get sick and need the insurance most. If the company decides to restrict our coverage or tell us we have a pre-existing condition after all, we're in the position of begging a capricious and heartless corporation to cover costs we assumed we were entitled to based on a contractual obligation. It's precisely when we need insurance most that we're least able to "fire" the insurance company.

The same goes for the rent/mortgage, for the utilities, for the car, for the cell phone bill, for nearly everything. Most of these things are necessary commodities for most Americans. Many are socially expected, even if not technically necessary. They all have (usually far overpriced) unavoidable monthly charges and premiums that fall on overworked and underpaid Americans every month like a load of bricks. We see many of them increase by at least 5-20% year over year even as our wages stay flat. All we can do is struggle to keep up, trying to find the least bad service for the lowest price we can afford, but knowing we're getting gouged every step of the way.

Romney talks about paying for health insurance as if it were the same as getting a pedicure, hiring an escort or getting the fancy wax at a car wash. It's a luxury service being provided to him, and he doesn't like it, he can take his business elsewhere. Romney's is the language of a man who has never wanted for anything, never worried about where his next paycheck would come from, never worried about going bankrupt if he got sick.

It is the language of an entitled empowerment utterly alien to the experience of most Americans, who feel victimized and bled dry without recourse by these rentier corporations. Romney sees himself as in charge of the relationship between himself and these entities. Most Americans don't. That's why the statement rankles and feels so off-putting to us. The mention of enjoying the act of "firing" them is just icing on the cake.

Uploaded by BIRDIE29. This is the original, nine years before Tennessee Ernie Ford made it famous.

Still Tasing, After All These Deaths

2012-01-11T20:00:00.001-05:00

Every county in Kentucky will elect a sheriff this year. Do you know what your local sheriff's policy on tasing is? Your local police department's? How they train their officers and deputies to deal with people who are not suspected of any crime, are not being violent, but just piss the cop off? With people who are mentally ill or have a physical disability that prevents them from obeying orders instantly? What the are rules for using a taser?

Now is the time to ask, when they are running for election.

Digby:

Just another New year's Day in America:

The traffic stop began peacefully three hours into New Year's Day 2010, with the woman driving the SUV telling the officer that she hadn't been drinking and her husband merrily exclaiming he was the source of the alcohol smell.

But the situation soured when Steven Kotlinski, 55, stepped out to watch his wife's sobriety test, provoking the Mundelein officers to order him into the SUV. He reluctantly obeyed, but one officer said Kotlinski had obstructed his efforts. He ordered him back out, then tried to pull him out.

Next came the electric crackle of a Taser, a sound heard far more often in Chicago and many suburbs than it was just a few years ago.

A Tribune analysis shows Taser use has jumped fivefold in the city since 2008 and suburban agencies that were surveyed were on pace to double their use, as departments equipped more officers with the devices. Chicago police were deploying Tasers at a rate of more than twice a day in 2011.

And oversight has not kept pace with the explosion in use. Departments are on their own in developing policies on when and how electroshock devices should be deployed, with no state regulation.

In Kotlinski's case, the engineer at Abbott Laboratories was removed from his SUV and pinned in the snow. He lost control of his body as an "intense burning sensation" accompanied the surreal feeling that he was floating over the ground, he said. He roared about his heart condition, then begged in a faint wheeze for someone to call 911.

"Pain. I've never felt that way in my life," Kotlinski said.

Sadly, most people that sort of thing happens to assume it's just the way things are --- that in America it's perfectly normal for police to shoot you with electricity if they feel you aren't cooperating regardless of whether you are suspected of a crime or posing a danger. That's just the way it is.

And it's becoming more and more common:

Like almost all states, Illinois does not track the weapons' use by local police, and departments have been left to monitor and govern electroshock devices with a patchwork of policies. In Chicago, the leap in the number of police carrying Tasers coincided with the scaling back of post-shock investigations by the Independent Police Review Authority.

In 2009, officers logged 197 incidents. A year later, after hundreds more weapons were passed out, Chicago police reported 871 incidents. As of fall, the department was on pace for 857 uses in 2011, which works out to 2.3 per day.

The growth in the weapons' use should not come as a surprise, given their rise in popularity.

Several companies make electroshock weapons, which override the target's central nervous system by firing wire-tethered probes that deliver electrical jolts. Arizona-based Taser International makes the most popular models. About 576,000 of the devices are used by more than 16,500 law enforcement and military organizations, nearly all in the United States, said spokesman Steve Tuttle. Only 500 or so agencies used the weapons in 2000, he said.

In Illinois, a little fewer than half of the municipal police agencies that responded to a 2007 survey reported they were using electroshock weapons, according to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, and more departments have since bought the weapons. Several suburban agencies contacted by the Tribune appear to have started using them in 2008 or 2009.

Taser International and police departments have faced lawsuits over safety. And though many fatalities following electroshock weapon use have been attributed to other causes, human rights group Amnesty International has counted 490 deaths after electroshock device use in the U.S. since 1990, said Debra Erenberg, Midwest regional director for the group. In some 50 cases between 2001 and 2008, coroners listed the weapons as a cause or contributing factor in a death.

You got a problem with that?

More to the point, does your local sheriff have a problem with it?

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Take 'em Down"

2012-01-11T12:00:00.001-05:00

Uploaded by ericzum:

This is a short video created by myself using footage I found online of the protests in Madison, Wisconsin. The band Dropkick Murphys dedicated this song to the protesters.

Number 104

2012-01-11T07:00:00.001-05:00

Kentucky's 104th sacrifice to the insatiable maw of Permanent War is a 20-year-old from London, in the eastern mountains. He got married in October.

From the Herald:

Pfc. Dustin P. Napier, 20, died in an exchange of small-arms fire in the city of Qalat, in Afghanistan's Zabul province, according to a release the Army issued Tuesday.

Family members said Napier had wanted to be a soldier since he was a child, said retired Air Force Col. Mark Jones, commander of the Air Force ROTC program at South Laurel High School.

"He was living his dream," Jones said Tuesday.

Napier's father, Darrell Napier, said he served five years in the military. Both his sons, Darrell Jr. and Dustin, followed him into the service.

Napier, who wore his camouflage uniform and boots to school nearly every day, was the cadet commander at South Laurel his senior year, in 2009-10, and was the most-decorated cadet, Jones said.

SNIP

Darrell Napier said an Army official told him his son had been shot in the head. Dustin Napier was born and died in an Army hospital, his father said.

Kentucky's 103rd Iraq/Afghanistan casualty, Marine Lance Corporal Timothy "Matt" Jackson, was from Corbin, next door to London.

Public Integrity

2012-01-11T06:00:00.001-05:00

This is what it looks like.

From Pam's House Blend at Firedoglake:

This thunderous letter of support for equality was sent to PHB and BlueNC by Sherre Toler, who, until last week was the director of elections for Harnett County in my state (North Carolina). Toler would rather leave her job than be a party to facilitating a ballot initiative this May that would allow discrimination under the North Carolina Constitution. Notably, she observes that “the Majority” would have voted to keep interracial marriage illegal. The cultural — and shifting — norm should not guide which human beings have civil rights and which should not. My emphasis below.

On January 3, 2012 I resigned my position as Director of Elections for Harnett County, NC. I am extremely proud of the progress and accomplishments made to the voting procedures and polling places in Harnett County over the last eleven and a half years. I am especially proud that the Board of Election’s Office has always been operated in a fair, efficient and non-partisan manner during my tenure.

Unfortunately, recent actions of the North Carolina General Assembly made it impossible for me to continue as Director of Elections as speaking publicly about candidates or issues appearing on the ballot is prohibited. In September, the legislature passed a bill requiring a referendum be placed on the May, 2012 primary ballot defining marriage as a “union between a man and a woman”. I cannot and will not be a party to such actions.

If “marriage” were simply a religious institution, this would not be an issue. Different faiths are free to impose whatever moral restrictions they choose on their congregations and they in turn are free to accept or reject those restrictions. From a psychological and emotional perspective, marriage provides the individuals an opportunity to demonstrate their love for each other by committing themselves to this “special” relationship. In addition, marriage provides the participants in the relationship with a myriad of legal rights and special status, including inheritance and property rights as well as insurance and tax benefits. Marriage provides over 1000 legal rights and protections. The so-called “Defense of Marriage” Act seeks to ensure that anyone wishing to marry their partner of the same gender will be DENIED those legal rights. The broad language of the referendum could also impact private contracts between individuals, powers of attorney, and domestic partnerships, including heterosexual ones.

Slavery, discrimination and segregation represent a tremendous blight upon the great history of this country. Not so long ago, “marriage” between those of different races, particularly black and white, was prohibited by law and this ban was supported by the “Majority”. In 2011, Public Policy Polling conducted a poll of Republican voters in Mississippi and a number of them (46%) believe that not only in their opinion is interracial marriage wrong but that it should be ILLEGAL.

Only 40% indicated they believe it should be legal. There can be little doubt that if interracial marriage were put to a majority vote, some jurisdictions would outlaw those marriages as well. It is important to a free society that civil rights not be subject to a popular vote!

As a result, I am opening Lighthouse Strategies and Consulting, LLC, a political consulting business. I plan to work tirelessly over the coming months to educate North Carolina citizens on the impact of this amendment and to defeat the effort to write discrimination into the North Carolina Constitution. I will also be working to help elect progressive candidates to local, county, state and federal offices so that these types of actions by legislatures around the country will not be repeated.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I simply could not continue in the position of Director of Elections and remain silent on this important issue.

Sherre Toler

Read the rest, including an inspiring interview with Ms. Toler.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Which Side Are You On?"

2012-01-10T12:00:00.001-05:00

In the depths of the Reagan Dark Ages, I was fortunate to hear Pete Seeger live in concert. The place was full of genuine hippies, who were then still in their prime. I can still feel the socio-political despair lift from the crowd as Seeger began to sing, and disappear entirely as the crowd sang along, for joy, for memory and for hope.

Uploaded by Thespadecaller:

In the mountains of Kentucky in 1931, the coal miners of Harlan County went on strike. Officers hired by the mining company roamed the countryside hunting for the union leaders. The independent coal miners fought back gallantly against the hired company deputies and blood was spilled on both sides. "Which Side Are You On," was written by Florence Reece, the wife of Sam Reece, a union leader who had escaped into the Kentucky mountains for safety. Class warfare continues in the United States and in most nations throughout the world. Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell of the Almanac Singers made this song famous in 1941.

Polishing the Thatcher Turd

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

The repugs aren't satisfied with turning Ronnie Raygun into a saint; they've got to whitewash Malignant Maggie, too.

I was in Ireland during the Thatcher years, and I saw the desperation in Ulster, the concertina wire and British armored personnel carriers topped with machine gun nests in Belfast, the graffiti "Remember Bobby Sands" and "Save the Maze Prisoners." The Iron Cunt was a fucking catastrophe, and the damage she caused lives on beyond Britain.

Laura Flanders on the movie that in true repug fashion turns history on its head:

Thatcher didn’t actually evacuate Liverpool in the aftermath of the 1981 inner-city riots. She led something more insidious. With her professionally crafted “grocer’s daughter” image, Thatcher gave class-conscious Britons permission to dismiss real human difficulties with a blow-dried bourgeois smirk: Unemployed? Get on yer bike! Said her administration. Got a problem? You’re the problem! In Maggie’s world, deprivation is your own damn fault.

Nor did Thatcher give people permission only to look away. Under Thatcher and egged on by her, those who could leave troubled towns and troubled people did, and so did government. We’d “mind the gap” (between the train and the platform) on the London Underground, but we came not to mind the gap between the rich and the rest, the north and the south; the possibilities people had if they needed things to be public and the possibilities they had if they could pay for the private stuff—the private healthcare, the private school, the private house. Today, in a new time of budget wars, The Iron Lady’s depiction of draconian cuts as feminist guts is chilling. What Thatcher called “harsh medicine” meant one thing for the poor and another for the very powerful then, and it still does. In both instances, there is hell to pay in social fabric.

I don’t remember if Lloyd’s Lady quotes the real lady’s most famous phrase: “There is No Alternative.” Certainly TINA deserves star billing. Thatcher’s quip about globalized capitalism has defined our epoch. People can debate the successes and failures of “the Thatcher era” all they like. One thing’s for certain: we don’t need a new one, because the old one’s still here. The consequences of the politicies Thatcher pioneered and made respectable—deregulation, privatization and globalization—can be measured in public costs and private profits on both sides of the Atlantic. More damning, even, is the enduring cultural habit of denial (looking away) and the political practice of silence—shutting the problem people up.

Grow the gap between government and the governed and you get what we have: a burnt-out world driven by the super-super-rich where some are stealing others blind and billions are alienated or angry, sure that government has nothing to offer but a bash on the head.

PA Teachers Endanger All Workers By Working for Free

2012-01-09T20:00:00.000-05:00

This is dead wrong and extremely dangerous:

The Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania suffered a serious setback when Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in education funds from the state budget. The cuts landed hardest on poorer districts, and Chester Upland, which predominantly serves African-American children and relies on state aid for nearly 70 percent of its funding, expects to fall short this school year by $19 million.

Faced with such a shortage of funds, the school district informed its staff that it will not be able to pay their salaries come Wednesday. So the teachers decided to work for free. As one teacher put it, students “need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job”:

At a union meeting at Chester High School on Tuesday night, the employees passed a resolution saying they would stay on “as long as we are individually able.”

Columbus Elementary School math and literacy teacher Sara Ferguson, who has taught in Chester Upland for 21 years, said after the meeting, “It’s alarming. It’s disturbing. But we are adults; we will make a way. The students don’t have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job.”

The school board and the unions separately begged Corbett to provide financial aid for the district, but Corbett turned each request down. Pennsylvania’s Education Secretary Ron Tomalis told the board that it “had failed to properly manage its finances and would not get any additional funds.” Chester Upland was forced to lay off “40 percent of its professional staff and about half of its unionized support staff before school began last fall.” That leaves 200 professionals and 65 support staff to manage a school with class sizes of over 40 students.

Chester Upland is not the only district desperately trying to stay afloat. Corbett’s cuts forced one school district to enforce wage freezes and cut extracurricular activities and another turned to actually using sheep instead of lawnmowers to cut grass at two of its schools. As ThinkProgress’s Travis Waldron pointed out, Corbett could relieve school districts if he let special interest groups like tobacco and the oil and gas industry go without their tax breaks. But he seems to prefer allowing teachers to go without pay.

Do I really have to explain that this is exactly what the repugs and one-percenters want?

This is what scabs do: give bosses an opening to slash wages and benefits down to nothing, because there are always desperate - or desperately naive - people willing to accept serfdom.

Nationwide, austerity hysterics are eliminating public-sector jobs by the tens of thousands every month.

David Dayen @Firedoglake:

While looking for something else, I found this chart from Calculated Risk:

It irks me to hear Democratic officials hail “private sector jobs numbers” or the “rebound in the private sector,” as if there are somehow two economies out there, and the amount of jobs up or down in the one where governments happen to sign the paychecks somehow has no bearing on the other. When cops and firefighters and teachers and nurses lose their jobs, they lose purchasing power. They lose the ability to hire private contractors or visit private businesses for the purchase of goods and services. Public employees don’t use a different currency or a different set of businesses. You cannot divorce them from the private sector.

And writing the public sector out of the equation like this really obscures the incredible nature of the depression in public sector jobs over the past few years. That shows up clearly in the graph above from Calculated Risk.

Why should the parastic rich pay a dime in taxes for teachers' salaries when obviously the "good" teachers are willing to work for free?

And if teachers work for free, what kind of freeloading commies are those cops and firefighters demanding money in return for their public service? And those fat-assed bureaucrats who make sure the water is fit to drink and the sewers flow freely and the roads are smooth and snow-free - why, they should be paying the one-percenters for the privilege of serving them!

Fuck you, teachers of Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania - you're making everything worse.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: Union Maid

2012-01-09T12:00:00.001-05:00

Joe Hill influenced Woody Guthrie, whose son Arlo maintains the tradition of writing and singing songs of the 99 percent. Here he is with "Union Maid."

Torturing Tourists With Food Products

2012-01-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

I wish this behavior were confined to the libertarian hellhole of Florida the way it used to be confined to libertarian hellholes like Chile, but it's not.

Digby:

No this isn't a story from North Korea or Pinochet's Chile. I swear:

It has been two and half years since 62-year old Nick Christie was tortured and pepper-sprayed to death by police at the Lee County Jail. Although the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, the law enforcement officers who kept him strapped naked to a chair and then pepper sprayed him until he died have not been charged in his death.

On January 20, 2010, the Injury Board’s National News Desk reported that Nick Christie’s wife, Joyce Christie, and her son, were planning to file a federal lawsuit because the police violated her husband’s constitutional rights. The article describes what allegedly happened when Christie was arrested for trespassing:

Christie, 62, was arrested last March after traveling from Ohio to Fort Myers while suffering, what his widow describes as a mental breakdown. Arrested twice for disorderly conduct and trespassing, Nick Christie was pepper sprayed ten times over the course of his 43-hour custody.

Suffering from emphysema, COPD, back and heart problems, the jail staff said his medical files were not available or immediately sought at the time of his arrest. But DiCello says Christie gave his medical history and list of medications to the jail days earlier during his first encounter with law enforcement.

His medication list was found in the back pocket of his pants when Christie’s personal effects were returned to his widow.

Sometime between the time he was arrested on March 27, 2009 around 2:00 p.m., and March 31 at1:23 p.m. when he was pronounced dead, Christie had been sprayed with ten blasts of pepper spray, also known as OC (Oleo-resin Capsicum), which is a derivative of cayenne pepper.

The officers involved in the incident say that Christie was “combative, despite the fact he was restrained in a chair so he allegedly wouldn’t spit at his jailers.” However, other inmates on the cell block tell a different story. They say that there was excessive use of pepper spray, his whole head was turning purple, he was gasping for air and was telling the officers that he couldn’t breathe and that he had a heart condition. (source: Injury Board)

According to the medical examiner, the death was a homicide caused by the stress that the restraints and repeated use of pepper spray placed on his heart. However, the State Attorney’s office decided there was no wrongdoing, therefore the officers involved in the incident were never charged in the homicide.

Clearly they tortured the man to death. I just don't see any other way of looking at this.

But we don't have a problem with that in our country, particularly when the victims refuse to "stop resisting" the robotic mantra used by cops all over the country to excuse beating, spraying with chemicals and electrocuting citizens. The mentally ill, foreigners and inebriated have a particularly hard time since they can't immediately absorb their "orders" to immediately comply from the police. Doing it when they are already in custody is unfortunately not all that unprecedented.

Every American had better hope they never get sick, particularly both mentally and physically, and find themselves in the hands of the authorities. There's a chance they won't come out of it alive. I'd prefer they just shoot me down immediately rather than pepper spray me to death. But that's just me.

Kentuckians are Nice, Too

2012-01-08T18:00:00.001-05:00

And just as misunderstood.

OK, all you Kentucky video wizards: here's the standard you have to beat. Get to it.

Keystone XL Pipeline: Even Worse Than You Thought In More Ways Than Ever

2012-01-08T15:00:00.001-05:00

Eliminating jobs, poisoning the Plains, increasing oil prices, super-charging and speeding climate change. What else?

How about bad construction leading to massive oil spills?

Think Progress:

Mike Klink: Let’s be clear — I am an engineer; I am not telling you we shouldn’t build pipelines. We just should not build this one.

By forcing the White House to make a decision on the politically and environmentally-toxic Keystone XL pipeline as part of an agreement reached in December to extend the payroll tax cut, Republicans are being lambasted by environmental groups for undercutting the federal environmental review process.

Now a whistleblower is claiming that the company overseeing the development of the proposed project, TransCanada, also has a track record of undercutting quality at the expense of the environment — further calling into question the decision by Congress to prevent a new federal environmental impact study for Keystone XL.

Mike Klink is a former inspector for Bechtel, one of the major contractors working on TransCanada’s original Keystone pipeline, completed in 2010. Klink says he raised numerous concerns about shoddy materials and poor craftsmanship during construction of the pipeline, which brings tar sands crude from Canada to Midwestern refineries in the U.S. Instead of actually addressing the problems, Klink claims he was fired by Bechtel in retaliation. He filed a complaint with the Department of Labor in March of 2010, and made his story public last fall.

Klink, who says he’s speaking as an engineer and not an environmentalist, has just published a scathing op-ed in the Lincoln Journal Star criticizing Keystone XL, a proposed extension of the current tar sands pipeline network that would bring crude down to refineries in the Gulf Coast, crossing a major aquifer along the way:

As an inspector, my job was to monitor the construction of the first Keystone pipeline. I oversaw construction at the pump stations that have been such a problem on that line, which has already spilled more than a dozen times. I am coming forward because my kids encouraged me to tell the truth about what was done and covered up.

When I last raised concerns about corners being cut, I lost my job — but people along the Keystone XL pathway have a lot more to lose if this project moves forward with the same shoddy work.

A recent environmental impact statement — outsourced by the State Department to another major TransCanada contractor — found that there would be “limited adverse environmental impacts” associated with the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline. Opponents of the pipeline cried foul, saying it was yet another major conflict of interest between the State Department and TransCanada.

Klink’s assertions about poor management of the first Keystone pipeline provide yet more ammunition for critics of the pipeline.

Compared to what worshipping Big Oil is going to cost us, a trillion-dollar Renewable Energy Manhattan Project would be a bargain.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "The Tramp"

2012-01-08T12:00:00.002-05:00

Uploaded by ghostcipher11:

Awesome song by Joe Hill.

Okay, this one isn't actually THAT bad considering I found it today and this is literally the second time I've played it. I was just so excited to put it up, I couldn't wait.

Lyrics here.

In the Spirit of Gatewood

2012-01-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Gatewood Galbraith would, of course, have been a terrible governor. He would have united legislators of both parties in vehement opposition to everything he wanted or tried. He would have vetoed everything they sent him as being wasteful or insufficient, and they would have refused to even consider any legislation he proposed.

But we would have had this: a passionate orator unafraid to use the bully pulpit to rally the people for massive changes in state government.

Gatewood would have given Occupy a run for its money.

Tom Eblen at the Herald:

Gatewood Galbraith, one of Kentucky's most colorful politicians, died Wednesday, just hours before Gov. Steve Beshear delivered his fifth State of the Commonwealth Address.

Many people didn't take Galbraith or his politics very seriously, but they liked him anyway. He was a genuinely nice guy who could poke fun at opponents without leaving scars. Most of all, Kentuckians admired his willingness to point out obvious truths despite the political cost.

As I watched Beshear speak, I could not imagine Galbraith standing there before the General Assembly. There were good reasons he lost five races for governor.

Beshear's speech wasn't bad. He brought up some tough issues, and he avoided the "get off our backs" nonsense from last year that made him look like a coal-industry puppet.

Having just won re-election, Beshear finally admitted the need for state tax reform. Not that he has proposed any real action before the end of the year, when most legislators stand for re-election. But it was a start. Maybe.

Still, with Galbraith on my mind that day, I longed to hear more honesty, more leadership and more political courage from a governor who will not have to face voters again — and who might want a political legacy beyond "caretaker."

I longed to hear something more like this:

Read the whole thing.

The Terrorists We're Not Fighting

2012-01-08T06:00:00.005-05:00

I rarely say "I wish I had written this." But I wish I had written this:

The Rude Pundit:

This burnt-out part of a building used to be the American Family Planning Clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Because abortions were performed there, it had been the flashpoint for anti-choice nutzoids for decades, including bombings in 1984 and other violence. Pensacola is also where two doctors who performed abortions were gunned down in the 1990s. In the early hours of 2012, a redneck, criminal homeless puke who should have met the L.A. serial killer tossed a Molotov cocktail at the place and burned it down because he didn't like abortions being done safely.

According to an affidavit in the arrest of Bobby Joe Rogers, the cracker arsonist had been spending time with anti-choice protesters who were regularly chanting, singing, holding signs, and occasionally blocking the way outside the clinic. The actual violence had died down since the shootings. Rogers was influenced by them. By groups devoted to ending a Supreme Court-approved liberty, as allowed by the founding document of our nation. Indeed, one could say of these groups, with little argument, that they hate us for our freedom and wish to impose a radical religious doctrine on the nation.

In other words, Bobby Joe Rogers is as much a terrorist as any mythical al-Qaeda sleeper agent. But because he was deluded by radical Christianity instead of radical Islam, he probably won't be treated as such. The groups that cheer on Rogers won't be investigated. Their assets won't be seized. Their members won't be demonized for the things they wrote and spoke that led directly to violence. They will be treated as anomalies, not the mainstream of a virulent, anti-American ideology. We will be told by anti-choice politicians that they don't advocate violence and that we shouldn't think that all anti-choice protesters are like Rogers. We will be expected to believe them.

There is a war, yes, in this country that has nothing to do with the utterly minor threat of Islamic terrorism occurring here. It is a war on women that is waged by state legislatures, with more restrictions on abortion access passed than ever, and it is a war waged by the very random, violent psychopaths that the government is supposed to have been granted wide power to protect us from.

Now, we can argue about whether or not the government should have those powers. But, surely, more women (and men) in this nation have been intimidated by Christian fundamentalists than have ever even thought they were threatened by Muslims. Imagine if it had been a Muslim man who tossed a bottle bomb at, say, an army recruiting office in a strip mall because he opposes American foreign policy. Imagine the wrath that would have been brought down on him.

How is Rogers any different? Oh, that's right. We're supposed to be furious about the larger implications of fantasy Muslims and we're supposed to ignore the very real implications of the very real Christian terrorists.

If you're not reading The Rude Pundit every day, you're missing the best - no joke, no exaggeration - the absolute best writing on the Internet - or off it.

A Government That Works for the 99 Percent

2012-01-07T17:00:00.001-05:00

This is what it looks like.

Major extra points to the Obama administration for this one. Smart, effective policy that is also smart, effective politics.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it?

Steven Benen:

For thousands of American families, this reform will have a tremendous impact.

Obama administration officials announced on Friday that they will propose a fix to a notorious snag in immigration law that will spare hundreds of thousands of American citizens from prolonged separations from immigrant spouses and children.

The change that immigration officials are offering would benefit United States citizens who are married to or have children who are illegal immigrants. It would correct a bureaucratic Catch-22 that those Americans now confront when their spouses or children apply to become legal permanent residents.

Although the tweak that officials of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services are proposing appears small, immigration lawyers and advocates for immigrants say it will make a great difference for countless Americans. Thousands will no longer be separated from loved ones, they said, and the change could encourage Americans to come forward to apply to bring illegal immigrant family members into the legal system.

As the L.A. Times report explained, under the status quo, those in the country illegally are expected to leave to apply for a green card. “Depending on how long they’ve lived in America, once they leave they are barred from returning for up to 10 years. They can claim that their absence would pose a hardship for their spouse or parent and ask the Department of Homeland Security to waive the re-entry restrictions. But to do that, they must first travel to a consular office abroad and begin a process that can take months or even years, experts say.”

What’s more, those waivers are often extremely difficult to get, leading to mass separations of families for several years.

Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer in Atlanta who is a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the NYT, “This will open up a huge door to bring a large number of people into the light. There are hundreds of thousands of people who came to the United States illegally who are married to U.S. citizens who have not taken advantage of the waiver that is currently available. This changes their lives.”

Ideally, this would be part of a larger immigration-reform initiative, but the White House believes — correctly — that such an effort is impossible given Republican extremism and the results of the 2010 midterms.

Obama administration officials are therefore left to use their regulatory powers to take incremental steps.

That isn’t to say this is a small improvement. On the contrary, for those affected, it’s a critical breakthrough.

As for the politics, the White House’s move is likely to win praise from Latino voters — a key 2012 constituency — many of whom are already looking at the Republican alternative with warranted disdain.

Here's hoping the Obama administration has finally discovered the Executive Orders to Get Around Congress drawer and is just beginning to mine its contents.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Casey Jones, the Union Scab"

2012-01-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

Joe Hill wrote this one 100 years ago to remind everyone that scabs get no reward from the bosses.

Uploaded by buckyhalker:

Johnsburg 3: Bucky Halker, "Mandolin Red" Stiernberg, and Pickles Piekarski perform the 100-year old IWW, labor song by Joe Hill entitled "Casey Jones, the Union Scab." Though executed by a firing squad in Utah in 1915, Hill became a legendary labor songwriter and the model for Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and others who followed.

"We’re heading in the right direction. And we’re not going to let up."

2012-01-07T11:00:00.001-05:00

Keep hitting the congressional repugs, Mr. President: there's a long, hard road ahead to rehabilitating this economy.

Full transcript here.

Federal Court to Decide Occupy Louisville's Rights

2012-01-07T08:00:00.001-05:00

Louisville's prosecutor requested the move from circuit to federal court, which suggests the city wants no part of the opprobrium that has fallen on Oakland, New York and other cities for their stormtrooper tactics in evicting Occupiers.

From the Courier:

A request for an injunction that would prevent the city from evicting Occupy Louisville protesters and their tents from Founder’s Square downtown was moved to U.S. District Court in Louisville from Jefferson Circuit Court on Thursday at the behest of the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office.

The move means a hearing scheduled for Circuit Court on Friday will not happen. It is unclear when there will be a hearing federal court.

Bill Patteson, spokesman for Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell, said the case was moved to federal court because protesters claim that it would be an infringement of their free speech if the city does not allow them, and their tents, to stay around the clock in the small park at Fifth Street and Muhammad Ali Blvd.

Since freedom of speech is protected by the U.S. Constitution, “it’s most appropriate to be heard in federal court,” Patteson said.

Occupy Louisville's permit to stay round-the-clock in Founder's Square expired December 31, but the city has made no move to evict them.

Very smart. Let's hope the federal court judge is just as smart.

Could Your Hometown Feed Itself?

2012-01-07T06:00:00.003-05:00

This is so fucking cool.

Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake:

While tooling around on the Internet, I ran across the story of Todmorden, the market town in Yorkshire in the UK that, from a modest guerrilla-gardening start less than four years ago is now well on its way to self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. They’ve set a goal of self-sufficiency by 2018, and they’re already well on their way to that goal.

How do they do it? The ringleaders convinced the city authorities to let them set up community gardens anywhere and everywhere in town — abandoned lots, highway medians, ditches, you name it — and encourage the townsfolk to come and take as much as they wanted. For free. Even in front of the police station:

Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds.

If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.

Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses? Nothing.

Well, that’s not quite correct.

‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.

For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots — and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town — are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they’re in season, they’re yours. Free.

So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor’s surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.

It’s not just veggies and fruits the Tods are raising: They’ve got an egg campaign, other sorts of local livestock, an aquaponic fish-and-veg farm under development, and have inspired several other UK cities and towns to see how much of their own food they can produce.

Kentucky prides itself on broad swaths of green grass beside the highways and in the medians. Not only is this vast public acreage unproductive, it wastes millions of tax dollars in mowing and other maintenance. Why not turn it over to local gardeners to plant in food?

Occupy the medians!

OccuParty Saturday!

2012-01-06T18:30:00.001-05:00

It's going to be warm and sunny, so don't you dare miss it.

Barefoot and Progressive:

Third in the nation and the longest continuous, uninterrupted Wall Street occupation in the country, Occupy Lexington is celebrating 100 Days and you’re invited:

North America’s longest running occupation is holding an open house this Saturday to celebrate its 100th day at the corner of Main and Esplanade in beautiful and historic downtown Lexington, Kentucky. Our camp has prospered at the foot of JP Morgan Chase because of good fortune: we have a mayor who thus far has allowed our presence, a professional police force that recognizes we pose no threat to the public (and that often waves to us when driving by camp on Tuesday mornings near 4:00 AM), and ordinary citizen activists like yourselves who have contributed various types of support.

On our centennial day at JP Morgan Plaza, we invite all you elected officials, neighbors, police, teachers, builders, writers, poets, children and the rest to drop on by our encampment to celebrate this noteworthy community landmark, and to offer ideas on how we can become better area residents. The winter is starting, and we would like our community’s input—political, police, educational, homeless, immigrant, artsy-fartsy, suburban, or any other community—for how our winter camp can more productively run.

Here’s the schedule of events:

12:00: The Speaker’s Corner will begin with a teach-in and continue throughout the day.
12:30: Teach-in on the consensus process with Kate Folsom.
1:00: Teach-in on political theory with Steven Burt.
2:00: Household working group meeting.
3:00: Libertarian Municipalism: Get an update and contribute your thoughts on the community markets that are being developed for Spring/Summer 2012.
4:00: Guerilla Bocce League: Two balls, one game to eleven.
4:30: Pot luck. If you plan to bring food, post on the event’s wall!
5:30: People’s Budget meeting.
6:30: General Assembly.
7:30: March.
8:30: Occu-Party!

Also from Barefoot, a related OccuPetition for you to sign:

A petition from North of Center:

I support Creatives for Common Sense in their quest to get Lexington Mayor Jim Gray to print and hang a banner advertising Lexington’s position as the longest running Wall Street occupation in North America. The banner should be placed alongside the other Lexington accomplishments enshrined in banners on the Commerce Lexington building, which faces the all-important Main Street corridor. Banner should read: #1: Best Cities to hold a prolonged Wall Street Occupation.

Click on over to sign.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: Have You Been to Jail for Justice?

2012-01-06T18:00:00.000-05:00

Uploaded by picstogo:

How Would You Cut the Defense Budget?

2012-01-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

Yesterday President Obama outlined his plan for a "leaner military."

The Obama administration has said it plans to cut $487 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, but the president, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other officials didn't offer details of where reductions would be made other than to say they'd shrink the size of ground forces. The details, they said, would be outlined during next month's budget session.

As bloated as the defense budget is, cutting it significantly yet safely is trickier than it looks. And of course there's a widget for trying it yourself.

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Grover Cleveland and Chris Preble point out the nifty DoD budget cost cutting tool at the NYT.

It’s not terribly hard to get to $450 billion, especially if you cut back on ground forces. I managed to get to $459 without cutting much from naval forces (1 carrier down), from benefits, or even from missile defense. I do kill the new stealth bomber and the bomber leg of the nuclear triad. That’s a pretty modest set of cuts; it’s also not terribly difficult to get to $1 trillion, but you have to start cutting back on benefits, and drop the USMC and USA by roughly 35%. I’m not convinced that some of the options would actually save money; replacing military personnel who perform commercial activities and cutting back on the civilian Pentagon work force, for example, would leave many DoD functions at the mercy of private contractors.

One thing to remember; cutting back on the defense budget, especially personnel costs, is anti-stimulus in the short term. Dropping the Army and Marine Corps by 100000 puts that many people back into the civilian workforce, with all the attendant disruptions that would cause.

Want something new about which to argue with your repug friends and relatives? Play Cut the Defense Budget at home.

The Pyramid of Capitalism

2012-01-05T21:00:00.001-05:00

Yeah, that's you, at the bottom.

From Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Quote of the Day

2012-01-05T18:00:00.001-05:00

Steve M., on Bobo's claim that freakazoid "values" are good for the economy:

Yeah, right -- that's why East Cowflop, Mississippi, with eighty-seven churches per person, is the economic dynamo of the planet, while New York and San Francisco are still struggling to emerge from the Third World.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By - "All Used Up"

2012-01-05T12:00:00.002-05:00

Uploaded by rocinante2011, who kindly includes the lyrics at the link.

IWW Songs to fan the flames of discontent

Farewell to a Genuine Kentucky Original

2012-01-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

All the fun has gone out of Kentucky politics; Gatewood Galbraith has died.

Linda Blackford at the Herald:

Gatewood Galbraith, an iconic Kentucky political figure and perennial candidate who won many hearts but never enough votes, died early Wednesday, just two months after running his fifth campaign for governor. He was 64. Mr. Galbraith died at home in his sleep after developing pneumonia that was complicated by chronic emphysema.

Although widely popular for his wit and unconventional stances, Mr. Galbraith's political life was led outside of Democratic and Republican party machinery, which meant he nearly always trailed in fund-raising totals. In addition to his five unsuccessful runs for governor, Mr. Galbraith also made failed bids for agriculture commissioner, U.S. representative and attorney general.

Between campaigns, Mr. Galbraith worked independently as a criminal defense attorney, and he often quipped that "losing statewide elections doesn't pay worth a damn."

Known universally by his first name, Gatewood was a recognizable figure around Lexington and the state, partly because of his imposing height and signature fedora, and partly because of his outspoken proposals to legalize marijuana and outlaw mountaintop-removal coal mining. For a brief time Wednesday morning, news of his death was one of the top trending topics nationally on Twitter."

He's the most colorful individual I've known in Kentucky politics in my life," said Terry McBrayer, a lawyer, lobbyist and longtime friend of Mr. Galbraith who ate breakfast with him frequently at Hanna's on Lime. "He didn't have a harmful bone in his body. He was a genuinely good person."

Gatewood was always a safety valve for disenchanted Democrats in Kentucky, whose shorthand for disgust with the available candidates - for any office - was "I'm voting for Gatewood."

This year, for the first time, I opposed Gatewood's candidacy, and did so vehemently. Not because he posed any threat to Steve Beshear's re-election, but because Gatewood's principled libertarianism had slid into the same freakazoid swamp in which Ron and Rand Paul slither: Forced Breeding, Even If It Kills Her.

It was a downright shame, because until Gatewood went the Full Freakazoid, he always stood for common sense and the common people. He was the only politician of statewide stature to oppose mountaintop removal mining - a far more unconventional and politically dangerous position than his support for legalizing marijuana.

But for most of his career, Gatewood kept the usual political suspects honest, by calling attention to the bread-and-butter issues they ignored.

You were dead wrong on abortion, Gatewood, but even - maybe especially - we liberals will miss you.

Virginia Third-Graders Get Their Joe Hill On

2012-01-04T21:00:00.001-05:00

There's a stupendously fabulous BEST PART to this, but you don't get it until the very end, so read this whole thing very carefully.

Kirsten Boyd Johnson at Wonkette:

A group of Virginia third graders composed a song about the spiritual emptiness of greed, which they sang for their fellow public school students at an assembly — good on them, right? Except, UH-OH TIMES A HUNDRED, they included the term “99 percent” in the lyrics. Since when are children allowed to use SOCIALIST PROFANITIES in school, Every Conservative Blogger in America now demands to know. Or maybe the real question is, who let these kids pay attention to the world around them like that?

Let’s first enjoy an excerpt from the children’s lyrics, shall we?

Some people have it all
But they still don’t think they have enough
They want more money
A faster ride
They’re not content
Never satisfied
Yes — they’re the 1 percent

I used to be sad, now I’m satisfied
’Cause I really have enough
Though I lost my yacht and plane
Didn’t need that extra stuff
Could have been much worse
You don’t need to be first
’Cause I’ve got my friends
Here by my side
Don’t need it all
I’m so happy to be part of the 99

And now here is one randomly-selected outraged dingbat of many (which you can Google search, if are you a masochist, but we won’t link to them all here) from BigGubermint.com, who is FEEUREEUS with this group of intellectually superior nine-year-olds:

Remember, these are third graders. The simplistic left wing economic nonsense of this ditty boggles the mind. But to an impressionistic third grader, it plants poisonous seeds at odds with long egalitarian American traditions that disdain class hatred. It mocks American traditions of industry, hard work and accomplishment. It teaches the young to distrust and dislike, which of course is a tactic employed by thug cultures and governments throughout history.

(The literate person’s version of the word is impressionable, by the way.)

Can we at least Blame the Teachers? Not really, says the school board, according to a newz report from some local CBS affiliate:

The song was written and performed by third graders on October 21, 2011 at Woodbrook Elementary School during a Kid Pan Alley program.

Kid Pan Alley is an organization that helps kids write and perform their own songs. Their mission is to inspire kids to be creators.

Students write the songs and school officials are standing by the lyrics.

“They don’t censor what the kids write. They don’t shape what the kids write. It all comes out of the kids own mouths and the kids own words,” said Albemarle County School Board Chair, Steve Koleszar.

Oh THERE’S the problem, we spotted it… they’re encouraging creativity. NONE OF THAT NOW.

The kids WROTE THOSE LYRICS THEMSELVES. Give up conservatards; Socialism Has Won.

Analogy of the Day

2012-01-04T18:00:00.001-05:00

From The Nation, on President Obama's Richard Cordray slap at congressional repugs:

But Representative Barney Frank, a longtime proponent of the CFPB, dismissed those comments earlier today. “Republican’s complaints about the President’s decision to make this recess appointment are equivalent to objections leveled by arsonists at people who use the fire door to escape a burning building,” he said in a statement. This is an argument Democrats clearly feel poised to win.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By - "The Rebel Girl"

2012-01-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

Uploaded by Red Celtic:

The begining of this video, is an audio narrative by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, with images of her, as well as a quote of hers about women in the I.W.W. This Narative is commonly used on recordings to introduce the song "The Rebel Girl" in which Joe Hill dedicated to Elezabeth Guley Flynn. The second part, is the song "The Rebel Girl" Writen by Joe Hill, and performed by Hazel Dickens. I have used images of women who were (or are) members of the IWW. Only two were "supporters" and not members of the I.W.W. (Emma Goldman and Charlotte Anita Whitney)

Kentucky Occupations Standing Their Ground

2012-01-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

They haven't been visited by many celebrities, and the police haven't bulldozed or pepper-sprayed them - yet - but Kentucky Occupations in Lexington and Louisville are hunkering down and hanging in.

Laura Ungar at the Courier:

With no sleeping bag and only a thin tent to protect him from the blustery winds, John Masters braved the cold Sunday night and Monday to take a stand against poverty, racism and other social ills through the Occupy Louisville movement.

“My toes about fell off,” said Masters, 29, a political science student at the University of Louisville who slept under several blankets and had to run back to his apartment and get thicker socks.

Masters was one of about 20 Occupy Louisville protesters who stood their ground at Founder’s Square downtown despite the wintry weather, which brought flurries, strong wind gusts and a high temperature of only 34 Monday.

The National Weather service expected temperatures to dip to 19 degrees overnight, with wind chills as low as 8 degrees. And today’s temperatures were only expected to inch up to 26 degrees.

Several protesters said weather is no deterrent. Some were gathering in three tents with heaters, while others remained in unheated tents.

Charles Spray, a 26-year-old construction worker who was recently laid off, stood outside, wearing a coat, gloves and a warm mask that covered his nose and the bottom of his face. He said he has an insulated sleeping bag in his tent.

“The reason why I’m here is corporate greed,” Spray said. “It’s been kind of decent weather until today.”

The city had previously said that all tents must be removed from the park by Monday.

Occupy Louisville had requested a temporary injunction that would prevent the city from evicting the group and seizing its 20 or so tents. But last week, that was rejected as premature by Jefferson Circuit Judge Irv Maze, who denied the request until a full hearing can be held Friday in front of Circuit Judge A.C. McKay Chauvin.

Find, support and join the Occupation in your town here.

Winter at Kentucky State Parks

2012-01-03T18:00:00.007-05:00

UPDATED Jan. 4, Jan. 9, Jan. 18, Jan. 19, Jan. 21, Jan. 23

This year I have neglected to post my occasional lists of activities and events at Kentucky State Parks, which remain - despite severe budget cuts - the finest in the nation.

And winter is perhaps the best season to discover them. Kentucky's State Resort Parks are open and offering discount prices for lodging along with special events.

First Hike at Cumberland Falls "Cumberland Falls State Resort Park is hosting a “First Saturday of the Month Hike” starting Feb. 4. The 10 a.m. trek will be a guided, interpretive hike on the Blue Bend Trail, a 4.5-mile loop. The first 3 miles of trail follow the Cumberland River along a hemlock grove and then ascend the hill leading to a “surprise” at the top. Participants should bring a lunch and drinking water and should dress appropriately for the weather. This event is free. Participants should meet in the Great Room of Dupont Lodge at 10 a.m."

Art Classes at Audubon "The Audubon Adult Art Series offers a great experience for any artist, beginning to advanced. Whether you are starting from scratch or just need a refresher course, don’t miss the grand opportunities in 2012 at the John James Audubon State Park Museum. Exhilarate your creative side by taking any or all of the classes designed just for you."

Painting at Pennyrile "Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park will offer its Landscape Oil Painting Weekend Feb. 24-26. If you've always wanted to learn how to paint, this is the weekend event for you!"

Buffalo Night and Tour of America "If the cold winter weather really makes you hungry, visit the Driftwood Restaurant at Barren River Lake State Resort Park to satisfy your appetite with some comfort food. Travel back in time with a taste of the past during Buffalo Night on Feb. 4. Enjoy a variety of buffalo dishes prepared by the park’s chef. Take a culinary “tour of America” without ever leaving Kentucky. Visit the park on the following dates to let your taste buds experience some of our great American cultures: Miami Cuban cuisine – Feb. 2; New Orleans Creole and Cajun foods – Feb. 16; American Indian foods from across the Plains - March 1; and traditional American foods of Boston - March 22."

Special Meals at Rough River "Rough River Dam State Resort Park is preparing some good food for hungry guests in January and February. The state park near Leitchfield will host some monthly specials for prime rib and seafood lovers, as well as a Mardi Gras buffet on Feb. 21."

Valentine's Day at the Parks "Looking for that perfect place to celebrate Valentine’s Day? Consider a Kentucky State Park. Resort parks are offering special events and packages in February to help celebrate Valentine’s Day. State parks provide a great place for a getaway weekend along with excellent food, entertainment, natural beauty and scenery. Listed (at the link) are the parks with Valentine’s packages and programs, and the park phone number.

Fireside Chats "Fort Boonesborough State Park and the Fort Boonesborough Foundation will be holding a series of “Fireside Chats” with famous characters from Kentucky history each Saturday evening in February. The programs will feature Daniel Boone (played by Scott New) on Feb. 4; a frontier musician portrayed by E.L. Kurtz on Feb. 11; Simon Kenton (played by Mel Hankla) on Feb. 18; and Jenny Wiley (played by Octavia Sexton) on Feb. 25. The Boone and Kenton programs are presentations by the Kentucky Humanities Council."

Bison Dinners "Three Kentucky State Resort Parks are offering special bison meals during the month of January. Natural Bridge, Jenny Wiley and Lake Cumberland will have buffets featuring bison, along with other favorites. The Kentucky State Parks have 17 resorts that include full-service restaurants that serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. For more information about these restaurants and their hours, visit www.parks.ky.gov." Bison or buffalo is delicious - leaner yet tastier than beef. If you haven't had it, you're in for a treat.

Eagle Watch Weekends "Nature lovers should be making plans for a unique Kentucky State Park tradition – Eagle Watch Weekends in January and February 2012. The park system will sponsor this wildlife-watching opportunity as bald eagles gather around the major lakes of western Kentucky looking for food. The park tours allow you to observe and learn about these beautiful birds of prey. For four decades, the Kentucky State Parks have offered Eagle Watch Weekends, a chance to view the eagles from land and water and learn about the national symbol and other wildlife. The tours take place at three resort parks during weekends in January and February, on an excursion yacht and by van. They are led by state park naturalists and Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists."

Songwriting Seminar "Greenbo Lake State Resort Park, in partnership with the Greenup County Extension Arts Council, presents a weekend seminar, “Become A Better Songwriter,” on Jan. 27-28. The seminar will include workshops, jam sessions and a dinner concert on Saturday night, Jan. 28. The special guest for the seminar will be singer-songwriter Rick Ferrell, writer of Tim McGraw’s “Something Like That” and Martina McBride’s “Where Would You Be.” "

Sandhill Crane Weekends "Each year thousands of sandhill cranes make Barren River Lake a stop on their journey back home. Join Barren River Lake State Resort Park during its Nature Watch Weekends to get up close to these beautiful cranes as they migrate through the area. The weekends, Jan. 20-21 and Feb. 17-18, 2012, will consist of educational sessions conducted by Wayne Tamminga, a wildlife biologist with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, on Friday evenings at 7 p.m. CST."

Winter Adventure Weekend "Carter Caves State Resort Park will present a weekend of hiking, canoeing, recreational tree climbing, cave tours, winter survival, rappelling and other adventures with its third annual Winter Adventure Weekend, Jan. 27-29, 2012. Guests will be able to select from a list of trips they want to take – for beginners and advanced winter adventurers alike. All of the trips and events are led by guides."

Rook Tournaments "Two Kentucky State Parks will host Rook tournaments in January. Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park in Dawson Springs will hold its Winter Rook Tournament Jan. 6-7. The round-robin rook tournament begins at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, and runs through Saturday evening. House rules apply. Registration fee is $25 per team and a new deck of rook cards. Register at least one week prior to the event to receive a $5 discount on registration. Prizes will be given to the top three teams. A lodging discount is available for participants – buy one night and get the second night at 50 percent off. For information, contact Rebecca Clark at 1-800-325-1711 or rebeccae.clark@ky.gov. The other Rook tournament will be Jan. 20 at Rough River Dam State Resort Park. The tournament will begin at 6 p.m. The entry fee is $20 per team plus a new deck of Rook cards. A lodging package that includes two nights (double occupancy) and four meals is available for $85 per person plus tax. For more information, call Geoffrey Roberts at 1-800-325-1713."

Kentucky Guild Exhibit "The John James Audubon State Park Museum will present the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen group exhibition, a unique mixed-media showcase of talent highlighting 2-D and 3-D work created by more than 25 guild members. The exhibit, open Jan. 20-March 11, will feature paintings, jewelry, photography, textiles and mixed-media pieces, most of which are for sale. Among the works will be the photography of Henderson photographer Fred Reaves and the glasswork of Henderson native Dan Neil Barnes."

Adventure Events "If you’re looking for some winter adventure, the Kentucky State Parks have numerous outdoor events planned in January and February to get you outdoors and moving. They include elk viewing tours, hikes, looking for eagles at the Land Between the Lakes and watching sandhill cranes as they migrate through Kentucky."

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By - "The Popular Wobby"

2012-01-03T12:00:00.000-05:00

The Grand Industrial Band:

an old iww song by t-bone slim. played on april 30th 2009 live at the Connetion in Cologne-Ehrenfeld (Germany).

The Paul Rules

2012-01-03T06:00:00.000-05:00

Ron Paul's supposed libertarianism is not what you think it is. But the question for Kentuckians is: with with our own Senator Rand Paul in Des Moines working his father's presidential campaign, how much of Ron's un-libertarian true politics does Rand share?

Digby calls it "Devolution for some of the people."

As always, Adele Stan nails the story when it comes to the connections among the far right fringies. In today's piece she draws together the strands that bring Ron Paul and the lunatic Christian Reconstructionists together. I urge you to read the whole thing -- it's quite illuminating. Here's the conclusion:

Ron Paul seeks to shrink the federal government to minimal size not because it intrudes in the lives of individuals, but because it stands in the way of allowing the states and localities to enact laws as they see fit -- even laws that govern people's behavior in their bedrooms.

Here's what Paul published on the Web site of Lew Rockwell -- allegedly one of the authors of his racist, homophobic newsletters -- about the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas that struck down the state's anti-sodomy laws, which prohibited sex between men:

The Court determined that Texas had no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because gay sodomy is somehow protected under the 14th amendment "right to privacy." Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states' rights — rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards. But rather than applying the real Constitution and declining jurisdiction over a properly state matter, the Court decided to apply the imaginary Constitution and impose its vision on the people of Texas.

This plays neatly into the hands of Paul's Christian Reconstructionist friends, who seek the destruction of the federal government for the opportunity to implement "God's law" on earth. Via Warren Throckmorton's invaluable Web site, comes this quote from the Christian Reconstructionist Bojidar Marinov, who writes of why "theonomists," as Reconstructionists define themselves, should root for Ron Paul:

The theonomic solution to the problems of sodomy and abortion can not be achieved at the Federal level because at that level liberals outnumber conservatives 20 to 1. And theonomic Christians are almost non-existent at that level. It is only when the socialist state is dismantled and power returned back to the states and the counties that we will be able to successfully deal with the other social and moral issues. As long as sin is protected at the Federal level, our political job as Christians is to dismantle the Federal bureaucracy and return all power to the local communities. Therefore, the great battle is against the socialist state.

Given that, Ron Paul is the man with the best position to work for that goal on the national level.

I continue to wonder why Ron Paul is considered a libertarian. He's an isolationist Tenther. If that's your philosophy, then fine. But I think an awful lot of libertarians are missing the bait and switch.

Update: There's a lot of talk about how all this libertarian white supremacy was just a political pact with the devil 30 years ago, along the lines of the Southern Strategy. That may be true. But it seems that Ron Paul has bought his own hype, if that's the case.

He could be crusading to end the drug war, for instance, on a moral or philosophical level. But as with his defense of Lawrence as a states' rights issue, he isn't. He crusading for it to be devolved to a state by state issue. That is not the same thing.

Libertarianism has a real position on this and it's universal:

Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and to accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make. No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

Nothing in that says force is ok as long as its used by the state of Texas instead of the FBI. And yet, that's Ron Paul's position on sodomy laws and drug laws and choice and a whole host of issues pertaining to individual liberties and human rights. So all of you who believe that Ron Paul would release the millions incarcerated for the victimless crime of using drugs should realize that he would only release those held in federal prisons. If you're locked up in the State Penitentiary, he sympathizes, but thinks that States have a perfect right to do it.

In case you were wondering, the total federal prison population in 2010 was around 200,000 people while the state and local prison population was about 1.5 million. Paul says there's nothing he can do about the latter and wouldn't dream of telling those states what they should and shouldn't do. That's his principle, not freeing the victims of the drug war.

Since the Civil War, the federal government has been the sole - albeit inconsistent - protector of individual liberties against reactionary state and local governments.

If your goal is to expand individual rights - on sex, on drug use, on religion, on war - your best bet is to reform and strengthen the federal government, rather than eliminate it.

And put not your faith in Pauls.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By - Workingfolk Unite!

2012-01-02T12:00:00.000-05:00

An IWW classic, direct from the Little Red Songbook.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By

2012-01-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Originally titled "Long-Haired Preachers," this is Joe Hill's most famous song. Like many of his songs, it uses the tune of a Salvation Army hymn.

Yes, Joe Hill coined the phrase "pie in the sky." The next time you hear somebody say it, sing this song to them. Or at least the chorus:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die

Atheists: Always Forward

2012-01-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

The accomodationist concern trolls are so cute; they really really want to help us nasty aggressive atheists become more effective by learning to be all nice and accomodationist. They really, really are missing the point.

PZ Myers, with help from Firefly:

Pigliucci complained about the arrogance of some atheists who think all believers are dumb, which is a common complaint, and one you hear from believers as well. But they’re wrong: I don’t think I’m smarter than everyone else.

I just think I’m right.

That’s important. Atheists should have a feeling of unrepentant confidence — we are on the right side of reason, the right side of history, and the right side of the evidence. It’s not because I think I have some intrinsically greater worth than others at all, but I have shed some delusions and freed myself of traditional dogma, and have also worked most of my life to alleviate my ignorance. Other people could benefit from similar enlightenment.

And anyone who’s bothered by my cockiness should have a little more self-awareness: we all think we’re right, or we wouldn’t be doing what we do.

Jayne: Shiny. Let’s be bad guys.

Yeah, the faitheists and believers think I’m a bad guy, for the reasons above (and I’m OK with that). My other sin, though, is that I encourage other atheists to join me, I reinforce my kind of rudeness in a large group of people, and I do that community building stuff. I foster my tribe. We grow stronger and louder and bolder, we are all bad guys together.

Of course, the kind of bad guys we are are the ones encouraged by Carl Sagan: the critics of mysticism and foolishness who do not sit silent when a god-botherer says something stupid. We misbehave because it’s about damn time someone did.

“…if we offer too much silent assent about mysticism and superstition ‐ even when it seems to be doing a little good ‐ we abet a general climate in which skepticism is considered impolite, science tiresome, and rigorous thinking somehow stuffy and inappropriate. Figuring out a prudent balance takes wisdom.”

Carl Sagan

That’s us. No silence. We fight the idea that skepticism might be impolite by being impolite all the time, making the questioning of dogma commonplace and frequent. After all, why should it be considered so awful for a horde of atheists to point out that Christianity or Islam or Judaism or Hinduism are ridiculous? The are ridiculous and are going to get ridiculed.

Here’s something else I think atheists should be:

The Operative: Do you know what your sin is, Mal?
Mal: Aw, hell, I’m a fan of all seven. But right now, I’m gonna have to go with wrath.

I see priests raping children. I see a publicity-seeking nun praising pain and suffering, poverty and sickness. I see politicians pandering for votes by demanding the persecution of gays in the name of Jesus. I see godly men declaring that the role of women is to be silent and subservient…and brood a quiverful of children. I see fanatics strapping explosives to their bodies and killing randomly in the name of their god. I see lobbyists hard at work, trying to dilute science education, and suggesting that we teach the Flintstones as fact in our biology classes. I see a pope in fancy silks and gold-bedecked palace urging people to shun materialism and savor the simple life. I see deluded people opposing work to alleviate climate change because they’re sure God wouldn’t let it happen. I see ordinary people certain that these are the End Times, rejoicing in our imagined imminent apocalypse, and actively working to bring it about.

If you aren’t angry, there’s something wrong with you.

Religion is not some mild happy recreational activity; it is a poison of the brain that taints the vast majority of humanity. It is bad shit. I will not support it in any way, and I resent the complacent schmoes who urge us to close our eyes to it. One the one hand, we’ve got the moderate academic types who like to tell us it’s mostly harmless and we’ll never be able to get rid of it, anyway; to them I’d say that, as people who are supposedly dedicated to learning the truth, you ought to be the first to deny religion because a) it’s wrong, and b) it’s a fallacious way of learning about the world. On the other hand, we’ve got the happy progressives who want us all to do interfaith work, and tell us that the fundies might be bad, but we share common cause with liberal Christians; to them I say that a mind addled by liberal opium is just as faulty as one fired up on conservative crack.

I know that we can never get rid of religion, because there will always be people willing to lie for gain, and there will always be gullible people willing to believe them. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t hate the lie of faith consistently and without apology. There are principles an atheist should stand for, and one should be that god-belief is bullshit.

No compromises on that. Wrath will be my response to those suggesting otherwise.

Zoe: Where are we going, sir?
Mal: The same as always. Forward.

No sitting still. Keep going, keep pushing, keep agitating. We may have to change course now and then, but the engines should always be running, we should always be plowing on ahead.

Moron of the Year

2011-12-31T20:00:00.000-05:00

The competition has been savage all year, but we finally have a winner.

No, not Digby, who merely identifies the species of brain-melting stupidity that we are dealing with:

Evidently, the pro-life movement is now calling for women to die rather than have an abortion or even treat their illnesses if it might result in fetal death. I guess some lives are more valuable than others after all. And it isn't the woman's.

This archaic belief has now entered the national consciousness and is being validated by the Republican candidates for President.

Again, for those of you new to this blog: a fetus is not a person. A fetus is not a baby. A fetus is not a child. A fetus Is. Not. Life.

A fetus is a lump of tissue that is a part of a woman's body. An expendable part. An unnecessary part. A life-threatening part. An easily disposable part, distinct but not different from menstrual blood.

Whereas a woman is a person. A woman is a daughter, a sister, a wife, a lover, a friend. A woman is a life.

A woman has potential, especially a very young woman. That she should sacrifice that potential, that life, in favor of a lump of tissue is an unspeakable abomination.

And here she is, straight from Idaho of course, your 2011 Moron of the Year:

POCATELLO, Idaho — Jenni Lake gave birth to a baby boy the month before her 18th birthday, though she was not destined to become just another teenage mother.

That much, she knew.

While being admitted to the hospital, she pulled her nurse down to her at bed level and whispered into her ear. The nurse would later repeat the girl's words to comfort her family, as their worst fears were realized a day after Jenni's baby was born.

"She told the nurse, `I'm done, I did what I was supposed to. My baby is going to get here safe,'" said Diana Phillips, Jenni's mother.

In photographs, the baby's ruddy cheeks and healthy weight offer a stark contrast to the frail girl who gave birth to him. She holds the newborn tightly, kissing the top of his head. Jenni, at 5 feet and 4 inches tall, weighed only 108 pounds at the full term of her pregnancy.

A day after the Nov. 9 birth, Phillips learned that her daughter's decision to forgo treatment for tumors on her brain and spine so she could carry the baby would have fatal repercussions. The cancer had marked too much territory. Nothing could be done, Phillips said.

It was only 12 days past the birth - half spent in the hospital and the other half at home - before Jenni was gone.

Even so, her family and friends insist her legacy is not one centered in tragedy, but rather in sacrifice.

This month, her family gathered at their ranch style home in Pocatello, where a Christmas tree in the living room was adorned with ornaments picked out just for Jenni, including one in bright lime green, her favorite color. She had passed away in a bedroom down the hall.

Recalling Jenni's infectious laugh and a rebellious streak, her mother held the baby close, nuzzling his head, and said, "I want him to know everything about her, and what she did."

Can you imagine spending your entire childhood and adolescence being expected to pay obeisance every day to the martyrdom of the moron who gave you birth? I fully expect this child to become the next John Wayne Gacy.

The Singing Went Straight to Their Hearts

2011-12-31T15:00:00.000-05:00

My New Year's Resolution for 2012 is to not let a single day pass without doing something, no matter how small, to push back against the plutocracy that has our economy and our nation in a death grip.

This is an old, old fight - older than the nation - and one we've mistakenly thought we'd won more than once. When the Revolution overthrew aristocracy, when the Civil War ended slavery, when TR broke the trusts, and of course when the New Deal and Union Power built the middle class after World War II, we thought the Money Power had been slapped down good and hard.

But it always comes back. More powerful than ever. And overcoming it gets harder every time.

I just started reading the new biography of Joe Hill "The Man Who Never Died." In the introduction, author William M. Adler traces the source of the power of the IWW to rally into one organization workers of both sexes and all races, religions, languages and ethnic backgrounds:

The funeral service on that warm Thanksgiving day in Chicago was testimony to the power of song, a power the IWW had recognized right from its start. "We have been naught," the delegates to the 1905 founding convention sang. "We shall be all."

Wobblies sang in jails, on picket lines, in fields, factories and mines, in train yards and city streets and hobo jungles. The very act of mass singing seemed to embolden and inspire people of varied backgrounds - emigrants from different parts of the world, who spoke different languages, whose skins were of different color - to unite under the IWW flag to the common goal of social and economic justice.

"They had never heard the song before," the novelist B. Traven wrote of a group of strikers, "but with the instinct of the burdened they felt that this was their song, and that it was closely allied to their strike, the first strike of their experience, as a hymn is allied to religion. They didn't know what the IWW was, what a labor organization meant, what class distinctions were. But the singing went straight to their hearts."

The singing went straight to their hearts.

It went to mine. May it go to yours.

I will post one IWW song every day until I can't find any more. Then I'll probably start posting them all over again.

May they inspire us all as they inspired the Wobblies a century ago.

"Make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded"

2011-12-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Mr. President, you could have ensured a relatively smooth budget year through the election by just standing by your original announcement raising the debt ceiling, but instead you caved again to the infantile screams of the repugs. Because this time they'll reward your surrender with cooperation?

It's getting more and more difficult to believe anything you say about the economy.

Full transcript here.

Why Creating Jobs is Not Enough

2011-12-31T06:00:00.000-05:00

Because the banksters and other corporate criminals have used the economic crisis they created to force desperate workers to accept pay and "benefit" levels that would be rejected in Mumbai.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

Manufacturing has been a bright spot over the past year in terms of jobs gained. Activity has picked up, and factories are coming back on-line. The problem is that this has come at a cost. Specifically, the US manufacturing jobs of the future feature lower pay and benefits.

That is particularly true of global manufacturers like General Electric. With labor costs moving down at its appliance factories here, the company is bringing home the production of water heaters as well as some refrigerators, and expanding its work force to do so.

The wages for the new hires, however, are $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on staff — with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future. Such union-endorsed contracts are also showing up in the auto industry, at steel and tire companies, and at manufacturers of farm implements and other heavy equipment, according to Gordon Pavy, president of the Labor and Employment Relations Association and, until recently, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s director of collective bargaining.

“Some companies want to keep work here, or bring it back from Asia,” Mr. Pavy said, “but in order to do that they have to be competitive in the final prices of their products, and one way to be competitive is to lower the compensation of their American workers.”

Hourly pay has leveled off as a whole, because of legacy hires and two-tier wage structures. But eventually they’ll cycle through, and factory jobs will not be middle-class jobs anymore.

The argument from business is that US wages are not competitive globally, and the only way for factories to survive here is through slashing costs. First of all, this comes from companies that are posting record profits, and native plants already save on shipping. Second, there are plenty of examples across the world of export-based countries who are more generous to their workers and can sustain a large manufacturing base. Germany, where auto workers make twice as much as in the US, comes to mind.

Third, the real problem for keeping manufacturing in the US has nothing to do with wages and everything to do with health care. The depressed wages merely reflect the outsized costs of health care, which grow every year. If we had a sane health care system, we could maintain the wage structure of the recent past and our manufacturing base while delivering the same quality of care. And until we really attack the source of the problem, those skyrocketing health care costs, wages will continue to be clawed back.

Maybe this changes slightly as jobs become more competitive when falling unemployment makes jobseekers less desperate. For now, you’re seeing factory jobs, outside of specialists, paying not a whole lot more than the McJobs in the service sector. Certainly they’re not paying entry-level wages consistent with raising a family. We have a terrible unemployment problem right now. But the crisis of falling or stagnant wages will reverberate into the future.

Ten years ago, my employer stopped the annual raises that had been standard for decades. It was called a temporary measure to cover a budget shortfall, but now it's permanent, and no one is complaining. We should all be making at least 75 percent more than we are making now, but we've gotten used to serfdom.

In real life, if you put a frog in a pot of cold water on the stove and slowly heat it up, as soon as the water gets too warm the frog will jump out.

If only American workers were as smart as frogs.

Don't Let Deference to Freakazoids Trump the Law

2011-12-30T06:00:00.002-05:00

UPDATE: In the best political news of the year in Kentucky, Governor Steve Beshear has rejected the merger. No, I don't believe it, either.

Kentucky is about to turn its largest public hospital over to a bunch of women-hating, poor-people-exploiting, child-rapist-protecting, anti-Democratic, un-American clerics who will let people die rather than obey the law.

(Kentucky Governor Steve) Beshear said he wants to make a decision “by the end of the year.”

“I think the merger partners have requested that I do that because they’ve got some … legal issues with bonds and different things that if they get to move ahead they need to do so by Dec. 31,” Beshear said. “So I think I owe it to them. I think we’ve spent the time we need to spend, and gathered the information we need to gather, and I’ve got to sit down once I get the attorney general’s report — either this afternoon or tomorrow — and make a decision.”

The merger would unite University Hospital with Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare and Saint Joseph Health System in Lexington, which is owned by Denver-based Catholic Health Initiatives.

CHI follows Catholic health directives, and University Hospital has agreed not to perform certain procedures, such as sterilizations — prompting concern by many area residents and leaders.

"Concerns" is a gross understatement. Terror and fury are the appropriate responses.

As I wrote in September and November, this merger will simply kill the public hospital, eliminate all services not approved by His Popey-Rapeyness, and leave Louisville's 99 Percenters at the mercy of the Big Pharma profiteers who run the private hospitals.

Religion and health care don't mix. Never have. Never will.

Kevin Drum:

Ed Kilgore recommends Peter Laarman's top ten list of ignored stories in the world of religion. I can't say I really understand why I should care that Southern Baptists are apparently becoming more Calvinist (#3 on the list), but even so, this is more interesting than, say, the top ten celeb fashions of 2011 or the top ten Republican hostage taking incidents. And this one certainly deserves a bigger spotlight:

6. Upside-Down Ideas About Religious Liberty

The dramatic new push for religious liberty exemptions for faith-connected providers of taxpayer-supported health services underscores the radical way in which understandings of religious liberty have changed in recent years. It's not that the push for exemptions hasn't made the news; it's that no one is writing (at least in the MSM) about the radical nature of the shift. In the past, the social service arms of religious bodies understood that if they wanted public money they would need to honor public law regarding the disposition of the money: i.e., provide the full range of mandated services on a universal basis. We used to say to objectors, “If you don’t like the mandate, don’t take the money.”

Apparently such a commonsensical response is now insufficiently deferential to religion. More and more people seem willing to say that if a Catholic health care provider doesn’t “believe” in providing reproductive health care to women, that private belief can trump public law. This is a particularly thorny problem because of the many regional health care system mergers involving Catholic partners: there are now many places in the country where, if a dominant provider that toes the bishops’ line won’t provide the service, area women will be out of luck and deprived of benefits they are entitled to receive by law. Does anyone defer to them? Afraid not.

I'm not sure I'd say this has been entirely ignored in the mainstream media, but it certainly gets less attention than it has at some times in the past, despite the fact that it's a problem that's continued to grow and continued to expand. A decade ago it was mostly restricted to abortion services, but since then its tentacles have spread to just about anything that religious conservative simply don't like very much. It's also one of those things that can be strongly influenced by executive orders, which means it depends a lot on who happens to be president. Just another reason to care about what happens next November.

The only gleam of hope in this looming catastrophe is that the University of Kentucky's hospital in Lexington will get a good, up-close look at what happens when you sell out the public commonweal, and shred any nascent merger plans of its own.

It's the Budget Cuts, Stupid

2011-12-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

One overlooked factor in the case of the Tennessee fire department that watched houses burn when owners failed to pay ~~protection~~ subscriptions is the effect of government budget cuts.

In a Kentucky county perhaps not coincidentally on the Tennessee border, that connection is clear-cut.

From the Middlesboro Daily News:

Bell Countians will be asked to consider adding a fire department subscribers fee to their budgets in the new year.

In a notice issued to media on Monday by Assistant Fire Chief David Miracle, the fire department states, in part:

“The Bell County Volunteer Fire Department would like to inform the citizens of Bell County that effective January 1, 2012, the BCVFD will be collecting an annual subscribers fee for the fire department. This is a voluntary fee and is in no way mandatory. The BCVFD will not deny our services to anyone.

SNIP

Miracle stated that the fire department would like to be funded entirely through a mandatory subscribers fee and claimed that BCVFD representatives had proposed that in Bell County Fiscal Court (BCFC) in the past.

The BCVFD and the BCFC have been in and out of court for five years due to changes in county ordinances that now requires the BCVFD to submit receipts for reimbursement, rather than receiving an allotted amount each year with little accountability.

The BCVFD collectively says that they are not owned by the county and have no indebtedness to tax payers.

“We own it,” Miracle said, “We are a 5013c non-profit corporation.” He also likened the BCVFD to a paving company that would be used contractually by the county.

Bell County Judge Executive Albey Brock disagrees, as he has many times in this long-running argument. “Since the fire department’s inception, the taxpayer has given them over $6 million,” Brock said. “They are a non-profit group established to provide service.”

Since the BCVFD has closed two of the nine stations (Colmar and Arjay stations were closed mid-December) in the county, Brock says funding will be halted. “At this point, we can’t fund them, if they’re closing stations.”

So it's a political fight. But it's a political fight that wouldn't happen if Bell County weren't strapped by state budget cuts, caused by federal budget cuts, caused by deficit hysteria and an economic meltdown caused by banksters on Wall Street.

Casinos to be on Kentucky Ballot in November

2011-12-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

Looks like casino gambling is going to be on the ballot in Kentucky this November, driving turnout up and turning the local and state legislative campaigns even more stupid than usual.

From the Herald:

Kentuckians overwhelmingly support putting a casino-gambling constitutional amendment on the November ballot, where it probably would pass, according to a new survey conducted for racetracks and horse-racing interests.

According to numbers released Tuesday, 87 percent of Kentuckians want to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to allow casino gambling. Only 10 percent of those surveyed said they opposed a vote.

Also, according to the poll released Tuesday, 64 percent would vote in favor of the amendment.

"Once again, a new poll shows Kentuckians demand an opportunity to vote on expanded gaming," Gov. Steve Beshear said. "The call for a direct vote by the people of this state has only gotten stronger over the last few years, and we should not make our citizens wait a moment longer to have their voices heard."

The Family Foundation, a conservative advocacy group that opposes expanded gambling, questioned the poll.

"This survey was bankrolled by the gambling industry," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for The Family Foundation. "It showed what they wanted it to show."

Beshear said one of his top priorities for the upcoming legislative session, which begins Jan. 3, "will be a constitutional amendment to take the gaming question directly to our people. It's time for Kentuckians to decide the state's future on expanded gaming."

Beshear has said that any expansion must include racetracks and the horse industry.

As I noted earlier this month, not only is casino gambling not an economic panacea, it's likely to be even less so in Kentucky as casinos in surrounding states have already sucked up the available business.

I'm tempted to vote for it anyway, if only to drive the freakazoids crazy. But of course the majority of those voting in favor of gambling - and of those who will be taking food out of their children's mouths to lose in the new casinos - will be freakazoid hypocrites. Oops, sorry for the redundancy.

Repug Priorities

2011-12-27T18:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah, those republicans and their conserva-dem fellow travelers are all about personal FREEDUMBS ... if you have a penis, that is. Otherwise, not so much.

Tanya Somanader at Think Progress:

2011 marked a banner year in the Republican war on woman’s health. Close to 1,000 anti-abortion bills sped through state legislatures as the GOP-led House led a “comprehensive and radical assault” on a federal level. But in surveying their arsenal this year, 10 bills stood out as particularly perturbing and far-reaching efforts to stymie women’s access to abortion services, birth control, and vital health services like breast cancer screenings. Here are ThinkProgress’s nominations for the most extreme attacks on a woman’s right to choose:

– Redefining Rape: Last May, every House Republican and 16 anti-choice Democrats passed H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. Anti-choice activists Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) tried to narrow the definition of rape to “forcible rape,” which meant that women who say no but do not physically fight off the assault; women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped; and minors impregnated by adults would not qualify for the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment. Smith promised to remove the language but used “a sly legislative maneuver” that essentially informs the courts that statutory rape cases will not be covered by Medicaid should the law pass and be challenged in court.

– Abortion Audits: The No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act also bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance. Thus, a woman who used such a benefit would have to prove, if audited, that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.” This requirement turns the Internal Revenue Service into “abortion cops” who, agents noted, would have to force women to give “contemporaneous written documentation” that it was “incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger” which made an abortion necessary.

– Let Women Die: This October, House Republicans also passed the “Protect Life Act”, known by women’s health advocates as the “Let Women Die” bill. The measure allows hospitals that receive federal funds to reject any woman in need of an abortion procedure, even if it is necessary to save her life. Though federal law already prohibits federal funding of abortions, the GOP insisted that the health care law “contains a loophole that allows those receiving federal subsidies to use the money to enroll in health care plans that allow abortion services.”

– Personhood: Mississippi entertained the idea of passing a “personhood” amendment to its constitution this year, one that defines a person as “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.” The measure’s “profoundly ambiguous” language regarding the definition of fertilization not only would ban all abortions, it could potentially outlaw birth control, stem cell research, and in vitro fertilization for couples struggling to conceive. Mississippians rejected the amendment but personhood activists are making headway with versions for other states and GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is championing a national personhood amendment.

Read more

Ben "Wire Hangar" Chandler (Cowardly Worm, KY-6) voted to deny abortions to all women who are not filthy rich enough to pay cash, although he did manage to vote against allowing hospitals to throw dying pregnant women out into the street.

Find out how your representative voted on H.R. 3 here, and on H.R. 358 here.

How Budget Cuts Cause Abuse and Neglect of Horses

2011-12-26T18:00:00.000-05:00

Driving through Central Kentucky's horse country, it's easy to believe horses live the life of Riley. Five or six sleek beauties grazing peacefully in the middle of a spacious, rich pasture, gleaming barns in the distance, five-plank fences sporting fresh paint.

But those are the one-percenters of the thoroughbred economy. The flip side of that perfect picture is horses making do on crowded, weedy pastures neglected by owners constantly on the verge of bankruptcy.

And that's in good economic times. People buy a little land, feel flush, think they gotta have a horse. After a few years of feed bills and vet bills and fence maintenance, it's too much. One local amateur skipped town leaving his horses stranded in a fenced pasture with no access to water. If someone hadn't found them, they would have died of dehydration.

From the Courier:

"A lot of people ... just don't get it," said Ponke, 45, of Cottrellville Township in St. Clair County (Michigan). "They just don't understand what it takes to take care of an animal properly, and it's sad."

After slaughterhouses were shuttered in the U.S. in 2007, experts say that -- coupled with the poor economic climate -- caused neglect and abandonment cases involving the country's 9 million horses to rise dramatically.

Michigan State University equine professor John Shelle estimates that the number of unwanted horses in Michigan has grown by the thousands. No concrete statistics are available, but he points to the number of rescue organizations near or over capacity.

It's a national problem that officials hope will end with new legislation.

On Nov. 18, President Barack Obama signed a bill permitting federal funding for inspection of horses intended for human consumption, allowing slaughter facilities to reopen across the country.

Supporters of the legislation hope providing slaughterhouses as another option for horse owners will reduce neglect and abandonment, while critics argue they're inhumane and the real problem is over-breeding.

Government agencies and animal welfare organizations have reported a rise in investigations for horse neglect and abandonment since 2007, according to a 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office, an independent federal agency based in Washington, D.C.

The study points to the end of domestic slaughter and an ailing economy as key factors in the increase.

Slaughterhouses across the country closed in 2007, following the government's decision in 2006 to yank federal funding for inspecting horses at slaughter.

SNIP

The Government Accountability Office's report found horse exports to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico then skyrocketed -- increasing by 148 percent and 660 percent, respectively -- from 32,789 horses exported for slaughter in 2006 to 137,984 in 2010.

A study conducted in 2009 by the Unwanted Horse Coalition, a national group aimed at improving the welfare of unwanted horses, found that 87 percent of horse rescue facilities that were interviewed think the number of unwanted horses is becoming a problem, compared with 28 percent in 2006.

The rise in neglect and abandonment cases is taking a toll on animal control officers and horse rescue groups.

SNIP

MacKillop is angered by people who put horses on Craigslist for free in an attempt to get them off their payroll. A quick search of metro Detroit and northern Michigan lists a handful of "free" horses ready for adoption on the popular online classifieds site.

The result: new horse owners who don't realize what it takes to care of such a large animal.

"I hate to see animals suffer ... it's a really bad situation out there," MacKillop said. "It irritates me, these free horses, anyone will go take them."

Horses are not overgrown dogs - they can't survive in developed areas without human help. Horses demand hard work, constant attention, significant money and long-term dedication. Don't indulge an urge to get one until you know what you're doing.

Child Labor is Bipartisan

2011-12-26T06:00:00.000-05:00

The robber barons would be so proud.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Who says bipartisanship is dead? Senators from both sides of the aisle can still come together to make the lives of children more dangerous. Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) are leading the charge to reject proposed Department of Labor regulations that would ban some child labor on our farms. What kind of odious government regulations are these? These new rules would attack the freedom of our children to mix noxious pesticides, climb tall ladders, and demolishing barns on farms that are not owned by their parents. If I can’t force my 11 year old to mix pesticides, we might as well just live in Soviet Russia. Moreover, since so much farm labor is done by immigrants these days, these regulations are a clear attack on the white right to exploit brown people. I am truly outraged. My love of racism combined with my passion for child labor has led me to become a huge supporter of our next president, Newt Gingrich.

Let me tell you a story about the good old days, before a bunch of liberal do-gooders got in the way of the free market. In the late 19th century, sawmills used to have the problem of sawdust building up under the saws. Eventually the sawdust would get so high as to get in the way of the saw. Actually stopping the saws to clear the sawdust would be a clear violation of my rights as a capitalist. So my forefathers simply hired children to crawl under the saws and clean it out. While the saws were still running. If one took a sawblade in the head, well, those Finns all have 15 kids anyway. I can just hire another. And they have one less mouth to feed. A public service to all!

30 senators have signed on to this bill, including 4 Democrats.

Once corporations have taken over all the schools, kids who can't afford pay-as-you-go elementary school will have to be put to work somewhere. It just makes sense.

"Useful as So Many Tapeworms"

2011-12-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

If you read this blog, you know the proper way to interpret repug pronouncements on Democrats, liberals, minorities and poor people is as confessions: whatever they accuse others of - voter fraud, fascism, criminal behavior and laziness - is what they themselves are guilty of.

The insistence that people who work minimum-wage jobs but need food stamps and other assistance must be lazy is particularly egregious. It has to be, to cover what repugs are trying to hide: that the real lazy parasites on society are the rich.

Scott Lemiuex at Lawyers, Guns and Money, on the values presented in some reality TV shows:

What I find particularly interesting is the vision they present of a desirable life. These programs cater to the wealth fantasies of their audiences, obviously, but they do so in a way that suggests that the epitome of the contemporary American Dream is to acquire either enough independent capital, or a sufficiently unlimited access to an income stream generated by someone else’s labor, to allow one to do nothing — or more precisely, to do nothing but consume.

Indeed, despite the enormous differences in context, these shows remind me of nothing so much as Orwell’s description of the world view of many a Victorian novelist, and in particular Dickens:

SNIP

Orwell’s essay is more than 70 years old, and it makes me wonder about the extent to which contemporary American society has returned, or regressed, to the rentier values that Dickens’s novels uncritically reflect. The key to these programs is that no one, or least none of the central characters, ever does anything resembling work. The “housewives” don’t have jobs, of course, but they are also almost never shown doing any parenting, let alone performing traditional domestic unpaid labor (all this has, as the expression goes, been outsourced). The Kardashian sisters are occasionally shown dabbling in things like launching a perfume line, but the point of their various shows is that they are 24/7 Party Girls. (For all I know turning your life into a reality TV show may be very hard work. The point here is not how much work the various Kardashians may do, but that their programs work very hard to represent them as people who do nothing).

And this isn’t merely a matter of not working for income: the most striking aspect of these shows is the extent to which they portray a class of people who have no vocation, in the broadest sense, of any sort, or indeed even any serious interests, besides spending money while being on the equivalent of a perpetual vacation.

SNIP

Still, one of the consequences of America’s increasingly unabashed embrace of plutocracy over the last generation is that we now have a genuinely enormous class of social parasites, living off inherited capital, or the stupendous income stream of the one member of an extended family who has a job. (A vignette from the beginning of the previous century: The Duke of Somewhere or Another was passing through customs at Ellis Island. On the immigration form under “Occupation” he wrote “Peer of the Realm.” The Irish-American cop who took the form crossed that out and wrote “Unemployed.”).

Consider that the bottom threshold for the annual income of the richest .1% of American households is close to two million dollars (that’s per year), and that there are approximately 120,000 such households, containing around 500,000 people. This suggests that well over one million Americans live in households with annual incomes of at least one million dollars per year. Of course some of these people are children, but a lot of them are fundamentally aimless adults who have nothing to do but spend money. So perhaps it’s not surprising that, increasingly, we’re seeing the celebration of a social class full of people who, as Orwell pointed out, are “just about as useful as so many tapeworms.”

The 12 Lies of Christmas

2011-12-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

The 12 days of Christmas actually begin today, Dec. 25. Sing these new lyrics every day, and by Twelfth Night everyone will have them memorized.

Jon Perr:

(Sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas")

On the first day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Obama's born in another country.

On the second day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the third day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the fourth day of Christmas
Republicans told me
We don't torture.
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

On the fifth day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Tax cuts more revenues bring
We don't torture
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country

Click here for the rest.

Occupy the Safety Net

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

According to the jesus myth, the character xians refer to as "lord" and "king of kings" in the most aristocrat-worshipping, un-American style, was born, lived and died poor.

So on his supposed birthday, take a minute to consider how our obscenely-wealthy-worshipping society is treating the poor today.

Last week's Nation issue is devoted to America's disappearing social safety net. Each article is more outrageous and inspiring than the last.

Imagine that: a president signing a law that asked for, even paid for, grassroots participation to shape policies and decide priorities. It sounds utopian now—even under a president who once worked as a community organizer—but as OWS has reminded us, sometimes the size of the demand is the measure of a movement.

Read them all.

The Christmas Spirit of Albany's One Percent and Their Pet Thugs

2011-12-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sure they hoped that doing it two days before Christmas would let it get lost in the holiday rush.

Crush that hope - forward this to everyone you know.

Diane Sweet at Crooks and Liars:

In the above video, an Occupy Albany member struggles to breathe, and suffers a seizure after being hit with pepper spray, while fellow occupiers plead for an ambulance.

After a move by Albany city officials to obtain an eviction order from a New York Supreme Court judge, referred to by occupiers as a "legal ambush," ended in a melee at Academy Park Thursday night, and a brutal assault by local police.

When all was said and done, there were four arrests, two protesters, two police officers and a News 10 ABC cameraman suffering minor injuries, a city councilman who was pepper-sprayed in the face along with protesters, including one who after being hit with the spray seemed to suffer a seizure afterward and was taken away in an ambulance.

Oh, and the only surviving tent of the occupation was shredded in a tug-of-war between police and the occupiers.

Via:

During the melee, an officer on a horse pepper-sprayed the crowd, dousing a number of protesters in the face, witnesses said. Chuck Nasmith, 56, said he got hit in the eyes, even though he used his "Who would Jesus evict?" sign as a shield.

"I said, 'Please stop it' and that's when he sprayed me like mad'," Nasmith said. "He would spray people and scream 'Go home' with a smile."

In a statement, police said only two people were pepper-sprayed, but a reporter spoke with at least half a dozen who had signs of being hit directly in the face by the spray and were still in pain. Cellphone video shows the mounted officer spraying throughout the crowd.

Protesters chanted "Shame on you" and "We are peaceful, you are not!" at the police. They also chanted the badge number of the officer who had allegedly sprayed the crowd.

One officer was overheard saying, "We're supposed to get out of their faces" as police moved across the street shortly after the melee.

The encampment at Academy Park had been occupied since Oct.21 despite the park's nightly curfew until Dec. 7, when the city of Albany granted the protesters a temporary permit limiting the size to no more than 30 tents, and requiring that city code violations deemed safety hazards be corrected.

The video below shows the Albany police officer on horseback riding along next to the last of the occupation's tents being carried through the park as police and protesters struggle over possession. As he rides the horse beside the tent, he sprays pepper spray into the faces of the crowd.

Caught One! Er ... Oops.

2011-12-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

One of the rare actual cases of genuine voter fraud is, of course, committed by a republican. But not just any republican.

Steve Benen:

It hasn’t been a good month for the GOP and election fraud. Two weeks ago, a Maryland jury convicted a Republican official who oversaw illegal voter-suppression tactics in the 2010 election. This week, a state judge found that Indiana’s Secretary of State, Republican Charlie White, not only committed voter fraud in 2010, but wasn’t even eligible to seek the office to which he was elected.

Charlie White is ineligible to serve as Secretary of State and should be replaced by his election opponent, Democrat Vop Osili, a Marion County judge ruled today.

White is facing seven felony charges, including allegations of voter fraud. Osili has the second-highest vote-getter in the November 2010 election.

Kay at Balloon Juice added, “Besides the obvious embarrassment of the state official who is in charge of elections being indicted on charges of voter registration fraud, it’s just perfect that this happened in Indiana, because Indiana paved the way for the voter suppression laws we’re seeing all over the country…. Indiana has one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country, and that didn’t stop their top elections official from registering and voting in the wrong place. That’s because voter ID laws target the imaginary problem of voter impersonation fraud, while doing next to nothing to address the fraud that actually occurs.”

Quite right. Republicans nationwide, as part of the “war on voting,” keep putting new hurdles between voters and the ballot box, ostensibly because they fear the scourge of fraud.

The irony is, the deceit Republicans are worried about is imaginary, while the real-world fraud is coming from their side of the political divide.

Here's the most important point again, because you'll need to remember it when you have to fight - and you will have to fight - voter ID laws in your state:

"Voter ID laws target the imaginary problem of voter impersonation fraud, while doing next to nothing to address the fraud that actually occurs."

"Giving of ourselves; service to others – that’s what this season is all about. "

2011-12-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

They are foremost in our thoughts this year, but military members aren't the only ones who serve the nation, Mr. President. Next year, how about a shout-out to the millions of low-paid, un-appreciated public employees who keep this nation running?

Full transcript here.