May 31, 2012

And now we've got people calling Nancy Pelosi a PLUTOCRAT?!!!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=744121

Sorry, just blowing off steam. You can't call bona fide crazy CRAZY anymore without getting a jury coming down on you.

May 30, 2012

College Tuition in 18 years from now: $130K A YEAR private, $41K a year public

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/college-tuition-look-18-years-131235673.html

What College Tuition Will Look Like in 18 Years
By Stephanie Landsman | CNBC – 6 hours ago

It's not just the nation heading for a fiscal cliff.

Soaring education costs could end up rupturing your nest egg-and bring your child to the brink of bankruptcy before he even gets his first job.

Even the top one percent may get a panic attack from the latest projected tuition rates.

Campus Consultants Founder and President Kal Chany figured out what college will likely cost by 2030 based on inflation rates. He wrote the book "Paying for College Without Going Broke."

The findings? In 18 years, the average sticker price for a private university could be as much as $130,428 a year (See chart.) The situation isn't much better if you go the public route. Sending your child to a state university could set you back at least $41,228 a year.

May 28, 2012

Remember the time when ECHELON was just a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory?

Those were the days, I tells ya.

May 28, 2012

No surrender, no retreat, take no prisoners in the war for better pay and conditions for workers

around the world.

Whether the issue is crappy (as in, non livable wage) pay for workers in America or anywhere abroad, 110 degree temperatures in an American warehouse or unnecessarily dangerous working conditions on the farm, dangerous mines and factories in China, Hong Kong workers workers living in cages, untouchables doing dangerous sewer work in India, workers in China and India suffering the health risks of recycling Western nations' consumer electronics, or any other situation where workers are exposed to hazards that can be alleviated, but isn't for some bullshit reason...

it's time for Democrats to reclaim their liberal roots and say "no more".

To hell with: "my daddy worked for peanuts under these shitty conditions, your generation ought to just suck it up", and "if you do improve working conditions or pay for these workers, the cost of your iPad or your shoes will go up", and "the robots will be doing their jobs as a result of your reforms", and "Seriously, people need to toughen up".

To hell with all excuses. Safer working conditions and better pay for all workers, around the world. No apologies, no surrender, no backing down. The Democratic Party is about liberalism, not Conservatism. We fight for workers, not the captains of industry or the Plutocracy. We don't piss on the working class to protect our sense of entitlement to cheap goods at all costs. Jay Gould be damned; we won't stand for half the workers pissing on the other half and telling them to "toughen up".

If you're one of those "we" then drop on in and give a shout out. Let the world know we're tired of the assault on progressive workers' rights and pay policies. Things can and must change for the better. Technology is always progressing - and it's high time that it benefit the workers as well as the bosses and the Plutocracy.

May 26, 2012

I expect to find this kind of crap on the Freeper forum, not here.

See this thread about workers winning a fight for safer working conditions:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=728331

And look at these responses that attack the concept of safer working conditions:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=728659

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=729880

How did this become allowable on the DU? They're trivializing the fight for safer working conditions even after the OP specifically pointed out that workers were collapsing due to heat stroke. In 110 degree temperatures. In one case the flimsy Freeper-level argument was made that as a result of workers fighting for a safer workplace, we'll be paying $100 for a formerly $13 shirt. What the frak.

Someone needs to send the reaper to deal with these Freeper arguments. Failing an outright PPR tombstone, how about some hiding of posts by juries?

No, I didn't report it. I've had people getting away with calling me mentally deficient on here, a flagrant violation of the rules; this will most certainly get forgiven.

May 26, 2012

Hey tinfoil hatters, we'll never see armed drones used in America. NEVER!!!

#!

- taken from http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=728891 and re-posted here as a wake-up call to everyone who thinks armed drones can't happen here.

The FAA's block on armed drones is just a technicality. All they need to do is flip the switch on their "block" and it's seriously on, America.

May 24, 2012

Globalism: What place does the American worker have in this?

American workers are increasingly being locked out of jobs that service the American market, and judging by our trade deficit, emerging markets elsewhere don't have any work for Americans, either.

What about globalism ISN'T designed from the ground up to exclude American workers?

May 22, 2012

Hey, DUers, stop hating on those cops! They're here to protect us!

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/12557216-418/county-oks-600000-settlement-in-police-torture-case.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002713201

http://www.pixiq.com/article/cop-caught-on-video-threatening-to-ram-penis-in-suspects-mouth

The next guy who says "fuck the police" gets a visit from a drone.

May 22, 2012

Foxconn creates another 35,000 jobs to produce iPads for America

and not one American is allowed to have one of those jobs.

As the free trade motto goes: America's working class can go eff off.

We need tariffs... NOW.

May 21, 2012

There are certain issues that Free Traders always avoid discussing.

Bring up these points and watch how the discussion gets miraculously taken off-topic!

1) One major and fatal problem with offshoring is that the "poor nations of the world" rely on taking American jobs and exporting goods to us, for their prosperity.

America's offshoring-driven unemployment will catch up with us and drag our currency OR our core economy down long before the poor nations of the world become self-sustaining. America will dry up as an export market before they can service their own economies. And China, for instance, is not self-sustaining. If their exports to us dry up any time in the next 10 years, their economy will go to hell.

Finally, eventually America will eventually run out of jobs to ship offshore. And that will also spell doom for the poor nations of the world who export to us.

Offshoring discriminates against American workers. Globalism prevents American workers from having access to foreign job markets, while enabling others to poach on ours This vampire economy cannot sustain itself; eventually the victim runs out of blood. Free traders cannot and will not address this because past that point, there is no future for the third world.

2) For free trade to even exist, one nation has to stay dirt poor so that importing from them is cheaper than producing those goods domestically. That's why, for instance, the United States tried to stop Haiti's government from giving their textile workers raises[/url: higher wages for Haitians meant more expensive clothes for America.

Ask your neighborhood free trader about that. How do they like their government keeping poor people's wages in the gutter so they can have their cheap clothes? Oh but they're helping the poor people of the world, right? Again, notice how the subject gets changed when you bring this up.

3) There's an even bigger problem to be looked at as well - and the free trade crowd won't even dare come near this. At the rate that the third world is polluting itself and crapping in its own food plate to produce goods for America, it won't even matter if they become self-sustaining. They will choke on their pollution. China has a drinking water crisis that America's media won't talk about, and it's caused by their industrial pollution. India has the same problem. In fact, the free trade movement is DESTROYING THE THIRD WORLD by doing absolutely nothing about the fact that America is exporting its heavy pollution overseas. Ever wonder why the globalism crowd never discusses this, or detours around it?

They detour around it because the solution is to force those nations to clean up their environmental act. Free traders detour around the environmental effects of offshoring because to clean up the mess overseas would make manufacturing goods overseas so expensive that offshoring would disappear. Cleaning up the environment at an offshore factory would cost the "poor people" their jobs. But failing to do so, is killing them.

4) I think that you the gentlereader can take it from here about human rights abroad. You know what safe workplaces, real democracy, and workers' rights do to the cost of imports. It drives it all upward. Byebye cheap shoes and iPads. Remember, the free traders are all about "but it'll raise prices for Americans and we can't have that". Again, notice how the conversation gets diverted when you bring this up.



What the third world needs, in order to become self-sustaining, is first world wages, and first world environmental protection standards. But they will not get that. Why? Because America wants its cheap stuff. The free traders want their cheap stuff. And to get their cheap stuff we must have foreign poor people working for crap wages in cities that are rapidly outranking American cities in the terms of who has the worst pollution levels.

One has to ask the free traders... what are they really advocating for? The well-being of the world's poor... or their own entitlement to the lowest-price clothes and consumer electronics?