- The Snowden Principle, and that fire that inspired him to take unimaginable risks, is fundamentally about fostering an informed and engaged public. The Constitution embraces that idea. Mr. Snowden says his motivation was to expose crimes -spark a debate, and let the public know of secret policies he could not in good conscience ignore - whether you agree with his tactics or not, that debate has begun. Now, we are faced with a choice, we can embrace the debate or we can try to shut the debate down and maintain the status quo.
- It’s not too extreme to call our system of government now “American fascism.” It’s the control of government by big business, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt defined in 1938 as fascism. And they control the government and turn the government to their favor—subsidies, handouts, giveaways, deferred prosecutions, non-prosecutions—and against the American people. And minimum wage is just one. You have full Medicare for all, which a majority of doctors and the American people want, with free choice of doctor and hospital. That’s the only—we’re the only Western country that doesn’t have it. Eight hundred Americans a week die because they cannot afford diagnosis and treatment for their ailments. That’s 800 Americans a week, 45,000 a year. Who says so? A study, peer-reviewed, out of Harvard Medical School. So, we have the lowest minimum wage in the Western world. We have the greatest amount of consumer debt. We have the highest child poverty, the highest adult poverty, huge underemployment, a crumbling public works—but huge multi-billionaires and hugely profitable corporations.
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Thanks in large part to higher taxes on the wealthy, which Republicans said would not reduce the deficit, deficit reduction is picking up speed at a pace few could have predicted. We’re now looking at over $400 billion in deficit reduction in just one year, and about $800 billion in deficit reduction since President Obama took office…. It’s fair to say this problem has been largely fixed…. Let’s also not forget that Republican talking points on fiscal policy have effectively been left in tatters, and every conservative political figure who’s declared ‘Socialist Obama is turning America into Greece!’ looks incredibly foolish right now.
The right’s fiscal criticisms of the Obama White House are the exact opposite of reality.
(via liberalsarecool) - While the high jobless numbers are partly a legacy of the Great Recession, the fact is that our economy has generated too few jobs for most of the last 30 years and is likely to continue to do so. The only viable response is a return to an idea that once animated domestic policy making: full employment, the notion that everyone who wants to work should be able to find a job, and if the market isn’t up to the task, then the government must fill the gap.
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(via tymethiefslongerthoughts)
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Seriously, if we believe a 14 year old is too immature to know how to take a pill, do we really think she’s adult enough to handle an unwanted pregnancy?
The truth is that the age restriction is completely arbitrary, tied only to our puritanical comfort levels. And listen, I get it; I think it’s fair to say that most people are uncomfortable with the idea of a 14 year old having sex. But here’s the thing - access to Plan B isn’t about keeping a 14 year old from having sex - by the time she gets to the pharmacy, that ship has sailed - it’s about keeping a 14 year old who has already had sex from getting pregnant. And despite what urban legend (or past embarrassing FDA memos) may tell you, making emergency contraception more available is not more likely to make young teens have sex - it will just make them less likely to end up pregnant.
We can’t let our discomfort with teen sex trump young people’s right to sexual and reproductive health and we can’t continue to let politics trump science. If we care about young women’s health and bodily autonomy and integrity, we’ll drop all age restrictions from emergency contraception. Anything less isn’t just illogical - it’s immoral.
“Hey, FDA: Drop the Plan B Age Restriction,” my latest at The Nation (via jessicavalenti)(via silenticyriver)
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People who think that no one uses welfare/food stamps to actually buy things they need can tell that to my hungry 11 year old self who wouldn’t have had decent lunches or meat (at all) without government assistance.
Oh, and who might have gone hungry if there had been drug testing involved. Thanks. I’m glad that you know more about my life than I do! If only I had realized sooner that my mom wasn’t really buying food with that money! I mean, I don’t know what she was doing with it, since our lives were fucking awful at that point and we had a grand total of zero luxuries (I shared a room with my mom! In the basement of my grandma’s condo! I did laundry for the whole house to earn enough dimes to buy myself sodas and candy!), but really, please, enlighten me.
Also, as a child of a drug addict, this law fucking terrifies me. The idea that some kid who is trying to cope with having an addict for a parent (not always easy) also might go hungry or without new clothes or whatnot because some privileged assholes think poor people have to be suffering saints to qualify for help literally makes me cry to think about.
(via stfuconservatives)
YAAAS TO ALL OF THIS
(via love-resist)
All these bullshit “welfare reform” laws that are designed to fix some imaginary problem in the system that doesn’t exist all comes out of the perpetuation of the “welfare queen” stereotype that we love to vilify all the time.
When we think welfare we think poor black woman who’s having babies for extra government benefits who’s really just taking the government handouts to buy drugs, candy or brand new shoes or some shit…
Making laws based off stereotypes is NOT how we combat poverty. Its how we make the issue even worse
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Reblogged for commentary
(via alexjandra)
My sister had asked me about drug testing laws a few weeks back and this is the quote I wanted to pull up because it sums up how I feel.
(via pixyled)
(via ultralaser)
- In desert societies — including the American Southwest — water is so precious that it is money. People connive and fight and die over it; governments covet it; marriages are even made and broken because of it. If one were to talk to a person who has known only that desert and tell him that in the city there are public water fountains and that children are even sometimes allowed to turn on the fire hydrants in the summer and to frolic in the water, he would be sure one were crazy. For he knows, with existential certitude, that it is human nature to fight over water. Mankind has lived now for several millennia in the desert. Our minds and emotions are conditioned by that bitter experience; we do not dare to think that things could be otherwise. Yet there are signs that we are, without really planning it that way, marching out of the desert. There are some who loathe to leave behind the consolations of familiar brutalities; there are others who in one way or another would like to impose the law of the desert upon the Promised Land. It may even be possible that mankind cannot bear too much happiness. It’s also possible that we will seize this opportunity and make of the earth a homeland rather than an exile. This is the socialist project. It does not promise, or even seek, to abolish the human condition, for that is impossible. It does propose to end that invidious competition and venality which, because scarcity allowed no other alternatives, we have come to think are inseparable from our humanity.
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At about 800 people per square mile, people switch from voting primarily Republican to voting primarily Democratic. Put another way, below 800 people per square mile, there is a 66% chance that you voted Republican. Above 800 people per square mile, there is a 66% chance that you voted Democrat.
What Republicans Are Really Up Against: Population Density - Politics - The Atlantic Cities (via markcoatney)
“98% of the 50 most dense counties voted Obama. 98% of the 50 least dense counties voted for Romney.”
(via sonicbloom11)
(via sonicbloom11)
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Romneyism
By now, in these last remaining days before the election of 2012, we have learned enough about the beliefs of the Republican presidential candidate to see them as a worldview all its own – a kind of creed that explains Mitt Romney. Those who say he has no principles are selling him short.
Despite its contradictions and ellipses, Romneyism has an internal coherence. It is different from conservatism, because it does not intend to conserve or protect any particular institutions or values. It is also distinct from Republicanism, in that it is not rooted in traditional small-town American values, nationalism, or states’ rights.
The ten guiding principles of Romneyism are:
1. Corporations are the basic units of society. Corporations are people, and the overriding purpose of an economy is to maximize corporate profits. When profits are maximized, the economy grows fastest. This growth benefits everyone in the form greater output, better products and services, and higher share prices.
2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. If workers do not contribute to that goal, they should be fired. If they cannot then find other work that helps maximize profits in another company, their wages must be too high, and they must therefore accept steadily lower wages until they find a job.
3. All factors of production – capital, physical plant and equipment, workers – are fungible and should be treated the same. Any that fail to deliver high competitive returns should be replaced or discarded. This keeps an economy efficient. Fairness is and should be irrelevant.
4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. They should not be used as excuses to constrain the pursuit of profits through regulation.
5. Individual worth depends on net worth — how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. Any person with enough intelligence and ambition can make a fortune. Failure to do so is sign of moral and intellectual inferiority.
6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. They should not receive food stamps, Medicaid, or any other form of social subsidy. Coddling leads to a weaker society and a weaker economy.
7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. It is the right and responsibility of individuals and corporations to exploit every tax loophole they (and their tax attorneys) can find in order to pay the lowest taxes possible.
8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. Any means used to win the game is legitimate even if it involves lying and cheating, as long as it gains more supporters than it loses.
9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. The rich must therefore do whatever is necessary to prevent the majority from exercising its will, including spending large sums of money on lobbyists and political campaigns. The most virtuous among the rich will go a step further and run for president.
10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money. Patriotism is a matter of guarding our economy from unfair traders and undocumented immigrants, rather than joining together for the common good. We owe nothing to one another as citizens of the same society.
On Tuesday we’ll decide whether these should be the guiding principles of America.
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Never forget.
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(via early-onset-of-night)
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“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
- It’s pretty clear to me that we have not begun to think through the political consequences of living in a world where sophisticated drones can be operated by lots of other countries besides the United States, and by private individuals within the US. After two large and unpopular land wars, we are shifting to a military posture that is heavily reliant on drones and special forces to carry out what amount to targeted killings of our political opponents. This is a very seductive path to follow because it is relatively cheap, lacking the huge logistics trains that accompany conventional force deployments, and seems for the time being to be a monopoly of the United States. The residual forces we are going to leave in Afghanistan will largely be of this nature.
