Pulling on bootstraps without boots

Jon Stewart interviewed Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The two videos combined are under 14 minutes. Stewart asks if government is incompetent at doing something (a favorite claim of conservatives) why should it keep doing it? Yes, government should be held accountable. But the things government does (infrastructure, education, research) are shared resources and they build up the middle class. The 1% have shown they have no interest in shared resources. Warren surprised Stewart with a statistic: Many of the big corporations spent more on lobbying than they are charged in taxes. Obviously, with that huge expense they expect it to help their bottom line.



Newsblog Firedoglake runs Occupy Supply. If you buy from them they will send a matching item to an Occupy encampment. As of last Monday there are 60 such encampments (at least that Occupy Supply knows about), with several more under threat of eviction, or have moved inside, or are daytime only. The movement is still strong.

Kevin Gosztola has been an Occupy Supply liaison and wrote a report of visiting the encampment in Buffalo. And, yes, it is winter there.



I recently wrote about Autumn Sandeen and her observation that lots of opponents of civil rights drag the bathroom into the discussion. In another essay she considers the flip side of the issue. If a law restricted bathrooms to the appropriate people, who would check and what would they check for? Do they check for what's under the front of your undies? What about intersex people where the distinction isn't clear? What about pre-op transgender people? Isn't this a monumental invasion of privacy? Do the potty police check ID cards? States have different rules on when a transgender person is allowed to change the gender on an ID. Why not just check facial features or secondary characteristics? There are too many people where classifying them as male or female on looks alone is difficult.



What is the definition of truth? Tea Party organizations in Tennessee want textbooks to omit references of Founding Fathers owning slaves. These great men were "revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it didn't exist." We should focus on that progress, and not on the details that get in the way of them being seen as great. We want students to know the truth about America.

Right.



Newt Gingrich has talked about his idea of giving jobs to poor kids, such as helping the janitor at school, so they can learn the work ethic. Joi Ruth Orr of Faith Leaders for Community Change wants Newtie to apologize for insulting poor kids. And that bit about "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" -- it can't be done. A poor kid needs a community to make that happen -- especially if the kid is so poor he doesn't even have boots.