I can't believe how 1984 this is. You try to get to a good posit ion in life but you have to try harder because your family isn't wealthy and when u lose the rich man's game, it's worse for all. WELCOME TO TERRA GOP!
http://bit.ly/oCsoRJ
Take back Wall Street
Take back our nation.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Soldier who hoped to teach in S Lake Tahoe dies in Afghanistan
Up To 30% of Online Reviews are Fake
Faking positive online reviews has been an industry I'm guessing at least since eBay started the recording "customer" satisfaction. Come on. No one talks like that in real life. And now online supposedly voluntary reviews are being investigated, reported by Business Week. (See link at end of this post.) I'd almost guess that places like Yelp etc wouldn't even have a business model except for purchased reviews, and I am always suspicious of gushing approval. I also find mechanics w/ gushing reviews tend to try to push extra work on you to pad their bills. Really, for local biz I'd rather use a phone book where I know the ad copy is purchased.
http://bit.ly/oY0HAX
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Bill Press: A Flat Tax is Unfair and UnBiblical
On The Ed Show last night, Bill Press pointed out a very important argument against the flat tax, the one that was made in the Bible.
Over and over the Bible points out that those who get more from life, the economy, or if you want to think of it religiously, from God have an obligation to give more back.
But now Republicans are calling over and over for a flat tax, an action they wouldn't dare do if we had half the quality press we need. Too many pundits will just repeat over and over again what Republicans say, trying to keep on the good side of the wealthy people paying their wages.
The Bible is all for the big wage earners paying a higher rate of taxes. It praises generosity in the wealthy, and considers their lot to look out for poorer people.
Remember how Jesus warned that it was easier for a camel to go through the "Eye of a Needle" than for a rich man to get into heaven? There was some discussion whether there was, in Jesus' days, a small gate called "The eye of the Needle" in which a camel would have to crawl on its knees to make its way through, but pastors I consider more honest said, no, that's about an actual needle.
In fact, the Christian religion actually demands that the wealthy to let go of their love of money, to divest of it, at least in a committed spirit which would require constant charity inspired giving that would tend to reduce one's ability to grow great wealthy or to become a Bill O' Reilly who is worried about a 50% tax on the immense amount of wealth he makes telling lies on FOX News.
Applying a graduated tax on citizens is also a matter of common sense. Forcing poor families to pay higher taxes removes their chance to buy a house, create a stable future for their family, and for you, because who is going to buy your home if the tax burden is increased on working and middle class families?
It has been shown that the ability to purchase a home and make some progress in life makes people more dependable and less likely to commit violence. Many of the rioters in Britain this summer get (or got) no or low rent housing from the government. That free housing did not keep people calm. If more of the poor young people had come from a family who owned a house themselves, they would likely have been less willing to burn down someone else's home.
There have been many crazy tax changes. During the 80s Reagan's new tax plan eased out the personal interest deduction. Most working class families couldn't get rid of the debt though wealthy Republicans swore it would be easy to do so. Coupled with Congress' refusal to force credit companies to restrict the interest they charge their captives .. er .. "customers" many families never were able to pay off that debt, and that is one of the reason we are having huge numbers of bankruptcy cases flooding our courts.
Even if the wealthy want to pretend they can put more tax burden onto the working class, it won't work. Unequal societies are inherently unstable and can turn over and dump anyone into the muck at any time.
See video linked here for Heidi Harris's complaint that poor people don't have to pay taxes at the same rate as wealthy people and "horrors, the earned income credit means that some poor people don't pay any federal income tax at al"l. Bill Press's response was my inspiration for this post. I just thought the Biblical message needed to be explained a little further to help people deal with a perverted idea of what the Christian religion teaches.
Over and over the Bible points out that those who get more from life, the economy, or if you want to think of it religiously, from God have an obligation to give more back.
But now Republicans are calling over and over for a flat tax, an action they wouldn't dare do if we had half the quality press we need. Too many pundits will just repeat over and over again what Republicans say, trying to keep on the good side of the wealthy people paying their wages.
The Bible is all for the big wage earners paying a higher rate of taxes. It praises generosity in the wealthy, and considers their lot to look out for poorer people.
Remember how Jesus warned that it was easier for a camel to go through the "Eye of a Needle" than for a rich man to get into heaven? There was some discussion whether there was, in Jesus' days, a small gate called "The eye of the Needle" in which a camel would have to crawl on its knees to make its way through, but pastors I consider more honest said, no, that's about an actual needle.
In fact, the Christian religion actually demands that the wealthy to let go of their love of money, to divest of it, at least in a committed spirit which would require constant charity inspired giving that would tend to reduce one's ability to grow great wealthy or to become a Bill O' Reilly who is worried about a 50% tax on the immense amount of wealth he makes telling lies on FOX News.
Applying a graduated tax on citizens is also a matter of common sense. Forcing poor families to pay higher taxes removes their chance to buy a house, create a stable future for their family, and for you, because who is going to buy your home if the tax burden is increased on working and middle class families?
It has been shown that the ability to purchase a home and make some progress in life makes people more dependable and less likely to commit violence. Many of the rioters in Britain this summer get (or got) no or low rent housing from the government. That free housing did not keep people calm. If more of the poor young people had come from a family who owned a house themselves, they would likely have been less willing to burn down someone else's home.
There have been many crazy tax changes. During the 80s Reagan's new tax plan eased out the personal interest deduction. Most working class families couldn't get rid of the debt though wealthy Republicans swore it would be easy to do so. Coupled with Congress' refusal to force credit companies to restrict the interest they charge their captives .. er .. "customers" many families never were able to pay off that debt, and that is one of the reason we are having huge numbers of bankruptcy cases flooding our courts.
Even if the wealthy want to pretend they can put more tax burden onto the working class, it won't work. Unequal societies are inherently unstable and can turn over and dump anyone into the muck at any time.
See video linked here for Heidi Harris's complaint that poor people don't have to pay taxes at the same rate as wealthy people and "horrors, the earned income credit means that some poor people don't pay any federal income tax at al"l. Bill Press's response was my inspiration for this post. I just thought the Biblical message needed to be explained a little further to help people deal with a perverted idea of what the Christian religion teaches.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Is GOP Playing Belgium to China's Germany For Illegal Campaign Donations?
Somehow Bad News is Always Worse As the Days Grow Shorter
But fall color helps keep the spirits up.
Picture is used with Creative Commons license via Flickr's native placement and attribution coding. Rollover for name of photographer, or click on it to go to original site
Reading an article on the Solyndra collapse, I sense there is a possibility that China undercut an amazing American chance to create better solar cells.
Republicans say": Welcome.
World wide trade is good. but at the expense of a better system created by Americans?
Read:
And instead of warning Americans, Republicans are using the incident to attack the president. As usual they are waging a phony political battle to try to unseat the one person who has the best chance to help our nation escape a Europe-like melt down.
After all is Rick "no social security" Perry or Mitt "jobs destroyer" Romney going to do that for us?
The LA Times article does not come out and say that China is playing economic warfare games, it just notes that as Solyndra was trying to gain a workable market share with a superior product suddenly the Chinese started dropping the price of their inferior flat solar panels until Solyndra really had no choice other than to give up the fight when they couldn't get another large loan from the government.
So, if anything, the Republicans shouldn't be blaming the Obama administration for lending money to Solyndra, (which was backed by both Democratic donors and Republican donors), but for giving up too early.
But, still it is unknown how far the Chinese would go in cutting prices and it was likely to be unfathomable what the outcome could be. The government may have done the best thing after all.
The best way to know whether if Solyndra was a victim of an economic act of war is to see if China now raises the price of their flat, less efficient, solar panels. If they do, I think we have our answer, and we should do something about it.
Tarriffs? Fund companies making cheaper solar panels in the US?
Don't bother asking the GOP leaders though. They have their little story all set up.
For those of you uncertain of how China can give illegal donations check out the Citizen's United decisions which allow corporations and others to give unidentified donations. That's how. You think the govt of China is going to tell us how they are waging war on our economy?? Republicans love the unidentified corporate donations, so they're likely to love Chinese participation in their campaigns. Now wonder they have no problem with Citizens United while they promote the bipartisan Solyndra as a Democratic problem. That's so
Belgium.
I tell you that I don't worry about a little Crony Capitalism though I don't think you can call the Solyndra loans by that name since people donating to both Republicans and Democrats were heavy investors in the company. What I fear more is Crony Fascism, the kind of deals I see coming out of the GOP and China.
And BTW, China, I am no longer so sanguine that you want to buy our baseball team out here in Los Angeles if you are going to play economic warfare on our green energy companies.
You can read a report on Solyndra's history at the LA Times which does not hint of any suspicion of economic warfare at: Solyndra's collapse is a tale of too much dazzle.
Census: 28,000 same-sex couples in California say they are married, regardless of the law
I'm a married heterosexual, but take that haters! See Mercury News: http://bit.ly/pgDMHM
Economists Say Obama's Jobs Plan Would Prevent Double Dip Recession
So I guess GOP is determined to block it since they favor your hide being sold to the highest bidders in 2013. See BW: http://bit.ly/obGgpC
Rand (send your donations here, Koch Bros) Paul blocks national pipeline safety bill
Rand Paul still keeps a glowing "send $$ here, Koch Bros." sign on his chest as he blocks a bill that would call for higher safety standards for our nation's pipelines. The Chronicle explains that regulations in CA, home of the horrific San Bruno blast, exceed national standards, but the block endangers people even in Paul's home state of Kentucky, and why breaking the "block" would be prohibitive to such polititions: http://bit.ly/r7G7kz All in all a fine piece of reporting by the Chronicle writer. Some pundits say we need to get away from political divisions, but what we really need is good reporting that explains the realities of politics.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
SFGate.com : UC Berkeley GOP student bake sale is mean-spirited
Johnson makes a good point. IE, if your ancestors were likely to have been selling other people's ancestors just 150 years ago, don't be thinking that you have anything to teach people about equality. And whatever this group says, the unequal bake sales trying to get white males angry about their lot in life have been around for decades. It's not about Gov. Brown's current legislation. http://bit.ly/rcyoKY
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
Mexico AG Blames Drug Lords for Mexico's Violence
A woman as pimped up as Sarah Palin stands on a stage and castrates Mexican drug lords for massive upscale of murder since her government took office and the SanDiego paper obligingly just reprints her words in one of the most obsequious articles I have ever read even in the US mainstream press.
It is known that violence skyrocketed after her government's rise to power, because drug selling gangs were allied with his political rival a relatively liberal politician whose realized that drug exportation to the US fed many people in the nation where the US pushed down wages to slave labor rates.
Even highly respected organizations have admitted that US anti drug policy pushes up the number of murders in Mexico as well. Even the r/w Mexican president has acknowleged the same. But now he and his team is back in full kill mode with this article, which is meant to allow them to kill more poor people who have to take the jobs from the drug lords because most jobs pay minimum in Mexico and that won't even house, clothe, and feed your family. Death happy Republicans love it and the San DiegoTribune stands ready to cover up the blame for their murderous policies.
See:
http://www.sandiegored.com/noticias/19271/Small-time-dealers-lead-to-big-time-drug-violence/
It is known that violence skyrocketed after her government's rise to power, because drug selling gangs were allied with his political rival a relatively liberal politician whose realized that drug exportation to the US fed many people in the nation where the US pushed down wages to slave labor rates.
Even highly respected organizations have admitted that US anti drug policy pushes up the number of murders in Mexico as well. Even the r/w Mexican president has acknowleged the same. But now he and his team is back in full kill mode with this article, which is meant to allow them to kill more poor people who have to take the jobs from the drug lords because most jobs pay minimum in Mexico and that won't even house, clothe, and feed your family. Death happy Republicans love it and the San DiegoTribune stands ready to cover up the blame for their murderous policies.
See:
http://www.sandiegored.com/noticias/19271/Small-time-dealers-lead-to-big-time-drug-violence/
Copyright Case Could Turn Into a Judicial Cluster Bomb for Media Groups
A couple of posts down I wrote about a case in which a poster was embroiled in a fight over the use of copyrighted material.
The copyright plaintiff, Righthaven, is a limited liability corporation and lost its case since it didn't hold the actual copyright.
The judge in the case awarded the defendent c. $35,000 in lawyers fees which Righthaven says it won't pay, and will declare bankruptcy instead.
But an analysis says that it might be provable that Righthaven was set up by its creators, Stephens Media, and MediaNews Group plus some single names (I will link to the article I'm referencing so you can get those if you want) knowing it was all a bit of a scam, and not wanting to put their own assets at risk, which would mean that they themselves can be sued for the fees.
I don't know much about Stephens Media, having avoided the Las Vegas paper, so I couldn't get tainted with a thought that Righthaven could sue me for, but I have admired some of the work that MediaNews has done.
Weirdly though they claimed that vigorously defending their material from copying would make them a more effective news system, since Righthaven's start up, it seems to me that their reporting has taken a serious dive in quality.
It's like the flatlining of news quality at the New York Times since they started their pay wall. Krugman's the only writer there who is even trying anymore. I wonder if the NYT is looking to catch Wall Street Journal readers with small brains and deep pockets.
Logically, making more money should make news teams better, but that's not what we are seeing.
Meanwhile The Washington Post keeps rolling along with some of the best reporting and still being offered freely on the web.
Media groups behind Righthaven could get hit with some bad judgements. Could it make them go back to superior reporting?
Maybe not, but the passing of news is an important function, one now apparently backed by a US District Court (in which most constitutional decisions are resolved according to one report on CA's trial to overturn Proposition 8).
The right to be informed looks to be winning.
I hope this continues, and a lot of people hope that Righthaven doesn't.
This post is a summary of and comment on a report at TechDirt
If Righthaven Declares Bankruptcy, Expect Lawyers To Go After Stephens Media, Media News, And Righthaven Principals
Also recommended:
Righthaven Defendant Moves To Strip Firm’s Assets
The copyright plaintiff, Righthaven, is a limited liability corporation and lost its case since it didn't hold the actual copyright.
The judge in the case awarded the defendent c. $35,000 in lawyers fees which Righthaven says it won't pay, and will declare bankruptcy instead.
But an analysis says that it might be provable that Righthaven was set up by its creators, Stephens Media, and MediaNews Group plus some single names (I will link to the article I'm referencing so you can get those if you want) knowing it was all a bit of a scam, and not wanting to put their own assets at risk, which would mean that they themselves can be sued for the fees.
I don't know much about Stephens Media, having avoided the Las Vegas paper, so I couldn't get tainted with a thought that Righthaven could sue me for, but I have admired some of the work that MediaNews has done.
Weirdly though they claimed that vigorously defending their material from copying would make them a more effective news system, since Righthaven's start up, it seems to me that their reporting has taken a serious dive in quality.
It's like the flatlining of news quality at the New York Times since they started their pay wall. Krugman's the only writer there who is even trying anymore. I wonder if the NYT is looking to catch Wall Street Journal readers with small brains and deep pockets.
Logically, making more money should make news teams better, but that's not what we are seeing.
Meanwhile The Washington Post keeps rolling along with some of the best reporting and still being offered freely on the web.
Media groups behind Righthaven could get hit with some bad judgements. Could it make them go back to superior reporting?
Maybe not, but the passing of news is an important function, one now apparently backed by a US District Court (in which most constitutional decisions are resolved according to one report on CA's trial to overturn Proposition 8).
The right to be informed looks to be winning.
I hope this continues, and a lot of people hope that Righthaven doesn't.
This post is a summary of and comment on a report at TechDirt
If Righthaven Declares Bankruptcy, Expect Lawyers To Go After Stephens Media, Media News, And Righthaven Principals
Also recommended:
Righthaven Defendant Moves To Strip Firm’s Assets
Thursday, September 22, 2011
How to Boycott Georgia
Information on businesses based in Georgia is available on the Internet.
Wikipedia has some listed, but I don't think it's very complete.
If you know more Georgia businesses, why not add them there.
Google also brings up more sources of information like: 13 Georgia companies on 2009 Fortune 500 list Which lists biggies like Coca Cola, The Home Depot, United Parcel Service, Delta Airlines, AFLAC, Genuine Parts, etc. (Besides 13 companies on the Fortune 500 they also list 16 from the Fortune 1000.)
An Ask.com search brings up more articles that can be sources.
I do suggest boycotting businesses in Georgia.
Business owners and leaders make many decisions on which candidates to back in their part of the world and how many resources to put into backing them.
Too many times they chose to go with the candidate that will give them tax breaks, or who indulges in crony capitalism.
Another way that businesses can get better governance is to promote a quality news system, but by not doing so they gain power because their money in politics is the main factor in all kinds of races.
Does anyone even have a chance to know anything about all those judges we're supposed to be voting for every few years?
Meanwhile businesses ignore the racism and the urge to kill in the populace around them while they make pathetic ads trying to prove to people that the world will be perfect if they just buy the products their companies sell.
This really needs to stop.
Business leaders need to stop promoting the hucksters in government and become responsible members of society.
Wikipedia has some listed, but I don't think it's very complete.
If you know more Georgia businesses, why not add them there.
Google also brings up more sources of information like: 13 Georgia companies on 2009 Fortune 500 list Which lists biggies like Coca Cola, The Home Depot, United Parcel Service, Delta Airlines, AFLAC, Genuine Parts, etc. (Besides 13 companies on the Fortune 500 they also list 16 from the Fortune 1000.)
An Ask.com search brings up more articles that can be sources.
I do suggest boycotting businesses in Georgia.
Business owners and leaders make many decisions on which candidates to back in their part of the world and how many resources to put into backing them.
Too many times they chose to go with the candidate that will give them tax breaks, or who indulges in crony capitalism.
Another way that businesses can get better governance is to promote a quality news system, but by not doing so they gain power because their money in politics is the main factor in all kinds of races.
Does anyone even have a chance to know anything about all those judges we're supposed to be voting for every few years?
Meanwhile businesses ignore the racism and the urge to kill in the populace around them while they make pathetic ads trying to prove to people that the world will be perfect if they just buy the products their companies sell.
This really needs to stop.
Business leaders need to stop promoting the hucksters in government and become responsible members of society.
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