No offense, Mr. President, but this inspiring-speech-that-could-have-accomplished-great-things-if-you'd-given-it-two-years-ago schtick is getting old.
Full transcript here.
Cool graphic here.
Yes, we lost last year to Missouri's balance-the-budget-by-buying-lottery-tickets proposal, for which Blue Girl still owes me for the truss I had to buy after the laughter caused major damage, but I knew all you Stupid State Tricks aficionados would appreciate this one:
John Cheves at the Herald:
Kentucky Republicans have two choices in their May 17 primary for the state’s elected Auditor of Public Accounts, but both come with baggage.
State Rep. Addia Wuchner of Florence last year settled a lawsuit against her insurance company in which she claimed to be “permanently and totally disabled” and unable to work more than 15 hours a week because of a car crash that seriously injured her knees, shoulders and back. Wuchner now says she’s capable of working full-time as auditor.
Lexington developer John T. Kemper III, whose campaign slogan is “A Debt-Free Kentucky,” may soon lose his home in a foreclosure auction related to his personal bankruptcy. Kemper used $124 from his campaign fund to pay his vehicle tax in February.
The winning Republican will face Democrat Adam Edelen, former chief of staff to Gov. Steve Beshear, in November. Edelen has no primary opponent.
The current auditor, Crit Luallen, a Democrat, is finishing her second term, the limit allowed by law. Voters have elected state auditors since 1850 to monitor how public money is spent and how public agencies function. Some of Luallen’s high-profile audits have led to criminal convictions.
Funny how every time you reach for a metaphor to describe the filthy super-rich who are destroying the country, the word that comes to mind is "parasite."
Susie Madrak at Croosk and Liars:
I've thought for a while that our leaders, both political and private sector, are actually trying to create another depression, but I wasn't quite clear on why. I mean, I figured they make money on it, of course, but I didn't connect all the dots.
This interview with liberal economist Michael Hudson is a few months old, but it has the ring of truth and explains so much:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay, coming to you today from New York City. Now joining us is Michael Hudson. He's a distinguished research professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City. He's also the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, and Trade, Development, and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization Versus Convergence in the World Economy. That's a mouthful. Thanks for joining us.
PROF. MICHAEL HUDSON, UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY: Thank you.
JAY: So President Obama's deficit commission has reported. The press, the media, and most of the political punditry all seem far more worried about government debt than depression. Why?
HUDSON: Because they're essentially appointed by the banking interests. When the government runs into debt, it has to borrow from the banks. They want to scale down government debt in order to scale down government taxes. So it's part of a one-two punch against the economy, basically. To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem. That's what they're trying to bring about, because you need a depression if you're going to lower wages by 20 percent.
JAY: And why do they want to do that?
HUDSON: Because they have the illusion that if you pay labor less, somehow you re going to make the economy more competitive, and the economy can earn its way out of debts --meaning their employers, the banks and the companies and make more profits and pay more bonuses and stock options, and somehow their constituency, Wall Street and the corporate economy, will become richer if they can only impoverish the economy.
So essentially you can think of it as between a parasite and the host economy. A smart parasite in nature actually is in a symbiosis with the host and tries to steer to new food. It wants the host to find new food, doesn't want it to get bigger; the parasite wants itself to get bigger. But to do that, it has to take over the host's brain and make the brain think that the parasite, in this case the host, is the industrial economy, the real economy, production and consumption.
The parasite is basically the financial sector. That's the deficit commission. That's the largest financier of the Obama administration. Obama appointed Wall Street lobbyists for the deficit commission, and basically their mind is a one-track mind: reduce labor's wages. So what we have here is a dumb parasite, not a parasite. That's the problem that's facing the American economy today. The problem is that the parasite's not only taken over the brain of the economy, which was supposed to be the government, but it's taken over its own brain in the process. And it actually imagines that corporations can make larger profits and the industrial, the financial system can survive if they just bring on a depression. In fact, it'll be the exact opposite.
JAY: Well, back up a step, because if you go into the recent crisis, ... the amount of consumer debt as a result of lack of real wages and real demand is, I've always understood, is one of the underlying reasons for the crisis. You create this bubble, but it's based on artificial debt. So if you take out even more consuming power by driving down wages, you take out even more consuming power by cutting unemployment insurance, you take out even more consuming power by various new kinds of taxes they're even talking about in terms of consumer taxes, so don't they actually exacerbate the problem, exacerbate the crisis? You're saying they want to.
Move On sent this a couple of weeks ago for distribution on Facebook, but it's worthy of a far more dignified - ahem - forum.
If you read the news stories this spring about Kentucky's prison reform laws, you probably shrugged it off as unlikely or superficial.
Amazingly, it is neither. Even more amazingly, backward Kentucky has taken a giant leap forward in replacing incarceration for drug possession with genuine drug treatment.
It's an incredible story, and Ronnie Ellis has it:
How a ‘Tough-on-Crime’ State Became Smart on Crime: Kentucky’s overhaul of its criminal justice system this spring is a textbook example of genuine bipartisanshipRead the whole thing.
For three decades, Kentucky politicians proved they were tough on crime. At every opportunity, they stiffened sentences and added offenses to the state’s penal code.
They nearly bankrupted the state.
Kentucky’s corrections budget grew from $30 million in 1980 to nearly $470 million in 2010, even as lawmakers cut $1.8 billion from the state’s budget in the grip of a deep recession. The prison population grew 80 percent between 1997 and 2009, the year Kentucky led the nation in the rate of incarceration.
Of 22,000 state felons that year, 8,000 were in county jails that became dependent on state funding.
But the crime rate remained relatively flat, below the national average, and about what it was when the tough on crime movement began.
The state’s justice system seemed ripe for change. But no one expected it to be easy.
When some legislators in the Kentucky General Assembly tried to reduce the strain imposed on the state budget by prison overcrowding in 2009, by inserting parole credit provisions in the budget to release around 1,500 prisoners, prosecutors and law enforcement howled.
A challenge from a local prosecutor and the state attorney general to remove the provisions lost in court.
Nevertheless, few could have predicted what happened in late February this year. After a year of study, Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill overhauling the state’s drug laws, as reforming its sentencing, probation and parole system. Following passage in the Kentucky House (Feb 17) and Senate (Feb 28), the bill became law upon the signature of Gov. Steve Beshear on March 3.
As easy as it is to mock the Pentagon for demanding overpriced poor-quality toys as much as any toddler, the truth is that if you want to know the down-and-dirty facts about what it takes to defend this nation, you have to go to the horse's mouth.
Most veterans know this, and aren't surprised when the horse says something that surprises those of us without military service.
Here's a revelation that I think deserves more publicity and consideration.
Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:
Hmm. As I was just saying recently, imagine if we as a country defined national security as the health, well-being, education and gainful employment of our citizens, and not as the ability to deliver bombs on targets.The refusal of chicken hawks in Congress to heed this wisdom, however, never surprises even as it always disappoints.
I'm not surprised that someone else came to the same obvious conclusion -- only that it's two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying so:
On Friday, April 8, as members of the U.S. Congress engaged in a last-minute game of chicken over the federal budget, the Pentagon quietly issued a report that received little initial attention: "A National Strategic Narrative."
The report was issued under the pseudonym of "Mr. Y," a takeoff on George Kennan's 1946 "Long Telegram" from Moscow (published under the name "X" the following year in Foreign Affairs) that helped set containment as the cornerstone of U.S. strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union.
The piece was written by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CAPT Wayne Porter, USN and Col Mark "Puck" Mykleby) in a "personal" capacity, but it is clear that it would not have seen the light of day without a measure of official approval. Its findings are revelatory, and they deserve to be read and appreciated not only by every lawmaker in Congress, but by every American citizen.
The narrative argues that the United States is fundamentally getting it wrong when it comes to setting its priorities, particularly with regard to the budget and how Americans as a nation use their resources more broadly. The report says Americans are overreacting to Islamic extremism, underinvesting in their youth, and failing to embrace the sense of competition and opportunity that made America a world power. The United States has been increasingly consumed by seeing the world through the lens of threat, while failing to understand that influence, competitiveness, and innovation are the key to advancing American interests in the modern world.
Courageously, the authors make the case that America continues to rely far too heavily on its military as the primary tool for how it engages the world. Instead of simply pumping more and more dollars into defense, the narrative argues:
By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans -- the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow -- we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America's youth.
Unfortunately for voucher fans, when kids all take the same test it's way too obvious that voucher schools don't really outperform traditional schools. Nor do they outperform schools in poor neighborhoods (that's the blue line in the chart). At best, they perform about the same, and at worst they perform more poorly. Not only does this undermine the case for vouchers, but it also undermines the case that, for example, it's the troglodyte teachers unions that are holding back Wisconsin's kids. That can hardly be tolerated, so the best bet is to simply not allow comparisons to be made in the first place.Read the whole thing.
It's ironic that one of America's more blatantly fascist congressmen, Allen West, was elected in one of the most Jewish districts in the South. His outburst about how women are "neutering men" made me go back to political scientist Lawrence Britt's classic delineation of the characteristics of fascism. The characteristic I was looking for was #5-- "Rampant Sexism"-- but as I started reading through them, I started thinking, uncomfortably, about slippery slopes:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Egyptian activist Gigi Ibrahim on the Daily Show:
ISTANBUL — Activists marking international workers' day Sunday staged a massive march of 200,000 in Turkey's capital and rallied in cities around the world to demand more jobs, better working conditions and higher wages.
Most of the annual May Day workers' rights marches were peaceful, although demonstrators in the Philippine capital set ablaze a cartoon effigy of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to protest his buying a luxury car secondhand.
Civil rights, economic and social justice, the rights of workers to bargain collectively...the air here at the White House was thick with these sentiments today.
They were brought to us by eight of the surviving members of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, who came to the White House today for the first time in their lives.
If that long-ago strike sticks out in your mind, it’s because Dr. Martin Luther King went to Memphis to support the almost entirely African-American sanitation workforce as they struck for union recognition, better pay, safer working conditions, and, fundamentally, respect.
It was there, on April 3, that Dr. King delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
And it was there, on April 4, when that amazing man was taken from us.
Please, if you do nothing else today, read (or reread) that speech. Read it to yourself, to your partner, to your parents and to your kids. You would be hard-pressed to find another document that so perfectly weaves together the beautiful yet all too fragile fabric of the historical struggle for basic human rights.
And what’s so remarkable about the way Dr. King told the story that day was not the pain, frustration, and violence of that endless struggle for justice, but the hope, the optimism, the non-violent sensibility, and most profoundly, the faith that he brought, and urged us all, to bring to that struggle.
A key theme of the speech, one that resonates today as well as it did in 1968, is the inseparability of social and economic justice. Dr. King’s civil rights work is of course well remembered, but you may not recall that toward the end of his life, he led the “Poor People’s Campaign,” a movement organized around the need for jobs, health care, and housing for the poor and disadvantaged.
As embodied in those striking workers in Memphis, and stressed repeatedly in his speech to them, the issue was, and remains, one of fairness. These men here today and their former cohort faced hard, even fatal working conditions (weeks before the strike, two men were killed on a city truck). Yet, they also faced deep discrimination and earned poverty-level wages.
So they decided to join a public-sector union—to tap their collective strength in pursuit of the fair treatment that eluded them as individuals. The mayor of Memphis declared the strike illegal but the workers, with Dr. King’s support, never gave up. And ultimately, they succeeded. Less than two weeks after King’s tragic assassination, the union was recognized and the strike ended.
Of course, that’s not the end of the story. The struggle to protect and add to the gains that Dr. King and those Memphis workers fought and died for is a lifelong one. It’s a struggle that President Obama knows well, and one he continues to wage each day. It’s a struggle that persists to this very day, as public-sector workers continue to fight for the right to bargain collectively.
But to see these eight men come to the White House and meet with this President…well, there really are no words to describe the moment other than to say that somewhere, from a distant mountaintop, Dr. King smiled down on the world today.
This doesn't excuse the repugs and Villagers who insist on claiming poverty status for people earning double the median income, but it does explain why economic arguments that fail to define "rich" and "poor" with actual amounts of money fall on deaf ears.
Kevin Drum:
Everyone thinks they're middle class. This isn't a big surprise: the word "rich" has specific connotations (servants, mansions on the Gold Coast, 200-foot yachts, etc.) and even someone making $200-300 thousand a year probably doesn't have any of that stuff. What's more, most people in that income range were likely raised middle class, so culturally they still think of themselves that way even if their incomes give them a pretty comfortable lifestyle.And how very convenient for the plutocrats that people earning less than the median income - $50,000 - reject programs that help them because they don't consider themselves "poor."
But Catherine Rampell notes something more interesting today. Researchers surveyed 1,100 households in Buenos Aires and asked them a purely objective question: what decile do you think your income puts you in? The bottom decile means you're part of the poorest 10%, the fifth decile means you're right in the middle, and the tenth decile means you're part of the richest 10%. Here's how things shook out:
Click here for chart.
Fascinating! The very poorest thought they were actually in the fourth decile — just barely below average. The very richest thought they were in the sixth decile — just barely above average.
If the same thing is true here — and I wouldn't be surprised if it were — it could go a long way toward explaining the political dynamics of taxation and economic policy in the United States. After all, if the poor don't really know they're poor, they're never going to mount much of a fight for more egalitarian public policies. And if the well-off don't know they're well off, they're going to strongly resist more egalitarian public policies. The result can be startling increases in income inequality without anyone really knowing it's happening or caring very much about it.
Kentucky's voter ID law actually predates the last decade of repug attempts to prevent Democratic voters from voting, but that doesn't make it acceptable. I am seriously considering refusing to show ID at the primary election May 17 and daring them to try to prevent me from voting.
Challenging the state's voter ID law would keep me out of trouble all summer.
Zandar:
How bad is Florida's new voter identification suppression bill? This bad. Kay at Balloon Juice:
When I reached this section of the linked article, I went to the text of the bill because I honestly did not believe it (pdf):And as Kay points out, the determination cannot be challenged by the voter themselves. As a matter of fact, the elections board can basically pre-challenge anyone up to 30 days before the election and force those voters to take a provisional ballot. Do not pass Go. Go straight to second-class voter status. Florida Republicans are basically going to lock in the right to disenfranchise any voter they choose to with a simple sworn statement that your right to vote is in question. That is all it takes to remove your right to vote in Florida if this bill passes...and it will.
A new provision added last night would now require voters whose legitimacy is challenged by poll watchers to cast provisional ballots with no opportunity at the polls to defend themselves and cast a regular ballot.Yup. It’s in there.
The clerk or inspector shall immediately deliver to the challenged person a copy of the oath of the person entering the challenge, and the challenged voter shall be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.A simple sworn statement that the voter is not eligible is enough to force any voter to accept a second-class ballot. Wow.
Alternatively, a challenge in accordance with this section may be filed in advance with the supervisor of elections no sooner than 30 days before an election. The supervisor shall promptly provide the election board in the challenged voter’s precinct with a copy of the oath of the person entering the challenge. The challenged voter shall be allowed to cast a provisional ballot.
Count on it. Adam Serwer has a smart discussion on the history of voter identification as voter suppression.
The unfounded rumors regarding the president's citizenship that lead to demands for his papers, and the Arizona-style immigration laws that would force Latino Americans to retain theirs at all times, reflect a creeping suspicion among some whites, at a time of job loss and austerity, that non-whites are gaining at their expense in a zero-sum battle for political power and resources. Hardcore birthers, (as opposed to those who have simply been misled by sources they trust) can't be sated because they believe Obama has no such claim. Likewise, for many Arizona-style immigration laws are an attempt to restrict access to American abundance to those who are "truly deserving," but their effect on those who genuinely are American citizens but are not white is minimized because their claim is believed to be weaker anyway. This is deeply frustrating because of how a sensible immigration policy could lead to mutual gain both for Americans and immigrants, but that realization has yet to take hold. As a country, we are increasingly demanding that non-whites literally prove that they "belong here," that they have a legitimate claim to American prosperity.This thread runs throughout history. When America wants to restrict opportunity and remind minorities to stay in their place, it asks for their papers.
It's been done before, and Republican-controlled states are simply taking it into the 21st century with the straw man of "voter identification".
I hate it when cowardly DINOs earn my vote by default because they are adamantly opposed by vicious motherfuckers I hate.
You'd think that in primaries at least, you could vote for the non-DINO Democratic candidate with a clear conscience. But no.
Media Czech:
The Kentucky Right to Life Association recently published their endorsements for the upcoming Kentucky primaries. KRLA is the group that explains on their website how having an abortion will give you breast cancer. That is, if it doesn't kill you. Either way, it's much more dangerous than actually giving birth. So they're all about scientifically accurate information and not dishonest scare tactics, thus any of the candidates would be proud to have their endorsement.Meanwhile, Governor Cowardly and his sidekick, Mayor Corruption-for-Life, are cruising to re-nomination without opposition and with likely general-election opposition crashing and burning.
Like Democrat Steve Hamrick, running for State Treasurer. Yes, it appears that Hamrick and the KRLA have thrown a wrench into my "Anyone But Hollenbach" strategy. I called the good folks at KRLA today to ask how Hamrick filled out their survey, and they informed me that he gave the "pro-life" response on every question, and is "a very nice man". If you haven't checked out their survey, that means that Hamrick wants to criminalize abortion at the federal level, even in cases of rape and incest, is against the morning after pill, and lots of other repugnant stuff.
Now it's true that Hamrick is running for treasurer and fortunately would have zero say in any policy relating to abortion or birth control, but could you really cast a vote for someone like this? Or give him a stepping stone to a future higher office? No, I'll be skipping this race in May.
Of note is that not only did Todd Hollenbach not turn in responses, neither did KC Crosbie. Crosbie was actually the only Republican candidate on the ballot this year to not do so, neither did she turn in one to Frank Simon.
SNIP
Also of note, there was only one candidate that received a "VOTE AGAINST THIS MAN" warning: Jack Conway.
Jack Conway (D) - MUST BE DEFEATED, no response to KRLA PAC survey or National Right to Life PAC survey; strong pro-abortion position, said on “Straight Talk” (August 24, 2001) with John Yarmuth that his position on abortion is like Bill Clinton’s. The Rothenburg Report (March 8, 2002) said “Conway aligns himself with the Clinton approach to abortion.” (Bill Clinton vetoed the ban on partial birth abortion twice and issued five pro-abortion executive orders immediately after taking office.) Speaking to students at Manual High School , Louisville (February 22, 2002) Con-way said he was “pro-choice” and added “All right, if you got up and shaved your face this morning, sit down and shut up, cause this is not your issue. That’s the way I feel about it.”
This one has our unqualified support, Mr. President. And if you don't mind a suggestion - offer to let them keep their subsidies. If all of their executives submit to weekly drug testing.
Full transcript here.
I had an advantage over most people who read Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea: because it was given to me by a conservatard freakazoid parasite family member, I approached it with substantial skepticism.
I can't claim to have suspected any of the facts that have turned up to smash Mortenson's too-good-to-be true fantasy; what turned me off was the conservatard canard that private charity accomplishes more than concerted government action.
I didn't doubt the book was true; I deplored its implication that government action is unnecessary at best, and counter-productive at worst.
Even more repug propanganda-ish, the book never addressed the role of the U.S. invasion - and war in general - as a primary cause of the lack of schools Mortenson claimed to have addressed.
The only other thing that struck me as strange was the apparent disconnect between Morteson's personal life and his charitable work - not the typical neglect-one-to-fulfill-the-other, but rather how his description of his family life - his disorganization and narcissism - contradicted his uber-altruistic behavior as Super Charity Guy.
Katha Pollitt at The Nation:
The Greg Mortenson scandal is still unfolding, but here’s one lesson we can already learn from it: if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.There's a reason scandals like this never erupt in the Peace Corps.
SNIP
How did Mortenson enchant so many, including knowledgeable people like Nick Kristof, who wrote an anguished column asking people to withhold judgment for now? As a string of much-praised fake memoirs can attest—to say nothing of Bernie Madoff’s meteoric career—people don’t look closely at stories that tell them what they want to hear. Americans love to be inspired by heroic lone individuals who provide simple solutions to complicated problems—especially when the individuals are American and famous, the solutions are cheap and the problems are far away. (Kristof is particularly fond of this narrative.) Mortenson took an urgent cause—girls’ education—tied it to the prevention of “terrorism,” offered himself as the bashful red-tape-scorning great white savior and, before you knew it, the US Army was making his books mandatory reading for soldiers being sent to Afghanistan. He may have collected pennies for “peace,” but Mortenson played right into one of the Bush administration’s worst ideas—the militarization of humanitarian aid.
SNIP
We’ve gotten used to a certain kind of NGO fairy tale, as depicted in the children’s book Beatrice’s Goat, much admired by Kristof: Heifer International gives a family a farm animal, and in a dozen years, the profits send a daughter to college. Kiva lends a Bolivian peasant a few hundred high-interest dollars to buy a bale of used clothes, and soon she owns her own store. Faced with the chance to transform a life, we forget that poor people rarely need just one small thing, that they are embedded in immensely complex and oppressive social worlds.
The real tragedy of the Mortenson news is that it may make Americans not more knowledgeable but more cynical. “Why can’t there be at least one morally correct person in the world?” asked one YouTube poster on the 60 Minutes segment. “Just one person who can selflessly do the right thing, change the world for the better, and not be a jerk about it?” Poignant question, but the answer is: there are lots of such people. Afghanistan and Pakistan have many honest, energetic and creative aid workers, including many locals—they just don’t get the celebrity media treatment or the celebrity-sized budgets. The Afghan Women’s Fund, run by the Afghan expatriate Fahima Vorgetts, builds and supports schools, runs literacy classes and income-generating projects for women, digs wells in parched villages and much more—on around $120,000 a year. Think what it could do with just one of CAI’s wasted millions! Lauryn Oates, of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (cw4wafghan.ca), told me the real Afghan education problem isn’t bricks and mortar; it’s finding qualified teachers—especially women. “The majority have no postsecondary education at all, or maybe didn’t even finish high school. We have high school math teachers who don’t know long division.” Besides doing other important projects, such as running literacy classes in places where there is zero literacy, her group has trained more than 1,800 already working teachers since 2008. Its annual budget? Around $800,000.
Upgrading teachers, providing textbooks and science labs, persuading parents to let their daughters go to high school—it may not be as exciting as building a school with a white star on it and an inspiring salvation myth behind it. But it’s what works.
SNIP
“I am heartbroken over the scandal,” Vorgetts e-mailed me from Afghanistan. “Not because he lied but because he jeopardized our work.” (Donate to Afghan Women’s Fund at WAW/AWF c/o Mary Ellen Bobb, 978 Yachtsman Way, Annapolis, MD 21403.)
This is exactly what the Koch brothers and all the other billionaires want: the poor and the scared-to-become-poor fighting each other instead of joining forces to fight their real enemy.
No, all you middle-class office drones, you are not in any way superior to people who - as a result of having been less fortunate in life's big gamble than you - must accept help from their fellow citizens in order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Bon the Geek at Zandar's place:
Normally, I am against drug testing, but this is an exception to my rule. Drug testing to work at a hobby store or file papers? Stupid. Drug testing before allowing someone to sit on their privileged ass while I work for a living? I dig it big time. The thing that makes it fair and effective is it gives the people who are addicted a chance. What they do with it is up to them, but the working poor are given the ability to decide which is more important to them. It's this sort of tough love that will reach the people who put forth the effort while denying benefits to those who do not. I realize addiction is a disease, but I also see the stupidity in our welfare system supplying the drug dealers that victimize the poor. Something has gotta give, and in this case it has to start with the people funding the problem. It's not ideal, but nothing about this situation is ideal. Meth is ravaging our country like a cancer, and this is a way to cut the abuse of financial aid and hit the manufacturers in the wallet where it hurts the most.In direct response, I commented (slightly edited for clarity):
Nope. A "less sophisticated test" is one far more likely to produce false-positives. One false-positive and Mom's off TANF and food stamps and thrown in jail. Even if she is taking drugs, are you going to take her kids in and raise them for the three or four years that is the average time for permanent drug rehab (including the standard two or three lapses)?Now that I've had time to stew and get really pissed off, I'll add this:
Any testing of recipients of government benefits is constitutional only if it tests ALL recipients of government benefits, including us middle-class takers of the homeownership deduction, upper middle-class takers of the charitable deduction, wealthy takers of investment deductions, corporate takers of subsidies for fossil fuels, agriculture, finance or anything else, and oh yeah - religious takers of the tax exemption.
Drug test all of THEM every year on April 15, THEN we'll talk about the disabled people and single parents "sitting on their privileged asses" while we work at our middle-class office jobs.
Civility just ain't gonna cut it. @PZ Myers:
Ellen Lewin is a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Iowa. Like all of us, she is constantly dunned with email announcing this, that, and the other thing at our universities, and sometimes we get email that makes our blood boil. In this case, she got mail from the College Republicans, announcing a "coming out" party (like Republicans in the midwest are a closeted and oppressed minority…) that featured some hagiographic movie about George W. Bush (that ignorant ass), an "animal rights barbecue" and other such joyful shenanigans to celebrate the party of morons and thugs and self-destructive ideologues.All together now: FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS
Ellen Lewin had enough. Ellen Lewin got angry. Ellen Lewin fired off a one-sentence reply.
FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS.
I think I'm in love with Ellen Lewin.
She later apologized for losing her temper — and I can sympathize with that, too — but I hope she never backs down in her righteous contemptuous opinion of the Republican party. I share it. I think her response was relatively mild.
Now, of course, the right-wingers are outraged. How dare she disagree loudly with an entire party of mouth-breathing, sanctimonious idiots? Read the Free Republic for examples of their response; the first comment sarcastically complains that "Liberals are SO CLASSY!!", and then the rest, with no sense of irony, posts a picture of her and proceeds to call her a "pervert", a "lesbian", a "cow", a "demonic lesbian demon", a "bitter, old, ugly, lesbian with a hairy lip", and suggests that she has sex with dogs.
And more! Those delicate little flowers, the College Republicans, are so hurt by her unkind words that they are filing an official complaint.
SNIP
It wasn't civil or respectful (although turning a brief outburst into a case of harassment and a "string of emails" is a bit much). But you know what? I approve of incivility and disrespect towards organizations that deserve it, and the Republican party is currently the party of know-nothings, hypocrites, liars, and greed — it's the stagnant, festering slime towards which all the worst elements of society now gravitate. The problem isn't college professors snarling at them, it's that the party itself encourages short-sightedness, idiocy, and hatefulness. So, until the grown-ups wake up and clean out the bigotry and ignorance from their own house, I think it's only fair for us to air our vigorous disgust with them.
I stand in solidarity with Ellen Lewin.
FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS.
And don't you let anybody tell you any different.
karoli at Crooks and Liars:
I want you to hear Baratunde Thurston's heartfelt messag to Donald Trump and the media who enabled him. Be forewarned, it's NSFW in places. While it will likely have no effect on those who most need to hear the message, it had a profound impact on me, and I think it will have one on you, too.Read the whole thing.
In his intro he writes this:
I then thought of this fetid, smug, hate-filled, wealthy white man taking credit for the release and yet still not being satisfied. It does not matter how long we’ve been in these United States. We will never be American.I was especially moved by his direct message to Donald Trump, a man who "was given everything" and lives the life he does with the freedom to do what he did because he was given everything.
I don't want to hear about The Apprentice. I don't want to hear about your new cologne. I don't want to hear about the new tower you're building in whatever f--king town.
That cologne smells of racism. That tower is built on the blood of disrespected slaves and freedom fighters. And that show is merely a showcase for the dishonor you have brought on anyone who would call themselves an American.
Yes, I will be watching Keith - NOT Lawrence - at 8 p.m on Current, and switching back to MSNBC to watch Rachel at 9 p.m.
The NYT:
Keith Olbermann formally announced the start date and the name for his new program on Current TV Tuesday – and it sounds a lot like the old program on MSNBC.
At least the title and the location on the prime-time schedule do. In a presentation on his Web site, FOK News Channel, Mr. Olbermann declared, with some fanfare, that the new show will be called “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” just as his previous show on MSNBC was, and it will begin on June 20 at his old time of 8 p.m. eastern.
If expropriating the title was not enough of a tweak to his former employers at MSNBC, in the video of his announcement on the Web site (FOK stands for “Friends of Keith” but is also an obvious play on his old rivalry with the Fox News Channel,) Mr. Olbermann also declared that this show, which he several times labeled a “newscast,” will be a place where “journalistic integrity and analytical honesty would never be compromised by corporate synergy.”
An MSNBC spokesman said the network would not comment on Mr. Olbermann’s decision to import the “Countdown” title.
Mr. Olbermann was once suspended by MSNBC for making contributions to Democratic candidates, and found himself embroiled in a corporate stand-off between the then-owners of MSNBC, the General Electric Company, and the owner of the Fox News Channel, News Corporation. Executives on both sides sought to tamp down the often vitriolic commentary back and forth between Mr. Olbermann and the Fox News host, Bill O’Reilly.
In his announcement, Mr. Olbermann also all but disdained the notion of journalistic balance, saying that on his new show “no one would proclaim the ultimate dishonesty that balancing a lie for every truth was somehow fair.”
Current TV has a much lower audience base that MSNBC. The channel averages fewer than 25,000 viewers in prime time; at MSNBC Mr. Olbermann often commanded audiences exceeding 1 million.
The channel’s executives have called Mr. Olbermann the best investment they have ever made. (His salary has not been disclosed, but he was granted an equity stake in Current, along with a management role.)
Mr. Olbermann emphasized how central he will be to the future of the channel, noting that the new “Countdown” will be shown three times a night, at 8, 11 and 2 a.m. Eastern Time.
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