I got your national emergency right here...

Pucker up, mother fuckers!

In light of Donald Trump's declaring a national emergency to get his worthless wall built with our tax dollars (and not Mexico's, I might add), I think every single Democratic candidate for President should begin announcing and listing on their web sites every issue for which they plan to declare a national emergency after assuming the Presidency in January of 2021.

Green New Deal?  Check.

Gun control?  Check.

Increase in the minimum wage?  Check.

Between catastrophic climate change, the untold deaths from gun violence, and the alarmingly high poverty rate in America, a much better case could be made for a national emergency on these issues than the fact that our neighbors from countries south of our border are crossing said border in search of a better life.

We have to make republicans pay for their stupidity.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

I'm glad it's your birthday

Today marks Social Security's 81st birthday--the Social Security Act (the brainchild of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to sit in the U.S. Cabinet--and how apropos that is in the year we'll elect our first woman President...) was signed into law on this day in 1935 by the Father of the modern Democratic Party, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,  It has become the most successful program in the history of the United States and is the biggest anti-poverty measure in America.

In honor of its allowing working class folks like me to have a few years of comfort after our bodies, minds, and spirits have been exhausted by the cretins of Corporate America (as well as all the good it's done for the disabled and children), I've "come (to) pipe a tune to dance to, lad..."--the second greatest birthday song ever written ("Happy Birthday to You" might be dull and common, but it's served birthday parties quite well since 1893, thank you very much).

Enjoy (and Happy Birthday, Social Security!):

Peace,
emaycee

Money, it's a gas

About the only thing I miss from subscribing to The Detroit Free Press are the columns they used to run regularly featuring Leonard Pitts.  For those not familiar with Pitts, he's an exceptionally good op-ed writer for The Miami Herald who has a genuinely unique take on the state of America and isn't afraid to share it, consequences be damned.

As is Pitts' wont, he had a slightly different take than many on the Flint water crisis this past week.  Pitts said for all the hoopla over it being just another in a long line of racism run amok in America, what the poisoning of Flint's children is truly about is poverty.  Pitts points to the city of Morgantown, West Virginia where whites outnumber blacks and those living beneath the poverty line is near 40%--and says he can easily imagine a similar situation as Flint happening there, but not so much in the Hamptons or Orange County, or any number of wealthy communities across America.

And Pitts is exactly right.

And again I ask:  what does it say about a nation when the needs of the privileged few take precedence over the many?  Isn't that in many ways what the Pilgrims first came to America to escape?  And so many immigrants after them?

Remember this?  "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...."

Somehow when the Founding Fathers wrote those words I don't think they envisioned a nation where children would be poisoned for a lack of money.

They wanted us to be better than that.

And so should we.

Peace,
emaycee

Snyderly whiplash

Is there a lamer Governor in America than Michigan's own Rich Snyder?  I mean Scott Walker  and Paul LePage are outwardly bigger assholes, and Rick Scott and Pat McCrory are equally as incompetent, but for sheer buffoonery, it's impossible to beat Snyder.

For those who may have missed it (and lucky for you if you did), Snyder has courageously volunteered to drink Flint water for the next month.  Leaving aside that I'd be willing to bet all I own and then some that Snyder (or more likely, his minions) pour it down his gold plated sink before it gets anywhere near his lips, what the Snyder administration didn't so courageously tell you is that Snyder has yet to do shit to fix the pipes in Flint--zip, zero, nada, nothing.

Let's see...drink some water or actually fix the problem?  Which do you suppose would do the most to help Michiganders?  And which is nothing more than a half-assed spectacle?

Snyder proves once again that republicans are quite adept at being little more than circus clowns--they can stage a show, but unfortunately it's not funny in the fucking slightest.

Get busy livin'

There's an old story wherein F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly told Ernest Hemingway, "The rich are different than you and me."  To which Hemingway purportedly quipped, "Yes, they have more money."

Alas, the story is most likely not true, but the gist of it remains truer than ever.  A recent study shows that men in the top 1% in income outlive the the poorest men by fifteen years.  For women, it's ten years.

While it will be interesting to see if Obamacare will eventually shrink that difference, I have to admit to being quite shocked the difference was so pronounced.  And to being not just a little angry--there is something seriously wrong with a nation that would allow so many people to die early simply for a lack of funds.

And makes Bernie Sanders call for Medicare for all that much more significant and all the more important to put in this summer's Democratic platform.

Peace,
emaycee

About damn time

Files this under better late than never....

Turns out that thirty-plus years of conservative dogma (see also the Reagan Devolution) for our economy hasn't had such a great outcome--feeding the rich while starving the poor has only led to the United States falling farther and farther behind other industrialized countries in infant mortality rates, people incarcerated, life expectancy for women, children in poverty, and teenage pregnancies.  Even worse, the social safety net that republicans spend so much time bitching about isn't all that safe--it's got gaping holes in it that far too many Americans in need are falling through.

And while we're beating a very dead horse, for all the right's claims to concern for the unborn and flogging of European socialism, it sure is funny how Europe absolutely cleans our clocks on infant mortality rates.  Who'd have guessed that, unlike our republican party and its minions, those socialists actually give a shit about children?

And therein lies the legacy of the modern republican party:  all talk and plenty of failed action for ordinary Americans.

Peace,
emaycee

The kids aren't alright

For all the news you may have read and seen this week, you sure as hell didn't see any of this:

• The four nations with the highest child poverty rates?  Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and the good old U.S. of A.
• One-half of the kids in American public schools are eligible for lunch assistance.
• One-half of African-American children under the age of six in America live in poverty.
• Out of every 100 American children, twenty are currently on food stamps.
• On any given night, 138,000 children in America are homeless.

And these numbers come from the richest nation in the history of human civilization.

But you know, if only those four and five-year-olds would pull themselves up by their bootstraps I'm sure they could find a couple of dented soup cans in some dumpster and a bigger cardboard box to spend the night inside.

Peace,
emaycee

Crapraesque

Not content with just taking away Social Security benefits from the disabled, republicans are now setting their sights on gutting the Children's Health Insurance Program because heaven forbid poor children's health  should be a collective concern.

Ever get the feeling that when republicans watch It's a Wonderful Life they root for Mr. Potter?

Peace,
emaycee

The other side of the mountain

I've spent most (though not all) of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck.  While my immediate family has been very fortunate in not having had catastrophic illnesses or injuries, many is the night I've laid awake in bed worrying about a car going on the fritz, the refrigerator humming its last hum, or a pipe bursting from the frigid cold (this week's worry!) and knowing there was no money to pay for any one of them.

Never, though, have I worried about having enough money to buy groceries.  We always had enough money for food.  Which is why, after reading this post on fifth Fridays (if you pay rent weekly, a fifth week in a month is hellish), you realize how propitious something many of us take for granted really is.

Have you ever frozen the leftover Christmas ham just so you could have meat for the next month?  Ever dumpster dived for dented cans of vegetables?  Wondered what it was like to wish you had enough money to buy whatever you felt like eating?  The young lady who wrote the post has.

And you can certainly understand her wondering just where in the hell in America this good life that we have all been promised if we worked hard enough is located these days.

Peace,
emaycee

Tennessee dud

Congratulation to the state of Tennessee and its republican leadership, which has joined Florida and its republican leadership (positive rate 2%) and Utah and its republican leadership (.2%) in pissing away taxpayer dollars to drug test welfare receipients and only finding a whopping .2 percent who tested positive for illegal drugs.

Apparently republicans have no problem with our tax dollars being flushed down the toilet as long as it's being done to appease the Tea Party.

Peace,
emaycee

Abandon all hope

Another year, another American city mistreating the homeless....

San Jose, home to 34 billionaires and often referred to as the capital of Silicon Valley, recently evicted thousands of homeless residents from an enclave called the "Jungle" where homeless folks had set up camp and some facsimile of a home, ostensibly because they were polluting a local creek.

Too bad those poor folks weren't the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in soutwestern Michigan--seems the power plant leaked 2000 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan over the last couple of months in 2014, polluting water used for drinking, fishing, and swimming.

What do you suppose the odds are that the state of Michigan will evict the power plant and force it to leave the state?

Peace,
emaycee

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

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

'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

Every classroom

A recent report from the National Center for the Family and Homelessness shows that 2.5 million American children are homeless, or roughly one in thirty of our kids.

For those of you who have kids, this means that virtually every classroom in your kids school has one homeless child in it.

For those of you who don't have kids, the next time you're walking or driving past any school, take a look at the windows.  Virtually every single window has a classroom with at least one homeless child in it.

In America, the richest nation in the history of civilization.

In America.

Peace,
emaycee

Another reason to hate Ronald Reagan

Not that I needed another one.

Seems that one of the crucial steps in the now thirty years war lead by wealthy elites and Corporate America on the working class that lead us to the point we're at now wherein we're seriously fucked financially, was making Americans hate their government.  As in, if they hate it they won't mind it not being funded, even though that funding generally helped the poor and the middle class.  And guess who benefitted?  Rich folks! As in, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

Leading the charge for this was all around nitwit and second rate Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan, and his government isn't the solution, it's the problem bullshit.  The Reagan Devolution has decimated the middle class and led to more Americans (especially children) living in poverty than when that pesky old government actually funded programs that helped actual Americans.

As one who lived though Reagan/s election, I can't begin to tell you how much I wish I had a time machine and could go back in time to show Americans what thirty years of Reagan's scorched earth economic policy has wrought upon the working class.  And for all his faults, Jimmy Carter could have changed all of that.

With two weeks to go until this years mid-term elections (November 4th!), anyone believing their local and state elections are a choice between tweedledee and tweedledum is sorely mistaken.  Elections, to quote Joe Biden, are a big fucking deal.

And it can be the difference between a strong middle class and a country that cares about its poor, and the crumbling middle class and the war on the poor that the Reagan Devolution gave us.

Peace,
emaycee

Broken...broken...broken...broken...record

And another ordinance is passed to criminalize homelessness...this time, the city of Fort Lauderdale (again!) has made sleeping in public a crime punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.  Pretty fucking certain that if the folks sleeping in public had $500, they wouldn't be sleeping in public, but you know, unlike the people who run the Fort L:auderdale City Commission, I actually have a brain (and a heart, too).

I fully understand that the conflicts in Iraq and Syria are a lot more sexy than homelessness, but outside of a few liberal blogs, no one much seems to care about the criminalization of the poor.  Imprisoning the poor or pushing them outside the city limits is neither going to solve the problem nor help anyone to lift themselves up. Woe unto any nation that considers itself an exemplar of greatness but does not help the least of its citizens.

Have to wonder, though, come next spring break how many of those students partying in Fort Lauderdale who pass out in public are going to get sixty days in the pokey.

Peace,
emaycee

Won us all what we got now

"Union song. Union battled. All added up.  Won us all what we got now."--Woody Guthrie, "I Guess I Planted"

From the Wikipedia article on Labor Day:

Labor Day in the United States is a holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. It is a celebration of the American labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of their country.

Paid holidays.  Paid vacations.  Pensions.  Healthcare.  Dental care.  Life insurance.  Safety protections.  The fucking entire middle class.  Won us all what we got now, indeed--though, thanks to income inequality (or as I prefer, greedy rich assholes), it's about $18,000 per year short of what it could be for the middle class.


Over the past week we've seen that the fight for a decent standard of living for all workers marches forward--President Obama used his weekend address to again beat the drums for an increase in the minimum wage.  In a related note, a study showed that 40%--40%, for fuck's sake--of restaurant workers live in near poverty (think about that the next time you're scarfing down an Encharito).  Fed-Ex workers challenged and won against Fed-Ex's war on workers--it's claim that it wasn't responsible for wage-theft because it's drivers were independent (much like the fast food industry passing the buck to franchise owners for worker abuses) was soundly rejected by the courts.

Two things I hate about Labor Day:  (1) That somehow it's a celebration of all workers--no, it's not.  It doesn't celebrate scabs and the leeches who want the the gains of unions but don't want to pay the dues.  It doesn't celebrate CEOs and anti-union organizations.  It's for those workers who make our lives better economically and socially, not the shitfarts.  (2)  The fact that I can channel surf the hundred some odd channels we have and only Al Jazeera--and it's not even a fucking American company!--has anything on that celebrates labor unions, which is why the vast majority of their fat ass viewers have the day off.  It's not as if there aren't quite a few good union flicks for the movie channels, and I thought--even if it is half-assed--that MSNBC was supposed to be the anti-Fox.

Two things I love about Labor Day:  (1)  That every liberal blog has at the very least one piece celebrating the day...which is also why I spend a lot more time reading liberal blogs than I do watching TV. (2)  It's a time to remember some of the great songs and artists celebrating unions--ain't no way any self-respecting artist is going to sing a song singing the praises of CEOs or big business.  Unions, my friends, are cool.
One of my favorites of the past few years, The Nightwatchman's (aka Tom Morello) "Union Town"--enjoy!

Happy Labor Day!
emaycee

Faux good news

The S & P 500 set a new milestone this week, breaking 2000 for the first time in its history.

For the vast majority of working class Americans, this means nothing.

Beginning with the stock market explosion during the Clinton years, it's become pretty much a habit for me to check the numbers for the stock market each day, but I don't know why.  I think we've become conditioned to believe that if the stock market numbers are good, the economy is good--it is, but not for anyone but those at the top.  As the above link notes, wages are at 65 year lows, unemployment remains high, and 16% of Americans live in poverty.  Only 14% of Americans say that the record highs in the stock market are helping them financially.  Seventy percent of us (preceding link) believe that the downturn of the Great Recession is permanent--basically that financially we will never improve.  It's hard to see how the lower 80% of us economically ever will.

But for the 1% and Corporate America (profits breaking records, too) life is oh, so good.

At least until the walls come down.

Peace,
emaycee

Month end bummer #2

Feeding America, a non-profit devoted to feeding hungry Americans, has released its quadrennial report on "Hunger in America" for 2014.  Think Progress gives a nice recap here.

Two items that stood out for me.  First, over 46.5 million Americans (that's one in seven) receive food assistance in--broken record time--the richest nation in the history of human civilization.  Second, that's 15.5 million households, forty percent of which have a child.  Give or take, that's 20 million children.

20 million children.

Maybe the next time some numb nut conservatives try to blame the gays or abortion for God's wrath in the wake of a 9/11 or a Hurricane Katrina, they might just consider God's wrath over twenty million children going hungry in a nation that has wolfed down the fatted calf more times than can be counted.

Peace,
emaycee