The Revolution Will Be Televised- over and over. Apologies to G S-H.  Scott-Heron wrote those words in 1970, in response to the Watts Riots.  Watts: what locals really mean by "South Central." (LA)  That revolution was televised - I watched from the bubble of Orange County -  I think the second black family was moving into Costa Mesa as I was moving to LA

By 1970, I was living in the Crenshaw District -a 'transitioning' neighborhood.  According to the local herstorians , the area had earlier been the Jewish (ghetto) neighborhood.  In the '40s and '50, when the black middle class was being born out of the post WWII boom, and wanted to buy a home, the Jews were the only homeowners who would sell to "them."  My friends in the 'hood were young, middle class black families, and a sprinkling of much older black ladies who had been "in service" for years, and saved their money.  Bought homes while they were still "living in" with the white folk further north in L.A.

One of my two best friends was a young(er than me) Afro-American, R, who'd recently returned from 4 years  in Germany, running the NORAD Computer  for the U.S.Army on 4 hits of acid a day. He was a twin, adopted by Ms. F (older lady retired from 'live in' service).  Their white mother (quickie with a black guy) basically abandoned them with Ms. F, as she cared for them.  R  radicalized me,  informed me, told me about all the tanks parked in the LA riverbed under the bridge crossing I 10 CA 60 heading into East LA and Whittier, took me to see the new sewer pipes then being installed under Venice Blvd.  Which was kind of the demarcation line between the Fairfax  and Crenshaw districts.  Look, the pipes are huge! Big enough to accommodate those tanks. I adopted the Black Power mantra.  'They' were coming to get 'us.' And my roomie, L, even younger than I (smh) who got pulled over for "no rear tail light illumination" and lots of similar bs,  repeatedly.   If we went to the store together, we got stopped.  "What are you doing here?"  to me, inevitably so fuckin inevitable - whatever car I was driving (I transitioned in that time frame from an old, salesman blue basic Ford to a Barracuda with a racing stripe -I was young, too)  With girls I worked with, with old ladies, whatever, if they were black, we got stopped. "What are you doing here?" This was early '70s LA.     I still have my "Free Angela" button. 

By 1991, I lived in Pacoima, last part of actual City of LA before City of San Fernando.  It was LAPD Foothill District.  Pretty far to the East of me were the 'black neighborhoods'.  Where I was: entirely Hipanic, mostly Mexican.  Homeowners, business owners.  It was great. It was the  last year before I sold my taxi (physically and ephemerally -car + LA City Permit) .  My neighbor turned out to be a mechanic - out of his garage - State License on the wall, shelves full of Official Shop Manuals.
The auto parts store around the corner was owned by an uncle, his two nephews, and his daughter.  The guy who rebuilt alternators, also around the corner,   On San Fernando Rd. - the father and son who owned the radiator shop (son and my #2 son became good friends) Further up SF Rd, twin brothers who owned the tire and alignment shop. Almost heaven if you OWN a taxi.  Really, IT owns you.   So, In between the tire shop and the radiator shop, Rodney King finally got stopped after a highspeed chase.  ("We like to discourage them from running from us." * )    The guy in the apartment across the street, with the brand new camera he wanted to test drive.  
Every sentient being in the area saw that video a thousand times.  
Three months after that, a Korean lady storekeeper shot and killed a 15 year old girl. We saw that on video a bunch of times, and then when a white (female) judge gave her  probation,  we saw it again, in eyeball etching memory strokes.    Read all about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots

On April 29, 1992,  I was in my Subaru (decals stripped, no longer a "taxi" I'd sold it,ta da!!) driving home from West LA to Pacoima,  I hear the verdict from Simi Valley - all 4 of the cops that did the beating have been acquitted.   My immediate reaction was to hurry home and den up.  Then I turned on the TV  71st and Normandy.  

On the second day, as the mayhem was moving toward Hollywood my crazy taxi driver friend, D showed up at my house, driving his cab, with a pillowcase full of bound up twenty's.   He was a compulsive saver, ready for Armageddon, and I had seen this stash previously at his place once.  He was just going to drive the cab to Santa Barbara for  a day or so and pay his lease for the whole time.  But he was afraid to go alone with all that cash, so could he stash it at my place  (nothing to loot in my 'hood- more on that later) for a couple of days, behind two big dogs and very friendly, brown neighbors?
That proved to be optimistic - oh D came back in two days, but there was a bit of, um, dust in the 'hood.  The chain market  and the K Mart down the way were looted:  people were filmed coming out of them carrying diapers and milk.  Day three survival technique.  All the local Korean corner stores, who  hired all their assistants from the neighborhood,  had two or three hefty Vatos just casually hanging around outside.  No trouble here.  The AM//PM, owned and solely operated by an extended Mid-Eastern family, got one small lit bottle of gasoline.   That was it, but afaik, the furthest out the uprising went.   My #1 son, then  28, had perfected his "these are not the 'droids you're looking for" manner and force.  He had friends who owned spiffy boutiques on Melrose. He patrolled there. The heavy looting had extended to big box stores on Sunset Blvd. by then.    I was petrified. 

But it was  all televised.   I'm embarrassed to say I didn't remember the extent to which Korea Town was truly a war zone.   This documentary seared my soul - I was there - but not - I hope these photogs won a Pulitzer.  ABC should, surely for the graduate education in the big question all the white folks ask: WHY? 

The Marches now are prime time fodder.  Nothing better than when the batshit crazy inciters stir up some shit.  (more here on that)    Of course, the (coming?) revolution will be televised - already some Red states are working on laws to make protesting a felony.  Is that Martial Music I hear? 

blasted linky no link so:    

mlozaouk  annieli

Apr 26 · 01:53:50 AM

Based Stick Man is referenced in Caroline"s tweet.  Enlightening 

Caroline O.‏ @RVAwonk  4h4 hours ago

 Caroline O. Retweeted Ann Coulter

Why don't you tell us the true story of why you celebrated one of the groups that promoted violence 

in Berkeley?https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/857056816458588160 …

Caroline O. added,

Ann CoulterVerified account @AnnCoulter

Here's the real story about Berkeley -- WHERE I WILL BE SPEAKING NEXT THURSDAY: http://bit.ly/2oWpKS8 

 Reply

Recommended 0 times

* quote from a cop, another story, another time.

(credit TV Guide Listings)

Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992

9:00 PM on ABC, 2 hr 2017

A look at the decade leading up to the L.A. riots of 1992. This documentary examines the era's racial tensions, the rise of gangs, the crack epidemic and the efforts of the LAPD to clamp down on the violence.

  

Walter Cronkite

"It was a day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times; and you were there."
Kind of sums up his life and impact on all of us who grew up and old with him

Walter Cronkite died this week. CBS took the 60 Minutes slot for a memorial show, and not once did they use that line. They did give half a second to "You Were There" with no explication whatsoever.

My first speaking part - playing Walter for a Columbus Day thingy in 3rd grade. The 'boy' who'd been assigned the part got sick, and I was the best reader in class, so I got it.

Happy Birthday Raz!

February 1, 1965, I gave birth to Rached Ahmad Zaouk.  I haven't seen him since April 2004.  I google him regularly, he seems to be alive and well in Las Vegas, but I still miss him.  I'm sorry I won't be "controlled" to his satisfaction.  I'm sorry that's the criterion I'm to meet to see my son.  But thanks for contributing to my every password.  Big Smile.  I'm at work, so I'd better quit now, so I'm not sobbing when my boss gets here in 30 minutes. 

Maybe I should blog now and then. :)

goodness!

Wow, it's still here ??  Can't seem to find it

From Paul Krugman, N.Y. Times

---

October 9, 2011

Panic of the Plutocrats

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.
And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.
Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.
Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.
And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”
The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it."

so here's what she said:  " There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.  Nobody.  You built a factory out there - good for you.   But I want to be clear.  You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.   You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.  You were safe in your factory because of  police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.  You didn't  have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory. . .  Now look.  You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God Bless!  Keep a big hunk of it.   But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."  

There's more to the column, too, to be summed up with my voice:  The banksters caused this mess, they continue to get paid mega mils,  and NO ONE has gone to jail! 

Elizabeth Warren

"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody.
"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did.
"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."^{1Elizabeth Warren}

Malaria

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Checking the Rosetta At Home website today (no new data supplied recently !)  and I got to reading. . . my very own version of the 'time sink'. . . .   and I got to thinking:   Malaria and it's pesky mosquito link are so ubiquitous. . .   there MUST be a purpose in nature for this disease.  The active attacks of malaria - do they heat the body to repel some other threat?  Are the painful joints telling you something about your body you should be addressing/amending?  And of course,  somewhere in the biosphere/living planet/Gaia there is a cure for this and associated trail of body imbalances.


May 18, 2011
Journal post from David Baker

A recent issue of Nature describes an exciting approach we are taking with collaborators to fight Malaria. The title of the paper is "A synthetic homing endonuclease-based gene drive system in the human malaria mosquito" and the PDF is available at my lab web site. The idea is to use enzymes which cut within critical genes in mosquitos to greatly reduce the number of malaria parasite infected mosquitos. There are still many issues that must be overcome for this strategy to be used against malaria in the real world, but this paper is an important first proof of concept of the strategy.

Just when I'd like to rant...

about a bunch of things - along comes another Truth Out e-mail that covers it all and more. . .if I can only figure out how I pasted it all in last time :)  . . .  wow that was easy

Wednesday 07 September 2011 The Price of 9/11 Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate: "The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security. The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda - as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive - orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning - as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation." Read the Article Obama Transition Team Member Explains Why Administration Chose Not to Prosecute Torture David Swanson, War Is a Crime: "If you can think back all the way to January 2009, back when wars were ending, Guantanamo was closing, the Pentagon was getting oversight, employees were going to have free choice, the rich would start paying taxes, the air would be getting cleaner, and so forth, you'll recall that the Obama transition team was acting super populist and high-tech. They had questions from ordinary people for the President Elect submitted on their website and voted up or down. The top question at the end of the voting had come from Bob Fertik of Democrats.com and it was this: 'Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor - ideally Patrick Fitzgerald - to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?' (Bob Fertik, New York City) Not only was the answer no, but it had to be inferred because President Change U. Wish refused to answer the question.... However, we now have an account from someone involved in the decision process way back when." Read the Article Qaddafi Loyalists Fled to Niger by Convoy, US Affirms Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter, The Los Angeles Times: "More than a dozen high-ranking loyalists of Moammar Kadafi made a desert getaway into neighboring Niger, US officials said Tuesday, but there was no indication that the former Libyan leader or his sons had escaped. 'We're confident that Kadafi didn't get out,' said Jalal Gallal, a spokesman for Libya's transitional government. News that as many as 250 vehicles carrying members of Kadafi's inner circle, including his security chief, had crossed Monday into Niger added a dramatic twist to the manhunt for the strongman who ruled Libya for more than four decades. However, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday that a spokesman for Niger's president said that only three cars had crossed into Niger, ferrying one member of Kadafi's inner circle. There was no immediate explanation for the contradictory versions." Read the Article Defense Spending: The Worst Way to Make Jobs Dina Rasor, Truthout: "I see it coming. As President Obama gives his speech on how important it is for the government and the country to produce more jobs, and as the budget noose starts to tighten on all government programs, including the Department of Defense (DoD) this time, the DoD will flood the Congress with charts and statistics on how cutting the DoD will also cut important defense manufacturing jobs across the US. Each member of Congress will be notified about how many jobs will be cut for any given weapon system, and this is especially effective because the DoD has become the master of spreading weapon production contractor and subcontractor jobs across as many districts and states as possible to get the weapons funded in the first place.... As we drawdown troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defenders of the DoD budget, which unfortunately includes the new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, will want to transfer any money saved back into their favorite endeavor: weapons production." Read the Article Obama Jobs Plan to Include $300 Billion in Tax Credits, Spending Peter Nicholas, The Los Angeles Times: "President Obama on Thursday will roll out a jobs package that strives to lift the ailing economy through $300 billion worth of tax credits, school renovation projects, job training for the unemployed and a program to prevent teacher layoffs, according to a person familiar with the administration's plans. In his speech before a joint session of Congress, Obama also will ask lawmakers to renew the 2% payroll tax cut that was approved in December and to extend jobless benefits, said the person, who requested anonymity to talk more freely about White House internal deliberations.... Obama is under pressure from his Democratic base to submit a bold package that would put a real dent in the jobless rate - and revive his reelection prospects. To the extent he follows this advice, though, he risks alienating Republicans and even conservative Democrats who want to avoid anything that smacks of another expensive stimulus package." Read the Article Project "Censored 2012": Moving Beyond Media Reform Mickey Huff, Seven Stories Press: "That there is a crisis in journalism seems to be understood by many scholars and independent journalists, while many in the corporate media don't seem to notice, or at least don't mention it much. Further, they do not divulge much in terms of the challenges we face in the twenty-first century as the corporate media flood the airwaves with celebrity tales and misinformation. The overall so-called 'mainstream' reporting in the United States is the equivalent to fiddling while Rome burns. And make no mistake, the US is an empire, and we are in decay. We the People of these United States already stand at a very real precipice - the potential end of what has been deemed the Great American Experiment, the institutional embodiment of human freedom protected by government of, by, and for the people. Meanwhile, the corporate media fill so-called news time with faux-angst, Astroturf platforms, cult-of-personality disorders, and one manufactured irrelevant crisis after another in what appears to be a Herculean effort to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home and abroad...." Read the Article Toward Total Information Awareness Nancy Murray and Kade Crockford, Truthout and ACLU Massachusetts: "It is no secret that the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) bungled a multitude of opportunities to foil the 9/11 plot. There were no fewer than 12 intelligence reports in the three years preceding 9/11 that Osama bin Laden planned to use aircraft as weapons and crash them into buildings in Washington and New York City, information that was included in the president's daily intelligence brief. In addition to the 2004 report by the 9/11 Commission, the often astonishing list of intelligence failings that contributed to the success of the attacks has been exhaustively documented.... In his minority report to the Joint Intelligence Committee, Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby urged agency leaders to be held accountable for the litany of failures. This was never done. Instead, well before the public was alerted to the extent of the multiple intelligence failures, the government embarked on a 'fix' that bore little relation to the actual shortcomings outlined in the reports...." Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: Before Wildfires, Texas Gov. Rick Perry Cut Firefighter Program by 75 Percent, and More In today's On the News segment: President's job plan will cost $300 billion; Gov. Rick Perry cut state's volunteer firefighter program by 75 percent, cutting critical program to prevent wildfires; United States slips to No. 5 in world's top economies; new Pew reports that one in three Americans who grew up middle class have fallen out of that economic class today; and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Did a Top GOP Staffer for Senator Grassley Cover Up Evidence of News Corp. Hacking in the US? Lee Fang, ThinkProgress: "A top investigator for the Senate Finance Committee, working under Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), may have had smoking gun evidence of News Corp's hacking activity. While News Corp's British subsidiaries have received the most media attention for systematically hacking the cell phone and personal records of private citizens, the public still has heard little of allegations relating to similar conduct perpetrated by News Corp against its American competitors. ThinkProgress has learned that not only did a sensitive tip come to Grassley's office about News Corp's cyber attacks against other American companies, but authorities may have failed to look into the matter partially because a staffer named Nick Podsiadly allegedly never followed through on his promise to the whistleblower." Read the Article Jim Hightower | Perry Tales: Rick Is Not Who He Says He Is Jim Hightower, Truthout: "Presidential wannabe Rick Perry is flitting all around the country - hither, thither and yon - spreading little 'Perry Tales' about himself and the many wonders he has worked as governor of Texas. His top Perry Tale is a creationist story about what he has modestly branded 'The Texas Miracle.' While the rest of the country is mired in joblessness, says the miracle worker, his state has added 1.2 million jobs during his 10-year tenure. I've built 'a job-creating machine,' the governor gushed during one of his recent flits across Iowa, and a Perry PR aide smugly added, 'The governor's job creation record speaks for itself.' Actually, it doesn't." Read the Article Is the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline in America's Best "National Interest"? Elizabeth McGowan, InsideClimate News: "Barely two weeks ago, pro-pipeline contingents were claiming victory and anti-pipeline forces were fuming after the State Department declared that the project would cause minimal environmental harm. But now both sides are girding for the federal government's next step. It requires the State Department to take the lead in determining if Keystone XL is in the national interest. The $7 billion pipeline, a project of Alberta-based TransCanada, would travel 1,702 miles through six states.... The State Department has scheduled a series of eight September and October public meetings in the half-dozen states along Keystone XL's proposed route-Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas-plus a final one Oct. 7 in Washington, DC. The department also will accept written comments through Oct. 9.... 'The State Department has committed to this national interest conversation being serious and we are going to take them at their word,' Danielle Droitsch of the Natural Resources Defense Council's international program told InsideClimate News. 'That means not taking a narrow view of what is in the national interest.'" Read the Article Plan Would Keep Small Force in Iraq Past Deadline Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times News Service: "Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is supporting a plan that would keep 3,000 to 4,000 American troops in Iraq after a deadline for their withdrawal at year's end, but only to continue training security forces there, a senior military official said on Tuesday. The recommendation would break a longstanding pledge by President Obama to withdraw all American forces from Iraq by the deadline. But it would still involve significantly fewer forces than proposals presented at the Pentagon in recent weeks by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, to keep as many as 14,000 to 18,000 troops there. The proposal for a smaller force - if approved by the White House and the Iraqi government, which is not yet certain - reflected the shifting political realities in both countries. It also reflected the tension between Mr. Obama's promise to bring all American forces home and the widely held view among commanders that Iraq is not yet able to provide for its own security." Read the Article Profit Motive Underlies Outbreak of Immigration Bills Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy: "While it has been reported that more immigrants behind bars means more income for ALEC member Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), less discussed has been how immigrant detention benefits commercial bail-bond agencies, an industry represented in ALEC through the American Bail Coalition.... An immigrant facing removal may remain incarcerated, benefiting the for-profit prison industry, or released on bond, often paying a commercial bail bondsman for their release. The for-profit bail bond industry's trade association, the American Bail Coalition (ABC), is an ALEC member and helped pass the ALEC anti-immigrant laws." Read the Article Nepal's Women Farmers Discard Imported Hybrid Seeds and Husband Local Varieties in Co-Op Seed Banks Sudeshna Sarkar, Inter Press Service: "Learning a lesson from crop failures attributed to climate change, Nepal's women farmers are discarding imported hybrid seeds and husbanding hardier local varieties in cooperative seed banks. 'I had a crop failure two years ago,' says Shobha Devkota, 32, from Jibjibe village in Rasuwa, a hilly district in central Nepal which is part of the Langtang National Park, a protected area encompassing two more districts, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchowk. 'The maize was attacked by pests, the paddy had no grain and the soil grew hard. I had a tough time trying to feed my three daughters and sending them to school.' Since her marriage 17 years ago, Shobha had been sharing farming chores with her husband Ram Krishna. However, when he left for Dubai four years ago to work as a security guard, farming became her responsibility entirely. Though she has never been to school and can only scrawl her name, Shobha and other women in the village who share similar backgrounds, are keenly aware of changing climate and its adverse impact on livelihoods." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES If you want to make crime a growth industry to create more jobs, just privatize prisons. It's happening across the nation. Heck, crime has been an institutional engine for a huge work force even in the public sector. Think of the hundreds of thousands of lawyers, judges, clerks, prison guards, police, parole officers, social workers etc. depending upon keeping people incarcerated. And then there's the construction industry that is hot footin' it to build new maximum security facilities. And the small towns now depleted of jobs that compete to "host" prisons to bring jobs to the community. But the real institutionalization of crime as a job creator is emerging full force with the privatization of jails. A corporation can't make a profit - let alone the issue of their accountability for how they treat prisoners - unless they have sufficient volume. In short, a privatized criminal incarceration system de facto creates the need for an ongoing source of criminals to meet the need for generating a profit based on economies of scale. It's no surprise that Rick Perry, then, has jumped on the prison privatization bandwagon, as detailed in a Mother Jones article, "Flush With Prison Industry Dollars, Rick Perry Pushed Privatized Prisoner Care." Of course, a lot of crime is based on multi-generational poverty, a condition which is exacerbated by our current severe economic downturn. That is why the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. It would be interesting to see what would result if we offered more jobs in the highest crime rate areas. But that's not bound to happen now or anytime soon. There's a lot of money to be made in crime by the many professions that depend upon the revolving door of "offenders" continuing at a nice pace, and much of that profit is increasingly being made by the growing for-profit prison industry. Mark Karlin Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout The Koch Brother Tapes: Gov. Chris Christie Lets the Plutocracy Know That He's One of Them Read the Article at Mother Jones Whichever Party Runs the Government in the UK, Murdoch and BP Pull the Strings Read the Article at BuzzFlash Will Bunch: Ten Real Questions About 9/11 Read the Article at The Philadelphia Daily News McConnell Once Again Proves GOP Leadership Has Become a Cult Read the Article at Talking Points Memo For Rick Perry, It's Bush "Deja Vu All Over Again" Read the Article at BuzzFlash Arrests at Paul Ryan's "Town Hall" Event Read the Article at Politico Tea Party Michigan Governor Signs 48-Month Welfare Limit Read the Article at The Associated Press Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines ---------- Support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation by clicking here. To ensure you receive our messages please add the following address to your email address book: messenger@truthout.org Click here to Subscribe Our Privacy Policy Click here to Unsubscribe Truthout is a proud member of the Newspaper Guild/CWA, Local 36047

Well, I really don't want to see the movie, but. . .

"Blogging is not writing, it's graffiti with punctuation."  lmao   it's a quote from the preview of "Contagion" which is looking just scary enough so I would never watch it.  heh heh - life is scary enough.

S & P downgrade

Oh wait -  aren't those the very same people who rated  A++ all those toxic, bundled,  should never-have-had- a-mortgage- mortgage backed securities that  (nearly) BROUGHT DOWN OUR ECONOMY in the first frelling place ??  IAFAYCCI    (new acronym - "it's all fixed and you can't change it")

And just a side funny:  Wells Fargo paid some billion (BILLION) dollar settlement because of (Wacovia's) their falsely favorable rating of some toxic securities.   Paid to some Hedge fund people - also to blame in said economic break down-  who were foolish enough to believe them, even though they were doing the same frelling thing out the other side of their mouths - .  Not to any small guys on Main street, whose wealth (house values, 401k's, college funds) was REALLY  looted.