Women are a majority of the population now—a majority in university classrooms and a majority in all kinds of contexts. It seems to me silly to say, ‘Gee, they’re discriminated against and we need to do something about it.’ They aren’t discriminated against anymore.
Source: thedailybeast.com
If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000—not $50,000. Sort of a big difference, no?
Source: motherjones
This is what the new gerrymandered Ohio district centered on Columbus looks like. It’s a beaut.
Unlike Luis Gutierrez’ famous “earmuffs” district in Chicago, this district wasn’t drawn as a majority-minority district for Voting Rights Act compliance. (The VRA requires the creation of majority-minority districts.) It was drawn purely as a Democratic vote sink.
This is a great early example of what the GOP is going to be able to do now that the party has unprecedented control over redistricting in the wake of massive state-level victories in the 2010 elections. For more, check out this story.
Good fucking luck!
Source: dailykos.com
That the wealthy are “job creators,” and therefore have interests that must be defended by the public at large, is a talking-point that, however facile, is so popular it slips effortlessly from the lips of conservatives every day.
It can be deployed for any purpose – not only in calling for more tax breaks for the rich, but also when opposing public interest regulation, consumer litigation and worker protections. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, even used it to deflect attention from the “gay rehabilitation” services her clinic allegedly offers. When asked about it by ABC News, Bachmann merely acknowledged, “we do have a business that deals with job creation.” When pressed, she stuck with it: “As I said, again, we’re very proud of our business and we’re proud of all job creators in the United States.”
It’s also complete nonsense; the opposite of the truth. Sure, the wealthy create a few jobs – people who offer exclusive services or sell them high-end goods. But the overwhelming majority of jobs in this country are “created” by ordinary Americans when they spend their paychecks.
Consumer demand accounts for around 70 percent of our economic output. And with so much wealth having been redistributed upward through a 40-year class-war from above, American consumers are too tapped out to spend as they once did. This remains the core issue in this sluggish, largely jobless recovery. The wealthy, in their voracious appetite for a bigger piece of the national pie, are the real job-killers in this economic climate.
Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that “the main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists” the paper surveyed. That jibes with what business owners themselves are saying. Last week, the National Federation of Independent Businesses released a survey of small businessmen and women that found widespread “pessimism about future business conditions and expected real sales gains.”
Source: alternet.org
I made a chart (with the great Celine Nadeau) comparing Social Security and a Ponzi scheme. They don’t have much in common.
(via motherjones)
Source: Mother Jones
National Review asks why Obama reads critically acclaimed fiction instead of Jonah Goldberg - National Review - Salon.com
Why would Bunch of Grapes stock Emma Donoghue’s “Room,” a novel Aimee Bender called “truly memorable” and “remarkable,” when they could stock Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism,” a book that the American Conservative says “reads less like an extended argument than as a catalogue of conservative intellectual clichés, often irrelevant to the supposed point of the book”? Liberal bias, that’s why. Liberal fascist bias.
Anyway, the president is “out of touch” and “in a bubble” because he can read, according to a conservative intellectual, at a “think tank.”
So, does this mean that “they” are running out of actual policy issues on which to criticize Obama? Or just that “they” can’t help but criticize everything about Obama, down to his choice of shoelaces?
The typical U.S. historical marker raises more questions than it answers, and many of the signs are rife with errors and bias. Artist Norm Magnusson’s I-75 Project uses the form for a different sort of provocation. (via utnereader)
Love this concept.
Genius.
Source: utnereader
Lower taxes on the rich do not lead to job growth
In theory, the GOP is so committed to resisting tax hikes because it’s so committed to creating jobs. “The fact is you can’t tax the very people that we expect to invest in the economy and create jobs,” says Speaker John Boehner. But Michael Linden’s chart comparing average annual job creation at different marginal tax rates begs to differ.
Can’t we just raise it a few percent? I don’t understand why they (the uber-rich) would miss it so. Their gross would go up anyway, theoretically, with more jobs and more productivity, making it a net loss of not much or eventually a net gain. C’mon! Where’s their patriotism?
Source: Washington Post
You gotta hand it to the GOP. They’re using wars they started, tax breaks they didn’t pay for and a financial crisis they didn’t prevent all to justify massive cuts they’ve always wanted to make to the middle class. Machiavelli would be envious.
Why isn’t this the story in the media?
Source: reddit.com
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