The real frauds Are Those Who, In The Face Of Facts, Still Choose To Believe That Individuals Receiving

Primer for those who still don’t understand in the wake of the arrest of, incarceration of, and likely murder of Sandra Bland in TX: 1. Asking a cop why they are stopping you/ticketing you is your right. They do not have the right to arrest you for asking, beat you for asking or in any way mistreat you for asking that question. 2. You have the right to say whatever you wish to a cop in response to being stopped. ANYTHING at all, so long as it does not constitute a threat of harm. You can cuss a cop, yell at a cop, and call a cop a fascist pig or a racist if you like. I do not recommend it, you shouldn’t do it (because sadly cops don’t care about the Constitution in far too many cases, and thus, might beat or kill you), and it’s not very nice I suppose (even when deserved), but it is NOT illegal to do so. 3. Refusing to put out a cigarette when asked by a cop is not a criminal offense either. The cop has no lawful right to arrest you for smoking or “disobeying” an order to stop smoking. Only if you are already being arrested for an actual crime and putting out the cigarette is necessary to affect the arrest, can such a request be considered lawful and can failure to do so constitute “resisting arrest.” But refusing to put the cigarette out, in and of itself, does not constitute a crime. 4. If you do any of the above, the cop still does not have the right to beat you or arrest you. And if you end up beaten or killed, it is not your fault. It is entirely and only the cop’s fault. They should be arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. Your “arrogance” or “attitude” is not grounds for brutality, ever. 5. None of the above is made any less true by the fact that “cops have a hard job and put their lives on the line.” That is entirely irrelevant and has no bearing on the rights of the people or the limitations on police power. 6. Any cop who disagrees with the previous points is not qualified to be a cop and should be summarily dismissed from their jobs. Any cop who can’t handle being challenged as to their authority, or who in any way disregards the rights of the people is not qualified to be a cop and should be summarily dismissed from their jobs. 7. Anyone at all who disagrees with these previous points has contempt for the Constitution and would clearly be more comfortable in a police state. Yet these are the same people who think “government regulation” of industry is tyranny, or that the IRS is equivalent to the Nazi SS or that Obamacare is totalitarianism. So they don’t mind actual authoritarian actions (so long as they are worked out mostly on the bodies of black folks and/or the poor), but God forbid government try and ensure health care, or collect taxes from the rich or try and limit pollution. THEN they scream about big brother and how awful the state is…

Tim Wise (via la-lobalita)

Paying for College: Then and Now

So baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964

This means that they entered college between 1964 and 1982

The total average cost to go to Public College including tuition room and board ranged from $950 in 1964 to $2945 in 1982

While they were on college they could count on making at least $1.25 an hour in 1964 to $3.35 an hour in 1982

This means that spending the 18 weeks during summer working full time at minimum wage they would make $900 dollar in 1964 and $2412 in 1982

That means someone going to school 1964 would only have to work 40 hours during the school year to completely pay for all of their expenses.

Someone going to school in 1982 had it a little worse, they had to work for less than 160 hours during the school year to completely cover their expenses.

To put this in perspective in 2006 (the most recent year that the Dept of Edu reports) a public college education cost $11,034

The minimum wage was $5.15 in 2006

That means to pay for school in 2006 at minimum wage you would have to work just over 2142 1/2 hours to pay for school.

Working full time year around, without any time off, is only 2080 hours

After all, if generous aid to the poor perpetuates poverty, the United States — which treats its poor far more harshly than other rich countries, and induces them to work much longer hours — should lead the West in social mobility, in the fraction of those born poor who work their way up the scale. In fact, it’s just the opposite: America has less social mobility than most other advanced countries. And there’s no puzzle why: it’s hard for young people to get ahead when they suffer from poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, and lack of access to good education. The antipoverty programs that we have actually do a lot to help people rise. For example, Americans who received early access to food stamps were healthier and more productive in later life than those who didn’t. But we don’t do enough along these lines. The reason so many Americans remain trapped in poverty isn’t that the government helps them too much; it’s that it helps them too little.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/krugman-the-hammock-fallacy.html?ref=todayspaper (via shhaauun)

I have one job, and its a pretty simple job: I come in in the morning, and we look at the news, and I write jokes about it.  And then I make a couple of faces, and like a noise, and then it’s just ch-ching, and I’’m out the door. But I didn’t do my job today, so I apologize. I got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds, because of what happened in South Carolina.  And maybe if I wasn’t nearing the end of the run, or this wasn’t such a common occurrence, maybe I could’ve pulled out of the spiral, but I didn’t.   And so I honestly have nothing.  Other than just sadness, once again, that we have to peer into the abyss that we do to each other, and the nexus of a gaping racial wound that will not heal, and that we pretend doesn’t exist. I’m confident, though, that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is… we still won’t do jack shit. Yeah.  That’s us. And that’s the part that blows my mind.  I don’t wanna get into the political argument of guns, and things – what blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people who are foreign are going to kill us, and us killing ourselves. If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would have fit into our – we invaded two countries!  And spent trillions of dollars, and thousands of American lives, and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different countries.  All to ‘keep Americans safe’!  'We gotta do whatever we can!  We’ll torture people!  We gotta do whatever we can to keep Americans safe!’ Nine people.  Shot in a church.  What about that?  'Hey, what can we do?  Craziness is craziness, right?’ That’s the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around.  And you know it.  You know that it’s going to go down the same path.  'This is a terrible tragedy.’  They’re already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this. This is a terrorist attack.  This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina, which is a symbol for the black community.  It has stood in that part of Charleston for a hundred and some years, and has been attacked viciously many times, as many black churches have. And to pretend that, I heard someone on the news say ‘tragedy has visited this church.’  This wasn’t a tornado.  This was a racist.  This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. I hate to even use this pun, but this one was black and white.  There’s no nuance here.  And we’re going to keep pretending like, ‘I don’t get it!  What happened?  This one guy lost his mind!’  But we are steeped in that culture in this country, and we refuse to recognize it, and I can’t believe how hard people are working to discount it. In South Carolina, the roads that black people drive on are named for Confederate generals who fought to keep black people from being to drive freely on that road. That’s insanity.  That’s racial wallpaper.  You can’t allow that.  Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them, who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina. And the roads are named for Confederate generals. And the white guy is the one who feels like his country is being taken over. We’re bringing it on ourselves. And that’s the thing: al Qaeda?  ISIS?  They’re not shit compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis.

JON STEWART, The Daily Show (via inothernews)

Watch: SNL nailed the reaction to “Formation” — and it only got more spot-on from there. 

Babies — Pulp

San Francisco

I love miniatures!  Also, the tiny phone made me think of this:

Ugh!

This is an elected representative smashing a homeless person’s possessions with a sledgehammer. Worst person ever?