Rich people hate you

How do I know this?  Let me count the ways:

• Although it's not as good as we would like, the unemployment rate is going down and more people are finding jobs.  Know who's not happy about that?  Rich people!  They want the Fed to cut interest rates so that jobs will stop being created.  No jobs being created, no need to increase wages--kind of like the myth of Sissyphus for the rest of us, though.  Keeping pushing that rock up the hill...oops, back down to the bottom....
• Want to guess who cut back on their charitable giving the most throughout the Great Recession?  Rich people!  Know why?  They've still got theirs and they don't give a shit that you lost yours because of their utter avarice and incompetence.  Easy come, easy go--as long as its the poor and the middle class losing.
• Remember how in high school it wasn't enough for the cool kids to be the most popular and and the best looking--they had to rag on the freaks and geeks, too?  Rich people never outgrew that--only now they lie about everything and demean the poor.
• Like sports?  Nice diversion, right?  The NBA is busy trying to turn Steph Curry and LeBron James into robots.  It's not bad enough that we have robots for bosses and robots reporting our news, now they want to turn our sports heroes into robots, too.  Missed shots and fouling out of the game?  That's so 20th century!
• We're working harder and longer than we did a generation ago--and not only is it killing us, it's killing the people we're responsible for.  Fred died on the job today?  Fuck it, have Wilma do his job and her job for the same money!  Rich people get richer, and we, um, die.
• You know the worst kind of rich people?  CEOs--man, these fuckers give Lucifer a run for his money when it comes to spreading evil on the unsuspecting masses.  And the shit they say--they're about as disgusted by us as they are by a dog turd.  Want to know the worse part?  They're not that smart nor that talented at their job--as evidenced by the link, they're just bigger assholes than the rest of us.
• And in the end, it probably doesn't much matter because we're all disposable to them anyway.  Hell, rich people even have a six step process to get the job done.  Nothing like knowing you're little more than a sopping Huggies diaper.

And yet despite the odds akin to a frog hitting a hole-in-one, so many of us keep on fighting the godless bastards for a fairer and more economically robust future.

On New Year's Eve, here's a toast to those who really deserve one:  us.

Peace,
emaycee

A fine year end list

This one snuck in my e-mail today--it's a list from Low Pay is Not OK of the top 8 reasons why 2014 was a good year for workers.

There's still a long, long way to go in the fight for economic equality, but you can't win if you don't fight back and an awful lot of folks puts their and their families' livelihoods on the line this year to make this a better country and bring a little more economic certainty to the lives of America's working class.

And their work put a lot more distance between hopeless and hopeful for low wage workers.

God bless them all.

Peace,
emaycee

Do not pass go

Once again, the republican party is doing all it can to come to the rescue of the Democratic Party....

Thanks to John Boehner who today gave a pass to Rep. Steve Scalise, the republican whip and #3 leader in the House, for speaking before a hate group, European-American Unity and Rights Organization (its founder is former Klansman David Duke), in 2002.  Boehner called it an "error in judgment."

An extra-marital affair might be an error in judgment.  Hiring a staffer who is involved in some sort of corruption might be an error in judgment.  Losing one's temper and dropping an f bomb in a public forum might be an error in judgment.  Having a few too many and howling at the moon in front of a local reporter might be an error in judgment.

But speaking before a hate group?  Fucking please--Scalise is either so craven for votes that he sold his soul to a group of white supremacists, or (as we're being lead to believe) he's so stupid as to not have vetted a David Duke group before speaking to them.

Either way, it's a piss poor start for republicans and it probably only gets worse for them from here on out.

Peace,
emaycee

Always on the outside looking in

A city in southwest France erected cages around its public benches to keep the homeless off of them.

In an ironic twist that gives me hope there may be a God after all, the cages were erected in such a way that no one could get into them to use the benches.

In a side note, the city's government is run by a conservative political party.

Which goes to show that conservatives are not only assholes in America, but assholes worldwide.

Peace,
emaycee

Body count

A couple of weeks ago, my family attended our local yearly Christmas parade.  While not even close to the scale of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, it does attract quite a few of the townfolk here, and as such, the local police officers help out by directing traffic around the event.  As we walked past them, it was hard not to think, in light of the recent incidents involving Michael Brown and Eric Garner, that any one of the men and women we passed could shoot and kill me or my wife or our son because they've been pissed off all day that their Raisin Bran got too soggy at that morning's breakfast, and thanks to local prosecutors gaming the system, walk away scot-free.

Now I know the odds of any one of us being killed by a police officer are roughly akin to being struck by a bolt of lightning, but what does it say about the state of our trust of the police when a white American male such as myself, living in Podunk, Michigan, looks askance every time he walks past one of the men and women in blue?

I'm not really sure who the hundreds of police officers that turned their backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio--a man who is dealing with the reality of police relations--while he spoke last week at a memorial for the two slain officers were trying to convince (maybe the Tea Party fringe approves, but frankly they all think police officers should be paid minimum wage and pay for their own damn life and medical insurance),  but it certainly wasn't their local African-American community.  If anything, it made them trust the police less.

And one can go from police officer to pariah in a heartbeat.

Peace,
emaycee

Governor Gutless caves again

Kudos to our own Governor Rick Snyder for caving once again to the far right fringe here in Michigan and signing a bill which will convene a yearlong test program in three counties to perform drug tests on those who are receiving welfare benefits.  As the link notes, drug testing the poor has proven a colossal failure in Utah, Tennessee, and Florida--but far be it from Governor Gutless to actually do the right thing instead of kiss Tea Party asses as he wastes more and more  precious Michigan taxpayer dollars.

Actually, I'm anxiously awaiting Governor Snyder's signature on a bill that will require his corporate cronies to be drug tested for the corporate welfare they receive from Michigan's fine citizens.  There's actually a chance he'll catch more than he will of the poor--at least his corporate benefactors can afford them.

Peace,
emaycee

It's that time of year

So I'm driving home from work tonight, and I come to a stop at a red light above a busy intersection.  And about ten feet in front of me I see a young man standing in the chilly drizzle, under a streetlight, with a cardboard sign that reads:

"Homeless    Anything Helps    Merry Christmas."

You know what stood out the most to me?  "Merry Christmas."

Now I know a lot of cynical people would think he inserted that line to pull at our heart strings and remind us  that it's that time of year.  But I don't think so--I think it's the quintessential expression of the best part of the often imperfect America spirit, i.e., even though my life's in the shitter doesn't mean I can't earnestly hope yours is doing fine.

And in our often imperfect country, we learn how to take the bad with the good.

Peace,
emaycee

Fear of a mad black protester

And if they're not blaming President Obama for the deaths of two New York City police officers this past weekend, they're blaming people exercising their first amendment right to peacefully assemble,

New York Police Union President Pat Lynch said there was "blood on many hands tonight" including the protestors in his fair city.  (By the way, am I the only one who wonders if this overplaying of their hand by police union leaders makes unions as a whole look bad?)

Not to be outdone, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt said criticism of police tactics from his own constituents led to the deaths of the two police officers.  (Apparently Senator Blunt isn't happy with merely losing 95% of the African-American vote, he's shooting for 100%.)

The only action the protesters in Ferguson and New York City (and those across American who joined them) are guilty of is seeking justice.  The deaths of two men who did a job most of us want no part of and provide a service we all need is tragic--it is not a time to place blame where it doesn't belong.

But it's standard fare--think welfare queen.  Think driving while black.  Think stop and frisk.  Think black on black crime.  It's a whole hell of a lot easier to concoct bullshit about the messengers than it is to debunk their message.

Peace,
emaycee

The only thing we have to fear is their selling of fear

Never missing an opportunity to spew hate and stoke fear, Fox News and Rudy Giulani are doing their best to convince our more ignorant fellow Americans that the shooting deaths of two police officers in New York City this past weekend are the fault of President Obama.  Shocking, I know.

No, the murders are not the fault of the President--they were committed by a young man with a history of mental health problems.

But anybody want to guess the state of affairs in America if either of two tone deaf bozos named John McCain or Mitt Romney had been President when the grand jury decisions on Michael Brown and Eric Garner were handed down?  Or having Sarah Palin wax poetic on the state of race affairs in America?

The jackasses ought to get down on their hands and knees and thank God that we have Obama for our President--his steady hand and empathetic nature have been the only things keeping us from a maelstrom of anarchy from a people thirsting for justice.

Peace,
emaycee

1000

It's been a busy few weeks in the news--protests in light of grand jury decisions regarding the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the CIA torture report, President Obama's change in policy toward Cuba, the Cromnibus bill.  Lost in the shuffle is a new report from the Pew Research Center which shows that the wealth gap between rich and poor and rich and the middle class is at record levels.

Now, the top .1 percent of Americans own 22 percent of all the wealth in America or more than the bottom 90% of us.  A little more than 300,000 people own more than a little more than 300,000,000 of the rest of us.  It's hard to see how that can be sustainable in what they tell us is the land of hope and dreams.

Not to take anything away from the importance of the stories of the last few weeks, but it's doubtful how much they'll matter in a country where more and more Americans either live in economic misery or have to take up arms just to survive.

Peace,
emaycee

Nothing to see here

I haven't written anything about the recent report released on torture done in our names by the American government, but this poll sure opened my eyes:  by a 59-31 margin--that's right, almost 60% of us--Americans believe the use of torture is justified to obtain information from suspected terrorists.

And it's a slippery slope that leads from beacon of freedom to despotic nation.

I don't know exactly how one changes the thought processes of Americans on a policy that not only stains our national image but shows a decided lack of empathy for human suffering, but I have to wonder how most Americans would feel if rectal feeding or waterboarding were used by suspected terrorists on our men and women in uniform.

I fear I may not like our response to that one, either.

Peace,
emaycee

Broken

You want to see how broken the republican party is these days?  Just look at their response to President Obama's actions concerning our change in policy toward Cuba.

The Cuban Embargo has been an unmitigated failure that has accomplished absolutely nothing over the last fifty years--foreign policy isn't my forte, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more nonsensical continuation of the status quo in our foreign relations.  So when President Obama decided that perhaps a change was in order, republicans immediately become apoplectic and flout failure as a desired goal of American foreign policy.  Or you can be even dumber like Marco Rubio and criticize the Pope for basically doing his job--which is more or less to help people love one another.

This change in our diplomatic relations with Cuba can have two outcomes--either everything stays the same in Cuba (no loss) or things get better for their citizens (big win).  How much of a nitwit do you have to be to not support that?

Another feather in the cap for President Obama for a much needed and welcome change for a bad policy.

Peace,
emaycee

The show must go on

When did we become a nation of such chickenshits?  And what a surprise it is that corporate America is leading the way.

I know I'm probably a minority of one, but what should have been done concerning the 9/11 type threats over the Sony movie The Interview is that we should have said, "Screw you," put the movie in the theaters, and gone about our lives.

Let's hope no one threatens our public restrooms, lest many American be running around with dirty drawers.

Peace,
emaycee

'Tis the season

Oh, the places you won't go if you're poor or homeless in America:

• Just for shits and giggles (hard to see any other reason for it) schools across America are denying children--children--lunches because their parents are too far in debt on their lunch tabs (in some cases as little as $20).  Hungry, Hungry Hippos takes on real life meaning.
• Fort Lauderdale, FL (their city motto:  "We're Fucking Heartless"), home of a law which prohibits the feeding of the homeless, last month arrested a ninety year old man for feeding the homeless.  You cannot make this shit up.
• Just to prove they really are fucking heartless, Fort Lauderdale officials last month also arrested a homeless man for speaking out against their policies during a ceremony to honor, of all things, National Homeless Week.  Proving mightily once again the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.
• Even though it's been an abysmal failure in Tennessee, Utah, and Florida both in terms of its cost and its ability to find much of any poor people using drugs, numbnuts Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker wants to drug test everyone in his state who collects unemployment or receives food stamps...just so Wisconsin can join the list the failures, too, and  he can appeal to the haters among the republican party faithful in his quest to not be America's next President.  Not bad enough that Wisconsin's poor have to put up with the worst fucking haircut in American politics, they also have to pee in a cup to assuage his Presidential ambitions.
• The city of Manteca, CA recently passed an ordinance (joining a long list of other American cities trying to make being homeless a crime) making it illegal for the homeless to sleep outside.  Hello--homeless=no place to live=no place to sleep other than outside.  The city's police chief noted that if the homeless wanted to leave, it would be their choice.  No it isn't--sleeping isn't a choice, it's a necessity.

The lone bright spot I've been able to find over the past few weeks is that the city of Dallas decided to stop trying to prohibit those feeding the homeless in public and agreed to pay $250,000 in settlement to those charities.

In the movie It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Potter at one point calls helping the least among us "sentimental hogwash."  At the time, his character's lack of empathy was considered villainous.

Now it's public policy.

Peace,

emaycee

The frights of their eyes

Sen. Pat Toomey, the junior Senator from Pennsylvania, went on the air after Elizabeth Warren's super, fantastic, badass, very good week crucifying Wall Street to lament Warren's "nonsense" and called it merely an attempt to invigorate the "professional haters of business" on the Democratic Party's left wing.

Sure worked on an old professional hater of business like myself--and pretty much every other Democrat as well.  She damn near derailed a very bad spending bill that should have been a slam dunk by doing the utterly  unthinkable to a turd like Toomey--standing up for all Americans, not merely the wealthiest among us.

Methinks Toomey doth protest too much--my guess is it's an opening salvo in what will eventually be a losing battle for the Senator and his business benefactors against the likes of Senator Warren.  The American people are getting more and more tired of an economy geared toward Wall Street and not Main Street.  Eventually the working class heroes of this country are going to smell blood in the water.

And thus Senator Toomey's thoughts on Senator Warren's week could be called the speed of the sound of being scared shitless.

Peace,
emaycee

Perry the platypus

Rick Perry, this week:  "Running for the presidency's not an IQ test."

And what a good thing for Mr. Perry that is--his already infintesimal chances for being our next President would be completely fucking non-existent.

And to think we get to enjoy such pearls of wisdom from republican pretenders for the next 23 months....

Peace,
emaycee

The opiate of the (American) masses

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal shows that going to the movies is more and more beyond the means of America's middle class.

You have to wonder just how long our economic system will hold when something as simple as going to the movies becomes economically unattainable for the vast majority of Americans.

In other words, shit meet fan.  Fan meet shit.

Peace,
emaycee

The choice is Warren-ted

The House passed another bad spending bill tonight, full of giveaways to Wall Street and Corporate America and the usual fuck-all for the rest of us.  Unsurprisingly, the White House supported the bill (hell of a week for Jeckyll and Hyde Obama--torture bad, greed good); Elizabeth Warren argued vehemently against it.

All of which got me to thinking...that in all likelihood, President Hillary would have supported the bill, too--and is that really what I want from now until 2024?  Will the middle class last that long?

I've pretty much been a Hillary supporter of the, "oh well, at least our economic travails won't get any worse under her leadership"  but maybe it's time to look at who will make our economic travails better.

Move.On started an online campaign this week to draft Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic nomination in 2016:

In lieu of replacing one Wall Street-centric Democrat with another, it might be the most important online campaign of our time for those of us fighting the losing battle of trying to stay afloat economically.

Peace,
emaycee

Any questions?

The only thing any voter needs to know before the elections in 2016:

Peace,
emaycee

Don't dream it's over...

R.I.P....the American Dream?

Economist Gregory Clark of UC-Davis says he's done the research and Americans have no more chance of social mobility than did those folks who lived in ye olde Medieval England--and that our rate of social mobility has worsened over the past 100 years.

Clark also notes that where you end up financially has mostly to do with where your lineage is at financially, i.e., if you weren't born rich you aren't going to be rich.

He also says that his students have a tough time accepting this--which could go a long way toward explaining why we don't see a lot more progressive politicians in office.

Because the first step toward changing problem behavior is admitting there's a problem in the first place.

Peace,
emaycee

How?

I know there are a lot of good and decent police men and women across the country, but after watching the events of the last few weeks, the decisions not to prosecute the killers of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the lame ass defenses of murderers by local police unions and spokesmen, how the hell does anybody trust any police officer anywhere?

How?

Peace,
emaycee

Letting lying dogs sleep

As you may or may not have heard, the republican led Michigan legislature is considering a plan to change the way our electoral votes are allotted--it's a somewhat convoluted plan, but suffice it to say that the idea is to allow the republican Presidential candidate to get at least a few electoral votes in Michigan even though he or she has as much chance of winning the states electoral votes based on the way the U.S. Constitution intended it to be as I do of farting $100 bills.  (Aside:  Funny how that whole disregarding the U.S. Consitution seems to get...um, disregarded when it comes to republican wants, isn't it?)

I, though, am one of the few Liberals who wholeheartedly endorse this plan--it's one thing (though it still isn't right) when you disenfranchise 10% of the voters in some podunk state in the South, and completely another when you disenfranchise 60% of the voters across the entire United States (figuring that approximately 40% of voters are Democrats or lean Democratic and 20% are more or less independent).

Pissing off that many Americans would be a final breath for a party already in its death throes.

Wouldn't bother attending the funeral, either.

Peace,
emaycee

Ram tough

In a show of solidarity with the folks in Ferguson, MO, five St. Louis Rams did this yesterday:

Which caused the St. Louis Police Officers Association to go apoplectic and demand the players be disciplined (the NFL said no, thanks) and that the Rams and the NFL issue an apology, because, you know, it wasn't enough that a piss poor and rigged grand jury proceeding let murderer Darren Wilson go free.

Here's hoping that next week the Rams' players give the St. Louis Police Officers Association a one finger salute.

Peace,
emaycee