November 6, 2013

The Chris Christie Rickshaw Co... (We're gonna need bigger wheels"

November 6, 2013

My town makes history (and not in a good way ) $2.36 million in bribes

http://blog.pe.com/court-docket/2013/11/05/moreno-valley-ex-councilman-pleads-guilty-to-accepting-2-3-million-bribe/

MORENO VALLEY: Ex-Councilman pleads guilty to accepting $2.3 million bribe
November 5, 2013 by John Asbury

snip

Moreno Valley City Councilman Marcelo Co agreed to plead guilty Tuesday, Nov. 5, to offering $2.36 million in bribes to an undercover FBI agent posing as a real estate developer, in what officials called the largest bribe by an undercover agent in history. As part of his payoff, Co vowed to line the pockets of other councilmembers to secure a voting majority and inflate the value of a 38-acre parcel to more than $5 million that would be voted on by the council, officials said.

During the undercover meeting, Co vowed to vote in favor of any land use and development proposals by the fictional developer, officials said. In return, officials said the land deal would be approved by the council for $3 million, while Co would keep the additional $2.36 million as a cash bribe. U.S. attorney’s officials believe the proposal never came up for a vote by the council.

The bribe was caught on video — made with piles of cash visible in a public place, officials said.

Co is also accused of taking more than $100,000 in unreported income for his private business.

snip

November 5, 2013

"possible plagiarism"times a-LOT.. at least 8 (you can check for yourself)

http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/

I just copy-pasted a random section of this article he "wrote"

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/29/opinion/rand-paul-syria

and had 8 quick hits...

November 1, 2013

Oct. 31, 1941: Mount Rushmore carving finished

By Kelly O'Mara 8 hours ago

LINK


Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln, use a tramway during Mount Rushmore carving (Photo: Charles D’Emery, courtesy …
On Halloween of 1941, carving on South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore was declared complete. The monument, which features the heads of Presidents Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt and Jefferson, was originally intended to show full-body representations of the four presidents. But time and money constraints limited sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who had previously carved the face of Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Construction, using dynamite and involving more than 400 workers, began on Oct. 4, 1927. Washington’s was the first face finished — dedicated on July 4, 1934 — followed by Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937 and Roosevelt in 1939. However, the mountain monument wasn’t yet complete.

Borglum had planned to include an 80-by-100-foot inscription, but weaknesses in the granite forced him to relocate some of the heads and revise the plan.

snip

October 30, 2013

Another feature of ACA that is not talked about much.

Before ACA:

Let's say you have insurance with a job, and you become seriously ill. Sooner or later you WILL lose that job, and with it, the insurance. After that happens you have the "option" of COBRA, but without income, it's almost impossible to pay for, so you end up uninsured and a charity-case at the worst possible time...and it may cost you your life...it surely will cost you your credit rating if you cannot afford to pay the bills for your care.

With ACA, there are emergency/special case adjustments available, and with a substantial loss of income, you would probably be put into Medicaid with NO charge.

Before the expanded medicaid with ACA, your family income may have disqualified you, but since they upped the ante, so to speak, many more people will qualify...and not suffer a loss of coverage at the time they need it most

October 28, 2013

New GOP word.. Taboggle ..

Right wing hack (Noelle Nikpour) on MSNBC declares Benghazi a HUGE Taboggle...and vows to hammer Hillary relentlessly for the next 3 years about it..

I'm sure she meant debacle...but....

October 24, 2013

Every cockamamie GOP voting supression scheme has one thing in common

Passports trump other IDs.
A passport is valid for many years, and your current street address is not all that important, because the US government does not expect you to notify them for a new passport every time you move . It's a GIVEN, that you are a citizen because they issued you a passport.

Democratic leadership should launch Operation Passport, ASAP, and encourage whatever Sugar Daddies there are on our side, to pony up some funding so people can start getting them. This would be money well spent, and could actually cause the GOP to stop all their nonsensical voting rules changes. Imagine if MOST democratic voters started showing up with a passport. As the pre-Boomers "leave the building", MOST people here will have been born in a hospital, and will have records available to them. (I know there is always the random case of a person here or there who cannot get their documents)

The beauty of having a passport is that when it does expire, you do not need to refile all the documents. When we got our most recent ones, they were good for 15 years .


I KNOW they cost money, but if people can spend millions of dollars on ads to get people to vote, it should also be possible for those voters to actually VOTE...and for it to count.

MOST people have valid ID, but for the woman-issue in Texas (names) and for other issues in the Jim Crow areas (skin color), a passport would nullify the GOP shenanigans


State-issued IDs expire every few years. College IDs are being excluded, .. A passport seems to be the best option. It could also be something that could be legislated (if given a chance to pass it ). With the patchwork laws from state to state, and the fact they they are always being tweaked just in time for an election, this seems to solve the problem. It's valid in every state, and voter purges would be more difficult also, if people show up with a passport proving they are citizens, and eligible to vote.

Instead of getting your teens video stuff for Xmas/birthday/graduation, get them a passport before they go off to college, or out on their own.

October 18, 2013

How the Fast Food Industry Destroyed "Home Ec" to Hook Americans on Processed Crap

http://www.alternet.org/how-fast-food-industry-destroyed-home-ec-hook-americans-processed-crap

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

How the Fast Food Industry Destroyed "Home Ec" to Hook Americans on Processed Crap
October 16, 2013 |



The following piece first appeared on Mother Jones. [3]For more great content from Mother Jones Magazine, click here to subscribe. [4]

I was a rotten high school student, a shirker and smart-ass of the first rank. I even found myself purged from a typing class for bad behavior—an event I regret to this precise moment, since touch-typing is obviously a convenient skill for someone in my profession. Afterward, I had to choose another "elective." Naturally, I seized upon home economics—in which, I hoped, I'd spend my time amusing girls with wisecracks and whipping up desserts from boxed mixes. If memory serves, that's exactly how it played out—especially the bit about the just-add-water confections. Mmmm, instant cake. In other words, I retained just as much from my home ec class as I did from my failed stint as a student of the keyboard: which is to say, nothing. Yet Ruth Graham's recent Boston Globe essay "Bring back home ec! The case for a revival of the most retro class in school" [5]strikes me as spot on. Graham isn't talking about the home ec of my misspent '80s youth, nor that of quaint stereotypes featuring "visions of future homemakers quietly whisking white sauce or stitching rickrack onto an apron."

She means a revitalized, contemporary home economics for all genders, one capable of at least exposing youth to basic skills that so many adults (i.e., their parents) lack: "to shop intelligently, cook healthily, [and] manage money." And I think such a reimagined home ec should move from the shadowy margins it now occupies—the field has been rebranded as "Family and Consumer Science," Graham reports—and become mandatory for all high school kids, and—why not?—even elementary school ones.

snip

The convenience food industry that's so powerful and entrenched today was just taking root in the 1950s. And as it began to aggressively market its products to a growing US middle class, it "faced one real obstacle," Moss writes: the "army of school teachers and federal outreach workers who insisted on promoting home-cooked meals, prepared the old fashioned way." Home ec teachers explicitly battled against the industry's claims of convenience, Moss shows. In 1957, he writes, the American Home Economics Association conducted a demo pitting a commercial cake mix against a homemade batter, Moss reports. "As reported in the association's journal, the homemade cake not only cost less and tasted better, it took only five more minutes to prepare, cook, and serve." Plus the batter could be made in advance and stored, "for quick parceling out when a cake was needed." Home-ec teachers also schooled their charges in frugal shopping, teaching them to "avoid buying things they didn't need."

snip

October 15, 2013

Occupy storms closed memorial, rips fences down..marches to WH

and tosses them at the White House...demands that Obama add back funding for poor kids..


Oh Wait.. That never happened

BUT

Imagine long lines of police with pepper spray and batons if it HAD..


Republican legislators & provocateurs KNOW they are always safe and guaranteed media if they hide behind misguided vets of their party..

Dem legislators would be too cowed to show up if Occupy showed up to protest.. Many of our "leaders" would congratulate the police for arresting them

October 12, 2013

In any discussion about poverty, food stamps are always front & center, BUT

The real issues are:

housing and wages

Take this example:

$10hr for a 30 hr week (before taxes& wh) comes out to $300 a week (most low wage workers cannot even GET 30 hrs a week)

In MOST places in the US, a "decent" apartment probably costs $500 (minimum) per month..

That comes out to 42% of GROSS income

If a senator makes $175k a year that 42% comes to $6125.00 per month.. I wonder how many of them pay that much rent/mortgage out of their own pockets..

Some of the teapartiers sleep in their offices & shower at the congressional gym because they say rents are too high for them..

If you have to spend 42% of your GROSS income, and you still have to pay for transportation, child care, medical care, utilities and all the other necessities of life, you WILL come up short in the food department.

Your other expenses, while not necessarily "fixed", are pretty inflexible..and the ONLY place in a budget that has some wiggle room, is food ..

Poor people will always be with us as long as we (as a society) limit their access to upward mobility, so we have 4 choices:

pay them enough to live on
subsidize their housing so they can afford to pay rent
give them food or money to buy food
kill them