Category: Uncategorized

What’s at stake in Wisconsin

Frank Rich of the New York Times sums up what’s really at stake in Wisconsin and elsewhere where the Tea Party frauds and other right wing radicals are busy eroding the well being of ordinary Americans.

That’s not to say there is no fiscal mission in the right’s agenda, both nationally and locally — only that the mission has nothing to do with deficit reduction. The real goal is to reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks.

That’s what it’s really about. Not the deficit, not the continued success and supremacy of the United States, but the well being of the plutocracy that supports these people.

-TPP

The American Dream Illustrated

20% of the wealthiest Americans own 85% of all the wealth in the country. The next 20% own 10% of all wealth, and the remaining 5% is owned by the rest of the population. The poor own nothing.

The interesting finding of the paper researching people’s perceptions of wealth is that people generally think the wealth of Americans is spread much more evenly. The reality is much more skewed in favor of the ultra rich than people think. The policy making implications are probably quite detrimental to the majority of people in this country.

The chart is a perfect illustration of how the American Dream is only for the few, and how the trickle up economy benefits those who already have rather than those who never will have anything.

-TPP

The War on Cameras

Radley Balko of Reason.com writes of legal problems people are finding themselves in some states after getting “caught” recording public officials’ interactions with the public.

In some US States it is a felony to record conversations without consent from all parties. This is generally a good idea, because privacy issues. Whether it should be a felony is a separate matter. However, prosecutors and police force in these states has increasingly taken the position that it is illegal to record on-duty police officers. They argue police officers have expectation of privacy while performing their work duties. That’s pretty ridiculous, but the letter of the law in these states really does allow for that.

In extreme cases, the article says, ordinary, law-abiding citizens are facing sentences of up to 75 years in prison for merely recording police actions in their cellphone cameras. People are getting routinely harassed for recording police officers, they’re arrested, thrown in jail and made criminals for something that causes no harm whatsoever. On the flip side in US States where it IS legal to record police officers, police officers who wrongly arrest people for it face no consequences whatsoever.

Read the article for a thorough review of this issue.

Please support the ACLU in their efforts of getting these insane laws repealed.

-TPP

The true purpose of the Arizona State immigration law

Laura Sullivan at NPR blows the lid off the Arizona State immigration law that makes it open season on anyone who looks hispanic.

She uncovered what really was behind the legislation. Corporate greed.

It seems as if the legislation was written by private prison industry lobbyists in an effort to funnel illegal immigrants to the prisons run by the industry. Obviously this would produce a windfall for the companies running the prisons. And it’d all be tax-payer money.

I wonder how many of the bill’s sponsors got kickbacks.

-TPP