Economy – Page 2 – Turning Left

So it turns out cheaters will not win this year, at least one in particular from H-F.

I especially feel bad for the kids affected, and, again, for those who were honest from the get-go.

Homewood-Flossmoor’s girls basketball team was scheduled to play T.F. North Wednesday. Instead, the Illinois High School Association has disqualified the team from the state playoffs over bylaw violations.

The Homewood-Flossmoor girls basketball team and its acclaimed first-year coach Anthony Smith were top contenders for the state title this season. Now, they won’t even play a game in the tournament. In a decision Wednesday, issued about an hour before H-F was to play its opening game in the tourney, the Illinois High School Association dashed all hopes of the team’s postseason glory. Citing several violations of its bylaws, the IHSA banned H-F from competing and forfeited its 21 victories this season. The Vikings, ranked No. 1 by the Sun-Times, was scheduled to play T.F. North at 6 p.m. in Calumet City.

Watch: US Olympic Speedskater Describes Having to Rely on Food Stamps

February 19, 2014 TL

Economy Poverty Sports

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From DemoNews.org:

Yes, you’ve read that right. Things have gotten so bad in America that even our Olympic athletes are receiving “poverty stipends” in order to help them make ends meet as they struggle to represent our country in the Olympics while putting food on the table.

In this very telling video, Emily Scott, representing the United States in Olympic speedskating, fights back the tears as she recalls having to apply for food stamps due to her Olympic stipend being cut from $1950 per month to only $600 per month, less than the minimum wage.

Palestine: A Land Forgotten; Isreal: The One Forgetting

February 1, 2014 TL

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Palestine.

How much thought have you given Palestine recently?

We live in a country (USA! USA!) where celebrity news trumps news of the suffering in the world. News of the starving in the world. News of those still facing genocide. Still facing abuse. Still lacking basic human rights.

And we thrive to news of celebrity arrests, as if they matter one damn.

At all.

Had lunch with a now old friend, my friend is very young (comparable to my scalp line), but very, very wise.

And very empathetic.

My friend just returned from a half-month trip to Israel and Palestine (notice I’m naming them separately, as the two separate states the are, should be, shall be, Insha’Allah.

God willing, that is.

I will share with you in this space some of the amazing, alarming, and jaw-dropping things I learned from my friend today.

Israel, the state (not all Israelis, not all Jews), but Israel is persecuting the Palestinians.

And this must be stopped.

Did you know, for example, that Israel controls all water and electricity into Palestinian regions?

And, did you know, that Israel frequentlly cuts off all water and electricity if one Palestinian “misbehaves?”

Did you know that it is illegal for an Israeli to enter Palestine? Did you know that, on average, Israel demolishes four Palestinian home a day?

Did you know that Israel will not do trash pick-up in any region inhabited by Muslims, whether in the Old City, or Palestine?

Did you know that the Israeli government then uses that reality to refer to the Palestinians as filthy, dirty animals?

In short, did you know that Israel, to put it mildly, discriminates against the Palestinians, that the officials of the Israeli state refer to all Palestinians as “terrorists.”

Did you know that, at the Dome of the Rock, Israeli soldiers guard the entrance, allowing only a certain number of Muslims to enter each day to pray?

And did you know that Palestinians just want to live?

To own property?

To build homes (which is illegal now)?

To be human?

Thank you to my friend.

More to follow.

Insha’Allah.

NYTimes: Third-Quarter U.S. Growth at 4.1% Rate in New Estimate. Good News?

December 20, 2013 TL

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Source: BLS

The economy is improving, and has been for years under President Obama.

It’s just been sluggish, and there are plenty of people out of work still. There are even more who are underemployed (above graphic is from June 2013). According to Forbes, the "official" underemployment rate does not count discouraged workers who have settled for part-time jobs, or have just given up. These people, properly tracked under what’s called the "U-6" rate, showed underemployment at 14.3% in June 2013.

So, what exactly are we to infer from the revised estimate, reported today by the New York Times, that third quarter estimates for the economy showed 4.3% growth? The NYTimes reports:

The United States economy grew at an astonishing 4.1 percent annual rate, the federal government said Friday in its third and final revision of gross domestic product for the third quarter.

The rate was the fastest in almost two years.

The Commerce Department said business spending was stronger than it originally thought, leading to the revision up from 3.6 percent. Economists had expected the final estimate of growth to be unchanged from that 3.6 percent.

According to the Times, the growth rate for quarter two was 2.5%.

So, this is good news, right?

Not so certain, given the underemployment rate and other factors. Those of us in the middle and lower are making less, therefore spending less.

Consider the rise in companies buying back their own shares of stock, to the tune of $211 billion.

Enter Robert Reich from December 17, via Facebook (emphasis added):

A big reason why CEOs are about to rake in big year-end bonuses even though their sales are lousy (after all, America’s vast middle class and poor aren’t earning enough to buy much) is CEOs been using their companies’ cash, plus whatever they can borrow at rock-bottom interest rates engineered by the Fed, to buy back their own shares of stock. This maneuver raises the price of the remaining shares, thereby giving the CEOs – whose pay is tied to share prices – huge rewards. This year, the 30 companies listed on the Dow Jones industrial average authorized $211 billion in buybacks, lifting the Dow (and CEO pay) to record heights.

This $211 billion could have gone instead to American workers in the form of higher wages – which would have come back to companies in the form of higher sales. McDonald’s, for example, spent $6 billion on share repurchases and dividends last year, the equivalent of $14,286 per restaurant worker employed by the company.

It’s a vicious cycle as long as CEO incentives are directed toward raising share prices rather than sales, and as long as the economy is organized around the stock market rather than good jobs.

Since many of our pensions were shifted to the stock market via crapshoot 401Ks, we have learned that the stock market is not a safe environment for our retirement funds to exist. Know anyone who was unable to retire because his or her 401K lost half its value or more — just when that person was planning to exit the work force?

I do. Too many, in fact.

So, yes, a 4.1% growth in the economy is good news. However, as long as the corporations are defining growth based on the stock market as opposed to job growth, most of us in America will have to wait — and work — for a paradigm shift in the outlooks of corporations.

Or, we will have to fight for it, just like we did in the early 20th century.

Let’s begin by organizing the Service Industry.

Get Rid of Corporate Rule! Direct TV Parody Compilation

December 6, 2013 TL

Civil Liberties Civil Rights Congress Conservatives Constitution Economy Ethics Republicans Tea Party

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Get rid of corporate rule!

The full campaign spoofing the Direct TV commercials, produced by Acronym TV for Move To Amend. All six spots, each about 30 seconds, are included here in this single video.

Written by Lee Camp and Dennis Trainor, Jr, and Directed by Trainor, these spots aim to hijack a popular meme to shine a seriously unserious light on the issues of corporate personhood and money as free speech.

Move to Amend is a coalition of hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of individuals committed to social and economic justice, ending corporate rule, and building a vibrant democracy that is genuinely accountable to the people, not corporate interests.

We are calling for an amendment to the US Constitution to unequivocally state that inalienable rights belong to human beings only, and that money is not a form of protected free speech under the First Amendment and can be regulated in political campaigns.

Over 300,00 people have signed the Move To Amend statement that states:
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

Links to each video as a stand-alone piece are below. We encourage you to share these far and wide.

Move To Amend, Direct TV Parody Campaign:
Don’t Be A Naked Hulk http://bit.ly/1eMqmeQ
Don’t Do Interpretive Street Corner Dance http://bit.ly/IKi65g
Don’t Miss The Supermodel Love Letter http://bit.ly/19fbNwm
Don’t Get Ducked Taped To A Chair In The Yardhttp://bit.ly/1g3IG7b
Don’t Do Cats http://bit.ly/1bdJL8P
Don’t Be A Loser With No One At Your Birthdayhttp://bit.ly/18YCOI2

Move To Amend’s Direct TV Parody Compilation
Written by Lee Camp and Dennis Trainor, Jr
Directed by Dennis Trainor, Jr.
Editing, graphics, keying and color correction by AJ Russo
Associate Producer Christopher Webb
Costumes Lara de Bruijn

Corporate personhood, Supreme court, Super Bowl Ad, Super Bowl parody ad, Super Bowl spoof commercial, Douche waffle, Douche Waffles, Money free speech, corporations are not people, corporate personhood, Lee camp, Dennis Trainor Jr, Acronym TV, parody, satire, comedy, spoof, Direct TV, Move To Amend, Amend the constitution, Legalize Democracy, End Corporate Rule.

Damn the GOP. What They’re Doing Is Unprecedented, Immoral, and Evil

October 12, 2013 TL

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The GOP government shutdown just hit home for a close friend.

His son, a laborer who lives in a so-called "Right To Work" state, was out of work. He had been let go from his previous job because he became injured outside of work. Rather than give him a month to heal, which is all he needed, his employer at the time just let him go. Tried to tell him that he was doing him a favor. That he could collect unemployment, as opposed to making nothing for the 30 days or so he would need to heal.

And his employer knew that this lad had only worked for him for five months, therefore not qualifying for unemployment. And, it turns out, this employer has done this to other workers, letting them go in the fifth month of employment, so the employer has to pay neither benefits nor unemployment.

This is what the GOP refers to as "Right To Work," the myth that, forbidding unions from requiring workers to join a union when they get a job, workers now can be "free" of union dues and work, because, dammit, they have the right to work.

In reality, it means states full of workers, like my friend’s son, who have no union protection, no unions who negotiated fair working conditions. None of that. Not at all.

And employers can be as ruthless as the nasty members of the GOP, some of the meanest pols we’ve seen since just before the Great Depression, when robber barons ruled, and pols danced to their commands.

So my friend’s son applied for another job. Went through the entire interview process. Passed every background check, drug test — paid for by the hiring company — and was given his "new employee" packet.

And, on what was supposed to be his first day of work, was told that the company could not start him, because of the government shutdown.

Because of the government shutdown, the company was not certain that some contracts would be upheld.

That’s not what they told him at first. But, after he pressed them, they admitted this was, in fact, the case. The government shutdown.

The damn GOP government shutdown.

His son says it was evident the company was scrambling. Some news from on high had reached the blue collar workers, and the company, and American company, was being downsized.

These inglorious GOP members of Congress have got to go.

All of them.

They claim that this shutdown is the fault of the Democrats and the Democratic President who "refuse to negotiate.

Bullshit.

And here’s proof.

From BillMoyers.com, proof that this debt ceiling crisis is not politics as usual:

Never before has a minority party linked controversial legislative demands with a threat to shut down the government or imperil the global economy. But House Republicans would have you believe otherwise.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this morning, Rep. Paul Ryan writes that president Obama “says he ‘will not negotiate’ on the debt ceiling. He claims that such negotiations would be unprecedented. But many presidents have negotiated on the debt ceiling—including him. ”

Ryan was referring to a speech given in September before the Business Roundtable — an association of CEOs of large US companies — in which the president said, “You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a president or a governing party, and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and have nothing to do with the debt.”

Ryan continued: “He’s refusing to talk, even though the federal government is about to hit the debt ceiling. That’s a shame — because this doesn’t have to be another crisis. It could be a breakthrough.”

But that’s spin: Negotiating would set a dangerous precedent, because Obama’s right that this time really is different. Here are three reasons why.

Go to the original article here and read, and then act.

Video: Rich Kids For Romney

September 7, 2012 TL

Economy Elections Ethics Humor Jobs Republicans

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I think I’m going to start posting this kind of stuff over here again over here at Turning Left through the November election. After that, well, we’ll just have fun again.

Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, Smug and Crafty Politician

June 23, 2012 TL

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Cardinal Donald Wuerl is a crafty, smug pol. (Catholics for Equality)

Donald Cardinal Wuerl has come a long way.

From John Cardinal Wright’s secretary, to bishop, to cardinal.

He’s come far.

But, in his heart, at his best, he’s just another pol.

Unelected, mine you. But a pol nonetheless.

Our friends at Catholics for Equality are trying to talk some sense into him, but his sanctimoniousness won’t listen.

Here’s their release, where they note His Eminence’s blatant electioneering:

Catholics for Equality, the country’s largest national political organization of pro-LGBT equality Catholics, joined hands today with several fair-minded and faithful Catholic social justice groups in organizing a peaceful protest outside the Archdiocese of Washington, DC’s rally promoting the U.S. bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” election year political campaign. The Catholic groups came together with prayers and hymns under one giant united banner which read, Bishops: We Need Pastors, Not Politicians, Your Antics are Hurting the Church.

The peaceful protest took place outside a rally held at George Washington University’s Charles E. Smith Center. The special event presided over by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl was billed as a prayerful service, but was in fact a political campaign rally to motivate Catholics to vote against the re-election of President Obama because of the Health Care Reform Act and his support for LGBT equality. Wuerl and his fellow bishops claim that the exemptions provided in the Act are not sufficient for the Catholic Church and that they are being victimized by the federal government. Furthermore, the bishops claim that the Act is the greatest infringement upon religious liberty in American history and see themselves as martyrs like St. Thomas More, St. John Fischer, and others in church history.

“The bishops no longer represent Catholics in the pews on so many social issues, from contraception to legal equality for LGBT people,” said Joseph Palacios, Director of the Catholics for Equality Foundation. “We also reject the bishops’ election year campaign that they are now somehow victims of religious liberty, especially as the U.S. Catholic Church receives 62% of its funding for Catholic Charities from federal and state funds — money coming from the taxes of all Americans. Catholics Charities in Washington, DC, receives 68% of its funding from taxpayers. This does not include taxpayer vouchers for Catholic schools and other support for Catholic health care programs. If the bishops want exemption from the law, then they should stop receiving taxpayer funding.”

According to a new report released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute, 57% of American Catholics do not believe that the right to religious liberty is being threatened in America today. The report also notes that 65% of Catholics believe that most employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception at no cost and that 63% believe religiously affiliated agencies should not be able to refuse to place children with qualified gay and lesbian couples.

“The bishops’ 2012 “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign is nothing more than election year political posturing,” said Phil Attey, Executive Director of Catholics for Equality. “For the past 10 years the bishops have earned the public branding of abusers, oppressors, and political bullies. They’ve lost the ear of Catholics in the pews and political leaders in Washington … including Catholic political leaders. In order to change this political reality, the bishops know they have to first have to change their public image. But instead of doing so by championing social justice issues — fighting for the poor, the sick the marginalized and the oppressed, as bishops have done in the past — our bishops are opting to run around spending our collection plate money on a campaign to claim they are the real victims in today’s society. Catholics aren’t stupid, though. We know what we see and we’re not buying it. The bishops are only bringing more embarrassment to our church.”

The USCCB’s “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign launched this week consists of events in over 37 dioceses across the country. The campaign officially concludes on July 4th with a nationally televised Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, though the bishops’ election year political activities are expected to continue all the way to election day.

Catholics for Equality empowers pro-equality Catholics to put our faith into ethical and effective political action on behalf of the LGBT community and their families.

Catholics for Equality was founded in 2010 to support, educate, and mobilize Catholics in the advancement of freedom andequality at the federal, state, and local levels for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender family, parish and community members.

Will no one save us from these meddlesome clerics? They, who now claim moral authority, after decades of shielding pedophiles.

Will no one save us?