America: No Vacation Time For You
In the richest country in the world, there is no right to any vacation time. Paid annual leave and paid holidays are optional for any employer. In most other wealthy nations, there are between 20-35 vacation days per year (4-7 weeks). To make matters worse, Americans are increasingly less likely to actually use their vacation days.
Incarceration Up, Education Down: America’s Cannibalistic Profiteering
The privatization of these crucial social programs has resulted in a situation contradictory to the benefit of society. The rate of incarceration has increased five fold during the same period that the cost of a post secondary education has increased threefold, and all for profit. America’s educational system and technological advances have declined over the same period that the county’s prison population has expanded. These results have benefited private interests while causing lasting and possibly irreparable damage to the nation and it’s citizens.
Palin and Angle Didn’t Use Political Rhetoric, They Gave Jared Loughner Instructions.
These two people have acted in a way that can arguably be attributed to the cause of the deaths of six individuals, including a federal judge and a young child, as the actions they prescribed – the second amendment remedy against a particularly targeted individual – were being carried out. Incitement to violence? Conspiracy to commit murder? Soliciting a criminal act against a specific individual? Willful disregard? All of these, and perhaps others, are questions that warrant, at least, an investigation.
Guns, Violent Political Rhetoric, & Insanity: America’s Deadly Mix
Can anyone truly claim to be taken completely by surprise by these tragic events? With the less-than-easy access to deadly firearms, a rise in religious fundamentalism in both the military and civilian society, and Right-Wing politicians, and pundits, claiming that the federal government is filled with everything from illegitimate foreign usurpers to unconstitutional oppressors of the American people…A 9mm Glauk in the hands of a mentally unstable individual (of which there are potentially many in any society) was simply a tragedy waiting to happen.
The Austerity Scam: Next Target, the U.S.A.
Austerity is what our politicians should be demanding from the banks and the corporations, not us. The right to exist is what we should be granting corporations and financial institutions, not the other way around. The constituents should be the most powerful lobbyists in any capital, not the corporations and banks. We’ve allowed our world to be turned upside down.
