Friend and civil rights attorney Bennet D. Zurofsky posts a link to an extensive new 84 page study of the detrimental effects of austerity entitled Prosperity Economics: Building An Economy For All. “Worth reading,” he says.
Friend and iconic politician Jack Drakeford dies at age 75
I just learned that the man who came very close to being my stepfather when I was a girl, passed away early this morning (Aug 2) at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck. No wonder all day long I’ve felt a powerful sense of loss all that I wasn’t able to shake off. In all the world, Jack Drakeford is one of the people whose presence in my life has most touched me, and whose friendship I have most valued.
Who was the towering man with soulful eyes and a huge bear hug always ready for his favorite friends? Jack Drakeford was champion of the new Jersey Black community, friend and mentor of young people preparing to take flight into the world, lover of iHop, speaker of truth, formidable politician and a man possessed of an extraordinary grasp of the struggle for racial and social justice in the United States and what it takes to build the rights that make equality happen. And an amazing friend.
Fire Demarco for underwater mortgage relief and $1 billion in savings
The good people at Rebuild the Dream tell us,
DeMarco is the Bush appointee who has been dragging his heels and blocking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from engaging in targeted principal reductions (resetting home loans to fair market value) for struggling, underwater homeowners on the grounds that it would cost the taxpayers too much.
Today, two things happened. First, FHFA produced a study that said principal reductions would actually save taxpayers more than a billion dollars. And then DeMarco announced that he still wouldn’t allow any principal reductions!
As NJ poor get poorer, rich get MUCH richer
Legal Services of New Jersey’s (aka Legal Aid) Poverty Research Institute income disparity study
entitled “Income Inequality in New Jersey: The Growing Divide and Its Consequences,” found the distribution of income between 2000 and the end of 2009 was heavily one-sided, with more than three quarters of the income gains going to the well-to-do in just 20 percent of the state’s households. That left little for everyone else, and some backtracked.
Significantly, more than a quarter of the gains went to just the top or richest one percent of the populace – an estimated 75,000 people living in households with incomes of at least $570,000. On the other end, those in the 40 percent of the state’s households with incomes under $34,300 – roughly 3 million people – actually saw their incomes take a hit during the decade.
Giving thanks may make you happier
Did you know there’s science to being happy? Watch Harvard researcher Nancy Etcoff’s TED talk on The surprising science of happiness.
A study administered by two scientists whose work focuses specifically on how gratitude affects happiness – psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami – proved that expressions of gratitude (you thanking someone else, or G-d, or yourself) increased people’s own happiness and enhanced their lives in various ways.
When they understand what it is, people love Obamacare
A Truthout op-ed article explains the real benefits of Obamacare. Once people understand how much benefit they provide, they love the new healthcare provisions. They’re also going to love the $500 rebate checks that will soon be sent out from insurance companies to compensate policyholders for the price gouging their insurers have been subjecting them to, and the $100 billion our government is going to save this decade because of the bill. Here’s an excerpt:
What the decision does do, using the taxing authority of the Constitution, is assure that everybody gets covered for health care – no one can be turned down. The President’s bill guarantees that everyone is now covered for pre-existing conditions, preventive care, mammograms, colonoscopies, seniors’ drugs, children on parent’s plans through 26, no lifetime caps, and this is a key part, requires that 80 percent of the benefits go to patients, not to administrators, prohibiting insurance companies from overcharging for their salaries and administrative costs. The insurance company overcharges – paying them as middlemen — were one of the factors that made us pay twice as much for health care as any nation on earth.
Quotes from the Dalai Lama
Here’s a compendium of the kind of deep quotes we love from the Dalai Lama (whom we also love). This is just a small sampling of what you’ll find there.
Social-media-users-should-leverage-our-own-power
I am beyond disturbed that much greater resources are being spent on finding ways to “leverage” the power of the internet to exploit users, than we users are investing to find how we can harness our own power to use for our own good. This makes no sense when you consider what leverage means: to use a small object and a small amount of force to control a more massive object. In this analogy, the small force are the exploiters, the small tool is social media and the massive object represents the vast base of social media users: us.
Kimi’s disappearing coffee cup
Oh, this is a riot. Look what happened to me: the other day I got a waitress at the Golden Grill all confused. I interrupted a very intense conversation with my breakfast mates about ways to get more Latinos and Blacks involved in Englewood Public library activities, to point out to the waitress that I still wanted more coffee, but someone had already removed my cup. It wasn’t sitting on the table near my right hand, where I had last seen it.
“Why is this lady looking at me so strange,” I wondered to myself. And she was motionless, just standing there with the coffee pot in her right hand, kind of frozen almost. She asked me a couple of time what I meant, and then I wasn’t sure what to do. Suddenly I became afraid that maybe she was having a stroke and had lost her power of comprehension. Finally, the waitress pointed at the coffee cup sitting right in front of me – the one practically touching the front of my shirt – and she asked me gently, “Could you be talking about that coffee cup, maybe?”
Save the free internet hashtag #stfi
I couldn’t find a hashtag for “save the free internet” or “save the open internet” so I made one up: #stfi.
Take a look at
http://thewei.com/kimi/we-must-keep-the-internet-open/
http://thewei.com/kimi/fight-for-internet-freedom-and-the-open-web/
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Save the Internet, a Free Press initiative
epic.org
National Urban League supports the open internet
President Obama supports an open internet
Speed Matters (universal broadband support org)
Broadband Opportunity Coalition
Army Small Business Conference Aug. 2-3
The U.S. Department of the Army Office of Small Business Programs invites small business owners to the 2012 Army Small Business Conference on August 2-3, 2012 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC.
This affordably priced national conference is designed to provide attendees with “Access to Success.” Attendees will learn about options for certifying in the various designated small business categories, how doing business with the government works and will meet directly with federal government representatives and prime contractors looking to expand their base of available small business vendors. In FY 2011, The Department of the Army awarded $23.7 billion in small business contract awards:
Bald eagle symbolizes GOOD government
Friend and civil rights attorney Bennet D. Zurofsky wrote on Facebook today in response to this picture,
I saw this posted on Facebook this morning and found its irony overwhelming.
The bald eagle would likely be extinct right now if the government had not imposed strict environmental regulations against DDT and other poisons that were killing them off. The government also greatly increased the protection of bald eagles by declaring them an endangered species and by engaging in a wide variety of programs to both conserve and increase their population and habitat. If I were a bald eagle, therefore, I most certainly would trust the government.
Supreme Court gives unlimited political spending to corporations but not unions
A few years back, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling gave corporations permission to spend unlimited amounts of money, “to buy elections.” The corporations don’t need to obtain stockholder’s permission to spend corporate money on political campaigns. But the Supreme Court ruled on June 21 that unions must obtain members’ permission in order to spend union money on the same campaigns.
The Supreme Court’s ruling regarding corporate spending was based on the premise that United States citizens have the right to information from all sources under the 1st Amendment. If it was found right for corporations to be able to spend without limits to make sure their points of view are heard, why is the same right being denied to unions?
Is increasing police violence the consequence of a conflicted society?
I’ve had strong responses on Facebook to the photo I posted showing Rhode Island Police Officer Edward Krawetz kicking a handcuffed and seated, White woman in the head. Krawetz was convicted but served no time due to a suspended 10 year sentence.
Police violence against citizens is truly a problem for society, an issue we need to think about, discuss and interact with. One comment I read really caught my attention: in a democracy, police must remain under civil control. So I did a bit of searching on this topic and found a thought-provoking article examining the question of what democratic policing actually is. MIT Sociology professor Gary T. Marx writes:
Facebook: block invites from someone
I have an eclectic following on Facebook which includes people living in other countries who aren’t going to make it to my monthly Green Drinks or other events. Fortunately there is an easy way for friends to block future invitations from me. They won’t be blocking or un-friending ME – they just won’t be annoyed by getting invited to events they’re not going to attend.
Instructions
To block event invitations from specific friends without unfriending him/her just