Tag: politics

How the Republicans Stole Christmas

The Federal Government is thinking of introducing a budget for the next fiscal year that would cut essential services from low income people across the country. The cuts are severe, and will hit the poorest the hardest.

Medicaid, food stamps, social services are all getting multi-billion dollar cuts in order to pay for the federal aid to Afghanistan, Iraq, the oil companies, Katrina relief efforts among other things.

What’s particularly ironic is that while victims of Katrina are getting emergency federal aid from one Governmental agency, the proposed budget cuts would cut other aid to the very same people. Give with one hand, take with the other? That’s flip-flopping with people’s lives, dear Republicans.

Meanwhile they’re still passing tax cut bills. Is there any sense to any of the Republican tax policies?

-TPP

The cause of the French riots? Rap music!

Apparently rap music is the root of all evil, at least in France.

200 French politicians have backed a petition from one of the country’s MPs calling for legal action against seven rappers and bands which he claims have fueled the recent riots that have taken place around the country.

Straight from the Deflect Blame 101 playbook.

-TPP

Couldn’t have said it better myself

Rosa Merilainen, a Finnish Member of Parliament, maintains a blog she updates every week.

She was recently involved with voting for a new copyright law in Finland, one which was opposed by 98% of Finnish citizens, but promoted heavily by the entertainment industry lobbyists. The bill caused an unprecedented uproar in Finland before it was passed, and the controversy has not lessened since. Ms. Merilainen was one of the many MPs who voted for the law, and has been critized severely by her constituents ever since.

The entry for week 45 on her blog has an interesting confessional from Ms. Merilainen. While having a rather unsuccessful attempt of doing any work during Thursday of that week, she was nevertheless in a happy mood, because she was heading to the Christmas season opening event of Gramex. Gramex is an organization protecting the interests of performing artists and publishers and also collects copyright related renumerations in behalf of them.

Turns out Ms. Merilainen was looking forward to the event, because she had had such a rough time with the new copyright law, she was trolling for praise from the “wonderful men” (her words) of Gramex.

It’s good to know Ms. Merilainen is working hard to please her constituents, or at least 2% of them.

-TPP

The hypocrisy of anti-video gaming laws

Arnold Schwarznegger signed a law banning selling violent video games to minors or face a $1,000 fine.

Funny how this man, who made his millions from extremely violent movies affording him his successful bid for Governor of California, is now the champion of anti-media-violence.

The Wired article sums up the hypocrisy pretty well with their last sentence: “Consider that your final irony: Politicians work hard to ban virtual torture — while working just as hard to allow it in real life.”

-TPP – Save the Children!

We can’t afford four more years

Washington Post reports that the US poverty rates increased to 12.7% last year. The poverty rates have been going up every year for the past four years.

In New York City, the poverty rates are up to 20.3% from 19%. That’s one in every five New York City residents living under poverty levels. I guess that happens when you have millionaires running the city.

I find these statistics completely mindboggling. To me they demonstrate a complete failure of the federal and city governments. We’re spending unlimited funds to fight tyranny around the world, but then let our own citizens get poorer and poorer with seemingly no concern. When is the last time you heard George W. Bush talk about fighting poverty [1]?

It is not the job of non-profit organizations and charities to take care of the poor. It is the government’s job to make sure poverty doesn’t exist, as much as possible. The government is failing in its job. Switch it!

-TPP

1. The social security system reform doesn’t qualify, as it would actually increase poverty

The net being regulated by Christian conservatives

Declan McCullagh, of Politech fame, reports about the .xxx TLD roadblocks and how the Christian conservatives have been getting more and more power in the US regulatory agencies.

He also lists concrete examples of how these Christian conservatives are flexing their newfound powers in ways that threaten the 1st Amendment rights and/or don’t make any sense whatsoever in the context of a global network like the Internet.

-TPP

Privacy is in the eyes of the beholder

There’s been some interesting debate recently on whether or not police can search your garbage without a search warrant. Apparently the police, district attorneys and judges think they can. They seem to believe since that stuff is put there to be discarded and people know it’s going to be handled by sanitation workers and even sorted for recycling there is no expectation of privacy, so it’s ok for the police to search it without a search warrant. And they routinely do.

Journalists of the Willamette Week newspaper in Portland, OR decided they’d exercise their rights to search this public depository of personal information by going dumpster diving in the Police Chief’s, the Mayor’s and the District Attorney’s garbage cans.

They then went to said persons asking whether it was ok to search garbage. All of them said yes…until the reporters told them they had gone through their own garbage. How the tables suddenly turned.

The Police Chief was so upset he cut the reporters off midsentence and stopped the interview. The Mayor summoned the reporters to her office and nearly arrested them on the spot. The District Attorney, however, was playing the “hahhah, it’s funny” game and apparently wasn’t upset at all.

-TPP

NRA out to lunch

Now, I don’t really usually care much what the kooks [1] at NRA are up to, but this time I have to wonder what in the hell are they thinking off.

In 2004 Weyerhaeuser Corporation in Oklahoma fired employees who were carrying guns in their cars parked in the company parking lot stating it was a violation of the company policy barring firearms from company property. The parking lot certainly is company property, so it’s not an entirely unreasonable to hold employees in violation the firearms policy by bringing guns onto the parking lot.

NRA wasn’t having any of it. If it was up to them, kindergarten cops would drive to work in a tank, so they called up a couple of friends in the Oklahoma State legislative office. The friends quickly passed a law that prohibits employers from banning firearms from locked vehicles parked on company property.

The legislation was co-authored by one interesting Oklahoma State Senator named Frank Shurden. He’s also known for other interesting bills. Looks like he’s trying to do that again. He sure got some balls. Wait, but it doesn’t end there. Senator Shurden also wants teachers to paddle unruly kids. I wonder if he’s into S&M. He sure fits the profile.

The law to allow firearms in locked vehicles hasn’t been enacted, because several companies in Oklahoma are opposing the law and got a temporary restraining order against enacting the law.

NRA wasn’t having any of it. If it was up to them, you could hunt deer with an M16, so they called up a couple of friends in the US Capitol. The friends quickly drafted a bill introduced in the US Senate last Friday that would essentially do the same thing as the law in Oklahoma. Naturally several companies are against any such laws, so NRA is calling on nationwide boycotts against them.

Yay for 2nd Amendment!

-TPP

1. No, I’m not talking about NRA members, some of which may actually be quite sane however misguided they may be on a variety of issues. The leadership is, however, pretty much your standard garden variety kook

Hot Coffee here, Hot Coffee everywhere

The controversy over animated, literally, sex scenes found in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reached the US Capitol earlier this week. Bunch of politicians figured a game that features prostitution, graphic violence, car jackings and other violent crime can’t have sexually suggestive contents in it, even if hidden from the retail version and only to be uncovered by modding the game with 3rd party software.

Hillary Clinton opened her presidential campaign with a media blitz suggesting this game alone is cause for all harm ever done to the youth of America. It turns out she was hoodwinkled into doing this by ambulance chaser extraordinaire, Mr. Jack “Thumper” Thompson. Mr. Thompson has made a career of exploiting high profile incidents like the Columbine shootings to extort money from innocent 3rd parties, like the video gaming industry.

Turns out Thumper is not the only lawyer trying to profit from this.

An 85-year-old grandma, Florence Cohen, is suing Rockstar Games, the maker of GTA: San Andreas, and their parent company Take-Two Interactive, because these awful companies put PORN in the game she bought for her grandson.

There’s just one big issue with this lawsuit. Her throroughly traumatized grandson is 14. At the time she bought this nice game for her nice grandson GTA: San Andreas was an M-rated game, which means it’s not suitable for people under 17. She bought it regardless. She is now claiming she was somehow deceived. If I was the lawyer for Rockstar Games, I’d offer to settle for $1.

The sanest opinion regarding all the media generated controversy on the issue was written by Steven Johnson, author of a book “Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter”. He’s mockingly encouraging Hillary Clinton to devote her energy on a much more popular game that “instills aggressive thoughts in the minds of its players, some of whom have gone on to commit real-world acts of violence and sexual assault after playing.”. That game is, of course, high school football.

-TPP