Thom Hartmann: A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican
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Category Archives: Racism
Eugene V. Debs: An American Revolutionary
Mark Ruffalo Reads Eugene Debs
The Anti-Wall Street Protesters’ Best Friend: Ray Kelly
Is Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly a closet supporter of Occupy Wall Street, the anti-establishment protest group that has been camped out in the financial district for the past week and a half? That’s what it’s looking like . . .
Over the past couple of days, the protesters, who are occupying Zuccotti Park, between Broadway and Trinity Place, have garnered headlines as far afield as London, Athens, and Jerusalem, as well the support of Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cornel West, and Noam Chomsky . . .
On its regularly updated Web site, OccupyWallStreet.org, the group describes itself as “a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions,” likens itself to anti-government protesters in Egypt, Spain, and other places, and adds, “We plan to use the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic of mass occupation to restore democracy in America.”
Read more . . .
US becomes a center of poverty-wage manufacturing
Aided by the plummeting dollar, the wage gap between American workers and their brutally exploited counter-parts in Mexico and Asia is increasingly being narrowed . . .
It is necessary to understand that this is a battle not simply against this or that employer but the entire capitalist system, which is impoverishing the majority of the world’s population in order to enrich the wealthy few. In every country, the political parties and trade unions defend the profit system and are complicit in the looting of society by the corporate and financial aristocracy . . .
In the US, the Obama administration has demonstrated that the Democratic Party, no less than the Republican, is a tool of Wall Street and the corporations, determined to gut living standards and slash vitally necessary social programs.
Capitalism must be replaced with a planned and rational system based on social need, not the profits of billionaires. Only then can the right to a job and a decent wage be secured for all people. Read more . . .
Real Class War Is Working to Keep Those Below You Down
Taking pot-shots at another class isn’t war, nor is imposing a modest tax increase on those who have been showered with tax cuts for the last decade. Genuine class warfare is those at the very top working to keep everyone else far beneath them . . .
Conservative discourse about the “undeserving” poor being where they are because of some inherent personal faults might make some sense if we were all born with the same opportunities to get ahead. Tragically, however, in today’s economy, the single greatest predictor of how much an American child will earn in the future is how much his or her parents take home . . .
In reality, the United States’ much-ballyhooed upward mobility is a myth, and it appears to be getting worse with each new generation.
The U.S. education system is largely funded through state and local property taxes, which means that the quality of a kid’s education depends on the wealth of the community in which he or she grows up. This, too, helps replicate parents’ economic status in their kids. Read more . . .
Poem: A Humanist Manifesto
By Curt Systma
In every age, the bigot’s rage
Requires another focus,
Another devil forced on stage
By hatred’s hocus-pocus:
The devil used to be the Jew
And then it was the witches;
And then it was the Negroes who
Were digging in the ditches.
The devil once was colored pink
And labeled Communistic;
Now, all at once, in just a blink,
The devil’s humanistic.
Why Does the South Execute More People?
The regional disparity is striking. Since the Supreme Court lifted a ban on death sentences in 1976, 1,264 people have been executed in the U.S. And 921 of those executions — or 73 percent of the total — took place in 13 Southern states . . .
But less discussed is the racial divide in how people view the death penalty. For example, underneath the polls showing widespread support is one of the most well-documented facts in death penalty research: that it enjoys much higher support among whites than other racial groups, especially African-Americans. Read more . . .
Always Question Authority 