I hope you get a chance to think about why the founders of our country fought and died 236 years ago next week. It was to give us the freedoms and escape from tyranny, 2 things that were taken away yesterday. I bet they are rolling over in their graves.

Source:

Some idiot conservative during a Facebook debate about the merits of the ACA being ruled constitutional.

I mean c’mon man, seriously?

Hit job on our academic work

On April 30, blogger Naomi Schaefer Riley attacked the work of several African American graduate students, as well as African American studies in general, in a post on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Brainstorm blog.

The right-wing post—and a subsequent defense by Schaefer Riley—caused a firestorm at the Chronicle website and provoked outraged responses from several academics and bloggers, as well as the faculty of the African American Studies Department at Northwestern University. In just a few days, a petition in defense of the students and African American studies garnered more than 6,000 signers.

In this statement, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, La Tasha B. Levy and Ruth Hays, the three graduate students who Schaefer Riley attacked, respond.

Conservative Bullshit: Chapter One

solo1y:

Tax breaks for job creators help the economy.

This is in Republican fairyland, where by “job creators” we mean very rich people, and by “tax breaks” we mean that we’re giving them more money.

1. Giving more money to very rich people does not create jobs. If a very rich person (or company) suddenly finds itself with lots of extra money, there is nothing at all to suggest that they will spend this money on jobs. Think about that for a moment - why would they? They might hang on to it as liquid assets, they might merge with another company (which usually creates more unemployment) or they might just buy a fleet of yachts or something (which, if you’re concerned about unemployment in the yacht sector, might be good news I guess?). And even if there were some way to force companies to hire people (and remember that conservatives don’t seem to want to force companies to do anything), they’d probably outsource.

2. There is a way to put heavy pressure on manufacturers to create more jobs, and that is to increase demand for their products (especially in a country like America that seems to run its domestic markets on demand rather than supply). And one quick, easy way to do that (as Franklin Roosevelt discovered) is to pump money into the bottom of the economy. In other words, giving poor people more money will create more jobs. You can make them do bullshit jobs to get it, if you like; it won’t make any difference to the overall effect. Taxing rich people more than poor people isn’t “unfair” or “punishing the successful”; it’s fixing the economy.

Basically, the real job creators are the average every day consumer.

Libertarians and Conservatives must choose: Competitive Enterprise or Idolatry of Property

When Adam Smith gets over-simplified into a religious caricature, what you get is “faith in blind markets” - or FIBM - a dogma that proclaims the state should have no role in guiding economic affairs, in picking winners of losers, or interfering in the maneuvers or behavior of capitalists. Like many caricatures, it is based on some core wisdom. As Robb points out, the failure of Leninism shows how state meddling can become addictive, excessive, meddlesome and unwise. There is no way that 100,000 civil servants, no matter how well-educated, trained, experienced, honest and well-intentioned, can have enough information, insight or modeling clarity to replace the market’s hundreds of millions of knowing players. Guided Allocation of Resources (GAR) has at least four millennia of failures to answer for.

But in rejecting one set of knowledge-limited meddlers — 100,000 civil servants — libertarians and conservatives seem bent on ignoring market manipulation by 5,000 or so aristocratic golf buddies, who appoint each other to company boards in order to vote each other titanic “compensation packages” while trading insider information and conspiring together to eliminate competition. Lords who are not subject to inherent limits, like each bureaucrat must face, or rules of disclosure or accountability. Lords who (whether it is legal or not) collude and share the same delusions.

Um… in what way is this kind of market “blind”? True, you have gelded the civil servants who Smith praised as a counter-balancing force against oligarchy. But the 5,000 golf buddies — despite their free market rhetoric — aren’t doing FIBM at all! They reverting to GAR. To guided allocation, only in much smaller numbers, operating according to oligarchic principles of ferocious self-interest that go back at least to Nineveh.

Union Workers Replaced With Prison Labor Under Scott Walker’s Collective Bargaining Law

jonathan-cunningham:

While Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) law dismantling collective bargaining rights has harmed teachers, nurses, and other civil servants, it’s helping a different group in Wisconsinites — inmates. Prisoners are now taking up jobs that used to be held by unionized workers in some parts of the state.

We make up indefensible laws to incarcerate citizens (for video taping police officers, sending their children to good schools or smoking marijuana), then enslave those citizens for cheap labor. It’s very similar to indentured servitude, but without consent (and thus less morally defensible). Will we continue to allow the upper class to make serfs out of us?

I really like the usage of the term “serfs” here, as that is exactly what is going on here: an attempt to return us to a feudal society. I have made this point here before, usually as a critique of libertarianism.

The signs are everywhere, and this is just one of the more blatant ones. We also have prominent right wing politicians and pundits openly stating that those who are not landowners shouldn’t have the same rights as those who are, in an attempt to disenfranchise the vast majority of Americans.

Their plan as I see it is a simple one. Remove voting rights for those who do not own any property (or at least make it very difficult for them to vote), pass ridiculous laws (as Jonathan said) allowing them to lock up people for victimless crimes, and then force people who are in prison to work for free. Using this free prison labor, they can now fire every employee who is a member of a union (or just fire them all anyway, free labor is good for business). Next thing you know, you have a class of landowners (nobility) and an underclass of slaves or serfs.

Humanity has fought for literally thousands of years to stop this sort of society from exploiting people. We cannot allow this type of oppression to return at any costs.

(Source: azspot)

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country - which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

Source:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum, in his column “Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American” for The American Thinker.

I literally do not know what to say this, other than the subtlety used in the past by folks like Vadum is dead. They do not want those in poverty to vote for fear their rich cronies will no longer be able to buy political clout. The richest 1% have 1% of the vote. 99% of the vote belongs to those outside of the top income brackets.

Never fear, Mr. Vadum. Citizens United v. FEC has your back. I’ll tell you what’s un-American: Decrying the empowerment of the impoverished via the last vestiges of the democratic process we have left in this country. To insist that a person is defined by what one owns versus who one is - that’s profoundly un-American.

You sir, are attempting to establish a new aristocracy in this country, a pseudo-royalty if you will. I believe the Founding Fathers might have a bigger problem with that than with the poor voting.

(via squeetothegee)

-_-‘

(via newwavefeminism)

Umm, American history? Anyone remember the first group to be given the right to vote after rich, land owning men? I’ll give you a hint. It starts with “NON LANDOWNING” and ends with “WHITE MEN”.

(via chauvinistsushi)

Proof that disenfranchisement is alive and well in the good ol’ US of A. This is sickening.

(Source: americanthinker.com)

Megyn Kelly is badass — that guy was calling maternity leave “a racket.” He was saying women shouldn’t get paid for it, and Megyn Kelly was just like “RARRRRRRR.” Never get between a mama grizzly and her maternity leave!

She’s making quite a spirited argument: that workers are entitled to certain benefits, and that society has an interest in protecting these benefits! Which is great — and really weird, because that’s not the Fox Megyn Kelly that I thought I knew. …She used to hate entitlement programs, mandated benefits and things like that.

…You see, this is the problem with entitlements: they’re really only entitlements (to you) when it’s something other people want. When it’s something you want, they’re a hallmark of a civilized society; the foundation of a great people. “I just had a baby and found out maternity leave strengthens society! But since I still have a job, unemployment benefits (for everyone else) are really socialism.”

More simply, (plays George Carlin’s famous “Have you noticed that their stuff is ‘shit,’ and your shit is ‘stuff’?” bit). Once again, George Carlin says in a sentence what took us three-and-a-half minutes.

So either Megyn Kelly has inadvertently exposed the hypocrisy at the heart of conservative demonization of unions and the working class, or — Oh my God, it’s worse than we thought: Megyn Kelly is suffering from post-partum compassion. (Beat.) It’ll pass.

Source:

JON STEWART, on Megyn Kelly decrying a fellow conservative’s remarks calling paid maternity leave a “racket,” on The Daily Show.

Brilliant.

(via inothernews)
inadvisable: braiker: “Statute.” This leaves me speechlest.

inadvisable:

braiker:

“Statute.”

This leaves me speechlest.