Celebrity Worship Shouldn't Set Price of Public Education
The dean of the University of California Irvine Law School has written an impassioned plea to justify super-sized salaries for ivory tower celebrities. Public university education will no longer be...
View ArticleAre You Paying Your Employers to Produce Their Profits? The "Wage Slave"...
After my last temp job ended two years ago, a friend offered me an under the table job: manage and deliver the used books he sold through Amazon.com in exchange for a percentage of the small profits....
View ArticleThe Beggary of the American People
The coverage of State worker protests in Wisconsin evoke (I'm sure deliberately) the popular uprising of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran. It's heartening to see the media recognize regular...
View ArticleTax and Build
Pointing out that voters only oppose spending in the abstract is not enough. Progressives of good will can't haul out the "what do you want to cut" line every time Conservatives slap us with the...
View ArticleThe Alternative to Cutting Entitlements: FUND ENTITLEMENTS
The Republican war on the disadvantaged hinges on the assumption that Entitlements are bad. Their rabid effort to dismantle Entitlements is exploits another hidden discriminatory assumption:...
View ArticleThe Federal Budget is Like a Family Budget
For me, the most demoralizing aspect of the debt deal was when Obama buckled under the weight of the Tea Party family budget metaphor. Why do we need to give in to hyper-Right ideology of "all cuts,...
View ArticleThe Bible Supports Build and Prosper!
While commenting on eXtina's diary about wealthy people who support raising taxes, I commented that there are some Biblical references that could be rallied to the cause. Since Christianity, as well...
View ArticlePersons of Interest
I have to admit I haven't been able to pick a side in the veil debate. Do veils symbolize and thus perpetuate the oppression of women? Are veils a beachhead in the onslaught against the secular State?...
View ArticleJobs: Questioning the System
Republicans often bring moral hazard into the jobs debate. Don't extend unemployment insurance, or people won't bother to look for work. Don't offer attractive public employment to compete with the...
View ArticleThere's a Ponzi Scheme, but It Isn't Social Security
A couple of days ago I read a fear-mongering article about Social Security was a ponzi scheme. The reasoning was the first generation did not pay into it. Even though we've already paid for that...
View ArticleEducation: We're Having the Wrong Debate
For the last decade both academia and the general public have been gnashing their collective teeth over whether higher education is worth the skyrocketing price and how to pay for it. In no other...
View ArticleThe Honest Deal: How I Would Solve Everything
Today I thought about what I would do if I were President for a day. For arguments sake, I also pretended that I was Congress and the Supreme Court and Governor/Legislature for all 50 States for a...
View ArticleBreak Our Chains: Eliminate Temp Agencies
From time to time I try to change up my diaries from mere complaining to proposing constructive changes that could better all our lives. It has been two years since Rousseau heralded the enlightenment...
View ArticleMajor Disincentive to Get Off Welfare (California)
The cornerstone of progressive politics is social justice and social uplift. Thus, I'm reluctant to point out any problems with General Assistance (i.e., Welfare) for fear it would become an excuse to...
View ArticleAnother California Welfare Diary: I'm Confused
For anyone interested in my adventures with Social Services, I trekked (actually bussed) to Oakland again on Monday. That's another $4.20 in bus money I can't afford. I still haven't made contact with...
View ArticleWells Fargo would rather See Poor People Mugged than Allow Them to Deposit to...
Unbelievable. I used to think that the war of Big Banks on the underclass was a metaphor for political struggle. Today I found it was literal. If the only thing you have in the world is a few dollars...
View ArticleThe State's Tacit Encouragement of Prostitution and Street Begging: A...
My last welfare diary brought about a lot of Tea Party astroturf, Ayn Randist propaganda, and outright hate-mongering. Indeed, I'm a Conservative Ideologue's worst nightmare. I have the writing skills...
View ArticleWhy Welfare-to-Work Fails
There is a fundamental truth that the right-wing punditocracy will go to any length to deny: that people on welfare want a different life. After all, the shiftless poor are the necessary foils for...
View ArticleReligion, Science, and Human Dignity (Spoiler Alert!)
Anyone who has read my profile knows that I created this account while working for Berkeley author Robert ("Bob") Fuller, and originally I blogged at his web site and cross-posted here. Currently, Bob...
View ArticleRebuilding Civilization
As the panicking plutocracy veers from criminalization to genocide of the poor, reality seems to be coming closer to any number of elite conspiracy science fiction plots. Yet if the Apocalypse and/or...
View Article"Fat Smokers Droning On and On About Their Shitty Health Care"
When Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, I voted for Obama because he was pushing hard to expand health care. This was a tough call for me to make....
View ArticleWelfare Recipient Secret: Amazing Super Powers!
A few months ago I tumbled, like Alice, into the rabbit hole of welfare. I continued to chronicle my misadventures in lack of information, rent payment snafus, pressure to beg and resort to...
View ArticleGenocide of the Poor
Mitt Romney is trying to kill me. He might as well have a sniper rifle cross-hairs fixed on the back of my head. Romney is willing to slaughter people just to score points with the few...
View ArticleThe Legacy of Bullying
The anti-bullying movement has gone mainstream, gone high tech, gone political, and reached the level of national policy. It's possible that anti-bullying campaigns have garnered more consensus, and...
View ArticleForget Welfare Queens: Paul Ryan is the Man Who Would be SCAMMER KING
Who says Romney doesn't have a vision for America? His choice of Paul Ryan, as the Next President of the United States a running mate and POTUS inheritor, shows a clear vision - or perhaps the it's...
View ArticleThe Jobs Mismatch Lie
The Great Jobs Mismatch is an urban legend that just won't die, no matter how many times it's soundly refuted. The Great Jobs Mismatch is a lie, and it's a lie that needs to be dealt with at the...
View ArticleThere are Plenty of Ideas to Fix Unemployment: The Problem is Nothing Gets Done
HuffPo is now cashing in on the job crisis: there is now a whole section devoted to airing ideas on how to put people back to work: GOT AN IDEA TO SPARK JOB CREATION? We're looking for blog posts...
View ArticleAkin, Ryan, Rand: Rape as Male Aspiration
Tonight Rachel Maddow hammered on the home truth: Todd Akin's views about "legitimate rape", which amount to saying that there's a lot of crafty women out there "crying rape" just to get men in...
View ArticleAkin/Ryan: Baby as Scarlet Letter
Yesterday I had an epiphany about the Republican obsession with rape as a "false claim": cries of rape interfere with forcing women to have sex as a masculinity rite of passage - ala The Fountainhead....
View ArticleWelfare Peon to Planet Romney: Fact Check This!
Why am I not surprised that Romney just pulls "facts" out of his asshat regarding the relationship of welfare to work. Romney is not trying to redefine welfare. He's trying to redefine work...as...
View ArticleEmpowering the Job Seeker: "It Would Be My Honor, Commander"
At the end of Star Trek (2009), young Spock asks to be considered for the position of First Officer on The Enterprise. Young Captain Kirk graciously replies, "It would be my honor, Commander." The...
View ArticleConfront the GOP's Big Lie About Welfare Head On: Demand Jobs
The president’s decision to [allow State welfare programs to waive work requirements]...says once again we’re going to allow people to escape the work requirements. - Mitt "Welfare Lie" Romney The...
View ArticleDid the GOP Commit Treason?
Like most people who pursued an advanced education, I tend to recoil from hyperbole, demagoguery, and extreme wackiness. However, since reality has reached extremes of desperation for me, and a lot of...
View ArticleWelfare Peon Goes to the Mayor (Almost)
Today, after 20 years of living in Berkeley, I went to the Mayor's office for the very first time. The results were a pleasant surprise.
View ArticleContinuity in Health Care: It's About Infrastructure not Entitlement
I've said that on the campaign trail, I think, every single day. Obamacare must be repealed—in its entirety. It's bad policy, it's bad law, and frankly, a $2 trillion entitlement we don't want and we...
View ArticleIt's Groundhog Day - and No One Got the Memo
When I was studying history in graduate school, Francis Fukuyama famously declared that wrapping up the Cold War meant "the end of history". This pronouncement seemed to apply quite literally to...
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Romney is Acting Like a CEO: And That's WHY He Doesn't Have the Character of...
When Romney was being assailed for promulgating lies about welfare in his ad campaigns, he did not think twice about misleading the American people because he considered the ads effective. When the...
View ArticleThis is What Needs to Happen to Get Race Out of the Welfare Debate
If anything, this survey on the attitudes of white working class voters, under-estimates the level of race-based resentment surrounding welfare. Decades of social pressures and educational campaigns...
View ArticleLies, Damned Lies, and Political Math for the Million
Over the last few weeks any inhibitions Romney had about lying his way to the Oval Office completely vanished. The sheer shamelessness, cynicism, and outright psychopathy driving these lies are...
View ArticleLet's Take Caring Out of the Equation
Romney seems to have no qualms about lying when it "works", so it's hard to tell when he just doesn't know what he's talking about. For instance, it's pretty hard to believe Romney thinks that...
View ArticleGOP Propaganda for the Poor: Is Dish TV Discount a Strategy?
Since I can't pay my part of the TV bill right now, my housemate switched to the cheapest value-priced Dish TV package, the "Smart Pack". I rarely watch TV, so I didn't take a close look at the...
View ArticleWelfare Diary: Torture on U.S. Soil
The torture I refer to is both mental and physical, and both were cranked up about a dozen notches today. Let me start by saying it's not easy for me to talk about the amount of physical pain I'm in....
View ArticleA Radical New Idea to Get Americans Back to Work
Today I had an idea about how to get more people employed faster. I haven't seen this idea before, so I'm going to dare to call it new and my own idea: econowonks who know better can correct me in the...
View ArticleIs It Legal to Limit Disability Accommodation to Those with Family and Friends?
I spent the last couple of weeks trying untangle yet another welfare problem from hell (missing paperwork - I will tell that story later), and this involved going to the Social Services office and...
View ArticleRomney/Ryan Confuse Charity and Patronage: Beachhead of the Alpha Male...
During yesterday's VP debate, Paul Ryan offered anecdotal evidence that Mitt Romney "cares" about the 47% of the American public that he perceives as moochers: ...let me tell you about the Mitt Romney...
View ArticleWelfare, Health Care, and the Bystander Effect
I first read about the Bystander Effect in the popular Sunday newspaper supplement Parade Magazine. Over the last 40 years there has been widespread research on this social phenomena and abundant...
View ArticleBerkeley, You're Doing it Wrong (Measure S)
Measure S - a law that would fine people for sitting down on sidewalks - reveals Berkeley, CA, at it's worse: a city that supports social justice, progressive ideals, and the dignity of human beings...
View ArticleThe Lie Told By Measure S Proponents
Kossacks usually think of lying to get votes as characteristic of GOP strategy. However, the case of Measure S, has brought out the kneejerk GOP reflexes behind the tolerant, socially progressive...
View ArticleIt's Time for the Grown Up to Come: Puerile GOP Skips Out on Debt to Society
Ann Romney has frequently posited her husband as "the grown up" who will take charge of an unruly and disobedient nation.Today, as I was reading through various campaign literature as I stood in a...
View ArticleMeasure S, Panhandlers, and the Struggle for Autonomy
Recently my Welfare diaries have shaded into opposition to Berkeley's Measure S, and the connection between the two issues may not be clear. Kos himself wants to reduce the "obnoxious" people and...
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