politics
I just came to a fascinating and frightening realization about the connection between…
I just came to a fascinating and frightening realization about the connection between Republican voter suppression efforts and the war on drugs while watching +Up with Chris Hayes this morning.
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The war on drugs as a voter suppression effort « Sam's Thoughts
I just came to a fascinating and frightening realization about the connection between Republican voter suppression efforts and the war on drugs while watching Up with Chris Hayes this morning. For dec…
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The war on drugs as a voter suppression effort
I just came to a fascinating and frightening realization about the connection between Republican voter suppression efforts and the war on drugs while watching Up with Chris Hayes this morning.
For decades Republicans have been working to find ways to stem the influence of the growing minority population in elections. The latest efforts at limiting voter “fraud” by making it tougher to register and requiring photo ID to cast a ballot are the most visible.
However, over the past several decades there has been a hidden and much more insidious scheme going on through the war on drugs by shifting populations to prisons. During the course of this decades-long domestic war, there has been almost no impact on actual drug use while at the same time the number of people incarcerated in the prison-industrial complex for non-violent drug offenses has ballooned by a factor of seven!
Most of those inmates are black males from urban areas. Blacks comprise 12.3% of the US population, about 14% of drug users and 37% of drug arrests! People living in densely populated urban areas are generally more likely to vote Democratic while it seems many of those in rural areas veer toward the right.
The drug war has a couple of different effects on voting patterns. First, just as prohibition triggered violent crime in the 1920s, drugs are doing the same in inner cities now. The result is creating an atmosphere of fear among more affluent urban dwellers even if it’s mostly unwarranted. Republicans prey on this fear with a law and order attitude toward drugs. That can tend to cause voters to shift to the right.
However, the more dangerous aspect of all this is the population of the prisons. Prisons are typically located in rural areas with smaller populations. When the census is done every ten years, the population of a prison is counted toward the population of the region where it’s located even though it’s inhabitants come from somewhere else. However, those inmates are not allowed to actually vote. As a result, when the electoral districts are defined, these rural areas can end up with a disproportionate representation while fewer members of the population get to cast ballots.
So the war on drugs shifts potential voters out of their homes, takes away their votes and gives more representation to those that are likely to vote Republican!
#politics #warondrugs
One of my biggest problems with supposedly pious politicians like Rick Santorum,…
One of my biggest problems with supposedly pious politicians like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and so many others, not to mention the religious leaders who support them is how they like to selectively pick and choose the teachings they will support.
What makes this worse is that all of these people so often stand and preach about how people can't just pick their beliefs a la carte but take all of the teachings or nothing at all.
Santorum and Gingrich are particularly egregious examples of this. University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole lists his top ten examples of catholic doctrine that Santorum ignores, all of which apply to Gingrich. On top of this Gingrich who converted to catholicism is also a serial adulterer and two-time divorcee.
#politics #indecision2012 #hypocrisy
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Top Ten Catholic Teachings Santorum Rejects while Obsessing about Birth Control
Juan | Uncategorized
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It's long past time for not only judges but lawyers and politicians to be educated…
It's long past time for not only judges but lawyers and politicians to be educated on the modern world of communications and intellectual property. There is far too much muddle-headed thinking and a complete lack of proportion and common sense.
If a judge can't look at a case like Paul Chambers with some reasonable context and immediately dismiss it, they should instantly removed from the bench. Similarly, a prosecutor that would even bring such a case should be fired.
#modernworld #law
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Where are the judges fit for the internet age?
Nick Cohen: Twitter and Facebook are having a transformational effect on the nature of secrecy and access
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Why is it those who are often the most vocal about shrinking the size of government… 1
Why is it those who are often the most vocal about shrinking the size of government and reducing taxes are also often the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse?
The human capacity for "Do as I say, not as I do" is quite remarkable. Take the case of Ki Gulbranson, a Minnesota shopowner that makes $39,000 a year. According to a story in the New York Times today, he says he doesn't need any government help and he's a staunch supporter of the Tea Party movement but he seems to ignore everything he gets from American taxpayers.
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.
Similarly senior citizens that benefit hugely from social security and medicare might want to consider the abject poverty that their elder forebears lived before complaining that taxes and entitlements are too high.
The states Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi and more that are most likely to hate the federal government also tend to be same ones that receive more in federal spending for roads, bridges, medicaid, education and more than they pay in taxes. They seem to ignore the fact that if the federal government collected as little in taxes and provided as little spending as they do at the state level, poverty levels would be far worse than they already are.
I certainly agree that there is a lot of waste in government and much of it goes to the military and subsidies to huge businesses like the oil, agriculture and finance industries. We need a restructuring of the payroll tax system to shift the burden from lower income Americans up the wealth scale. But if we simply slash the way Tea party supporters want, they are actually the ones most likely to be hurt by it.
#taxes #teaparty
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Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It
The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits.
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When Maggie Gallagher said on +Up with Chris Hayes this morning that she was not…
When Maggie Gallagher said on +Up with Chris Hayes this morning that she was not opposed to "marriage equality" just to "same-sex marriage" that was a distinction without a difference.
How can you have marriage equality if any two individuals that want to be together can't get married. Does she maybe favor polygamy as long as its one many and any number of women?
I applaud states like New York, California, Iowa, Massachusetts and others that have decided that it is just plain wrong to say that two men or two women can't be legally married.
#samesexmarriage
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Saturday's Guests & Suggested Reading (Feb. 11)
Updated Friday Feb 10 @ 3:45PM.
Here are a few pieces to help you get familiar with our Saturday topics, plus a list of guests scheduled to join Chris on "Up" starting Saturday at 7AM EST on MSNBC:
– …
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Paulo Coehlo is living proof that we don't need more anti-piracy laws
He made a very healthy living after "pirating" his own book by posting it on thepiratebay.org. Once readers had the opportunity to experience his writing for free, word spread and people actually started buying his books and made them bestsellers.
#acta #sopa #pipa
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Straight from the horse's mouth, take that wingnuts 3
Straight from the horse's mouth, take that wingnuts
Reshared post from +Jeff Gilbert
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Eastwood Calls Criticism of Chrysler Ad “Daydreaming”
Actor/Director Clint Eastwood is firing back at those who criticized his “Halftime in America” Chrysler ad.
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Excellent news for the web! Now we need to go back revisit the pantent granting process…
Excellent news for the web! Now we need to go back revisit the pantent granting process and get examiners to outright reject patents that are either obvious, vague or duplicate ideas that have already been produced.
Reshared post from +Tim O’Reilly
It's so great to see the Eolas patent struck down. We had firsthand knowledge of this case at O'Reilly, since +Dale Dougherty and +Pei Wei, who worked with us on GNN back in 1992 and 1993, have testified repeatedly in this trial over the past decade or more. Pei's work with Viola (see http://viola.org) was clearly prior art, but it took till now for the court system to catch up with that obvious fact.
The current patent system is a terrible tax on invention, as it requires real inventors to spend time in court rather than focusing on making real things happen. We must remember that the patent system was supposed to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," not to enrich people who know how to work the legal system.
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Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll’s Claim to Own the Interactive Web
TYLER, Texas — After threatening web companies for more than a decade, Michael Doyle and his patent-holding company Eolas Technologies — …
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