Public Information

Billion$ Wasted by Right-Wingnuts

“Republicans have squandered money on hubristic, base-rousing engagements and re-investigations, and forfeited money available for a wholly legitimate and beneficial expansion of health coverage for low-income families. Sadly, it’s not them who are left counting the costs.” (via The Daily Kos)

VenusPlusX has already defined in several posts what we mean by right-wingnuts: sexually-repressed, fear-motivated, white, theocratic oligarchs, as dangerous to the future of civilization as any gun-wielding terrorist. The phrase, right-wingnuts, has popped up elsewhere, to rightly label these knuckleheads for what they really are —  radical conservatives strangling us towards extinction, one way or another. They need stop or be stopped.

Image by Patrick Hoesly Flickr/creative commons

Image by
Patrick Hoesly
Flickr/creative commons

The Daily Kos has provided us with an accounting of how many of your tax dollars has been misspent by these slithering haters.

The grand total of this misanthropic laundry list is over $25 billion, not including the more than $35 billion net loss of Federal medicaid expansion funds rejected by right-wing state governors!

More than even this, consider that there is not one trending catastrophe, from the Middle East to Immigration to Feguson, Missouri, that doesn’t not rest at the feet of these theocrats who worship no other agency besides their own comfort.

As activists, we can identify the issue, the power-holders to be targeted, and the strategies to bring about positive change. What call to action with radicalize you enough to get up and do something about it? Find a cause, any cause you believe in, and then bring your power and personhood to bear, be present.

For example, in the US, if we just focused solely on enfranchising those in poverty, especially people of color, we can bring about substantive and sustainable change in this country within the next two months just by casting our vote. By claiming our power, our votes flip the script, where those enslaved by the system rid themselves of politicians, governments, religious hierarchies, and corporations who repress them in every way possible.

White men who feel so threatened by a brown America need to be sent in for something Frank Zappa once called re-grooving, a powerful reality check of epic proportions.

Let us know what you are doing to heal our world.

 

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For Labor Day: Income Inequality Dampens Economic Growth for Rich and Poor Alike

In tribute to American workers, over half of whom earn less than $15 per hour but deserve so much more, we are reprinting our coverage on income equality. Where the minimum wage is $15 the local economy is boosted, reason alone to join the movement to rectify income equality.

See also: The Wealthy and Powerful Aid Social and Powerful Social and Economic Justice Activists and List of Organizations Working on Income Equality

 

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office showed that after-tax average income ballooned 15.1% fro the top 1% of earners, but grew by less than 1% for the bottom 90% of earners. (TIME magazine, August 5, 2014)

reway2007 Flickr/creative commons

reway2007
Flickr/creative commons

Correcting income inequality is not just a social and economic justice issue. When we talk about income inequality we have to be careful to distinguish it from income equality. Angry right-wing pundits seize on the term, income equality, to scare people with images of anarchy and culture wars.

Rather we are talking about righting a wrong, income inequality, by demanding equal opportunity, especially educational opportunity.

The dollar ratio between managers and workers compensation has increased ten-fold in favor of a few upon the backs of the many (more than 2-:1, two decades ago, to over 200:1, today). That gap in earnings has more and more been based on a widening education gap, which in turn further fuels the economic decline of the middle class and those already in poverty.

How many private homes, yachts, planes, cars, and vacation can you buy, after all? The very rich tend to stockpile their money as just another expensive commodity they can look at in self-admiration, just like Scrooge McDuck.

The overall economy worsens daily, as 90% of us spend, are often forced to spend, most of our income, thereby seeding the economy, while the top 1-9% sits on their excess wealth, again,  earned from the sweat of others. How many private homes, yachts, planes, cars, and vacation can you buy, after all?

There is a report out this week from Standard & Poor’s (S&P) that newly re-arms social and economic justice advocates. S&P is a respected Wall Street ratings entity that helps investors and top earners to become more wealthy through non-partisan presentations of financial facts and predictions. Now it has delivered a hard truth: unequal wealth distribution hurts the overall economy, actually creating recessions, inhibiting investments, and keeping us in harmful boom-and-bust scenarios.

The report cites the education gap as “a main reason for the growing income divide.”

With wages of a college graduate double that of a high school graduate, increasing educational attainment is an effective way to bring income inequality back to healthy levels.”

If we added another year of education to the American workforce from 2014 to 2019, in line with education levels increasing at the rate of educational achievement seen from 1960 to 1965, U.S. potential GDP would likely be $525 billion, or 2.4% higher in five years, than in the baseline. If education levels were increasing at the rate they were 15 years ago, the level of potential GDP would be 1%, or $185 billion higher in five years.

This education gap is a main reason for the growing income divide, and it affects both wages and net worth. From a wage perspective, occupations that typically require postsecondary education generally paid much higher median wages ($57,770 in 2012)–more than double those occupations that typically require a high school diploma or less ($27,670 in 2012).

But you first must have the opportunity to pay for higher education and that’s harder and harder to do as you go down the economic scale. If you care about social and economic justice or just care about a thriving economy or if you are a human capable of logical thinking, you know that major changes that increase access to a college education, without saddling people with decades of student debt, should be a matter of immediate importance.  

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Check back tomorrow for a starting list of wealthy and/or powerful people who already understand the problem, and can be tapped to help activists bring this movement further into the mainstream.

Also see: United for a Fair Economy (UFE)  2011 Annual Report 

And, for those who like your info on video, here is Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word, summing up many of S&P’s conclusions . . .

 

 

Unacknowledged Racism Feeds Institutional Prejudice

Prejudice  by Mo Flickr/creative commons

Prejudice
by Mo
Flickr/creative commons

This morning, The New York Times Op-Ed by Nicholas Kristof asks, Is Everyone A Little Bit Racist? This bit of genius melds diverse findings that suggest that yes, we are, whether we are white or a person of color.

Blind research has proven over and over again that unacknowledged racism throughout society has fed institutional prejudice.

When injured, non-whites were less frequently prescribed pain-killers.

Black students are three times more likely to be suspended from school.

Young black people are almost 4 times more likely than their white cohorts.

A black sounding name on a resume is much less likely to result in a call back.

Kristof points out that while we tend to blame overt racism, the real culprits are the “broad swath of people who consider themselves enlightened, who intellectually believe in racial equality, who deplore discrimination, yet who harbor unconscious attitudes that result in discriminatory policies and behavior.”

We challenge you to become a part of the research that explains why these facts are true by playing an on-line shooting game and/or some other tests to self-reveal your implied social cognition, the unconscious attitudes about race we all possess to one degree or another. By uncovering and owning our unconscious attitudes we become better equipped to do something about them. I’ve worked since my teens fighting racism but my results taking several tests show that, unconsciously I moderately favor white people over Asian and black people.

Black, brown, white, and Asian people are equally affected by the same cultural programming, but it is up to each of us to bring our gut impulses more in line with our intellectual aspirations.  

Prejudice can be cured, and you can help bring about change by knowing yourself better by privately exploring your most innermost impulses. If you are brave enough to test yourself, let us know how it goes.

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Stay Informed. Stay Active.

Light Brigading Flickr/creative commons

Light Brigading
Flickr/creative commons

We speculate that unlike the consciousness raising on gun control following the Newtown Massacre, which petered out along partisan lines since the National Rifle Association owns most of the U.S. Congress, this singular event in Ferguson will succeed in merging the message with the messenger at just the right moment. It has brought about a laser-focus on the rotten mass of shameful, bankrupt, coercive, and inhumane systems, forcing elected officials, conservative and liberal alike, to say, wait a damn minute.

 “The eyes of the nation and the world are watching Ferguson right now. The world is watching because the issues raised by the shooting of Michael Brown predate this incident. This is something that has a history to it and the history simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson.” — Attorney General Eric Holder

Politicians can ignore these issues now, at their peril, but we will continue to pose the epic questions:

How will we end this country’s war on brown and black men, especially young men?

How will we demilitarize our police forces?

How will interfere with the scourge of mass incarceration?

How will we end our outsourcing to for-profit prison industry and the for-profit probation system?

We have to keep reminding ourselves that ALL of this is connected to greed and the money (including your tax dollars) that elites accumulate from the pain of others. The War on Drugs later upstepped by the War on Terror placed immense pressure for more arrests. Brown and black men have been the primary targets and the easiest targets. We pay for your senators, congressmen, and prosecutors to entertain for-profit prison industry lobbyists pushing for longer and stiffer sentences to increase their corporate bottom line. We penalize debtors further by putting them into for-profit probation programs at once increasing the original debt on a weekly basis and the likelihood of jail time for things like an overdue water bill.

More Americans have become aware that their hard earned tax dollars finance the military-style firepower we’ve seen on display in Ferguson. Add to that the local police’s sad rendition of how trained military personnel actually behave with these arms and equipment that has put all public safety at risk.

People united have all the power to stop all of this.

[Regarding a similar shooting in 1943 . . . ] The shooting, the funeral and the riot, taking place so close together, led Baldwin to realize that we must always hold in our minds two opposite ideas. The first is that “injustice is commonplace” in our world. But the second is that we cannot be complacent. We “must never … accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all [our] strength. This fight begins … in the heart.” (via Laila Lalami’s ‘This Fight Begins In The Heart’: Reading James Baldwin As Ferguson Seethes)

Stay informed. Stay active.

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Also see:

New Nail Polish Technology Raises Important Questions

Why Rape Prevention Activists Don’t Like The New Nail Polish That Can Detect Roofies

“I think that anything that can help reduce sexual violence from happening is, in some ways, a really good thing, but I think we need to think critically about why we keep placing the responsibility for preventing sexual assault on young women.” — Tracey Vitchers, the board chair for Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER) via Think Progress’s Tara Culp-Ressler

The US Department of Justice says there are about 89,000 rapes are reported each year, but that a whopping 95% or rapes are never reported. There is a rape crisis underway on college campuses in particular, and President Obama and the US Congress are trying to address it.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

So a  lot of people got really excited when 4 male college students developed a nail polish that changes color when submerged in drinks to detect several date-rape drugs. Their motivation was pure in wanting to cut down the number of rapes of women who unknowingly drink something that will make them unresponsive and unable to recall the details of a rape.

However effective this may turn out to be, many believe this is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound because it places the responsibility to prevent rape on the shoulders of the victims, further limiting their behavior, rather than the perpetrators.

Women are already expected to work hard to prevent themselves from becoming the victims of sexual assault. They’re told to avoid wearing revealing clothing, travel in groups, make sure they don’t get too drunk, and always keep a close eye on their drink. Now, remembering to put on anti-rape nail polish and discreetly slip a finger into each drink might be added to that ever-growing checklist — something that actually reinforces a pervasive rape culture in our society.

What do you think?

Love Pierces Hate

by Rafee Jewell Flickr/cretaive commons

by Rafee Jewell
Flickr/cretaive commons

 

After a week of writing about the senseless murder of Michael Brown, a young, unarmed African-Americn in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white policeman, I’ve spent the last few days reading posts we have written over the past few years, and those from other authors, condemning racism. It’s become a meditation on the racism upon which this country was founded.

Fear of other did not begin with America. Fear of something different than yourself springs from caveman DNA, and it is only the gradual grasp of Love, in your intellect and in actuality of the Love you express, that raises anyone above the primitive. When we evolve as individuals, and as a mass of humanity, to be able to reject fear as a way of life, the earth and its people tick closer to a world built on Love. This is a world where every child is born with its personal autonomy intact, where governments, corporations, religious hierarchies, or local custom do not rob us of mutual equality. This is the age of universal plurality, the only pathway to Peace, the only future that applies to all people.

Organized religion has done the most to retard this evolution away from the primitive. From the earliest shamans, humans have been exploited by greedy (and lazy) interlopers presuming to come between us and the reality of love, something we can actually feel flow into, through, and out of our own bodies.

To the extent that our successes or our happiness sits atop the exploitation of others, the love in our lives is an illusion, a mental appetizer only of what could be. Every decision we make is a personal moral question. There is no morality greater than one person, despite what religious hierarchies and others would have you believe. No decision is based on what others think or tell you because if you just quiet your mind for a moment you know exactly what each decision is and where it will lead. At that moment you know whether you are choosing love over hate, mutual support over exclusion, purpose over failure. It is not only our intellect or even our heart that guides us, although they are helpful. It is recognition of the underlying and inescapable ecology of Love, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Consciously or unconsciously we understand in our gut that love has a future and that hate dies on the vine, however long that might take.

The founders of Amerika, and everyone since, sprung from a white supremacist point of view. First up? The eradication of the non-white natives. Next? The ruthless exploitation of black people brought to this country against their will, permanently indentured to the whim of their white owners. Now? Closing our borders selectively because white people fear that we are fast becoming a blended brown nation.

Every white person, individually and collectively, knows they are consciously choosing hate or at least something short of Love, whenever and wherever they are unwilling to give up the systemic exploitation and enslavement of those they consider “other.”

The only future for white people in this country is to embrace Love of their fellows by silencing the haters. We have to call the haters out in capital letters, on a daily basis. The legacy of Michael Brown and his family is giving this country an ideal platform to recognize this country’s racists roots, and to make amends by finding ways to make things right.

“Not everything that is faced can be chaged;
but nothing can be changed until it is faced
James Baldwin (1924 – 1987)
American novelist, essayist, playwright,
poet, and social critic

Jamelle Bouie Gives the Larger Picture

Photo by Steve Rhodes Flickr/creative commons

Photo by Steve Rhodes
Flickr/creative commons

Why the Fires in Ferguson Won’t End Soon

But while calm is hard to predict, one thing is clear: The events in Ferguson—from the shooting to the police response and everything since—are a product of familiar forces and stem from a familiar history. Put another way, the area’s long-bottled racial tension has burst, and it’s difficult to know if it can be resolved, much less contained. — Slate’s Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) 

In a mere 3000 words, Jamelle Bouie schools us in reality versus perception. The article is well worth a full read and understanding because it applies to every other American city. Here are some highlights . . .

Mr. Bouie aptly blends history with current events to put the Michael Brown shooting into a larger context. He forces us to recognize that modern events cannot be considered apart from St. Louis area’s dark history of segregation and police brutality.

An overbearing police presence is a defining feature of life in Ferguson and the rest of North County. Last year in Ferguson, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches, and 93 percent of arrests involved blacks, despite the fact that police found more “contraband” stopping white residents than black ones. I spoke to several young men in Ferguson—all teenagers or in their early 20s—who said they were stopped on a weekly basis. At a makeshift Michael Brown memorial, I asked one 20-year-old how many times he’s stopped by police, “About 10 times a month,” he said.

Mr. Bouie takes us back to 100 years when St. Louis became one the first places to create African-American ghettos with boundaries illegal to cross, and sequestered areas where brown and black people were allowed to own homes.

He goes on to offer the best analysis of the facts I’ve seen anywhere, including a documented history of police brutality that breeds fear and disables any notion of serve and protect. He points us to The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (also a must read).

“Blacks were the easiest targets of the police; their rights were the least respected, and they had only a modicum of political influence to hold officers accountable.

Criminality was well-distributed among the ethnic and racial groups of the North, but blacks were disproportionate targets for police. The result was a perception of black criminality despite the lack of clear evidence it actually existed.”

This deep distrust of law enforcement stems from decades of unfair treatment, says Bouie, who suggest this is perhaps what motivates desperate looters. Unless we can turn this tide with new laws, policies, and human rights protections the current state of affairs will continue and there will continue to be police shootings of brown and black men in this country.

***

I submit that tonight in American there are hundreds of African-American parents forced to sit their young children down to explain how they should watch out for and behave in any encounter with the police. These hard truths rob these children of part of their childhood, making them feel there is something wrong with them in spite of their parents’ attempts to dispel that false and crippling notion.

Congressional panels and other inquiries are being launched to answer the epic questions raised by Michael Brown’s murder: the war on brown and black men in this country, police bias and brutality, systems of mass incarceration in for-profit prisons. It is our job to make sure we find the answers and create new, human, and voluntary associations to replace the coercive systems built on the pain of many for the advantages of the few.

We need to coproduce a world in which no mother ever has to have that conversation with her children.

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Also see:

Old Ferguson Makes New Commitments

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

VenusPlusX’s unique mix, what we mean by The New Age of Sexual Freedom, is aimed at solutions to change the state of our country, our world, through the removal of all obstacles such as racism, sexism, the worst of nationalism, and all the other “isms,” that stand in the way of Peace, universal pluralism based on love. (Our Mission, our Manifesto.)

In this context, we have written all week about the shooting of young Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, his legacy and his family’s continuing legacy, a lightening strike heard around the world that has forever changed how many people look at the self-destructive systems, laws, and policies that led to this senseless death. These obstacles to Peace include the war against young black men, the militarization of local police, mass incarceration, for-profit prisons and probation systems, and more that we have long focused on, and will continue to.

So, what’s the good news?

Today, Attorney General Eric Holder is visiting Ferguson as part of the Justice Department’s federal civil rights investigation.

“I realize there is tremendous interest in the facts of the incident that led to Michael Brown’s death, but I ask for the public’s patience as we conduct this investigation. The selective release of sensitive information that we have seen in this case so far is troubling to me. No matter how others pursue their own separate inquiries, the Justice Department is resolved to preserve the integrity of its investigation. This is a critical step in restoring trust between law enforcement and the community, not just in Ferguson, but beyond.”

Holder’s full statement is available here. He has ordered a third and last autopsy on Michael Brown to establish evidence, and finally freeing the family to bring him to rest. All this is happening as the county grand jury for Ferguson is convening to consider criminal charges, a result we might not know until mid-October, a result entrusted to St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch with a questionable track record who has refused calls for his recusal. 

In the meantime, Holder has fielded 40 new FBI investigators to canvas the area, interview witnesses, and collect evidence as part of the federal investigation. Justice awaits us.

Also, today, the Ferguson Police Department issued a list of new commitments. Again, we have to try not to be immediately skeptical, but again, we will have to wait and see. Here is the full announcement.

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http://www.mobile-vision.com/products/vievu/

http://www.mobile-vision.com/products/vievu/

The other day, we noted how effective body cams can be.

Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality.

We asked that you sign the White House petition demanding these body cams for all police officers, and it has just reached over 100,000 signatures, a threshold that requires a direct response from the President.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Do Your Part To Break The Cycle

 

By Elvert Barnes Washington, DC August 14, 2014 Flickr/creative commons

By Elvert Barnes
Washington, DC
August 14, 2014
Flickr/creative commons

Michael Brown and his family have finally put a face on police brutality, sparking a robust national conversation that must take place. Freedom and human rights are just words, words this country peddles abroad but does little for at home. We can honor this family’s awful sacrifice by doing more each day to end this scourge in our nation. Will you? (VenusPlusX, August 18, 2014)

Yesterday, we wrote Solutions Are Available But Will We Pay Attention? to start a list of what we can do to bring about substantive change to the circumstances that lead to the tragic killing of young black men in this country. We talked about three things we need to be doing to get started:

  1. Mobilize people of color to vote, making sure they are represented proportionally at all levels of local, county, and state administration. The most recent elections in Ferguson brought out only 12% turnout by minorities, less than a third of white turnout.

  2. Support national legislation to reverse the decades long, constitution-bashing systems that turn local police forces into armed militias who must overreact to justify their existence. (Sign the Care2 petition.)

  3. Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality. (Sign White House petition.)

Today,  and  expand on our list, writing on Huffington Post, 10 Ways You Can Help The People of Ferguson, Missouri.

  • Donate to the Michael Brown Memorial Fund to assist the family with legal, burial and travel costs as they investigate their son’s killing.
  • Support and donate to Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment’s Legal Defense Fund for Justice for Mike providing legal support for those arrested as part of the protests, primarily on bailing or bonding residents out of jail.
  • Sign the Amnesty International petition, and/or the related one launched by the American Civil Liberties to show support for and voice your opinions to Ferguson’s elected officials charged with helping to mediate the conflict.  You can also contact the Ferguson Police Department, urging law enforcement leaders to release public information related to the shooting (Police Chief Thomas Jackson, 314-524-5269 or email tjackson@fergusoncity.com).
  • Don’t allow irrelevant narratives to deflect front he larger issue at hand.
  • Send condolences or a message of support to Brown’s family.

Ashtari and Boboltz urge everyone to invest ourselves in the cause of racial equality (one of the pillars of VenusPlusX’s work). They also talk about something we stress over and over: Always remember that if you have any privilege whatsoever its only use is give it freely to those who have none.

How will you use your privilege today to help others?

 

 

Solutions Are Available But Will We Pay Attention?

“Every once in a while, a dramatic news story can actually produce real reform. More often the momentum peters out once the story disappears from the news (remember how Sandy Hook meant we were going to get real gun control?), but it can happen. And now, after the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missiouri, turned to a chaotic nightmare of police oppression, we may have an opportunity to examine, and hopefully reverse, a troubling policy trend of recent years.” — Paul Waldman, The American Prospect

Photo by Chase Carter Flicker/creative commons

Photo by Chase Carter
Flicker/creative commons

We’ve written our initial response to the unfolding events in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting over a week ago of Michael Brown by a white police force.

The escalation of protests and more violence at the hands of police continues as justice is delayed or denied for the Brown family, such as:

  • The Browns had to watch their son languish in the middle of the street, unattended for more than 4 hours.
  • The local police and the county prosecutor have completely failed in their duties, not releasing the name of the police officer for 6 days, and still giving no information from law enforcement’s reports on the shooting.
  • The pre-emptive release of a tape alleging Michael Brown was a shoplifter, although the policeman who shot Brown was unaware of this (not that it should have made any difference).
  • The overreaction of a militarized police force, a big nationwide problem that must be reversed, a key issue we will continue to cover.
  • The bull-headed insistence by Governor Jay Nixon and the rest of the white establishment that the community must first demonstrate peace before they will deal out justice when it is obvious that the reverse must take place in order for the unrest end.

It’s time to start looking for real and sustainable solutions, and we will dive deeper into these in the coming days:

  1. Mobilize people of color to vote, making sure they are represented proportionally at all levels of local, county, and state administration. The most recent elections in Ferguson brought out only 12% turnout by minorities, less than a third of white turnout.
  2. Support national legislation to reverse the decades long, constitution-bashing systems that turn local police forces into armed militias who must overreact to justify their existence. (Sign the Care2 petition.)
  3. Make every policeman wear a body camera, a simple fix that has shown a dramatic 88% decline in the number of complaints about police, and a similar drastic reduction in the use of force and police brutality. (Sign the White House petition.)
  4. More to come . . .

Michael Brown and his family have finally put a face on police brutality, sparking a robust national conversation that must take place. Freedom and human rights are just words, words this country peddles abroad but does little for at home. We can honor this family’s awful sacrifice by doing more each day to end this scourge in our nation. Will you?