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I Can't Get There Tomorrow, But I Can Come on Thursday |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27766"><span class="small">Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Monday, 12 May 2014 08:48 |
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Warren writes: "The deck has been stacked against working moms for years. And even though women are the main breadwinners, or joint breadwinners, in two-thirds of the families across the country, it's only getting worse."
Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Boston Globe)
I Can't Get There Tomorrow, but I Can Come on Thursday
By Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News
12 May 14
 ne Tuesday night back in 1979, I rushed from my new teaching job at the University of Houston to pick my son Alex up from daycare. He was sitting on a small cot in the crowded daycare, his diaper soggy. He clung to me and cried when I tried to change him, and by the time I got him in the car I was covered in tears, pee and baby snot.
When we got home, I gave Alex a bath, crumbled hamburger in a skillet, and started a load of laundry. By the time I got Alex and his big sister Amelia in bed, I was so tired my bones hurt.
My 78-year-old Aunt Bee called to see how I was doing. I started out ok, but finally I broke down and started to cry. I was failing my kids and I loved teaching, but I was doing my class preparations after midnight. I was always behind. I told Aunt Bee I was going to quit my job.
Aunt Bee matter-of-factly told me, "I can't get there tomorrow, but I can come on Thursday." She arrived with seven suitcases and a Pekingese named Buddy, and she stayed for 16 years.
The reason I'm here today as a United States Senator is because my Aunt Bee rescued me on that Thursday in 1979. I know how lucky I was, because so many working moms don't have a family member who can rush in and save the day.
In fact, the deck has been stacked against working moms for years. And even though women are the main breadwinners, or joint breadwinners, in two-thirds of the families across the country, it's only getting worse.
When I was a law professor, I spent years studying why middle class families were going broke. In my academic research on bankruptcy, I uncovered some grim facts:
- In one year, more women will file for bankruptcy than graduate from college.
- Having a child is the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse.
- Single moms are more likely than any other group to file for bankruptcy – more likely than the elderly, more likely than divorced men, and more likely than people living in poor neighborhoods.
- Single moms who had been to college are actually 60% more likely to end up bankrupt than their less educated sisters.
Women get hit hard. They still earn, on average, only 77 cents to the dollar that her male colleague earns. Bloomberg analyzed census data to find that women are paid less in 264/265 major occupations – in 99.6% of jobs, women get paid less than men. Yet Republicans have blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act – a law that would make sure women don't get fired just for asking what the guy down the hall makes.
Minimum wage workers haven't gotten a raise in seven years, and today nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women. Mothers of very young children disproportionately work low-wage jobs in every state in the country. A minimum wage job no longer keeps a mother and baby above the poverty line, yet Republicans continue to block legislation to raise the minimum wage.
And seniors? Because women make less than men throughout their lifetimes, they receive, on average, more than $4,000 less a year than men in Social Security benefits, yet women rely most heavily on those checks. At a time when Social Security is the only safety net keeping 14 million people out of poverty, Republicans continue to try to cut Social Security for women.
I know how lucky I was to have a woman in my life who was there when I needed her. She's gone now, but the best way I know to honor her memory is to help another woman – or maybe join with a lot of people and help millions of women.
It's time. It's long past time. Minimum wage. Equal pay. Social Security. Doing something tangible in honor of the women who helped us.
Happy Mother's Day!
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Crazy Climate Economics |
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Monday, 12 May 2014 08:46 |
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Krugman writes: "Everywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don't — but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you'll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin."
Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)
Crazy Climate Economics
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
12 May 14
 verywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don’t — but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you’ll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin; Rick Santorum has declared that any use of the word “class” is “Marxism talk.” In the right’s eyes, sinister motives lurk everywhere — for example, George Will says the only reason progressives favor trains is their goal of “diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”
So it goes without saying that Obamacare, based on ideas originally developed at the Heritage Foundation, is a Marxist scheme — why, requiring that people purchase insurance is practically the same as sending them to gulags.
And just wait until the Environmental Protection Agency announces rules intended to slow the pace of climate change.
READ MORE
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Editors Don't Belong in Courtrooms, and Cecily McMillan Doesn't Belong in Prison |
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Monday, 12 May 2014 08:45 |
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Funkhouser writes: "Throughout the case, the prosecutor set out to distract the jury from the question at hand by discussing undocumented events, treating witnesses' opinions as fact and casting aspersions on McMillan's character. Judge Zweibel gave them free rein to do so, while consistently ruling key testimony and evidence for the defense inadmissible."
Cecily McMillan arriving at court in Manhattan. (photo: Andrew Gombert/EPA)
Editors Don't Belong in Courtrooms, and Cecily McMillan Doesn't Belong in Prison
By Kathryn Funkhouser, The Nation
12 May 14
The jury that convicted the Occupier on May 5 had only been given one side of the story.
 retend you have to choose a book: one is a lurid airport paperback written for people who don’t like to read, the story of a bad girl getting taken down a peg; the other is missing half its pages and it has a lot of footnotes. You’d choose the first book, whatever its faults—you can’t even tell what the second one’s about.
This was essentially the choice presented to the jury of Cecily McMillan’s trial by the rulings of Judge Ronald Zweibel. In a fair trial, the jury must consider two full texts and answer a reading comprehension question: In this case, is there any reasonable doubt that McMillan intentionally assaulted a police officer for the purpose of preventing him from performing his duties? But when the jury convicted McMillan on May 5, they had really been given only one side of the story.
McMillan was arrested on the night of March 17, 2012, which fell on both St. Patrick’s Day and the six-month anniversary of the Occupy movement—a date that would also become known for the seventy-three arrests that occurred in Zuccotti Park that night. While the police were clearing the park of the throng of protesters, McMillan’s elbow struck Officer Grantley Bovell’s face. The defense argues that this event occurred when McMillan, exiting the park as directed, was suddenly grabbed from behind by her right breast. Her elbow then struck Bovell when she startled, without intent to strike him or knowledge that he was a police officer. The prosecution claims that McMillan hit Bovell with her elbow without provocation while he was escorting her from the park. The fact that the blow was struck was never disputed; the question was whether the blow was provably an intentional assault of an officer.
Throughout the case, the prosecutor set out to distract the jury from the question at hand by discussing undocumented events, treating witnesses’ opinions as fact and casting aspersions on McMillan’s character. Judge Zweibel gave them free rein to do so, while consistently ruling key testimony and evidence for the defense inadmissible. This pattern was most clearly demonstrated in the court’s treatment of evidentiary video footage. Several videos posted to YouTube show the crowd at Zuccotti Park from different angles on the night in question. However, the jury saw only a sliver of blurry footage. According to the defense, out of a ten-minute video of the events before and after McMillan’s elbow struck Bovell’s face, only fifty-two seconds was admitted. Zweibel’s justification? At the beginning of this fifty-two-second section is the first frame in which Bovell says he can definitively identify himself.
It’s particularly convenient for Bovell that none of the contextual footage was shown. Another piece of his testimony was directly contradicted by the melee shown at the beginning of the video, in which another officer shoves a protester and announces through a bullhorn, “Leave the park or you will be arrested.” Bovell testified that there was an announcement that the park was being temporarily cleared for routine cleaning, at which point the belligerent protesters suddenly began to cause trouble for the polite police force. The violence with which the police are shown to interact with unresistant protesters in the full video is key to understanding the events of that night. But the judge ruled this footage inadmissible because Bovell’s memory, which proved extremely selective under cross-examination, conveniently didn’t coincide with it. One of the jurors anonymously told The Guardian that it was this fifty-two-second clip, taken out of context, that led the jury to its guilty verdict.
Another short clip was only allowed without sound—this one shows McMillan convulsing on the ground after her arrest. In that audio, jurors would have heard voices in the crowd shout at the police officers to help McMillan, which provides important context to the officers’ motionless observation of her body. If McMillan were faking distress, as the prosecution alleged, it certainly fooled many of those present. Had audio been admitted, the prosecution would have been free to argue that the crowd’s assessment was incorrect, but when the audio of the footage was ruled to be prejudicial, the ruling seemed calculated to bolster the prosecution’s narrative. The police officer’s casual reactions were there for the jury to note, but not the reactions of the civilians. Zweibel, through his selective admittance of clips, looked increasingly like an editor of those YouTube parodies of movie trailers in which The Shining is edited to look like a family comedy, or Mary Poppins is recut as a horror film. The prosecution became the director dictating a vision for the story, and Zweibel acted as the editor, selecting footage to tell the tale.
Throughout the trial, the courtroom rang out with objections, but the judge’s rulings fell overwhelmingly in favor of the prosecution. Zweibel sustained so many of the prosecution’s objections that several times he said “sustained” before Assistant District Attorney Erin Choi could even say the word “objection”. Some courtroom onlookers began placing bets on how many “sustains” for the prosecution Zweibel would pronounce. Drew Mitchell, a member of the group Justice For Cecily who attended the trial, was shaken by the pronounced inequality of the judge’s treatment of the two sides: “Every rule that could be enforced on the defense was enforced. The prosecution had no rules.”
McMillan’s character and history were not only scrutinized but mocked. When defense witness Yoni Miller described McMillan’s reputation in Occupy forums as “queen of nonviolence,” ADA Choi cried, “She is a fraud!” When Miller described seeing McMillan convulsing unaided on the pavement, Choi flailed her arms and hips in an exaggerated, ridiculous fashion, archly asking if her imitation of a seizure resembled McMillan’s. The prosecution’s portrait of this accomplished young activist, says Shay Horse, one of her supporters, is that of “a publicity-crazed millennial,” an image that dovetails with their claim that McMillan hit Bovell for attention from the cameras. In her closing arguments, Choi extended her jeering tone to general statements about assault and those who are assaulted. She said that Bovell would have had to have iron hands to leave a bruise through clothes. Tim Eastman, who attended the closing arguments, tweeted: “Pros[ecutor] says Cecily is ‘not shy’ and therefore ‘would not have trouble reporting sexual assault.’”
While the prosecution took copious liberties in their depiction of McMillan, any attempt by the defense to question Bovell’s testimony or bring up his record was quickly shut down by Choi and Zweibel. Although Bovell’s involvement in the Bronx ticket-fixing scandal was discussed, the defense was prevented from addressing other, violent parts of his record. In 2010, he was involved in a lawsuit against the NYPD for his participation in an incident in which NYPD officers ran off the road a teenage boy on a dirt bike. In 2009, he kicked in the face a suspect lying on the ground. He allegedly assaulted Occupy protester Austin Guest on the same day as McMillan’s arrest. These episodes were not permitted to be entered into evidence. When Stolar explained to Zweibel that he had two eyewitnesses (uninvolved in the pending lawsuit against Bovell) who saw Guest be lifted up by Bovell and a second officer and slammed head-first into each row of seats on the bus used to transport prisoners to court, the judge exclaimed, “He must have been resisting!” and called the allegations hearsay.
Concrete evidence supporting the defense’s argument was consistently rejected in favor of the suppositions of the prosecution, whose arguments were often based on a lack of evidence instead of its presence. For example, while there is photographic evidence of McMillan’s bruises, coinciding with her story that her breast was grabbed, the prosecution was permitted to speculate that they were self-inflicted. Their alternate story involves Bovell’s helping out a female officer at whom McMillan was cursing, though no one in the trial could determine this female officer’s identity or even if she exists. The prosecution’s claims that McMillan faked a seizure and had no bruises when she was admitted to the hospital are based on the lack of notes taken during her medical treatment.
And was she really unwell? Bovell testified that he told her, “If you can speak to me, you can breathe.’ “What medical degrees do you hold?” asked the defense attorney, Martin Stolar. “Objection,” said the ADA flatly. “Sustained,” said the judge, sounding bored. Now he had decided he didn’t find speculation unacceptable.
In her closing argument, Choi scoffed contemptuously that McMillan’s story would be more believable if she claimed that “aliens came down that night and assaulted her.” Let us consider: according to the prosecution, it’s more believable that an activist whose reputation is founded on nonviolence would change her plan to go out with friends on a holiday to pick a fight with a possibly fictional police officer, then exhort bystanders to please film her elbowing another officer in the face, for attention. After her arrest, she goes on to elaborately fake a harrowing seizure, and at some point after her admission to the hospital self-mutilates in order to severely bruise her own breast for the purpose of framing Bovell. This is more believable?
This is more believable than the possibility that on a night when protesters were arrested in a manner that The New York Times described as “brutal and random,” an officer who once kicked a suspect in the face grabbed McMillan’s breast, in a way consistent with bruises that were entered into evidence, and she flailed out with her elbow in a startled reaction? More believable than the idea that an officer on probation at that time for being involved in a ticket-fixing scandal would need a justification for the bruises on his prisoner and his public indifference to her medical distress?
Ultimately, to Judge Zweibel and his court, it was more believable that this young woman is simply crazy than that this man could commit an act of sexual violence and lie about it, in a manner consistent with both his personal history and the culture of the institution that employs him. It’s not even a good story, but it had a hell of an editor. In a just system, editors don’t belong in courtrooms—and Cecily McMillan doesn’t belong in prison.
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Hard Not to See Bias in Michael Sam's Draft Fall |
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Monday, 12 May 2014 08:43 |
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Koebler writes: "If Michael Sam were straight -- or hiding his sexuality -- I find it hard to believe he would've been available for the St. Louis Rams to draft him with the 249th pick in the draft."
Michael Sam. (photo: Joe Robbins via Getty Images)
Hard Not to See Bias in Michael Sam's Draft Fall
By Hank Koebler, The Huffington Post
12 May 14
 f Michael Sam were straight -- or hiding his sexuality -- I find it hard to believe he would've been available for the St. Louis Rams to draft him with the 249th pick in the draft.
In today's NFL full of pass-happy offenses and hybrid defensive fronts, football reasons alone can't justify why an award-winning pass-rusher like Sam fell so far in the draft. Playing in the toughest conference in college football, Sam was an anchor on a Missouri defensive line that helped propel the Tigers to a Cotton Bowl victory and the SEC East title. He posted more sacks in 2013 than No. 1 overall draft pick Jadeveon Clowney, was a first-team all-American and won the SEC defensive player of the year award.
Historically, Sam's drop was unprecedented for an SEC Defensive Player of the Year. Since the award's inception in 2003, all but two of its winners went in the first round. One of those players, linebacker DeMeco Ryans, was the first pick of the second round of the draft. The lowest-drafted winner of the award, 2003 winner Chad Lavalais, was drafted over 100 spots ahead of Sam, in the fifth round of the 2004 draft.
In short, either Sam is the worst player by far to be named the best defensive player in college football's best conference, or other factors were afoot. Based on his game film, the latter seems much more likely than the former. Sam was quick off the snap, displayed good play recognition and frequently maintained leverage against larger offensive tackles. Where Sam really excelled at Missouri was quickly shooting through the B-gap between the tackle and guard to get into the backfield.
He wasn't the best at stopping the run, and honestly he wasn't quite as good as fellow Missouri defensive end Kony Ealy. Ealy was more versatile and a bigger factor on run plays, but the drop-off between Ealy and Sam wasn't that big. If Ealy was worthy of the second-round pick the Carolina Panthers spent on him -- and he was -- then Sam's name only should've been called a round or two later.
Instead, Sam waited another five rounds after his teammate's selection, despite playing nearly as well as Ealy. As lesser-qualified defensive ends from smaller and smaller schools kept getting selected, the elephant in the room grew more and more difficult to ignore. Among the players drafted ahead of Sam were:
- Two kickers and a punter
- A defensive end from Marist
- A defensive tackle who missed all of the 2013 season because he was kicked off his team
- A defensive end the same size as Sam who posted a slower 40-yard dash time than Sam and racked up only 5.5 sacks playing in the Conference USA
- An offensive tackle who quit early during his own pro day
No matter how pessimistically teams were viewing Sam's ability to transition to the NFL, it strains credulity to suggest that nobody in the first six (and three-quarters) rounds thought Sam provided a better value than some of the players that got picked before him. It says something about teams' priorities that being accused of threatening to rape a rape victim won't drop a player out of the top 15 picks in the draft, but dating men will drop an All-American pass-rusher down to the absolute bottom of the draft's final round.
I don't think outright homophobic collusion is to blame for Sam's unjustifiably long wait on draft day. Some teams probably passed on Sam because they wanted to avoid media attention. Even more teams probably passed on Sam because they figured the rest of the league would be too concerned with media attention to draft him.
Eventually the St. Louis Rams decided Sam provided too much value to pass him up and they took him with the eighth-to-last pick of the draft. The Rams' front seven is pretty thoroughly stacked, so cracking a starting lineup even as a linebacker may be tough for Sam, and he may have trouble making the team. Regardless of what obstacles he may face on the rest of the journey, Sam has made history by being the first openly gay player drafted into the NFL.
It's just fishy that it took so long for a player with his pass-rushing acumen to be drafted and make that history.
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hose in the premodern world who hoarded possessions and refused to redistribute supplies and food, who turned their backs on the weak and the sick, who lived exclusively for hedonism and their own power, were despised. Those in modern society who are shunned as odd, neurotic or eccentric, who are disconnected from the prosaic world of objective phenomena and fact, would have been valued in premodern cultures for their ability to see what others could not see. Dreams and visions—considered ways to connect with the wisdom of ancestors—were integral to existence in distant times. Property was communal then. Status was conferred by personal heroism and providing for the weak and the indigent. And economic exchanges carried the potential for malice, hatred and evil: When wampum was exchanged by Native Americans the transaction had to include “medicine” that protected each party against “spiritual infection.” 
