Republican blackmail schemes endanger American prosperity

It has been said that the whole debacle surrounding the recent debt ceiling legislation was a “manufactured crisis.” Republicans have taken control of the US House of Representatives and effectively use their threat of filibuster to stymie any progressive legislation from passing the US Senate. Republicans picked the “debt ceiling crisis” as their latest and greatest fight to wrest blackmail from the country in the furtherance of The Republican War on Christmas. And see here. Republicans have posited a series of ever more extremist and radical plans to restructure government under the guise of “fighting the deficit.” But, Republicans have offered more of the same failed and fatally flawed economic polices of the Bush era with more and better tax breaks for corporations, millionaires and billionaires with the added twist of abolishing Medicare and gutting Social Security.  And see here, here and here. Recent revelations by a high ranking Republican Budget Committee staffer confirms the Republicans’ blackmail as their chief strategy to preserve the privileges and incomes of the corporations, millionaires and billionaires to the economic damage of the rest of us Americans. [More. . . ]

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The world through the lens of a college English teacher

At Orion Magazine, college English Instructor Erik Reece has written an excellent essay exploring the role of schools in modern society. The conversation is expansive (covering such things as John Gatto, Citizens United and the trashing of the environment), yet the bases of his essay are his personal interactions with thousands of English students. Here's the launching point for Reece's essay.   He asked his college freshmen English students to write an essay on the following topic: "Evaluate the education you received over the last four years."   Here is his summary of types of responses he received:

  • Many teachers show no passion for their subjects.
  • Many teachers don’t seem to know their subjects very well.
  • Teachers often have very low expectations for their students and very lax standards (late work is rarely penalized).
  • Many teachers are afraid to engage students in real critical thinking or actual dialogue; they simply rely on handouts and lectures.
  • Assignments don’t seem relevant to students’ “real” lives.
  • Many teachers only “teach to the test.”
  • The majority of the work is far too easy and leads to boredom.
  • Students express an overwhelming feeling that only their attendance and test scores are important to teachers and administrators.
Again, this is the starting point for a highly worthwhile piece of writing.   I invite you to take a look.

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Republicans Fiddle and Lie, Obama Shuffles, America Burns

Republicans in the US House and Senate have been complete money grubbers when it comes to getting funds from the Democratic Stimulus Bill but, total lying sacks of dung when reporting about the real results the stimulus bill. Most of those asking for the stimulus funds in the US House have been Republicans. All of the Republicans getting any of such funds have touted their individual successes at bringing home the bacon for their districts or states. [Note: I offering numerous links throughout this post; rather than embed them, I am leaving them as text, which will make it easier to see the topics of the links based on the permalinks]. http://www.iwatchnews.org/2010/10/19/2420/tea-party-founder-texans-among-those-asking-stimulus-funds http://www.democrats.org/news/blog/gop_hypocrisy_on_recovery_act_projects_makes_news_nationwide http://www.wusf.usf.edu/news/2010/10/18/gop_congressmen_criticize_stimulus_ask_for_money [More . . . ]

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Why Barack Obama should not be believed anymore

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.

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Time to rename our national holidays after the big businesses who are calling the shots

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.

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