"[White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' resignation would] be fair, because this isn't the first time [Gibbs has made untoward and inflammatory comments toward the activist left]. And, again, people of all political shades worked very hard to help the president become the president. Why would he want to go out and deliberately insult the president's base? And why would he confuse legitimate critique with some sort of lack of loyalty. Isn't this what the far right does? Punishes people who are not ideologically aligned with President Bush?"—Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, asking some excellent (rhetorical) questions and calling for a request of Gibbs' resignation as a show of good faith by the president that he "doesn't share [Gibbs'] view that the left is unimportant."
UPDATE: Ellison clarifies he is not overtly calling for Gibbs' resignation, but stands by his contention that Gibbs went too far.
Quote of the Day
B-b-but CALORIES IN CALORIES OUT!!!
Four reasons some fat women aren't Bunsen burners.
The actual headline is: "Four surprising reasons women can't lose weight." I'm not sure how "surprising" something like PCOS is for the women who have it, but okay, whatever. It's a start.
Obama Signs Law Banning Cell Phones in Federal Prison
Hmm:
Hoping to stop federal inmates from directing crimes from behind bars, President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday a prohibition on cell phone use by prisoners.The law not only bans cell phones, for which, according to a government report, inmates will pay up to $1,000, but other wireless devices as well—and "calls for up to a year in prison for anyone found guilty of trying to smuggle one to an inmate."
...The Federal Bureau of Prisons confiscated more than 2,600 cell phones from minimum security facilities and nearly 600 from secure federal institutions last year.
"Now that this bill has become law, prison gangs will no longer be able to use cell phones to direct criminal attacks on individuals, to decide territory for the distribution of drugs, or conduct credit card fraud," said Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-California, a co-sponsor of the bill.
"Making it illegal for criminals to use cell phones and wireless devices in federal prison cuts their communication link and helps keep our communities safe," said her Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
...The new law calls for a government study to be issued in a year to measure the effectiveness of the new prohibition.
So, here's what bothers me about this law: There's no nuance. Someone found in possession of a mobile phone which zie has been using to coordinate criminal activity is not distinguishable under this statute from someone found in possession of a mobile phone which zie has been using to chat benignly with family members, or to speak with an attorney who's filing an appeal for a wrongful conviction.
I would hope that confiscation of any wireless device would be followed by an investigation into its use before formal charges were filed, but I suspect that most federal prisons won't be keen to use their discretion in the application of this law.
Especially when a conviction for possession means another sentence and more time served. Which is more money in the pockets of the corporations housing many of our federal prisoners in private/subcontracted prisons.
Ahem.
Question of the Day
Following up on my earlier post about Linus and Locke!, if you were a Hollywood bigshot and were producing a show starring Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn, what would be the premise?
It could be a comedy, drama, reality show, a miniseries, a remake, an adaptation of a novel, anything. Let's hear it, Shakers!
Mine would be a re-imagining of Riptide.
Shocking
Pew Research: Republicans Faring Better with Men, Whites, Independents and Seniors.
Well, I'm positively shocked to find out that the Republican Party is the party of old white men who are spittin' mad that other people get a say in America these days.
And then there's this:
The Republican Party's prospects for the midterm elections look much better than they did four years ago at this time, while the Democrats' look much worse. Voter preferences for the upcoming congressional elections remain closely divided (45% support the Democratic candidate or lean Democratic, while 44% favor the Republican or lean Republican).Huh. I wonder why that might be. Any ideas, Robert Gibbs?
...Republicans and conservatives continue express far greater interest in the election than do Democrats and liberals.
This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
So, this article in the New York Times is pretty much a textbook case in how the rape culture, and its erroneous narratives about being able to identify a rapist based on his appearance or behavior or personal circumstances, serves to protect rapists.
In meeting with Mr. Akassy, who is from Ivory Coast, Mr. Simmons said he found him to be an intelligent, "very well-spoken, very well-groomed, good-looking person."Note that one of the narratives of the rape culture is that women should be magically able to identify rapists to avoid becoming their victims...but when women correctly construe a man as a potential threat and report him to authorities for escalating harassment, their intuition is dismissed out of hand.
"What I derived from his personality, I can't see him being this violent or raping any person," he said.
[...]
[A woman who was stalked by Akassy] went to the police, she said, and a detective took a report. The detective told her not to worry because Mr. Akassy's Web site, orbitetv.org, indicated that he was a public figure and therefore he was unlikely to "do anything stupid."
Can't win. Can't fucking win.
[H/T to Shaker Bruno.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
The Inartful Dodger
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admits his comments calling liberals drug-addled ingrates were "inartful."
I watch too much cable, I admit. Day after day it gets frustrating. Yesterday I watched as someone called legislation to prevent teacher layoffs a bailout -- but I know that's not a view held by many, nor were the views I was frustrated about.See, here's the thing: I do know what's at stake, and I still have fundamental policy differences with this administration. This constant assertion that I am (and people like me are) just too fucking stupid to understand politics and to grasp the importance of issues like healthcare reform is not endearing this administration to me. I am not a stupid person. I am not an uninformed person. I am not a naïve person. I am not an impatient person. I am not a person who insists on ideological purity.
So what I may have said inartfully, let me say this way -- since coming to office in January 2009, this White House and Congress have worked tirelessly to put our country back on the right path. Most importantly, to dig our way out of a huge recession and build an economy that makes America more competitive and our middle class more secure. Some are frustrated that the change we want hasn't come fast enough for many Americans. That we all understand.
But in 17 months, we have seen Wall Street reform, historic health care reform, fair pay for women, a recovery act that pulled us back from a depression and got our economy moving again, record investments in clean energy that are creating jobs, student loan reforms so families can afford college, a weapons system canceled that the Pentagon didn't want, reset our relationship with the world and negotiated a nuclear weapons treaty that gets us closer to a world without fear of these weapons, just to name a few. And at the end of this month, 90,000 troops will have left Iraq and our combat mission will come to an end.
Even so, we will continue to work each day on the promises and commitments that the President made traveling all over this country for two years and produce the change we know is possible.
In November, America will get to choose between going back to the failed policies that got us into this mess, or moving forward with the policies that are leading us out.
So we should all, me included, stop fighting each other and arguing about our differences on certain policies, and instead work together to make sure everyone knows what is at stake because we've come too far to turn back now.
I am also not a person who appreciates being expected to march in lockstep under the guise of "working together." As I have said before: It is, simply, not the duty of any person who is repeatedly subjected to alienating language, images, behaviors, and/or legislation to nonetheless never complain and pledge fealty from the margins. Gibbs' statement here is nothing more than the words of an articulate bully.
And let us be honest for a moment about his list of successes: We have not seen historic healthcare reform, but historic insurance reform—which is not to take away from the millions of people who will be helped by that legislation, but calling it something it just isn't, while simultaneously ignoring that the president broke faith with women to get it passed, is just another way of pretending the legitimate policy disagreements that many progressives have with the administration don't exist.
It's easier to call dissenting feminist/womanist progressives a bunch of crackpots when you disappear the valid complaints many of us have about the legislation the president has made the centerpiece of his first term.
Back to that list: I was hugely excited (and remain so) about the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but to assert that this administration achieved "fair pay for women" is absurd. Women are still (illegally) being paid less than their male counterparts all across the country, and what the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act did was increase the statute of limitations in which women who discover they are being paid unequally can sue.
If this administration really wanted to endure "fair pay for women," they would advocate an employment law that required employers to make public their employees' salaries, so every woman working in the US would have the ability to see whether she is being paid equally.
But they're never going to do that, because corporations save billions of dollars every year underpaying women. And this administration cares more about corporations than women.
So claiming to have guaranteed "fair pay for women" is a real stretch, and, I don't know about any other working women in the US, but I frankly don't appreciate being told that this administration has given me something it flatly hasn't delivered.
No less to have them turn around and tell me I'm too goddamn stupid to understand the nuances of Big Boy Politics.
Now, I could go on, but my point was to dismantle Gibbs' bullshit, not assert that the Obama administration has had no successes—because, clearly, I don't believe that to be the case.
I do believe, however, that this administration has adopted the deplorable tactics of their most ardent defenders during the election. Trying to bully people with legitimate grievances and policy differences into submission, trying to extort their support by threatening them with Things They'll Lose, was shitty behavior coming from a bunch of privileged fauxgressive wankstains who can't abide uppity girls and queers who don't believe in trickle-down social justice, and it's even shittier coming from the White House.
And P.S. Gibbs: Stop saying "this White House and Congress have worked tirelessly to put our country back on the right path" when Obama took 26 vacation days his first year in office (double that of the average US worker) and Congress is, as we speak, on its annual month-long summer recess. I don't begrudge Obama and Congress their time off, but get a clue, dude. The vast majority of people in this country (who are still fortunate enough to have a job) aren't getting a month off every year.
There are millions of US workers who get no paid vacation time at all. They're the ones "working tirelessly."
Well, actually, I'm sure they're fucking tired, but they don't have a goddamn choice but to keep working anyway—a reality with which Gibbs et. al. might be better acquainted if they weren't so ceaselessly occupied patting themselves on the back and whinging at their devastating lack of cookies.
Today in Lost News
Coming soon: Linus and Locke!
In the tradtion of Hardcastle and McCormick, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Simon and Simon, and Laverne & Shirley, comes a new breed of buddy cop dramedy: Linus and Locke!
Watch what happens when this real odd couple must work together as both partners on the force and as roommates! Every episode of Linus and Locke! will be filled with laughs, hi-jinx, and hard-hitting issues ripped from the headlines.
Or not. Maybe Linus and Locke! will be about an archeologist and his witty man-servant. Who knows?
Well, we do know Michael Emerson (Linus) and Terry O'Quinn (and Locke!) are shopping around for ideas for a TV show. I can't wait until they're back on the small screen.
[Cross-posted.]
Former Senator Ted Stevens in Plane Crash
Dave Dittman, a former aide and longtime family friend of former Sen. Ted Stevens, says Stevens was killed in a plane crash near Dillingham Monday night. Dittman says he received a call overnight Monday that said the former senator was dead, but no official confirmation has been made.According to the WaPo, there hasn't even yet been "confirmation that he actually got on the plane."
Nine people were on board, including former NASA Chief Sean O'Keefe. Five people were killed in the crash, but other identities were not known, nor are the conditions of the survivors.
My suspicion is that Stevens did not survive the crash, but they are withholding confirmation until his family has had a chance to notify those close to him, so they don't find out from the news.
Stevens is probably best known professionally for being the longest-serving Republican Senator in history, for his role in championing and securing funding for the $400 million Bridge to Nowhere, for his conviction on corruption charges, and for coining the award-winning internet meme, "Series of Tubes."
To be perfectly blunt, precisely the approach Senator Stevens would have respected, I did not like the man as a public servant, which is the only capacity in which I had the opportunity to know him. But I offer my sincerest condolences to his family and friends.
Craigslist Profiting From Rape
[Trigger warning for sexual violence, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and dehumanization.]
[Transcript below.]
On the actual episode of Anderson Cooper 360 on which this aired, Lyon went on to note (emphasis mine): "Jim Buckmaster says they work tirelessly with law enforcement. So we've been conducting the majority of this investigation out of Washington, D.C. It's one of the worst cities in the nation for sex trafficking. We spoke with the local PD here. They say they have never been contacted by Craigslist, and Craigslist is not working tirelessly to help them out in their investigations."
Craigslist is a company making more than $35 million a year from its "adult services" ads. They won't admit they've got no way of knowing whether an ad is selling consensual sex with an adult, because that would force them to acknowledge they're profiting from rape and human trafficking, and that might affect their revenue stream, which is more important to them than protecting women and children from sexual violence.
They just want to be able to say, "Well, we're not profiting from it deliberately," and have that be good enough.
It isn't.
"Jessica," age 20 (in voiceover, over images of her sitting, walking, putting on makeup at a vanity; she is seen only from the neck down, to preserve her anonymity): I don't know. The men just disgust me. Everything about them, they disgust me. You know, doing the things I do with them is just not, like I said, what I pictured myself doing when I was a kid. You know, I wanted to work with animals, and—or be a meteorologist or a doctor or something, not a whore.
Amber Lyon, CNN Correspondent (sitting on a hotel room bed w/ Jessica, whose back is to the camera): Why Craigslist?
Jessica: Craigslist is just the quickest, fastest, easiest way to get money.
Lyon (in voiceover, over images of Craigslist ads on a computer screen): We found 20-year-old Jessica after spotting her ad on the Virginia adult services section of Craigslist. (on camera) So, you spend most of your life in a hotel room like this?
Jessica: For the past two to three years, yes.
Lyon: How—how many guys do you sleep with on an average day?
Jessica: Three to five, on an average day.
Lyon: How—how much money is that?
Jessica: I get $150 for a half an hour and $250 for the hour. That's what I charge, I mean.
Lyon (in voiceover, over images of Craigslist ads on a computer screen): Jessica says she and most of the girls she knows who sell sex on Craigslist are being trafficked by pimps, who take their money and their freedom. (on camera): What would happen if they said, you know, "I'm sick of this, I'm done selling myself on Craigslist, I want to leave"…?
Jessica: I can't leave. I cannot leave. I'm his. I'm his property. He owns me. I cannot leave him. And that's how it is with most girls, I would think. They can't.
Lyon (sitting at an outdoor café): Since our investigation aired last week, anti-sex-trafficking organizations took out an ad in the Washington Post.—and, in it, two girls who claim they were sold for sex on Craigslist plea with Craig to shut down the adult services section. They even addressed the letter to Craig. (in voiceover, over images of the text, and then video of Lyon looking at Buckmaster's blog post, the images of police reports): One of the girls says, "I was sold for sex by the hour at truck stops and cheap motels, 10 hours with 10 different men every night. This became my life. Men answered the Craigslist advertisements and paid to rape me." Another one of these girls was underage when she was being sold on Craigslist. And she writes, "Dear Craig, I am MC. I was first forced into prostitution when I was 11 years old by a 28-year-old man. I am not an exception." So, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster wrote a response to the Washington Post ad. He wrote this blog—Buckmaster says, "Craigslist is anxious to know that the perpetrators in these girls' cases are behind bars." He asks the advocates to email him the police the reports, so "Craigslist can improve preventative measures." CNN has seen the police report for the so-called AK; MC is still a minor, so her records could not be released, but two sources tell us they have seen her arrest records for prostitution. (sitting outdoors with Saar): This is Malika with The Rebecca Project, and her organization posted that ad in the Washington Post.
Malika Saada Saar, Founder and Executive Director of The Rebecca Project: I think that it's also important for him to acknowledge that the stories of these girls are true. It's thoughtful that he wants to catch the perpetrators. I think if he wants to catch perpetrators, then he ought create better screening processes, so that children aren't raped and sold online.
Lyon (in voiceover, over images of Craigslist adult services ads, with female faces blurred out, then over footage of Newmark): Sex-for-hire ads are against Craigslist's stated policy. The company says it, quote, "manually screens all adult services ads" and will reject any that look or sound like they are selling sex. We caught up with the Craig in Craigslist, Craig Newmark, at a speech he was giving in Washington, D.C., on trust. He agreed to this interview on trust on the Internet. (on camera, speaking face-to-face with Newmark): What are you guys doing to protect these girls?
(Newmark stands and stares, silently, at Lyon for seven seconds, with a smirk on his face. After seven seconds, the video cuts off and jumps to another question.)
Lyon (showing Newmark a printed Craigslist ad): You guys say in the blog that you will remove any ad that looks like the person might be suggesting they're going to offer sex. Look at this ad. It says, "Young, sexy, sweet, and bubbly." Clearly here she writes "$250 an hour." I mean, what do you think she's selling in her bra and underwear—a dinner date? And she's in her bra and underwear. What are you guys doing?
Newmark: Have you reported this to us?
Lyon: But you guys say you screen all these ads manually in your blog.
Newmark: Have you—I have never—I don't know what this is.
Lyon: But in Jim Buckmaster's blog, he says these are being screened.
Newmark: Have you reported—have you reported this to us?
Lyon: Why do I have the responsibility to report this to you, when it's your website? You are the one posting this online.
(Newmark stares at her silently again until video cuts.)
Lyon (in voiceover, over more images of ads): Under the Communications Decency Act, Craigslist is not liable for what users publish on its site. But if Craigslist knows it's happening and vows to stop it, why do they allow it to continue? Victims' advocates say it's about one thing: Money. The Internet research firm AIM Group projects the site will make $36.5 million, a third of its total revenue, from the adult services ads this year. (edit; Lyon is sitting in a studio onscreen): After our first story aired, we were contacted by Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, and he sent CNN this response: He says, "Craigslist is vigilant in barring child sex ads and prominently features anti-trafficking and –exploitation sites." He also says, quote, "We will continue to work tirelessly in tandem with law enforcement and key nonprofits to ensure that any of these victims receive the assistance they desperately need and deserve." Amber Lyon, CNN, Washington.
[The video cuts off here, but on the actual show, Lyon went on to note: "Jim Buckmaster says they work tirelessly with law enforcement. So we've been conducting the majority of this investigation out of Washington, D.C. It's one of the worst cities in the nation for sex trafficking. We spoke with the local PD here. They say they have never been contacted by Craigslist, and Craigslist is not working tirelessly to help them out in their investigations."]
Call For Action For Burmese Political Prisoners
I've mentioned before that Amnesty International is one of my favourite activist organizations, one I've done low-level volunteering for for over twenty years now.
Amnesty UK has a really interesting campaign running, and I wanted to encourage you to consider taking part. What it'll need from you is a picture, and some ink on your hand.
To stand with the people of Burma all you need to do is:Here's mine.
1. Read the list of cases below and decide which prisoner(s) you would like to support through this action
2. Write their name on your right hand (or get a friend to!).
3. Hold your right hand out, palm facing the camera
4. Take a picture. Then either:
5. Login to Flickr upload your picture and add it to the group
or
6. Email your picture to amnestyphotoaction@gmail.com/text it to +44(0)7733 134 670 and we will add it to the group for you
7. Tell a friend to do the same
Mie Mie, the prisoner whose name I'm carrying there, was arrested in 1988 as a high school student taking part in anti-government protests. She was sentenced to 65 years in prison. She's now 40, and has spent her entire adult life behind bars as a prisoner of conscience.
As ever, if you're looking for an organization which will be able to accept even small time donations, Amnesty may be a good org to try. They always have campaigns on which can be participated in by as little as writing a letter. Even doing that once a week means contributing to fifty different human rights cases a year.
Should Food Be a Right for the Poor?
That, according to the NY Times headline, is the question being asked by the nation of India. The actual focus of the article is on competing ideas of how to deliver government-subsidized food to those so poor that they would otherwise not have enough. Even if one could learn enough from one Times article to adequately consider that question, this article would not be the one.
It describes a debate going on within the ruling Congress Party on whether the current government food distribution system should be expanded and the right to food be made part of India's Constitution, or whether, as the Times' Jim Yardley describes the alternative, the country should "begin to unshackle the poor from the inefficient, decades-old government food distribution system and try something radical, like simply giving out food coupons, or cash?"
Well, when you put it like that, Jim . . . for gosh sake, yes, unshackle those poor people! I mean, if I were to come across a bunch of shackled, starving people, the first thing I would do would be to unshackle them! No wonder they're starving, they probably can't even reach the food! After all,
Many economists and market advocates within the Congress Party agree that the poor need better tools to receive their benefits but believe existing delivering system needs to be dismantled, not expanded; they argue that handing out vouchers equivalent to the bag of grain would liberate the poor from an unwieldy government apparatus and let them buy what they please, where they please.Yes! Liberate those people! Let them buy what they please, where they please! Wow, that sounds like a great deal for India's poor, doesn't it?
Call me a gloomy gus, but it almost sounds too good to be true. That's some loaded language Yardley is using to describe the possibilities. And, as far as you can tell from this article, there are only two: Put having enough food to live in India's Constitution while keeping poor people shackled to an old (not sure why its age matters, independent of how well it's actually serving people — tragically unhip?), inefficient system rife with corruption, or (cue the harp music and the sparkly shit) Magic! The magic of the Free Market!
Yardley refers to "many economists and market advocates", but he quotes only one economist in this story, briefly, with no indication as to how zie would be inclined to answer hir own question.
“The question is whether there is a role for the market in the delivery of social programs,” said Bharat Ramaswami, a rural economist at the Indian Statistical Institute. “This is a big issue: Can you harness the market?”But the market is already involved in this system, deeply, broadly, and corruptly.
Moneylenders are common across rural India, often providing loans at extortionate rates. Some farmers hand over food booklets as collateral.There's some free market action, right there. When government inspectors extort payments from clerks who sell the subsidized grain, they're just doing a little business on the side, but business it is.
To the extent that the problem is corruption or inefficiency among those responsible for providing the food booklets or, as also cited in the article, low-level officials having extra booklets printed for themselves and their families, or outright stealing money from the program, turning the food distribution system over to a voucher or cash distribution system solves nothing. You don't solve the problem of theft by giving the thieves something different but of equal value to steal.
Yardley says that India "vanquished food shortages during the 1960s with the Green Revolution", "has had one of the world’s fastest-growing economies during the past decade", yet "poverty and hunger indexes remain dismal". Are there any reasons for that other than a corrupt and inefficient government food distribution system? If there are, Yardley doesn't mention them, other than a brief mention of cultural customs such as one in which a groom's family is expected to provide a "bride price" to the bride's family.
That custom left the poster family for Indian poverty whom Yardley has chosen landless and impoverished, "yet he and his wife kept having children." Ah, that's the other problem, then, besides the natural decrepitude of government programs. The funny old customs and irresponsible child-having of poor people. Some traditional customs may, indeed, contribute to keeping the poor impoverished, but exploration of that issue seems to be outside the scope of this article.
Still, let it not be said that the Times reporter is lacking in compassion for such folk. In fact, he begins the article with a description of the malnutrition ward of an Indian hospital into which the father of this family "and his ailing children have staggered . . . after falling through India’s social safety net." The article is illustrated with graphic photos of more starving children.
So, we get the pix of starving dark-skinned children, with their funny-custom-having, inexplicably-breeding, illiterate parents, and examples of corruption within the food-distribution system, and a shocking, if vague, statistic: "Studies show that 70 percent of a roughly $12 billion budget is wasted, stolen or absorbed by bureaucratic and transportation costs." (How many studies? Of what kind? Who carried them out — scientists, or "market advocates"? Dunno.) We are given Yardley's summation of what "many economists and market advocates" think — Unshackle the poor! — the rallying cry of market advocates the world over, no doubt.
Of the advocates for including the right to food in the Constitution, and for expanding the existing food entitlement, we hear only that the Congress Party has won votes, especially in rural areas, by supporting such entitlements, and that to its president, Sonia Gandhi, "and many left-leaning social allies, making a food a legal right would give people like Mr. Bhuria a tool to demand benefits that rightfully belong to them." Not much of a case made on this side of the question. No harnessing of powerful forces, no unshackling for the poor.
Toward the end of the second online page of this article, there is an acknowledgment that "efforts are underway to reform the national system. Tracking of grain shipments has been computerized in one Indian state, for example, so that they cannot be diverted and resold by corrupt officials.
In any case, Yardley does not feel that, in order to attempt to understand this complex issue, we need to hear from the likes of the President of India (and her left-leaning allies) as to what other reforms have been or could be undertaken to improve the system, or why they feel it is better to do so than to change to a cash or coupon system. The question of whether the food necessary to survive should be considered a right must be examined in the light of the votes such an idea brings to its supporters, but the motives of "market advocates" need not be examined further than their unquestioned desire to unshackle the poor.
I am quite obviously not qualified to address the question of how India can best meet the needs of the desperately poor people among its population. Indian Shakers could perhaps tell us more. I do know, however, that when politicians and "market advocates" start implementing their plans for "harnessing the free market" to serve powerless people, it is rather those powerless people, generally given no say in the process, who are more likely to be harnessed, and the free market unshackled.
And I also know that how you talk about a thing matters. How the press covers an issue has everything to do with whether solutions seem possible, and what solutions get considered. And the NY Times is a flamingly liberal newspaper. I know that because, well, because I've heard it described that way so many times that it must be true, right?
David Brooks is off today
The employment situation in the United States is much worse than even the dismal numbers from last week’s jobless report would indicate. The nation is facing a full-blown employment crisis and policy makers are not responding with anything like the sense of urgency that is needed.
The worst news, with the most ominous long-term implications, was that the reason [July's] unemployment rate was not higher was because 181,000 workers left the labor force... With many of them beaten down by the worst jobs situation since the Great Depression, they just stopped looking for work. And given the Alice-in-Wonderland way in which we compile our official jobless statistics, they are no longer counted as unemployed.
We’re not heading toward the danger zone. We’re there. The U.S. will not remain a stable society if this great employment crisis is not addressed head-on — and soon. You cannot allow joblessness on this scale to fester. It’s wrong, and the blowback will be as destructive and intolerable as it is inevitable.
Yep.
Alice-in-Wonderland indeed. When we moved out to the rust belt (interestingly enough, because it was the only place where I could find work), we figured it would be at least three months before my partner could find work. Twenty five months later, I guess we were right. Our contacts with connections and decades of experience have all been laid off. I dunno what they're doing... early retirement, I guess.
My partner's gone from wanting a job to planning on waiting until after all of our kid(s) are in school. This isn't because we don't need the money or because my partner doesn't want a job, but have you seen the want ads lately? Me neither.
We're looking at a lost decade. I mean, yeah, there'll be great times n' such, but saving? Not so much. Dental issues fixed? Not so much. Other medical issues? Nope. House? No way in hell. College funds and family vacations are just laughable. It's the same throughout my city. Two years ago, I moved to a city where seemingly every other building was abandoned. Since then, factory after factory has been shuttered, and the jokes have gotten more and more macabre.
Not having a paying job can give you plenty of time to pursue any number of things, but a lot of them are off limits if you need to savor every last gallon of gasoline. Sure, you could get a hybrid, but.. oh. You could take the bus, but the buses don't come very often these days. Do you have any idea how much the zoo costs?!? You might as well sit on the couch and watch Maury Povich. Before Michigan or Ohio adopts that as state slogan, we might want to do something, because our collective depression is positively crushing.
Herbert's right, this economy is destructive. The media's coverage of economic issues is equally so. We are not in a recovery. I do not want to discuss how long this recovery will take, or whether this recovery is slowing, or whether the stimulus worked enough. There has been no recovery. Acting as if there has been a turn around only serves to alienate my neighbors from our leaders even further. Do they not see us, or do we just not matter? Perhaps both.
FYI
Quote of the Day
"There's a large part of me that's four years old. I wake up in the morning and I know that somewhere there's a cookie. I don't know where it is but I know it's mine and I have to go find it. That's how I live my life. My life is amazingly filled with fun."—Newt Gingrich, a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, former Speaker of the House who oversaw 1994's Contract with America and the subsequent Republican-led witch-hunt of President Clinton, conservative firebrand, known misogynist, racist, homophobe, and religious intolerant, disgraceful family values hypocrite, and general asshole, in a new interview with Esquire, who are inexplicably willing to help this shitsack rehabilitate his career ruining America, despite his undiluted contempt for average Americans.
Today in Weezer News
The album is titled, appropritately enough, Hurley.
In stores September 14, 2010.
[Cross-posted.]
