What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.
And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break. And the average tax break for those lucky few — the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year — would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.
How can this kind of giveaway be justified at a time when politicians claim to care about budget deficits? Well, history is repeating itself. The original campaign for the Bush tax cuts relied on deception and dishonesty. In fact, my first suspicions that we were being misled into invading Iraq were based on the resemblance between the campaign for war and the campaign for tax cuts the previous year. And sure enough, that same trademark deception and dishonesty is being deployed on behalf of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
The planned “ultra-mosque” will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin’s call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for “victory” is. Charlie Brooker ☀
A frequent refrain of mine is that the purpose of public education is not the creation of the 21st Century workforce, but rather, the co-creation - in conjunction with our students - of 21st Century citizens. I really believe that “work” is a subset of “citizen,” and that if we aim for citizenship, we’ll get the workforce we need, but aiming for creating workers won’t get our society the citizens it needs. A public education that centers first around workforce development will put a high premium on following directions and doing what you’re told. A public education that centers first around citizenship development will still teach rules, but it will teach students to question the underlying ideas behind the rules. Workforce development will reinforce the hierarchies that we see in most corporate culture, while a citizenship-focus will teach students that their voice matters, regardless of station. It’s not just about what society needs, it’s also about what students need. We completely change the lens of “Why do we need to study this” when the answer deals with being an informed and active citizen as opposed to what we do with our work life, because let’s be honest with ourselves, most people don’t need calculus, the Periodic Table of Elements or the date of the signing of the Magna Carta to be a good worker. But you do need to understand statistical analysis to read fivethirtyeight.com and make sense of the political conversations there, you do need to understand basic chemistry to understand how the oil in the Gulf disaster affects the region, and understanding how England evolved from a pure aristocracy to a constitutional monarchy which did sow the seeds of the American democracy might help to make sense of our own country’s history. The goal of a citizenship-driven education exposes students to ideas that will challenge them, push them, and help them to make sense of a confusing world. The Big Lie (Thoughts on Why School Is Not Only About Workforce Development) ☀
Thirteen years ago when I was Secretary of Labor, DeCoster agreed to pay a $2 million penalty (the most we could throw at him) for some of the most heinous workplace violations I’d seen. His workers had been forced to live in trailers infested with rats and handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands. It was an agricultural sweatshop.
Several people in Maine told me the fine wouldn’t stop DeCoster. He’d just consider it a cost of doing business. Evidently they were right. DeCoster’s commercial egg business has a record that would make a repeat offender blush.
In 2003, DeCoster pleaded guilty to knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants (who don’t complain about unsafe working conditions, below-minimum-wage pay, and unsanitary facilities). DeCoster paid a record $2.1 million penalty for that one.
In the 1990s he was charged by Iowa authorities for violating state environmental laws governing the runoff of manure into rivers. He continued to violate environmental laws so often that the Iowa Supreme Court approved an order barring him from building more hog structures.
In 2002 the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission fined DeCoster’s operation $1.5 million for mistreating female workers. The charges included rape, sexual harassment, and other abuses.
Earlier this year, DeCoster paid another fine to settle state animal cruelty charges against his egg operations in Maine.
In other words, the current national salmonella outbreak is just the latest in a long series of DeCoster corporate crimes. He’s fostered a culture that disregards any law standing in the way of profits. Along the way, DeCoster has abused the environment, animals, his employees, and his customers.
WHY are Americans getting fatter and fatter? The simple explanation is that we eat too much junk food and spend too much time in front of screens — be they television, phone or computer — to burn off all those empty calories.
Unfortunately, behavior changes won’t work on their own without seismic societal shifts, health experts say, because eating too much and exercising too little are merely symptoms of a much larger malady. The real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast-food meals; saturation advertising for fatty, sugary products; inner cities that lack supermarkets; and unhealthy, high-stress workplaces.
In other words: it’s the environment, stupid.
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. Arundhati Roy ☀
You throw an anchor into the future you want to build, and you pull yourself along by the chain. John O’Neal ☀
Why should we remember the Hanigan Case now, as we consider the future of Arizona’s SB 1070 and comprehensive immigration reform in general? Foremost, Arizona politicians seeking to gain traction with voters in their state, while at the same time broadcasting their message to the nation as a whole, have sought to portray the state of affairs in Arizona as an emergency caused by a crashing wave of undocumented immigrants. But perhaps it is Americans’ general aversion to history, or the myopia of our short-term memory, a condition caused by a deluge of opinions and rapidly shifting news cycles, that has blinded us to how the present situation in Arizona evolved over a period of forty years.
The Hanigan Case suggests a whole other set of lessons as well. First, it reminds us that Mexican migrants are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators. Second, it demonstrates the strong correlation between recession and anti-immigrant sentiment. On this point, it should come as no surprise that politicians now seek to divert attention from their own political failures and shortsightedness by blaming Mexicans. Third, the Hanigan Case shows that vigilante activism in Arizona is not the domain of a few extremists who have found a home there only since Chris Simcox moved to Tombstone. From the KKK to the Minutemen, exclusionary vigilantes have a rich tradition in southern Arizona. Finally, Arizona also has an equally impressive tradition of civil rights activism. Individuals including Isabel García, Margo Cowan, Guadalupe Castillo, and John Fife—through their leadership of the Manzo Area Council, the Sanctuary Movement, No More Deaths, and the Coalición de Derechos Humanos—have struggled from the 1970s onward to achieve fair and humane treatment of immigrants.
The parties devote themselves to gaining and holding power. Their candidates have to appear idealistic, dedicated and principled, without actually becoming too committed to any policy or belief. Candidates know from long experience that they should work more on being attractive and uttering clichés than on debating the real pros and cons of controversial ideas. If they want to be elected and reelected they have to be sure to say what the largest possible number of voters wants to hear. Strong convictions, especially if voiced in public, are likely to get in the way. Hence the most successful politicians combine amiable dexterity with empty yet high-minded rhetoric, and are always able to change their views to coincide with changes in popular opinion. Almost the only ideas they can endorse wholeheartedly are those shared by their opponents across the spectrum. Campaigns and candidates that insist on sharp distinctions and clear ideas usually lose. Look at Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential candidate in 1964. He really wanted to cut back the federal government and really wanted to ratchet up the Cold War. He was willing to denounce Social Security in such unambiguous terms that alarmed senior citizens flocked to his opponent Lyndon Johnson on Election Day. Worse still, he declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Maybe it isn’t, but that resonant phrase from his acceptance speech permitted the Democrats to depict him as a self-professed extremist who would provoke a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. How to Succeed in Politics ☀
In light of the current economic crisis, we need new and creative ways of thinking about economics, business, and the common good. Given the genuine moral failures of our leadership class and the pressing ethical demands of modern life, we need new and creative ways of thinking about and cultivating virtue among the young, so that they are not lost to egoism, cynicism, and nihilism. In facing the conflict and tensions inherent in a pluralistic world, we need richer resources for understanding our differences and working through them peaceably. The juvenile accusations and worn-out clichés that dominate our public discourse on these and other matters are simply inadequate to the critical challenges facing us. We must work toward greater “thickness” in our politics, economics, education, media, and families, in ways that reinforce common ideals and uphold common goods. Strong democracies, just economies, vital communities, meaningful education, and morally inner-directed persons depend on this careful balance, especially in times of adversity. Failing to meet this challenge will leave us with a culture that is shallow and trivial, one that is incapable of understanding the difficulties of our time, much less of addressing them with wisdom and courage. James Davison Hunter ☀
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