Who's More Credible: Fox News Or Sponge Bob? You Decide
Liberal Viewer shows how Fox News edited clips of President Obama's press conference to make it appear he was evading questions.
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Monday, May 20, 2013
Left Wing Radio Stations
The Right controls the airwaves and controls public discourse in the country. Led by Clearchannel's 1,200 and some stations, radio is one, if not the prime vehicle by which Rush Limbaugh and the Lesser Republicans have been able to swamp the national consciousness with a one sided argument for conservatism. Practically everyone spends time in their car, where there's always a radio to listen to, and radio continues to be an important medium for the exchange of ideas. Unfortunately, Capitalism being what it is, and telecommunication deregulation being what it's been, the ideas getting exchanged right now come mainly from the Right.
Knowing this, perhaps, a guy named Paul Green started LeftWingRadioStations.com (now added to my blog list) where you can look up, according to where you are, and find yourself some Left Wing radio to support and enjoy. There's almost always at least one left leaning station in any larger market, but even places as small as Taos, NM are apt to have one.
The Left Wing Radio Stations site is one of those attractive, intelligently designed web sites that's easy and actually fun to navigate. It also includes links to some Leftist web based radio. I've found some interesting programs on web based radio that help pass the driving hours and keep me well informed at the same time. Many stations on the site, over the air and web based, make most of their programming downloadable as podcasts, so they can be gotten into an mp3 player somehow, either as a playlist or through iTunes itself if they are listed there, which many are, so you can listen to left wing radio even when you're not in range of a left wing radio station.
KABQ AM1350, which airs the Liberal lineup of Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz, Randi Rhoades, Norman Goldman, etc. every day right here in Albuquerque (and on Saturday airs the excellent and radically leftist Ring of Fire show with Mike Papantonio and Robert Kennedy Jr) is on the site. All the Pacifica stations, which I'm always promoting, are on the site. Many of those little gems of community stations you come across randomly out on the road sometimes are on the site.
These stations do need our support. They need it so they can survive, and so we can start to make a dent in the oversized arguing power the right has had for way too long now. Check out Left Wing Radio Stations and get started.
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The Right controls the airwaves and controls public discourse in the country. Led by Clearchannel's 1,200 and some stations, radio is one, if not the prime vehicle by which Rush Limbaugh and the Lesser Republicans have been able to swamp the national consciousness with a one sided argument for conservatism. Practically everyone spends time in their car, where there's always a radio to listen to, and radio continues to be an important medium for the exchange of ideas. Unfortunately, Capitalism being what it is, and telecommunication deregulation being what it's been, the ideas getting exchanged right now come mainly from the Right.
Knowing this, perhaps, a guy named Paul Green started LeftWingRadioStations.com (now added to my blog list) where you can look up, according to where you are, and find yourself some Left Wing radio to support and enjoy. There's almost always at least one left leaning station in any larger market, but even places as small as Taos, NM are apt to have one.
The Left Wing Radio Stations site is one of those attractive, intelligently designed web sites that's easy and actually fun to navigate. It also includes links to some Leftist web based radio. I've found some interesting programs on web based radio that help pass the driving hours and keep me well informed at the same time. Many stations on the site, over the air and web based, make most of their programming downloadable as podcasts, so they can be gotten into an mp3 player somehow, either as a playlist or through iTunes itself if they are listed there, which many are, so you can listen to left wing radio even when you're not in range of a left wing radio station.
KABQ AM1350, which airs the Liberal lineup of Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz, Randi Rhoades, Norman Goldman, etc. every day right here in Albuquerque (and on Saturday airs the excellent and radically leftist Ring of Fire show with Mike Papantonio and Robert Kennedy Jr) is on the site. All the Pacifica stations, which I'm always promoting, are on the site. Many of those little gems of community stations you come across randomly out on the road sometimes are on the site.
These stations do need our support. They need it so they can survive, and so we can start to make a dent in the oversized arguing power the right has had for way too long now. Check out Left Wing Radio Stations and get started.
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Sunday, May 19, 2013
More Perspective On Assata Shakur
More on Assata Shakur comes from Linn Washington Jr, Temple University Professor of Journalism and columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune and Black Agenda Report, in his weekly column in This Can't Be Happening, a website he runs with several other writers that I occasionally post articles from.
Washington writes about Shakur's trial for the alleged murder of a New Jersey state trooper, which I haven't gone into yet, where half the all-White jurors had ties to the state police, and in which the jury ignored an admission by state police that they had no evidence Shakur committed a murder, such as powder burns on her hands.
Shakur and two others had been stopped for riding in a car while Black. Shakur was shot in the back by state police while her hands were in the air. One of the other riders in the car was killed and one wounded, and one of the state troopers was killed. It's not known by whom. Shakur was taken to the hospital and charged with murder, and her trial and conviction have been widely condemned.
Washington points out that Shakur writes occasionally but has never advocated terrorism, which is why, the FBI says, they put her on their most wanted terrorist list. He writes,
"Supporters of Shakur contend her terrorist listing moves dangerously beyond relentless revenge rooted in the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO covert war to crush black civil rights and militant activists during the late 1960s and early 1970s (including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). A U.S. Senate investigating committee in 1975 blasted COINTELPRO's blatant attacks on constitutionally protected activities during an attempt by the FBI to sustain America's racist status quo.
Shakur supporters see that terror listing as another step in expanding the Terror War’s assault on domestic dissidents and erosions of civil liberties including the First Amendment right to criticize government. Supporters also see the listing as a weapon in right-wing efforts to blunt Obama Administration discussions about removing Cuba from the federal government’s list of nations allegedly involved in sponsoring terrorism."
Linn Washington Jr's column can be read here.
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More on Assata Shakur comes from Linn Washington Jr, Temple University Professor of Journalism and columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune and Black Agenda Report, in his weekly column in This Can't Be Happening, a website he runs with several other writers that I occasionally post articles from.
Washington writes about Shakur's trial for the alleged murder of a New Jersey state trooper, which I haven't gone into yet, where half the all-White jurors had ties to the state police, and in which the jury ignored an admission by state police that they had no evidence Shakur committed a murder, such as powder burns on her hands.
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| Assata Shakur after 1972 arrest and today. This Can't Be Happening graphic |
Washington points out that Shakur writes occasionally but has never advocated terrorism, which is why, the FBI says, they put her on their most wanted terrorist list. He writes,
"Supporters of Shakur contend her terrorist listing moves dangerously beyond relentless revenge rooted in the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO covert war to crush black civil rights and militant activists during the late 1960s and early 1970s (including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). A U.S. Senate investigating committee in 1975 blasted COINTELPRO's blatant attacks on constitutionally protected activities during an attempt by the FBI to sustain America's racist status quo.
Shakur supporters see that terror listing as another step in expanding the Terror War’s assault on domestic dissidents and erosions of civil liberties including the First Amendment right to criticize government. Supporters also see the listing as a weapon in right-wing efforts to blunt Obama Administration discussions about removing Cuba from the federal government’s list of nations allegedly involved in sponsoring terrorism."
Linn Washington Jr's column can be read here.
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She Who Struggles
Assata Shakur and Hip Hop
"I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government’s policy towards people of color." Assata Shakur
A few posts ago I wrote about the seeming incongruity of Assata Shakur being put on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list -- 30 years after the 1960s Black revolutionary escaped from prison and began living in exile in Cuba. (Assata means "she who struggles").
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| Grio graphic |
Tonight some more light was shed on things, for me anyway, when I came across a couple of articles that talk about Assata Shakur and Hip Hop. It seems she's been a topic of Hip Hop lyrics for a long time and is known to many Hip Hop followers.
Whenever I'd come across Assata Shakur's name it was in the context of her living in Cuba. I'd see her picture, read about her, read her articles, in publications I follow because I'm interested in the Cuban Revolution, the Cuban peoples' struggle to create an alternative to Capitalism in the face of every effort by the hostile empire to the north to prevent it from setting a good example for its docile and ignorant subjects.
Cultural critic Chuck 'Jigsaw" Creekmur, co-founder of AllHipHop.com, and James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University, both writing in the Grio, offer their takes on why Assata's name comes up in Hip Hop songs and why she strikes a cord with today's youth, and not so youth.
A lot's been written and said about Hip Hop -- about it's liberatory potential, it's subversive nature, its co-optation by the basically White-owned music industry -- and of course it's been demonized and hated and misunderstood and manifestly feared by basically conservative White America.
Creekmur and Peterson argue, essentially, that what Assata was about, Hip Hop artists and fans are still about. They talk about the system she fought against that still oppresses them, about how irregularities in her trial have always cast grave doubts as to her guilt, and about the fact that despite all the power and all reach of the empire, she got away.
I've re-produced both their articles below. Neither is overly long, and taken together with Margaret Kimberly's article, I think, make the picture about why the FBI fears Assata Shakur, more than ever, a bit more clear.
Hip-hop’s infatuation with Assata Shakur: It’s complicated
Opinion
It wasn’t our parents who introduced us to Assata Shakur. It was hip-hop. Chuck D of Public Enemy broke the thick, cold ice when he bellowed, “supporter of Chesimard!” in the group’s seminal song “Rebel Without A Pause.”
However, Assata Shakur, known to her haters by her married name, JoAnne Chesimard, lived a graphic tale that began well before the 1987 classic song by P.E. Shakur, 65, was accused of the 1973 murder of state trooper Werner Foerster during a traffic stop in New Jersey. A member of the Black Liberation Army, Shakur was convicted in 1977, even though her case was wrought with controversy (she has consistently denied killing Foerster and proclaimed her innocence). And then she famously escaped, and fled to Cuba. Chuck D name-checked her, and sparked a lot of brain cells in the youth who were consuming rap music at a time when her name was not ringing many bells.
After Chuck D came others in rap who acknowledged Shakur in their lyrics, like revolutionary rapper Paris, the jazzy Digable Planets, militant crew X-Clan, and Common, a more palatable purveyor of conscious rap. Assata’s name came up in 2011 when Common was invited to the White House to perform, as many on the Right took exception to his early lyrical content. They were also offended at his outright, unapologetic support for Shakur on “A Song for Assata,” who is now widely known only as a “convicted cop killer” as if injustice didn’t exist in America.
But hip-hop also embraces Assata for a reason deeper than any name-check.
Her godson, Tupac Shakur, was probably the biggest name ever in rap music. Many have fantasized that Pac is in Cuba right now, chillin’ with his step aunt. Although most people gravitate to the thug in Pac, he had revolutionary blood in his veins. He’s mother was a Black Panther and his stepfather Mutulu Shakur, also an activist, is considered a political prisoner by his supporters. Mutulu is in jail right now for helping his sister, Assata, in her escape from prison on November 2, 1979. These are the ones Tupac considered “real n***as.” We absorbed that in his songs as he name checked them.
The wormhole goes deeper.
The Rebel…With A Cause
However, Assata Shakur, known to her haters by her married name, JoAnne Chesimard, lived a graphic tale that began well before the 1987 classic song by P.E. Shakur, 65, was accused of the 1973 murder of state trooper Werner Foerster during a traffic stop in New Jersey. A member of the Black Liberation Army, Shakur was convicted in 1977, even though her case was wrought with controversy (she has consistently denied killing Foerster and proclaimed her innocence). And then she famously escaped, and fled to Cuba. Chuck D name-checked her, and sparked a lot of brain cells in the youth who were consuming rap music at a time when her name was not ringing many bells.
After Chuck D came others in rap who acknowledged Shakur in their lyrics, like revolutionary rapper Paris, the jazzy Digable Planets, militant crew X-Clan, and Common, a more palatable purveyor of conscious rap. Assata’s name came up in 2011 when Common was invited to the White House to perform, as many on the Right took exception to his early lyrical content. They were also offended at his outright, unapologetic support for Shakur on “A Song for Assata,” who is now widely known only as a “convicted cop killer” as if injustice didn’t exist in America.
But hip-hop also embraces Assata for a reason deeper than any name-check.
Her godson, Tupac Shakur, was probably the biggest name ever in rap music. Many have fantasized that Pac is in Cuba right now, chillin’ with his step aunt. Although most people gravitate to the thug in Pac, he had revolutionary blood in his veins. He’s mother was a Black Panther and his stepfather Mutulu Shakur, also an activist, is considered a political prisoner by his supporters. Mutulu is in jail right now for helping his sister, Assata, in her escape from prison on November 2, 1979. These are the ones Tupac considered “real n***as.” We absorbed that in his songs as he name checked them.
The wormhole goes deeper.
The Rebel…With A Cause
Shakur holds a major distinction that probably contributes to the ire of her detractors. Simply put, she got away. Davey D, a hip-hop activist and historian, says her supporters can relate to her success at bucking the system.
“Of course she was a rebel,” Davey says. “She’s been a rebel — not in some sort of nostalgic way — but in a real way that people can relate to.” And he says Shakur’s supporters in the world of hip-hop “don’t see her as some crazed cop killer, the way the popular narrative would have you believe. She was somebody who was about defending our community. She comes on the scene [as a] response to our community [being] attacked” by racist forces.
More than anything, Assata Shakur’s story feels to her supporters like she was at one with hip-hop’s sense of rebellion. At the core, hip-hop music has balked at convention in all its forms. The culture itself was bred out of a particularly dark period in the Bronx the late 70′s and early 80′s, when the young black and brown society that would eventually give birth to hip-hop culture felt marginalized and dismissed by the entire nation. Some in the community accused the government of overtly conspiring against young people of color with everything from crack cocaine to “Reaganomics.” Through it all, hip-hop was born, survived and, in some ways, escaped those conditions, something that feels familiar in Assata Shakur’s story.
Rosa Clemente, the fiery grassroots organizer, hip-hop activist and journalist, lets it be known exactly why she and others gravitate to Assata.
“Hip-hop culture inherently speaks truth to power and tries to act against power,” Clemente says. “Assata Shakur, through her life and her freedom, not only speaks against power, she escaped from the most powerful military empire in the world. That is why they want her [so badly]. She comes out of a time in history — the late 60′s, early 70′s — when this country was on the cusp of a revolution. The Black Panther Party was named the biggest internal security threat to the USA. The state used all its power through the COINTELPRO program to stop this.”
Rob “Biko” Baker, who helms the League of Young Voters, agrees, stating that urban youth are in a similar fight every day, albeit not as dramatic.
“Hip-hop is attracted to Assata Shakur because her story represents the oppression, pain and hopefulness of the hip-hop generation,” Baker says. “While her life’s work may anger some politicians, the harsh reality of racism and exclusion in the 60s and 70s forced many to adopt a more militant brand of protest politics. Those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s know that racism and exclusion continued and was reinforced by the war on drugs. Assata’s story shows the hip-hop generation that it is possible to survive.”
Hip-hop at a tipping point
Its a fact that people of color have been victimized in America in ways that continue to this day, from systemic racism to environmental racism to inequalities in nearly every facet of life. Every statistic imaginable supports this notion. Still, people forge ahead with conviction. Detractors may not agree, but hip-hop’s adoration of Assata Shakur is not blind. It’s complicated. It’s rooted in history: past, present, and and probably future. Assata is not O.J. Simpson. She too is complex to be bound by linear, elementary terms like “cop killer” and “domestic terrorist.”
Hip-hop has seen how mainstream groupthink helped reduced Tupac to a common thug. Hip-hop has also seen how police troll rap music websites and maintain dockets on artists, tracking them like future crooks. And we’ve seen hip-hop launch as the most revolutionary art form to originate on American soil, and with all that potential, turn into what today seems to be a tool to keep people brain dead — drugged-up students of a new game who go on to major in party and minor in bullsh*t.
In a 2000 interview with Christian Parenti, Assata Shakur spoke about the power and potential downfall of hip-hop.
“Hip-hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young people’s political and social consciousness,” she said. “But just as with any weapon, if you don’t know how to use it, if you don’t know where to point it, or what you’re using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters or brothers.”
Typically, America loves the outlaw (The Outlaw Josey Wales), the rogue cop (Dirty Harry) jailbreak prisoners (Escape from Alcatraz) … as long as it’s a white guy portrayed by the likes Clint Eastwood. Real outlaws, not so much.
So forget, for a moment, all of the political-social-conspiracy-activist talk about fighting the powers that be, runaway slaves and the like. In a quintessentially American way, some folks in hip-hop just appreciate the raw “gangsta” of a woman who didn’t back down, stood firm in her convictions, completely bucked the system, and lived to tell The Pope about it.
Why the Assata Shakur case still strikes a chord
Opinion
In “A Song for Assata,” rapper, Common asks “I wonder what would happen if that would’ve been me?” Common wonders aloud what readers of Assata Shakur’s gripping autobiography, Assata, must ask themselves as they are confronted with the miscarriages of justice at the core of Shakur’s life as a black revolutionary.
Published in 1987, the autobiography chronicles Shakur’s emergence as an activist at the center of America’s racial conflict. She ultimately affiliated with the Black Panther Party and the black liberation movement in the 1960s. Her case and her bouts with the criminal justice system recall all of the angst and murkiness within which the battles for black freedom were fought in the mid-20th century: brutal prison conditions, falsified evidence, conflicting statements, frenzied media panic, and violent racists posing as officers of the law.
In spite of these at times unlawful and regularly dehumanizing experiences, Assata Shakur has been living in exile with asylum in Cuba since 1984.
‘She Who Struggles’
Assata – whose name means “she who struggles,” was implicated in the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper on May 2 1973. Today marks 40 years since that day.
While little detail is available as to how Ms. Shakur was ferreted away to freedom from the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey in 1979, the “facts” of her case, or rather, the state’s case against her are shaky at best. By her supporters’ accounts they are institutionally designed to falsely prosecute and imprison her.
For more info on her case and details of her experiences go here: http://www.assatashakur.org.
As recently as 2005, the U.S. government issued a one million dollar bounty for information leading to her capture and/or extradition from Cuba. Her name, as well as her government name, Joanne Chesimard, has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since before most Americans had ever heard of Osama Bin Laden.
’20th Century Escaped Slave’
Assata refers to herself as “a 20th century escaped slave” and her experiences with the criminal justice system and the verve with which the U.S. government prosecuted and persecuted her suggest that this reference is not exaggerated in the slightest.
She has occasionally given interviews and or written from somewhere inside of Cuba, but it is unlikely that our government will ever be able to come to terms with its own role in the violent racial conflicts of its immediate past, and thus unlikely that Assata will ever be able to live freely in her country of origin – these United States.
Assata’s status, the government’s case against, her and the moment out which all of this emerged, are signal reminders to many of us that not so long ago, members of the Black Panther Party were considered the greatest threat to the United States government; that revolutionary activists like Assata Shakur, were considered this nation’s most feared terrorists.
We can only hope that as the fight against terror creeps through the beginnings of a new century, that this nation will fight to uphold the tenets of justice above and beyond its xenophobic and racialized history.
Chuck “Jigsaw” Creekmur is a father, son and the co-founder of AllHipHop.com. He’s a cultural critic, pundit and trailblazer that has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR), BET, TVOne, VH1, The E! Channel, MTV, The O’Reilly Factor, USA Today, The New York Times, New York’s Hot 97 FM and like a zillion other outlets. Follow him on Twitter at @chuckcreekmur.
James Braxton Peterson is the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University. He is also the founder of Hip Hop Scholars LLC, an association of hip-hop generation scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban and youth cultures. You can follow him on Twitter @DrJamesPeterson
(Note: The quote that begins this post is posted on Assata's web site and begins an open letter in which she discusses her arrest, trial and escape, in the context of the inherent racism in the US media and the US court system.)
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Saturday, May 18, 2013
America - Wounded By Permanent War
The intrepid Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and frequent guest on Leftist radio on matters of the courts, Bradley Manning and militarization, in his weekly Guardian column adds up the costs of the endless "War on Terror," that, although it went unnoticed this week amidst the media's obsession with a trio of presidential mini scandals, the Obama Administration informed congress this week will continue for "at least 10 to 20 years" on top of the 12 years it has been waged already. At least 10 to 20.
Ensuring this is the fact that the endless war has the backing of all the powerful institutions, Greenwald points out. Congress, the military-industrial complex, the corporate media. The only question anyone in congress is asking, including Republican and Democratic members, with the exception of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, is whether the president needs more authority to wage the war than he has now.
And so the world will keep getting more dangerous and hatred against the US will grow, as our government, instead of helping people help themselves, ravages their countries and kills their citizens, and as we publicly mock them via the media and films and the utterances of public officials. By making sure the war's victims remain out of the public eye, and that working class Blacks and Latinos, with few other economic alternatives available to them, are forced to fight it and the sons and daughters of the White Middle Class are not, public resistance to the war, as it's reflected in the media, at least, will remain minimal.
And the erosion that has taken place to our civil liberties in the name of the War on Terror will become permanent, and will likely get worse. Government will continue to wiretap our phone calls and read our emails. If we say or write anything that can be construed as supporting anyone our government has decided is a terrorist we can be charged with a serious crime. We'll continue living under the threat that at any moment we can be snatched off the street and sit in a prison cell somewhere, forever, without ever being charged with a crime or our case going before a judge, and with knowing that on the authority of the president, without any kind of review and no checks and balances whatsoever, we can be assassinated by a missile fired from an anonymous drone aircraft. We, American citizens, can.
Greenwald makes these two chilling points:
1. "Each year that passes, millions of young Americans come of age having spent their entire lives, literally, with these powers and this climate fixed in place: to them, there is nothing radical or aberrational about any of it. The post-9/11 era is all they have been trained to know. That is how a state of permanent war not only devastates its foreign targets but also degrades the population of the nation that prosecutes it."
2. "Though rarely visible, the costs are nonetheless gargantuan. Just in financial terms, as Americans are told they must sacrifice Social Security and Medicare benefits and place their children in a crumbling educational system, the Pentagon remains the world's largest employer and continues to militarily outspend the rest of the world by a significant margin. The mythology of the Reagan presidency is that he induced the collapse of the Soviet Union by luring it into unsustainable military spending and wars: should there come a point when we think about applying that lesson to ourselves?"
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The intrepid Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and frequent guest on Leftist radio on matters of the courts, Bradley Manning and militarization, in his weekly Guardian column adds up the costs of the endless "War on Terror," that, although it went unnoticed this week amidst the media's obsession with a trio of presidential mini scandals, the Obama Administration informed congress this week will continue for "at least 10 to 20 years" on top of the 12 years it has been waged already. At least 10 to 20.
Ensuring this is the fact that the endless war has the backing of all the powerful institutions, Greenwald points out. Congress, the military-industrial complex, the corporate media. The only question anyone in congress is asking, including Republican and Democratic members, with the exception of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, is whether the president needs more authority to wage the war than he has now.
And so the world will keep getting more dangerous and hatred against the US will grow, as our government, instead of helping people help themselves, ravages their countries and kills their citizens, and as we publicly mock them via the media and films and the utterances of public officials. By making sure the war's victims remain out of the public eye, and that working class Blacks and Latinos, with few other economic alternatives available to them, are forced to fight it and the sons and daughters of the White Middle Class are not, public resistance to the war, as it's reflected in the media, at least, will remain minimal.
And the erosion that has taken place to our civil liberties in the name of the War on Terror will become permanent, and will likely get worse. Government will continue to wiretap our phone calls and read our emails. If we say or write anything that can be construed as supporting anyone our government has decided is a terrorist we can be charged with a serious crime. We'll continue living under the threat that at any moment we can be snatched off the street and sit in a prison cell somewhere, forever, without ever being charged with a crime or our case going before a judge, and with knowing that on the authority of the president, without any kind of review and no checks and balances whatsoever, we can be assassinated by a missile fired from an anonymous drone aircraft. We, American citizens, can.
Greenwald makes these two chilling points:
1. "Each year that passes, millions of young Americans come of age having spent their entire lives, literally, with these powers and this climate fixed in place: to them, there is nothing radical or aberrational about any of it. The post-9/11 era is all they have been trained to know. That is how a state of permanent war not only devastates its foreign targets but also degrades the population of the nation that prosecutes it."
2. "Though rarely visible, the costs are nonetheless gargantuan. Just in financial terms, as Americans are told they must sacrifice Social Security and Medicare benefits and place their children in a crumbling educational system, the Pentagon remains the world's largest employer and continues to militarily outspend the rest of the world by a significant margin. The mythology of the Reagan presidency is that he induced the collapse of the Soviet Union by luring it into unsustainable military spending and wars: should there come a point when we think about applying that lesson to ourselves?"
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The Hummer As A Percentage
Personal income statistics can tick up or down, and each person's sense of their own well being can tick up or down, but charts like this leave little doubt that we are getting a smaller and smaller share of the wealth our labor creates.
The chart, by the way, comes from the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank. It's one of "10 Amazing Charts" found on the St Louis Fed's web site by Michael Snyder, who writes the Economic Collapse blog.
I've written about a widening gap in wealth between the Capitalist class and the rest of us, and a widening gap in income. But I've put it in terms of the widening gap in the totals, as in, the top 20 percent now owns 80 percent of the wealth, or gets 80 percent of the income, up from 35 percent in the 70s or whatever. This chart demonstrates that gap in a different way.
It all amounts to the same thing. The pie, regardless of its overall size, is being divided up less equitably all the time. We're getting less, they're getting more.
Meanwhile In America
There's a big flashy Hummer now, parked in one of the parking spaces here at the soon to be fashionable Tierra Pointe apartment complex on Albuquerque's west side. About a year ago there was a Hummer parked in one of the parking spaces, too. It disappeared after awhile, as this one will, I don't doubt. Whether or not the arrival of the Hummers coincides with the arrival of income tax returns, I don't know. Why they go away after awhile, I can only speculate
Rents here range from $519 for a studio apartment to $739 for a three bedroom. The payment on a $50,000 Hummer is probably in that range. You can also find a fixer-upper house in Albuquerque on a one-third acre lot for about $50,000, although the credit for that will be a little more difficult to arrange.
The thought of fixing up a dismal looking little house may never enter the constellation of thoughts and emotions and yearnings that drive the behavior of the typical resident here at the soon to be fashionable Tierra Pointe apartments. What enters into it are what your peers are talking about, and the commercials and billboards, and when someone pulls up close behind you in their flashy new pickup ruck and then blows by you if you don't accelerate to your vehicle's limit coming off the red light.
The big flashy Hummers attract attention, but for the most part, here at the soon to be fashionable Tierra Pointe apartment complex, you see little Hyundais and small Chevrolets, and single working women and single working men, and young families, the Hispanics who are making Bernalillo County into a stronghold of the Democratic Party.
You see some of the big flashy new pickup trucks that are advertised heavily on local TV, and you see some old pickup trucks, with their back ends always full of rolls of old carpeting and padding, that will be taken to the landfill tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.
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Wages as a percentage of GDP are hovering near an all-time record low. That means that American workers are bringing home a smaller share of the economic pie than ever before. (The Economic Collapse blog.)
Personal income statistics can tick up or down, and each person's sense of their own well being can tick up or down, but charts like this leave little doubt that we are getting a smaller and smaller share of the wealth our labor creates.
The chart, by the way, comes from the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank. It's one of "10 Amazing Charts" found on the St Louis Fed's web site by Michael Snyder, who writes the Economic Collapse blog.
I've written about a widening gap in wealth between the Capitalist class and the rest of us, and a widening gap in income. But I've put it in terms of the widening gap in the totals, as in, the top 20 percent now owns 80 percent of the wealth, or gets 80 percent of the income, up from 35 percent in the 70s or whatever. This chart demonstrates that gap in a different way.
It all amounts to the same thing. The pie, regardless of its overall size, is being divided up less equitably all the time. We're getting less, they're getting more.
Meanwhile In America
There's a big flashy Hummer now, parked in one of the parking spaces here at the soon to be fashionable Tierra Pointe apartment complex on Albuquerque's west side. About a year ago there was a Hummer parked in one of the parking spaces, too. It disappeared after awhile, as this one will, I don't doubt. Whether or not the arrival of the Hummers coincides with the arrival of income tax returns, I don't know. Why they go away after awhile, I can only speculate
Rents here range from $519 for a studio apartment to $739 for a three bedroom. The payment on a $50,000 Hummer is probably in that range. You can also find a fixer-upper house in Albuquerque on a one-third acre lot for about $50,000, although the credit for that will be a little more difficult to arrange.
The thought of fixing up a dismal looking little house may never enter the constellation of thoughts and emotions and yearnings that drive the behavior of the typical resident here at the soon to be fashionable Tierra Pointe apartments. What enters into it are what your peers are talking about, and the commercials and billboards, and when someone pulls up close behind you in their flashy new pickup ruck and then blows by you if you don't accelerate to your vehicle's limit coming off the red light.
The big flashy Hummers attract attention, but for the most part, here at the soon to be fashionable Tierra Pointe apartment complex, you see little Hyundais and small Chevrolets, and single working women and single working men, and young families, the Hispanics who are making Bernalillo County into a stronghold of the Democratic Party.
You see some of the big flashy new pickup trucks that are advertised heavily on local TV, and you see some old pickup trucks, with their back ends always full of rolls of old carpeting and padding, that will be taken to the landfill tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.
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Friday, May 17, 2013
Why Did You Veto The Minimum Wage Bill, Governor Martinez?
From OLÉ New Mexico (Organizers in the Land of Enchantment). Posted on Facebook by Faux Susana Martinez.
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From OLÉ New Mexico (Organizers in the Land of Enchantment). Posted on Facebook by Faux Susana Martinez.
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Monday, May 13, 2013
Assata Shakur
Assata Shakur isn't a household name, but when the FBI put her on its list of most wanted terrorists last week it made some headlines. The 65-year-old former Black Panther, birth name JoAnne Byron, has been living in exile in Cuba for 30 years, after escaping from prison in the US. Shakur was a black activist during the time when, led by the FBI, law enforcement in the US had declared war on black activists, and not just the Black Panthers, many of whom ended up murdered by police or the FBI, but up to and including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, whose murder remains unsolved in the minds of many people including members of his family.
In naming Shakur the first woman on the most wanted terrorist list, the FBI also doubled the bounty on her head to $2 million and put up big billboards and wanted posters about her in the US.
Assanta Shakur hasn't stopped criticizing US imperialism since she got to Cuba and she's a significant and well regarded figure, both symbolically and practically, in many Leftist circles. Still, the FBI's announcement caused shock and disbelief in the Leftist press. It didn't make sense. After all this time? With her living in Cuba? There were calls to stand up for her. Suggestions were made that it was part of a plan to try to silence Leftist criticism of the government.
But Margaret Kimberly, a black writer whose work appears in black owned publications that often criticize the president's policies, such as Black Agenda Report and The Black Commentator, has written an article arguing that there's a broader significance behind the FBI's move.
Kimberly first points out that under the Patriot Act, anyone who openly supports Shakur is now subject to arrest for "material support" of a terrorist, and that under laws and policies implemented since President Obama took office, they are also subject to indefinite detention and drone strike.
"Obama is making a point about black America and those few who still dare to speak out against their nation's domestic and international policy," Kimberly says.
"Of course," she ads, "the billboards aren't meant to capture Shakur but to send a not so subtle message about the state of black liberation. Simply put, there won't be any talk of black liberation. The Shakurs of the world who weren't imprisoned, killed off by Cointelpro or bought off, have to be destroyed once and for all and any memory of them must be disappeared as well."
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| Black Agenda Report graphic |
Assata Shakur isn't a household name, but when the FBI put her on its list of most wanted terrorists last week it made some headlines. The 65-year-old former Black Panther, birth name JoAnne Byron, has been living in exile in Cuba for 30 years, after escaping from prison in the US. Shakur was a black activist during the time when, led by the FBI, law enforcement in the US had declared war on black activists, and not just the Black Panthers, many of whom ended up murdered by police or the FBI, but up to and including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, whose murder remains unsolved in the minds of many people including members of his family.
In naming Shakur the first woman on the most wanted terrorist list, the FBI also doubled the bounty on her head to $2 million and put up big billboards and wanted posters about her in the US.
Assanta Shakur hasn't stopped criticizing US imperialism since she got to Cuba and she's a significant and well regarded figure, both symbolically and practically, in many Leftist circles. Still, the FBI's announcement caused shock and disbelief in the Leftist press. It didn't make sense. After all this time? With her living in Cuba? There were calls to stand up for her. Suggestions were made that it was part of a plan to try to silence Leftist criticism of the government.
But Margaret Kimberly, a black writer whose work appears in black owned publications that often criticize the president's policies, such as Black Agenda Report and The Black Commentator, has written an article arguing that there's a broader significance behind the FBI's move.
Kimberly first points out that under the Patriot Act, anyone who openly supports Shakur is now subject to arrest for "material support" of a terrorist, and that under laws and policies implemented since President Obama took office, they are also subject to indefinite detention and drone strike.
"Obama is making a point about black America and those few who still dare to speak out against their nation's domestic and international policy," Kimberly says.
"Of course," she ads, "the billboards aren't meant to capture Shakur but to send a not so subtle message about the state of black liberation. Simply put, there won't be any talk of black liberation. The Shakurs of the world who weren't imprisoned, killed off by Cointelpro or bought off, have to be destroyed once and for all and any memory of them must be disappeared as well."
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Sunday, May 12, 2013
Benghazi in 2016
Karl Rove's Crossroads America super pac has released an attack ad against Hillary Clinton about the attacks on a US State Department/CIA outpost in Benghazi, Libya in which four Americans were killed, that occurred while Clinton was Secretary of State.
The ad, and the fact of who is behind it, should make clear what's behind the numerous investigations into what would otherwise be a largely forgotten incident by Republican-controlled House committees that are underway or are about to be launched.
This about the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton, the most popular politician in America at the moment, is the overwhelming early favorite to become the next president -- see this listing of the latest state by state polls, in which Hillary leads the top Republican in all but a few small states where mules outnumber books. Even in Texas, where there's a town called Mule Shoe.
Republicans don't have anyone of any substance they can hope to put up against her, and ads like this are being run already, and the House hearings are being conducted, to "drive up" Hillary Clinton's negative ratings in the polls and, Republicans hope, curtail her fundraising ability and forestall what is gradually, here and there, more and more, becoming the forgone conclusion that Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
Karl Rove's Crossroads America super pac has released an attack ad against Hillary Clinton about the attacks on a US State Department/CIA outpost in Benghazi, Libya in which four Americans were killed, that occurred while Clinton was Secretary of State.
The ad, and the fact of who is behind it, should make clear what's behind the numerous investigations into what would otherwise be a largely forgotten incident by Republican-controlled House committees that are underway or are about to be launched.
This about the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton, the most popular politician in America at the moment, is the overwhelming early favorite to become the next president -- see this listing of the latest state by state polls, in which Hillary leads the top Republican in all but a few small states where mules outnumber books. Even in Texas, where there's a town called Mule Shoe.
Republicans don't have anyone of any substance they can hope to put up against her, and ads like this are being run already, and the House hearings are being conducted, to "drive up" Hillary Clinton's negative ratings in the polls and, Republicans hope, curtail her fundraising ability and forestall what is gradually, here and there, more and more, becoming the forgone conclusion that Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
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