July 13, 2015

This is why I despair at HRC being the candidate

"Workers are assets. Investing in them pays off. Higher wages pay off. And training pays off."

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/620603824441458688

Even when pandering to us, she speaks the language of the oligarchs.

I am NOT an "asset". I am a human being.

July 13, 2015

The modern slave trade, TPP and the Obama Administration

Given this story in The Nation, I find it very hard to judge this action by the Obama Administration as anything other than totally evil. The obvious first defense of the president would be that this was done WITHOUT his complicity. If this is true, then I expect to shortly hear that he has rescinded this "reclassification" of Malaysia. If nothing is done, I am left with no alternative to the view that he is just as evil and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. That when it comes to a decision of money or humanity, he will pick money.

http://www.thenation.com/article/obama-wont-let-some-mass-graves-stop-tpp/

Obama Won’t Let Some Mass Graves Stop the TPP
The Nation


Malaysia is home to many “outsourcing companies” that are, in reality, professional slaving operations: foreign workers, often refugees fleeing desperate situations in nearby countries like Burma, are recruited to the country with the promise of legitimate work but then subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. The State Department and international human rights groups have routinely concluded the Malaysian government does very little to inhibit the traffickers’ operation.

Senator Robert Menendez inserted language into the Senate version of fast-track prohibiting the use of fast-track for a trade deal with a Tier 3 country, presumably with an eye on Malaysia. The Obama administration and Republican leaders in the House tried to have the language removed but were unable to excise it due to the complicated path the fast-track bill took through Congress.

Observers were then unsure what would happen next. Would Malaysia be thrown out of the deal? Would the United States lean hard on the Malaysian government to crack down on human traffickers so it could sign the trade deal? Was there any chance fast track would be disengaged for the TPP?

 Instead, the Obama administration appears to have chosen another path that has shocked the human-rights community: It will simply reclassify Malaysia. Reuters has reported that when the Trafficking in Persons report comes out next week, Malaysia will no longer be a Tier 3 country.

There is essentially zero evidence Malaysia has done anything to earn this reclassification. Just two months ago, police found 139 mass graves along the Malaysian border that contained migrant workers that had been trafficked or held for ransom.

Is "Denari Über Alles" now the Democratic Party motto?

July 2, 2015

"Slaves did not lose their dignity...because the government allowed them to be enslaved"

Let me be fair and give you the complete context of that statement in Clarence Thomas' dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges:

In dissent, Thomas argued that "human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away."

This was written by a sitting an African American Supreme Court Justice(?) in the second decade of the 21st century!!

How disconnected from reality can a human being be?

Of all the sins of the Democratic Party, this has been the most damaging. By refusing to filibuster this man, as they did Robert Bork (Correction, Bork was voted down in the senate. Thomas should have been voted down as well but 11 Democrats defected and voted to confirm), they sowed the seeds of the loss of the 2000 election, the elevation of corporations to personhood, the destruction of the Voting Rights Act, and numerous other erosions of justice and liberty.

Thomas is the personification of Judge Narragansett from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, to such and extant that Rand is probably writhing in her grave in orgasmic ecstasy.

Try to remember that this man replaced Thurgood Marshall