(via questionall)
(Source: wisconsinforward)
Women vote advocates Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
(via thepoliticalfreakshow)
“Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.” — Can this campaign be constructive? - E.J. Dionne Jr.
Wisconsin's resentment factor - Wisconsin Recall - Salon.com -
If Scott Walker survives tomorrow’s election, there will be plenty of reasons. Many people will point to his huge cash advantage, for good reason. But no factor will have been more important than the decades of decline in U.S. union membership.
“Unions had their place,” a woman named Jerri told me soon after I arrived in Wisconsin last week. “They did their part back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and then they got too big, and are abusing their power.” Jerri and her husband, Tim (both declined to give last names), were eating at a bar in Wauwatosa, the purple Milwaukee suburb that’s home to Scott Walker. They both work in sales: She’s in retail at the mall; he’s in wholesale, selling caskets. Tim said Walker’s union “reforms” were necessary because local politicians had been “looking out for the union” instead of “people like me.” He said unions are for people who don’t “feel they should have to work very hard.” Jerri complained that unions “are sucking off my teat.” Public workers’ benefits, she said, “should be the same as anybody in any kind of private job.”
I absolutely cannot understand the people holding thoughts like this - if they are not millionaires. They are against other citizens like themselves joining together in order to have some leverage when negotiating their wages and benefits with their employers. If they are not part of a union, they disparage those who are instead of trying to figure out how to join or create one for their industry.
Yet these same individuals think that a single CEO taking multi-millions in compensation for a single year is no big deal - and they probably have no problem with a ball player, who is a member of a union of sorts, taking a million dollar salary.
Only the guys and gals they think of as equals or slightly beneath them should have no right to a decent wage and a less stressful life that comes with a living wage and health benefits.
I can’t tell you how much this depresses me.
Psychologists examine how race affects juvenile sentencing -
The study found that participants who had in mind a black offender more strongly endorsed a policy of sentencing juveniles convicted of violent crimes to life in prison without parole compared to respondents who had in mind a white offender.
“The fact that imagining a particular target could influence your perceptions of a policy that would affect an entire class of people, we think, is pretty important to know,” Eberhardt said.
The black-offender group also rated juvenile offenders as more similar to adults in their culpability than did respondents in the white-offender group.
“Race is shifting how they are thinking about juveniles,” Eberhardt said. “So the protected status the offenders have as juveniles is threatened.”
The study took into account racial bias and political ideology, yet neither accounted for these effects.
“The findings showed that people without racial animus or bias are affected by race as much as those with bias,” said Carol Dweck, another of the study’s authors.
“That suggests they believe black offenders will likely be the same when they’re adults but white offenders are in a developmental period and could be very different adults. This starts breaking down the protections against the most severe sentences,” said Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor in the Department of Psychology.
(Source: sociolab, via fudgesmonkey)
Romney economics: when a fair wage for American workers is considered ‘greed’ -
Fox News and Mitt Romney, as representatives for the one percent, rely on the Republican base voters to be not only dumb and uninformed, but self-hating as well. How else do you explain support (by people who aren’t wealthy) for the idea that fair wages and benefits for working Americans is “greed”? This morning, Ed Gillespie, an adviser to Mitt Romney, told Fox News host Chris Wallace that Scott Walker winning in Wisconsin would mean:
“I think the statement to big labor and to big government employee unions, government worker unions is that you can’t be too greedy,” Gillespie explained. “You need to understand that times are tough and a lot of these legacy costs that you imposed are due for some reforms and some restructuring.”
It’s interesting that Romney’s adviser calls it ‘greed’ when unions and workers want to preserve their wages and benefits. Especially when you consider the tactics ofvulture capitalism, practiced by Mitt Romney during his time at Bain Capital, on long-term employees of companies acquired by Bain (fire them, hire some back at lower wages). Support for this kind of thinking will turn us into a third-world economy yet. Here’s proof: the WSJ reported this week that flat wages in the US are helping a manufacturing rebound:
The wage lag is a key factor contributing to the rebounding competitiveness of U.S. industry. A recent uptick in factory employment and the return of some production to U.S. shores from abroad both added jobs that probably otherwise wouldn’t exist. But sluggish wages also are squeezing workers’ incomes and spending. That, in turn, hurts retailers who target middle-income earners and restrains the vigor of the economic recovery. “The U.S. has held manufacturing wages in check while there has been strong wage growth in China and moderate wage growth in Mexico,” says economist Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, referring to two of the U.S.’s biggest lower-wage competitors.
China and Mexico’s wages are growing while U.S. wages are shrinking. Apparently that’s the only way corporations who got rich on American soil are willing to bring jobs back to American soil. Soon everyone will have a job, if they’re not too “greedy” and are willing to work for $1.00 a day.
Oh, and of course this is not greed.
“David Plouffe: [Under a Romney presidency], potentially abortion will be criminalized. Women will be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.
Eric Fehrnstrom: Mitt Romney is pro-life. He’ll govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election.”
—
Eric Fehrnstrom, Mitt Romney’s senior campaign adviser, claiming issues like contraception coverage and abortion rights, were “shiny objects” being used to distract voters.
Not a social issues election?
You can’t fire up the culture wars as an entire party and then have the nominee’s spokesman trot out to the Sunday morning shows and say, “Lulz, j/k!” when you’re losing said war.
Women’s rights and reproductive rights are “shiny objects” and nothing more?
Remember this in November. Remember, if you give a damn about women’s rights, access to contraception, and reproductive rights in general, the Romney campaign thinks you’re being distracted by shiny objects.
Oh, and access to contraception and reproductive health services is very much tied to the economy thankyouverymuch.
(via cognitivedissonance)
“If you actually look at the actual track record of government spending, government employment, Reagan is the Keynesian and Obama — mostly because of political constraints, although a little bit of lack of conviction on the part of his own people — has been the anti-Keynesian,” [Paul] Krugman said. “He’s been the one who’s been doing what Republicans say is the right answer.” —
Filed under quotes that will make a conservative’s head explode. (via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
June 03, 2012
Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul on Sunday to protest against plans by Turkey’s prime minister to bring in a new law on abortion, a practice he has called “murder”.
Women of all ages held aloft banners with slogans including “My body, my choice” and “I am a woman not a mother, don’t touch my body” as they marched to the city’s Kadikoy Square.Fuck yeah!
FIGHT abortion stigma and join the women who are telling their stories without shame at wearethe1in3.tumblr.com.
(via other-stuff)
Ex-Blackwater executives finger CIA in weapons trial -
Five ex-Blackwater executives, facing federal firearms charges in connection with a gift of weaponry to a Middle Eastern monarch, have come up with a new explanation for how it occurred:
It was a CIA operation.
(Source: brotheridris, via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
Chinese Women Faces Life Sentence In America For Suicide Attempt That Killed Fetus
On December 23 2010, Bei Bei Shuai became so depressed after she had been abandoned by her boyfriend – a married Chinese man who broke his promise to set up a family with her – that she decided to end her life. She consumed rat poison, and after confessing to friends was rushed to the Methodist hospital.
Doctors took steps to save her, but on December 31 there were signs that the baby, then at 33 weeks gestation, was in distress and a Caesarian was performed. On the second day the baby was found to have a massive brain haemorrhage and on January 2 was taken off life support.
March 14th last year, Shuai was arrested and taken into custody in the high-security Marion County prison, where she was held for the next 435 days, charged with murdering her fetus and attempted feticide. If convicted of the murder count she faces a sentence of 45 years to life.
Bei Bei Shuai is at the sharp end of the creeping criminalization of pregnancy across America. Women who lose their unborn babies – whether in cases of maternal drug addiction or in Shuai’s case a failed suicide attempt – are increasingly finding themselves accused of murder.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Shuai told the Guardian she is determined to defend herself as she prepares for a murder trial scheduled for December. “I have a strong desire to stay in America,” she said, three days after she had been released from jail on $50,000 bail. “I want to stay and fight this case. I have the best legal team, and I’m not afraid anymore to face the charges.”
(via fudgesmonkey)
Florida Voter Purge Will Continue, Defying Federal Warning -
Florida will defy a federal warning to stop purging people the state suspects aren’t U.S. citizens from voter registration rolls.
Despite a Justice Department letter, objections from county elections officials and evidence that a disproportionate number are voters of color, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner’s office planned to continue scrubbing the election rolls, a spokesman said Friday. Gov. Rick Scott (R) ordered the search for potentially ineligible voters.
(Source: azspot, via pieceinthepuzzlehumanity)
Whose Welfare? - NYTimes.com -
The reason for these staggering numbers — and for the growing imbalance between the parties — is that the vast financial power of the business world has been loosed as a political tool by the federal courts. In pursuit of lower taxes and less regulation, businesses, led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, are determined to remove President Obama from office and return full control of Congress to the Republican Party. Executives and companies are the principal source of the unlimited checks that are fueling the rise of these outside groups.
Many of the executives are giving money to “super PACs,” which have to disclose their names. But because businesses usually don’t want the public to know of their political activity, they prefer to launder their political contributions through the Chamber or through “social welfare organizations,” which can keep the names a secret.
The law that permits these undisclosed contributions also puts explicit limits on these organizations’ activities. Tax-exempt social welfare groups, known by their Internal Revenue Code section number as 501(c)(4)’s, cannot be organized for the “primary” purpose of political activity. So far, the I.R.S. is looking the other way.
But if not political activity, what is the primary purpose of a group like Crossroads GPS, the 501(c)(4) organized by Karl Rove, which plans to spend more than $100 million this year? It has already run at least a dozen ads this year, 11 of which accuse President Obama of breaking promises or committing serious policy errors.“Obama added almost $16,000 in debt for every American,” says the latest, a classic in misleading political hyperbole.
As Jeremy Peters recently reported in The Times, that ad is part of a $25 million campaign that was based on 18 focus groups and field tests conducted by Crossroads, all to determine the most effective attack lines against the president.Is that the action of a tax-exempt social welfare group not primarily active in politics?
The I.R.S. generally makes that kind of assessment by examining a 501(c)(4)’s activity over a calendar year, so a full reckoning of this year’s campaign finance travesty won’t happen before 2013. But some of these groups, including Crossroads, have been operating with the tax agency’s implicit consent since 2010. Even a cursory audit would show how little they deserve to call themselves a “social welfare group” and claim a tax exemption.
Removing the 501(c)(4) exemption would be serious: it would force Crossroads to either retain its tax exemption by converting to a super PAC and disclosing its donors, or pay taxes on its tens of millions in donations. American voters would win either way: they might learn who is behind those millions, and the disclosure and tax requirements would reduce the shadowy money pouring into the campaign
If the I.R.S.had stood up to this farce last year, it would have had a hugely beneficial effect on this year’s campaign.Though it needs more resources and better legal tools, it mostly requires the will to enforce the law.
Maybe it is time for Commissioner Douglas Shulman to hear from more citizens. From the IRS website:
If you suspect or know of an individual or company that is not complying with the tax laws, you may report this activity by completing Form 3949-A. You may fill out Form 3949-A online, print it and mail it to:
Internal Revenue Service
Fresno, CA 93888
If you do not wish to use Form 3949-A, you may send a letter to the address above. Please include the following information, if available:
Although you are not required to identify yourself, it is helpful to do so. Your identity can be kept confidential.
Frequently Asked Questions - 1.13 IRS Procedures: Reporting Fraud
How to Report: