Today in Washington DC the GOP held a Congressional oversight hearing about the new birth control mandate.
Not one woman was on the panel for the hearing.
Let me repeat.
In a hearing about birth control, an issue that affects largely women, not…
DENMARK’S “FAT TAX” TARGETS BUTTER, BURGERS
A fatty cheeseburger may take a toll on your health, but if you live in Denmark, it’s also about to take a toll on your wallet.
Pictures: Fat tax? 15 states with biggest obesity bills
Denmark has imposed a “fat tax” on fatty foods in an effort to convince Danes to eat healthier. The tax is a complex one, in which rates will correspond with the percentage of fat in a product. The value of the tax is about $3.00 for every 2.2 pounds of saturated fat.
For example, a burger will increase in price by about $0.15, and a small package of butter could cost around $0.40 more under the new plan.
This graphic comes courtesy of the Pew Research Center. The graphic demonstrates the widespread discontent of the American populace toward political parties, leaders, and the government.
Pretty ugly stuff.
Enjoy.
(via robot-heart-politics)
Prison hunger strikers now number 12,000, advocates say:
Advocates for California prison inmates conducting a hunger strike said the number of participants has swelled to 12,000, making it possibly the largest prison strike in recent U.S. history.
Photo: Inmate Timothy Kelly at Pelican Bay State Prison, where inmates waged a hunger strike in July to protest alleged mistreatment. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press
(Source: Los Angeles Times, via pantslessprogressive)
Labor does not see industrial strife. It wants peace, but a peace with justice. In the long struggle for labor’s rights it has been patient and forbearing. Sabotage and destruction syndicalism have had no part in the American labor movement. Workers have kept faith in American institutions. Most of the conflicts, which have occurred have been when labor’s right to live has been challenged and denied.
If there is to be peace in our industrial life let the employer recognize his obligation to his employees — at least to the degree set forth in existing statutes. Ordinary problems affecting wages, hours, and working conditions, in most instances, will quickly respond to negotiation in the council room.
The United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and similar groups representing industry and financial interests, are rendering a disservice to the American people in their attempts to frustrate the organization of labor and in their refusal to accept collective bargaining as one of our economic institutions.
These groups are encouraging a systematic organization of vigilante groups to fight unionization under the sham pretext of local interests. They equip these vigilantes with tin hats, wooden clubs, gas masks and lethal weapons and train them in the arts of brutality and oppression. They bring in snoops, finks, hatchet gangs and Chowderhead Cohens to infest their plants and disturb the communities.
Fascist organizations have been launched and financed under the shabby pretext that the C.I.O. movement is communistic. The real breeders of discontent and alien doctrines of government and philosophies subversive of good citizenship are such as these who take the law into their own hands.
No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.
Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit. It is upon the fuller development of collective bargaining, the wider expansion of the labor movement, the increased influence of labor in our national councils, that the perpetuity of our democratic institutions must largely depend.
—John L. Lewis, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), delivering his Labor and the Nation speech on September 3, 1937, in Washington DC. (via pantslessprogressive)
![stfuconservatives:
thedailywhat:
This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: Kyle Willis, a 24-year-old unemployed father of one from Cincinnati, passed away last week from an easily treatable tooth infection because he didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t afford a simple tooth extraction.
Willis began experiencing a wisdom tooth ache two weeks ago, and was told by dentists he would need to have it pulled. He didn’t have insurance to cover the procedure and couldn’t pay for it out of pocket, so he decided to skip treatment altogether.
After his face began to swell, Willis went to the emergency room, where he was prescribed antibiotics, which, again, he couldn’t afford. He decided to stick with pain medicine. The infection eventually spread to his brain causing it to swell.
He died last Tuesday.
American Academy of Family Physicians president-elect Dr. Glenn Stream says that, even if Willis had access to a free dental clinic, “the wait is often months…and this young man died within two weeks of his problem.”
“[Willis] might as well have been living in 1927,” Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, told ABC News. “All of the advances we’ve made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don’t have coverage, you might as well never have developed those.”
[abcnews.]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you don’t believe that health care is a right then you believe that poor people, like this young man, deserve to die.
-Joe](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr0nbtS4Fs1qzpwi0o1_400.jpg)
This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: Kyle Willis, a 24-year-old unemployed father of one from Cincinnati, passed away last week from an easily treatable tooth infection because he didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t afford a simple tooth extraction.
Willis began experiencing a wisdom tooth ache two weeks ago, and was told by dentists he would need to have it pulled. He didn’t have insurance to cover the procedure and couldn’t pay for it out of pocket, so he decided to skip treatment altogether.
After his face began to swell, Willis went to the emergency room, where he was prescribed antibiotics, which, again, he couldn’t afford. He decided to stick with pain medicine. The infection eventually spread to his brain causing it to swell.
He died last Tuesday.
American Academy of Family Physicians president-elect Dr. Glenn Stream says that, even if Willis had access to a free dental clinic, “the wait is often months…and this young man died within two weeks of his problem.”
“[Willis] might as well have been living in 1927,” Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, told ABC News. “All of the advances we’ve made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don’t have coverage, you might as well never have developed those.”
[abcnews.]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you don’t believe that health care is a right then you believe that poor people, like this young man, deserve to die.
-Joe
(via political-cartoons)
—Barbara Ehrenreich (via azspot)
(via robot-heart-politics)
The Secret History of Guns
The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.
More —> Adam Winkler, The Atlantic
Thousands of people marched in Dublin this weekend to show the Irish government they demand equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens: the right to marry.
An estimated 4,000 protestors held signs and marched to the Department of Justice on St. Stephen’s Green to make some noise about how Ireland needs marriage equality now. Advocates say the Irish government is contributing to bullying trends by denying LGBT citizens basic rights.
Recent legislation in Ireland grants same-sex couples rights via civil unions, but denies them official marriage.
Proud to see the momentum for full equality growing around the world. Keep it up, Ireland!
