A thread for Democrats Only
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What if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? What if the problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re lazy and impulsive and irresponsible and have no family values – or that they lack the skills and smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy? What if the problem is that poverty is profitable? These are the questions at the heart of Evicted, Matthew Desmond’s extraordinary ethnographic study of tenants in low-income housing in the deindustrialized middle-sized city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
You might not think that there is a lot of money to be extracted from a dilapidated trailer park or a black neighborhood of “sagging duplexes, fading murals, 24-hour daycares”. But you would be wrong. Tobin Charney makes $400,000 a year out of his 131 trailers, some of which are little better than hovels. Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher who is one of the only black female landlords in the city, makes enough in rents on her numerous properties – some presentable, others squalid – to holiday in Jamaica and attend conferences on real estate.
More at www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/07/evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-th
e-american-city-matthew-desmond-review
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Nancy not just age or dementia, sounds trashed!
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“On the Clock: What Low-Wage Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane” is the first nonfiction book that ever gave me a nightmare.
www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/books/article/On-the-Clock-is-a
-horrifying-look-at-14188366.php
Something about it was triggering, and I woke up after reading it in a cold sweat convinced I had just been fired from a warehouse job for taking a break one minute over the allotted time while I was desperately trying to save money for a surgery. It was the classic “I have a test and didn’t study” dream for an adult in late-stage capitalism.
“A bunch of people have told me that, actually,” author Emily Guendelsberger says. “Especially the Convergys chapter. They told me it gave them anxiety dreams. Good. I did my job.”
Guendelsberger is a journalist who found herself out of work after her newspaper folded. She decided to spend a year investigating some of the biggest low-wage-employment options in America, including working for Amazon during the holiday season, fielding customer-service calls at Convergys for AT&T and the old standby, McDonalds.
It’s a book that could have come across as terribly elitist, as if Guendelsberger were an anthropologist studying the lower classes like Jane Goodall studied the chimps.
What makes “On the Clock” work is how careful she is to never fall into that mindset. In fact, she goes out of her way to highlight those who have contributed to the grueling plight of the wage worker and their lack of empathy or basic consideration toward workers. Titans such as Ray Kroc and Henry Ford get mentioned, but it’s a little-remembered man named Frederick Taylor who truly started the ball rolling in the 19th century. Taylor began using a stopwatch and promises of bonuses to convince ironworkers they were capable of working much harder, while also somehow paying them less to do it.
His techniques have been expanded into the modern workplace in frightening ways. Guendelsberger describes the omnipresent cataloguing of every movement from her Amazon scanner, how any deviation from the expected schedule is blared in forms of countdowns and loss of points. She describes the red glare of counters on her customer-service screens as badly integrated systems boot up and she is expected to sell rather than aid, and she asks people to listen at our next fast-food trip to the sheer number of alarms going off, goading the employees to move Move MOVE.
“It’s been interesting to see the disparity in the reactions between people who haven’t worked jobs like this in the last 10 years or so and people who have,” Guendelsberger says. “That is what I was trying to accomplish. To build a bridge. They weren’t aware. It’s people in power from good families with good jobs who tend to have the most power in politics. When you’re working jobs like this, oftentimes you can’t even take a Tuesday off to vote.”
More at www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/books/article/On-the-Clock-is-a
-horrifying-look-at-14188366.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“On the Clock: What Low-Wage Did to Me and How it Drives America Insane” is the first nonfiction book that ever gave me a nightmare.
www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/books/article/On-the-Clock-is-a
-horrifying-look-at-14188366.php
Something about it was triggering, and I woke up after reading it in a cold sweat convinced I had just been fired from a warehouse job for taking a break one minute over the allotted time while I was desperately trying to save money for a surgery. It was the classic “I have a test and didn’t study” dream for an adult in late-stage capitalism.
“A bunch of people have told me that, actually,” author Emily Guendelsberger says. “Especially the Convergys chapter. They told me it gave them anxiety dreams. Good. I did my job.”
Guendelsberger is a journalist who found herself out of work after her newspaper folded. She decided to spend a year investigating some of the biggest low-wage-employment options in America, including working for Amazon during the holiday season, fielding customer-service calls at Convergys for AT&T and the old standby, McDonalds.
It’s a book that could have come across as terribly elitist, as if Guendelsberger were an anthropologist studying the lower classes like Jane Goodall studied the chimps.
What makes “On the Clock” work is how careful she is to never fall into that mindset. In fact, she goes out of her way to highlight those who have contributed to the grueling plight of the wage worker and their lack of empathy or basic consideration toward workers. Titans such as Ray Kroc and Henry Ford get mentioned, but it’s a little-remembered man named Frederick Taylor who truly started the ball rolling in the 19th century. Taylor began using a stopwatch and promises of bonuses to convince ironworkers they were capable of working much harder, while also somehow paying them less to do it.
His techniques have been expanded into the modern workplace in frightening ways. Guendelsberger describes the omnipresent cataloguing of every movement from her Amazon scanner, how any deviation from the expected schedule is blared in forms of countdowns and loss of points. She describes the red glare of counters on her customer-service screens as badly integrated systems boot up and she is expected to sell rather than aid, and she asks people to listen at our next fast-food trip to the sheer number of alarms going off, goading the employees to move Move MOVE.
“It’s been interesting to see the disparity in the reactions between people who haven’t worked jobs like this in the last 10 years or so and people who have,” Guendelsberger says. “That is what I was trying to accomplish. To build a bridge. They weren’t aware. It’s people in power from good families with good jobs who tend to have the most power in politics. When you’re working jobs like this, oftentimes you can’t even take a Tuesday off to vote.”
More at www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/books/article/On-the-Clock-is-a
-horrifying-look-at-14188366.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Oh good. Second read a book.
Does that mean I can expect you to stop giving me shitty comments about my current work situation when you've lost an argument then?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:No. My advice to you is to kill any boss who fucks you over, steal his money, and don't get caught. You'd be making the world a better place. The author Emily Guendelsberger was earning money and hoping she made the world better by writing about it, but she would have actual done far more good for the world by murdering her bosses. It's kind of like a slave uprising: if you don't kill the slave owner, the slaves will end back in slavery. See the American Civil War. That problem of slavery was solved with cold steel and hot lead fired at slave owners, not by writing books or talking about the hardships of slavery. Slave owners knew they had a good thing for themselves back then and bad bosses know they have a good thing for themselves now and neither bosses nor slave owners will change unless violently forced.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh good. Second read a book.
Does that mean I can expect you to stop giving me shitty comments about my current work situation when you've lost an argument then?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:No. My advice to you is to kill any boss who fucks you over, steal his money, and don't get caught. You'd be making the world a better place. The author Emily Guendelsberger was earning money and hoping she made the world better by writing about it, but she would have actual done far more good for the world by murdering her bosses. It's kind of like a slave uprising: if you don't kill the slave owner, the slaves will end back in slavery. See the American Civil War. That problem of slavery was solved with cold steel and hot lead fired at slave owners, not by writing books or talking about the hardships of slavery. Slave owners knew they had a good thing for themselves back then and bad bosses know they have a good thing for themselves now and neither bosses nor slave owners will change unless violently forced.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh good. Second read a book.
Does that mean I can expect you to stop giving me shitty comments about my current work situation when you've lost an argument then?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Should all those Republicans you fired based off of their political views have risen up and killed you then?
I'm fine with where I'm at in life. I'm certainly not going to let somebody as mentally unhinged as you make me feel otherwise. It was a rhetorical question anyhow, since I already knew the answer. Thank you for posting more of your insanity for everybody to see though.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Fox News Anchor Confronts Trump Chief of Staff Mulvaney Over Ballooning Deficit, Pointing Out It Began Decreasing Under Obama
Although then-candidate Donald Trump promised in 2016 to eliminate the national deficit if he was elected president, the deficit has actually ballooned significantly since he took office and is projected to grow substantially moving forward. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace confronted acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney about this fact Sunday, pointing out that the deficit had begun decreasing under former President Barack Obama before Trump took over.
"After dealing with the Great Recession in his first term, the deficit under Obama dropped by an average of 11 percent a year in his second term," Wallace pointed out to Mulvaney — who also serves as Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget — on Fox News Sunday.
"The deficit has increased by 15 percent a year in President Trump's first two years. Under President Trump, our national debt has increased by more than $2 trillion," Wallace continued. He pointed out that estimates project that the amount will "top $4 trillion," if a bipartisan budget supported by the president goes through.
Wallace asked how Mulvaney and the Trump administration could support such significant increases to the deficit, particularly when the president had promised to do precisely the opposite.
Trump's 2020 budget proposal contradicted a key 2016 campaign promise made to voters by the president. It aimed to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid and $845 billion less on Medicare, despite Trump promising as a presidential candidate that he was "not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid" like "every other Republican." That White House proposal, despite Mulvaney's claims, would have also been the largest federal budget in U.S. history, calling for $4.75 trillion in spending.
More at www.newsweek.com/fox-news-anchor-confronts-trump-official-deficit-decr
easing-under-obama-1451474
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump's attacks on the Federal Reserve are about to get worse
President Trump has shown his hand. Over two years into his presidency, he has proven that he governs in the model of the 21st-century populists who have taken office across the world. As the 2020 election draws closer, he will intensify his attacks on the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell. And his pressure will become far more determined if economic growth shows signs of slowing.
We know this because Trump is following the playbook of other authoritarian populists: embracing nationalist rhetoric and policies, developing an us-vs.-them narrative ahead of the elections and undercutting the independence of the Central Bank.
Populist leaders have caused economic mayhem in the past, and they see political benefits in lower interest rates to stoke short-term economic growth, even if the long-term impact is harmful to the economy, spiking inflation and killing off a recovery.
American democracy has deep roots; it is stronger than in other countries where it has come under assault. But we can see many of the same patterns replicated by other nationalist populists with authoritarian tendencies. The model requires discrediting independent media, demonizing critics, politicizing the judiciary and assaulting the very notion of truth.
Attacking the independence of the central bank is a more arcane element of the strategy, but it's also vital. And precisely because it is less "sexy," it attracts less attention than, say, calling the media the "enemy of the people," or suggesting that opposition critics of color should "go back" to their countries.
More at www.cnn.com/2019/07/29/perspectives/fed-independence-powell-trump-auth
oritarian-populists/index.html about
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi
botching the banking systems of their countries.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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One of the few qualified, well-respected and scandal-free members of President Donald Trump’s administration is on his way out. Dan Coats plans to resign next month as director of national intelligence, apparently to be replaced by a House member who has few obvious qualifications for the job – unless we count strong partisanship and loyalty to Trump.
Trump has been feuding on and off with U.S. intelligence agencies since his presidency began, and we’re told that Representative John Ratcliffe, his proposed replacement for Coats, is going to “clean house,” which presumably means rooting out those more interested in getting the intelligence right than in demonstrating fealty to the president.
Perhaps the Senate will insist on someone with more experience in these matters than Ratcliffe. But it’s a good reminder that Republican senators have flubbed this process from the get-go. They could’ve used their power of confirmation to insist that Trump run a professional White House and executive branch. They’ve largely chosen otherwise.
To be sure, Trump has had an unusually high number of failed nominations. Republican senators have been willing to block some of his poor choices; that’s why Herman Cain and Stephen Moore aren’t on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and why Judy Shelton, who still hasn’t been formally nominated, may not wind up there either. The Senate is able to block choices when it collectively chooses to, usually by convincing the president to withdraw a nominee before a hearing is held or even before he makes the nomination. But if anything, the process of finding, selecting, and vetting executive-branch nominees seems to be getting worse, considering that it took about seven months and two selections to find a secretary of defense and there’s still no nominee for secretary of homeland security more than three months after the position was vacated.
More at www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-29/john-ratcliffe-is-not-a-
qualified-replacement-for-dan-coats
Among other things, the Director of National Intelligence gives the president his daily intelligence briefing, and in those reports, as well as in his testimony to Congress, Dan Coats has concluded that Iran no longer had a nuclear weapons program, that North Korea was unlikely to get rid of its nuclear arsenal, that ISIS was still an active terrorist organization, and that top Russian officials interfered in the 2016 election — all of which contradicted Trump’s views. At times, Trump has even publicly sided with assurances from Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over the findings of the intelligence community.
By contrast, Ratcliffe has been a hangdog defender of Trump during the various inquiries into Trump’s collusion with Russia. In last week’s hearing, he grilled Mueller on his legal theories and asserted that the real colluders were Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, claiming that the Steele dossier — which Ratcliffe incorrectly said had triggered the Mueller probe — was filled with misinformation planted by the Russians, with the intent of harming Trump’s bid for the White House.
Retired intelligence officers and several of their associates who still work in the agencies are concerned that the nation’s top spymaster might be someone who has such scant experience, entertains such wacky conspiracy theories, and seems so eager to please the president.
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/dan-coats-dni-john-ratclif
fe.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Another good story ruined by an eye witness...
https://www.macrotrends.net/2015/fed-funds-rate-historical-chart
Why don't you go ahead and read that chart to me, Second.
Tell me what the average fed rate was the entire time Obama was in office and tell me where it's at now.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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