JS Online tells the story:
A low-level state employee was fired Thursday after he sent an email to his fellow employees telling them about the state Department of Transportation’s policy on giving out free photo identification cards for voting.
While Barack Obama gave yet another pretty speech, Matt Taibbi decided to tune out. Here's why:
I remember following Obama on the campaign trail and hearing all sorts of promises before union-heavy crowds. He said he would raise the minimum wage every year; he said he would fight free-trade agreements. He also talked about repealing the Bush tax cuts and ending tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. It's not just that he hasn't done those things. The more important thing is that the people he's surrounded himself with are not labor people, but stooges from Wall Street. Barack Obama has as his chief of staff a former top-ranking executive from one of the most grossly corrupt mega-companies on earth, JP Morgan Chase. He sees Bill Daley in his own office every day, yet when it comes time to talk abut labor issues, he has to go out and make selected visits twice a year or whatever to the Richard Trumkas of the world. Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best – play the part of a progressive. He's good at it.
It has become abundantly clear that the United States has evolved from somewhat of a democracy to much more of a corporatocracy. It's time to rename the national holidays to reflect this reality. I was inspired to write this post when re-considering the attached photo of corporate flags, which I took at the downtown St. Louis Fourth of July celebration this year. Based on the ubiquitous corporate sponsors of that holiday (combined with the salient lack of people who cared about the original reason for this holiday), I'd recommend that we rename Fourth of July as Big Business Day. It's clear now that (as Representative Dick Durbin once said), the banks own the place (referring to Congress), that we set aside a day to remember that development. But why stop there? There's no more need for Labor Day either, since most politicians are leaving workers to fend for themselves. Further, a lot of us don't have jobs anymore. Therefore, let's rename Labor Day as Banker's Day.
Here's the problem, as described by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
Our trains, even in the busy Northeast corridor, are second rate, our airports are embarrassments, our dams are leaking, and our bridges are crumbling. Taken as a whole, the average age of our public capital stock has risen from 16 to 23 years over the past four decades, "suggesting great underinvestment in public infrastructure," Mike Mandel says. The American Society of Civil Engineers agrees. In their most recent report card, they gave our solid waste facilities a C+, our bridges a C, our rail a C-, our energy infrastructure a D+, our dams and schools a D, and our roads, levees, and inland waterways a D-. Nothing got an A or a B. All of this is common knowledge.Instead needlessly destroying people and property in the Middle East for the past decade, we could have been addressing America's decrepit infrastructure by investing in America. We would have been simultaneously creating high-skill long-lasting jobs. We failed to do what we needed to do because our priorities and our political system are insane and self-destructive. We had the money to get the job done, but we blew it, as described by Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post:
When [George W. Bush] was campaigning for the White House in 2000, the government was anticipating a projected surplus of roughly $6 trillion over the following decade. Bush said repeatedly that he thought this was too much and wanted to bring the surplus down — hence, in 2001, the first of his two big tax cuts. Bush was hewing to what had already become Republican dogma and by now has become something akin to scripture: Taxes must always be cut because government must always be starved. The party ascribes this golden rule to Ronald Reagan — conveniently forgetting that Reagan, in his eight years as president, raised taxes 11 times. Reagan may have believed in small government, but he did believe in government itself. Today’s Republicans have perverted Reagan’s philosophy into a kind of anti-government nihilism — an irresponsible, almost childish insistence that the basic laws of arithmetic can be suspended at their will.I'll end with a proverb: “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
I have personally spoken with clients who have records showing that they have made ALL of their mortgage payments on time, yet the bank foreclosed on their home and then filed an unlawful detainer case to kick them out of their home. In two cases, the bank continued to kick the people out of the house even when the mistake was brought to its attention. We have found that, quite often, no one at the bank cares. Sometimes, not even the attorney representing the bank in court cares that there has been a terrible error made by the bank. It sounds unbelievable, but it's true. Where is the evidence that big banks break their promises, deceive mortgage customers, lose paperwork and otherwise engage in despicable behavior? Start reading this list at Consumeraffairs.com. This list contains complaints against one bank: Bank of America. Grab yourself a cup of tea before you start, because it's going to take you a long time to get through this list.