One-tenth of 1 percent.
The middle class is finally on its knees. Jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer. Government and corporate policies have been whacking working Americans every which way for the past three or four decades. While globalization and technological wizardry were wreaking employment havoc, the movers and shakers in government and in the board rooms of the great corporations were embracing privatization and deregulation with the fervor of fanatics. The safety net was shredded, unions were brutally attacked and demonized, employment training and jobs programs were eliminated, higher education costs skyrocketed, and the nation's infrastructure, a key to long-term industrial and economic health, deteriorated.—The always-brilliant Bob Herbert, in his most recent column, "A Recovery's Long Odds."
It's a wonder matters aren't worse.
While all this was happening, working people, including those in the vast middle class, coped as best they could. Women went into the paid work force in droves. Many workers increased their hours or took on second and third jobs. Savings were drained and debt of every imaginable kind — from credit cards to mortgages to student loans — exploded.
With those coping mechanisms now exhausted, it's painfully obvious that the economy has failed working Americans.
There was plenty of growth, but the economic benefits went overwhelmingly — and unfairly — to those already at the top. Mr. Reich cites the work of analysts who have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-'90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.
The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing just 13,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.
That does not leave enough spending power with the rest of the population to sustain a flourishing economy.
[Trigger warning for violence, including sexual assault]
As regular readers may have noticed, I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Times. One of the things I miss about being a Times subscriber is the feeling of being a fly on the wall at the meeting of a plutocratic secret society. Advertisements for watches that cost more than my car. Advertisements for shoes that cost more than my car. (Have you seen my car?) Recipes that require one to go down to Dean & Deluca's flagship store to buy two pounds of Kashmiri saffron. (Most. Expensive. Tuna Casserole. Ever.)
What I'm trying to say is that I'm not shocked when I run across articles like this one, which advises the super-rich how to keep their kids safe at college. The uber-wealthy need newspapers too.
I'm not highlighting this article to have cheap laughs at the expense of wealth, although:
For prominent families, the costs of a security plan to reduce these risks are part of life, but for most affluent families, such security is prohibitively expensive — even though their children may be just as susceptible to crime.
Senate Democrats Overcome GOP Filibuster of Small Business Bill:
Senate Democrats today overcame a summer-long Republican filibuster of a bill to jumpstart job growth by providing small businesses with a $30 billion lending fund and around $12 billion in tax relief.So, the Democrats have finally won a long battle against Republicans to pass financial legislation straight out of the Republican playbook, which the Republicans have been filibustering because it was Obama's idea but the Democrats have been championing because they are stupid. Or something.
The vote to end debate on the small business measure was 61-37, paving the way for it to obtain final passage in the Senate later this week.
Daniel de Vise, writing for the Washington Post under the headline "Report: More women than men in U.S. earned doctorates last year for first time," tells us:
For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide.The difference was slight: 50.4% of the doctoral recipients were women, while 49.6% were men. It's accurate that more women than men earned doctorates, but the real news is that women have at long last achieved parity.
Men may be staging a modest comeback.Oh. Right.
Washington Post: Jobless are straining Social Security's disability benefits program.
The article begins: "The number of former workers seeking Social Security disability benefits has spiked with the nation's economic problems, heightening concern that the jobless are expanding the program beyond its intended purpose of aiding the disabled."
Well, sure. That's one way to look at it, especially if you're a cynical asshole who expects the worst of people and assumes every person who qualifies for disability is already on it. But my guess is that, in reality, there are lots of formerly employed people who qualified for disability but never used it, as long as they had work. And when they lost their jobs and exhausted their unemployment benefits, they applied for a program to which they're rightfully entitled as a last resort.
Atrios also notes that disability is frequently "the only place to turn for older unemployed people with no realistic job prospects. It isn't a generous program, and barriers for applicants are quite high. I don't mean to suggest fraud is a big problem, just more that there are people who if they could find the right job situation could in theory work, but it's hard enough finding a job at 57 if you're in perfect health, let alone if maybe you're in less than perfect condition." (As defined by an institutionally disablist work culture.)
Still, it's fun to pretend that no disabled people work, disability is easy to get, and lazy people who hate bootstraps are just gaming the system. Wheeeeeeeeee!
The thing about that ol' American Work Ethic is that it requires the existence of jobs.
[Trigger warning for violence and police abuses.]
There are a lot of good things about the US justice system—and a lot of bad things. One of its greatest shames is that only "Ten states require videotaping of at least some interrogations, like those in crimes that carry the death penalty, and seven state supreme courts have required or strongly encouraged recording," leaving the door wide for coerced and contaminated confessions.
When an innocent person is convicted and sent to prison on the basis of a false confession, particularly for violent crimes with high rates of repeat offenses (like rape), it isn't just that hir life (and hir family's lives) are permanently altered, often in devastating ways; the survivors of the crime(s) are denied real justice, and the actual perpetrators of the crime(s) are left free to continue offending, creating even more victims.
This is an entirely avoidable scenario, as long as only demonstrably reliable confessions are used. But procedures that ensure demonstrably reliable confessions are simply not in place in most of the country.
[M]ore than 40 others have given confessions since 1976 that DNA evidence later showed were false, according to records compiled by Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Experts have long known that some kinds of people — including the mentally impaired, the mentally ill, the young and the easily led — are the likeliest to be induced to confess. There are also people like [Eddie Lowery, who spent 10 years in prison after confessing to a rape he did not commit and was later exonerated by DNA evidence], who says he was just pressed beyond endurance by persistent interrogators.
Naturally, the less privileged a person in police custody is, the more likely zie is to be bullied into a false confession by an officer determined to get one. Every layer of situational disadvantage—being questioned without an attorney present, not knowing one's rights—adds to the likelihood of being railroaded. Every layer of cultural marginalization—youth, poverty, being a person of color, being a person with a psychological disability—adds to the likelihood of being railroaded.
…Of the exonerated defendants in the Garrett study, 26 — more than half — were "mentally disabled," under 18 at the time or both. Most were subjected to lengthy, high-pressure interrogations, and none had a lawyer present. Thirteen of them were taken to the crime scene.
…Eight of the defendants in Professor Garrett's study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before trial, but the courts convicted them anyway.
…Some defendants' confessions even include mistakes fed by the police. Earl Washington Jr., a mentally impaired man who spent 18 years in prison and came within hours of being executed for a murder he did not commit, stated in his confession that the victim had worn a halter top. In fact, she had worn a sundress, but an initial police report had stated that she wore a halter top.
Steven A. Drizin, the director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, said the significance of contamination could not be understated. While errors might lead to wrongful arrest, "it's contamination that is the primary factor in wrongful convictions," he said.
Every time some MRA and/or rape apologist shows up in comments spouting off about wrongful rape convictions, I make the point that wrongful convictions being attributable to false allegations is vanishingly rare, and that their ire is best directed at police and prosecutors who fuck up cases, intentionally or irresponsibly. This is precisely what I'm talking about.
The Innocence Project has listed its priorities for fixing the system here. Ideas for how you can get involved are here.
Ali Ahmad Asseri, first secretary of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, has applied to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security for asylum as a member of "a particular social group" subject to persecution in his homeland. Asseri wrote, in an email to NBC,
My life is in a great danger here and if I go back to Saudi Arabia, they will kill me openly in broad daylight.Asseri has been based at the Saudi embassy in Los Angeles for five years. He says that, in recent months, Saudi consulate employees who suspected that he is gay began to follow him to gay bars. They also discovered his close friendship with a Jewish woman from Israel. Subsequently, Asseri says, consulate officials began harassing him.
Words cannot express the anger I feel about how I have been treated.Other gay Saudis have been granted asylum by the U.S., according to Ally Bolour, Asseri's lawyer. But Asseri's status as a diplomat — and recent statements he has made which have been critical of the Saudi royal family — give Asseri's case a political status unlike the others.
[Trigger warning applies to all links.]
I was checking out the news this morning, and I came across multiple stories of trans women being murdered. Ugh. The murder of trans women is the most horrifying version of business as usual, an actual meme in an actual world that owes trans people much, much more.
Thankfully, Helen and Lisa at Questioning Transphobia have already provided summaries and links. I don't have anything else to say :(
Two women murdered in Puerto Rico: QT, EdgeBoston
Victoria Carmen White of Newark, NJ murdered: QT, Baristanet
On a related note, Helen's posted a report of Trans Respect versus Transphobia's Murder Monitoring Project. The data are here. 93 trans people were killed in the first half of 2010. That's 93 murders in 181 days.
Dear Mitch Daniels,
No. No to the hell to the no. No, no, no. I mean it. Really. No way. No how. Hell no.
Boys vs. girls: Who's harder to raise?
Forget that old poem about snips and snails and puppy dog tails, says Sharon O'Donnell, a mom of three boys and the author of "House of Testosterone".Despite the caveats about socialization throughout, one is nonetheless left with an overwhelming sense of "girls are like this" and "boys are like that," and never shall the twain meet.
"Somehow it's been changed to boys being made of 'fights, farts, and video games,' and sometimes I'm not sure how much more I can take!"
Not so fast, say moms of girls, who point out that they have to contend with fussier fashion sense, more prickly social navigations, and a far greater capacity to hold a grudge. And as a daughter grows, a parent's concerns range from body image to math bias.
[Trigger reference for mentions of disordered eating and self-harm, as well as implicit theme of body policing.]
My body is mine. All mine.
It is my domain into which none may enter without my explicit and enthusiastic consent.
It is mine to care for and dress and decorate and modify and use and inhabit in whatever way I want, so long as my choices don't infringe upon anyone else's right to do precisely the same.
My hair is mine, to cut or grow or style or color or shave or not shave or keep or lose, gracefully or ungracefully, as I choose.
My skin is mine, to pierce or tattoo or scar or burn or pearl or implant or otherwise alter as I choose, to cover or reveal in measures I determine.
My bones are mine, and my blood, and all my internal organs, the parts or wholes of which I may choose to donate to someone else who needs them.
My mind is mine, and the thoughts that reside therein—my ideology, my principles, my memory, my dreams, my experience, my perceptions, my humor, my choices.
My sexuality is mine, and the things that attract and excite me. My desire is mine—who I want to fuck and how often, whether I want to fuck in the first place, and how. Who I want to love, and let love me.
My gender is mine, and the choices I make about my gender presentation, and the decisions I make about whether the corporeal body that is my own must be changed in some big or small ways to reflect the gender I know myself to be.
My teeth are mine, and my tongue, and my tonsils, and everything down to my toes.
Choices about whether and how to abuse my body, and how to define what constitutes abuse (extreme sports? binge drinking? tongue bifurcation? overeating? under-eating? smoking? skin bleaching? wearing high heels?), and communicating my boundaries for intervention to those close to me, are my own.
My reproduction is mine. My reproductive choices are my own—whether to reproduce at all, and with whom, and when, and how often. My contraceptive decisions are my own, with the input of consenting partner/s.
I make the decisions about where my body goes and where it belongs and how it locomotes from place to place.
My abilities are my own. My disabilities are my own.
My healthcare choices are my own, along with the decisions about what foods and drinks and drugs, legal and less so. How my body is best nourished is a decision that belongs to me.
I know my body, and, though I may occasionally, or often, or some frequency in between, solicit the advice of professional people who know about bodies generally, and how to diagnose and fix and care for them, I claim without qualification the unreserved right to be an expert on what feels best and right and good for my body, as a unique entity.
One day, given the opportunity, I may make a decision about when my body stops living. I have chosen who will make decisions about my body and the life it holds (or doesn't) if I am rendered incapable. My choices about what happens to my body after it is dead are mine to make.
My choices are not empirically "right." They are right for me.
Because I am an adult woman who fervently believes in the radical notion that my body is mine.
And your body is yours.
[Related Reading: Proposed.]
by Shaker soupcann314, who works at the Women's Law Project's Pittsburgh office.
[Trigger warning for rape/sexual assault.]
Tomorrow afternoon, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs will hold a public hearing on "Rape in the United States: The Chronic Failure to Report and Investigate Rape Cases." Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the subcommittee, scheduled the hearing at the request of the Women's Law Project, which has been working on this issue since the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in October 1999 that the Philadelphia Police Department was labeling rape cases as non-violent offenses and dismissing reports as "groundless" after little or no investigation. The WLP spearheaded an advocacy effort that resulted in a reinvestigation of police files, finding 681 cases which should have been classified and investigated as rapes and 1700 other cases which should have been investigated as other sex crimes.
Recently, the WLP has been contacted by reporters in several other major American cities, including New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Cleveland, about police departments using similar tactics to sweep reports of rape under the rug. The stories from around the U.S. are heartbreaking:
One of the victims testifying tomorrow is Sara Reedy, a Butler County, PA, woman who reported her assault to the police and ended up being arrested for false reporting. She spent five days in jail and awaited trial for months before her charges were dropped – when her assailant confessed to assaulting her and two subsequent women.
In her testimony, Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women's Law Project, will ask Congress to direct the FBI to charge the Uniform Crime Program staff to undertake a nationwide audit of police practices to insure that local law enforcement agencies are recognizing and investigating sex crimes so that they are properly reported as crimes to the FBI.
She'll also discuss the need to update the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting system's definition of what constitutes rape. The definition that is still used today was adopted in 1927 and classifies "forcible rape" as "the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will." This definition identifies only forced penile-vaginal penetration as rape and completely ignores the many other forms that rape can take.
You should be able to watch the hearings live online here at 2:15 PM EDT on Tuesday, September 14. Let's hope that the federal spotlight on this issue will make every police department in the country review how they handle rape and sexual assault cases. In the meantime, advocates will continue to work for the day when every rape victim's account is taken seriously and investigated thoroughly by the systems that should be in place to help and protect them.
You can view contact the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee here to thank them for holding the hearing and encourage them to approve a nationwide audit of police practices when it comes to reporting and investigating rape cases.
