That reform trap door can open awfully fast under unsuspecting feet. Recently it opened up under Black youth leadership in the Windy City when the ACLU of Illinois announced the results of its secret negotiations with the City of Chicago regarding the Chicago Police Department’s “stop and frisk” practices.
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FASCISM ANYONE? THE 14 DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM by Laurence W. Britt Originally published in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry Magazine (19)
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From NYT: An updated study by the prominent economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty shows that the top 1 percent of earners took more than one-fifth of the country’s total income in 2012, one of the highest levels recorded in the century that the government has collected the relevant data.…
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From Colorlines: In response to a question from New York Magazine about whether de Blasio’s campaign represents “class-warfare,” Bloomberg piped in “class-warfare and racist.” Pressed to explain himself, Bloomberg said that though de Blasio himself is not racist, his “appeal” is such. Going in on the point, the mayor said…
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From WaPo: As New York Times labor writer Steve Greenhouse has noted, until 1975, “wages nearly always accounted for more than 50 percent of our nation’s GDP.” But in 2012 they fell to a record low of 43.5 percent. Those who make the economic engine run are receiving less of…
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The strain of poverty may mean people are more likely to make bad decisions that exacerbate their financial problems. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images From The Guardian: Poor people spend so much mental energy on the immediate problems of paying bills and cutting costs that they are left with less capacity…
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From WashingtonPost: It has long held true that elderly people have higher suicide rates than the overall population. But numbers released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people, with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose…
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From HuffPo: Extended unemployment benefits Congress put in place at the outset of the Great Recession didn’t discourage people from taking jobs, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Princeton University economics professor Henry Farber and San Francisco Fed economist Rob Valletta found that extended…
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