Tag: Open Thread

Jul 04 2015

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Fried Chicken Stars in This Make-Ahead Meal

The usual strategy for a make-ahead summer meal is a spread of salads and poached fish, which is fine in June but grows wearisome by August.

Instead I suggest taking another path entirely: fried chicken.

A longtime picnic staple, chicken is one of the few fried foods that tastes as good at room temperature as it does warm. And with a few minor tweaks to the classic recipe, this version holds up particularly well, remaining crisp and well seasoned for hours out of the fryer.

~ Melissa Clark ~

Make-Ahead Fried Chicken

This recipe has been specially engineered to be made in advance. It’s seasoned assertively, so the flavors won’t dull as it cools.

Panzanella With Mozzarella and Herbs

At the height of tomato season, for every perfectly ripe, taut and juicy specimen, there’s an overripe, oozing counterpart not far away.

Pickleback Slaw

Those artisanal pickles from the farmers’ market sure are expensive, so don’t throw out the juice in which they’re pickled.

Coconut Cream Cake With Peaches

In this trifle-like dessert, a tender coconut macaroon cake is layered with whipped cream and juicy ripe peaches.

Jul 03 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: Medicare and Medicaid at 50

Medicare and Medicaid, the two mainstays of government health insurance, turn 50 this month, having made it possible for most Americans in poverty and old age to get medical care. While the Affordable Care Act fills the gap for people who don’t qualify for help from those two programs, there are important improvements still needed in both Medicare and Medicaid. [..]

Despite the perennial fear that the costs of these two programs will grow uncontrolled, spending in both has been growing at a relatively modest rate in recent years. Medicare and Medicaid have changed and grown over the decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations, to meet new challenges. Their performance and popular support has allowed them to withstand ideologically-driven attacks on their continuance as government entitlements. These programs succeed, in fact, because they entitle all eligible Americans to receive the health care they need.

Paul Krugman: Europe’s Many Economic Disasters

It’s depressing thinking about Greece these days, so let’s talk about something else, O.K.? Let’s talk, for starters, about Finland, which couldn’t be more different from that corrupt, irresponsible country to the south. Finland is a model European citizen; it has honest government, sound finances and a solid credit rating, which lets it borrow money at incredibly low interest rates.

It’s also in the eighth year of a slump that has cut real gross domestic product per capita by 10 percent and shows no sign of ending. In fact, if it weren’t for the nightmare in southern Europe, the troubles facing the Finnish economy might well be seen as an epic disaster.

And Finland isn’t alone. It’s part of an arc of economic decline that extends across northern Europe through Denmark – which isn’t on the euro, but is managing its money as if it were – to the Netherlands. All of these countries are, by the way, doing much worse than France, whose economy gets terrible press from journalists who hate its strong social safety net, but it has actually held up better than almost every other European nation except Germany.

: Rep. Raúl M Grijalva: America’s no ‘land of the free’ if we send kids fleeing violence to for-profit prisons

On a desolate dirt road about an hour south of San Antonio, some 2,500 women and children will experience the Fourth of July in America for the first time this weekend. For them, there will be no celebration: no barbecue in the backyard or fireworks in the night sky. We proclaim to the world that those facing credible harm in their homelands can find refuge in America, and they followed our promise of sanctuary for hundreds of miles to reach our southern border. They risked life and limb to escape poverty, violence and sexual predators in their native lands to find safety in America.

And then we threw them in jail.

The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas – known simply as Dilley – is one of two detention facilities outside of San Antonio that I toured on a Congressional delegation last week. I went to see for myself the conditions that the women and children incarcerated there face firsthand – and what I saw was nothing short of heartbreaking.

Jostein Solheim: I scream, you scream, we all scream – for higher fuel emission standards

We all know how good a cold ice cream tastes on a hot day, and climate scientists are telling us to expect more hot days – and extended heat waves – in the years ahead. As the planet gets warmer, we at Ben & Jerry’s want to be sure that our ice cream is produced with as few greenhouse gas emissions as possible, to keep our fans supplied with Cherry Garcia without making climate change even worse.

We’ve done our homework and know that 17% of our carbon footprint comes from transportation, from shipping our ice cream from the factory to our distribution centers. That’s a big bite out of our carbon budget, and we’re not alone. [..]

To tackle this carbon pollution and costs, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed federal regulations for the fuel economy of freight trucks. These proposed regulations are a step in the right direction, but they don’t lower emissions far enough or fast enough.

Seumas Milne: Syriza can’t just cave in. Europe’s elites want regime change in Greece

It’s now clear that Germany and Europe’s powers that be don’t just want the Greek government to bend the knee. They want regime change. Not by military force, of course – this operation is being directed from Berlin and Brussels, rather than Washington.

But that the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the troika of Greece’s European and International Monetary Fund creditors are out to remove the elected government in Athens now seems beyond serious doubt. Everything they have done in recent weeks in relation to the leftist Syriza administraton, elected to turn the tide of austerity, appears designed to divide or discredit Alexis Tsipras’s government. [..]

The real risk across Europe is that if Syriza caves in or collapses, that failure will be used to turn back the rising tide of support for anti-austerity movements such as Podemos in Spain, or Sinn Féin in Ireland, leaving the field to populists of the right.

Either way, any Greek euro deal that fails to write off unrepayable debt or end the austerity squeeze will only postpone the crisis. If the Syriza government survives, it will have to change direction. Its fate, and its chaotic confrontation with the eurozone’s overlords, is going to shape all of Europe’s future.

Barbara Kingsolver: A view from the south: let the Confederate flag go

My little town is proud to have reared citizens like Carolee, an honour student and star athlete who offers a helping hand to anyone she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a ponytail and a delicate tattoo on her wrist. It’s the Confederate battle flag.

That flag has come crashing into the global conversation after an avowed white supremacist massacred nine parishioners in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. He tore up hearts and families, left a state without its senator and a nation bereft. A crime so senseless leaves us grappling for something we can blame, or fix. We’re sickened by Dylann Roof’s self-portrait with a semi-automatic pistol and Confederate flag. In the wider world where it’s seldom seen, people must wonder how that emblem waved by a racist vigilante could ever have held appeal for local historians or thoughtful honour students. [..]

My southern home is not that nation. This month the Confederate flag finally came down from several southern state houses, and my neighbour’s barn. Our governor banned it from licence plates. The stock car drivers of Nascar, that bastion of good-ol-boys, expelled it from the racetracks. We’re honouring heritage by tapping our well of kindness, knowing that for too many people those colours evoke terror and despair. No more. Now is the moment in history when we send that flag to the graveyard.

Jul 03 2015

The Breakfast Club (Notes)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Union forces win the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War; George Washington takes charge of the Continental Army; Algeria gains independence; Actor Tom Cruise born; Singer Jim Morrison dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.

Jon Stewart

Jul 03 2015

On This Day In History July 3

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

July 3 is the 184th day of the year (185th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 181 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1863, Battle of Gettysburg ends

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in disastrous failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.

Third day of battle

General Lee wished to renew the attack on Friday, July 3, using the same basic plan as the previous day: Longstreet would attack the Federal left, while Ewell attacked Culp’s Hill. However, before Longstreet was ready, Union XII Corps troops started a dawn artillery bombardment against the Confederates on Culp’s Hill in an effort to regain a portion of their lost works. The Confederates attacked, and the second fight for Culp’s Hill ended around 11 a.m., after some seven hours of bitter combat.

Lee was forced to change his plans. Longstreet would command Pickett’s Virginia division of his own First Corps, plus six brigades from Hill’s Corps, in an attack on the Federal II Corps position at the right center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Prior to the attack, all the artillery the Confederacy could bring to bear on the Federal positions would bombard and weaken the enemy’s line.

Around 1 p.m., from 150 to 170 Confederate guns began an artillery bombardment that was probably the largest of the war. In order to save valuable ammunition for the infantry attack that they knew would follow, the Army of the Potomac’s artillery, under the command of Brig. Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt, at first did not return the enemy’s fire. After waiting about 15 minutes, about 80 Federal cannons added to the din. The Army of Northern Virginia was critically low on artillery ammunition, and the cannonade did not significantly affect the Union position. Around 3 p.m., the cannon fire subsided, and 12,500 Southern soldiers stepped from the ridgeline and advanced the three-quarters of a mile (1,200 m) to Cemetery Ridge in what is known to history as “Pickett’s Charge”. As the Confederates approached, there was fierce flanking artillery fire from Union positions on Cemetery Hill and north of Little Round Top, and musket and canister fire from Hancock’s II Corps. In the Union center, the commander of artillery had held fire during the Confederate bombardment, leading Southern commanders to believe the Northern cannon batteries had been knocked out. However, they opened fire on the Confederate infantry during their approach with devastating results. Nearly one half of the attackers did not return to their own lines. Although the Federal line wavered and broke temporarily at a jog called the “Angle” in a low stone fence, just north of a patch of vegetation called the Copse of Trees, reinforcements rushed into the breach, and the Confederate attack was repulsed. The farthest advance of Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead’s brigade of Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s division at the Angle is referred to as the “High-water mark of the Confederacy”, arguably representing the closest the South ever came to its goal of achieving independence from the Union via military victory.

There were two significant cavalry engagements on July 3. Stuart was sent to guard the Confederate left flank and was to be prepared to exploit any success the infantry might achieve on Cemetery Hill by flanking the Federal right and hitting their trains and lines of communications. Three miles (5 km) east of Gettysburg, in what is now called “East Cavalry Field” (not shown on the accompanying map, but between the York and Hanover Roads), Stuart’s forces collided with Federal cavalry: Brig. Gen. David McMurtrie Gregg’s division and Brig. Gen. Custer’s brigade. A lengthy mounted battle, including hand-to-hand sabre combat, ensued. Custer’s charge, leading the 1st Michigan Cavalry, blunted the attack by Wade Hampton’s brigade, blocking Stuart from achieving his objectives in the Federal rear. Meanwhile, after hearing news of the day’s victory, Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick launched a cavalry attack against the infantry positions of Longstreet’s Corps southwest of Big Round Top. Brig. Gen. Elon J. Farnsworth protested against the futility of such a move but obeyed orders. Farnsworth was killed in the attack, and his brigade suffered significant losses.

Jul 02 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Trevor Timm: Killing civilians to vanquish Isis will only make besieged people hate us

Advocates for even more war in the Middle East apparently have a new strategy for defeating Isis: allow the US military to kill more civilians. If you think I’m exaggerating, just read their deranged and pathological arguments for yourself.

It began in late May when the New York Times reported that both Iraqi and American officials started complaining the US was too worried about killing civilians, suggesting that the Obama administration shouldn’t be worried that indiscriminately killing innocent people might turn the Iraqi population even more against the US than it already is. (Nevermind that it could be considered a war crime.) As the Times’s Eric Schmitt wrote: “many Iraqi commanders and some American officers say that exercising such prudence with airstrikes is a major reason the Islamic State, also known as Isis or Daesh, has been able to seize vast territory in recent months in Iraq and Syria.” [..]

If the US is being a little more careful about civilian deaths on its third go-around in Iraq – and that’s a giant “if” – we should all be commending that. Perhaps they’ve learned that if our second invasion of Iraq didn’t lead to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians, we wouldn’t be in this Isis mess in the first place. A call for a return to anything short of only killing enemy soldiers should be called what it is: sociopathic.

Robert Reich: Overtime: Finally, A Break for the Middle Class

The U.S. Department of Labor just proposed raising the overtime threshold — what you can be paid and still qualify to be paid “time-and-a-half” beyond 40 hours per week — from $23,600 a year to $50,400.

This is a big deal. Some 5 million workers will get a raise. (See accompanying video, which we made last month.)

Business lobbies are already hollering this will kill jobs. That’s what they always predict – whether it’s raising the minimum wage, Obamacare, family and medical leave, or better worker safety. Yet their predictions never turn out to be true.

In fact, the new rule is likely to increase the number of jobs. That’s because employers who don’t want to pay overtime have an obvious option: They can hire more workers and employ each of them for no more than 40 hours a week.

Joseph E. Stiglitz and Martin Guzman: Argentina Shows Greece There May Be Life After Default

When, five years ago, Greece’s crisis began, Europe extended a helping hand. But it was far different from the kind of help that one would have wanted, far different from what one might have expected if there was even a bit of humanity, of European solidarity.

The initial proposals had Germany and other “rescuers” actually making a profit out of Greece’s distress, charging a far, far higher interest rate than their cost of capital. Worse, they imposed conditions on Greece — changes in its macro- and micro-policies — that would have to be made in return for the money. [..]

The situation has some important similarities with Argentina’s 2001 default — and some differences as well. In both countries, recessions turned into depressions as a consequence of austerity policies — making the debt even more unsustainable. In both cases, the policies were demanded as a condition for assistance. Both countries had rigid currency arrangements that gave them no possibility for running expansionary monetary policies during the recession. In both countries, the IMF got it wrong, providing alarmingly flawed forecasts of the consequences of the imposed policies. Unemployment and poverty soared, and GDP plummeted. Indeed, there is even a striking similarity in the magnitude of the fall in GDP and the increase in the unemployment rate.

Ralph Nader: Where Are the Presidential Candidates on the Minimum Wage?

As the 2016 campaign season gets underway, working families across the country will be very interested in where presidential candidates stand on raising the minimum wage. [..]

Democratic primary candidates Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage to $15.00 over the next several years, a living wage that would lift tens of millions of individuals out of poverty. Others have remained mum on the subject, including former Virginia Senator Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee.

Perhaps most glaringly silent is the front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She has spoken many times about making sure that individuals will make enough money to survive, including most recently at the Fight for $15 conference in June where she said, “It is wrong that so many people stand against you thinking that they can steal your wages with no consequences. That even stacks the deck higher for those at the top.” However, Clinton has declined to comment on whether or not she would support a $15 an hour minimum wage, or when she would like to see a wage hike implemented. In 2007, as a Senator, she supported raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour and in May, 2014 she finally came out in favor of raising it to $10.10 an hour.

Mark Weisbrot: Are European Authorities Trying to Force Regime Change in Greece?

It’s ironic but not surprising that the European Central Bank decided Sunday to limit its credit to Greece by enough to force the Greek banking system to close.

This has pushed Greece closer to a more serious financial crisis than the country has had in the past five years of austerity-induced depression. Why did the ECB decide to take this harsh, unnecessary and dangerous measure now?

It seems clear that the move is in response to the Greek government’s decision to hold a referendum on whether to accept the last offer from the European authorities outlining conditions for continuing official lending to Greece. The financial problems and inconveniences of this week, caused by the bank holiday, are the European authorities’ way of saying, “Vote as we’ll tell you to, or we can make your lives even more miserable than we have been making them.”

Jul 02 2015

On This Day In History July 2

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

July 2 is the 183rd day of the year (184th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 182 days remaining until the end of the year.

It is the midpoint of a common year. This is because there are 182 days before and 182 days after (median of the year) in common years, and 183 before and 182 after in leap years. The exact time in the middle of the year is at noon, or 12:00. In the UK and other countries that use “Summer Time” the actual exact time of the mid point in a common year is at (1.00 pm) 13:00 this is when 182 days and 12 hours have elapsed and there are 182 days and 12 hours remaining. This is due to Summer Time having advanced the time by one hour. It falls on the same day of the week as New Year’s Day in common years.

On this day in 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the historic Civil Rights Act in a nationally televised ceremony at the White House.

In the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The 10 years that followed saw great strides for the African-American civil rights movement, as non-violent demonstrations won thousands of supporters to the cause. Memorable landmarks in the struggle included the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–sparked by the refusal of Alabama resident Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a city bus to a white woman–and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech at a rally of hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., in 1963.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (“public accommodations”). Powers given to enforce the act were initially weak, but were supplemented during later years. Congress asserted its authority to legislate under several different parts of the United States Constitution, principally its power to regulate interstate commerce under Article One (section 8), its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment.

Jul 01 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: There’s Finally Momentum Behind Paid Sick Leave

Last week, the Supreme Court upheld a core provision of the Affordable Care Act, quashing the Republican Party’s latest attempt to gut the law through the judicial system. At issue in the case, King v. Burwell, was the government’s ability to provide subsidies to help millions of working Americans purchase health insurance through the federal exchange. Yet, as too many middle-class families know, health insurance is only one of the costs associated with getting sick. For more than 40 million workers who currently lack paid sick leave, another pressing concern is how to afford taking time off.< [..]

To appreciate the momentum for paid sick leave, however, it’s necessary to understand how we got here. The recent passage of multiple laws in rapid succession belies a long struggle to get politicians to take up the cause, even within the ranks of the Democratic Party. Indeed, a closer examination reveals the anatomy of a legislative movement and demonstrates how grassroots pressure can turn what some considered a fringe issue into a political juggernaut.

Wendy R. Davis: Texas women got a reprieve from the state’s anti-abortion law. It might not last

Until I exhaled on Monday, I hadn’t realized that I had been holding my breath.

Like so many people, I spent part of my weekend tearing up as I looked at post after post on social media of committed, loving partners’ marriage photos with a renewed sense of hope that sometimes, “right” actually wins – but then there was the fitful sleep of Sunday night because, still pending before the US supreme court, was a case that would have meant the closure of almost all of Texas remaining reproductive health clinics.

The supreme court had to decide whether the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision to allow the full enforcement of HB2 – Texas’ sweeping anti-abortion law – could stand pending the final outcome of appeals in the case. If they sided with the lower court, it would have forced all but nine of the original 41 clinics in the state to close as of 1 July. With Monday’s stay of the circuit court’s ruling came reason to breath … if only for a little while.

But hundreds of thousands of Texas women await two more decisions in the case: whether the US supreme court will hear the appeal and, if it does, whether it will strike down the challenged provisions of HB2. Reading the supreme court’s majority opinion in the Obergefell same sex marriage case issued on Friday, I feel reason to hope: its findings, rooted in the concepts of equal protection and individual autonomy, ought to extend to reproductive rights as well.

Anna Lappé: The billion-dollar business to sell us crappy food

New report sheds light on the covert tactics used to shape public opinion about what we eat

At the turn of the last century, the father of public relations, Edward Bernays, launched the Celiac Project, whose medical professionals recommended bananas to benefit celiac disease sufferers. Those pitched on the sweet fruit’s miraculous properties didn’t know the project was actually created for the United Fruit Co., the largest trader of bananas in the world.

The creation of front groups – independent-sounding but industry-backed organizations – as a public relations strategy dates at least as far back as Bernays’ day. But a new report by Kari Hamerschlag, a senior program manager at the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth; Stacy Malkan, a co-founder of the food industry watchdog U.S. Right to Know; and me shows that such tactics are continuing with ever more scope and scale today.

Zoë Carpenter: The Next Tactic in the Right’s Fight Against Gay Marriage? ‘Religious Liberty’

As a jubilant crowd at the Supreme Court celebrated Friday’s 5-4 ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry, moans of impotent fury emanated from conservatives in and out of the Court. “The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie,” Justice Antonin Scalia fumed in his dissenting opinion. In his own dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Court should not worry about human dignity: “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” he wrote. Justice Samuel Alito, also dissenting, fretted that homophobes now “will risk being labeled as bigots.”

Among the field of Republican presidential candidates, the responses ranged from outrage to resignation; none embraced the ruling. Some were quick to throw red meat to the conservative base, ignoring yet another thing the GOP supposedly learned after getting crushed in 2012. But a few of the more serious candidates, who have read the polls and know that aggressive opposition to gay marriage spells trouble in a general election, tried to shift the focus to one of the next issues in the marriage debate, which Nan Hunter explores in detail here-the attempt to frame discrimination as the exercise of “religious liberty.”

Michelle Chen: Shouldn’t Home Care Workers Earn a Living Wage?

Healthcare workers in Massachusetts got good news twice this past week. First, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act and its insurance exchange rules-a system expected to add some 360,000 Massachusetts residents to the healthcare rolls. On Friday, about 35,000 workers who are providing disability and senior care through state programs got a major pay raise. Their new wage of $15 an hour puts Massachusetts personal-care assistants at the helm of the low-wage workers’ movement known as the Fight for 15.

George Gresham, president of the home care workers’ union, 1199 SEIU, said in the announcement of the deal, ‘”It is a moral imperative that all home care and healthcare workers receive $15 per hour, and Massachusetts is now a leader in this effort.”

The wage agreement was brokered over several months of talks between the union and Governor Charlie Baker’s administration, for a contract covering one of the country’s largest unionized home care workforces. The raise in the hourly base pay, set to increase from the current $13.38 to $15 by 2018, will cover a majority of the state’s home care workforce, who provide an array of household services, such as daily social support and medical assistance, to seniors and people with disabilities, and now heads for a union ratification vote.

Leslie Savan: In the Wake of Charleston, Fox News Is Perplexed on Just What the Confederate Flag and the N-Word Mean

It’s been quite a week for racist symbols. It took the murder of nine black churchgoers at the hands of a killer steeped in Confederate and apartheid logos and logic, but politicians have started removing rebel flags and other symbols of Dixie from places we’d thought they were nailed to (like Alabama’s capitol grounds, and South Carolina’s, where the Stars and Bars will need a two-thirds majority vote of both houses to come down).

There is even an “Et tu?” quality to the defenestration, since it has often been Republican politicians and corporations like Walmart who have suddenly realized that these symbols can be hurtful “to some.”

And the Charleston murders have galvanized a US president to publicly say the n-word to explain why not ever saying it in public does not magically end racism-anymore, he might have added, than electing a black president does.

Jul 01 2015

The Breakfast Club (Color Me)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

The Civil War Battle of Gettysburg begins; The first nuclear weapons test in peacetime; TR’s assault on San Juan Hill; Britain’s Princess Diana born; Hong Kong returned to China; Actor Marlon Brando dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Frederick Douglass

Jul 01 2015

On This Day In History July 1

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

July 1 is the 182nd day of the year (183rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 183 days remaining until the end of the year. The end of this day marks the halfway point of a leap year. It also falls on the same day of the week as New Year’s Day in a leap year.

On this day in 1997, Hong Kong returned to China.

At midnight on July 1, 1997, Hong Kong reverts back to Chinese rule in a ceremony attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles of Wales, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. A few thousand Hong Kongers protested the turnover, which was otherwise celebratory and peaceful.

Hong Kong is one of two special administrative regions (SARs) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China’s south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour. With a land mass of 1,104 km2 (426 sq mi) and a population of seven million people, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hong Kong’s population is 95 percent ethnic Chinese and 5 percent from other groups. Hong Kong’s Han Chinese majority originate mainly from the cities of Guangzhou and Taishan in the neighbouring Guangdong province.

Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the First Opium War (1839-42). Originally confined to Hong Kong Island, the colony’s boundaries were extended in stages to the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories by 1898. It was occupied by Japan during the Pacific War, after which the British resumed control until 1997, when the PRC acquired sovereignty. The region espoused minimum government intervention under the ethos of positive non-interventionism during the colonial era. The time period greatly influenced the current culture of Hong Kong, often described as “East meets West”, and the educational system, which used to loosely follow the system in England until reforms implemented in 2009.

Under the principle of “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong has a different political system from mainland China. Hong Kong’s independent judiciary functions under the common law framework. The Basic Law of Hong Kong, its constitutional document, which stipulates that Hong Kong shall have a “high degree of autonomy” in all matters except foreign relations and military defence, governs its political system. Although it has a burgeoning multi-party system, a small-circle electorate controls half of its legislature. An 800-person Election Committee selects the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, the head of government.

As one of the world’s leading international financial centres, Hong Kong has a major capitalist service economy characterised by low taxation and free trade, and the currency, Hong Kong dollar, is the ninth most traded currency in the world. The lack of space caused demand for denser constructions, which developed the city to a centre for modern architecture and the world’s most vertical city. The dense space also led to a highly developed transportation network with public transport travelling rate exceeding 90 percent, the highest in the world. Hong Kong has numerous high international rankings in various aspects. For instance, its economic freedom, financial and economic competitiveness, quality of life, corruption perception, Human Development Index, etc., are all ranked highly.

Jun 30 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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Richard H. Pildes: At the Supreme Court, a Win for Direct Democracy

IN 2000, voters in Arizona adopted a state constitutional amendment that created an independent commission to draw congressional districts. But the commission immediately faced a legal challenge: the United States Constitution gives the power to state legislatures (and to Congress) to regulate national elections – not to the voters. Can the word “legislature” in the Constitution mean voters themselves?

That question eventually came before the Supreme Court, which on Monday ruled, in a 5-to-4 decision, that the Constitution permits states to let their voters use “direct democracy” – popular votes on ballot measures, known as voter initiatives – to regulate the rules for national elections. [..]

The Supreme Court often surprises critics who see it in simplistically ideological terms. As this term and this decision confirm, the current court remains a pragmatically minded institution that interprets legal language with an eye toward the problems that language was created to address. As a result, direct democracy will remain available to constrain partisan gerrymandering and other ways legislatures seek to manipulate democratic purposes for self-serving reasons.

Scott Lemieux: If execution by torture isn’t ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment, what is?

You might think that the Eighth Amendment, which forbids “cruel and unusual” punishments, clearly prohibits death penalty regimes like those currently in effect in Oklahoma: unqualified and inexperienced personnel trying experimental drug regimes that have a substantial likelihood of inflicting serious pain before death. But, if you know anything about the Roberts Court, you won’t be surprised to discover that they disagree. In a 5-4 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito (appropriately, as he’s the current justice with the very worst record on civil liberties) the US supreme court gave the green light to Oklahoma’s method of death (pdf).

Late last year, Oklahoma horrifically botched its execution of Clayton Lockett, effectively torturing him for 40 minutes before he died (and blocking him from view from observers midway through). Its system for lethal injection relies on a three-drug cocktail, the formula invented (entirely arbitrarily) by the Sooner State itself in 1977: two of the drugs stop the heart but, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in her dissent to the majority ruling, “they do so in a torturous manner, causing burning, searing pain.” The first drug, then, is supposed to be a barbiturate that renders the condemned prisoner unable to feel pain (although, since the second drug is generally a paralytic, it’s not really possible to tell if it works). Oklahoma, however, has been unable to obtain any of its usual drugs for the first step of the process, and has thus resorted to an alternative that carries the substantial risk of producing death by torture.

Nonetheless, to a bare majority of the court, Oklahoma’s system is good enough for the Eighth Amendment, based on a series of scientifically weak defenses offered for the protocol by a single witness and the argument that the condemned prisoners themselves are required to offer the state a less risky method for their own executions. The state can, under Alito’s reasoning, torture people to death as long as it cannot procure the drugs needed for a safer, less torturous method.

David Cay Johnston: Egalitarianism is on the march

The fall of the Confederate flag is the latest step in a progressive wave of reforms

Bigotry is suddenly on the run in America.

It is as if a giant dam thrown up to block human progress has begun to spill over the top, the outpouring growing until the dam collapses, a flood of decency, fairness and respect washing the stains of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.

Before June 17, many Americans were already feeling revulsion towards our country’s legacy of white supremacy after seeing numerous cellphone videos of police attacking innocent blacks. Then Dylann Roof massacred nine worshippers at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly and unexpectedly the vile nature of the Confederate battle flag, waved with pride by Roof in several photos released after the shooting, became obvious to so many people that within a week Southern politicians scurried away from that symbol of racist hatred.

This is just the beginning. We will see more positive change in the near future as those who solicit votes through fear and denunciation watch America move toward its founding ideals: that all people are created equal with inalienable rights and that America does best when our government follows the six noble purposes of our Constitution, especially promoting the general welfare.

Joseph Stiglitz: Europe’s Attack on Greek Democracy

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics. [..]

It is startling that the troika has refused to accept responsibility for any of this or admit how bad its forecasts and models have been. But what is even more surprising is that Europe’s leaders have not even learned. The troika is still demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP by 2018.

Economists around the world have condemned that target as punitive, because aiming for it will inevitably result in a deeper downturn. Indeed, even if Greece’s debt is restructured beyond anything imaginable, the country will remain in depression if voters there commit to the troika’s target in the snap referendum to be held this weekend.

Alexis Goldstein and Luke Herrine:  Higher education reform should start with for-profit schools

Presidential candidates should recognize that the government’s education policy is rife with conflicts of interest

As the presidential campaign season heats up, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are talking about debt-free or tuition-free college. Using student debt as an issue to damage Republicans and to energize young voters is a smart strategy. But to make the case for why higher education should be free in the United States, 2016 candidates need look no further than the current crisis in the for-profit college industry. The government’s deep conflicts of interest as both the regulator meant to protect students and the banker profiting off student debt has led to an unmitigated disaster – one that, so far, has stuck students with the bill.

For decades, for-profit colleges have run an outrageously profitable scam: They have devoured more than a quarter of all federal student loan money and used it to lure first-generation college students into career training programs that lead to few, if any, real prospects. These schools often spend more money on marketing (pdf) than on instruction. As a result, employers laugh at for-profit college degrees. [..]

For-profit colleges perfectly illustrate why the privatization of public goods doesn’t work. It turns public servants into the guardians of private interests, and students are left behind as collateral damage. Politicians on both sides of the aisle proclaim education as the civil rights issue of our time. If that’s the case, it’s time to move past the model of individual indebtedness, which falls most heavily on poor and minority students, and show we value education for more than just talking points.

 

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