Society – Page 19 – The Wrongologist

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 21, 2015

We know that when faced with a tragedy, some people exploit it for narrow ends. But we got to see just how low Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) could go. Appearing on The View, Senator Graham at first said a couple of things that seemed mainstream:

It’s not who we are, it’s not who our country is, it’s about this guy…and this guy’s got tons of problems and to kill people in a church after sitting with them for an hour shows you how whacked out this kid is.

Fine. He’s going with the lone wacko meme instead of the domestic terrorist meme.

Then he goes further. Despite the fact that the Justice Department had labeled the attack a “hate crime,” Graham wouldn’t go there: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

There are real people who are organized out there to kill people in religion and based on race, this guy’s just whacked out…But it’s 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians [in order] to kill them.

Excuse us Mr. Graham, there hasn’t been anything so far to indicate that this was a hate crime against Christians for being Christian. And when you suggest that it is about that, two bad things happen:

• It denies the legitimacy of the trauma this caused black people in and outside South Carolina, irrespective of their religious beliefs
• It feeds the paranoia of white Christians, many of whom already have a borderline persecution complex

He ignores that the killer’s roommate said he was “big into segregation” and wanted to start a race war, and that he had Confederate Flag vanity plates. The eyewitness survivors of the attack said that he complained about black people raping white people.

Under the circumstances, it is safe to say that this was a hate crime, and also that it was a hate crime directed against black people for being black. This guy turned his anger on black people. The next guy might target secularists because politicians like Mr. Graham use this tragedy to say that people are out to get Christians.

A primary job of our leaders is to tamp down paranoia when it appears. But, Sen. Graham isn’t interested in calming people’s fears, he is a merchant of the politics of fear. He wants you to be afraid all the time, which is how he builds support for his domestic policies and his foreign adventures.

That he is consistently re-elected speaks volumes about South Carolina. Only 672,941 people of South Carolina’s roughly 3.8 million voters voted for him in 2014. Since he is now a GOP presidential candidate, he wants to win the SC GOP primary. So he is only speaking to those 672,941 SC voters.

That implies that he has no moral compass.

On to cartoons. South Carolina was the dominant story, but we heard from Pope Frank, Obama’s trade deal passed the House, and there is a new $10 bill on the way.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves about root causes:

The usual suspects offered the usual denials:

The Pope’s faith-based climate teaching met resistance:

Pope Francis has difficulty reading right-wing signals:

Obama rides Republicans towards a trade deal:

There should be no debate on who will be on new $10 bill:

Why Don’t Low-Wage People Get Better Jobs?

Regarding Tuesday’s post, “More About Taxpayers Subsidizing Corporations“, which deals with taxpayers subsidizing the low-wage employees of restaurant chains, long-time blog reader Kevin asks: “Why don’t the folks who flip burgers go out and get better jobs?” Excellent question.

Two thoughts. First, they should move up whenever possible, and the chart below about restaurant employee turnover should lead us to believe that they do move out, if not up. When it comes to workplace changes, everyone deserves the chance to move up into higher positions and therefore, this will increase the rate of employee turnover. Research from Work Institute has suggested that 22% of turnover was due to career development and a higher chance of job growth. Being able to excel in your chosen career can only happen if these people decide to make this change. But, whether they leave or not, those jobs will remain at or below minimum wage, and the taxpayers will continue to subsidize these restaurant corporations who underpay them. It falls to the social safety net to make up the difference. Take a look at restaurant employee turnover statistics:

Source: People Report, a division of TDN2k

The burger flippers turnover is the highest among restaurant hourly employees, and it is growing. These are the people who don’t even get tips, so since employee turnover is the highest where wages are the lowest, it’s the burger flippers who move on. This could also be due to job satisfaction they may feel in the workplace. It could be argued that they do not feel the same level of appreciation within a service profession as they would in an office environment that would buy gifts for employees in order to boost their morale in an attempt to keep them for longer.

A second thought is, what jobs can they move up to? Here is a little background:

The US lost more than 8.84 million private sector jobs in the Great Recession. Now, five years after employment hit bottom in February 2010, private sector employment has returned to prerecession levels. The National Employment Law Project (NELP) indicates in a study that low-wage job creation didn’t just happen in the first phases of the recovery, but today, five years in, job growth is heavily concentrated in lower-wage industries. Lower-wage industries accounted for 22% of job losses during the recession, but 44% of employment growth.

Worse, low-wage jobs account for 100% of the net job growth in the economy. Today NELP reports that there are:

• 958,000 fewer mid-wage jobs than at the start of the recession
• 976,000 fewer high-wage jobs than in 2008

The National Restaurant Association’s 2015 economic forecast says the restaurant industry in 2014 added 1,000 jobs per day. It is projected to provide a record 14 million jobs in 2015.

So, where do the motivated, striving burger flippers go?

The glibertarians say the burger flippers should work hard, save money from their minimum wage jobs, get a better education, and move on to a higher paying job, maybe in an office or a laboratory. OK, that’s possible for some.

They say that Mr. Market determines what the value of a burger-flipping job should be. And, if it isn’t a living wage, the burger flipper should study some more.

But when they move on, odds are that they will move to another low-wage job, more likely than not, in the restaurant industry.

And regardless of what new low-wage job they take, the taxpayers’ subsidy of the Corporatists will continue.

Monday Wake Up Call – June 1, 2015

How many hours does it take to make rent at the minimum wage? The National Low Income Housing Coalition looked at the number of hours minimum-wage employees have to work per week in each state just to rent an apartment and survive financially. Their headline conclusion is there is no state where a minimum wage worker can earn enough to make the fair market rent for a two-bedroom place on 40 hours a week. West Virginia tallied the fewest hours at 63 to make the average fair market rent. Hawaii was 175 hours. California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Washington, DC were all over 130 hours. So, no chance to get an average place for a family while working 40 hours. Here is a chart from their report:

The Wrongologist would have preferred if the study had used median rents rather than average rents. The red bars show the gap in hourly wages between the state’s minimum wage and the cost of an average two bedroom place. This is another artifact of the Great Recession. Let’s recap what has happened since it ended:

• The percentage of people employed in the US has never recovered
• All income gains went to the top 1%
• There has been a huge bull market in stocks, despite stagnant income for all but the top few

If we don’t wake up, America will be a banana republic, with the emphasis on the “banana”, since the “republic” is already dying. The US will be small enclaves of massive wealth run by a few oligarchs. Think of it as Manhattan, a few square miles where the Corporations and their top employees reside, surrounded by a sea of low wage cast-offs.

None of this is inevitable. We could increase wages, we could rebuild our decaying infrastructure. This approach is dismissed as “Keynesian” by our right-wing brothers. The only kind of Keynesian stimulus they will accept is military Keynesianism. It’s not that peaceful Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work, it’s just that they won’t benefit from it. They see war as prosperity. China is next in their battle sights.

Wake up America, time is running out to keep us on a course that avoids our demise as a middle class economy. The next election may be the most important in our lifetimes. Here is today’s wake-up call, Amy Speace, a folk singer featured in a NYT Money section article. Here is her song, “Spent,” about trying to make rent:

Sample lyric:
We’re head over heels,
In over our heads,
We borrow and steal
To pay the rent.
How are we gonna save any money
When it’s already spent?

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Today’s breakfast links:

Study shows human attention span now lags that of a goldfish. Who is behind the study? Microsoft, who wants to learn how modern technology impacts the attention span of people who use it. (Insert your own joke here)

Sudden loss of ice in Antarctica was large enough to affect Earth’s gravity. The ice loss causes small changes in the gravity field of the Earth, which were detected by a satellite mission, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

What do you get if you take the blades off a wind turbine? A better wind turbine. This new turbine is a hollow straw that sticks up 40 feet up in the air and vibrates like a guitar string when the wind blows. Its 50% cheaper than blade turbines, and while it is also 30% less efficient at capturing energy, a wind farm can double the number of bladeless turbines that occupy a given area. That’s a net energy gain of 40%. The company is Vortex Turbines. Invest at your own risk.

A new salt reactor will use spent nuclear fuel to make energy. This nuclear reactor generates 75 times the electricity per ton of uranium compared to today’s light-water nuclear reactors, since it burns 96% of its fuel, compared with only 4% in light-water reactors. The company is the venture-funded Transatomic Power. They hope to build a 20-megawatt demonstration reactor by 2020. With nearly 80,000 tons of radioactive waste in the US (and with 2,000 tons added every year), it could turn something toxic into something useful. Invest at your own risk. With this being said, it could be as simple as doing some research into something like uranium mining stocks and finding out about this sector in this particular industry. The more people know about investing, hopefully, the more clued up they will become and potentially make better decisions.

A PA newspaper published a letter calling for President Obama to be executed, but now they’re apologizing. The paper says: “We will strive to do better in the future.” Another example of our media’s inexorable descent. They are only sorry they got caught.

Here is a list of Zagat’s best brunches in Manhattan.

A Civil War Meditation

May 9th was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. It passed unnoticed in most national media. Despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, America’s black citizens were not truly free until MLK made us really see their problems during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. In 1965, the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, the Voting Rights Act was passed.

The Voting Rights Act, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were the largest step forward for equal rights in our nation’s history, certainly more important than the Emancipation Proclamation.

We are fascinated by the Civil War because it is an epic story. The American Republic was founded in 1789, and the nation only lives 72 years with slavery before it is torn apart by the argument over states’ rights, and the right to own slaves. We go on to fight a war that kills some 750,000 people, (equal to 7 million today). We then free 3.5 million people overnight, and then take years to try to put the country back together. Today, about 1 in 3 Americans can trace an ancestor to one side or the other in the Civil War. That adds up to about 100 million of our population who are remotely connected to the war.

What is sometimes lost in the story is that Lincoln, a Republican, introduced big government to America. At the start of the war, the country had a weak central government. Lincoln built the centralized state. Consider what Lincoln created:

• The first national income tax
• The first military draft
• The Quartermaster Corps, which became the 2nd largest employer in the country during the war, behind only the Union Army
• The largest confiscation of property in US history when he emancipated the slaves. Slave owners in the South lost $3.5 billion of net worth in the process
• A re-imagining of the US Constitution, passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, ending slavery, formalizing birthright citizenship, creating black male suffrage, and guaranteeing equal protection under the law. It can be said that these Amendments were a second American revolution.

Conservatives ask: “Where did big government come from?” It was invented by Lincoln, a Republican, to win the Civil War. If the Civil War ended with Constitutional Amendments that can be called a 2nd American Revolution, perhaps the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the mid-1960’s was yet a 3rd American Revolution. And there may be other “revolutions” to come.

Yale University Professor of Civil War History, David Blight wrote in The Atlantic that the nation has never truly gotten over that conflict. He says that the great issues of the war were not resolved at Appomattox, and in a sense, not only is the Civil War not over, it can still be lost.

When we think about the legacy of the Civil War, one of the issues that we have re-visited since the Reagan era is the revival of a debate about states’ rights and the place of federalism in our Republic. This is a persistent legacy of the Civil War, the issue of state power versus federal power: does America owe its first loyalty to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, that says the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties are “the supreme law of the land?” Or does the 10th Amendment come first, which states that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it under the Constitution?

Professor Blight says that the question we have to ask the states’ rights supporters is: “states’ rights to do what?” Or, “for whom and against whom?”

During the Civil War, the states’ rights argument was used to preserve the racial order in the South. Today, the states’ rights debate is hidden in the term “limited government”, versus the right’s categorization of “big government”.

Lately, conservative partisans have brought back “nullification”, but couched in near-Orwellian terms, such as “right to work,” or, “religious freedom.” We have 36 state legislatures controlled by Republicans that are trying to eliminate abortions, remove environmental protections, enhance gun rights, and privatize education, all of which need a weaker federal government to succeed.

And every time a politician of the South says she/he is “standing on principle” and pledges “a return to our founding principles of limited government and local control,” our progress from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, through the New Deal reforms, to the 1960’s Civil Rights acts are again threatened.

50 years after the Voting Rights Act, we are finally aware that there are millions of Americans who have never fully accepted the verdict of Appomattox.

As Professor Blight said this week in a BBC lecture, as long as we continue to debate states’ rights, and as long as we continue to leave the “problem” of racism unresolved, we will need to study our Civil War.

Truth or Spin?

Eye of the beholder: Baltimore in flames!

The only problem is the photo wasn’t taken in Baltimore. It was taken in Venezuela. But, Fox13 in Memphis, TN posted it as “Baltimore in Flames.” For those who saw Fox’s rendition of the story, the image is of urban devastation in Baltimore. A viewer recalled the actual event and called Fox out. Fox took the photo down after it racked up tens of thousands of views, saying: “Our team didn’t fact check the picture the way we should have.”

At the time, many commentators stressed the need for peaceful protests. It wasn’t long before some invoked MLK. You can always count on Wolf Blitzer:

I just want to hear you say there should be peaceful protests, not violent protests, in the tradition of Martin Luther King.

Sure, why not? Here is what a 38 year-old Martin Luther King Jr. already the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said to the American Psychological Association’s convention in Washington, DC:

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest.

MLK said more: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he [the Negro] is shocking it by abusing property rights…This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.

He also said:

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services.

And Dr. King closed with this:

These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

Speaking truth, or showing photos that distort the truth?

Take another “truth”, the Republican’s emerging 2016 campaign idea: What matters is economic opportunity, not inequality. A Wall Street Journal poll asks the question:

Which concerns you more: the income gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the country or middle and working class Americans not being able to get ahead financially?

The answer?
• Income gap between the wealthy and the rest of the country: 28%
• Middle and working class not being able to get ahead: 68%

People tend to share values, and they lean more towards equal opportunities than equal outcomes. But, these are linked through causation. That means we can’t increase opportunity without reducing inequality. If we have narrowly distributed growth, those with asset-driven incomes hold disproportionate power relative to those whose incomes depend on paychecks. So, measures that attempt to reduce the 1%’s economic “rents”, things like collective bargaining, higher minimum wages, trade policy that protects workers’ rights and wages, robust safety nets, and progressive taxation, are attacked by Republicans as counterproductive to growth and jobs.

The political selling of “equal opportunity” is a house of cards. Why would anyone be happy with just equal opportunity, if it means an equal chance to live in in poverty? The R’s seem to be comparing equal economic opportunity to one roll of the dice: Roll a six sided die, get a 1, and earn less than $20,000, roll a 6, and you earn more than $115,000.

It’s high stakes, but relax, you’ve got equal opportunity.

Here is a Red-Winged Blackbird for your moment of Zen. Saw the first of the year today in a Crab Apple tree on the vast land holdings at the Mansion of Wrong:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

See you on Sunday.

RIP Guy Carawan

Unless you were around for the folk revival era in the late 1950’s − early 1960’s, you probably don’t know who Guy Carawan was. He co-wrote and popularized the protest song “We Shall Overcome” in the American Civil Rights Movement by teaching it to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. He just died at the age of 87.

Wrongo has written about the genealogy of this song:

The story behind the story of We shall Overcome is that the song is based on the early hymn “U Sanctissima.” Charles Albert Tindley, a minister in Philadelphia, added new words in 1901 and called his new hymn “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” In the ensuing decades, the song became a favorite at black churches throughout the American south, often sung as “I Will Overcome.” Eventually, the song was brought to a workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, TN. The school’s cultural director was Zilphia Horton. Pete Seeger visited the school and changed “We will overcome” to “We shall overcome.” Guy Carawan, a great folk artist who plays the hammer dulcimer, was then a music director at the Highlander School. He introduced it to civil rights activists during a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting in 1960. Frank Hamilton was in Seeger’s band.

The song’s copyright includes Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, but omits Charles A. Tindley.

Carawan lived in California at the beginning of the folk revival movement, but ended up at Highlander, a place famous for its role in left-wing southern organizing in the 20th century. Few know that Rosa Parks had already trained at Highlander on civil rights issues before refusing to move to the back of the bus which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Martin Luther King had visited Highlander as well.

In 2013, NPR’s Noah Adams had a piece about Carawan and the song. Apparently, Carawan heard the song in the early 1950’s when he was finishing graduate work in sociology at UCLA and doing some singing on the side. He also learned about the Highlander Center, and eventually that’s where he spent most of the rest of his life. He told a history of the song:

I first heard this song from a friend of mine, Frank Hamilton. He taught me this song, and he also had put some chords to it [on guitar]…When I came to Highlander in 1959, Zilphia Horton had died, and I had some singing and musical skills and they needed somebody there. So by the time I came to Highlander, I was playing it with the guitar…

Today, few people sing at civil protests. Somehow, outside of concerts and church, we have lost an understanding of the power of shared singing, of unrestrained sincerity, and the strength it provides to the group.

But its power was important to Dr. King. Here is what he said about the song on March 31, 1968, just days before his death:

There’s a little song that we sing in our movement down in the South. I don’t know if you’ve heard it…You know, I’ve joined hands so often with students and others behind jail bars singing it: ‘We shall overcome.’ Sometimes we’ve had tears in our eyes when we joined together to sing it, but we still decided to sing it: ‘We shall overcome.’ Oh, before this victory’s won, some will have to get thrown in jail some more, but we shall overcome.

One difference between the civil rights movement, which resulted in political change, and the Vietnam demonstrations which did not, was the power of churches working together with students, singing a song that reflected the struggle. Regardless of whether it was sung by Mahalia Jackson, the earnest Carawan, Pete Seeger, or simply kids carrying signs, it had a power to inspire.

A successful movement also required a charismatic leader like Martin Luther King, Jr. who could tell a story, and take America on the journey with him.

Guy Carawan isn’t well known today, but he was really important to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and he will be missed. Here is Guy Carawan singing “We Shall Overcome”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tftdes9dp-A

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Monday Wake Up Call – May 4, 2015

The 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon passed unnoticed by this blogger last week.

Wrongo was drafted in 1966. He was on orders for Vietnam twice, but managed to spend most of his service time in West Germany, running a nuclear missile unit. He lost many friends in Vietnam, but was home, and out of the service in time for most of the big protest marches of the 1970’s. By 1974-75, no one in the States truly expected a “victory”. The debate was, according to Richard Nixon, how to achieve “peace with honor.”

For Nixon, that meant selling America on the premise of “protecting the troops as they withdraw,” or, “securing the release of POW’s”, which Nixon used to extend the war for years.

Since the 1970’s there has been a meme among conservatives that the reason we lost in Vietnam was a lack of national will, brought on by liberals and the war protesters. We still hear this today from a few career military, and many Republican chicken hawks. But, the idea that the primary reason we lost Vietnam was a liberal stab in America’s back is ridiculous, when you realize that Nixon stretched out the war for 6 years beyond the announcement of his “secret plan” to end it.

And if you remember how rapidly the South Vietnamese regime collapsed when it was no longer being propped up by the US military, you know their argument falls apart.

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan are all places where our boys bled on foreign soil. All are places where our money was recycled to our war profiteers, and where we left behind no ability to bring about the “democratic” way of life that some of us had wished for them.

War profiteering for private corporations, socialized losses for the people. US soldiers dead or maimed for life. This is the legacy of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And do Chicken Hawks care about taking care of our veterans after the fact, here at home? They do not. Their mantra is cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes on the war profiteers. Cut social programs, because how can a war profiteer (including those in Congress) possibly make any money off a government-run non-profit social program?

Wake up America, time to throw the Chicken Hawks out of office! Today’s wake up song is “There’s A Wall in Washington” by Iris DeMent:

Sample Lyrics:
A boy, he traveled from far away
to walk the path ’til he finds that name
He reaches his hand up and traces each letter
He stares at the name of his unknown father
His heart is young and it’s filled with pain
in anger he cries out
‘Who is to blame for this wall in Washington
that’s made of cold black granite?
Why is my father’s name etched here in it
On this wall in Washington?’

Your Monday Hot Links:

Czech libertarians received 200,000 applications for citizenship of Liberland, a seven-square-mile microstate established between Serbia and Croatia. The economy will be based on a digital cryptocurrency. Libertarian paradise. What could go wrong?

Reuters says that China will crack down on strippers who perform at rural funerals. Apparently, the Ministry of Culture is taking aim at performances which corrupt “social morals”. Strippers at funerals?

Statues of Snowden, Manning and Assange were unveiled in Berlin. All are considered heroes on the German political left for leaking US intelligence documents. The life-size statues will be going on a world tour, since they have fewer travel restrictions than the real people.

Want to carry a gun in your pants without risk of becoming a gelding? Try Thunderware, a holster designed to give you security while you pack heat near your meat. Is it pants stuffing? Is this for the guy who want you to think he has more down there than he really has? You be the judge. Gun fanatics bristle when people say that their attachment to guns is very phallic, yet they market Thunderware with a straight face.

Audi has announced that it is making synthetic diesel fuel from just water and carbon dioxide. In a bid to put an end to our fossil fuel crisis, Audi’s experimental diesel fuel is made from air and water. Called “e-diesel,” it has less sulfur and fossil-based oils, so it is more environmentally friendly. Audi claims an overall energy efficiency of around 70%. Sounds too good to be true and so far, they can only make 42 gallons/day. Invest at your own risk. If you have an Audi vehicle take a look at this VW service Melbourne as the provider also specialises in the same for Audis.

Monday Wake Up Call – April 27, 2015

Last week saw the sentencing of David Petraeus, former CIA director and the highest-profile general from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to two years’ probation for providing classified information to his mistress. Mr. Petraeus was also fined $100,000.

Petraeus remains a four-star US Army general. His retired pay is $220,000/year, plus the perks of shopping at the PX and the commissary store, full medical benefits, free travel on government aircraft, free legal advice; the list goes on.

A US officer convicted in a US civilian court of a felony is subject to dismissal from the service, at the discretion of the service secretary. A dismissal is the equivalent of a dishonorable discharge for an enlisted soldier. It strips the former member of all the perks, everything.

What Petraeus was convicted of would normally be a felony in a civil court. But he was charged by the Obama Administration with a misdemeanor so he wasn’t vulnerable to an administrative dismissal. This misdemeanor conviction will have about the same impact on his life as a conviction for littering. From the New York Times:

As part of the plea agreement, Mr. Petraeus admitted that he gave his lover, Paula Broadwell, who was writing a biography about him, black notebooks that contained sensitive information about official meetings, war strategy and intelligence capabilities, as well as the names of covert officers.

War strategy. That would be the strategy written by the guy giving it to Broadwell, along with the names of covert officers? Compare that to the crimes for which Jeffrey Sterling and 8 others are facing hard time in prison. Sterling was convicted on 9 counts of violations of the Espionage Act for providing much lesser information to a guy writing a book, James Risen. Manning got 35 years, John Kiriakou gets 2, Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for 3 years and counting, Snowden is on the run, and no military brass is doing time for Abu Ghraib.

Petraeus gave Broadwell that information for personal profit. It helped him in his amorous adventure and, most likely, helped the sales of her book. He has since moved on to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. L.P., a New York investment firm where he is a partner.

That makes Petraeus just another example of too big to fail.

The Justice Department and the Obama administration need today’s wake-up, for not pursuing Mr. Petraeus to the fullest extent of the law.

So here is your Monday wake-up, the White-Throated Sparrow. These guys are all over our property right now:

If you read the Wrongologist via email, you can view the video here.

Your Monday Hot Links:
Everyone wants to appear smart when in a meeting. Here are a few tricks:

Kochs were defeated in Montana after spending a bundle to defeat Medicaid expansion. What? Medicare expansion passed in a Red state?

How much water is in your food? See this graphic. Everyone should look at this, not just Californians.

Wall Street Journal says more people are out of the stock market than are in it. About 52% of Americans are not investing in the stock market, and 53% of them say they don’t have the funds to invest. A different study from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that 45% of working-age households had no retirement savings at all; among the 55-64 age group, the average was only $12,000.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 26, 2015

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether same-sex marriage bans are constitutional. Gay marriage is currently legal in 36 states. And, by the end of this Supreme Court term in June, same-sex couples will either be able to wed in all 50 states, or gay marriage bans may be restored in many states where they’ve been struck down.

Opponents of same-sex marriage shouldn’t worry, because Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the Pride of Iowa, has their backs. He proposed legislation to strip federal courts of the ability to make any ruling on marriage. His “Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015” would, if enacted, strip federal courts of jurisdiction in all cases related to marriage. The bill would leave the issue solely to State courts. Mr. King released this statement along with his bill:

For too long, federal courts have overstepped their constitutionally limited duty to interpret the Constitution. Rather, federal courts have perverted the Constitution to make law and create constitutional rights to things such as privacy, birth control, and abortion. These un-enumerated, so-called constitutionally-protected rights were not envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

He isn’t alone with the “my religion is supreme” arguments:

Mike Huckabee warns gay rights will outlaw Christianity: Because God-fearing Americans know that the gayz will destroy traditional marriage and Christianity. Is THAT what you want, America?

Anti-Gay Activists: We Are Prepared to Die to Fight Gay Marriage ‘Slavery: E.W. Jackson, the 2013 Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia said this at the National Press Club. Maybe dead anti-gay activists is not such a bad idea.

Iowa GOP official says Christians should enjoy special rights: No, Steve King didn’t say this, it was Tamara Scott, a Republican National Committeewoman. She conceded that Muslims had First Amendment rights, but she said Christianity should be favored under US law.

Look, these charlatans have to whip up their base, those Gulfstreams aren’t going to buy themselves.

So in honor of their ideas, the anti-gay right gets a free McDonald’s next time in NYC:

GOP jerks twerk for Koch dough. Very hard to un-see this:

Loretta Lynch finally gets ticket punched to DC:

Europe still thinking about an acceptable migrant solution:

Earth Day comes and goes with speech-making and little change:

Monday Wake Up Call – April 13, 2015

Today’s Wake Up is for the House Judiciary Committee, who last month cleared a bill to the House floor that if passed, would grant asylum to families who want to home school their children, while it would restrict current levels of asylum-granting to children fleeing violence in Central America. The committee vote was 21-12.

Think Progress reports that this provision of the bill grants asylum for up to 500 individuals fleeing home school persecution in countries where home schooling is illegal (Germany is one). The bill refers to people who home school as a “particular social group” and indicates that a person is eligible for asylum if he/she is:

Deemed to have been persecuted for failure or refusal to comply with any law or regulation that prevents the exercise of the individual right of that person to direct the upbringing and education of a child of that person.

This provision seems to put homeschoolers ahead of others seeking asylum who experience much more dire circumstances. The bill also includes provisions to limit asylum claims generally, prohibiting:

• Unaccompanied alien children, like the ones who crossed the southern US border last year, from applying for asylum if “such child may be removed to a safe third country”
• Increasing the number of full-time immigration judges and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyers

In addition it raises the information standard for those children who try to prove that they would be threatened if they were deported back to their home country.

So, the Republican Party is saying that home-schooling is a priority for asylum, ahead of murder, rape, or child abuse. They say that the denial of the right to home-school is persecution, while most lawyers would say it is religious discrimination, a bad thing, but not a reason to let homeschoolers into the US.

Today, applicants must prove that they would face persecution, torture, or even death if they were returned to their native countries. Out of 3,996 asylum requests from Mexico, only 38 were granted.

So sure, homeschoolers, just cut to the head of the line.

This is the state of the Republican Party: Escaping from drug cartels makes you a moocher. Escaping from the tyranny of public education makes you noble.

Or, as Thoroughly Republican Jesus might say: “That which you did for the Home Schooled, you did for me.” Forced to learn about evolution? You’ve got asylum. Forced into prostitution or drug-muling? You better be able to prove it, kiddo.

So, wake up Republicans! To help with that, and in honor of yesterday’s Masters golf tournament, listen to The Texas Tornados doing “A Little Bit is Better Than Nada” from the movie, “Tin Cup“:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8H_ESwrWg

For those of you who read the Wrongologist in email, the song is here.

Monday’s Hot Links:

The avocado is ‘transgender’ and has overnight sex changes, a botanist has discovered. Soon, the “avocado-phobic” brigade will be all over this! Apparently, eating avocados does not make you bi-sexual.

The Onion has a list of The Pros and Cons of body-cams for police. The #1 pro? Provides accurate record of where the cop was when he turned off the body-cam.

Muck Rock reports that Homeland Security can download your PC’s hard drive when you enter the US. Based upon the opinion of any US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer, your device can be searched and its contents read. With approval of a supervisor, the device can be seized, its contents copied in full, or both. This is despite the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Because, terrorism.

Huge oil find near London’s Gatwick airport hypes stock of tiny company. The BBC says it could be as much as 100 billion barrels. The North Sea field has produced 40+ billion barrels over the past 40 years.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Society