#THISisAmericanCommunism

1. Guaranteed Work for Everybody
Unemployment blows. The easiest and most direct solution is for the government to guarantee that everyone who wants to contribute productively to society is able to earn a decent living in the public sector.
...
Imagine a world where people could contribute the skills that inspire them – teaching, tutoring, urban farming, cleaning up the environment, painting murals – rather than telemarketing or whatever other stupid tasks bosses need done to supplement their millions.

2. Social Security for All
What if people didn't have to work to survive? Enter the jaw-droppingly simple idea of a universal basic income, in which the government would just add a sum sufficient for subsistence to everyone's bank account every month.
...
Put another way: A universal basic income, combined with a job guarantee and other social programs, could make participation in the labor force truly voluntary, thereby enabling people to get a life.

3. Take Back The Land
The most mainstream way of flipping the script is a simple land-value tax. By targeting wealthy real estate owners and their free rides, we can fight inequality and poverty directly, make disastrous asset price bubbles impossible and curb Wall Street's hideous bloat. ... In any case, we have to stop letting rich people pretend they privately own what nature provided everyone.

4. Make Everything Owned by Everybody
"Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets.

Just buy up their stocks and bonds. When the government does that, it's called a sovereign wealth fund.

5. A Public Bank in Every State
There is only one state that currently has a public option for banking: North Dakota. When North Dakotans pay state taxes, the money gets deposited in the state's bank, which in turn offers cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses. The Bank of North Dakota doesn't make seedy, destined-to-default loans, slice them up inscrutably and sell them on a secondary market. It doesn't play around with incomprehensible derivatives and allow its executives to extract billions of dollars. It just makes loans and works with debtors to pay them off.

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source:
EXCERPTED from w/ emphasis added: Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For | Politics News | Rolling Stone

#THISisLGBTIran

• Iran’s execution of two men last week for homosexual conduct highlights a pattern of persecution of gay men that stands in stark violation of the rights to life and privacy, Human Rights Watch said today. (2005)
• Mehdi P., from Tabriz; Moshen G., from Shiraz; and Nemat Safavi, from Ardebil, were accused in separate cases of committing homosexual acts when they were under age 18.  No date has been set for their execution yet, but the lawyer representing two of the men fears that it could happen any day. (2009)
• "The three convicts were sentenced to death based on the articles 108 and 110 of Iran's Islamic penal code, for acts against the sharia law and bad deeds," the Isna agency quoted a judiciary official in Khuzestan as saying. (2011)
• The four men -- identified by the Human Rights Activist News Agency in Iran as Saadat Arefi, Vahid Akbari, Javid Akbari and Houshmand Akbari -- are set to be hanged after their guilty verdict was approved recently by high court judges. (2012)
• Iran's revolutionary guards have announced the arrest of "a network of homosexuals and satanists" in the western city of Kermanshah, close to the country's border with Iraq, prompting fresh alarm over the treatment of gay people in the Islamic republic. (2013)

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source:
Iran: Two More Executions for Homosexual Conduct - Human Rights Watch - November 22, 2005
Three Men Await Execution for Alleged Homosexual Conduct When Children - Human Rights Watch - November 4, 2009
Iran executes three men on homosexuality charges - by Saeed Kamali Dehghan - The Guardian, Wednesday 7 September 2011
Iranian Gay Men To Be Hanged For Sodomy: Report - Huffington Post - Posted: 05/14/2012
Four Iranian men sentenced to death by hanging for sodomy - by Dan Littauer - LGBTQ Nation - Saturday, May 12, 2012
Iran arrests 'network of homosexuals and satanists' at birthday party - by Saeed Kamali Dehghan
The Guardian, Thursday 10 October 2013

#THISisRaceOnRaceMurder

• 44,406 black-on-black murders - 2000-2010
• 4,441 average per year
• 36,419,434 black population - 2000
• 42,020,743 black population - 2010
• 39,220,088 average black population
• 11.32 black-on-black murders per 100,000 people per year

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• 37,345 white-on-white murders - 2000-2010
• 3,735 average per year
• 216,930,975 white population - 2000
• 231,040,398 white population - 2010
• 223,985,686 average white population
• 1.67 white-on-white murders per 100,000 people per year.

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source:
Black-on-black murders - 2000-2010 - WSJ By Rob Barry, Madeline Farbman, Jon Keegan, and Palani Kumanan. Source: FBI. Data collected 12/9/2013
White-on-white murders - 2000-2010 - WSJ By Rob Barry, Madeline Farbman, Jon Keegan, and Palani Kumanan. Source: FBI. Data collected 12/9/2013
The White Population: 2010 Census Briefs
The Black Population: 2010 Census Briefs

#THISisLaborParticipation

Series Id: LNS14000000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate
Labor force status: Unemployment rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	President
2001	4.2	4.2	4.3	4.4	4.3	4.5	4.6	4.0	5.0	5.3	5.5	5.7	Republican
2002	5.7	5.7	5.7	5.9	5.8	5.8	5.8	5.7	5.7	5.7	5.9	6.0
2003	5.8	5.9	5.9	6.0	6.1	6.3	6.2	6.1	6.1	6.0	5.8	5.7
2004	5.7	5.6	5.8	5.6	5.6	5.6	5.5	5.4	5.4	5.5	5.4	5.4
2005	5.3	5.4	5.2	5.2	5.1	5.0	5.0	4.9	5.0	5.0	5.0	4.9
2006	4.7	4.8	4.7	4.7	4.6	4.6	4.7	4.7	4.5	4.4	4.5	4.4
2007	4.6	4.5	4.4	4.5	4.4	4.6	4.7	4.6	4.7	4.7	4.7	5.0
2008	5.0	4.9	5.1	5.0	5.4	5.6	5.8	6.1	6.1	6.5	6.8	7.3
2009	7.8	8.3	8.7	9.0	9.4	9.5	9.5	9.6	9.8	10.0	9.9	9.9	Democrat
2010	9.8	9.8	9.9	9.9	9.6	9.4	9.5	9.5	9.5	9.5	9.8	9.3
2011	9.1	9.0	8.9	9.0	9.0	9.1	9.0	9.0	9.0	8.9	8.6	8.5
2012	8.3	8.3	8.2	8.1	8.2	8.2	8.2	8.1	7.8	7.9	7.8	7.8
2013	7.9	7.7	7.6	7.5	7.6	7.6	7.4	7.3	7.2	7.3	7.0

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Series Id: LNS11300000
Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Seas) Labor Force Participation Rate
Labor force status: Civilian labor force participation rate
Type of data: Percent or rate
Age: 16 years and over

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	President
2001	67.2	67.1	67.2	66.9	66.7	66.7	66.8	66.5	66.8	66.7	66.7	66.7	Republican
2002	66.5	66.8	66.6	66.7	66.7	66.6	66.5	66.6	66.7	66.6	66.4	66.3
2003	66.4	66.4	66.3	66.4	66.4	66.5	66.2	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.1	65.9
2004	66.1	66.0	66.0	65.9	66.0	66.1	66.1	66.0	65.8	65.9	66.0	65.9
2005	65.8	65.9	65.9	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.1	66.0	66.0
2006	66.0	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.2	66.1	66.2	66.3	66.4
2007	66.4	66.3	66.2	65.9	66.0	66.0	66.0	65.8	66.0	65.8	66.0	66.0
2008	66.2	66.0	66.1	65.9	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.1	66.0	66.0	65.9	65.8
2009	65.7	65.8	65.6	65.7	65.7	65.7	65.5	65.4	65.1	65.0	65.0	64.6	Democrat
2010	64.8	64.9	64.9	65.1	64.9	64.6	64.6	64.7	64.6	64.4	64.6	64.3
2011	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.2	64.0	64.0	64.1	64.2	64.1	64.1	64.0
2012	63.7	63.9	63.8	63.6	63.8	63.8	63.7	63.5	63.6	63.8	63.6	63.6
2013	63.6	63.5	63.3	63.3	63.4	63.5	63.4	63.2	63.2	62.8	63.0

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source:
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey - Unemployment Rate
Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey - Labor Force Participation Rate
Data extracted on: December 6, 2013

#THISisVetoTheFix

"[Any] health insurance issuer that has in effect health insurance coverage in the individual market as of January 1, 2013, may continue after such date to offer such coverage for sale during 2014." - H.R. 3350

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"The Administration supports policies that allow people to keep the health plans that they have. But, policies that reverse the progress made to extend quality, affordable coverage to millions of uninsured, hardworking, middle class families are not the solution."
"If the President were presented with H.R. 3350, he would veto it." - President Barack Obama

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source:
Text of H.R. 3350: Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013 (Introduced version) - GovTrack.us
STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY - H.R. 3350 – Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013

#THISisShibboleth

While writing my book, Alphabetical, about the history of the letters we use, I discovered that debates about power and class surround every letter – and none more so than the letter H.

Is it 'aitch' or 'haitch'? Photograph: Alamy

The alphabet is something not to be argued with: there are 26 letters in as fixed a sequence as the numbers 1-26; once learned in order and for the "sounds they make", you have the key to reading and the key to the way the world is classified. Or perhaps not.

Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story
by Michael Rosen

Actually, in the course of writing my book about the history of the letters we use, Alphabetical, I discovered that the alphabet is far from neutral. Debates about power and class surround every letter, and H is the most contentious of all. No other letter has had such power to divide people into opposing camps.

In Britain, H owes its name to the Normans, who brought their letter "hache" with them in 1066. Hache is the source of our word "hatchet": probably because a lower-case H looks a lot like an axe. It has certainly caused a lot of trouble over the years. A century ago people dropping their h's were described in the Times as "h-less socialists." In ancient Rome, they were snooty not about people who dropped their Hs but about those who picked up extra ones. Catullus wrote a nasty little poem about Arrius (H'arrius he called him), who littered his sentences with Hs because he wanted to sound more Greek. Almost two thousand years later we are still split, and pronouncing H two ways: "aitch", which is posh and "right"; and "haitch", which is not posh and thus "wrong". The two variants used to mark the religious divide in Northern Ireland – aitch was Protestant, haitch was Catholic, and getting it wrong could be a dangerous business.

Perhaps the letter H was doomed from the start: given that the sound we associate with H is so slight (a little outbreath), there has been debate since at least AD 500 whether it was a true letter or not. In England, the most up-to-date research suggests that some 13th-century dialects were h-dropping, but by the time elocution experts came along in the 18th century, they were pointing out what a crime it is. And then received wisdom shifted, again: by 1858, if I wanted to speak correctly, I should have said "erb", "ospital" and "umble".

The world is full of people laying down the law about the "correct" choice: is it "a hotel" or "an otel"; is it "a historian" or "an historian"? But there is no single correct version. You choose. We have no academy to rule on these matters and, even if we did, it would have only marginal effect. When people object to the way others speak, it rarely has any linguistic logic. It is nearly always because of the way that a particular linguistic feature is seen as belonging to a cluster of disliked social features. Writing this book has been a fascinating journey: the story of our alphabet turns out to be a complex tug of war between the people who want to own our language and the people who use it. I know which side I'm on.

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source:
Why H is the most contentious letter in the alphabet | Science | The Guardian

#THISisDebtCeilingKabuki

Obama’s Statement on Debt Ceiling as a U.S. Senator

“Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘trillion’ with a ‘T.’ That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.

"And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on. Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans—a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.

“Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

–Senator Barack Obama (March 16, 2006)

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source:
Obama's Congressional Record - Budget