Interesting post by Jeff Sovern at the Public Citizen Law and Policy Blog. A lot of effort has gone into providing loan customers with the APR (which is somewhat different than the interest rate). But are consumers actually using/heeding that information? Sovern explains the quandary, and raises the issue of alternate approaches.
Through no effort of my own, I receive email bulletins from the Christian Coalition, an unabashedly theocratic (and more covertly white-centric) political action committee, yet somehow still tax free (503-(c)4).
The latest email tells people to bring voters their guides to church. Their splash page practically forces you to download it.
I am of the opinion that churches that want representation like this should be amenable to taxation. Naturally they argue that just because every member shills for their platform, the churches should not be held accountable. Can this be remedied?
Discussion?
Robert Reich has distilled ten principles of Romneyism. I think he's compiled and articulated these accurately. Whether they SHOULD be guiding principles for the United States is an entirely separate question. Here are the ten:
1. Corporations are the basic units of society. 2. Workers are a means to the goal of maximizing corporate profits. 3. All factors of production -- capital, physical plant and equipment, workers -- are fungible and should be treated the same. 4. Pollution, unsafe products, unsafe working conditions, financial fraud, and other negative side effects of the pursuit of profits are the price society pays for profit-driven growth. 5. Individual worth depends on net worth -- how much money one has made, and the value of the assets that money has been invested in. 6. People who fail in the economy should not be coddled. 7. Taxes are inherently bad because they constrain profit-making. 8. Politics is a game whose only purpose is to win. 9. Democracy is dangerous because it is forever vulnerable to the votes of a majority intent on capturing the wealth of the successful minority, on whom the economy depends. 10. The three most important aspects of life are family, religion, and money.
Here's what happened to a group of people protesting a foreclosure. Note the extreme militarization of the police. They looked nervous, and they should have been, because they were surrounded by ordinary people fighting a fucked-up system by uttering truths to the police-soldiers. Amazing that it's coming to this.
I just saw these stats in a new post by LEAP:
Just over one week before voters in three states will decide on ballot measures to legalize and regulate marijuana, the FBI has released a new report today showing that police in the U.S. arrest someone for marijuana every 42 seconds and that 87% of those arrests are for possession alone. A group of police, judges and other law enforcement officials advocating for the legalization and regulation of marijuana and other drugs pointed to the figures showing more than 750,000 marijuana arrests in 2011 -- more than 40 years after the start of the "war on drugs" -- as evidence that this is a war that can never be won.To be clear, I'm not advocating the use of drugs. I'm criticizing the criminalization of the use of drugs. Characterizing the use of drugs to be a law enforcement issue has been a massive failure.