Palin Pounds GOPers

Sarah Palin's scorched-earth plan for the GOP - World - CBC News:

Sarah Palin, who now says she's definitely interested in "serving" as president next year, made a speech last weekend at a gathering of Republican White House aspirants in Iowa.

It was somewhat coarser, and certainly more bitter, than her usual bundle of platitudes and jingoism.

At one point she shouted "Screw the left in Hollywood!" And she complained about how even some Republicans are buying into "this unhealthy new obsession … about this subjective income gap that we're supposed to be so obsessed about right now."

She came close to suggesting conservative Republicans rip up their cards and register as independents in order to punish the party leadership, then seemed to abandon the idea...

The Earth Has Shifted On Its Abortion Axis

Addicting Info – After Listening To Women, Longtime Anti-Abortion Congressman Becomes Pro-Choice:

...Ryan personally thanked US Rep. Rosa DeLauro for helping him understand that “Nobody celebrates abortion,” and that such decisions are personal ones that should be between women, their families, and their doctors. He also acknowledged that federal and state bans won’t reduce abortions. Such laws only make abortions less safe.

Instead, Ryan wrote that government can play a role in significantly reducing the number of abortions by passing laws to help women access contraception and better sex education...

Huckleberry Half-Truth Exposed

Huckabee’s hateful true colors: Why his dig about Fox’s “trashy” women is so revealing - Salon.com:

... And while we’ve known for some time that Huckabee’s views are, well, terrifying, they’d been masked in such a way that once set him apart. But now, the real Huckster — in all his sex-panicked, purity-centric, woman-policing glory — is who we get to deal with. At least we know exactly what we’re up against.

Bibi & Boehner Sittin' On A Land Mine

Bibi & Boehner blow it: How they strengthened the White House’s hand - Salon.com:

...John Boehner and the Republican Party had what it thought would be a fun idea to tweak the president, assert congressional authority, give U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East a rightward shove, and earn “the Republican Senator from Israel” another term. (Those last two items being one and the same.) He would invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress shortly before his election, without consulting the White House. That would offer Netanyahu the chance to show off his influence in American politics ahead of Israeli elections and put pressure on fence-sitting lawmakers to pass a new round of Iran sanctions that threatens to unravel nuclear negotiations at its most critical stage.

This plan has not gone over very well...

Shooting Cars

Girl shot by Denver police: Why mother wants independent autopsy - CSMonitor.com



It's AP so no words. Related link: Police Killings List

Mitt Already Slinging Mud

Mainstream Media Outlets Help Romney Smear Hillary Clinton With Discredited Attacks | Blog | Media Matters for America:

ABC News and CBS News helped potential GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney dredge up discredited attacks on Hillary Clinton in their reports on an upcoming speech by Romney. The attacks smear Clinton's diplomatic work with Russia as secretary of state and scandalize comments she made on trickle-down economics that were taken out of context by the media...

JJ Hypocrite

Jesse Jackson Finally Makes A Statement About White Motorist Beating - Downtrend:

...If the races were reversed in this case, Jackson surely would have condemned the attackers, but for two weeks now, he has been silent. Social media and the blogosphere have lit up calling Jackson a hypocrite. After all, a hate crime is no less abhorrent if the victim happens to be white. With his credibility on the line, Jackson finally broke his silence this week, saying in a phone interview:..

The Breedng Rich And Their Spawn

Education and class: America’s new aristocracy | The Economist:

WHEN the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination line up on stage for their first debate in August, there may be three contenders whose fathers also ran for president. Whoever wins may face the wife of a former president next year. It is odd that a country founded on the principle of hostility to inherited status should be so tolerant of dynasties. Because America never had kings or lords, it sometimes seems less inclined to worry about signs that its elite is calcifying.

Thomas Jefferson drew a distinction between a natural aristocracy of the virtuous and talented, which was a blessing to a nation, and an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, which would slowly strangle it. Jefferson himself was a hybrid of these two types—a brilliant lawyer who inherited 11,000 acres and 135 slaves from his father-in-law—but the distinction proved durable. When the robber barons accumulated fortunes that made European princes envious, the combination of their own philanthropy, their children’s extravagance and federal trust-busting meant that Americans never discovered what it would be like to live in a country where the elite could reliably reproduce themselves...

Idolatry

The Greatest False Idol of Modern Christianity | RELEVANT Magazine:

...It [idolatry] shows up in the lazy stereotypes and the religious rhetoric that flows so easily in church lobby coffee chats and extremist blog rants. It’s as if everything has now become an imminent threat: Muslims, Atheists, Gays, The President, inner-city criminals, Hollywood, illegal immigrants, The Government, school hallways.

The world outside the church building is broadly painted as a vile, immoral war zone, with “God’s people” hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned...

You Think?

Senate’s marathon Keystone debate ends in anger - POLITICO:

...“Senator McConnell’s rush to vote on amendments without providing time to read or debate them could have something to do with this Koch retreat tomorrow, which a number of Republican senators are reportedly attending…,” Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said by email...

Addiction Theories Napalmed

The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think�|�Johann Hari:

 ...So the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection.

When I learned all this, I found it slowly persuading me, but I still couldn't shake off a nagging doubt. Are these scientists saying chemical hooks make no difference? It was explained to me -- you can become addicted to gambling, and nobody thinks you inject a pack of cards into your veins. You can have all the addiction, and none of the chemical hooks. I went to a Gamblers' Anonymous meeting in Las Vegas (with the permission of everyone present, who knew I was there to observe) and they were as plainly addicted as the cocaine and heroin addicts I have known in my life. Yet there are no chemical hooks on a craps table...

New Apple; Same Rotten Core

Barack Obama’s State of the Union tax proposal: The president’s program will expose Republicans’ unwillingness to fight inequality.:

...Some of these Republicans’ proposals—to expand the earned income tax credit or child tax credit, for instance—hold real promise. But there is a big problem with this new anti-poverty, anti-inequality platform, one that gives all this new rhetoric an air of unreality: The party remains at its core committed to fighting solutions that would come at the expense of the very wealthiest Americans, even at a time when that upper-upper echelon is achieving truly historic levels of affluence. Just look at what has been the first order of business for Republicans after they won full control of Congress for the first time in eight years this past fall. It’s not expanding the earned income tax credit, but rather pushing a Wall Street wish list for tweaks to weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2010...

GOP Firing Squad

State of the GOP is broken: I thought Joni Ernst was bad. Then I watched Ted Cruz - Salon.com:

...And remember, at this point we’re likely to see at least four of those guys – counting Bush and Romney, Paul and Cruz – in the 2016 presidential debates. Cruz was expected to be formidable, but you don’t get do-overs at live, nationally televised events, no matter how RNC chair Reince Priebus thinks he can rig the rules. I’m not saying the Democrats have no problems or internal fissures, but their debates won’t feature anything like the GOP’s.

Expect the media to say that’s boring, and damaging to Clinton. But secretly, or not so secretly, Republicans wish they had Clinton’s problems.

Media Trump Kissing

Breitbart News Admires Donald Trump's Toilet | The Daily Caller:

...Not surprisingly, the reporter was Matthew Boyle, who Trump can call on anytime he wants him. Kind of like Bloomberg Politics‘ Mark Halperin, except shorter, bigger cheeks and right wing. Some may recall the story that Trump spoon fed to baby Boyle to exact revenge on BuzzFeed‘s McKay Coppins for the profile piece he and his camp loathed. Some close to Trump have referred to Coppins’ piece as “dog shit” reporting. At the time, Breitbart News might as well have turned the entire site over to Trump — here, publish whatever you want Mr. Trump!

The same goes for Boyle’s story published Monday in which he can be seen bowing to The Donald...

Comment Of The Day: O'Proposals

Cannonfire:"Obama Did It Again"

Of course he does this when it has no chance of getting through congress. No, I don't care how good it SOUNDS, it's not going to happen with this congress and Obama knows this. If he was serious, if he had a real spine or was a real President that cared about "the little people" he would have made sure this happened in 2008 when he had a congress that would have been more likely to make it happen. Of course, even then, most of the Dems would have shown their true colors if they had actually had to vote on a proposal like this. Call my cynical, but his sudden discovery of Democratic principles and proposals is disingenuous. He's only doing it precisely because he knows it can't happen now. He doesn't care, because he's on his way out. He just wants to be able to say, "see? I tried!", but he didn't try when it actually mattered and would have possibly made a difference.

posted by Anonymous Gus : 11:52 AM

Lies About SS Diisability

Myths & Facts Behind The Campaign To Attack Disability Benefits | Research | Media Matters for America:

Media outlets including NPR and Fox News are targeting federal disability benefits programs through a campaign deceptively portraying these programs as wasteful and unsustainable. In reality, these programs have low fraud rates and help the rising number of Americans with severe disabilities survive when they are unable to work...

Fox ReDuhs

Fox Business Delivers Stupidest Super Bowl Report Possible:

Fox Business Network attempted to report on Super Bowl ticket sales today with threats that "the NFL is expecting record-low attendance." That's not true, but somehow what reporter Elizabeth MacDonald went on to say got even stupider.

MacDonald tried to trace recent Super Bowl attendance trends to the popularity of the teams playing, claiming six-figure attendance four years ago was due to the Green Bay Packers' and Pittsburgh Steelers' involvement. She then projected the popularity of teams in the running for this year's Super Bowl, and how that might affect attendance. Here's the thing, though: only one number factors into Super Bowl attendance statistics, and that number is STADIUM CAPACITY...

Flogging Priebus

Priebus Is A GOP Marionette With Little Control Over The Presidential Selection Process - Esquire:

... Priebus deserves the credit for reinventing the modern political party only if you don't count the contributions (in every sense of the damn word) of the Koch Brothers, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, and, especially, the Supreme Court of the United States which, during Priebus's tenure as the Republican party's most conspicuous public marionette, effectively has legitimized bribery and formalized influence peddling while simultaneously declaring the Day Of Jubilee so that Republicans out in the states can disenfranchise inconvenient voters, and most of the state legislators who are doing so owe their allegiance to a lot of people who are not Reince Priebus. Crediting Priebus for these developments, as though he had any control over any of them, is rather like crediting the local dowser for the last hurricane...

Identity Of American People Revealed

When Politicians Say, “The American People…” | Notes from a Boy @ The Window:

We should all roll our eyes, pick up a snowball we’ve stashed in our freezers since the middle of February, and hit the politician in his forehead whenever we hear one of them start a statement with, “The American people.” Because as many of us have realized for years, they’re not talking about us. As we discovered with the Supreme Court decision about corporate and foreign contributions to campaigns last year, corporations and the wealthy define whom most of our leaders think of when they’re saying “The American people.” Especially since Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil and NBC Comcast collectively count as “American people..."

Fox Strikes Again

‘Expert’ Sorry for Making Up Facts About Islam -- NYMag:

Terrorism "expert" Steven Emerson is sorry for implying that whole British cities live under tyrannical Muslim rule on a Fox News program Sunday. He had painted a frightening image of British libertines forced to cover up whilst being chased by shalwar kameez–clad men in their hometowns — and one that is entirely false. Even British prime minister David Cameron called him "a complete idiot..."

Uh-Oh! Heads Will Explode

FBI recommends charges against ex-CIA chief Petraeus: NY Times:

The FBI and US Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired General David Petraeus for allegedly providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the CIA, The New York Times reported Friday...

The Calm After The Storm

After Taking Hostages, The Fight Inevitably Ended With The Death Of The Gunmen - Esquire:

...One encouraging part of the French response to this incident is the fact that it was conducted primarily as a police action. A vigorous one, granted. A militarized one, certainly. But, at least from my vantage point, the murderers were treated as criminals. They were identified as criminals, hunted as criminals, and ultimately discovered through the basic techniques of criminal investigation. Except over here, they weren't treated as super-villains with dark magical powers. They were gunmen -- and one gunwoman -- who shot up places and killed people. Their crimes were their only cause. Now they are dead. Their crime spree is over. It ended the same way crime sprees ended for Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger. And it's time for people to calm down again. But I suspect that won't happen, at least not here.

Mitt In The Pit, Er, Dock?

Mitt Romney Slapped With Racketeering Lawsuit | Crooks and Liars

Murderous Oops

Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris | Informed Comment:

...The operatives who carried out this attack exhibit signs of professional training. They spoke unaccented French, and so certainly know that they are playing into the hands of Marine LePen and the Islamophobic French Right wing. They may have been French, but they appear to have been battle hardened. This horrific murder was not a pious protest against the defamation of a religious icon. It was an attempt to provoke European society into pogroms against French Muslims, at which point al-Qaeda recruitment would suddenly exhibit some successes instead of faltering in the face of lively Beur youth culture (French Arabs playfully call themselves by this anagram). Ironically, there are reports that one of the two policemen they killed was a Muslim...

Rally Against Tyranny Worldwide

No living in fear: 'I Am Charlie' rallies back free speech - Houston Chronicle:

From Berlin to Bangkok, tens of thousands took a stand Thursday against living in fear, as rallies defended the freedom of expression and honored the victims of a Paris newspaper attack.

Viewing the Paris attack as a cold-blooded assault on democracy, people from all walks of life — journalists and police officers, politicians and students — turned out in cities around the world, holding up pens and joining hands...

Turtle Talk

Mitch McConnell is off to a bitter start - The Washington Post:

...Elsewhere in his speech, McConnell hailed the contributions of senators from Henry Clay to Robert Byrd, but his self-aggrandizing claim about the economy brought to mind Byrd’s withering criticism of Republicans as pygmies who “stride like colossuses while marveling like Aesop’s fly, sitting on the axle of a chariot, ‘My, what a dust I do raise.’ ”

McConnell, when he wasn’t taking credit for things that preceded his ascent, gave a remarkably angry and ungracious first speech to the body he now leads. It was an 18-minute snarl, dripping with contempt and packed with campaign-style barbs for the president. He didn’t even offer an expression of condolences to the French after the terrorist attack Wednesday in Paris. (He mentioned the carnage to reporters later, after lunch...)

Fox Flaming And Ignoring

The Christian beheading Fox News conveniently ignored - Salon.com:

On New Year’s Eve, Christian Jose Gomez allegedly attacked his mother with an ax. Angry that she had been “nagging” him about moving some boxes up to the attic, Gomez beheaded Maria Suarez-Cassagne in the family’s garage and tried to stuff her headless body into a garbage can, according to investigators. When he couldn’t do that, he fled the home on his bike and was soon captured by local deputies in Oldsmar, Florida. Gomez calmly confessed to the crime and said he’d been planning it for days.

Note that Fox News ignored the Florida scene of grisly, domestic violence. Apparently, without a Muslim suspect under arrest for the beheading, Fox News wasn’t interested. The cable channel didn’t set aside hours to cover the horrific crime. There was no heated Fox News commentary, no panel discussions, no primetime news specials to comb over the evidence of the tragic beheading. Fox News didn’t care about the shocking story of an isolated beheading in America...

The Crisco Cowboy Ploy

Karl Rove Runs Interference For Chris Christie Amid NFL Playoff Scandal | Blog | Media Matters for America:

...Christie's appearance at a Dallas Cowboys game as a guest of owner Jerry Jones in his personal suite is "proving to be controversial." As reported by The Washington Post Christie flew to Dallas and accepted the ticket to the game at the expense of the Cowboys' owner, who just so happens to have a business relationship with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey." Christie's NFL experience may have been worth more than $100,000, and "his acceptance of a gift from a business owner with ties to the Port Authority" raises concerns about possible conflicts of interest in the governor's private and political life...

A Look At The Clown Car

The 2015 GOP Clown Car: Bigger, Meaner, and More Dangerous Than Ever�|�Richard Zombeck:

 Another year gone and another string of long-winded, factually inaccurate, and manufactured comments from the clowns in the Republican Party are behind us. With every passing year that the little clown car pulls up it seems to get a little bigger and every year more and more clowns pour out and step up to the podium to obfuscate and pontificate. Nearly everything they say would lead one to believe that they are impervious to reality and yet their statements are made in such a way and with such confidence that it's as if they had received the message from God Himself...

The Broken System

Americans Against the Tea Party: The Truth About 'The Republican Mandate': 50 Percent More People Have Voted Democrat Since 2010:

Seventeen percent. That's the percentage of eligible voters who voted Republican in 2014. Fifty-five percent: That's the percentage of Republicans in Congress right now. Something has gone hideously wrong in the Matrix somewhere...

Morons Of Maryland: Kirby Delauter Edition

Maryland GOP Pol Threatens Reporter For Using His Name Without Permission | Crooks and Liars:

...Kirby Delauter, a county council member in Frederick County, Maryland, doesn’t appear to agree. He took to his Facebook page yesterday to denounce a local reporter, Bethany Rogers of The Frederick News-Post, because he “did not authorize any use of my name.” He also included this rather menacing line: “You need to know who you’re dealing with.”

To cap off his post, Mr. Delauter threatened to sue her: “Use my name again unauthorized and you’ll be paying for an attorney...”

Triumph Of The Orange

Boehner re-elected to third term as House speaker:

Rep. John Boehner was re-elected Tuesday to a third term as U.S. House speaker after facing down a conservative rebellion that sought to oust him from the office....

Comment Of The Day: Defining Weaselspeak

Republicans Looking For Help From Judicial Activists They Once Derided - Esquire

Barry Friedman · Follow · Top Commenter · University of Tulsa · 171 followers

(Excuse the blatant self-promotion of this, but this from my column on Pruitt, which will be out Wednesday)


"Scott Pruitt is for states rights, unless the state wants to ban assault weapons or allow its citizens to get high; he’s a champion of individual liberties, unless the individual wants an abortion or to marry someone with the same genitalia; he’s pro-life, unless the life at stake is a bad man who must be executed, proper protocols be damned; he’s pro-family, unless it’s a family of Latinos where the children are legal but the parents are not; he’s against the influence of religion in society, unless that religion is Christianity and  espoused by a company that sells arts and crafts; he’s for the safe exploration of energy, unless energy companies are burdened by independent safety criteria; he’s for homeowners, unless it costs rapacious home lenders any money; and he’s for health care, unless he has to help pay for anyone else to have it."

A Set-up Murder?

A drug informant lied, SWAT pounced, a man died - The Washington Post:

Back in July, we looked at the case of Jason Wescott, a Florida man shot and killed by a police SWAT team during a drug raid over an alleged sale of $200 worth of pot to a police informant. The tragedy was exacerbated by the fact that according to friends and relatives, Wescott had been previously threatened by a man who had broken into his home. When he reported the threat to police they apparently told him, “If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.” Officers from the very same police agency then raided Wescott over some pot. When he grabbed his gun, they killed him...

...And so the pile of bodies grows. The cops get cleared. The drug war marches on. And then it all happens again.

But No One Ever Died For Ratings

Without Fox News, There Would Have Been No Iraq War | Mother Jones:

...And this in turn means that we owe the Iraq War to Fox News: "We estimate that removing Fox News from cable television during the 2000 election cycle would have reduced the average county's Republican vote share by 1.6 percentage points..."

On The Obama Economy

Presidents and the Economy - NYTimes.com:

...Last but not least, even if you think Mr. Obama deserves little or no credit for good economic news, the fact is his opponents have spent years claiming that his bad attitude — he has been known to suggest, now and then, that some bankers have behaved badly — is somehow responsible for the economy’s weakness. Now that he’s presiding over unexpected economic strength, they can’t just turn around and assert his irrelevance.

So is the president responsible for the accelerating recovery? No. Can we nonetheless say that we’re doing better than we would be if the other party held the White House? Yes. Do those who were blaming Mr. Obama for all our economic ills now look like knaves and fools? Yes, they do. And that’s because they are.

And They Shall Eat Their Old...

 ...and orange.

Conservative call for Boehner coup against grows louder - CNN.com:

Conservative momentum to oust John Boehner from his position as speaker of the House continued to build through the weekend, with two alternatives emerging and a major national conservative group joining the effort...

The Man Who Ruined Paul Harvey's Radio Show

Mike Huckabee's Worst Media Moments | Blog | Media Matters for America:

Fox News and Mike Huckabee are finally parting ways as the now former host explores a second presidential run. After serving as the governor of Arkansas and losing a 2008 presidential primary bid, Huckabee was hired by the network. His media career was rife with controversial comments and outright falsehoods...

Legal Thievery

Are Police Stealing People’s Property? - The Daily Beast:

“Don’t even bother getting a lawyer. The money always stays here.”

That’s what the Tenaha Police Department told 27-year-old Arkansan James Morrow after they confiscated $3,900 from his car for “driving too close to the white line.” The police reported the “odor of burned marijuana,” though no drugs were found in the car. Morrow was carted off to jail, while the car was impounded...

On The Blue Revolt

The NYPD’s mini-rebellion, and the true face of American fascism - Salon.com:

...I’m not the first person to observe that the New York police unions’ current mini-rebellion against Mayor Bill de Blasio carries anti-democratic undertones, and even a faint odor of right-wing coup. Indeed, it feels like an early chapter in a contemporary rewrite of “It Can’t Happen Here”: Police in the nation’s largest city openly disrespect and defy an elected reformist mayor, inspiring a nationwide wave of support from “true patriots” eager to take their country back from the dubious alien forces who have degraded and desecrated it. However you read the proximate issues between the cops and de Blasio (some of which are New York-specific), the police protest rests on the same philosophical foundation as the fascist movement in Lewis’ novel. Indeed, it’s a constant undercurrent in American political life, one that surfaced most recently in the Tea Party rebellion of 2010, and is closely related to the disorder famously anatomized by Richard Hofstadter in his 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”

There’s no doubt that the NYPD crisis has disturbing implications on various levels. Amid a national discussion about police tactics and strategy, and the understandable grief following the murders of two NYPD officers, it amounts to a vigorous ideological counterattack. In effect, many cops (or at least their more intransigent leaders) want to assert that law enforcement is a quasi-sacred social institution, one that stands outside the law and is independent of democratic oversight. Sometimes this is taken to ludicrous and literal-minded extremes, as in a recent column by Michael Goodwin of the New York Post celebrating the NYPD and the United States military as “Our angels in a time of danger and cynicism.” (Without realizing it, Goodwin was buttressing the conclusions of James Fallows’ must-read Atlantic article about the way American society has become disconnected from the military and sanctified it at the same time.) As Salon columnist and veteran New York reporter Jim Sleeper has noted, this tendency also makes clear how little the tribal, insular culture of big-city policing has changed, even in an era of far greater diversity...

Fear Itself

Fox News has nothing but fear: Here’s how we fight back against lies — and win - Salon.com:

...Conservative hostility had multiple sources, not least the fact that everything conservatives had believed in during the Bush years had crumbled to dust. Nothing had worked the way it was supposed to. The Clinton era of relative peace and prosperity had given way to a time of catastrophic failure at home and abroad, and the 2008 electoral map showed it: for the first time since 1964, a Democrat won the states of Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. Speaking of 1964, some Democrats hoped that Obama would be an LBJ-style figure, substantially updating and expanding the New Deal legacy which forms the core of what the modern Democratic Party means and has meant since the 1930s. But his allegiance to corporatism, Wall Street and neo-liberalism has made him more a Tony Blair-style figure of continuity with Bush than a sharp break with him. And yet, that has done nothing at all to dim the fears and hostility that’s been marshaled against him. If anything, Obama’s efforts to placate conservatives have only made them more profoundly hostile and suspicious on the one hand—as epitomized by birtherism, and the NRA’s repeated claims (here, here, here, etc.) that massive gun confiscation is imminent—and more demanding on the other, as epitomized by their ever-increasing demands to cut government spending on programs for the poor and the middle class...

FDR’s 2nd Bill Of Rights

Re-Implement FDR’s 2nd Bill Of Rights (VIDEO):

...A 2nd Bill Of Rights was first put forth by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) in his State of the Union Speech to Congress on January 11, 1944. It includes: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education...

Strange Bedfellows

Charles Koch Wants To Change America's Criminal Justice System:

...Koch pointed to sentencing as an area in desperate need of reform, arguing that sentences should be "more appropriate to the crime that has been committed."

His new mission has precipitated some unlikely alliances. The Eagle reports that Koch has unofficially teamed up with progressive mega-donor George Soros and the American Civil Liberties Union to address prison reform. Koch has also earned praise from outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who told The Marshall Project that Koch's donation to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which funds training for attorneys who represent those in need, was a positive force. According to reports, Koch has been a supporter of the organization since 2004...

Predictable As Sunrise

Exposing the charter school lie: Michelle Rhee, Louis C.K. and the year phony education reform revealed its true colors - Salon.com:

...Troubling news stories about the financial workings of charter schools had been leaking slowly into the media stream for some years.

A story that appeared at Forbes in late 2013 foretold a lot of what would emerge in 2014. That post “Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express to Fat City” brought to light for the first time in a mainstream source the financial rewards that were being mined from charter schools. As author Addison Wiggin explained, a mixture of tax incentives, government programs and Wall Street investors eager to make money were coming together to deliver a charter school bonanza – especially if the charter operation could “escape scrutiny” behind the veil of being privately held or if the charter operation could mix its business in “with other ventures that have nothing to do with education...”