Police forces around the country have equipped themselves with surplus military equipment our DoD doesn’t need.
This is what Ferguson, Missouri looks like tonight.
The Criminalization of Everyday Life | BillMoyers
Sometimes a single story has a way of standing in for everything you need to know. In the case of the up-arming, up-armoring and militarization of police forces across the country, there is such a story. Not the police, mind you, but the campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that is, a $500,000, 18-ton, mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle of a sort used in the war in Afghanistan and, as Hunter Stuart of the Huffington Post reported, built to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs and nuclear, biological and chemical environments.” Sounds like just the thing for bouts of binge drinking and post-football-game shenanigans.
Continue reading The Criminalization of Everyday Life | BillMoyers
Anger in #Ferguson follows record of racial disparity |The Rachel @Maddow Show |msnbc
Hillary Clinton: ‘Failure’ to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS | The Atlantic
The former secretary of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine. She says this about President Obama’s: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”
President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion. In an interview in February, the president told me that “when you have a professional army … fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict—the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”
Jonathan Capehart’s Moving Statement on MSNBC’s “Up with Steve Kornacki”
The Washington Post and MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart made a very moving personal statement in today’s edition of Up With Steve Kornacki, in the wake of yet another case of curious police-involved shooting of a young black male in Ferguson, Missouri. Continue reading Jonathan Capehart’s Moving Statement on MSNBC’s “Up with Steve Kornacki”
The Federal Reserve Is Telling Us The Economy Is Pitiful
Shahien Nasiripourand
08/07/2014
Fewer than one-third of Americans report being better off financially than they were five years ago, with weak household savings and hefty debt burdens holding back large segments of the economy, according to a new Federal Reserve survey. Continue reading The Federal Reserve Is Telling Us The Economy Is Pitiful
Still No Wage Pressures to Speak Of…And Yet, People Speak of Them… | Jared Bernstein | On the Economy
August 9th, 2014
I don’t plan to publish this wage mash-up every quarter, but given the building and misguided pressure on the Fed to start raising rates to prevent allegedly incipient wage and price inflation, I thought I’d update the previous quarter’s result through the first half of this year.
Another Conservative Group Gets Entangled in an Indian Casino Money-Laundering Scandal | BillMoyers.com
Curated from BillMoyers.com
By Joshua Holland
August 8, 2014
Politico came up with a big scoop this week when it uncovered internal documents from the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) showing that the Alabama Republican Party had “essentially launder[ed] ‘toxic’ money from the gaming industry by routing it out of state and then back into Alabama” via the prominent conservative group.
Rahm Emanuel Cuts Schools, Pensions While Preserving Fund For Corporate Subsidies
Months after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said budget constraints forced him to push for pension cuts and mass school closures, an analysis of government documents reveals the city has $1.71 billion in special accounts often used to finance corporate subsidies. While the Emanuel administration has rejected open records requests for details of the subsidies, evidence suggests at least some of them have flowed to companies connected to Emanuel’s campaign donors.
The analysis conducted by the TIF Illumination Project evaluated the city’s 151 tax increment financing, or TIF, districts, which divert a share of property taxes out of accounts obligated to schools and into special accounts under the mayor’s control.
Continue reading Rahm Emanuel Cuts Schools, Pensions While Preserving Fund For Corporate Subsidies
Faces of Neoliberalism: The War on Teachers | PartII
WASHINGTON — Every day throughout the summer of 2006, seemingly without end, things just kept getting worse for Washington Republicans. Iraq was spiraling out of control, President George W. Bush was at the depth of his unpopularity. Congressional Republicans were mired in scandal. One was even caught sending dirty instant messages to young boys.
What followed was the Democratic wave of 2006, which handed Congress to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, followed by a second wave ridden by Barack Obama into the White House. Pundits talked about the end of the Republican Party, or at best, a permanent rump status.
Continue reading Faces of Neoliberalism: The War on Teachers | PartII