It goes like this Greedy Bastards.Com
(Be patient and let all the greed load)
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The Key: From the Bottom Up
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Think of it...incarceration as a growth industry.
Nobody invests in and starts a business they don't expect grow over time. And of course businesses will lobby for their industry to make that growth more likely. In the case of the private prison industry that lobbying includes clamoring for tougher sentencing and jail time for even the smallest crimes as well as trying to defeat policies that will reduce crime and jail time. The last thing the private prison industry wants is a more compassionate or rational judicial and penal system since that will threaten their profits. Talk about walking down the wrong path.
No Way Out: Private Prisons Or Conservative Sponsored Gulags?
By Stephen D. Foster Jr
Ever heard of private sector prisons? Up until a couple of years ago, I had always assumed that prisons were owned and operated by state and federal government. It was only while researching the Arizona death panels that I discovered the existence of privately run prisons. Something that didn't shock me was the fact that Republicans were the ones pushing for the privatization of the American prison system. That's a scary prospect considering how desperate the right wing is to take total power and legislate every aspect of our personal lives. Add the fact that Republicans are literally trying to destroy their political rivals and competition and you have a recipe for tyranny that becomes easier with the addition of private prisons.
Republican support of private prisons is rapidly growing. GOP governors in many states have increased funding to these institutions and while it may seem like Republicans are only trying to support more free market ideas, the prospect for the abuse of the private prison system is very real and has already happened and is spreading.
In Ohio, Republican Governor John Kasich and many Republican state senators have proposed a plan that would privatize nearly half of the state's prisons. In Florida, the Senate President has also put privatized prisons on the table and in Arizona, Jan Brewer recently awarded several million dollars in tax payer money to the private prison industry. This is occurring in several other red states as well.
The number one private prison company is also America's first company of its type. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the first, for-profit private prison company in America has taken the lead in this quest to make money by imprisoning people. The more people imprisoned, the better the profit. But even though CCA is making profits in the millions, it treats its employees like crap and the conditions inside the prisons is substandard. Even the safety record of CCA is terrible. The list includes, failure to provide adequate medical care to prisoners; failure to control violence in its prisons; substandard conditions that have resulted in prisoner protests and uprisings; criminal activity on the part of some CCA employees, including the sale of illegal drugs to prisoners; and escapes, which in the case of at least two facilities include inadvertent releases of prisoners who were supposed to remain in custody. You can blame the company's labor policies for most of its problems. Prisons are very labor intensive institutions, so the only way a company like CCA can sell itself to government as a cheaper option while still making a profit, is by using as few staff as possible, paying them as little as possible, and not spending much on training. Sounds like the GOP platform, doesn't it?
The relationship between the Republican Party and private prison companies runs even deeper. At the federal level, CCA has given more than $100,000 to the Republican Party since 1997 as well as political action committee contributions to individual members of key Congressional committees. Not only that, CCA has close ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful force that promotes the conservative policy agenda among state legislators and writes bills and pushes them to get passed. CCA has been a corporate member and a major contributor to the Council and a member of its Criminal Justice Task Force and its executives have co-chaired the Task Force over many years. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have also been contributed to Republicans at the state level. But here's where it really gets scary.
The goal of a for-profit prison or any business for that matter, is to make money. To achieve this goal, it is the interest of any business to have as many customers as possible, or in the case of prisons, as many prisoners as they can get. Every person imprisoned represents more profits for private prison owners. This opens the door to an increase in prison sentences and, in some circumstances, an increase in innocent citizens being sent to prison. This is already happening. In a plot to get rich, a former Juvenile Court judge in Pennsylvania was convicted of racketeering in a case that accused him of sending young offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illicit payments from the builder and owner of the lockups.
Just as libertarians have to ignore that the collective effort of the group or society is the primary source of their worship of the Individual, insofar as there cannot be individuals sans culture of some sort, so must the magical thinking of those who claim the free market alone is the miraculous source from which all invention and innovation arises, ignore the contribution of tax payer funding to the process.
The Plow and the iPhone:
Conservative Fantasies About the Miracles of the Market
by Robert Jensen Nation of Change
A central doctrine of evangelicals for the "free market" is its capacity for innovation: New ideas, new technologies, new gadgets -- all flow not from governments but from individuals and businesses allowed to flourish in the market, we are told.
That's the claim made in a recent op/ed in our local paper by policy analyst Josiah Neeley of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think-tank in Austin. His conclusion: "Throughout history, technological advances have been driven by private investment, not by government fiat. There is no reason to expect that to change anytime soon."
As is often the case in faith-based systems, reconciling doctrine to the facts of history can be tricky. When I read Neeley's piece, I immediately thought of the long list of modern technological innovations that came directly from government-directed and -financed projects, most notably containerization, satellites, computers, and the Internet. The initial research-and-development for all these projects so central to the modern economy came from the government, often through the military, long before they were commercially viable. It's true that individuals and businesses often used those innovations to create products and services for the market, but without the foundational research funded by government, none of those products and services could exist.
So I called Neeley and asked what innovations he had in mind when he wrote his piece. In an email response he cited Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers. Fair enough -- they were independent entrepreneurs, working in the late 19th and early 20th century. But their work came decades after the U.S. Army had provided the primary funding to make interchangeable parts possible, a transformative moment in the history of industrialization. In the "good old days," government also got involved.
As Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway explain in their book Merchants of Doubt, the U.S. Army's Ordinance Department wanted interchangeable parts to make guns that could be repaired easily on or near battlefields, which required machine-tooled parts. That research took nearly 50 years, much longer than any individual or corporation would support. The authors make the important point clearly: "Markets spread the technology of machine tools throughout the world, but markets did not create it. Centralized government, in the form of the U.S. Army, was the inventor of the modern machine age."
That strikes me as an important part of the story of the era of Edison and the Wrights, but one conveniently ignored by free-marketeers.
Obama's State of the Union Address
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a "religion for atheists" -- call it Atheism 2.0 -- that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.
I don't accept his ideas fully, especially regarding art, but they are definitely worth hearing.
Hide your sisters, hide your kids...
Solar eruption sparks biggest radiation storm in seven years
Wave of charged particles expected to force rerouting of polar airplane flights
A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles past Earth on Tuesday, as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun overnight (10:59 p.m. ET Sunday, or 0359 GMT Monday), according to SpaceWeather.com.
The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory and the STEREO spacecraft, observed the massive sun storm.
A barrage of charged particles triggered by the outburst is expected to hit Earth at around 9 a.m. ET Tuesday, according to experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [Video and photos of the solar flare]
At least in terms of the satire...
I will not be posting to this site for 24 hrs and here is why:
SOPA Blackout Set For January 18th: Here's All The Info
My universe is 99% stuff needing to be done and .01% consequential if it isn't.
I used to be a manic list writer. I even had lists of the lists I needed to make...then I started to realize that most of the things I felt to list never got done anyway.
So I started writing my lists as usual and then I would put them in the kitchen junk drawer. After a week had gone by I would take out the list and see how many of those important things that needed to be done had been. Usually, there would be maybe two out of ten items that could be satisfactorily crossed off as accomplished and somehow life had gone on and the universe had survived without the remaining items having even been attempted.
Eventually I stopped making lists that projected chores or events that would extend beyond one day. This had the effect of liberating me from the anxiety which the former list writing had stemmed from in the first place.
Not that the anxiety went away of course; it simply found an outlet in me smoking more cigarettes or in an increase in one of my other compulsive habits. But at least I got to cross off "list making" on my several lists of things to stop doing.
"The Republican debate audience has been an incredible measure of what the GOP believes. They have booed a gay soldier, cheered for executions, cheered for letting a sick uninsured man die, and cheered child labor. And now they have booed basic Christian law laid down by Christ himself. The Republican Party should be ashamed to call themselves Christians."
This is because the right wing has no capacity for shame
Conservative Audience Boos 'The Golden Rule' During GOP Debate
By Stephen D. Foster Jr.
As if the Republican Party hadn't already damaged itself enough since August, the audience of yet another GOP Debate has booed something that seriously questions their claims of being true Christians.
During the Fox News/Twitter Debate in South Carolina on Sunday, the conservative audience booed the Golden Rule which is a pillar of Christian law in the Bible. In Matthew 7:12, Christ says "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets."
Well, when Ron Paul suggested that the United States practice the Golden Rule in foreign policy, the Republican audience booed him.
RON PAUL: "My point is that if another country does to us what we do to others, we are not going to like it very much. I would say that we maybe ought to consider the golden rule in foreign policy. Don't do to other nations what we don't want them to do to us. We endlessly bomb these countries, and then we wonder why they get upset with us?"
AUDIENCE: [Boos]
Here's the video:
It's hard to believe this sort of thinking still goes on. One of the main reasons I left religion in the dust in my youth was the blatant baloney of attributing human emotions and physicality like sexual division to a god. How petty can it get?
Santorum Staffer Says Women Shouldn't Be President
Because It's Against God's Will
By Marie Diamond
In an article about the reasons Rep. Michele Bachmann's campaign fizzled, the Des Moines Register points to "sexism among conservatives," singling out an offensive email written by a staffer to Rick Santorum:
Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum's Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children's lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. [...]"The question then comes, 'Is it God's highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, ... to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?' " Johnson's email said.
Johnson, who remains on Santorum's staff, complained that the email was "blown out of proportion" and should not be held against him because it was sent from a personal email account.
But he refused to back away from the substance of the email, saying "I was sharing my personal reflections with a friend...[T]hey were reflections on over 25 years of formal, theological study [based in] classical Christian doctrine."
After Bachmann left the race, several of her advisers pointed to sexism as a contributing factor. "We did believe that sexism -- I use the stronger word misogyny -- was at play," said Peter Waldron, her faith outreach coordinator. Waldron said that several influential pastors called for her to drop out of the race, reasoning "that a female could not be a civil magistrate." Johnson himself is a pastor at a central Iowa church.
This should be the image made iconic for the Democrats Economic arguments for the 2012 Election. Just keep the image constant to fight the complete and incessant BS propaganda foisted by the Republicans.
What a joke, indeed.
Stephen Colbert's PAC Parody Explains Campaign Finance To America
by Paul Blumenthal and Dan Froomkin HuffPost
Part 1
Part 2
This is the first part of a five-part series by The Huffington Post exploring Stephen Colbert's explanation of the nation's campaign finance laws to the public. Stay tuned through the week of Jan. 16, 2012, for the rest of the series.
WASHINGTON -- Two years after the Supreme Court voided many of the country's bedrock campaign finance laws, much of the American public is still confused by the change -- and stupefied by the often-impenetrable jargon that frequently encumbers any discussion of the topic.
But one public figure has managed to pierce the veil of dullness to actually demonstrate -- in an electrifying way -- just how dangerous and corrupt the current system of political campaign financing has become.
In an indication of the desperate state of campaign finance laws -- and the mainstream media -- that person is a comedian: Stephen Colbert, who plays a right-wing blowhard on the Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report."
Colbert has spent much of the past year on a crusade to accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and individuals in order to make political statements and lavish himself with luxuries. In so doing, he may have helped bring the troubling issues surrounding campaign finance to the public's attention more than either the reform community or traditional media.
The comedian has often used his on-air persona's actual participation in events to help educate his viewers about what he says are the craziest elements of the United States' political system. This journey began on March 30, 2011, when Colbert announced on his show that in order to influence the 2012 elections, he would be forming a political action committee.
"If you wanna be a political playa in 2012, you need a PAC," he said.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Occupy the Dream: The Mathematics of Racism
by Russel Simmons and Dylan Ratigan
As we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, it appears we are a far less prejudiced country than we once were. Individual expressions of racism are less tolerated than ever, we have an African-American President, and African-Americans are increasingly being accepted into executive suites. Yet when we look closer, we find that Greedy Bastards have rebranded racism and made it acceptable again, by calling it "the war on drugs."
These statistics compiled by New York Times columnist Charles Blow and author Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) are mind-blowing.
Since 1971, there have been more than 40 million arrests for drug-related offenses. Even though blacks and whites have similar levels of drug use, blacks are ten times as likely to be incarcerated for drug crimes.
"There are more blacks under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began."
"As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race."
In 2005, 4 out of 5 drug arrests were for possession not trafficking, and 80% of the increase in drug arrests in the 1990s was for marijuana.
There are 50,000 arrests for low-level pot possession a year in New York City, representing one out of every seven cases that turn up in criminal courts. Most of these arrested are black and hispanic men.
Why is this happening, when personal prejudice is so much less common, medicinal marijuana initiatives routinely pass around the country, and illicit drug use is accepted enough that Steve Jobs could praise psychedelic drugs as key to his creative success at Apple Computer?
The modern drug war in politics can be traced back to political operative named Clifford White, an advisor to Barry Goldwater, who recognized that there were votes to be had in the backlash against the civil rights movement. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the war on drugs became convenient code for politicians who wanted to appeal to certain working class white voters with coded racist appeals. President Reagan used this political support to escalate the war on drugs.
A Federal law passed in 1986 allowed law enforcement agencies to seize drug money, and use it to supplement their budgets. Grabbing cash connected to drugs meant that police departments could buy more tools and training. Like the fee-for-service model in medicine, that pays doctors for performing procedures, not for making people healthier, the "forfeiture laws" effectively pay the police departments for making busts - not for reducing the drug trade.
In fact, if the war on drugs was ever won, it would be a financial disaster for law enforcement. There's so much dirty money funding law enforcement agencies that now, according to NPR, some police departments have become "addicted to drug money".
The second significant institutional incentive is of more recent origin, though it too has its beginnings in the Reagan era - the development of for-profit prison companies and their vast lobbying and political apparatus.
Prisoners now manufacture and assemble products for Microsoft, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret, Boeing, as well as body armor for soldiers and handcuff cases for law enforcement officers.
In 2007, taxpayers spent 74 billion on prisons, with the largest percentage increase of prisoners going to for-profit prison companies.
The Justice Policy Institute noted that these companies make more money through longer prison sentences, but you don't need a report from a nonprofit group to know that. Just look at their own investor reports. The Corrections Corporation of America, the largest for-profit prison company in the country, lists as a business risk in its 10K to the SEC "any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them." CCA also told investors it would make less money if there were lower minimum sentences and more eligibility for inmates for early release for good behavior.
Putting people in jail and keeping them there is good for business. So that's what these companies lobby for. According to the Justice Policy Institute, these companies "have contributed $835,514 to federal candidates and over $6 million to state politicians. They have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on direct lobbying efforts." They are large donors to state-based think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), who market harsh immigration, drug laws, and prison privatization laws to state level politicians around the country. While the rationale is no longer outright bigotry, the net effect, in terms of stripping millions of blacks of political and economic rights, is the same.
This is the face of racism today. It isn't the racist sheriff in Alabama turning hoses and dogs onto protesters, or the all-white development or country club, but the smooth lobbyist and campaign contributor discussing the efficiency of private prison initiatives or the politician too cowardly to act on decriminalizing marijuana for fear of antagonizing a powerful lobby. It's racism, Greedy-Bastards-style.
What's the alternative? David Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has highlighted a very simple common sense approach known as hotspotting. He advocates for sitting down the gang members that perpetrate most of the violence, police, prosecutors, and community leaders to talk about their shared problems and the consequences of crime. Such an approach has dramatically reduced homicide rates in Boston and Chicago, and across the country. Yet these programs and programs like them with proven success in reducing crime are the first to go on the chopping block, because they don't provide the budgetary incentive that forfeiture laws do.
Today, the march for civil rights isn't about convincing Americans that racism is wrong. It is about getting money out of politics, so that the profit from institutional racism is eliminated. The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson saying "separate but equal" has been trumped by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, eliminating all restrictions on corporate cash in politics. If we are to honor Dr. King, let us make this our generation's cause. It won't be an easy fight, but as he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
Untruths, Wholly Untrue, And Nothing But Untruths
by Paul Krugman
I was deeply radicalized by the 2000 election. At first I couldn't believe that then-candidate George W. Bush was saying so many clearly, provably false things; then I couldn't believe that nobody in the news media was willing to point out the lies. (At the time, the Times actually told me that I couldn't use the l-word either). That was when I formulated my "views differ on shape of planet" motto.
Now, however, Mitt Romney seems determined to rehabilitate Bush's reputation, by running a campaign so dishonest that it makes Bush look like a model of truth-telling.
I mean, is there anything at all in Romney's stump speech that's true? It's all based on attacking Obama for apologizing for America, which he didn't, on making deep cuts in defense, which he also didn't, and on being a radical redistributionist who wants equality of outcomes, which he isn't. When the issue turns to jobs, Romney makes false assertions both about Obama's record and about his own. I can't find a single true assertion anywhere.
And he keeps finding new frontiers of falsehood. The good people at CBPP find him asserting, with regard to programs aiding low-income Americans, that
What unfortunately happens is with all the multiplicity of federal programs, you have massive overhead, with government bureaucrats in Washington administering all these programs, very little of the money that's actually needed by those that really need help, those that can't care for themselves, actually reaches them.
which is utterly, totally untrue. Administrative costs are actually quite small, and between 91 and 99 percent of spending, depending on the program, does in fact go to beneficiaries.
At this rate, Romney will soon start lying about his own name. Oh, wait.
OF COURSE: Republican Sponsor of Bill Requiring Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients Arrested for DUI
from the Daily KOS
File this story in the overstuffed folder labeled Republican Hypocrisy That Borders on Satire. Georgia state Rep. Kip Smith [left], who is co-sponsor of a bill requiring that public assistance recipients be tested for drug abuse, has been arrested and charged with DUI.
Smith, who has been pushing for mandatory drug testing of Georgia's poorest citizens, was pulled over and arrested while driving his - wait for it - gold four-door Jaguar XJ8.
As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, not only was he well over the legal limit, he was also not particularly forthcoming or cooperative:
"I observed the odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from Mr. Smith's breath," [Officer] Kramer said in his report. "He advised me he was a state representative and gave the name 'Kip Smith.'"Smith, whose given name is John Andrew Smith, first told the officer he had not consumed any alcoholic beverages.
"I asked him again, and he stated he had consumed a single beer at Hal's. I noticed also that Mr. Smith's eyes were watery, and I asked him to exit the vehicle, which he did," Kramer said in the report.
Smith told the officer he'd had the beer 45 minutes earlier, and the officer asked him to blow into a hand-held "intoximeter". The officer said the lawmaker refused, stating he would prefer to go to a clinic or the hospital to get tested.
The officer told Smith that was done only after an arrest, and that Smith had not been placed under arrest, but Smith "seemed to be having a difficult time understanding what I was trying to explain to him," the officer said in the report.
The officer said Smith finally agreed to blow into the device. The report stated that Smith blew a .091, which is above the legal limit of .08. [He blew a .100 once at city jail.]
The officer said Smith then told him he'd had a beer 15 minutes earlier, instead of the 45 minutes he had said previously. Smith then allegedly failed a "walk-and-turn" test and a "one-leg-stand" test.
This story is another anecdotal example of the hypocrisy rampant among those in the GOP who attempt to codify their prejudices (masked as ethics or proper conservatism).
However, it's more than that. It's another example of the fact that those who we may need to test for drug abuse are not those struggling to survive, but those responsible for creating economic policies that make such struggles persistent.
Those with the power to mold our social and economic policies, those who sit in our country's most-elevated seats of power, those who do well to protect their own interests while abusing or ignoring the interests of 99 percent of us - those are the ones we should test.
On so many levels.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
As a white man I am much freer today because of Dr King and I cannot but thank and laud him for his work and courage. To me, his personal frailties only serve to remind us even more deeply how much he was able to overcome in order to bear witness to a better world for all of us.
All men and woman have flaws, but few manage to transcend them for the greater good.
To have lived your life as an inspiration to millions of others...what more can be asked?
By Eugene Robinson
He would be an elder statesman now, a lion in winter, an American hero perhaps impatient with the fuss being made over his birthday. At 83, he'd likely still have his wits and his voice. Surely, if he were able, he would continue to preach, and to pray--and to dream.
For the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., dreaming was not optional. It was a requirement of citizenship to envision a fairer, more prosperous nation no longer shackled by racism and poverty. It was a duty to imagine a world no longer ravaged by senseless wars. His most famous speech was less an invitation to share his epic dream than a commandment.
In these sour, pessimistic times, it is important to remember the great lesson of King's remarkable life: Impossible dreams can come true.
This is not a partisan message; King was every bit as tough on Democrats as Republicans. His activism even transcended ideology. His call for social justice and his opposition to the Vietnam War were rightly seen as liberal, but his insistence on the primacy of faith and family was deeply conservative. His birthday is a national holiday because his words and deeds ennoble us all.
Thinking about King's legacy reminds me that this is hardly the first time our society has been bitterly divided and fearful of an uncertain future. When he led the 1963 March on Washington and gave his indelible "I Have a Dream" speech, many Southern whites, including officials, were still determined to resist racial integration by any means necessary. Many black Americans were fed up, no longer willing to wait patiently for the rights promised them under the Constitution.
We were inured to television images that today would be shocking. Police dogs turned loose on peaceful protesters. Columns of smoke rising from cities across the land following King's assassination.
As he predicted, King did not live to reach the mountaintop. But his leadership--and that of so many others in the civil rights movement--set us on a path that changed the nation in ways that once seemed unimaginable. Racism, sexism and all the other poisonous -isms have not been eradicated, but they have been dramatically reduced and marginalized. It is difficult for young people to believe that overt discrimination--"You can't have that job because you're black" or "I'm going to pay you less because you're a woman"--used to be seen as normal.
Today, the nation is suffering what I see as a crisis of confidence. Economic globalization and advances in productivity have hollowed out the U.S. manufacturing sector, eliminating millions of blue-collar jobs. For the first time, parents have to worry whether their children's standard of living will decline rather than improve. Demographic change is about to make this a nation without a white majority; by the middle of the century, we'll be an increasingly diverse collection of racial and ethnic minorities--held together, even more than in the past, by the ideals of the nation's founding documents.
We're struggling to climb out of the worst recession in decades. We're deeply in debt. Most of us agree on the need for a social safety net but not on how to structure it or how to pay for it. Our political system is sclerotic if not dysfunctional. The last few elections have not produced a consensus on the way forward. The next won't, either.
I consider myself fortunate that when I'm feeling pessimistic about all of this, I'm able to visit the new King Memorial that was dedicated in October. The towering statue of King looks out toward the Jefferson Memorial, honoring the man whose stirring words now apply to all Americans, not just a few. Behind King is the Lincoln Memorial, a tribute to a leader who shepherded the nation through days much darker than these.
The plaza surrounding King's statue opens up to the Tidal Basin as if to demonstrate how our nation, at its best, embraces possibility.
The first time I visited the memorial, I ran into former Sen. George Allen from Virginia. He and I disagree on almost everything--and since he's running for office again, I'm sure we'll be on opposite sides of many issues. But on a crystalline morning, we were able to stand together, awed by King's moral vision and humbled by his challenge: We can be better. We must. We will.
Kirk Sorensen shows us the liquid fuel thorium reactor -- a way to produce energy that is safer, cleaner and more efficient than current nuclear power.
Why are we not doing this?
Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
When all the slaves are free? - j mitchell
Race relations and MLK's dream:
Welcome to the generation gap
By James Eng
You know that adage about how the young and old can never seem to see eye-to-eye?
That could well apply to the state of race relations in America, says a report released Friday by a national advocacy group working to rein in economic inequality.
In its ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day report, titled "State of the Dream 2012: The Emerging Majority," the Boston-based group United for a Fair Economy says that racial disparities are increasingly becoming influenced by age.
"Increasingly, elderly Americans do not identify with young Americans who are far more racially and ethnically diverse, leading to reductions in future-oriented public investments," the report says.
According to the report, almost half of today's U.S. residents under 18 are members of minority groups, while 80 percent of retirees are white. By 2030, the majority of U.S. residents under 18 will be youth of color. And by 2042, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and other non-whites will collectively compose the majority of the U.S. population.
"If current trends continue, the racial wealth gap will continue to be massive, as it is now, and as the non-white share of the population grows it will become unbearable for the economy as a whole," Tim Sullivan, one of the authors of the report, told msnbc.com.
The report says:
"It is alarming that in states where the racial generation gap is widest, such as California where public investments in education, social programs, and transportation made in the 1950s helped to catapult the state into one of the richest in the country, public investments have dwindled, as the elderly do not see themselves reflected in youth of color."
The report examines the racial economic divide in America since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and uses the trends of the last 30 years to project 30 years forward to 2042. The conclusion: The past 30 years of public policy has done little to address racial economic disparities.
"The racial economic divide is a national embarrassment. Eliminating it should be a moral imperative, and as the non-white share of the population grows, it will become an increasingly urgent economic necessity," United for a Fair Economy said.
The thing is -- and this is kind of important -- governments are not corporations. I cannot stress this enough. There's the obvious point that in democracies, legislatures tend to impose a more powerful constraint than shareholders, making it that much harder for leaders to execute the policies they think will be the most efficient. - Daniel W. Drezner
by Paul Krugman
"And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A."
That's how the fictional Gordon Gekko finished his famous "Greed is good" speech in the 1987 film "Wall Street." In the movie, Gekko got his comeuppance. But in real life, Gekkoism triumphed, and policy based on the notion that greed is good is a major reason why income has grown so much more rapidly for the richest 1 percent than for the middle class.
Today, however, let's focus on the rest of that sentence, which compares America to a corporation. This, too, is an idea that has been widely accepted. And it's the main plank of Mitt Romney's case that he should be president: In effect, he is asserting that what we need to fix our ailing economy is someone who has been successful in business.
In so doing, he has, of course, invited close scrutiny of his business career. And it turns out that there is at least a whiff of Gordon Gekko in his time at Bain Capital, a private equity firm; he was a buyer and seller of businesses, often to the detriment of their employees, rather than someone who ran companies for the long haul. (Also, when will he release his tax returns?) Nor has he helped his credibility by making untenable claims about his role as a "job creator."
But there's a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn't at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen -- even great businessmen -- do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery.
Why isn't a national economy like a corporation?
Back in the day (1980's) Peter Norton was a computer programing guru and was held in high esteem industry wide. He published articles and books that were seminal for many up and coming computer geeks and hackers and created a line of software utilities for computers that made them run better and eventually helped people fight the ever growing problem of viruses and other malware.
He made millions and then sold his company in the early 90's to a company called Semantec. At first Semantec continued Peter Norton's excellence and produced some great software, like many companies over the last 20 years the software products became less and less effective (even destructive) while the company became more and more concerned with profit alone. You know the story...death by bean counters.
As a pro computer repair person I have spent hundreds of hours cleaning people's computers of one of the most cumbersome and pernicious pieces of expensive software ever invented: Semantec's Norton's Security Suite.
It's invasive to the point of ridiculousness in how it "hooks" into Windows system files and even after uninstalling leaves all sorts of traces of itself in systems folders and the system registry. It also can cause all sorts of havoc on systems should anything go even slighly wrong with the program itself or when subscriptions run out and need to be renewed.
The worse part is the amount of money people pay to the company to get a service many anti-virus and other security software products make available for free.
Now a lawsuit has been filed against the company for using extortion software that causes customers to think they have an infected system when they do not. This puts them in the same category as the European mob groups that make millions off the same scare techniques.
I have long suspected that anti-malware companies could easily be responsible for producing the very same viruses and trojans that their products were aimed at controlling and fixing. Think about it.
Now something of that order is being raised by a lawsuit against Semantec.
Score one for the little guy.
Lawsuit: Symantec bullies users into buying anti-virus softwareThe anti-virus vendor Symantec has been formally accused of employing devious scareware tactics to trick customers into paying for software they don't need.
On Tuesday (Jan. 10), James Gross filed a class action lawsuit in a California Federal court claiming that Symantec defrauds its customers by running fake anti-virus scans on their machines, Courthouse News reported. The results, Gross alleges, are rigged to convince users their computers are in danger and need to be protected with the paid version of Symantec's products.
In a statement, Symantec said the lawsuit lacks merit.
In the suit, Gross singled out three Symantec products: PC Tools Registry Mechanic, PC Tools Performance Toolkit and Norton Utilities, and said each comes with a free diagnostic scan that warns consumers, "in alarmist fashion," that harmful threats exist on their computers.
"Once the Scareware's scan is complete," Gross claims, "the user is presented with its results in an extremely menacing fashion. For example, the displayed lettering is red and bolded, the screen contains warnings that errors need immediate repair, or that they are slowing down the computer, or exposing the user's privacy."
"Next the Scareware offers to 'fix' some of the detected errors, but requires the user to purchase the full, registered version of the software to fully 'fix' the identified computer problems," Gross said.
This is where Symantec's actions become illegal, Gross contends. He claims the three offensive Symantec's products always report that the computer's "system's health is low," and that "high priority errors exist on the system." In effect, the free diagnostic scan is Symantec's way of scaring consumers into buying a product to fix a problem that, according to Gross, doesn't exist.
"The Scareware does not actually perform any meaningful evaluation of the user's computer system, or of the supposed 'errors' detected by the software," he said. "Moreover, the Scareware does not, and cannot, actually perform the valuable tasks represented by Symantec through its websites, advertising, and in-software display screens."
Symantec countered Gross' claims, and said, "Several independent third parties have tested and reviewed these products very favorably, verifying the effectiveness of their functionality," according to a statement obtained by Computerworld.
Gross, a Washington State resident, seeks punitive damages for unfair competition, breach of warranty, fraud and unjust enrichment.
Paddy Ashdown claims that we are living in a moment in history where power is changing in ways it never has before. At TEDxBrussels he outlines the three major global shifts that he sees coming and the importance of recognizing that our survival depends on the emerging new order of interdependence and interconnectedness which will downplay the historical concept of individual nation states.
A Michigan schoolteacher who said Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church violated the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2005 when it fired her after she tried to return to work after being diagnosed with narcolepsy was told by the Supreme Court that her claim was overruled by the 1st Amendment rights of her employer.
This is another example of the twisted stupidity of the Robert's court. Her claim has zero to do with her religious qualifications, which is the basis for the court's decision, and everything to do with her employer (her church) being able to fire her for a physical disability. This decision like the Citizen's United case, makes no sense whatsoever.
Supreme Court OKs job bias in church worker's case
Robert Barnes
The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Wednesday that federal discrimination laws do not protect employees of religious organizations who perform "ministerial" duties.
The court ruled unanimously that the First Amendment's protection of the free exercise of religion dictates the organizations "be free to choose those who will guide it on its way."
The case involved a Michigan schoolteacher who said Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church violated the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2005 when it fired her after she tried to return to work after being diagnosed with narcolepsy.
The church said that Cheryl Perich was not fit for ecclesiastical office and that her threat to sue violated Lutheran teachings that disputes be handled within the church rather than in civil courts.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that such decisions are reserved to religious organizations.
"The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important," Roberts wrote. "But so too is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith, and carry out their mission.
"When a minister who has been fired sues her church alleging that her termination was discriminatory, the First Amendment has struck the balance for us."
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Obama administration had backed Perich's suit against the Redford, Mich., religious school.
Wednesday's ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court had acknowledged such an exception.
Can scientists define 'life' ... using just three words?
Does 'self-reproduction with variations' cover it? Not-so-little words spark a big debate
By Carl Zimmer - Txchnologist
In November 2011, NASA launched its biggest, most ambitious mission to Mars. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the Red Planet this August, releasing a lander that will use rockets to control a slow descent into the atmosphere. Equipped with a "sky crane," the lander will gently lower the one-ton Curosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity, which weighs five times more than any previous Martian rover, will perform an unprecedented battery of tests for three months as it scoops up soil from the floor of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. Its mission, NASA says, will be to "assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life."
For all the spectacular engineering that's gone into Curiosity, however, its goal is actually quite modest. When NASA says it wants to find out if Mars was ever suitable for life, they use a very circumscribed version of the word. They are looking for signs of liquid water, which all living things on Earth need. They are looking for organic carbon, which life on Earth produces and, in some cases, can feed on to survive. In other words, they're looking on Mars for the sorts of conditions that support life on Earth.
But there's no good reason to assume that all life has to be like the life we're familiar with. In 2007, a board of scientists appointed by the National Academies of Science decided they couldn't rule out the possibility that life might be able to exist without water or carbon. If such weird life on Mars exists, Curiosity will probably miss it.
Wow...a 27 minute film aimed at exposing Romney's pedatory capitalism called
Watch it and tell me this guy is not a major effing a-hole who should be jail rather than running for president.
Do Something.
You betcha!
Here's the short form, but I highly doubt people of faith will accept it.
How to get a cosmos from nothing
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss has taken on plenty of edgy topics, ranging from evolution to the state of science policy, to quantum quackery, to the science of "Star Trek." But in his latest book, he takes on what might be the edgiest topic of all: how all the somethingness of our universe could have arisen from nothingness without divine intervention.
Recent Comments