kpete
kpete's Journal"The American dream" increasingly seen as cynical historical fiction.
Crumbling American DreamsBy ROBERT D. PUTNAM
My hometown — Port Clinton, Ohio, population 6,050 — was in the 1950s a passable embodiment of the American dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for the children of bankers and factory workers alike.
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...the story of Port Clinton over the last half-century — like the history of America over these decades — is not simply about the collapse of the working class but also about the birth of a new upper class. In the last two decades, just as the traditional economy of Port Clinton was collapsing, wealthy professionals from major cities in the Midwest have flocked to Port Clinton, building elaborate mansions in gated communities along Lake Erie and filling lagoons with their yachts. By 2011, the child poverty rate along the shore in upscale Catawba was only 1 percent, a fraction of the 51 percent rate only a few hundred yards inland. As the once thriving middle class disappeared, adjacent real estate listings in the Port Clinton News Herald advertised near-million-dollar mansions and dilapidated double-wides.
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The contrast with the egalitarian ethos and reality of the 1950s — the contrast between the upward mobility experienced by J and the bleak prospects of R — vividly captures Port Clinton’s transformation in the last half-century, much like that of the rest of the country. My research team has talked with dozens of R’s from Austin, Tex., to Duluth, Minn., and from Atlanta to Orange County, Calif.
The crumbling of the American dream is a purple problem, obscured by solely red or solely blue lenses. Its economic and cultural roots are entangled, a mixture of government, private sector, community and personal failings. But the deepest root is our radically shriveled sense of “we.” Everyone in my parents’ generation thought of J as one of “our kids,” but surprisingly few adults in Port Clinton today are even aware of R’s existence, and even fewer would likely think of her as “our kid.” Until we treat the millions of R’s across America as our own kids, we will pay a major economic price, and talk of the American dream will increasingly seem cynical historical fiction.
xlnt article (mho)
MORE:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/crumbling-american-dreams/
New Book: Romney's Chief Strategist "Walked Out Of Room & Threw Up" When He Saw Eastwood/Chair
For inside-baseball readers, there’s plenty to chew on. The tale of how a man worth more than $200 million let his campaign go dead in the summer because he could not match Obama’s $150 million in attack ads on Bain Capital, Romney’s former financial roost, is too good to summarize. Then there are the Monty Python moments. Balz informs us that when Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist, saw Clint Eastwood on live television at the Republican National Convention speaking off-script to an imaginary Obama in an empty chair, “he walked out of the room and threw up.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/collision-2012-obama-vs-romney-and-the-future-of-elections-in-america-by-dan-balz/2013/08/02/df66f74a-efe4-11e2-a1f9-ea873b7e0424_story_1.html
hmmmmmmmmmmm, interesting sentence in the story on AQ's terra threat
The official also said authorities were stunned that the group broke "operational security" - meaning they talked likely knowing it would be picked up by intercepts.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/08/senior-u-s-official-intercepted-al-qaeda-communications-indicate-planned-attack-big-strategically-significant/
cynical me, i know,
peace, kp
America’s suicide rate is on the rise, and Conservative economic policies are to blame.
The Corporate Right-Wing Agenda Is Driving Thousands of Americans to Attempt SuicideThe very same austerity policies that Republicans in Washington are constantly pushing on us are the same policies that are driving Americans to kill themselves.
The fact is, America’s suicide rate is on the rise, and Conservative economic policies are to blame.
....for years we've been seeing a trend that had begun years ago of hiring managers skeeving the unemployed, which is why you keep hearing of people who are still unemployed after four years or more (such as me). HR Directors and other hiring managers are already exacerbating and perpetuating a serious enough problem, which is insufficient or nonexistent job opportunities. When you hear about the Obama administration crowing about better-than-expected numbers from the BLS (such the annual and inevitable spurt in government sector jobs just before the tax deadline), it invariably fails to say that the unemployment figures simply do not count those who have been discouraged after one, two, three, four or more years of unemployment and have stopped looking for work.
MORE HERE:
http://www.welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-grand-old-party-and-grand-old.html
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In a study released in May, Professors David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu of Oxford University in England found that suicide rates in both the U.S. and U.K. increase when working class wages and wealth decline.
The study calculates, for example, that there were 4,750 “excess” suicides during the recession period in the U.S., compared with suicide rates before the recession.
Stuckler and Basu conclude their report by saying that, “what we’ve learned is that the real danger to public health is not recession per se, but austerity.”
That’s right. The very same austerity policies that Republicans in Washington are constantly pushing on us are the same policies that are driving Americans to kill themselves.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/corporate-right-wing-agenda-driving-thousands-americans-attempt-suicide?page=0%2C1&paging=off
Nothing new:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2263690.stm
Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles
Source: New York TImes
Other Agencies Clamor for Data N.S.A. Compiles
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: August 3, 2013 113 Comments
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency’s dominant role as the nation’s spy warehouse has spurred frequent tensions and turf fights with other federal intelligence agencies that want to use its surveillance tools for their own investigations, officials say.
Agencies working to curb drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement complain that their attempts to exploit the security agency’s vast resources have often been turned down because their own investigations are not considered a high enough priority, current and former government officials say.
Intelligence officials say they have been careful to limit the use of the security agency’s troves of data and eavesdropping spyware for fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans’ privacy rights.
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Smaller intelligence units within the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have sometimes been given access to the security agency’s surveillance tools for particular cases, intelligence officials say.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/other-agencies-clamor-for-data-nsa-compiles.html?hp&_r=1
Libertarian populism and the battle for the Perot vote
— @UnstableIsotope
Bernie Sanders: Walmart family’s ‘obscene’ wealth subsidized by taxpayers
“One of the reasons that the Walton family, the owners of Walmart, are so wealthy is that they receive huge subsidies from the taxpayers of this country,” he said. “When you pay, at Walmart, starvation wages, you don’t provide benefits to your workers, who picks up the difference? The answer is that many of the workers in Walmart end up getting Medicaid, they get food stamps, they get affordable housing paid for by the taxpayers of this country while the Walton family remains the wealthiest family in America.”“If that is not obscene, I don’t know what is,” Sanders concluded.
VIDEO & MORE
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/03/bernie-sanders-walmart-familys-obscene-wealth-subsidized-by-taxpayers/
For Those Of You Who Were Wondering About The NEW Terror Alert...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/03/1228394/-Animal-Nuz-160
Wisconsin DNR removes Facebook page amid national outcry over SWAT-style takedown of fawn
Wisconsin DNR removes Facebook page amid national outcry over SWAT-style takedown of fawn
Observers criticize use of taxpayer resources in heavy-handed raid
Kristian Knutsen on Saturday 08/03/2013 9:04 am
Wisconsin DNR removes Facebook page amid national outcry over SWAT-style takedown of fawn
Observers criticize use of taxpayer resources in heavy-handed raid
Public relations flacks are notorious for trying to bury embarrassing news in Friday evening press releases, but that time of day turns out to be a favored time for squelching public feedback as well. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, in the face of an online maelstrom of criticism over a SWAT-style raid on an animal shelter near Kenosha that ended with the killing of a fawn, shut down its Facebook page just as the weekend was starting.
>More
http://www.isthmus.com/daily/article.php?article=40570&sid=cdd7ef4b1bb7e31a610440d53c669fc5
http://www.wisn.com/news/armed-agents-raid-animal-shelter-for-baby-deer/-/9373668/21272108/-/item/0/-/13d8x2mz/-/index.html
US Senate IP Caught Defacing Edward Snowden's Wikipedia Entry
SAT AUG 03, 2013 AT 09:56 AM PDT
US Senate IP Caught Defacing Edward Snowden's Wikipedia Entry
byaigeantaFollowforVoices on the Square
Republished from Voices on the Square by permission because I wrote it.
Usually the only wiki we associate with Edward Snowden is WikiLeaks. However, in a hilarious turn of events, an IP address linked to the United States Senate was caught defacing Edward Snowden's Wikipedia article last evening. The "less than neutral" edit was to change the lead sentence from this:
to this:
When this was discovered by Wikipedia staffers, it was quickly edited back, but the fact that a United States Senate staffer has the time to deface Wikipedia entries does not bode well for our democracy. Get back to work, Government, and stop spying on us when you should be doing your real jobs.
More:
http://www.voicesonthesquare.com/articles/2013/08/03/us-senate-ip-caught-defacing-edward-snowdens-wikipedia-entry
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/03/1228659/-US-Senate-IP-Caught-Defacing-Edward-Snowden-s-Wikipedia-Entry
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