Profiling

You can profile some of the people some of the time......

from Firedoglake:

"It is certainly possible that the Cincinnati Office of the IRS looked more dubiously into tax exemption claims from various “Tea Party” groups than others.  

But there are a few logical reasons this should probably have occurred.  There are two things true about “Tea Party” groups — They HATE government and they REALLY HATE paying taxes to that government they HATE. The possibility of such a group could bit a shady therefore is a bit higher than most.  

Meanwhile, in news few notice or care about:

Thousands of documents obtained by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy show how Homeland Security and local law enforcement were obsessed with the Occupy movement and other activists. 

You can still punch a hippie all you want — but don’t you dare question the guy wearing a tri-corner hat in the 21st century!"

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Shipping Containers

Free exchange: The humble hero | The Economist:

"THE humble shipping container is a powerful antidote to economic pessimism and fears of slowing innovation. Although only a simple metal box, it has transformed global trade. In fact, new research suggests that the container has been more of a driver of globalisation than all trade agreements in the past 50 years taken together."

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Actually, Wolf, I'm an Atheist.

Found Here:  CNN's Wolf Blitzer to tornado victim: "You gotta thank the lord". Victim: "I'm an atheist" - Boing Boing:



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The War on Drugs

Matt Taibbi explains that it only applies to some people.

Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke | | Rolling Stone:

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A Recovery For The Rest of Us

A Recovery For The Rest of Us - Forbes:

Could this be another flaw of monetary policy. Krugman is always shouting that it doesn't work well at the zero-bound but maybe it doesn't really work very well in an overly unequal economy?

The elite/the rich/Capital capture the majority of the monetary stimulus leaving little for the worker-bee/labor group. The rich don't really need the money so it just creates bubbles as it ricochets around the financial system. The poor are left to scramble for the little that "trickles-down".

Good fiscal policy that puts labor directly to work, puts the money where it can help the majority,.. in labor's pockets. I guess bad fiscal policy, that is, waste programs designed to feed cash to special interests, would also just feed cash to the rich.  

So, i guess as long as the rich hold the power we can expect monetary policy combined with bad, crony-ism fiscal policy. We're screwed.

tnb

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McDonald's Customer Service

The Customer Service Problem at McDonald's Is a Symptom of a Much Bigger Problem | Slog:

More pay may help but poor service is inherent in the corporate system. The corporate slaves just don't feel the attachment to the work place like they could if it was a well-run, locally-owned, mom-and-pop shop. They're paid very little, have little or no benefits, have to work a lot of crappy, short, doesn't-qualify-for-benefits shifts, are subject to a lot of over-bearing policies designed to protect the corporate interests, are subject to dismissal at the whim of another discouraged corp-o-slave, and have very little chance to really move up in the organization. Their work life is only about harvesting money from the locals so it can be shipped off to some never-seen corporate master. Given that, how could anyone really give a damn about the place they work or its customers?


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401s and old workers

A good rant from Gin and Tacos today.

BUT IT'S CHEAPER, RIGHT? | Gin and Tacos:

401's just don't work as a person's only retirement plan. They can be a piece of you retirement stash but most people won't save enough or will dip into it for some emergency cash so they just won't have enough to cover retirement. Also, there have two large hits to most 401s in the last 15 years so people probably are postponing retirement so their 401 can recover but I see many old workers hanging on for "The Insurance".

I'm lucky to be working in an industry that still pays pretty well and has defined pension plans (for now) but there are still many people working way past their prime. The main excuse for non-retirement is that they can't afford insurance while they wait for medicare to kick in. These people have the cash to retire. Many would have an annual income from their pension far in excess of the average worker's working wage but they just can't bring themselves to pay for medical insurance that the company has paid for them all these years.

Medicare for all,... good quality, pay-everything Medicare, would lead to a mass exodus of the 55 and above crowd from our workforce.

tnb

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War with Syria

Wilkerson: Chemical weapon use in Syria ‘could have been an Israeli false flag operation’ | MyFDL:

This could’ve been an Israeli false flag operation, it could’ve been an opposition in Syria, … or it could’ve been an actual use by [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad. But we certainly don’t know with the evidence we’ve been given. 

again...."we certainly don’t know with the evidence we’ve been given."

We just don't know. We went to war once when we didn't really know. We were told we knew,.. but we didn't. That war cost billion of dollars, millions of lives, and hurt the US reputation around the world. We don't need a Syrian War.

tnb

Update

The evidence points to the rebels not the Government?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505

there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television. 

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

I doubt we'll see this on CNN or Fox.



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