I recommend a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party. Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly -Teddy Roosevelt
Posted under General
This post was written by admin on September 4, 2011
The Consumer Products Safety Commission runs a database to which anyone can submit information about being harmed by a product. Before anything gets entered into the actual database, it is vetted by CPSC staff and the manufacturer is given ten days to respond. Apparently Republicans do not want the public to know about defective or dangerous products, because the Republican House of Representatives approved a Republican (Mike Pompeo, Kansas) bill last week to deny funding for the database. Pompeo is concerned for the financial health of manufacturers and other businesses, who might be harmed by “false information.” He doesn’t have any examples of false information, mind you, but this is such a danger to commercial interests that immediate action is essential. Meanwhile babies will be injured in defective cribs and toasters will start fires in empty homes. But businesses will be saved! Next time you vote, remember which politicians protect consumers and which protect businesses.
Posted under Class Warfare, General, Republicans
This post was written by admin on February 25, 2011
By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights – the right to belong to a free trade union. - Ronald Reagan, 1982
Posted under Class Warfare
This post was written by admin on February 24, 2011
The 2010 Winter Olympics kicked off Friday night in Canada with what I thought was the worst opening ceremony I’ve ever seen. Read More…
Posted under General
This post was written by admin on February 15, 2010
The headline below is from MSNBC, and ran above an AP story. I show it here because it represents a common grammatical error in English: a misplaced hyphen. People often think when there are two adjectives modifying a noun, there should be a hyphen connecting them. Or perhaps people think when the two adjectives are related, they need a hyphen. But in fact, that is almost never the case. A hyphen is used most often when one of the adjectives modifies the other, and not always then. The rule seems to be changing in common usage lately, but this example is still wrong.
Posted under Grammar Police, Journalism
This post was written by admin on December 22, 2009
Sacramento woke up today to its first measurable snowfall in 33 years.
Posted under General
This post was written by admin on December 7, 2009
People who complain about the threat of socialism remind me of the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran’s hospital. When he was laid off he received unemployment insurance and then got an SBA loan to start his own business. His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance laws. When he retired he went on Social Security and Medicare. The other day he got into his car, drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, parked in the public lot, took Amtrak to Washington, and went to Capitol Hill to ask his congressman to get the government off his back.
Posted under General
This post was written by admin on November 17, 2009
On May Day in 2007, immigrants and their supporters around the US rallied in major cities to announce their support for immigrant rights. In Los Angeles, police said protesters threw “plastic bottles and other projectiles,” according to Democracy Now! Police decided to clear the park of protesters, and in the process used rubber bullets, tear gas, and batons (cubs).
Many nonviolent, non-resisting participants were assaulted, along with news crews from local TV stations and an observer from the National Lawyers’ Guild. Police Chief William Bratton said (in 2008) he planned to discipline 11 officers and terminate four others. The city this year agreed to pay $13 million to people injured or mistreated in the melee.
Now the district attorney’s office says it can’t prove any police officer broke the law, so no charges will be filed against any officers.
This is not a surprise, since police are rarely punished for violence against non-prominent, and especially non-white, protesters. But the failure to hold police offices to the standards they claim to enforce is a major flaw in our legal system. It leads many to the conclusion that laws are intended to control the general population. Except for that purpose, they seem not to be taken seriously by the authorities.
Posted under America, General, Immigration, Police, Power
This post was written by admin on October 31, 2009
Let America be America again
by Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek–
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean–
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today–O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home–
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay–
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain–
All, all the stretch of these great green states–
And make America again!
This post was written by admin on July 5, 2009
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Posted under General
This post was written by admin on July 3, 2009
