Sunday Gumbo

I guess I've been on holiday this month. Sorry to all you 5 readers I've got. Though I haven't posted anything in a while, I have started several posts and saved them without getting too far in depth with any subject, so instead of writing something I decided to post all the unfinished posts I have saved here.


Post Title: "It's because they're nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests"

Krugamn has been working hard lately writing some really interesting columns about social and fiscal responsibilty. In yesterday's column, he discusses the almighty Blue Dogs, you know the conservative Democratic group found in 1995 during the Clinton era, when defining yourself as a fiscal conservative and social liberal was cool. Except of course when it came to the right to affordable AIDS medication, gay rights, and critically needed social services to prevent places like Baltimore from becoming murder capitols of the country.

Anyways, it yesterday's column about the Blue Dogs, Krugram makes this little, unassuming statement: "It’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests".

Read the whole column here.

Post Title: Can you beat crazy?

Last year the video's of the Palin rally's scared the shit out of me. Remember that one where the woman who went off with craziness outside a rally? I don't anyone to experience those few minutes again, so watch this clip instead to jog your memory.

Post Title: Why is Florida So Fucked Up?

I've mentioned a couple times about the Constitution's 14th admenment and how it is preventing community citizens from determining the scope of the development of their own town. This is known as corporate personhood. Because of a contract with the federal and state government's corporations are able to sidestep citizen demands against how they run their business.

Business does not have a contract with the citizens of the town they work in but rather the state government which trumps local government. This is how factory farms are allowed to be built in small towns even when the town votes against having them there.

Amendment 4 is on the ballot in Florida for the next election. It is called Florida Hometown Democracy. It is a way for citizens to have the right to yea or nay to particular types of development, mostly big box stores (Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc).

I just read this article in The Jacksonville News by a campaign organizer trying to get Florida Hometown Democracy (Amendment 4 passed). It's pretty fucking clear. And goes into the details about why Florida entered the recession before any other state and why it will take the longest to recover. It doesn't talk directly to that issue, but if you compare his points to why this is happening Florida you can better understand why the housing bubble burst earlier, why the population dropped for the first time in 63 years, and why Florida will sit in the recession longer than other states.


Post Title: (The one I was just going to write and decided that my buritis hurts too much to concentrate) What should pro athletes and the chemical industry have in common?

Plexico Burress is going to jail and all he did was shoot himself in the thigh. My heart really goes out to this man. He shot himself in the thigh at a night club, is going to jail, and might not play football again. I've made so really stupid decisions in my day. The kind where I can't believe I'm actually still alive stupid. And I know that he basically just stumbled over his too big ego and is now paying the price (which I agree he should) but when I think about what must be going through his brain, I'm so embarrassed I have to stop thinking about it.

Anyways, so the Christian Monitor has a story about how athletes aren't getting any slack in the legal system these days. And it makes me think. Shouldn't we be doing the same thing to the chemical industry? How different is killing dogs in your backyard to knowingly releasing toxic chemicals into the air and water several feet away from an open school? Alec Baldwin wrote a great blog for Huffington Post the other day on Michael Vick. He compared his crimes to those of the food industry and asked the question why are so many people having a hard time giving Vick a second chance while they are eating chicken that came from factory farms?

"What Vick did is, obviously, senseless and reprehensible. But I believe Vick, as a wealthy and talented athletic superstar who performs his job out in the open before crowds of amped-up and highly opinionated fans, suffers an unfair disadvantage as compared to, say, the heads of a meatpacking plant or the directors of a medical research lab where animals are suffering the cruelest imaginable abuses behind walls and doors that remove them from our sight and, therefore, judgments."

We need new laws when it comes to where our schools are sited. We need a three strikes you're out rule. If you release emissions passed your permits three times near a school, you're out. You shut your doors and you go home. The schools that are next door, like Fork Marsh Elementary in West Virginia, to polluting facilities are in areas where most people can't see them. The children that go to that school are not rich or powerful and might never be, so they don't count. But if we knew about the real impacts of the pollution. If each parent received a letter home with the emissions data and the possible reproductive and neurological impacts, I bet the facility would have a lot harder time staying open.

There's my sunday gumbo.

Renee Claire