First Draft

Government Help at the End of the World

Jon Armstrong pulls something out here that I missed when this article originally made the rounds with all the quick and easy commentary that a) conservatives are inherently fact-free and b) as long as a white person's getting it, it's not REALLY welfare. That's all in there, too, but honestly, lately I'm sitting here staring at my screen just waiting for something different to say because of course, and it's all hateful, and I am having such a hard time with everything being hateful things we know all about already. I can't tell you. And from this, it sounds like a lot of other people are, too:

Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

They don't want less help. They want to NEED less help, which means they want things to be easier. And they're not wrong. I feel like this whole country just needs a goddamn nap. Like if we could just shut everything up for about 24 hours, let everybody get enough sleep and a sandwich, and then try this again. The economy, the unwinnable and clandestine wars, the presidential campaign, the health care fight, all of it. Gas prices, I mean, and how much a gallon of milk costs.

And this isn't about technology or "the pace of life these days" or kids with their iPods or whatever. This about things that shouldn't be fights being fights: Being paid fairly for the work you do, being able to buy food to feed your family, being able to see a doctor when you get sick, being able to take care of yourself when you're old. Has anybody noticed that our culture, lately, is obsessed with the end of the world? I see where it's coming from. Everybody is just so tired.

So what's the answer? A lot of people are ready to burn the whole fucking place down and dance around the flames. If you say you've neve thought about it, you're a liar to me or yourself and it doesn't matte which. A lot of people are ready to tear the safety net down, take us back to some place they imagine that this shit was handled without them having to think about it, as if begging in the streets wasn't something that in the timeline of the universe was the snap of two fingers ago. A lot of people would like to put a government in place with the express instruction to clap our national hands over our ears and yell LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

The trouble I think is the impulse to shame, to make "assistance" and "need" into things that give someone else the upper hand over you. We take that shame and we give it the power to stop us getting what we need, and we divorce "government" from "that thing we pay for with our taxes" and make each other the enemy that way. I'm just kind of thining out loud here. We've made compassion a weakness, and so anyone showing us compassion makes us weak or evil, and our own need just becomes one more burden to us.

One more thing to carry, when we're already bent under the weight of the world as it is.

A.

Lunch is for Closers

Ugh: 

The bill’s sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. “If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don’t think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,” he said.

Of course, not every employer can be counted to to follow even the easiest of requirements to look after workers’ health and rights. Back in 2005, Walmart was forced to pay $172 million for denying workers their lunch breaks. Pyramid Breweries Inc. settled a case in 2008 for $1.5 million. Just a few months ago, California ordered Embassy Suites to pay workers tens of thousands of dollars for forcing them to skip breaks.

WHY STOP HERE, GUYS? I swear, somebody needs to tell these people that the first couple pages of A Christmas Carol are not, you know, an instruction manual. 

A. 

We Will Now All Be Equally Screwed

YAY! 

Bertolini is just one of tens of thousands of public workers in Wisconsin without union contracts who have faced reduced buying power in the wake of Gov. Scott Walker's landmark legislation — unveiled one year ago this week — to balance the budget by curtailing union collective bargaining and extracting financial concessions from workers.

Private sector workers have lost jobs and suffered pay and benefit cuts in recent years, and many are used to going without pensions, paying into retirement accounts and paying more for health insurance. But the erosion in public worker benefits happened suddenly, prompting massive protests at the Capitol, sparking recall efforts against Walker and lawmakers and transforming the state into a national battleground over the future of unions.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie blamed the budgeting practices of previous administrations, and said the higher insurance premiums and pension contributions prevented layoffs while keeping taxes down, cutting state costs at a rate of $308 million a year. Another $65 million in annual savings are expected from higher health care co-pays that started Jan. 1, Werwie said.

"Asking government employees to contribute to a portion of their pension and health care costs, far less than the average person in the private sector pays, helped keep thousands of workers on the job, while thousands of Wisconsinites have seen property tax relief for the first time in years," Werwie said.

The "shared sacrifices" brought government more in line with private business, said Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon.

"Although it's tough, it's also been tough on the private sector, people who are unemployed now," Fitzgerald said. "Obviously, it's a highly charged issue."

You guys, it's so much better now that NOBODY is protected in any way. It's so great. See, the point is to make a society in which everybody (except for like five guys who run stuff) is equally screwed. That way a maintenance worker can't give a teacher any shit for his fantastic salary, because he's just as bad off as she is. And an office park dweller has no pension, but it's okay, because neither does the guy who processes his unemployment claims! PROBLEM SOLVED! It's like magic how that works. 

A. 

Today in Total Nitwittery

If you own a toaster oven, you are not poor: 

Poverty in America is certainly a serious problem, but the plight of the poor has been moderated by advances in the economy. Between 1970 and 2010, the net worth of American households more than doubled, as did the number of television sets and air-conditioning units per home. In his book "The Poverty of the Poverty Rate," Nicholas Eberstadt shows that over the past 30 or so years, the percentage of low-income children in the United States who are underweight has gone down, the share of low-income households lacking complete plumbing facilities has declined, and the area of their homes adequately heated has gone up. The fraction of poor households with a telephone, a television set and a clothes dryer has risen sharply.

In other words, the country has become more prosperous, as measured not by income but by consumption: In constant dollars, consumption by people in the lowest quintile rose by more than 40 percent over the past four decades.

Income as measured by the federal government is not a reliable indicator of well-being, but consumption is. Though poverty is a problem, it has become less of one.

Look. I am not saying that there aren't degrees here, and that by and large somebody living without INDOOR PLUMBING in 20FUCKING11 isn't worse off than somebody who has it, but can we please stop with "your lack of income is not a problem if you have a waffle iron?" This line of thinking is a cousin to all those dicks who saw Slumdog Millionaire and were like, "Poor people in America have nothing to complain about har har har." 

Jude and I were talking about this recently, about just how few truly rich people have ever been to a second-hand store and know that you can get an air conditioner or a microwave for ten bucks. They might suck and be old, but they will be an air conditioner and a microwave and thus prove to this cockyank that you are not THAT poor. Not really poor. Not Charles Dickens/Appalachia movies poor. 

Some apartments come with a washer/dryer. They're still not mansions. Some apartments come with air conditioners. Doesn't make them summer homes in the Caymans. I used to live in a place that was billed "luxury apartments" and once a friend came to visit and was all "ooh, fancy!" until I drove her around and showed her that all the apartment complexes in the area said "luxury," regardless of how small/weird they were. And even if "luxury" meant something special (one place did have wood-burning fireplaces, which was kind of nice) it still wouldn't make me Donald Trump. 

American views about inequality have not changed much in the past quarter-century. In their 2009 book "Class War? What Americans Really Think About Economic Inequality," political scientists Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs report that big majorities, including poor people, agree that "it is 'still possible' to start out poor in this country, work hard, and become rich," and reject the view that it is the government's job to narrow the income gap.

BUT IT'S NOT THE GOVERNMENT'S JOB TO KEEP WIDENING IT, EITHER, WHICH IS THE WHOLE POINT YOU KITCHEN APPLIANCE. 

A. 

What We Can Afford

This one burns a little hotter than all the other rage-inducing hippie-punching poor-hating nonsense coming out of Wisconsin's legislature on a daily basis: 

In the Wisconsin Legislative session of 2009-2010, a bill passed both the Senate and Assembly providing health insurance to the families of firefighters killed in the line of duty.  For reasons unknown to me, police officers were not included in this legislation.  However, in May of 2011, a bipartisan effort led by Republican Senator Van Wanggaard and Democratic Senator Bob Jauch sought to remedy this.  Senate Bill 18 added the health insurance protection to the surviving spouses and children of Wisconsin's fallen law enforcement officers, retroactively.  The bill passed the Senate on May 17, 2011 by unanimous vote.

[snip]

At the last minute, the Republican legislators in control of the Assembly blocked the bill from being brought to a vote.  BLOCKED the bill that unanimously passed the Senate.  From what I have discovered, the Birkholz family was given the choice of coming to the Capitol for the resolution only, but understandably opted not to attend. In a horrendous display of partisan politics in what should have been a unifying issue, John Jagler, spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, called SB 18 an "unfunded mandate" on local governments that "isn't ready to become law."  

An unfunded mandate? Okay, I'll play. An unfunded mandate is a bad thing, let's stipulate. 

THEN FIND A WAY TO FUND THE THING. You know, like we do for wars, tax incentives for corporate headquarters construction, festivals and parties for rich people, and the goddamn fireworks. Find the money. You don't want your taxes going to the freeloading families of dead cops? Fine. Find a sponsor. Maybe one of those corporations we're handing out free money to can kick in the necessary amount. But don't just sit there and say oh, it's too hard, let's just kick back and bitch about how we can't do anything for people who sign up to GET KILLED IN OUR DEFENSE anymore. Take it away, Journal-Sentinel commenters! 

This is another perfect example of a feel-good idea that we simply cannot afford. Giving this kind of benefit to surviving spouses, which happens nowhere except in the public sector, is the kind of spending that has gotten us to the point we're at now - nearly bankrupt.

A feel-good idea. That's what health insurance for other people is. A feel-good idea. Yep. It does in fact feel good to take care of people who've suffered an unimaginable tragedy in defense of the public. You know why it feels good? BECAUSE IT IS GOOD. That's a sign that we should DO it. That impulse that tells you what the right thing to do is? You LISTEN to that. You don't take it out behind the barn and kick it to death. 

I feel like we could all use a refresher course in this right here: In the past 10 years we have managed to find the money for massive tax breaks for wealthy people, two unwinnable wars, a bunch of drone attacks to blow up stuff in a couple of other countries, secret service protection for various morons running for office or actually in it, and yes, the president's vacations. In Wisconsin alone millions of dollars are going to go to companies that do what they're already supposed to do, which is hire people to do stuff. 

But we can't afford to give health insurance to the families of people who die serving the public. That, we can't pay for. That's fiscally irresponsible. That's an unfunded mandate. That's a bridge too far. And lest we get all crazy about "well, my family doesn't have that guarantee," hey, guess what. The point of us as people is not to make sure everybody's life sucks just as much as yours sucks. The point of us as people is to make things better. 

So light 'em up: 

The following politicians are responsible for the failure to bring this bill to a vote.  Please send them emails on behalf of Ashley Birkholz and the families of Wisconsin's other fallen heroes, and ask everyone you know to do the same.  Please spend 5 minutes of your time serving those who sacrificed their lives serving us. Demand of these legislators that they bring this important piece of legislation to an immediate vote. 

Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald: Rep.Fitzgerald@legis.wisconsin.gov

Representative Bill Kramer: Rep.Kramer@legis.wisconsin.gov

Representative Dan Knodl: Rep.Knodl@legis.wisconsin.gov

Representative Joan Ballweg: Rep.Ballweg@legis.wisconsin.gov

Representative Mary Williams: Rep.WilliamsM@legis.wisconsin.gov

Representative Samantha Kerkman: Rep.Kerkman@legis.wisconsin.gov

 

A. 

Hastening the Pitchfork-Wielding Mobs

Clearly this would never have happened if we had given this guy the tax cuts he needed.

A. 

Story Fatigue

The public wants better news than it's getting: 

Even during weeks when the economy was the top story, interest surpassed coverage. For example, the week of Dec. 8, 41 percent of people said they were following the economy very closely; it was 13 percent of coverage that week. From Dec. 15-18, 36 percent said they were following it closely; it was 10 percent of coverage.

But hey, let's talk more about abortion, gay marriage, Newt's wives, Obama's birth certificate, who "won" a debate, what video is "sweeping like wildfire across the Internet" and for fuck's sake, the motherfucking weather: 

Keep stats like the above handy for when somebody is boring on in a column about how the all-powerful news media is simultaneously powerless to resist the desires of the masses for cheese and stupidity. 

A. 

'Do not sit beside me and whine'

One of my favorite mythological stories is that of Ares, god of war, returning from the battlefield at Troy. He was wounded in the fight and complained about it to his father, Zeus.

Dad’s response was logical and predictable:

'Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar.
To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympos.
Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles.

Republicans love war, but only when they’re winning and when they’re not getting hurt.

Or when the war doesn’t involve complicated things, like, you know, words.

Billionaire Warren Buffett recently upped the ante on his earlier claims that he wanted to be taxed more. In an interview with Time Magazine, Buffett said he’d be willing to match dollar-for-dollar all contributions Republican legislators made that would go toward paying down the national debt.

He called out Sen. Mitch McConnell, adding, “I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell.”

McConnell is worth about $10 million. He’s the senior senator from Kentucky and the leader of the senate minority.  He’s probably also getting a ton of likeness rights cash from Cabbage Patch Kids people, so a challenge like this shouldn’t be a huge problem.

And yet, this was the response from some literacy-challenged email monkey in McConnell’s office:

Sen. McConnell says that Washington should be smaller, rather than taxes getting bigger. And since some, like President Obama and Mr. Buffett, want to pay higher taxes, Congress made it possible for them to call their own bluff and send in a check. So I look forward to Mr. Buffett matching a healthy batch of checks from those who actually want to pay higher taxes, including Congressional Democrats, the President and the DNC.

The response, of course, makes no sense as a) Buffett said he’d match Republican contributions, not those from Democrats, b) the three sentence statement switches from third to first person at least once and c) ignores the fact Buffett isn’t proposing a tax, but rather a donation to pay down the debt.

I wanted to tell McConnell to grow some balls, but I realized that would be insulting to the ball-less everywhere. My grandmother is tougher, stronger and more aware of the debt situation than McConnell and she’s been dead for 10 years.  

Republicans have made a living on the “get tough” ideology. In fact, they’ve adopted the word “tough” as a standard for keeping themselves in office. They want to get tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on illegal immigrants, tough on foreign powers, tough on toughness…

And yet when someone actually gets tough on them, they scurry like roaches when the lights come on.

In Wisconsin this week, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald filed a complaint with the GAB, arguing that the people who are attempting to recall him got an extra day to collect signatures. Of course, this is horseshit, as the GAB explained the rules back in November, explaining how the clock worked and when signatures were due.

Did Fitzgerald bitch then? Nah.

It’s only now that it looked likely that he’d be told to squeal like a pig that he’s pitching a fit. Or, as one volunteer put it, acting like “the kid who's not winning at Monopoly throwing the board up at the end."

(And of course, the folks trying to recall him just made a “Thanks but no thanks on that extra day. We can recall this asshole now” press statement on Friday.)

For McConnell and Fitzgerald and the other members of the Usual Gang of Idiots, it’s great fun when you’re running the show, calling the shots and demanding things of other people. When someone turns the tables, especially when you think there’s NO WAY that could happen, it’s going to suck.

When you decide to fight that way, though, you need to be able to dish it out and take it.

Stop Helping

If only we'll give them just one more tax break, this time they won't piss it all away. 

"Sears Holdings Corp. plans to close between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores to raise cash after a weak holiday shopping season for the retailer," AP reports.

"The closings fueled speculation about whether the 125-year-old retailer can turn itself around."

I wonder if Quinn - and the Illinois General Assembly - knew that Sears was (supposedly) banking the futures of 120 stores on Christmas shopping under catastrophic economic conditions whenhe signed more than $150 million in tax breaks to the company into law under cover of darkness two Fridays ago.

You know, I do get that there are things government can do to reward businesses that genuinely create jobs and improve the local tax base. Public infrastructure improvements, for example, that make a location more attractive: We're gonna come here but you have to have the roads to support us. 

But this constant practice of massive tax incentive packages doesn't actually help the targeted company any more than it helps the community, because if you relocate a business you need the cops to patrol it and the schools to educate the children of employees and money to keep the streetlights on. Without all that, you're left with someplace not even the CEO wants to live. 

A. 

Gaming the System

Via the Crack Den, I just cannot fathom that this is the conversation: 

About 230,000 retailers nationwide participate in the SNAP program, with about 80 percent of funds spent at larger grocery chains. But officials said several smaller retailers often fraudulently obtain PIN or card numbers from program beneficiaries and keep the funds without the person’s knowledge. In the last decade, USDA has disqualified more than 8,300 retailers for such fraud, officials said.

In other cases, beneficiaries who receive monthly deposits of food aid on to plastic cards similar to bank cards intentionally use SNAP benefits to purchase water or other beverages with bottle deposits, dump the liquid and then obtain cash for bottle deposits. Others attempt to sell SNAP benefits in exchange for cash on Craigslist and social media sites.

Notice there's no number on the latter.

Let's get this out of the way first: everyone who is stealing things right now, stop, proceed to the nearest police station, and turn yourself in.

That being said, there is literally nothing a food stamp recipient could do with his or her benefits that would offend me enough to launch a full-scale witch hunt through the program, not while Dick Cheney is walking around free. Until that rat bastard is hanging upside down in chains like a fucking vampire bat, you could not pay me in either food stamps OR cash to get excited about somebody who is demonstrably fucked enough to be on food stamps doing anything with them at all.

I mean it, you cannot possibly, and I know, okay, this one guy your cousin knows saw something once at a store, but somewhere along the line here we have forgotten as a society how not to get worked up about people doing what people are going to do. There is no system somebody can't game. Therefore you can either make yourself insane with anecdoctal scare-tactic journalism and the predictable nitwitted response, or you can say, look, 80 percent of this cash is going where it is supposed to anyway, the sucky retailers are being tracked down, and if somebody is poor enough to be buying six packs and turning in the bottles for cash maybe there are other problems I should get to before I yell at him for being, frankly, pretty damn creative about trying to fucking survive.

As I say when we discuss gun control, we are never going to implement Stupidity Control. We are never going to be able to come up with a system that doesn't wind up benefitting somebody who just wants heroin. So we either let that person's story become the reason nobody gets to eat, or we let him have his heroin, chill the fuck out, and the 98 percent of people who need hotdogs for their kids get hotdogs for their kids without the food gestapo crawling all over their receipts from the fucking Kwik Trip.

At least until we have Dick Cheney under guard somewhere.

A.

 

Charlie Sykes is a Lazy Ignoramus

Wisconsin wingnut Charlie Sykes, as usual, has no idea what the fuck he's blithering about. 

Most apartments, even crappy ones, have at least a small shitty air conditioner and many will have a small, shitty microwave. Which incidentally you can buy both from a secondhand store for almost nothing, or get off Craigslist, or garbage-pick for when summer is over. 

But this isn't about the actual stuff or how life really works out here or what we consider poor. You see, if you can police someone else's choices, then you don't have to think about the system in which they made those choices. If you can carefully assure yourself that you, virtuous you, in that scenario would forgo a microwave or an air conditioner in order to, I don't know, see, this is why this is so fucking dumb. If you take that money and you spend it on food or rent or gas, you're still poor. Poor isn't about what you buy, it's about your income level relative to the surroundings. 

This is the same lousy excuse-making that runs around investigating people's countertops to see if they could afford health insurance, the same lousy excuse-making that's not about the person being attacked at all. It's about how Charlie, like most people who've never worried about making the rent or having the car repossessed, has to come up with a reason not to give a shit about anybody else, and this is it.

That they have microwaves, and air conditioning. If they'd just give those up, they'd either be magically rich like Charlie, or they'd be poor enough, surely, that we could feel sorry for them without reservation. Surely then we wouldn't be able to come up with any other reasons at all that they don't deserve our consideration. 

A. 

Black Friday's Instigators

I don’t do Black Friday. I’m hideously claustrophobic and large crowds often set off my I’M TRAPPED MUST GET OUT OMG STABBITY reflex, so pretty much from now until Christmas my shopping will be confined to stores in my ‘hood and online.

However, I have relatives who go out at the crack of dawn and take care of their whole list off those sales, who prep all week to line up at 10 p.m. and come home at 3 a.m. having had one hell of a good time. I don’t really have a cat in the Authenticity Olympics here, and I find the endless bitching about Black Friday almost as irritating as the ritual itself.

Every year someone behaves like a rampaging rhinoceros in a store, every year someone is injured or killed, and ever year we fill the airwaves with glib jokes about fat stupid Wal-mart people and Facebook cracks about how our society is doomed because somebody wanted a TV and commentary about “those people” and how they don’t truly understand the meaning of Christmas like they should.

Here’s the thing. It’s easy to shame the nutjobs who behave badly, like the woman in the video who pepper-sprayed people, or the shoppers who kick or punch or trample, or those who just plain yell and shove like assholes. We can all shake our heads in disgust at people crowding in for $2 waffle irons and talking cartoon character dolls and whatever else; by and large the people in those videos are lower- to middle-class, not very attractive, and they are actually behaving badly. Obligatory disclaimer: Please do not pepper-spray anyone in a store to get to a cheap toy because that is bad.

A conversation we’re not at all willing to have is who encourages them to show up at the crack of dawn, camp out, crowd around, and go bonkers when the doors open? Who runs the deals that create a frenzy, and who feeds that frenzy? Who knows damn well after how many years of this that if you offer people a break on something for their kids during the worst economy in the history of the world, more than, say, five decorous ladies in car coats gonna show up and take advantage?

We don’t see much discussion of whether Best Buy and Wal-mart and other big-box stores should treat the day after Thanksgiving like something other than tryouts for the Packers’ offensive line. Whether they should be kicking campers out of their parking lots, off their sidewalks, telling them to go home to their families. Whether they should let their own damn employees have a holiday for once, and not knock them awake at midnight to be there for the 2 a.m. rush. What responsibility they bear, for deliberately creating an unsafe situation and then acting very sad and disappointed in society when people show up and act in a less than safe manner.

It’s hard to have that talk, because it turns into one about valuing profits over safety, and that’s class warfare after all. Easier to blame the people buying all the cheap electronics and maybe hurting each other along the way, than the people pricing and selling the stuff in the first place.

A.

x-posted at Firedoglake

 

In The Jar

Jurassic Pork could use some spare cash, if you have any lying around. 

This economy ain't getting no better. 

A. 

Crashing By Design

The Congressional stupor committee has failed to reach a "bipartisan compromise." As far as I'm concerned, that means they've succeeded: instead of puny tax increases and punitive spending cuts, if nothing else happens, the Bush tax cuts will expire in 2013. That, in turn, means a return to the Clinton era tax rates and $14 trillion (yep, trillion with a T) in the guvmint's coffers. Sounds like a winner to me.

It turns out that President Obama outmaneuvered Congressional Republicans by placing spending cuts on the table that GOP couldn't agree to because they were tied to tax hikes. That smug prick Grover Norquist's ridiculous no tax pledge helped ensure the "failure." Nothing succeeds like failure, y'all.

The stupor committee was *designed* to fail since it had an equal number of Dems and Goopers as well as House members and Senators. Equality equals gridlock equals failure equals success all things being equal. Guess I need to adjust the equalizer right now...

Well-informed Americans should know by now that searching for a "bi-partisan compromise" is like sending some poor bastard on a snipe hunt. The nostalgia for the good old days among some people is a bit nauseating. We've gone through many periods of partisan polarization and the cross party compromises engineered by LBJ and FDR were possible because there *used* to be moderate Republicans and were done despite Conservative Southern Democrats. Now that the solid South is solidly Republican such compromises are as rare as the dodo bird.

I only hope the Obama-ites will stick to running against the "do nothing" Congress ala Harry Truman in 1948. The cool and cerebral President may be a bit miscast as a populist firebrand but Harry Truman was a poor speaker and Obama at his best is one of the best orators in our history. Now that I think of it, Mitt Romney is not a bad comp for Tom Dewey: he's dull and cautious. The difference is that Dewey was a genuine moderate with a distinguished record on Civil Rights issues. In short, Dewey was dull but he believed in something. Mitt, of course, only believes in himself and the LDS church's weirdo doctrines.

 

We Do Not Suck

Not all of us. 

A. 

There's a Crack in Everything

It's how the light gets out: 

XJ: How did you go about finding someone nearby who would allow you stage this from inside their home?

MR: Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully there. But then I got one call from a sane person Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

A. 

Guns + Penises + Anti-Recall Measures = JOBS!

In his inaugural address, Governor Deadeyes repeated to the point of laughability that Wisconsin was “open for business.” The importance of jobs could not be understated. In fact, if you played a drinking game with his speeches, you’d be better off taking “times Walker is on camera” than “jobs” for your drinking cue.

In calling a special session of the legislature, Walker promised that he would “focus like a laser” on jobs. Apparently, lasers must first do other things before they can hit that jobs target.

 Over the past few months, the legislature, which is controlled by Walker’s own party, has taken on a number of bills, none of which has anything to do with jobs.

Republicans have attempted to protect GOP targets from recall by trying to use the newer, more Republican-friendly redistricting lines.

They tried to make it harder for people to recall state officials by proposing a bill that required all recall petitions be notarized.

They put teachers' jobs in the hands of disaffected youth, by allowing for the use of standardized tests to help decide whether to discipline or fire teachers.(Did anyone ever take those tests seriously? I never did. Tried making patterns out of the dots a couple years in a row. Went from idiot to genius to idiot. I was then found out and my parents nearly throttled me.)

The senate passed a bill that demanded teachers in public schools promote marriage and teach abstinence-only efforts in sex-ed classes. (Question: What happens to the gay kids in the class who are told that marriage is important but can’t marry under our current law? Answer: They need to be less gay. Duh.)

They made a run at capping attorney fees in consumer litigation. Of course, it took the good folks at the Journal-Sentinel to point out that the representative who proposed the bill is actually on the “pay up” end of the stick in just such a claim.

In an effort of bipartisanship, the Assembly pushed forth a bill that would expand the rights of homeowners to kill people. (Because, hey, if we can’t get together on our right to bust a cap in someone’s ass, what has this country come to?)

This list could go on and on of “jobs-free” job-creation bills, but the most laughable one requires special attention. The Assembly debated for more than nine hours, deep into the night, over a contentious amendment that would remove race as a consideration for a college grant program.

 The problem? The state’s Higher Educational Aids Board stopped using race as such a factor about a year ago.

In other words, our legislature is wasting time arguing about something that doesn’t exist. And, to be fair, this amendment was proposed by Peggy Krusick, a Democrat, which goes to show that stupidity has no party affiliation in many cases.

Jobs have become for Walker what terrorism was for Bush: the brush-back pitch he throws at anyone who questions anything he’s doing.

Want to destroy unions? Hey, it’ll create jobs!

Want people to get angry at state workers? Those guys have cushy jobs!

Want to get kids to stop fucking? It’s about jobs! Hand… blow… rim… et cetera.

However, job creation has to be more than a sleight of hand, a statistical maneuver and a bumper-sticker slogan. People need to go to work. They need to make real money. They need to start picking themselves off the ground again as they begin to rebuild their shattered lives.

People elected you, Scott Walker, because… Hell, I don’t know… Why the hell did they elect you? I could ponder this for days…

Anyway, when you stood up and yelled about Wisconsin being “open for business,” people seemed to like it. They gave you the benefit of the doubt about your desire to see this state chip away a the unemployment rate. When you said everyone needed to focus like a laser on jobs, people seemed to like that too.

So worry less about keeping your job and start doing your job. Don’t worry about who can shoot what at whom, whether they’re packing a .44 Magnum or a Magnum condom. Stop thinking about whether some lawyer or a black kid is getting too much money.

Find that laser and aim better.

The Papandreou Family Business

Greeks love to be the center of attention. It was the main reason they fought so hard to get the 2004 Summer Olympics, which is one of the reasons the country is in such desperate straits right now. The situation there is so fluid that Prime Minister Papandreou has cancelled the referendum he announced just the other day. I understand that Sarko and Merkel hit the ceiling when it was sprung on them. Rumor has it that they heard from the media, which wouldn't surprise me. Greek politicians are known for being devious and sneaky.

Greek culture centers on food and, more importantly family, which is why two families: the Papandreous and Karamanlis' have dominated Greek politics since the 1960's. George Papandreou Sr. was the PM who was overthrown in a military coup in 1967. The conservative Constantine Karamanlis was first head of government and then head of state after the junta collapsed. Andreas Papandreou was the first socialist PM as well as the father of the Greek welfare state. But revenue collection has never been the strong suit of the Greek government and tax evasion is almost the state religion, which is one of the reasons why the third PM named Papandreou is in deep shit and sinking fast.

The current PM was born in the US to an American mother while his father taught at the University of Minnesota. He's not as charismatic as his grandfather or father. He's more of a technocrat whereas his father was essentially the Huey P Long of Greek politics. That's probably why I felt so much at home in the Gret Stet of Louisiana: the wheels of the Greek economy are greased by nepotism, cronyism and loans from the richer Eurozone countries. The difference is that taxes are collected in Louisiana whereas in Greece they disappear down the proverbial rabbit hole.

I'm not really sure what the Greeks should do: eat the austerity measures imposed by the EU or go into default and leave the Eurozone. Whatever happens it won't be quiet: the Greeks are known for their rowdy political culture with frequent clashes between leftist demonstrators and rightist police and military.

The government is facing a confidence vote tomorrow and ministers are trying to form a national unity government to deal with the crisis. It is unclear whether Papandreou will be Prime Minister for much longer or indeed whether he'll be the last of the line. If I were him, I would seriously considering letting someone else take the abuse that will be heaped on whoever is PM and whatever they do. My gut tells me that Greece will stay in the Eurozone because an exit would be a huge blow to national pride, which is everything to the Greeks.

So There Was a Strike in Oakland Today

Photo by Oakland99er.

They've shut down the port.

I feel like we've been talking in circles for years. Part of the reason I have such affection for the protesters nationwide is that tell me what else, I mean, honestly. People elected Democrats to end the war and the war went on. People want the rich taxed and the rich get their taxes cut. Everybody knows the right thing to do and nobody's doing it and this has been the case for years. We say, every year, as it gets dark and cold, that maybe this year it won't be so dark or so cold. What if it is? What if this is as good as it gets, when we do what we're supposed to do?

Maybe this is what it takes. The conversation's changed, I can tell you that much, around dinner tables where our pundits like to source their tirades. It's not about the deficit anymore. It's about this being as good as it gets lately and that fucking sucks, so what happens next is important. Now that we're talking about this, about how there aren't any jobs except shitty ones and that the best you can hope for is to not be quite so desperate as you were yesterday, where does that energy go? Who steps up to harness all that? I have no faith in the leaders of my party, that they see this and will respond. They've squandered every opportunity presented to them in the last decade. Why not this one, too?

But if not them, who? What's out there, that hasn't been thought of yet?

A.

Trick or Treat

So I live in a big building with narrow walkways and usually on Halloween the trick-or-treaters go right by. There are big houses full of candy around the corner, after all. And usually Mr. A and I are on the road during trick-or-treating, but last year we happened to be home and saw all the costumes from our windows, and felt wistful that we missed out on the fun of seeing neighbors and passing out treats.

And then I read this, and my head almost exploded:

We had more kids at our door than we ever had in Oak Park! This time the majority of families were coming from Maywood. We ran out of candy in the first hour and I had to send Andrew to the store to scrounge up anything he could so we could continue to give out treats! In conversations we had at a neighborhood party following trick-or-treating, we were given some advice: buy a small amount of "good candy" to give out to the "neighborhood kids" and then buy tons of "cheap candy" to give out to the rest.

I have been quietly watching what happens on the streets of River Forest as I take my kids around on Halloween night and here is what I have found. Some houses give out full-size chocolate bars, gift certificates and soda pop, but only to the "neighborhood kids". I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this practice. On one hand I realize that , for the kids they know, they want to do something special. On the other hand, I think that the only way for most people to distinguish "neighborhood kids" from the kids coming from Maywood is by the color of their skin.

I get that the economy sucks and that not everyone can afford to buy candy for half the city. I'm not shaming anybody for deciding to opt out, close the door and stay inside. But what in God's name kind of twisted satisfaction does anybody get out of counting out who deserves what candy at the door on Halloween? Every year this happens here too, even though my 'hood is far from wealthy. Some knob whines to the local paper about "those kids" coming into "our" neighborhood and getting candy. Because those Milk Duds were rightfully mine! You're actually going to make a federal case out of a popcorn ball? I mean, okay, but ... really?

Even if this is true, and even if this gets your back up, there is no real solution. What exactly should be done here? Checking parents' driver's licenses for an address in proximity before giving the kid a Twix? Maybe some Republican legislator can pass a law that says you can only trick-or-treat two blocks from your house. Possibly if you are enough of an asshole all those kids will go away! After all, when I was a kid blah blah blah just go watch some TV, would you? Just go watch TV or take a nap or play Scrabble or something. I can't fathom getting that amped about the candy, and I've been eating malted milk balls for breakfast.

Last year I saw some girls up the street with a fantastic idea. They put a card table in front of their apartment building, hung up a sign that said "welcome trick-or-treaters" and handed out sweets all afternoon. So this year Mr. A and I bought four bags of candy (we even had three left by Halloween!) and dragged down the lawn chairs and gave candy to Batmen and a doctor and some teenagers in cat outfits and three ninja daughters with their ninja mom and Smurfette and lots of pirates. Why should we miss out on the fun just because we don't have a porch or a niblet of our own to take around?

We ran out of candy with about 45 minutes left, disappointing a wee ninja turtle whose witch-hatted sister got the last mini Hershey bar. I apologized to him, and he solemnly told me, "That's okay. I can share."

A.

The Things We Can't Afford

It gets cold here. I suppose all the homeless people should just bootstrap themselves to somewhere warm:

While the 50-plus inches of snow we may receive will inconvenience a lot of us and perhaps drain the city's snow removal coffers, if you live on the street, the freezing temperatures and blizzard conditions won't be just another snow day. They're life-threatening.

The 2012 budget passed by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Pat Quinn earlier this year cuts funding for homeless prevention services by 52 percent, eliminating $4.7 million for shelters, emergency housing and transportation. Homeless advocates are fighting for that funding to be restored, but neither party seems optimistic about that happening.

Numbers from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless indicate that more people were turned away from homeless services last year than were taken in. That's 45,673 turn-aways compared with 40,542 intakes. It's a phenomenon sweeping communities throughout the region.

A.

'Corporate greed is going to cost me my life'

Shit is fucked up and bullshit.

A.

'Teaching 3rd Graders and Doing Landscaping'

That sort of thing is apparently beneath our Galtian overlords:

Someone in the Chicago Board of Trade dropped leaflets on top of “Occupy Chicago” protesters Wednesday afternoon as they rallied alongside unions in the city’s financial district.

“We are Wall Street,” the leaflet said. “It is our job to make money.”

“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves,” it continued. “What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours.”

“Do you really think we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping?” the leaflet asked.

Right. You work at the Board of Trade because you're ABOVE such things, after all. I mean, the reason you pledged a frat was so that you wouldn't end up living life like the plebes do. Your parents played all that golf with the chancellor for a reason!

Fucking arrogant pricks. I'm sorry, but you know what? It is possible to be a rich person without being a TOTAL DILLHOLE. It is actually possible to go to your job, make your money, go home, and enjoy your life. America really wouldn't hate you, if you did that. Not to the point that there'd be rallies outside your work place asking people to honk if they want you indicted.

What makes America hate you is shit like this, this epic whining that you have it so rough and how dare five guys with mowhawks bang drums. Not only do you want to make a giant pile of money to swim around in like Scrooge McDuck, but you want every single person in the world to love you, too. Guess what? It is a matter of physics. Eventually you have to stop jerking or you will break it off, man. It starts to look needy.

Nobody in any one of the dozens of Occupy outposts around the country is saying you, personally, Trader Joe, give me $50. What they're saying is that the system rewards you and punishes them, and they would like to stop being fucked so hard constantly for the unpardonable sin of working every day. Doing trivial things. You know, like landscaping, or teaching third grade.

Schmucks.

A.

The Free Market

It creates jobs!

A.

As Oakland goes?

Oakland is a city with an inferiority complex: it has been in the shadow of San Francisco forever and is now outshined by San Jose, of all places. I say that because San Jose was a smallish semi-rural town when I was growing up. That was, of course, before the tech boom. Oakland remains best known for Gertrude Stein's wisecrack: "there is no there, there."

Oakland finds itself in the spotlight because of its handling of the #occupy protests:

Police and protesters scuffled in the streets of Oakland on Tuesday as more than 1,000 people marched on city hall to voice anger over scores of arrests at an "Occupy Wall Street" camp.

Police dispersed the crowd once with what appeared to be a stun grenade and several other times set off tear gas to drive the demonstrators away from a downtown plaza that had been at the center of the conflict.

Witnesses reported seeing several people taken into custody during the confrontations, but an Oakland police spokeswoman said the department would not confirm any Tuesday night arrests until Wednesday.

Protest leaders said the march aimed at reclaiming Frank Ogawa Plaza, which had served as a base for two weeks of protests against economic inequality in the city until police cleared it before dawn by firing beanbags and tear gas.

Ain't leadership grand? I got a whiff of tear gas many years ago in (where else?) Athens when the cops busted up a protest rally at Syntagma Square near the parliament. The more things change and all that shit.

I'm not sure where the #occupy protests go from here but I must admit to being surprised by their staying power. They've stuck it out much longer than expected and, if nothing else, came up with the catchy slogan about the 99%. The problem in America is that a good slice of the population wants to be a part of the 1% and doesn't give a shit about the folks they left behind. Some call it American exceptionalism, I call it American selfishness.

'Misdemeanor Illegal Lodging'

Riot cops were apparently needed to combat the evil sin of camping:

Interim Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference later in the morning that hundreds of officers and sheriff's deputies from more than 12 agencies moved in on about 170 protesters.

He said police fired beanbag rounds and tear gas, but no one was injured. Television news footage showed protesters being taken away in plastic cuffs without incident, although an officer did fire a non-lethal projectile from a shotgun at a protester who lobbed a bottle, authorities told the San Francisco Chronicle.

One of those arrested, Aiyahnna Johnson, 30, of Oakland, had been living at the camp with her 2-year-old daughter. "We want the best for you guys, that's all," she was quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle telling two officers who were leading her away.

And via my pal Scott on Facebook, here's a story that illustrates what the point is of all those crazy hippies banging drums in the street:

Occupy Wall Street has already achieved a stunning victory – a victory that is easy to overlook, but impossible to overstate. In just one month, the protesters have shifted the national dialogue from a relentless focus on the deficit to a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs -- and especially jobs with decent benefits -- spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families' debt-loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point.

To borrow the loosely defined terms that define the Occupy movement, these ordinary citizens have shifted the conversation away from what the “1 percent” -- the corporate right and its dedicated media, network of think-tanks and PR shops -- want to talk about and, notably, paid good money to get us to talk about.

The latest of Time magazine is Joke Line's fucking idiocy about how left and right are evil, of course, and that the only way to get yourself heard politically is to disavow actually giving a shit in any way, and mouth platitudes that express not true moderation but a desperate attempt to ensure balance by insulting fucking everybody. I'd link to it, but it's behind a paywall, and also contains zero polling data to actually back up the assertion that everybody likes people and politicians who eschew movements. In truth, only Joke likes these, because they allow him to point out his own superiority over those gross people who believe in stuff.

So people like that have the money and the power, the airwaves and the soundbites, and hippies have tents and signs, but when all you've got is a hammer you might as well nail some shit down. What's the point of protesting? To change the conversation. When and if the protests end, the work that has always been done will continue being done, so that we get better as a country, but right now we need to talk about something else besides the deficit and how hard rich people have it when everyone hates them.

A.

Scott Walker Gives UW System A Hand

(Not for the weak of heart or stomach. Not like the budget is any more savory.)

Apparently, Governor Deadeyes woke up earlier this month and said to the state’s university system, “Oh, you survived those three gunshots to the chest? Crawl over here and let me see your head.”

According to a memo released Wednesday, the state is expecting that all of those jobs we were supposed to get in Wisconsin, now that Walker opened us for business, will likely not yield enough tax money to balance the budget. Thus, the general raping that occurred in the budget battle this state saw will now be followed by required give-backs of between $174 and $300 million.

The news got worse for higher education, as approximately 38 percent of that amount will be laid at the feet of the UW System. This, despite the fact that the system accounts for about 7 percent of the state’s budget.

Several areas that are crucial are protected, including programs for the poor and aid to local schools. No arguments there. At least he’s not trying to fully eviscerate the poor.

But those folks hoping to become highly educated? Fuck ‘em.

There’s a perverse set of values our esteemed College Dropout in Chief is demonstrating here.

First, if you want people to put jobs somewhere, you need to have workers fully capable of completing the tasks you assign them. The governor isn’t cutting tech school funding, which seems to indicate that he’s thinking those jobs will be attached to manufacturing work or other elements of hands-on labor taught at these schools. Instead, every financial indicator had shown that the jobs of my father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather will not be the jobs of my children.

Like it or not, the bachelor’s degree has become the union card of this generation. You need it just to get in the door. After that, what you can do and what you have studied will come into play.

Forcing the university system to take another bullet for the state is simply shooting economic growth in the foot.

Second, if you are the governor and you are not educated, not good at your job and the source of scorn and ridicule by people who know better, you have a couple choices as to how to fix that. Option A is you can get an education, you can improve your work habits and you can show some serious efforts toward bridging the gap between you and those who don’t like you.

Of course, Option A is hard. Thus, there’s Option B.

You can do your best to cut down on the amount of people who are smarter than you.

So, while purporting to be pro-job creation, he’s undercutting the opportunities of people to become educated throughout the employment spectrum while simultaneously demonstrating his distain for smart people.

You know, like people who might own companies and maybe create jobs…

The government of the state that served as a northern hub of abolition in the 1800s, gave us Fighting Bob La Follette in the 1900s and re-crafted social policy in the at the turn of the century, has officially become a Dilbert cartoon.

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9

The political world has gone stark raving mad, bonkers, looney tunes or whatever your favorite word for crazy is. Herman Cain is the current temporary GOP frontrunner, which is the latest signal that Mitt Romney reminds women of their first husband or dull first boyfriend and men of the boring rich kid who was elected class President because nobody else wanted the hassle. In short, Mitt Haircut is a grind.

We've been here before in 1988 and with both parties. Ann Richards was the one who tagged Poppy Bush with the first hubby label. Bob Dole was like the grownup version of the schoolyard bully and eventual Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was the grind. The minor and/or unelectable candidates were the fun ones: Jesse Jackson was the temporary frontrunner for the Dems after Gary Hart's zipper problem led to his, uh, premature withdrawal from the race. Hart returned but wasn't taken seriously.

Herman Cain is looking more and more like a weirdo mashup of Jesse Jackson and 1996 candidate Steve (Flat Tax) Forbes. Cain's 999 tax "reform" plan is breathtakingly simple and totally impractical, which makes it irresistible to GOP primary voters. Hell, it's a way the so-called 47% will have to pay taxes; what an awesome idea according to the Erick Erickson's of the world. It's not: sales taxes are the most regressive form of taxation, which is why Goopers love it so much. I live in a high sales tax state: in Orleans Parish it's 9% and that means that it would be 18% if Cain passed his plan. Mercifully, that won't happen.

Herman Cain is clearly one of the more entertaining candidates this time around and Mitt Haircut is robotic and dull BUT this election is depressingly winnable for the GOP. They've flirted with Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Chris Christie and now Herman Cain but I still expect a shotgun wedding between Republican voters and Romney. They're not quite ready to consumate the marriage but unless Rick Perry figures out how to run a national campaign, they'll have to "lie back and think of England" as the old saw goes.

Finally, the worst thing about Cain's 999 plan is that Revolution 9 is stuck in my head and it's the only Beatles track I hate. Damn you, pizza man:

 

Fuck Yeah, Robin Hood!

My city wins everything forever today.

A.

This Will Create SHIT TONS of Jobs for Wisconsin

So very, very many people will want to move there now!

The same controversial bill that ended the ability of public employee unions (except firefighters and police unions) to collectively bargain for anything except cost-of-living wage increases said state workers must pay 5.8% of earnings for their pensions and 12.6% of health care costs.

For a full-time state worker buying family health care coverage, the Fiscal Bureau report said those changes meant:

$25,000-a-year worker: $2,828 more. This worker had been paying $1,118 (4.5% of salary) toward health care and pension, but that went up to $3,946 (15.8% of salary).

The $3,946 breaks down this way: $2,496 for health care and $1,450 for pension. Last year, the same worker paid $50 toward his or her pension and $1,068 for health care.

$50,000-a-year worker: $4,228 more. The employee had been paying $1,168 (2.3% of salary) for health care and pension benefits, but that is now $5,396 (10.8% of salary).

The $5,396 breaks down this way: $2,900 for his or her pension and $2,496 for health care. Last year, the employee paid $100 for pension and $1,068 for health care.

My mood is already shot to shit and it is MONDAY.

A.

Occupy Chicago: Somebody Stood Up

 

A lady on the corner of Jackson and LaSalle was holding this. Every cabbie and bus driver that went by blew his horn, to much applause from the crowd.

 

 

 

 

Right now we are living in a time of aggressively not having important conversations. I mean we're really putting our backs into it. Those conversations, we're not having them hard. All around us the earth is caving in and our country's discourse is basically about how debt is bad and Obama is a Muslim. Watching TV, reading the paper, watching the local news, you could be forgiven for thinking things weren't that bad. That maybe we were all okay, and you were the one who was cracked for feeling the ground shake under you every time the phone rang.

They Cannot Muzzle The Light

You know that famous picture from the Westboro Baptists protests and counter-protests? This one?

I feel like standing next to Capitol Hill with that sign right now. Or the DNC headquarters. Something.

Thousands of people are in the fucking streets. Thousands. In New York, Boston, Cali, Philly. Thousands.

Yet Washington Democrats cower in the corner for fear of joining them.

I can see why. What if one of the hippies has a rude shirt?

And doesn't it make Obama look bad to point out that the earth is caving in on his watch?

What if somebody at the rallies compared Republicans to Satan? What would Chris Matthews say?

What if somebody at the rallies once sold his food stamps on Facebook?

Won't that give Republicans and the pundits who hold Washington hostage cause to say mean things about us? Won't that give them cause to talk about how we're all about the smelly kids and faggots and welfare cheats and others who are anathema to America? Surely they wouldn't be doing that anyway so I'd best stay over here, and pretend those protesters don't speak for me.

Surely I'd better not note that these are my people, my constituents, the middle class workers for which my party is supposed to have fought, once upon a time, in a land far, far away. Surely I'd better not concede that even if they are just "college kids," they're goddamn citizens of this country whose concerns deserve a voice and whose voice is a vote. Surely I'd better not worry that where there are ten of them today there will be sixty tomorrow, because when in history has that ever happened?

Surely it's safer to stay indoors, keep my powder dry, and hold off having this fight until things get just a little bit worse. Surely, when the right moment comes along, someone will let me know.

In case it's escaped anyone's notice, the Occupy All That Shit protests aren't going away. They're growing. They're going from city to city. They're getting louder. They're gaining friends and allies. They're becoming more. And I don't know how much more, how many more people it's going to take before somebody supposedly on the side of the middle class takes fucking notice and gets his ass down to the microphone. 

Isn't there a single strategist in Washington yelling that there are thousands of votes out there to be won by actually acting like a Democrat? I know that hasn't exactly been in high favor the last 10 years, but do thousands of people in the street express anything BUT a deep hunger for a world that isn't going to screw them over? And isn't that a political opportunity of which someone should avail himself?

Yes, the Tea Party was funded, and marketed nonstop by Fux News. You know what else it was? Supported by every major Republican candidate, who looked at the racist signs and the ignorant-ass 'necks in attendance and said sure, some of them are gaping assholes but all of 'em are gonna vote and they might as well vote for me. That's part of how that movement gained legitimacy. If tea partiers held a march against Obama's wars, they wouldn't lack for grand marshals.

Our leaders, even among those who do nothing but comment, just snipe about hippies and kids, as if they have any economic or demographic data on these crowds at all. That's if they notice; most are too busy figuring out how much to cut from Social Security. I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. Yes, everybody's tired, but eventually your exhaustion is just self-indulgence, and it doesn't matter what's on the back of the trustafarian's shirt at this point.

You go to the revolution with the revolutionaries you have.

I'll be at Occupy Chicago tomorrow with food and coffee for the demonstrators. Where will our leaders be?

A.

Poor Moral Character

Digby:

I think all these elites believe they are wealthy and secure due to their superior morality and work ethic. Therefore, it's important to make sure the plebes feel some pain for their excesses so they'll adopt the higher standards of their betters. Just as Michael Kinsley believes that Chris Christie's obesity reveals a slothful character, the Central Bankers are apparently all convinced that sovereign debt is due to the character flaws of slothful citizens who have failed to become wealthy. Neither belief is relevant to fiscal policy. Or even true.

In the first place, who gives a flying fuck how much Christie eats? He could order a barbecued elephant every night at Morton's and I wouldn't give a toss, so long as his approach to public policy didn't make me want to tear my hair out. But in the second place, how does having a byline at Slate make you a better person? How does that prove anything about you? 

I get that this is a complicated and uncomfortable line of thinking that leads to feelings of inadequacy, laziness, obligation, guilt. It's hard to be proud of what you've achieved when you know how much of it depended (as in my case, for example) being born white and middle class in the United States of America. And the reason we can't hold the idea of "I worked my ass off" in our heads right along with "and thank God the system was designed to help people like me succeed" is that we've confused pride in achievement (and anyone who isn't presently in prison for raping children can probably take some pride in an accomplishment of some kind) with achievement as proof of virtue.

If being successful makes you good, what then does a turn of bad luck make you? Can you just spin right back around and say, "Well, it wasn't my fault I got laid off, etc?" Sure, you can, but if you're even the tiniest bit self-aware and all this time you've been lecturing others about how success is tied inherently to decency, you're going to feel kind of sick to your stomach.

Or as a very wise woman once said to me, nobody wants to think they are the victim or beneficiary of a system they cannot control. If you're not rich because of your superior virtue, if you're not successful because of your own hard work and nothing else, well, then you have to think about whose shoulders you stand upon, and ponder that a system which raises you up can also cast you down.

A.

A Must-Read Story About Poverty Making the Rounds

Read the whole thing and then come back. I'll wait.

There's a couple of things going on in here beyond just the "wow, are people fucking fucked" response you're supposed to have. The first is this:

Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund called the surging child poverty rate "a national disgrace." Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cited evidence that poverty shortens life spans, calling it "a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people."

Overall, though, the figures seemed to be greeted with resignation, and political leaders in Washington pressed ahead with efforts to cut federal spending. The Pew Research Center said its recent polling shows that a majority of Americans — for the first time in 15 years of being surveyed on the question — oppose more government spending to help the poor.

Why, though? Why do they feel this way? Why do they hate and fear the poor? What's changed in the last 15 years? One thing consistently drives me goddamn bonkers about our press is this passive-voice nonsense where we pretend people just decide to have views based on nothing. We all know full well that the reason people oppose more government spending is that there is a constant stream of human dildos on their televisions telling them that the reason people are poor is that we're doing too much to help the poor and we should stop it.

Some of this is elementary psych, of course. One way of coping with the devastating fear of something awful happening to you is hating everyone it does happen to, hating their weaknesses and failures, hating their examples of what can happen if you slip, even just a little. Obviously that's one way you can react. But until 15 years ago we didn't have a full-time media machine invested in telling people that that sick feeling in the pits of their stomachs meant you should throw rocks at the homeless folks causing it until they went away.

And until 15 years ago we kind of, sort of, almost maybe sometimes had politics that allowed for a voice saying what the fuck is wrong with you, you selfish goddamn assholes. Give that poor kid an apple and some bus fare, you jerk. We didn't always pretend it was admirable to sneer at panhandlers. We might have done it, but we wouldn't have openly applauded people for doing so.

The second thing I want to point out is this:

About 75 miles away, in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates, dozens of families lined up patiently outside the Willow Creek Care Center as truckloads of food for the poor were unloaded.

Among those waiting was Kris Fallon of nearby Palatine, mother of a teen and an infant, who hitched a ride with a friend.

She recounted how she and her husband — once earning nearly $100,000 a year between the two of them— lost their jobs, forcing them to move from their rented home into an apartment and give up their car.

"We fight a lot because of the situation," she said. "We wonder where we are going to come up with money to pay rent, where we are going to get food, formula for the baby."

She began to cry.

Hoffman Estates is a wealthy community. I bought some furniture off Craigslist from a dude there whose wife was redoing their kitchen, and when I walked in I wondered why on earth because the place was like a palace, and this wasn't even the fanciest home on the block. So the other part of this story is that from Willow Creek (the area's mega-church, by the by) you can throw a rock and hit the REASON everyone is so goddamn poor: Because a few other people are so goddamn rich.

That's really what this story isn't about, and should be. It's about the abjectness of some but not the excess of others, and you can't pretend the two aren't related or you miss the real story. I want to give the AP props for doing this, putting a face to the poor and lost, and certainly it's better than anybody else has done. It's very easy for news organizations to give up on stories like this because hey, we know about poor people, and we know they don't read the paper so fuck 'em.

But stories like this are too easily dismissed on the grounds that each individual should have made different choices. Here's just a sample of the comments before I had to stop reading them and go hit my head on something hard for a while:

That husband looks like a real loser. Yeah, I'm sure he has his resume updated and is ready to hit the streets. If something like that walked into my office I'd have security escort him out. No wonder they're out of work. It also looks like they didn't let money stop them from having yet another child. I'm sure our tax dollars that are robbed from us everyday are paying for that kid's diapers, food and care. The welfare office, WIC and free medical sees to that. I don't think I feel that sorry for that couple.

Of course people like this miss the point, but it's easy to. The point isn't this guy, or that guy or all the guys in the story. The point is that cumulatively we are horrifically screwed, and until stories like this also address the why, make the connection between those who are poor and the policies that make and keep them so, we're going to keep seeing pitiable examples that the intended audience steadfastly refuses to pity.

A.

It's about time

President Obama has finally realized that raising taxes on the super rich is both good policy and good politics. It won't pass and it took public pressure from tycoon Warren Buffett to get him to act like a Democrat BUT better late than never.

The Republicans are, of course, outraged but so are some erstwhile "centrist" Democrats like former Clinton adviser and all around douchebag Mark Penn:

Barack Obama is careening down the wrong path towards re-election.

He should be working as a president, not a candidate.

He should be claiming the vital center, not abandoning it.

He should be holding down taxes rather than raising them.

He should be mastering the global economy, not running away from it.

And most of all, he should be bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.

There's more of this crap at Satan Botoxed Handmaiden's joint but I wanted to post this for the buyer's remorse crowd. Penn was one of Hillary's 2008 senior advisers and he thinks that the path to re-election involves being an echo, not a choice. It's the strategy that Team Obama has pursued since entering the White House and it hasn't worked. There's not much evidence that fantasy world President Clinton would have done otherwise: it's what her husband did to win re-election, after all.

This policy U-Turn may be too little too late but it's past time for the administration to do something for its base. Pointing at the crazy Goopers is not enough. It's what the Carter campaign did in 1980 and we all know how that turned out...

Some Deep Thinking About Last Night's Speech

From where? Why, The Cornhole, of course!

And is the president unable to give a speech without trotting out the tired canard of “millionaires and billionaires” and the omnipresent Warren Buffett and his proverbial secretary for the nth time — especially given that Buffett’s companies have had tax troubles with the IRS and his fortune will pass without inheritance taxes? Can he refrain from equating legitimate worry over new hyper-regulation with a desire to expose kids to mercury or be shortchanged by the health-care industry? Does he really believe that the majority of Americans who oppose his statism really wish to “just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own”?

Yes. Lord knows nobody REALLY wants that.

Given that most of the criticism of Obama from the left comes from the place of realizing he's not proposing enough to help the economy, I'm at least relieved he's started to tell us that while he's not proposing enough, Republicans aren't proposing anything but tax cuts. Which still won't magically raise revenue, no matter how angry the Cornholios and their teawad pals get.

After watching the debate this week, it's pretty plain that the choice is between Really Honestly Not Good Enough and Quite Frankly My Dear You've Slipped a Bearing Somewhere. Which is a shitty position for the country to be in when there's nothing really wrong at all, but when the fucking earth is caving in and people are living in cars and the skeezy motel I drive past every day is advertising its "New Recession Weekly Rate," well, let's just say those people buying up survival seed packets and shit are starting to look like sensible well-prepared Boy and Girl Scouts.

A.

Coming to Terms with the Cost of Doing Business

Cole hits close to articulating something I've been banging away at on this here blog for more than 7 years now (holy shitsnacks, I am old), when, in talking about the Post Office and the usual bellyaching about its financial shortfalls:

We need to stop thinking of those as losses, but the cost of a service. I have no idea why people have decided the Post Office needs to run like a business, with profits each year or be damned, but it is insane. This is a basic service that government can and should provide.

Yeah, I know, everybody who works for the Post Office is a surly asshole, your letter carrier sucks, stamp prices keep going up, we have FedEx now, whatever. Look, the Post Office is not the point. The point is that we have totally lost the fucking plot, as a country.

It's not just the post office. And it's not just government. Everything has to make money, or at least lose as little as possible. Everything has to make more money this year than it made last year, and be projected to make even more next year. Even if we can pay for it, even if a loss isn't going to break us, even if we maybe need the thing more than we need the profit it isn't producing, we still look at as an abject failure anything that isn't making the bill counter go apeshit every single Friday. Instead of saying look, we need this, and we have the money for it, and we're gonna do it.

You know, like we do with wars and David Vitter's health care.

And a lot of the reluctance to do this comes back to old ugly animal fear that everybody out there is trying to scam us, and the only reason they can't is constant Republican reduction of the bottom line. As if people won't scam a slightly smaller system. As if no matter how much you reduce the sample size, there won't always be one crackheaded shitsmack who has to find a way to steal stuff.

Somebody stole my bike light the other day, yet inexplicably did not steal the bracket that's the only way to attach it to a bike. People will steal anything. But when they do steal stuff, instead of having a righteous freakout and deciding that This Means It Doesn't Work, we plug the hole they stole the stuff through, and move the fuck on, because that's the cost of doing business.

We were fine with this scenario, by the way, with this adult way of doing things, when we were losing $6 BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS that is just, like, poof, gone. We were fine with saying eh, you know what, cost of doing business. Which I wouldn't have so much of a problem with, if we didn't flip our shit every time somebody is seen on TV getting a candy bar with his goddamn food stamps.

A.

 

Don't Have a Job? Can't Get a Job.

A country of assholes:

With last month's unemployment report showing a net total of zero jobs created, one might think it couldn't get much more grim for the unemployed. However, the Tribune reported yesterday on yet another hurdle in finding gainful employment in today's economy - current employment as a job qualifier.

According to the Trib, some companies are adding language in job postings that in order to qualify, applicants must be currently employed.

Technically, such a practice wouldn't be discriminatory, since the unemployed aren't a protected class of people. It is however, as Rex Huppke pointed out, both shortsighted and counterproductive. The idea that an unemployed person somehow has more shortcomings than someone currently employed has always been questionable, but in today's economy, it simply doesn't make sense. With plenty of companies announcing mass layoffs, a period of unemployment - sometimes even a lengthy one- is becoming more common for the average worker.

This comes from the same place as the story I linked to below about welfare limits: the idea that if you're unemployed, if something bad has happened to you, it's because on some level you wanted it to. Sometimes our possibilities seem so limitless that it MUST be that we limit ourselves; otherwise, how could you possibly not succeed in this country? So say the rich Republertarians who have never worried about making rent.

A.

Unions Have Problems Because Republicans Say They Do

Oh, God, NYT:

When the overall approval rating for unions fell to its lowest level ever in 2009, many labor relations said that was because many Americans believed that labor unions could be too stubborn and demanding and were a major cause of the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies that year. Union leaders maintain that a major reason for the overall decline in approval ratings in recent years — the approval rate was 65 percent less than a decade ago — is that conservative politicians and think tanks have been putting out a flood of negative information about organized labor.

[snip]

Labor leaders acknowledge that one of their biggest challenges is to figure out how to make Americans more enthusiastic about unions and unionizing at a time when many workers face stagnating wages, rising insecurity on the job and employers’ cutting back on pensions and other benefits — all while corporate profits have been quite strong.

Yes. If only someone could make that case.

A.

While We're On The Jobs Topic

Steve over at Beachwood:

Here's an idea that I think both parties can get behind: Let's keep business and government separate. Let's take health care out of the hands of employers and put it where it belongs: in the purview of a democratic government. And let's keep taxpayer money where it belongs: in the public sector. And let's let the private sector battle it out in the marketplace without government putting its thumb on the scale. Oh, and next time let's actually use stimulus money for jobs instead of tax cuts and pork projects and business subsidies. Put people to work WPA-style rebuilding America. That was the plan we needed in 2009. Just think where we'd be now.

The trouble with this argument comes in the area of regulation, generally considered to be a good thing when it comes to making sure your meat isn't poisoned and drug companies aren't ignoring test results that say their medication will make you grow a second head and then die. Such regulation is generally considered by business to be a "thumb on the scale" and by those of us who are not squillionaires to be, you know, common sense.

Fuck yeah to the rest of it, though.

A.

Rick Perry: Tax Cuts are the Ultimate Civil Right

Or something. I mean, you tell me what to parse out of this gibberish:

QUESTION: And coming to the Old Town Bistro you’re actually visiting a very important place in Rock Hill and the nation’s civil rights history. This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Friendship Nine sit-in here. Care to comment on that?

PERRY: Listen, America’s gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have. I mean we’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights. I think we all can be proud of that. And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom. It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation.And Americans regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved.

Yes. You need to know America is about freedom, the freedom for corporations to fuck you over and be entirely immune from paying for it in any way.

A.

Let's Get All the Old Folks To Give Us $1,000

Meanwhile, the people who can blow that on lunch get to sit around bitching about their Galtian dreams not coming true:

Officials with the state Department of Employee Trust Funds unveiled another hit to members' wallets last week — a coinsurance payment that could cost them up to $1,000 a year.

ETF on Thursday rolled out a series of videos and fact sheets meant to educate members about changes to health insurance benefits, some of them beginning as early as this week.

And while most of the changes, which come as the result of the new collective bargaining law, were expected, the new coinsurance payment was a surprise to some.

David Taylor, 61, a retired 25-year state employee, ran across the ETF website Thursday and was alarmed by the news. He said the change was not that big a deal for him, but he worried about others.

"This could have a huge impact on people," he said. "There are a lot of folks on fixed income."

I seriously have no patience for this nonsense right now. The comments are full of this sort of thing where $1,000 over the course of a year isn't "that" much, and you know what? If you have a good job and you're not in hock to the Russian mob for your fillings, no, it's not. But I never do hear anybody who's paying the electric bill one month and the gas bill the next talking about having an extra $75 sitting around at the 30th.

A.

Profitable Hospitals Put Gun to the Heads of Medicaid Moms

Seriously, three "non-profit" hospitals got their tax exempt status yanked after pulling record profits, and now their lobbying organization is all, "nice charity they got going here. Shame if somebody wrecked it."

"It's not good for patients. It's not good for our communities. There's nothing positive about this," said IHA President Maryjane Wurth

Wurth said the denial of property tax exemptions for Prentice, Edward and Decatur Memorial hospitals could mean big changes for their patients.

"Northwestern Memorial serves the highest number of Medicaid moms that deliver babies in the entire state and we, frankly, think these are essential community benefits that need to be preserved," Wurth said. "We fear and worry that this will mean that there will be less community services, less ability to help with prevention and primary care services, less access to care — because these hospitals reinvest and provide essential community assets and services to patients."

So either give us our tax breaks or the Medicaid mom gets it? Also, nobody is saying you won't get reimbursed for Medicaid services at the same rates you've always been reimbursed. Just that you have to pay your fucking property taxes.

The story goes on at length in this vein, quoting people who like the hospital and think it's awesome and jobs for the community, and how dare we pick on them OMG MEEN. I had to go to the comments section to find out what kind of profits these "non-profit" hospitals were pulling down:

The Northwestern Memorial decision was based on its 2007 application for its newly constructed $450 million women's hospital. The Northwestern system had $1.17 billion in net patient revenue in 2007, according to Klemens. Northwestern reported charity care totaling 1.85 percent of its revenues.

This info is from other stories, including one here.

Real charitable business, that. Saintly, even. I don't know how they manage to do it, what with the weight of that cross on their backs all day long.

There are just too many fucking assholes in the world today, seriously.

A.

We're Turning Into Something Else

Democrats won both elections in Wisconsin last night, meaning Walker's policies are so wildly popular that literally nobody who previously voted for a Democrat wanted a Republican in office, and bunches of people who wanted a Republican said erm fuck no thank you ma'am.

Which is no surprise, considering this is the kind of place Wisconsin — America — is becoming:

In the past, the local program for non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) was run by the Aging and Disability Resource Center, using local volunteer drivers recruited by the Waupaca County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The drivers provided elderly and disabled Medicaid recipients rides to their medical appointments.

On July 1, LogistiCare, a private, for-profit corporation based in Atlanta, Ga., became Wisconsin’s sole broker for NEMT.

Pat Enright is the aging and disability resource manager for Waupaca County DHHS. He has logged dozens of complaints from patients who have missed their medical appointments due to their rides arriving late or not showing up at all.

On Aug. 1, Enright sent a letter to Greg DiMiceli, the Medicaid transportation analyst who oversees the state program, detailing the problems since LogistiCare took control.

Enright also filed an elder abuse complaint against LogistiCare as a result of Barry’s experience.

"A vulnerable adult that has a care provider who has assumed responsibility for a portion of their care and then failed to provide that care could be charged with abuse of a vulnerable adult," Enright said in his letter to DiMiceli.

"These people don’t understand that I get really sick when they’re late picking me up," Barry said, noting that being late for an appointment can result in his being at the clinic for eight hours as he waits for the dialysis equipment to become available again. And missing his dialysis treatment means toxic wastes are not being removed from his body. A Logisticare driver also failed to pick Barry up for a scheduled ride to the clinic for a CAT scan.

"I feel like they’re trying to kill me," Barry said. "Yesterday, I made my funeral arrangements."

Scout sent that over, and it dovetailed with an argument Mr. A and I were having in the car about why the concept of the public good somehow became linked with you the Virtuous Taxpayer footing the bill for Undeserving Welfare Queens, and anybody who died because of your selfish fuckery was just Too Bad So Sad.

I cannot describe to you the Libertarian Shrug that says some people just have to die, okay, that I get from people these days. Some people just have to die so that a private company can have this contract. Some people just have to die so that I don't have to think about their systemic disadvantage, poverty and want. Some people just have to die so that we don't have to get it together as a society and suck it up and realize that assholes who game the system don't matter and we need to take care of everybody else. Some people just have to die.

If they wanted to live, they should have been fortunate enough to have rich relatives or friends with free time who could drive them to every single doctor's appointment, because that's something you can totally guarantee in your life at all times.

But never me. Never mine. Never anyone I know and never anyone I love. That's an outrage. That's a crime. That's the entire fucking goddamn blue POINT: It's always someone you love. It's always someone that somebody loves. It's always you. Our fate is your fate.

A.

I somehow missed this cartoon

The Guardian is not only the best newspaper in the English speaking (reading?) world BUT it has the best editorial cartoonists as well in Steve Bell and Martin Rowson. I missed this late July masterpiece by Steve Bell on Speaker Boehner and the teabaggers:

London Calling

It's a long hot summer everywhere but particularly in the UK. The rioting in London and elsewhere is conjuring up memories of the late 1970's and early 1980's. There were riots in Brixton in 1981 caused by Tory budget cuts and heavy handed policing. Sound familiar?

One thing that *has* changed, however, is the relationship between the government and the police. David Cameron is suffering some fallout from the phone hacking scandal, which caused several senior coppers to resign and blast the Posh Boy on their way out. Also, Mrs.Thatcher had the good sense *not* to cut spending on police. Nobody has ever accused Cameron of having common sense; nothing common about the Posh Boy or sensible either:

The parallels with the 1980s are everywhere; in the burnt-out buildings, the looting, the anger of an apparently disenfranchised youth and the agonising over what caused an urban uprising which police have labelled the worst disorder in living memory.

There is one significant difference, however. During the riots of the 1980s, when Brixton and Toxteth burned and PC Keith Blakelock was hacked down with a machete as he fled for his life in Broadwater Farm, the police could count on the full support of the government. Margaret Thatcher was in power and the police were seen as an unquestioning arm of the state.

On Tuesday as David Cameron sits around the table with the home secretary, Theresa May, and senior police officers the ambience will not be a warm one. Relations between the country's top police officers and the Conservative leadership are at an all-time low, with senior Tory sources briefing against the country's top officers and they in turn speaking openly of the "stupidity" of government policy.

Cuts to frontline policing – an estimated 12,000 officers are to go as a result of budget reductions – the determination of the coalition to impose elected commissioners, the attacks on the public service pensions of both rank-and-file and senior officers and the Winsor review into pay and conditions have all served to increase tensions.

<snip>

A senior police source has said privately that the government holds the police in utter contempt and, while the service is resilient, the government is starting to lose goodwill from both rank-and-file and senior ranks.

Asked to put their lives on the line night after night, sources say the rank and file feel unsupported and vilified by the government.

It's quite unusual for a right of center government to have such a terrible relationship with the po po BUT this is class based mutual loathing. I keep waiting for the Tories to blame Brown and Blair for the chaos but they haven't quite gone there yet. But they will, they're already making shit up about Labour Shadow Cabinet member Diane Abbott who happens to be-you guessed it-black. It's time for the nasty party to come out of the sewer and start throwing shit around. It will be interesting to see how Deputy PM Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems respond to this: they'll probably stick to the old stiff upper lip and say nothing.

Since everyone is talking about the dark days of 1979 and 1981, here's one of the quintessential British bands of that era:

 

Kids Today, So Lazy They Volunteer!

I hate this article every time I read it, and I've read it like six times in the last week. I'll let 365reasonswhy speak for me here on dissecting this masturbatory nonsense: 

I'm not even really a millennial, I'm the tail end of Gen X, but seriously a big fuck you to the writer of this article.

THIS made me stop reading mid-post so I could rage:

Meanwhile, they tend to worship fame more than fortune, and put family and friends before work and career. They don't have much employment experience, in fact, but they do a lot of volunteer work.

Oh God, how RIDICULOUS of millennials to VOLUNTEER when there's no work to be found. I have a feeling this person would be whining about millennial laziness if this weren't the case, but instead of looking at the volunteering as a plus, since unemployment is high, it's somehow a negative?

Perhaps because they don't get much practice working for bosses, millennials can often be no picnic to manage on the job. Their unemployment rate is about 14%, compared with the national rate of 9.2%. Another 23% of young people are not even looking for a job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Or maybe it's just that there aren't many jobs to be had. And does the 23% include millennials who are still in school?

Many millennials have been known to hold out for the perfect job at the perfect company with the perfect salary and a clear path to the vice presidency, even if it means crashing with mom and dad well into their 20s. The Pew Research Center found that in 2008, when the recession began, the percentage of the population that lived in households where at least two generations were present inched upward to 16%. In better economic times, that figure might be as low as 12%.

I'm a Gen X and I ended up moving in with my mom for a short time after I lost my job. How dare I become unemployed through no fault of my own. I More than one generation living under the same roof is not just a millennial thing, it's an every generation thing these days. Sixty year olds are co-habitating with their still living parents in order to save money. You do what you have to.

ETA:

Millennials are in no rush to start the rat race, because they work to live and not the other way around. They saw their parents get laid off or trudge to jobs they hated. They're determined to be different.

How terrible, not to live merely to be a worker for a corporation. Volunteerism = meh, apparently.

Ok, I'm going to try and read the rest.

You all know my feeling on kids and their relative terribleness and especially on anecdotes versus actual, you know, stuff, so I'll just say this for the millenials: I'm not reading stories by them on CNN about how no other generation than theirs was ever hard-working and good. That's a point in their favor.

A.

Feel More Like London

Reading this tonight, via Kos, I was reminded of something Megan wrote some time back, about what happens to people when you continually tell them they're nothing: They start to believe you.

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.

Giving people who need assistance a stake in society doesn't just help individuals. It tethers people in, so that even if they don't have what you have, they see the value in what all of us have, and feel a part of things. This isn't charity. There is an actual benefit to me in creating a world that benefits you: It makes you less likely to SET ALL MY SHIT ON FIRE. God Almighty, what happens when you wall people up in their own little worlds and only venture there when something's broken? You give them incentive to break things.

A.

 

'The Rat's Perspective on the Bubonic Plague'

Driftglass on our broken pundit machine:

Grover Norquist: Regulations are the real problem. Next week the EPA might try to shove a liberal light bulb up your ass!

Krugman: Guy's a liar. Also a moron. Also, a liar.

This week's black-and-white differences between Amanpour's show and Gregger's Carnival of Beltway Bukkake are clearly visible and, I think, easy to understand.

Gregger's audience -- which is basically the same as media-bestriding colossi like David Brooks and Tom Friedman -- consists of a few thousand insider players in D.C., a few hundred plutocrats who own property and keep homes in New York, and the millions who are obtuse enough to believe their drivel.

Amanpour is trying for a more international audience, and the America where David Gregory is considered the gold standard of journalist and Grover Norquist has not been flogged into the street by mobs of sensible humans is a foreign land indeed.

And you know, I think I might be a little more open to the "pro-business" argument that we need no regulation and taxes whatsoever, if we hadn't just spent the last 30 years trying basically that and having it DEMONSTRABLY NOT WORK. I really wish somebody would start asking, loudly, when we were going to see results from all this freeing up business from the nightmares of energy efficient light bulbs and prohibitions on poisoning people, plus making sure they don't have to pay for the street their HQ sits on or the cops that patrol it. 

A.

Today on Tommy T's Obsession with the Freeperati - Fiscal Follies (female) edition

Good morning, everyone!

Since Adrastos is busy with Rising Tide VI - Electric Boogaloo (shameless plug) and Kibitzer is still recovering from strolling into the iso chamber, noting the rotating red beacon lights, the warning sirens and the people rushing for the airlock in a frantic attempt to outrun the unleashed Freeper crazy - and then looking around saying "What's up?" while the toxic fumes engulfed him - I'd like to thank the erstwhile Elspeth Ravenwind (still sounds better than Wendy) for doing a yeowoman's job helping me get the insanity sponged off the walls.

Let's see what's cooking this week, shall we?

First of all - Freepers luvs them some Laura Ingraham.

I mean, luvs. 

Laura is on O'Reilly

Posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 7:49:33 PM by fatima

She is doing a great job and looks Beautiful.

1 posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 7:49:33 PM by fatima

Would you still love her if she looked Ugly?

To: fatima

She is one smart woman.

2 posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 7:51:40 PM by svcw (Legalism reinforces self-righteousness - it communicates to you the good news of your own goodness)

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To: fatima

She is doing a great job and looks Beautiful.

She always does...and always does...

 

3 posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 7:51:50 PM by jessduntno ("Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in it." - Ted Kennedy (D-HELL)

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To: SoCalPol

Thanks.That’s means she is on the rest of the week.:)Love Laura.

14 posted on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 8:13:25 PM by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))

Get the picture?

"I love Laura and she loves me - She's as brittle as she can beee"

.

Now?

Not so much.

Why?

Laura Ingraham pushes back on Sarah Palin primary threat Politico ^ | July 29, 2011 | ALEXANDER BURNS

Posted on Friday, July 29, 2011 4:00:56 PM by ejdrapes

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, one of the high-profile certified non-moderates urging the GOP to support John Boehner's debt ceiling bill, leveled criticism at Sarah Palin during today's show for raising the prospect of 2012 primary challenges to House Republicans.

***************

No, Larua thank god

You're going to Hell for failing to capitalize "God".  Just so ya know.

we have people who stand on principle. Most of the time that's the reason we get half a loaf.

Metamucil can help you with that.

If it wasn't for the grass roots we'd be totally screwed. I do agree with her though that throwing out primary challenge threats right now isn't helpful. I can't believe Palin really thinks someone like Paul Ryan or Alan West should be primaried because they're voting for Boehner 3.0. So I'm not sure who that challege was directed at.

1 posted on Friday, July 29, 2011 4:00:59 PM by ejdrapes

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To: ejdrapes

Ingraham argued in her broadcast that Palin's note was unhelpful to the GOP — and to the tea party

I have had about enough of Ingraham too.

 

Lindsey Graham's old girlfriend.

4 posted on Friday, July 29, 2011 4:04:40 PM by kcvl

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To: ejdrapes

Makin’ friends inside the beltway there Laura? Don’t let the cash trump the ol’ principles.

12 posted on Friday, July 29, 2011 4:07:48 PM by Invincibly Ignorant

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To: ejdrapes

Certified non-moderate?????????????????? The woman is a RINO!

The ultimate insult!! Could there be anything lower in the eyes of the Freeperati?

An unmarried RINO!

26 posted on Friday, July 29, 2011 4:13:15 PM by Doc Savage ("I've shot people I like a lot more,...for a lot less!" Raylan Givins)

 

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More of The Battle Of The Babes after the folded faces, with gratutious Allen West (remember when they loved him, too?) bashing.

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