Monday, March 31, 2014
Health. CARE. First. AID.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"The Obama Administration and its Democratic allies have made the task of promoting the A.C.A. more difficult through their own fecklessness. The law is still better known for the Web-site fiasco than for the benefits it has achieved. Three weeks ago, when President Obama pitched healthcare.gov to young adults on “Between Two Ferns,” Zach Galifianakis said, “Oh, yeah, I heard about that. That’s the thing that doesn’t work.” It was funny, sort of. Support for the A.C.A. remains low in opinion polls, thanks in part to “horror story” campaigns paid for by groups such as Americans for Prosperity. But, in a peculiar way, no politician, of any stripe, has incentives to tell the whole truth. Republicans prefer not to acknowledge any benefits at all. Some Democrats who voted for the law, particularly those up for reëlection, seem unable to acknowledge how much they still support it. It’s easier to focus on the parts that benefit middle-class voters—who tend to turn out at the polls, especially in midterm elections—and to elide the benefits to the poor, which are rarely politically advantageous.
But the core of the law is the guarantee of health care to the people who need it most. As the story of Medicaid illustrates, the hardest thing about programs to aid the poor is getting them started in the first place. Obamacare has now passed that hurdle."
THE NEW YORKER: Health Caring
words.
"The Obama Administration and its Democratic allies have made the task of promoting the A.C.A. more difficult through their own fecklessness. The law is still better known for the Web-site fiasco than for the benefits it has achieved. Three weeks ago, when President Obama pitched healthcare.gov to young adults on “Between Two Ferns,” Zach Galifianakis said, “Oh, yeah, I heard about that. That’s the thing that doesn’t work.” It was funny, sort of. Support for the A.C.A. remains low in opinion polls, thanks in part to “horror story” campaigns paid for by groups such as Americans for Prosperity. But, in a peculiar way, no politician, of any stripe, has incentives to tell the whole truth. Republicans prefer not to acknowledge any benefits at all. Some Democrats who voted for the law, particularly those up for reëlection, seem unable to acknowledge how much they still support it. It’s easier to focus on the parts that benefit middle-class voters—who tend to turn out at the polls, especially in midterm elections—and to elide the benefits to the poor, which are rarely politically advantageous.
But the core of the law is the guarantee of health care to the people who need it most. As the story of Medicaid illustrates, the hardest thing about programs to aid the poor is getting them started in the first place. Obamacare has now passed that hurdle."
THE NEW YORKER: Health Caring
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
metalocalypse.
words.
"...an even more fundamental factor in the declining share of working Americans is the technological automation that has eliminated millions of jobs and is poised to eliminate millions more.
...I doubt that the mass acquisition of creative and social skills is sufficient to meet this challenge. The way to deal with such a job apocalypse would begin with the very measures that we have failed to enact to combat the cyclical downturn that began in 2008: a massive government program to build and repair our infrastructure and to provide the preschool education and elder care that the nation needs, which would increase consumption and economic activity generally.
Eventually, however, as computers pick up more and more skills, we will have to embrace the necessity of redistributing wealth and income from the shrinking number of Americans who have sizable incomes from their investments or their work to the growing number of Americans who want work but can’t find it. That may or may not be socialism; certainly, it’s survival."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The coming job apocalypse
"...an even more fundamental factor in the declining share of working Americans is the technological automation that has eliminated millions of jobs and is poised to eliminate millions more.
...I doubt that the mass acquisition of creative and social skills is sufficient to meet this challenge. The way to deal with such a job apocalypse would begin with the very measures that we have failed to enact to combat the cyclical downturn that began in 2008: a massive government program to build and repair our infrastructure and to provide the preschool education and elder care that the nation needs, which would increase consumption and economic activity generally.
Eventually, however, as computers pick up more and more skills, we will have to embrace the necessity of redistributing wealth and income from the shrinking number of Americans who have sizable incomes from their investments or their work to the growing number of Americans who want work but can’t find it. That may or may not be socialism; certainly, it’s survival."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The coming job apocalypse
jerk ribs.
a moment of clarity.
for your consideration...
words.
"In the debate over economic inequality, most of the discussion is about new things the federal government should do to make the distribution of our society’s resources more even: raise the minimum wage, say, or impose higher tax rates on the rich. But what about getting Washington to stop some policies that skew after-tax income distribution upward?
...Many inhabitants of Blue America — progressive lawyers, health-care professionals, journalists and college professors — have raised their influential voices against the oil companies and Wall Street. They certainly have a point: Corporate tax breaks and the preferential treatment of capital gains are big sources of inequality in the tax code.
But if upscale progressives really want a more egalitarian America, their lifestyles will have to take a hit, too. (Incidentally, bigger houses tend to use more energy and produce more carbon emissions.) Tax subsidies for housing have enabled many a Blue American to renovate a Victorian, send a kid to riding camp or drive a hybrid SUV — and, painful though it may be to admit, to do so at the expense of everyone else"
THE WASHINGTON POST: Fixing one driver of inequality may hit close to home for some progressives
for your consideration...
words.
"In the debate over economic inequality, most of the discussion is about new things the federal government should do to make the distribution of our society’s resources more even: raise the minimum wage, say, or impose higher tax rates on the rich. But what about getting Washington to stop some policies that skew after-tax income distribution upward?
...Many inhabitants of Blue America — progressive lawyers, health-care professionals, journalists and college professors — have raised their influential voices against the oil companies and Wall Street. They certainly have a point: Corporate tax breaks and the preferential treatment of capital gains are big sources of inequality in the tax code.
But if upscale progressives really want a more egalitarian America, their lifestyles will have to take a hit, too. (Incidentally, bigger houses tend to use more energy and produce more carbon emissions.) Tax subsidies for housing have enabled many a Blue American to renovate a Victorian, send a kid to riding camp or drive a hybrid SUV — and, painful though it may be to admit, to do so at the expense of everyone else"
THE WASHINGTON POST: Fixing one driver of inequality may hit close to home for some progressives
hot topic.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarity.
words.
"Most gay men already know that the more masculine you present in online dating profiles, the more interest you will attract. I’ve always known that, aside from being black, my feminine, flowing, chest-length locks were the greatest deterrent my own success, which is why I logged off altogether for a while. However, recently, I started wondering if the masculine vs. femme assumptions were true, so I signed on for a few weeks to conduct a little experiment. The results are pretty interesting—predictable, but still interesting.
I stopped looking for dates online more than a year ago because it’s just not a productive use of my time. My greatest strength is my personality, and I’m not very photogenic. Add that to the fact that black men are virtually invisible on online dating sites (unless you are in the top 5 percent of musculature and attractiveness) compared to white men (who can be completely average in every way and still fill a social calendar), and it became clear to me that looking for dates on the Internet was pointless for me, personally.
...Believe it or not, I didn’t come out of this experiment feeling bad about myself—just smarter about the way gay men (or perhaps men in general) place way too much emphasis on silly characteristics like beards and ballcaps (hint: that’s why you’re all still cranky and single).* And really, I don’t think having long hair itself is the big hang-up; it’s what my hair implies. Having long hair (especially for a black man) means you’re probably a bitchy dramatic queen that nobody wants to date. Even if the assumption isn’t that extreme, the underlying fear is “you spent too much time on your appearance and that’s not masculine.” That’s frustrating, of course, since stereotypical masculinity takes just as much work—we just don’t think of it that way. I remember chatting with this scruffy, fairly muscular guy with tattoos and chest hair and an Instagram full of masc pics; once we got to talking, he revealed his obsession with Beyoncé and said “yasss!” every other paragraph. But no matter—his picture is butch, so his dating life is always full."
SLATE: Butching Up Online: A Dating Experiment
words.
"Most gay men already know that the more masculine you present in online dating profiles, the more interest you will attract. I’ve always known that, aside from being black, my feminine, flowing, chest-length locks were the greatest deterrent my own success, which is why I logged off altogether for a while. However, recently, I started wondering if the masculine vs. femme assumptions were true, so I signed on for a few weeks to conduct a little experiment. The results are pretty interesting—predictable, but still interesting.
I stopped looking for dates online more than a year ago because it’s just not a productive use of my time. My greatest strength is my personality, and I’m not very photogenic. Add that to the fact that black men are virtually invisible on online dating sites (unless you are in the top 5 percent of musculature and attractiveness) compared to white men (who can be completely average in every way and still fill a social calendar), and it became clear to me that looking for dates on the Internet was pointless for me, personally.
...Believe it or not, I didn’t come out of this experiment feeling bad about myself—just smarter about the way gay men (or perhaps men in general) place way too much emphasis on silly characteristics like beards and ballcaps (hint: that’s why you’re all still cranky and single).* And really, I don’t think having long hair itself is the big hang-up; it’s what my hair implies. Having long hair (especially for a black man) means you’re probably a bitchy dramatic queen that nobody wants to date. Even if the assumption isn’t that extreme, the underlying fear is “you spent too much time on your appearance and that’s not masculine.” That’s frustrating, of course, since stereotypical masculinity takes just as much work—we just don’t think of it that way. I remember chatting with this scruffy, fairly muscular guy with tattoos and chest hair and an Instagram full of masc pics; once we got to talking, he revealed his obsession with Beyoncé and said “yasss!” every other paragraph. But no matter—his picture is butch, so his dating life is always full."
SLATE: Butching Up Online: A Dating Experiment
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
words.
"I know that Obamacare is helping a great number of people. I understand that for the first time millions of people are getting health insurance. It’s the one thing that gives me solace.
But let’s not pretend that this new policy is the affordable health care savior that many of us were hoping for. For us, our new plan is a big financial hit for a product that does not make it any easier to get basic health care.
...We’re still waiting for quality health care that we can actually use, afford and understand..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Why I’m Jealous of My Dog’s Insurance
But let’s not pretend that this new policy is the affordable health care savior that many of us were hoping for. For us, our new plan is a big financial hit for a product that does not make it any easier to get basic health care.
...We’re still waiting for quality health care that we can actually use, afford and understand..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Why I’m Jealous of My Dog’s Insurance
atomic bomb.
a cover.
starring hot chip.
PITCHFORK: Listen to Hot Chip's Cover of William Onyeabor's "Atomic Bomb"
starring hot chip.
PITCHFORK: Listen to Hot Chip's Cover of William Onyeabor's "Atomic Bomb"
meanwhile with inequality in america...
a moment of clarity.
words.
"(Lawrence) Lindsey’s argument was this: income inequality has risen under every President since Nixon; it rose most dramatically under Clinton. Neither party has been able to solve this problem, so our expectations should be very modest. In spite of large government transfers from the rich to the poor since the nineteen-sixties, and in spite of the rich paying a higher proportion of total income taxes now than they did in 1980, inequality keeps going up. The reason, Lindsey concluded, is the decline in “middle-aged labor-force participation,” especially among men, in the past few years. In other words, lots of people in their thirties, forties, and early fifties have chosen to stop working. In Lindsey’s blunt phrase—which he subsequently denied using—they have chosen not to be self-reliant. They have dropped out of the workforce because tax rates are onerous and government benefits are attractive; they have less incentive to work than to be unemployed. This, the former President’s adviser suggested, is the main cause of inequality: more and more formerly employed people just don’t want to work. It was an updated version of Ronald Reagan’s freeloading welfare queens—only now they’re white and middle class.
...It doesn’t require decades of work by a leading economist to understand that there’s a connection between wealth and power. It should be clear from stories like the one written by Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times earlier this month, about the struggles of low-wage workers, that hard work no longer keeps millions of Americans out of poverty. It should be obvious to anyone who talks to ordinary Americans. The idea that the main cause of inequality is Americans who choose not to work because it’s more attractive to live off the government could only occur to someone who has spent his career inside Washington think tanks and the White House."
THE NEW YORKER: The Right’s New “Welfare Queens”: The Middle Class
words.
"(Lawrence) Lindsey’s argument was this: income inequality has risen under every President since Nixon; it rose most dramatically under Clinton. Neither party has been able to solve this problem, so our expectations should be very modest. In spite of large government transfers from the rich to the poor since the nineteen-sixties, and in spite of the rich paying a higher proportion of total income taxes now than they did in 1980, inequality keeps going up. The reason, Lindsey concluded, is the decline in “middle-aged labor-force participation,” especially among men, in the past few years. In other words, lots of people in their thirties, forties, and early fifties have chosen to stop working. In Lindsey’s blunt phrase—which he subsequently denied using—they have chosen not to be self-reliant. They have dropped out of the workforce because tax rates are onerous and government benefits are attractive; they have less incentive to work than to be unemployed. This, the former President’s adviser suggested, is the main cause of inequality: more and more formerly employed people just don’t want to work. It was an updated version of Ronald Reagan’s freeloading welfare queens—only now they’re white and middle class.
...It doesn’t require decades of work by a leading economist to understand that there’s a connection between wealth and power. It should be clear from stories like the one written by Steven Greenhouse in the New York Times earlier this month, about the struggles of low-wage workers, that hard work no longer keeps millions of Americans out of poverty. It should be obvious to anyone who talks to ordinary Americans. The idea that the main cause of inequality is Americans who choose not to work because it’s more attractive to live off the government could only occur to someone who has spent his career inside Washington think tanks and the White House."
THE NEW YORKER: The Right’s New “Welfare Queens”: The Middle Class
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
-INTERLUDE-
I am listening to N 2 Gether Now. Just because. I'm groovin'. You care. #LIMPBIZKIT
— oyster perpetual. (@OneTokenBlack) March 26, 2014
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Blaming poverty on the mysterious influence of “culture” is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to address the problem.
...Confronting the devastation suffered by what used to be working-class communities is hard; adjusting to post-globalization economic realities is harder. Say the word culture and you sound erudite and concerned, especially if you drop the name of the Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, who described world affairs as a clash of civilizations with different cultural values.
My problem is that when you identify something so amorphous as culture as the fundamental issue, you excuse yourself for not proposing concrete solutions. ...If we had universal pre- kindergarten that fed all children into high-quality schools, if we had affordable higher education, if we incentivized industry to invest in troubled communities — if people had options for which they were prepared — culture would take care of itself.
But all of that is expensive. Hot air, as Paul Ryan knows, is cheap."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Paul Ryan’s culture attack is an excuse to do nothing about poverty
"Blaming poverty on the mysterious influence of “culture” is a convenient excuse for doing nothing to address the problem.
...Confronting the devastation suffered by what used to be working-class communities is hard; adjusting to post-globalization economic realities is harder. Say the word culture and you sound erudite and concerned, especially if you drop the name of the Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, who described world affairs as a clash of civilizations with different cultural values.
My problem is that when you identify something so amorphous as culture as the fundamental issue, you excuse yourself for not proposing concrete solutions. ...If we had universal pre- kindergarten that fed all children into high-quality schools, if we had affordable higher education, if we incentivized industry to invest in troubled communities — if people had options for which they were prepared — culture would take care of itself.
But all of that is expensive. Hot air, as Paul Ryan knows, is cheap."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Paul Ryan’s culture attack is an excuse to do nothing about poverty
tolerated.
a video.
starring girl talk, freeway, and waka flocka flame.
PITCHFORK: Girl Talk and Freeway Detail Collaborative EP Broken Ankles, Tease Video With Waka Flocka Flame
starring girl talk, freeway, and waka flocka flame.
PITCHFORK: Girl Talk and Freeway Detail Collaborative EP Broken Ankles, Tease Video With Waka Flocka Flame
Monday, March 24, 2014
Friday, March 21, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
the low end theory.
a moment of clarity.
words.
THE WASHINGTON POST: Journalists’ and activists’ strange approach to low-wage workers
words.
THE WASHINGTON POST: Journalists’ and activists’ strange approach to low-wage workers
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
out of the black.
a video.
starring robyn & neneh cherry.
PITCHFORK: Watch Robyn and Neneh Cherry Star in Art Video for Their Collaboration "Out of the Black"
starring robyn & neneh cherry.
PITCHFORK: Watch Robyn and Neneh Cherry Star in Art Video for Their Collaboration "Out of the Black"
Monday, March 17, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Friday, March 14, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin).
starring yg and kendrick lamar.
ROLLING STONE: Kendrick Lamar Joins YG For Gritty 'Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)'
ROLLING STONE: Kendrick Lamar Joins YG For Gritty 'Really Be (Smokin N Drinkin)'
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Saturday, March 08, 2014
Friday, March 07, 2014
the bare necessities.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Objection: Once you add in public assistance and tax credits, $9 an hour is plenty, and business could survive that.
“Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.” (1938, Fireside Chat, the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act that instituted the federal minimum wage)"
THE NEW YORK TIMES: F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage
words.
"Objection: Once you add in public assistance and tax credits, $9 an hour is plenty, and business could survive that.
“Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company’s undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry.” (1938, Fireside Chat, the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act that instituted the federal minimum wage)"
THE NEW YORK TIMES: F.D.R. Makes the Case for the Minimum Wage
Thursday, March 06, 2014
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
do you feel the same.
Starring Hercules and Love Affair.
PITCHFORK: Hercules and Love Affair Announce The Feast of the Broken Heart, Share "Do You Feel the Same?"
PITCHFORK: Hercules and Love Affair Announce The Feast of the Broken Heart, Share "Do You Feel the Same?"
Monday, March 03, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)