It seems unlikely that Palin is aware that Darrow was a big wig at the American Civil Liberties Union given her penchant for scoffing at...civil liberties. And one wonders whether Palin knows that, in the Scopes trial, Darrow defended John Scopes, who violated Tennessee law by teaching evolution. But there you have it.
In his recent book, After Shock, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich argues that the economic downward mobility of American workers, has "to do with power...income and wealth in fewer hands." Apparently, many working class Americans want to keep it that way. A recent SEIU poll reveals that, 38 percent of American voters are opposed to rescinding Bush's tax cuts for the 2 percent who earn $250,000 or more annually. 2 or 3 percent of taxpayers probably earn close enough to $250,000, to think they might be affected someday. This leaves about 33 percent voting against their self-interest -- higher taxes on the wealthiest would reduce the national debt, facilitate spending on levies, bridges, schools, healthc are, and create jobs. Similarly, an AP-GfK poll found that in the upcoming election, 58 percent of white working class Americans favor Republicans who opposed rescinding the Bush tax cut, and fought every Democratic bill benefiting low income earners including extending unemployment benefits.And they didn't get to the point where they drastically underestimated that disparity by accident:
On the other hand, a 2005 study by Dan Ariely of Duke and Michael Norton of Harvard, reveals that when presented with unlabeled pie charts representing wealth distribution in the U.S where the richest 20 percent control about 84 percent of wealth and Sweden where the top 20 percent control 36 percent, 92 percent of respondents -- who reflected U.S. ideological, economic, and gender demographics -- stated they would rather live in a country with Sweden's wealth distribution.
"Why don't more Americans -- especially those with low incomes advocate for greater redistribution of wealth?" the authors ask. Their answer: Americans drastically underestimate the disparity between the very rich and the rest of the population, are overly optimistic about social mobility, and there exists a disconnect between their attitudes toward inequality, their self-interest and public policy preferences.
Instead, as Reich points out "rich and powerful think tanks, books, media, ads" were designed to convince Americans that free markets "know best" and operate in the interest of working people. They also convinced them that their enemies are not the heads of large corporations and the Republicans who represent them, but rather the Ivy League quiche eating, Eastern elite -- people like Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, outspoken supporters of policies beneficial to working class Americans. This has fed into a "Real Men Vote Republican" reaction among many white male blue collar workers.Lest you conclude we are immune to such mythology here in Canada, remember that organizations like the Fraser Institute have the unambiguous goal of making us just as ignorant about where our best interests truly lie. If they weren't having great success at that project would we have the government we have now?
Tim Profitt, the Rand Paul supporter behind the white sneaker that notoriously stomped on a MoveOn activist's head in Kentucky, sought to play down the importance of the incident Tuesday, and went so far as to ask the victim for an apology.
"I don't think it's that big of a deal," Profitt told WKYT. "I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you."
[T]he system they have in the UK where you can simply sweep opposition objections aside is actually the right way to do bipartisanship. Call it bipartisanship by alternation. When Labour wins the election, Labour has the chance to implement a bold agenda creating and expanding programs in a way that they think will make Britain a better place to live. Then when the Tories come in, they’re able to be brutal in their efforts to pare back or eliminate things that they think aren’t working. Over the long term, you get a trajectory where programs survive if and only if they’re so widely regarded as successful that no mainstream party would dare abolish them.Yes, in the parliamentary system used by the Brits and of course us, given a majority, a stable coalition or a toothless opposition afraid to oppose, the government can ram through its ideas and bipartisanship is purely a matter of the opposition being able to do the same thing four years later if the party in power over-reaches and government changes hands.
Migrants entering Canada with the help of human smugglers would be denied permanent residency and face mandatory jail time and reduced health coverage under a proposed law to combat human smuggling.Mean spirited, racially charged petty policy sadism, from this government? Shocking.
Of course elite privatization proponents keep calling for more studies.; the dozen or so that have already been done that weren't blatantly stacked with Tory insiders and/or insurance company executives like the Mazankowski or Kirby reports keep coming to the same conclusions. That any more erosion of the wholly public model would be more expensive and less equitable. That a lot of the most popular private schemes that have been foisted on the system like P3s or private clinics contracted to perform public procedures have turned into expensive boondoggles. That in fact, the best long term cost savings plans would be to expand rather than retract public healthcare, for example through pharmacare and major expansions of long term care.
– 8 hours ago
FARATA'A, Palestinian Territories — Thick black smoke billows from the olive grove under the gaze of Israeli soldiers as Palestinian farmers use branches to try to beat out the fires lit by Jewish settlers.
It's olive harvest time in the occupied West Bank.
The firebombers swooped down from Havat Gilad, a wildcat Jewish settlement unauthorised even by the Israeli government.
Encircled by barbed wire, the makeshift dwellings glower down on the surrounding Palestinian olive plantations from a hilltop in the northern West Bank.
"We were gathering the olives when the settlers arrived. One of them started a fire," says olive grower Shaher Tawil.
He points to a bearded man wearing a T-shirt and a Jewish kippa or skullcap, now safely behind an Israeli military barrier.
"When we saw the flames, we called the fire service but the soldiers wouldn't let them come any closer to prevent clashes with the settlers," the old man says.
The young Israeli conscripts, visibly embarrassed and restricted by their uniforms in the oppressive midday heat, finally let the fire-truck through after about an hour, by which time the flames have already been well-fanned by the wind.
At last the fires are put out, as again the soldiers look on.
Tawil says that last week settlers from Havat Gilad harvested the fruit of 800 trees belonging to his family.
"Every year they steal our olives and burn our trees," he says.
The Havat Gilad settlers are among the most hardline in the West Bank and believe they have a God-given right to land they know by its Biblical name of Samaria.
For them, the villagers in whose midst they have set up home are not "Palestinians" with a right to a state alongside Israel but "Arabs" who are interlopers on Biblical Jewish land.
The settlers are wont to quote a saying by one of their spiritual and ideological gurus, the late rabbi Mordechai Elyahu.
"This land is the birthright of the people of Israel. If a gentile plants a tree on my land, the tree and its fruit are mine."
My name is Cliff Hesby, I'm a writer with a lefty political disposition who's been active in politics and the trade union movement. I've been blogging for the last five years at www.rustyidols.blogspot.com.
I grew up in small town Alberta and like many visiting this site I have experienced bullying. I know the pain and fear and shame and sheer helpless rage.
When I was ten we were in a car crash that broke my mom's back, just after she had been offered a job in Vancouver in fact. Her new employer promised to wait for her and she stayed behind in Alberta for a year recovering while my brother and I moved in with our aunt and uncle in North Vancouver and started school...(Continued...)
In fact, U.S. State Department insiders say that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice not only didn’t campaign for Canada’s election but instructed American diplomats to not get involved in the weeks leading up to the heated contest. With no public American support, Canada lost its bid to serve. That gives the EU more than 25% control of the body and a strong voting block to ensure EU priorities become global priorities.And yes, I know the source is dubious, and the paranoid anti-Euro pro Harper stridency is obnoxious, but assuming that 'insiders say' lead has any truth to it at all, it would suggest a certain coolness from the Obama White House, towards the Harper government.
By most accounts, Stephen Harper and his government were humiliated Tuesday at the United Nations, losing a coveted Security Council seat to Portugal. The defeat is still the buzz of official Ottawa and political spin doctors have been working overtime.
Cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister's own communications director, Dimitri Soudas, are blaming Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff for torpedoing the deal. This, after he publicly declared Canada did not deserve the seat because of the Harper government's foreign policy.
The Liberals, meanwhile, are blaming Mr. Harper and his international policies for the loss. Mr. Ignatieff has accused the Conservatives of ignoring the United Nations.
Ottawa's eviction from a Mideast military base has exposed a rift within the Harper cabinet over how far Canada should go to satisfy its Arab hosts: an internal debate in which Stephen Harper cut Defence Minister Peter MacKay out of negotiations.
Canada is set to vacate Camp Mirage, a once-secret military installation, by Nov. 5 after failing to reach an agreement with the United Arab Emirates over what would amount to compensation for nine years of accommodation near Dubai.
The UAE has been seeking additional lucrative landing rights for two state-backed air carriers at Canadian airports, and Mr. MacKay was one of several ministers, including Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and International Trade Minister Peter Van Loan, who had favoured doing more to help the Arab ally, a senior Conservative MP said.
The Prime Minister ultimately cut these ministers out of negotiations, the official said, favouring the forceful arguments against big concessions advanced earlier this year by former transport minister John Baird.
The loss of the base has left some cabinet members frustrated and angry at how Mr. Harper handled it.
"[It's] all gone because of a fit of pique and a hard [core] position that is truculent and unreasonable against Canada's short- and long-term interests," the MP said.
'Out of touch, arrogant and dictatorial' are by now well established descriptions of this, the most secretive and PMO dictated government in Canadian history. We knew that Harper's machivellian scheming always has a tendancy to slam up against his own bitter hatred of dissent and opposition, his bully boy need to 'stick it' it to anybody who challenges him. PARIS - Hundreds of thousands of French workers, students and functionaries walked out on strike Tuesday and paraded through the streets in what labor unions described as the beginning of a long-term showdown with President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Air and rail service throughout the country was disrupted by the protests - the fourth in a month.
They were aimed specifically at reversing a new law requiring people to work until age 62 rather than 60 before receiving their retirement pensions. But they also were a platform for broader-based political resentments that have been building among France's salary-earners, many of whom view Sarkozy's government as callous and too close to big business.
In the souring atmosphere, union leaders declared many of the strikes that on Tuesday nearly crippled the country would continue indefinitely or recur on an irregular schedule. The result could be gasoline shortages, curtailed rail and air travel, chaos at schools and perhaps even power cuts in France's main cities, they warned.
"We are going to continue," vowed Bernard Thibault, secretary general of the General Labor Federation. "The mobilization is not going to stop just because the senators have voted."
Flashback:BUDAPEST — The managing director of the company whose reservoir unleashed a lethal torrent of red sludge on three villages last week has been arrested, the Hungarian prime minister announced before Parliament on Monday.
He will be charged with criminal negligence leading to a public catastrophe, and if convicted could face a sentence of up to 10 years, according to a government spokeswoman.
Minister Shalom Simhon (Labor) also skipped the meeting, as he was abroad on a business trip. Herzog told Haaretz late Saturday that the resounding support for such an amendment showed that "fascism was devouring the margins of society."
"We are on a most dangerous slippery slope," he warned.
Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni condemned on Sunday the cabinet's approval of a controversial proposal requiring non-Jews seeking citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state....
"What we have seen today is politics at its worst. The sensitive issue of Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state has become subject to political horse-trading.
Writing in today's Haaretz, liberal commentator Gideon Levy said: "Remember this day. It's the day Israel changes its character ... From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country."Even some members of the hard line Likud Party opposed the law as dangerous and counter-productive.
Virginia Thomas wants to return to our constitutional roots, which once denied her and her husband citizenship or the right to vote.
RICHMOND, Va. — As one of the keynote speakers here Friday at a state convention billed as the largest Tea Party event ever, Virginia Thomas gave the throng of more than 2,000 activists a full-throated call to arms for conservative principles.
For three decades, Mrs. Thomas has been a familiar figure among conservative activists in Washington — since before she met her husband of 23 years, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. But this year she has emerged in her most politically prominent role yet: Mrs. Thomas is the founder and head of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, dedicated to opposing what she characterizes as the leftist “tyranny” of President Obama and Democrats in Congress and to “protecting the core founding principles” of the nation.
Growth based on risky banking has a tendency to prove illusory.
Prostitution, while a permanent, ineradicable and arguably even necessary accessory to communal life, is an ignoble line of work and inherently unworthy of social respect. Legalization won’t change that. -Barbara KayBarbara Kay insists that the dirty little whores must continue to be treated like dirty little whores by the law, even if prostitution is 'a permanent, ineradicable and arguably even necessary accessory to communal life' and even if the laws struck down have been found to seriously endanger the health, safety and lives of the people engaging in this 'permanent, ineradicable and arguably even necessary accessory to communal life'
Speaking of consequences, I’m taking the opportunity to call prostitution a dehumanizing and morally degraded behaviour now, because I think my right to do so won’t long continue. Since activists are already using the vocabulary of other “rights” and “equality” battles, I predict we’ll soon have to watch our judgmental language on this front. Once prostitution has been legally/morally airbrushed by the SCC, it will be deemed “offensive,” “excluding” and “intolerant” to hurt the feelings of prostitutes. Don’t be surprised if the next time you call a whore a whore, you’re hauled up before a Human Rights Commission for prostitutophobia.
In the comment section of his strip, when one reader complained that the Boston Globe has run a different cartoon, Wiley responded saying;
"Yours along with many other papers across the country were afraid to run this cartoon. In doing so, it is rife with irony, as it is obviously satirizing the paralyzing fear in media of anything regarding Islam. Cowards indeed.
For those of you whose paper ran the alternate edition, I strongly suggest you contact the editor and voice your opinion on the matter. They are the ones who need to hear it, as they are the ones who made the decision."
Since I began these columns, now in their 20th year, I've tended to think of each as the last, which is now the case. I'm glad to end with the reasons for the Ford phenomenon, since I've always felt that saying what one thinks is cheap and easy. It's more useful to describe why one thinks it and, even better, how one thinks.
It's been a pleasure to (try to) share that experience with you.
Most of this article was originally published in the Globe and Mail.
But Defence Minister Peter MacKay has cancelled the imam’s planned appearance after learning of it Friday. His office issued a statement saying the Canadian Islamic Congress has a record of fomenting hatred and has no place at an event honouring Muslim contributions to this country.So extending the logic of the government's decision here, this means the Conservative Party remains responsible and culpable for everything ever said by any leader of the Conservative Party or its precursors the Reform Party and the Alliance Party?
Mr. Delic has previously been cited for efforts to help Muslims integrate into Canadian society. He was one of 13 Canadians included in a 2009 book, The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World, penned by Islamic studies scholars at Georgetown University. One of the book’s editors called Mr. Delic “a scholar who writes about how Muslims can integrate into Canadian society.”
Mr. MacKay’s office cited incendiary comments that were made in 2004 by a then-president of the Canadian Islamic Congress as the reason for its decision.
I’m not clear on where Reynolds gets his per capita spending numbers from, but there is no evidence of government spending growth in excess of income (GDP) growth per person over the past 30 years or so
If we look at the period from Reynolds base year of 1982 to 2009, real per capita GDP grew by 52%. So if Reynolds numbers are correct, government spending growth lagged growth in GDP per capita.
Moreover, Statistics Canada data show that, between 1982 and 2009, total current spending by all levels of government in Canada fell from 47.7% to 42.1% of nominal GDP. (Calculated from data in Tables 1 and Table 3 of the Historical Statistical Supplement to the Canadian Economic Observer.)
Government spending has been falling rather than rising relative to income over the period chosen by Reynolds, and this would show up in even more dramatic form if we took the early 1990s (when government spending topped 50% of GDP) as the base.
Being a prostitute is a shameful, indecent activity, and any sex worker who demands respect as a matter of course is fooling herself. She is not respectable. Politically correct people will say she is, but she isn’t. The danger will continue, the pimps will still control the desperate girls and society as a whole will think less of itself. And all because nobody really takes a good look at the word “harm” and asks themselves what a healthy society looks like, and what kind of newly designated “normal” behaviours, stamped kosher by the courts, bring harm to that healthy body.So Babs isn't planning on getting a happy ending massage any time soon, we get it. Can I say that I'm very, very glad that its the Charter of Rights and Freedoms not Barbara Kay's idea of 'what a healthy society looks like' that is the law of the land?
