Archive for December 2015
Wanted: Part-time job with $174,000 salary — and plenty of perks
Pssst — have I got a few sweetheart jobs for you.
In one, you’ll only have to work 111 days in 2016. You’ll be off — yep, off! — for 150 days. There’s this job, too: You’ll only have to work for 149 days and get 112 days off.
I know — it sounds too good to be true, right? Well, get this: In either job, you’ll be paid at least $174,000. You’ll be able to earn about 15 percent more in “outside income,” too.
You’ll get an allowance of almost $950,000 to hire staff to help you cope with your arduous schedule. You’ll get money for office expenses and have postage for your official mail paid for you, too. You’ll get great health benefits (including an “attending physician” in case you need emergency care), a gym and workout facilities, and a terrific retirement plan.
And more perks: Free parking at D.C. airports. Your staff will have dedicated phone lines to airlines to make reservations for you. You won’t have to publicly disclosure your stock trades and any insider knowledge, too. Wow! You’ll get to fly back and forth for D.C. to your home state, paid for by taxpayers!
[read more …]
Where there’s political smoke, there’s the oil and gas lobby
Well, isn’t that special: Congress passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill before heading off for a three-week holiday vacation. (You get that much time off?) Brinkmanship is avoided; threats to shut down the government over (this time) Syrian refugees or the Puerto Rican debt crisis are avoided (or, more likely, postponed).
But it’s a bad bill for any president serving in the next few decades. Those presidents, irrespective of party, will have to deal with the physical consequences of human-induced climate disruption as well as the political repercussions of not meeting the Paris accords.
That’s because provisions buried in the spending resolution hamper the ability of future presidents to cope with a warming climate. And that’s because your representatives caved (as usual) to the oil and gas industry lobby.
As Bill Moyers and Michael Winship report, each $1 the oil and gas lobby spent in 2013 and 2014 returned $103 in subsidies. The industry spent $326 million to lobby Congress. In return it received $33.7 billion in government favors.
[read more …]
For 2016, re-elect Andrew Shepherd as U.S. president: Fiction trumps the Republican reality
In my favorite bad movie, The American President, Michael Douglas as the fictional President Andrew Shepherd confronts his Republican challenger’s claims about Shepherd’s character.
We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: Making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.
You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character. … You scream about patriotism and tell them [who’s] to blame for their lot in life … [emphasis added]
Now remove Bob Rumson’s name and insert the name of any of the recent CNN main stage GOP presidential candidates (or even Wolf Blitzer, as he goaded them into ISIS hysteria). Each follows the Rumson playbook: Make us afraid. Blame ISIS. Promise to bomb the shit out of ISIS, even it means killing civilians — and children. Result: Radical Islamic terrorists are blamed and thus killed; fear ends; America emerges triumphant again as savior of freedom, democracy, and what have you.
Read more …
What happened when I had a black boyfriend
By one of my university students …
By Kailyn Jennings
I’m a skinny, knock-kneed, white girl from a small farm town in upstate New York. I have blue eyes, pale skin, brown hair. I’m quiet and usually buried in a book. I’m average.
Imagine people’s surprise when I began dating the 6-foot-7-inch Division I basketball player. The black one.
I can’t count the number of times people asked me what it’s like to date a black man. The only thing different about dating a black man is people asking me what it’s like to date a black man.
Those same people usually asked if I was okay, too. Am I okay? Not with people being blind to their own ignorance.
They may have been blind, but they certainly still saw color.
During a visit to my hometown, my boyfriend and I went to pick a friend up from a party. There, I hugged other friends I hadn’t…
View original post 347 more words
deadlines amuse me 