Summations Only

Seems to me they're doing something like this...

I do understand that the new hot thing among conservatives is to blame the unemployed for being unemployed. But I thought the previous hot thing among conservatives was that Obama's mismanagement of the economy caused pernicious unemployment.Could you clear that up for me, Buz?Are the unemployed of America Obama's victims or leftist scum?

Recent sick-day legislation in Connecticut--one of our most liberal states--shows the current climate here.(Disclosure: I live in Connecticut. Being well left of liberal, the effect of my residency is that I generally feel that I share a planet of origin with my neighbors.)The new law, the first in the nation, requires employers of 50 or more people to provide one hour of sick time for each 40 hours worked. So a full-time worker can accrue about six days per year, part-time workers considerably less.The law barely passed, and even so only because we have a Democratic governor for the first time in many years. The law had been introduced regularly for years but stalled in the face of a veto threat from a Republican governor.The response from the business community?

quote:

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Joe Brennan, a lobbyist for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, dismissed that argument as absurd. The new law will make Connecticut less competitive with states that do not tell business how many sick days they must provide to workers, he said.

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Where does it stop? Brennan said. Mandate vacation time? Mandate how many times people can get a coffee break during the day?

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Mandated vacation time?! Breaks? The horror, the horror.See, if we provide these Euro-Socialist perks to our workers, then we will undermine the lean, competitive companies that support our vibrant American economy.Then we will have persistently high unemployment and decades of stagnant wages.Oh. Wait.

The privatization of prison construction and management is a hot topic in Alabama these days--the surrounding four states have turned to privatization to lower their incarceration costs.Once privatization is accomplished in Alabama and prisons are fully profitable, Plantation Redux will be complete.

The Oakland Police Dept. initially denied the use of rubber bullets. Faced with viral web video to the contrary, they have admitted their use.They are currently denying the lobbing of a flash-bang into the group of protestors huddled around Scott Olsen.AbE: Dr A posted video of the denied flash-bang above.Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

We certainly could have used some video cameras in the sixties--even walkie-talkies with still cameras (as we might have seen cell phones) would have been phenomenal. It took many massive demonstrations and multiple deaths to persuade media networks to air footage and print photos of police dogs (of all varieties) savaging Civil Rights marchers.Even now Wiki says of the Democratic Convention in 1968, "Rioting took place between demonstrators and the Chicago Police Department, who were assisted by the Illinois National Guard.""rioting between" I lived a few hours from Chicago in those days, and I was there that August, a few days before starting my senior year of high school. There was some critical press, but mostly because the police had roughed up some reporters: the true level of gratuitous violence visited upon protestors went largely unreported--even then, no video, didn't happen.Now a number of organizations distribute video cameras to oppressed peoples.Videre Est Credere is among the most well known. On-Q does similar work, providing cameras to indigenous peoples in Alaska, Brazil, Peru and Borneo.My last two camcorders went to such efforts. Keep these folks in mind if you dispose of a phone with video capabilities.At last. the whole world really is watching.

They do tape themselves quite a bit, but only release what serves their purposes. Filming protestors started as far back as the 50s, pursued by local police, the FBI, and (illegally) the CIA in order to identify and then persecute peaceniks and other subversives.My father's car was photographed outside a Black Panther storefront in the sixties, and the resulting harassment changed his views on the police a bit. I think citizen surveillance of the police does help, if only to limit the scale of police violence. Some of the undocumented police actions from the sixties were truly horrendous.Naturally, police nationwide react with force, often violating local laws that expressly permit filming the police, to prevent citizens from taping them at work.Some of them are, unfortunately, pigs in the classic sense. American police forces have been heavily militarized, both in tactics and arms, for the past few decades--as violent crime rates have steadily declined. Demilitarizing the police, and instituting reforms like more stringent psychological screening of applicants and citizen boards of review, are badly needed.Like with prison guards, the folks you'd least want to have those powers want them the most.Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

I agree with your analysis, especially with regard to the turning point under Reagan. But I'm not optimistic about change in the near future.For 30 years or so, working class and middle class wages have stagnated or fallen, in step with the near eradication of unions in the private work force. Yet one of the most effective rallying cries for conservatives is "Union bosses! Union thugs!"--as they turn their sights on unionized public employees.The wealth that drained away from the 99% geysered up to the wealthiest--yet working class and middle class conservatives cheer on tax cuts for the rich, budget cutting that will further stunt the economy, and the shredding of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.I see no sign of this masochistic enthrallment waning. Instead, it seems to have intensified into a mass hysteria.This change--in which working people have been persuaded not just to tolerate, but to demand actions that harm them--concerns me the most.I don't mean I see no hope, or that I see no reason to try. But I fear we will suffer an era of domestic conflict that makes the sixtes look like a PTA meeting before we see real change.

Yes.

Let's be explicit, Buz.You support the firing of a tear gas cannister at close range into the face of a peacefully protesting Marine vet.You support tossing a flash-bang into the group of people huddled around the critically injured man.Is that right?

Well, then that's a good thing, right?Isn't that why Israelis have such success raising funds and political support from evangelical churches? Because the existence of a militarily strong Israel coincides with their end-time beliefs?So you must welcome any spread of Islam if it heralds the Second Coming.By the way, answer my question in Message 350.Stop being the King of Jeers and give an honest reply.

I've noticed Buz delivers more jeers than the rest of the board combined, and dispenses them most freely when he has no effective reply. Wear it with pride I'd say yes. The police use prison rape as an interrogation threat and put vulnerable prisoners into hard-core cell blocks and holding tanks as both punishment and leverage.I've experienced both scenarios--listening to someone who is sworn to "serve and protect" describe your likelihood of being raped with lascivious delight teaches you something about human depravity.Like most systems of institutionalized abuse, prison rape serves the institution's purposes.Buz supports his police. {At best, slightly on topic. Shall we all try to do better? - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Note in red.Edited by Omnivorous, : Solidly on topic. But every day in every way, I try to do better.

Hundreds of OWS people have been or will be arrested. It is instructive to consider how they will be treated by the police.If past experience is any guide, they will be systematically humiliated and taunted. They will be subjected to strip searches by hostile guards and matrons. If they are especially defiant, verbally or otherwise, they will be subjected to cavity searches. If they are eloquent in their defiance, they will be threatened with sexual violence at the hands of the general jail or prison population.In the same way that our shameful prison system produces harder, meaner, unemployable and more alienated alumni, the protesters will find their arrest and incarceration a life-changing event. It will impact their lives in a myriad of ways: employability, insurance rates, lasting emotional and psychological trauma, and--perhaps--their will to resist a morally bankrupt and economically bankrupting society.

The Cato Institute? Seriously? That's your authoritative source?Instead of a conservative think tank puff piece, show us some independent figures and budgetary statistics that support your claim of GOP frugality.(Hint: You can't.)Anyway...so you're claiming that Bush blew a surplus created by Republicans on his way to huge deficits?How is that better?

The problem with socialism in the U.S. is that we've socialized corporate losses while privatizing their gains.Somehow, while conservatives critique taxpayer-funded retirement and old age medical care (hardly bread and circuses) because of federal deficits, corporate profits and the incomes of the wealthy have soared--while taxes on both are at their lowest levels in many decades.A little more direct democracy might help. I think the odds are good that we would pour less money down the rat-holes of war and appeasement of the wealthy. At present, for example, more than two-thirds of the American people support raising tax rates on millionaires and up, and oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Yet even Democrats--both Congress and the White House--entertain those cuts in a "Grand Bargain" with Republicans. Of course, the vast majority of our representatives are themselves millionaires and their campaign funds come from other millionaires, so their natural interests are not aligned with ours.Representative democracy is intended to be a bulwark against the ills of popular passions, but in practice here it merely identifies the few who need to be bought.We already have a Constitution designed to protest us from a tyrannical majority, so I'm not too concerned about national referendums that might erode, for example, civil liberties. Besides, our representative democracy is doing a pretty good job of eroding those already.Perhaps with a bit more direct democracy, the oligarchs would feel that they have to buy us off rather than our politicians. If the only difference was that instead of millions flowing into politicians' coffers, every kid in the U.S. could have enough bread to eat and could go to the circus every year, I'd call that an improvement.