Ploofle

…and this is in a verifiable publication used for the public record: the Provo, Utah-based Daily Herald.  One of the more choice excerpts:

“illegal immigrants should not be allowed because ‘they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. … If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do.’”

Read on at the link above to get a good bit of insight on our political process.  The paper’s office is on Freedom Blvd, btw.

Tags: currents, words

While looking over my typical geekblogs, I found this one: Blogging New Orleans. It has bits about random news, living there post-Katrina, and (one of my favorite parts) progress reports on various restaurant reopenings. It’s under the weblogs, inc brand but I get a good vibe from it.

Tags: currents

I’m working on my final project for a news media and public policy course. We’re supposed to pick an organization and develop a strategic communications plan and media pitch to be delivered in class. I’m basing mine on the nonprofit I worked with last summer, the Georgia Free Clinic Network, and I’m trying to get a handle on the more negative reactions to words like “uninsured” and “free clinic”, and I came across this gem as a reader response to condo development in the Atlanta exurb of Lawrenceville:

“Let’s just build some highrise tenements to meet the needs of the current influx of “immigrants” into Larwenceville. And let the taxpaying citizens of Lawrenceville pay for them to live there, and let’s furnish a free clinic for them and all their relatives. And if you read today’s paper about the ESOL teachers, maybe we can just offer a free private school for all of them at county taxpayer expense. Highrises are not going to improve Lawrenceville. It is on a downward spiral and will continue to head that way for a long time thanks to all the development of cheap housing and the lack of enforcing zoning laws.”

What a fucking xenophobe.

There have been a variety of news accounts about what the country’s border-tightening efforts have gotten us (check out here and here)

Here’s another great one:

Except for a few native Americans, all our ancestors came here from somewhere. For the first 200 years or so, our immigration policy seems to have worked just fine. Being an illegal alien had consequences back then, now it seems to come with full benefits, as long as you don’t get caught.

Ok, but we’re at about 2.1 million right now Native population, and where some tribes’ populations declined by as much as 95% post-colonial contact, that’s a tad more than a few there. Tortured logic to justify migrant work but to simultaneously deny them anything more than the “gift” of labor.

When you have a society with increasing disparity and “competing” interests (um, who’s standing in line to flip your burger again? And why do they get no insurance when they’re operating deepfry machinery far more dangerous than the average executive’s blackberry?), I guess it’s ok to kick em while they’re down.

Tags: currents

Pointed out to me by Melissa - I had read about it, but the moving picture medium makes you really see what’s going on: UCLA student tasering. What. the. fuck.

If you’ve heard about this, watch the video - see for yourself. And the youtube comments to it are idiotic. A terrible sign - if this is the way you respond to resistance, how could things like the civil rights movement really gain momentum? Then again, they had firehoses, billy clubs, and german shepherds then…

At UW, they do check id’s at the 24-hour library “for your safety”. I wonder what would happen if people chose not to show their id. As a publicly-funded institution, the rationale of which is used so often to restrict our coursework or actions, shouldn’t tax-paying people (and I mean in the broadest sense - everyone pays taxes at least for their groceries) be allowed to access these resources?

Back to the youtube comments, many were like “that’s what you get for saying no to the law” or “that’s school policy. you should follow it.” Maybe people are forgetting that law and justice, or even decency, aren’t identical. We have laws that allow for huge loopholes in tax credits, we have laws that allow the environment to be abused for the sake of profit, hell, we’ve had laws that forbade interracial marriage (and I’m painfully leaving out the laws that fuck me over)! Where is there justice in these laws? This isn’t an earthshattering law that’s illustrated here, but I’d hate to see what would happen in a more substantial situation.

Tags: currents

There’s this: War on poverty slips from election agenda [again].

I think it’ll be a real shame if in their eagerness to gain some majorities Democrats jettison some of the major issues that have been hanging like a cloud for the past couple of years over the country. It would be a super shame if they also forget the same lesson Republicans did and blithely go on their merry way on their planks and constituents. Government should be about serving the people, and, hard to believe, even those who may not have voted for you. There is such unmet need and inequity that you could argue for the benefits to the businessmen who seem to truly govern in words of economics that they would understand. There’s the human and moral imperative. And then there’s the personal: would you want your momma (even if she’s nuts) to be treated like the poorest of the poor are treated here? With just about every rule and statute taking those few bits that mean so much to her, but proportionally so little to the everyday life of a person who has more than they need to live?

–endrant–

Tags: currents