New MLK Monument: Did we keep the receipt?

some of my best friends are liberals

I don't like to use the word liberal because it has a different meaning in all the other countries.

It makes it more difficult to dialog internationally.

These are all liberal political parties:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_International

So that's what liberal means in most of the world, and it's not really the politics I subscribe to...

People worldwide associate liberalism with defending capitalism.
I haven't called myself a liberal for about 20 years now because I think liberals support free trade agreements like NAFTA, GATT, WTO, PNTR-China, etc. etc.

There's so much disagreement over what it actually means, and that's part of what makes it challenging to use.

It's not a dirty word it's just that people think liberal means something, and they disagree with that thing.
I think most of us have seen this poll by now.

http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publics-response-to-capitalism-socialism/

I dislike labels. But if I must have a label, I want one that stands for defending labor, environmental protection, consumer protection, class consciousness, anti-fascism, solidarity, economic justice, health and welfare for all the people, blah blah blah.

I don't really think the word "liberal" fits that description. I agree with liberals on a lot of things though.

Out-of-Control Cop Punches Defenseless Special-Needs Girl

A passenger on a bus recorded a Los Angeles cop punching a woman in the face who apparently hadn't been violent while the camera rolled.

Jermaine Green, the man who taped the Monday night incident in Bellflower, told NBC LA that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy who struck the woman threatened to arrest him if he didn't hand over his camera phone.

The woman brought a stroller laden with pillows on to the bus and Green described her as having "special needs." Two deputies allegedly boarded the bus at the next stop and confronted the lady, who began cursing at them, according to Green's retelling.

His video begins with the woman standing in the aisle and cursing repeatedly. One of the deputies, a woman, grabs her arm.

20 hour work week, Brilliant of course.

Reducing the standard work week, let me say to 30 or 35 hours, seems like a pretty good idea to me.

Alot of people would be against it though because they would lose money that way, if they lose work hours. Maybe it also needs to be accompanied by wage increases?

I really do think though that increased leisure time(aka family time/personal time) is one of the most important goals we can have as a society.

I have never heard any Democrat or Republican talk about increasing leisure time for people. They usually talk about getting us more jobs.

Why isn't reducing the standard work-week from 40 to 30 hours ever mentioned, except by third parties? This is never discussed in mainstream politics.

I think that demonstrates that our political system has some fundamental flaws that keep certain types of solutions from ever being considered.

Janitors with PHDs, etc.

Alot of middle class kids in the 1980s and 1990s got funneled out of high school straight into a four-year college because they had just always been on a "college track".

Parents, teachers, counselors and students all just assumed that college was a default for kids that were on this track, even when there wasn't a clear career goal.

People would sometimes spend a couple years "undeclared" in college before deciding on a major. Sometimes people ended up with degrees that were not really worth much (ancient philosophy or something). Sometimes they ended up with valuable good degrees but found out they just weren't suited to the field for some reason, or they had some mental or physical reason why they couldn't continue in that field, or the job market in that field dried up, or a combination of those factors.

One effect of this has been that if these folks took loans to invest in an education, they sometimes face great difficulty paying the loans off because they don't make enough money in the jobs they end up in.

It also seems like this over-educated under-employed class of people have been some of the early strong supporters of the Occupy-related protests. The burden of student debt and the lack of quality life opportunities (i.e. jobs) are among the issues the protesters seek to draw attention to.

I'm not sure whether the practice of funneling kids strait out of high school into college still goes on or not. But I think these issues are becoming more clear to people, and I wouldn't be surprised to see college applications decreasing.

NYC needs Giuliani back, he'll take care of these rats.

ha ha why doesn't the city have a plan to kill the giant rats!







:justkidding: :justkidding: :justkidding:
just kidding I;'m not for Giuliani, i know he's rpublican.
Just funny cause he can kill the rats hahaha

Support full decriminalization

The medical use is real, but ultimately in the long run (years later) doctors are not going to prescribe a smoked drug if a pill is available instead. If you think smoked marijuana should be legal, just come out and say the government should either keep its hands off weed, or even better, regulate and tax it so we know what we are buying. I'd like to be able to use it just for fun and to relax, and I don't want to have to get doctors note.

Rich people do run the mainstream media, IMHO.

Hi I don't think I ever posted in this Meta forum before. It's open to anybody right?

So people run media/news companies by being on the boards of directors and such, and the same people also sit on the boards of other companies too, like mining companies, oil companies, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, chemical, insurance, banking and finance, etc.

Also the money from those other industries funnels back into the media arm via advertising revenue.

The mainstream of corporate spin has always been that global warming is not real. That's not because they actually believe it, but because they don't care if it's real or not. Their only goal is to maximize corporate profits whether or not it resulted in planetary catastrophe. Protecting people or our way of life is not part of the corporate equation. They are required by law to value profits above all else. And so they have always tended to ignore the inconvenient truth of global warming, or to put a question mark on it.

The business office and corporate leadership exerts influence over what topics are covered in the news.
Consistent lack of news coverage of global warming over the last 40 years is a result of this.
And when it was covered in the last 30 years it has often been presented as a question, rather than a fact.

I thought everybody knew this.

It's not even close to being in the same category as chemtrails, in my opinion.

Thanks.

medical marijuana is very popular in california. The issue has legs.

Dems should pay attention.

This voting bloc is an important part of the Democratic coalition in California and they have a valid concern.

I wouldn't take it as a joke.

That's how people get driven away.

Anybody think the $2 charge was overblown by the media to avoid covering more substantial people's

protests like OWS? Banks, corporations and billionaires are screwing us for thousands or millions of dollars, and people are really up in arms about it all over the country, standing in front of lines of cops getting beat up and sprayed and shot at, and arrested. But the media just loves focusing on this $2 convenience fee that at most costs someone $24/year. I'm not saying it isn't important; it is. But what is the relative importance of this protest over $2/month to warrant the amount of media coverage it has gotten. People are upset about the $2 but they are much more upset about much larger systemic injustices in our economic system, and they have to literally make a big scene and get shot at to get any media attention. And then when Verizon reverses its decision and drops the $2 fee, the media can act like that shows there really was justice and the protest was successful, so everybody can go on about their business.