Occupy Wall Street: Outing the Ringers
Jay Smooth has some cool things to say about this movement.
Open Letter to that 53% Guy
Max Udargo on the Daily Kos delivers a great response to to the guy calling people whiners for not working 70 hours a week, and telling people to “suck it up” and stop blaming Wall Street. Read the whole response, because it’s worth it. But this particular bit stuck out to me (emphasis mine):
Here’s how a liberal looks at it: a long time ago workers in this country realized that industrialization wasn’t making their lives better, but worse. The captains of industry were making a ton of money and living a merry life far away from the dirty, dangerous factories they owned, and far away from the even dirtier and more dangerous mines that fed raw materials to those factories.
The workers quickly decided that this arrangement didn’t work for them. If they were going to work as cogs in machines designed to build wealth for the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies, they wanted a cut. They wanted a share of the wealth that they were helping create. And that didn’t mean just more money; it meant a better quality of life. It meant reasonable hours and better working conditions.
Eventually, somebody came up with the slogan, “8 hours of work, 8 hours of leisure, 8 hours of sleep” [note from Steph: I never heard this before. I like it!] to divide the 24-hour day into what was considered a fair allocation of a human’s time. It wasn’t a slogan that was immediately accepted. People had to fight to put this standard in place. People demonstrated, and fought with police, and were killed. They were called communists (in fairness, some of them were), and traitors, and many of them got a lot worse than pepper spray at the hands of police and private security.
But by the time we got through the Great Depression and WWII, we’d all learned some valuable lessons about working together and sharing the prosperity, and the 8-hour workday became the norm.
The 8-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek became a standard by which we judged our economic success, and a reality check against which we could verify the American Dream.If a family could live a good life with one wage-earner working a 40-hour job, then the American Dream was realized. If the income from that job could pay the bills, buy a car, pay for the kids’ braces, allow the family to save enough money for a down payment on a house and still leave some money for retirement and maybe for a college fund for the kids, then we were living the American Dream. The workers were sharing in the prosperity they helped create, and they still had time to take their kids to a ball game, take their spouses to a movie, and play a little golf on the weekends.
Robert Reich Debunks 6 Big GOP Lies About The Economy
Worth watching. The lies are these – (watch the video to see how he debunks them):
- Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will trickle down to benefit the middle class and the poor. Corporations are having higher profits now than we have seen in 35 years. Ratio of profits to wages is higher now than it ever has been since before the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)
- High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)
- Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)
- Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)
- We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any “tax reform” needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)
Michele and Marcus Bachmann on Homosexuality
Republican front-runner Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus put the rumors of their anti-gay therapy clinic to rest.
Michele and Marcus Bachmann on Homosexuality – watch more funny videos
Stand with Planned Parenthood
Please take a few moments to go and sign this petition against defunding Planned Parenthood:
After months of budget negotiations, extreme anti-choice members of Congress are trying to force a shutdown of the federal government. This shutdown is not about disagreements over spending or taxes — it’s about a single-minded vendetta against Planned Parenthood and a cruel determination to cut women off from reproductive health care.
We cannot let this vengeful, narrow-minded assault on Planned Parenthood and the people we serve continue. We urgently need your action right now. Add your name to the letter we are sending Representative Boehner and his extreme colleagues today. Fill out the form at right to take action.
Federal money to Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics goes to providing contraceptive services, sex ed, STI and HIV testing, and cervical cancer screenings. It doesn’t go to abortion – that is prevented by the Hyde Amendment. This is about basic women’s healthcare, and is truly a right-wing radical agenda.
links for 2011-03-13
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Crazy-ass Missouri Republican wants to repeal child labor laws and put kids to work. Barking mad, I tell you. What is the world coming to? Busting labor unions and putting kids to work – this is outright class warfare.
I don’t get it at all
A Democratic congressperson was SHOT in the head. Six people were killed. And the media is STILL allowing things to be said like “We don’t know the motivation of the shooter?” We don’t? Because *I* do. I follow politics, and I’m not an idiot – I can see exactly what happened here.
And Republicans in Arizona are criticizing the Pima county sheriff for going on television and TELLING THE TRUTH about what is going on in Arizona.
They have to be KIDDING. This is their doing. They have blood on their hands, and they are criticizing the sheriff? The nerve. The gall. The brazenness of it. I can’t believe it.
I actually heard a pundit on a news program claim that “the same vitriol came from left during the last administration.”
REALLY? People were threatening to SHOOT Republicans? To “Exercise their second amendment remedies?” WHEN? Where? I defy you to tell me when this happened. Because it never did. This shit is ONLY COMING FROM THE RIGHT. And now that it’s come to fruition, all the threats – they need to own it. To acknowledge it an apologize.
And the calls for civility? No way. I’m not being civil. They started the violence. I don’t have to be nice about it. I have to be angry about it.
Republicans block child nutrition, Catholics protest gay portrait exhibit
An update on things famous assholes are doing to wreck your life. First – more on the GOP being assholes to poor people:
Republicans block child nutrition bill
WASHINGTON – House Republicans have temporarily blocked legislation to feed school meals to thousands more hungry children. Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to try to amend the $4.5 billion bill, which would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier.
House Democrats said the GOP amendment, which would have required background checks for child care workers, was an effort to kill the bill and delayed a final vote on the legislation rather than vote on the amendment.
Because the nutrition bill is identical to legislation passed by the Senate in August, passage would send it to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature. If the bill were amended, it would be sent back to the Senate with little time left in the legislative session.
And while that’s going on, our old friend William Donohue is up to his old anti-gay hatred:
VIA NPR – Smithsonian Under Fire For Gay Portraiture Exhibit
The Smithsonian Institution is under fire for an exhibition called Hide/Seek that is being touted as the “first major exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture.”There are some very famous artists represented in the show: Andy Warhol, Walt Whitman and Jasper Johns, among many others. But the work that so far has been the most controversial is a provocative video from 1987 by the late artist David Wojnarowicz called A Fire In My Belly.
Martin Sullivan, director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, says the artist created the piece as a response to the “agony and suffering” of his partner who at the time was dying of AIDS. Using “vivid colors, and some fairly grotesque scenes, it’s more a meditation on the fragility of the human flesh,” Sullivan says.
But included in that meditation is a crucifix — a cross bearing the body of Christ — crawling with ants. The image, according to Catholic League President Bill Donohue, is offensive. He calls the video “hate speech” and says that “the Smithsonian would never have their little ants crawling all over an image of Muhammad.”
Donohue says he complained to members of Congress and the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. “My principle is very simple,” he says, “If it’s wrong for the government to take the taxpayers’ money to promote religion, why is it OK to take taxpayers’ money to assault religion?”
We don’t need taxpayer money to assault Donohue’s religion – I’ll do it for free! Leave the arts alone, you noxious windbag of hate.
These losers are voting
And they hope you aren’t. Vote in this years’ election on November 2nd.
For Marion County voters in Indiana, you can vote early – here’s the info:
Clerk’s Office, 200 E. Washington St., W-122
Begins: Monday, October 4
Ends: Monday, November 1 (at noon)
Weekday Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,
Weekend Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sat. & Sun.
They have weekend hours, folks, so no excuses.
If you don’t vote, Susan B. Anthony will cry. You don’t want that, do you?
Also, Alice Paul will picket your house, then have a hunger strike.
Frederick Douglass will deliver a fiery speech from your front porch. It will be awesome, but also embarrassing in front of the neighbors.
Health care reform changes go online today
Democrats.org provides an overview of the changes that go into affect today – helping me and thousands of other Americans with direct, real changes. Bold text indicates changes that affect me personally, italics highlights changes that affect people I know.
This week marks six-months since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law–enacting one of the most sweeping reforms in a generation. Starting today, several important aspects of this historic law take effect. Among those provisions is the Patient’s Bill of Rights, which ends the worst abuses of the health insurance industry and empowers consumers with greater control over their health care. Beginning today, the new law:
- Prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to children on the basis of a pre-existing condition, extending coverage to as many as 72,000 uninsured children;
- Prohibits insurance companies from taking away health coverage from those who need it most, protecting more than 10,000 folks who would have lost coverage because of rescission;
- Prohibits insurance companies from imposing lifetime limits and restricts annual limits on health coverage and hospital stays;
- Allows individuals who purchase new health insurance to choose their own doctor within their network and visit the closest hospital that has the Mini C-Arm in an emergency;
- Requires new health plans must have free preventive care such as free mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations, and pre-natal care;
- Allows young people under the age of 26 can now stay on their parents’ insurance longer, which could mean coverage for up to 2.4 million Americans who previously wouldn’t have health care;
- Empowers Americans to challenge insurance companies’ denial of coverage or treatment to an independent third party.
In addition, the Affordable Care Act has begun to close the Medicare prescription “donut hole,” increases payments for Medicaid providers to expand vital health care for the nearly 50 million Americans who live in rural areas, and will extend health coverage to an estimated 400,000 Americans with pre-existing conditions.
For people like me who have had expensive health procedures, that lifetime cap was a huge stressor – you find yourself questioning whether you should go to the doctor for any procedure, lest they find something wrong that would cost so much that you’d end up without any coverage as you get older, and you think things like – “I can just suffer through this, so I don’t rack up my insurance bill.” That’s a terrible way to have to look at life.
When you’re going to vote in November, keep in mind that almost every Republican has pledged to attempt to repeal these health care reforms – they won’t be able to do it, but they’re running on trying to.