No, it is not absurd to claim, as Sonali Kolhatkar does at Counterpunch, that "Policing Causes Violence, Not the Other Way Around." Not just because the science tells us it's true, and not just because you can easily recall recent incidents (like the recent New York subway shootings) that increased police presence did not prevent. I think we've all experienced the phenomenon where we make problems worse by paying much more intense attention to them! And I'm old enough to remember when conservatives said "you can't just throw more money at a problem and hope it'll go away." But even those conservatives told us out of the other side of their mouths that we should throw all the moneys at police because crime. Also too, if we stopped using them as the Swiss Army knives of the state, we'd have better police officers for less money.
Hard to believe, Harry, but big nursing home corporations have sued to stop a New York state law that would force them to spend more money on patient care. Because they'd lose money! What cojones! They think the very notion of losing money an apocalyptic drama, but the neglect they foist on their workers and their patients is the real apocalypse. See, this is why we don't "let business be business," or "let big business make the important decisions." Also too, the very existence of "profits" in such a business testifies to the amount of care patients don't get -- after all, patient care is an expense. Bring back the 55% corporate tax rate and I bet we see a change right quick.
McDonald's franchises used Paycheck Protection Program (or PPP) money to pay rent to McDonald's. No, really! McDonald's, the parent corporation, owns the land upon which individual fast-food joints operate, and collects rent from them, so the franchises took money meant to keep good Americans working and used it to keep franchises more or less current on their rent. Nice work if you can get it! See? Government doesn't work! right-wingers exclaim, though it was their heroes who ran government so badly. Public Citizen's Lisa Gilbert must be being very polite to say that PPP had "noble intentions," because I never got that vibe, particularly after big corporations collected so much welfare. I mean, people don't think their local McDonald's is a "small business," do they?
In a related note, some policy bigwigs are now asking "whether the stimulus checks were a mistake" given all the inflation we're having now, and all I can say is: seriously? We're debating this? It's never a "mistake" to keep tens of millions of good Americans out of poverty they would have descended into through no fault of their own; I would have done it differently (less PPP, more CTC), but to say it's not worth it because corporations are now taking advantage of us and jacking up prices at will? And not for nothing, but those checks amounted to $3,200 total over 12 months, and I sincerely hope we all know by now how quickly we can go through $3,200.
Another day, another far right-wing whiner running for state Senate in Michigan who laments that he "(c)an't even watch a college basketball tournament without commercials telling me I have to feel guilty because I think a family should be a white mom, a white dad and white kids." Reminds me of all those years I couldn't even watch cable news programs without pundits telling me I was a traitor and a terrorist sympathizer! So yeah, Randy Bishop, fuck your feelings. I will say -- not at all in his defense! -- that while I approve of all the interracial couples I see in TV advertising, I fear that future historians will one day conclude that our society was a whole lot more accepting of interracial marriage than was actually true. But since (as Franz Boas used to say) racism disappears when interracial marriage becomes accepted, I hope that point will be moot in 20 years or so.
Finally, after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (E-GA) calls herself a "victim" of the January 6 attack, a Capitol police officer displays graphic photos of the actual injuries he suffered that day. That's some expert counter-trolling on the part of Aquilino Gonell, though I'm sorry he had to go through it at all. But we're all victims of Ms. Greene's slow-motion train wreck of a Congressional career.
Comments