|
Reuters? Class Warfare: Lower Tax Takes ?Costs? Gov?t
2008-08-26 22:06:00 -By Warner Todd Huston Reuters thinks that tax breaks and loopholes “costs” government its tax receipts. This is a perfect example of class hatred ginned up by the media to further class warfare between Americans. The absolute truth is that if people use the tax code to limit their tax burden they are not costing the ...
By: Publius Forum
Rethink the Fight against Cocaine
2008-05-26 21:40:00 International Crisis Group When Plan Colombia (the multibillion dollar US assistance program targeted at curbing drug smuggling and supporting Colombia against armed guerrillas) started, coca was cultivated in 12 of Colombia's 34 provinces. Today it is grown in 23 of those provinces. In 2006, after five years of Plan Colombia, four years of the regional Andean Counterdrug Initiative, and after spending $5.5 billion, some 1,000 metric tons of cocaine were produced between Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. That's about the same amount that was produced in 2002 when President Álvaro Uribe took office. The head of the White House Office of Narcotics and Drug Control Program, John Walters, admitted at a press conference in Haiti recently that last year that cocaine production had risen to 1,400 metric tons in 2007 – a whopping 40 percent hike. Not surprisingly, his staff is scrambling to rephrase that. Washington is focusing on the mos...
Government May Have Massive Surveillance Program for Use in National Emerge
2008-05-21 19:39:00 AlterNet ?Main Core,? a program that authorizes ?computer searches through massive [unspecified] electronic databases? in order to discover ?potential threats? in the event of a ?national emergency?: According to a senior government official??There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ?enemies of the state? almost instantaneously.? ? One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. These so-called ?Continuity of Governance? plans, Radar notes, ?are shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively unregulated by Congress or the courts.? ?Main Core is the table of contents for all th...
Moyers: Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes, and We May Be R
2008-05-19 06:12:00 AlterNet The earth we share as our common gift, to be passed on in good condition to our children's children, is being despoiled. Private wealth is growing as public needs increase apace. Our Constitution is perilously close to being consigned to the valley of the shadow of death, betrayed by a powerful cabal of secrecy-obsessed authoritarians. Terms like "liberty" and "individual freedom" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to "promote the general welfare" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the welfare of the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it. It isn't necessary to be a Jeremiah crying aloud to a sinful Jerusalem that the Lord is about to afflict them for their sins of idolatry, or Cassandra, making a nuisance of herself as she wanders around King Priam's palace grounds wailing "The Greeks are coming." Or Socrates, the gadfly, stin...
Food Crisis Rises To Forefront In Asia
2008-05-05 23:21:00 Globalization is perpetuated by the third world's leaders, hungered by the West's promise of money, until reality hits home. IPS News Three words -- high food prices -- emerged like a gatecrasher at an event hosted by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) here that was originally billed as a celebration of the bank?s new vision for poverty eradication in Asia. Participants at the event discussed the AsDB?s ?Strategy 2020? -- the long- term strategic framework (LTSF) for the 2008-2020 period -- and raised the alarm about the current global food crisis. It is a reality that the bank cannot ignore, they said, in light of the millions who could be condemned to a life of hunger and poverty in the region. "The rising food prices are a threat to food security and a threat to poverty reduction, and we stress that food security must be adopted as a challenge of the LTSF," D. Subba Rao, secretary of India?s finance ministry, said during a Sunday morning seminar for the central bank governor...
Bush: Robin Hood for the Rich
2008-04-28 20:21:00 The Bush economic policy was a scam, a rip off, probably the biggest bait and switch in history. I began with a tactic proposed by Grover Norquist called "Starving the Beast". I've been writing about it for four years. The idea is that if the US government spends itself into debt so far that it can't grow the economy enough to get out, the only outcome can be major cuts in government spending. Combine this with Globalization, the pressure on the wages of the average American will continue to decrease relative to the cost of living. The end result is we have a major counter-revolution, a return to pre-New Deal times where the rich were richer and the worker was too busy to pay attention to anything but paying for food and shelter. If you don't believe me, read on: AlterNet The recession of 2001 never ended. At least not for ordinary Americans. Ordinary Americans found that their income was declining. From 2001 to 2007, median family income declined - depending on where you ...
A Solution to the Food Crisis
2008-04-25 20:46:00 AlterNet Here's what we must do to prevent an epidemic of starvation from breaking out. First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500 million by May 1. Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices. To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every pe...
Food Crisis: Hunger Plagues Haiti and the World
2008-04-23 20:17:00 Globalresearch.ca Consumers in rich countries feel it in supermarkets but in the world's poorest ones people are starving. The reason - soaring food prices, and it's triggered riots around the world in places like Mexico, Indonesia, Yemen, the Philippines, Cambodia, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Guinea, Mauritania, Egypt, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Peru, Bolivia and Haiti that was once nearly food self-sufficient but now relies on imports for most of its supply and (like other food-importing countries) is at the mercy of agribusiness. Wheat shortages in Peru are acute enough to have the military make bread with potato flour (a native crop). In Pakistan, thousands of troops guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. In Thailand, rice farmers take shifts staying awake nights guarding their fields from thieves. The crop's price has about doubled in recent months, it's the staple for half or more of the world's population, but rising prices and fearing scarcity ...
Pluto/Chiron class warfare going fine, thanks
2008-04-16 01:25:00 Global Hunger, Corporate Greed: When will enough be enough? By Debnath Guharoy Systemic deception has become acceptable culture in too many boardrooms, with nothing more than a wink and a nod required down the chain of command. When it gets to a point that an accountant is unable to explain complex new financial instruments and their equally befuddling acronyms, disaster cannot be far away
Poll finds broad pessimism over economy
2008-03-19 07:32:00 Yahoo! News More than three in four Americans think the United States is in a recession according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll released on Tuesday. Not since September 1992, two months before President George H.W. Bush lost his re-election bid, have so many Americans said the economy was in such bad shape, USA Today reported. Seventy-six percent of to those polled said the economy is in recession, compared to 22 percent who said it is not, USA Today said. Asked if the United States could slip into a depression lasting several years, 59 percent said it was likely and 79 percent said they were worried about it, the newspaper reported. The poll was completed on Sunday, AlterNet Remember - and don't let any of your acquaintances forget - what we're experiencing is a direct result of GOP fiscal policies that began during Ronald Reagan's reign, and that were elevated to the high art of social theft during the Bush years. The GOP pyramid scheme is collapsing. Lee Atwater, prototype...
Biofuels Starve the World's Poor
2008-03-03 22:22:00 What is amazing here is that mainstream media didn't bring up this point before an whole bio-fuel industry launched towards consuming 30% of US corn. New York Times The world?s food situation is bleak, and shortsighted policies in the United States and other wealthy countries ? which are diverting crops to environmentally dubious biofuels ? bear much of the blame. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by a quarter. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982. As usual, the brunt is falling disproportionately on the poor. The F.A.O. estimates that the cereal import bill of the neediest countries will increase by a third for the second year in a row. Prices have gone so high that the World Food Program, which aims to feed 73 million people this year, said it might have to reduce rations or the number of people it will help. The world has fa...
One in 99 Americans Behind Bars
2008-02-29 14:56:00 AlterNet According to a new study from Pew, 1 in 99 American adults are currently in jail. From the New York Times article on the report: For the first time in the nation's history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report. Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars. Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34. Military spending and incarceration rates are also both cornerstones of the booming Republican public sector economy: In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. Th...
The Ethnology of a Chicago Gang
2008-02-28 05:28:00 I have a new theory. Dirty money is spread so wide and deep that perhaps most of the wealthy families in this world started out in the underground economy, like drug and human trafficking. That would certainly explain the Kennedy's, Bush and the EU willing to look the other way in Kosovo where a gangster is running the government, and the history of the Iran Contra as well as seeding the start of Osama's Islamic jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan funded by Reagan and the Saudi family. Here is a book review about a Chicago gangster that offers some confirmation of what I'm suspecting. Salon Books None of Robert Taylor residents really liked the gang, but it evolved to serve a purpose: As is often the case when civil order breaks down -- whether it happens in Afghanistan, Somalia or the South Side of Chicago -- strongmen emerge to provide security, at a cost. On the other hand, at least the residents of Robert Taylor knew exactly what they were getting for their "taxes...
Obama Threatened and Secret Service Drops Gun Checks
2008-02-22 17:10:00 While Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists publish ominous threats to Obama's life, reportedly, Secret Service ordered an end to gun checks at Obama rally. Now what is up with this? "The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security," reported the paper's Jack Douglas, Jr. More than 10 days remain until the Texas primary and a key vote for president. "Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on. '"Sure,' said Lawrence, when asked if he was concerned by the great number of people who had gotten into the building without being checked. But, he added, the turnout of more than 17,000 people seemed to be a ...
Huckabee Populist Message Continues Ad Nauseum, Class Warfare Included
2008-01-18 20:57:00 POPULIST RHETORIC VS. REALITY IN THE PALMETTO STATE Gov. Huckabee Raised Regressive Taxes On Working Families “I don’t think he understands the free market business system. He’s not good on taxing, he’s not good on spending, he’s not good on free trade. In other words, all the prosperity factors seem to be ...
John McCain’s Top 10 Class-Warfare Arguments Against Tax Cuts
2008-01-16 19:51:00 From Human Events 1. “I don’t think the governor’s tax cut is too big—it’s just misplaced. Sixty percent of the benefits from his tax cuts go to the wealthiest 10% of Americans—and that’s not the kind of tax relief that Americans need. … Gov. Bush wants to spend the entire surplus on tax cuts. I don’t ...
Clinton v. Obama: Protected Class Warfare
2008-01-14 12:57:00 For years, Dems have promoted group identity politics, turning real or imagined grievances into votes by creating coalitions based on the solidarity of perpetual victimhood. But now, the aspirations of two groups are pitted against one another in the presidential candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and solidarity is fast giving way to polarity. For ...
Plutocrats: Middle Class Warfare going dandily
2008-01-14 02:10:00 Video: John Edwards Senator Bernie Sanders: "Let's be very clear. A vicious and premeditated class warfare is being waged today against the American middle class." Oppressive, racist Pluto-Chiron's plutocracy vs America's once great middle class. Yep. The hourglass society hath returneth with a vengence...just the way the "elites" like it. Those are Bush's "base" you remember from his first
Business Interests Fear an Edwards Presidency
2008-01-11 19:00:00 The Guardian Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards. The former North Carolina senator's chosen profession alone raises the hackles of business people. Before entering politics, he made a fortune as a trial lawyer. In litigious America, trial lawyers bring lawsuits against companies on behalf of aggrieved individuals and sometimes win multimillion-dollar settlements. Edwards won several. But beyond his profession, Edwards' tone and language on the campaign trail have increased business antipathy toward him. His stump speeches are peppered with attacks on "corporate greed" and warnings of "the destruction of the middle class." He accuses lobbyists of "corrupting the government" and says Americans lack universal health care because of "drug companies, insurance companies and their lobbyists." Despite not winning the two state nominating contests completed so far, with ...
The Edwards Surge: Right Message at the Right Time
2007-12-27 15:22:00 Here is why I think Edwards is the greatest hope for America. The Nation Indeed, undecided voters assembled in focus groups that watched the debate for the major television networks rated Edwards off the charts. That's going to help the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president as the Iowa caucuses approach. Despite the intense focus on the campaigns of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, most polls suggest that Edwards is very much in the running in Iowa. And rightly so. To a far greater extent than Obama or Clinton, Edwards has struck at the heart of issues that should matter most in the race to replace not just George W. Bush, but the Bush agenda of corporate giveaways, job-crushing free trade deals, war profiteering in Iraq, and subprime mortgage profiteering in Indiana, Idaho, Illinois and, yes, Iowa. Edwards summed up his increasingly aggressive and powerful anti-corporate themes with a declaration: "What makes America America is at stake: jobs,...
Bush?s Class Warfare
2007-12-23 13:06:00 Sudhan @13:05 CET Peter Dreier | Huffington Post, posted December 21, 2007 Just a week before Christmas, President Bush gave corporate America two big presents. On Tuesday, his Federal Communications Commission changed the rules to allow the nation?s giant conglomerates to further consolidate their grip on the media by permitting them to purchase TV and radio ...
By: Suzie-Q
The Rich Keep Getting Richer
2007-12-14 18:00:00 Why has so many in the middle class voted Republican over the years? They haven't been paying attention. Paul Krugman Here?s what the numbers say about percentage gains in after-tax income from 2003 to 2005: Bottom quintile: 2% Next quintile: 2.4% Middle quintile: 3.9% Fourth quintile: 3.7% Top quintile: 16% Top 10%: 20.9% Top 5%: 27.7% Top 1%: 43.5% It was a boom, all right ? but only for a few people. One other thing that?s striking from the report, by the way, is that over the 26 years the estimates span, the only significant gains for the bottom two quintiles, and most of the gains for the middle quintile, took place during the Clinton years.
Something is Wrong with Our Justice System
2007-12-10 19:14:00 There is something wrong with our justice system. Michael Vick gets 23 months in prison Monday for his role in a dogfighting conspiracy, and Barry Bonds faces a 30 year in prison term if convicted for lying to a grand jury about steroid use. The US has the highest rate of imprisonment of any country in the world, 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). One in 32 Americans are in jail or prison. Too many are young African Americans and way too many are imprisoned for petty drug offenses. Not only are we creating more victims, we're ensuring their future success as criminals in the best training grounds (prisons). We can no longer afford this sick system, by taxes, or moral responsibility.
The Get-Tough-On-Crime Bug is Making Us Sick
2007-12-06 04:37:00 AlterNet Doctors recommend people get the flu shot this time of year. And I recommend folks get inoculated for the get-tough-on-crime bug before the campaign season gets in full swing. The highly contagious mental malady prevents people from thinking clearly about crime and punishment. It's how we get legislation like the "Aid Elimination Penalty" provision in the Higher Education Act (HEA) that bars students with drug convictions from receiving federal financial aid for college; apparently, to teach them a lesson. By "them," in this case, we're talking about disproportionately disadvantaged students. Rich, stoner kids don't need financial aid. The push to repeal the provision from the HEA was dropped in Congress two weeks ago, despite the efforts of the Coalition for Higher Education Act Reform, though they did get one small victory in getting the law amended so that the AEP applies only to offenses committed while a student is getting financial aid. Still, an estimated 200,...
Victoria's Secret: It's Slave Labor
2007-11-28 17:42:00 AlterNet "The Victoria's Secret workers toil 14 to 15 hours a day, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., seven days a week, receiving on average one day off every three or four months. All overtime is mandatory, and workers are routinely at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week while toiling 89 to 96 hours. Treatment is very rough, as managers and supervisors scream at the foreign guest workers to move faster to complete their high production goals. " Workers who fall behind on their production goals, or who make even a minor error, can be slapped and beaten. Despite being forced to work five or more overtime hours a day, the workers are routinely shortchanged on their legal overtime pay, being cheated of up to $18.48 each week in wages due them. While this might not seem like a great deal of money, to these poor workers it is the equivalent of losing three regular days' wages each week. " Workers are allowed just 3.3 minutes to sew each $14 Victoria's Secret women's bikini, for...
Riots rock Paris suburb for third night
2007-11-28 01:56:00 CNN.com Club-wielding police fought stone-throwing rioters in the northern suburbs of Paris for a second night Monday, with at least five officers suffering injuries during the clashes, authorities said. The riots began Sunday night, after two teenagers on a motorcycle were killed in a collision with a police car in the town of Villiers-le-Bel, the Val d'Oise police prefecture reported late Monday. The melees come two years after riots in other Paris suburbs populated largely by immigrants and their French-born children. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking in Beijing while on a visit to China, called for calm while an investigation in the crash is under way. Rioters set ablaze at least 60 cars, as well as a police station, library and car dealership in Villiers-le-Bel, police said. The clashes had spread across six towns by Monday night, they said. None of the injuries to police were life-threatening, police reported. The number of rioters hurt and the extent of their ...
Wall Street End of Year Bonus Are Huge!
2007-11-27 21:56:00 Everyone agrees Wall Street is having a bad year. Why are bonuses still in over the top? Someone must be profiting from the disaster of our economy, someone beyond the invest bank brokers. Someone is making billions selling stocks and equities short. And they are making sure the brokers who help them are rewarded for a job well done. Joe Kennedy did it in the Depression. There have to be hundreds profiting now from our misfortune. Too Much They don?t just make deals on Wall Street. They make myths. And last week Wall Street's myth-making machine was roaring at full throttle ? after the news broke that America?s five biggest investment banks will this year shell out a record $38 billion in bonus pay. To justify the financial industry?s annual bonus blitz, friends of Wall Street fortunes usually recycle some variation on that most elemental of investment banker fables, the wealth creation myth. Wall Street?s movers and shakers, we are assured, create fabulous wealth. They richly...
The Media and Class Warfare
2007-11-22 21:50:00 by Norman Solomon A few decades ago, upwards of one-third of the American workforce was unionized. Now the figure is down around 10 percent. And news media are central to the downward spiral. As unions wither, the journalistic establishment has a rationale for giving them less ink and air time. As the media coverage diminishes, fewer Americans find much reason to believe that unions are relevant to their working lives. But the media problem for labor goes far beyond the fading of unions from newsprint, television and radio. Media outlets aren’t just giving short shrift to organized labor. The avoidance extends to unorganized labor, too. So often, when issues of workplaces and livelihoods appear in the news, they’re framed in terms of employer plights. The frequent emphasis is on the prospects and perils of companies that must compete. Well, sure, firms need to compete. And working people need to feed and clothe and house themselves and their families. And workers ho...
This Fight is About Your Government Pensions
2007-11-21 06:25:00 If the French cut pensions to government workers, you can bet your's will be next on the block. New York Times President Nicolas Sarkozy urged transit workers to end their weeklong strike over pension benefits on Tuesday as civil service employees, including primary school teachers, firefighters, newspaper printers and weather service employees walked out in a separate dispute over job cuts. After a week of avoiding commenting on the train strike, Mr. Sarkozy said in a speech to a group of French mayors that an overhaul was long overdue for early retirement privileges for public sector employees, including the transit workers. ?We will not surrender, and we will not retreat,? he said. ?France needs reforms to meet the challenges imposed on it by the world.?
The Art of Mental Warfare
2007-11-20 18:53:00 The Art of Mental Warfare is going to do to you: What Dylan did to folk music, What Hendrix did to electricity, What Pollock did to the canvas, What Ali did to the ring, What a juiced up Bonds did to the Home Run, What Paine did to revolution, What Jefferson did to democracy, What Bush did to stolen elections, What Einstein did to the atom, What Darwin did to evolution, It's Happening Here Mr & Ms Jones. Jump Start Your Mind. Our time has come. We're going to do what your mama did to you. It's time to be born. Awake! Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you. Ye are Many - They are Few.
Trading Corporate Republicans For Corporate Democrats
2007-10-31 05:14:00 Senator Edwards delivered Monday at St. Anselm?s College in New Hampshire. He tells the truth. John Edwards It's time to tell the truth. And the truth is the system in Washington is corrupt. It is rigged by the powerful special interests to benefit the very few at the expense of the many. And as a result, the American people have lost faith in our broken system in Washington, and believe it no longer works for ordinary Americans. They're right. As I look across the political landscape of both parties today -- what I see are politicians too afraid to tell the truth -- good people caught in a bad system that overwhelms their good intentions and requires them to chase millions of dollars in campaign contributions in order to perpetuate their careers and continue their climb to higher office. This presidential campaign is a perfect example of how our politics is awash with money. I have raised more money up to this point than any Democratic candidate raised last time in the presid...
No Child Left Behind Law A Disaster for Inner City Schools
2007-09-11 06:20:00 UNDERVIEWS The poisonous essence of [the federal education law No Child Left Behind] lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation's schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic "teaching to the test" it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended. The justification for this law was the presumptuous and ignorant determination by the White House that our urban schools are, for the most part, staffed by mediocre drones who will suddenly become terrific teachers if we place a sword of terror just above their heads and threaten them with penalties if they do not pump their students' scores by using proto-military methods of instruction -- scripted texts and hand-held timers -- that will rescue them from doing any thi...
Where Did the Katrina Money Go?
2007-09-06 18:01:00 NAM When pressed on the slow pace of recovery in the Gulf Coast, President Bush insists the federal government has fulfilled its promise to rebuild the region. The proof, he says, is in the big check the federal government signed to underwrite the recovery -- allegedly more than $116 billion. But residents of the still-devastated Gulf Coast are left wondering whether the check bounced. "$116 billion is not a useful number," says Stanley Czerwinski of the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm. For starters, most federal money -- about two-thirds -- was quickly spent for short-term needs like debris removal and Coast Guard rescue. As Czerwinski explains, "There is a significant difference between responding to an emergency and rebuilding post-disaster." That has left little money for long-term Gulf Coast recovery projects. Although it's tricky to unravel the maze of federal reports, our best estimate of agency data is that only $35 billion has been approp...
Fighting Over Their Share of the Healthcare Dollar
2007-08-31 18:28:00 The Washington Monthly I would happily pay for universal healthcare just so I never had to read an op-ed like this again. It's not that Williamson doesn't have a point, it's just that this beggar-thy-neighbor attitude is enough to make me retch, and I see it all the time. I don't get dental coverage, so why should grocery workers? My copay went up last year, so why shouldn't everyone else's? I don't pay for healthcare for my housecleaners, so why should I pay it for school cafeteria workers? Our wretched private healthcare system has turned us into a nation of spiteful and small-minded misanthropes.
Research Support for the Class Warfare Model of Politics
2007-08-30 23:17:00 Robert Biggert - Assumption College Regional differences in party support have attracted a good deal of attention since the 2000 election. A striking feature of the current pattern is that Democratic support is higher in more affluent states. At the individual level, income is associated with Republican support, but in a recent paper, Gelman et al. (2006) find that this relationship is weaker in more affluent states. In affluent states, people with high and low incomes both tend to vote Democratic; in poorer states, people with low incomes vote Democratic while people with high incomes vote Republican. This paper extends Gelman et al.'s analysis by considering both education and income. We find that the effects of income and college education both vary among states, in a largely independent manner. Variation in the effects of college education is related to the educational composition of the state: where college education is more common, it is more strongly associated with support...
Smashing the Plutocracy
2007-08-22 04:42:00 The Nation Somewhere in the Hamptons a high-roller is cursing his cleaning lady and shaking his fists at the lawn guys. The American poor, who are usually tactful enough to remain invisible to the multi-millionaire class, suddenly leaped onto the scene and started smashing the global financial system. Incredibly enough, this may be the first case in history in which the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system without going to the trouble of a revolution. First they stopped paying their mortgages, a move in which they were joined by many financially stretched middle class folks, though the poor definitely led the way. All right, these were trick mortgages, many of them designed to be unaffordable within two years of signing the contract. There were "NINJA" loans, for example, awarded to people with "no income, no job or assets." Conservative columnist Niall Fergusen laments the low levels of "economic literacy" that allowed people to be exploited by sub-prime loa...
Forced Sex and Labor Trafficking in the U.S.
2007-08-15 16:50:00 AlterNet We like to think of slavery in America as something consigned to history books, a dark chapter set in Southern cotton plantations and the hulls of ships set sail from Africa. Flor Molina wishes this were true. For part of the year in 2003, Molina, a 29-year-old Mexican, was held against her will and forced to work in a factory in southern California, making dresses from 5:30 in the morning until 11 at night, seven days a week. She was not allowed to leave the factory or take a shower; she shared a small bed with another woman in the back of the shop. If she didn't sew fast enough, her boss would pull her hair, pinch and slap her. "If we wouldn't do what she [her employer] said, she told us somebody who we love would pay the consequences," says Molina, a small woman with steady dark eyes and black hair that falls below her waist. "She told me she could kill me and no one would ask her for me. She told me dogs have more rights than I have in this country." Molina is one...
Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?
2007-08-10 02:21:00 Glenn C. Loury in Boston Review According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States?with five percent of the world?s population?houses 25 percent of the world?s inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century. Never before has a supposedly free co...
Katrina Families Still in Distress
2007-07-21 05:32:00 The Bush Administration has engaged in the most incredibly blatant demonstration of class warfare I can recall in my adult life. The poor people of New Orleans were always expendable and they continue to be. Despite the media hue and cry initially, insufficient efforts continue. Children and families continue to suffer in poisonous FEMA trailers, in need of basic services, too many without school, without extended family support, without treatment for traumatic stress disorders. Psychiatry News Children were especially hard hit by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, traumatized by loss of their homes and communities and separation from families and friends, said Joy Osofsky, Ph.D., clinical director of Louisiana Spirit and a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, and public health at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) School of Public Health. Louisiana Spirit offers crisis counseling to child and adolescent hurricane survivors in the state. For children,...
Money Can Buy Happiness
2007-05-20 23:29:00 I had a conversation with a friend a short time ago. The subject of our conversation turned to the age old cliché, “Money cannot buy happiness.” My friend was adamant in his attempt to convince me money cannot buy happiness. My mistake was that I somewhat agreed. My mind has been much clearer lately so ...
Class Warfare and Other People's Time
2007-02-02 20:52:00 As if we have nothing else better to do nowadays, add yet another topic to the list of those to find fault with, or put on the official "I'm offended" list. For those of us who do not operate or work inside the confines of a Dilbert Cubicle, and have no desire to ever do so let me inform you as to how ordinary people, walk, talk and chew gum all at the same multi-tasking time: 1)With the multi- ethic, multi- racial, multi- diverse, multi-sexual, multi-religious nature of our country it is impossible to be all things to all people without having a bias against somebody, somewhere, over something in this country. As if we were all born yesterday. We all got something. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO BE PREJUDICED OR BIASED.2)After listening and absorbing all the cultural diversity one immigrant nation up to this point in time is it any wonder we still have that "We're Movin' On Up" song floating through our collective psyches like so many worn out slaves toiling in the plantation fields?... |
|
 |
|
 |
