2013-05-15
post/50508007231
CHENEY: I think it’s very dangerous. I can’t believe some guy down in the bowels of the organization in Cincinnati set this up. It would require, I would think, because of the sensitivity of it, somebody pretty high up to sign off on it. ”
Yes, the IRS as a political witch-hunt would be terrible, wouldn’t it? Good thing nothing like that happened while Cheney was VP.
In 2004, the IRS went after the NAACP, auditing the nation’s oldest civil rights group after its chairman criticized President Bush for being the first sitting president since Herbert Hoover not to address the organization. “They are saying if you criticize the president we are going to take your tax exemption away from you,” then-chairman Julian Bond said. “It’s pretty obvious that the complainant was someone who doesn’t believe George Bush should be criticized, and it’s obvious of their response that the IRS believes this, too.”
Then, in 2006, the Wall Street Journal broke the story of a how a little-known pressure group called Public Interest Watch — which received 97 percent of its funds from Exxon Mobile one year — managed to get the IRS to open an investigation into Greenpeace. Greenpeace had labeled Exxon Mobil the “No. 1 climate criminal.” The IRS acknowledged its audit was initiated by Public Interest Watch and threatened to revoke Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, but closed the investigation three months later.
(Source: foxnews.com)
2013-05-13
Lupe Fiasco and Philosophy Sunday
Three posts from Lupe Fiasco’s Twitter account on Sunday:
A Marxist theory today:Actual Revolution which affects wholesale societal change is only seen via technological advancement i.e. industrial
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) May 12, 2013
Hey guys #LF Mgmt here. Gotta love his lively way with twitter but sadly he’s gonna be taking a break to focus on other things.
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) May 12, 2013
The #LF twitter will stay active but will focus solely on giving you guys info on upcoming #LF events, music touring and media.
— Lupe Fiasco (@LupeFiasco) May 12, 2013
The full series of posts between these three, including responses, is available at Exquisite Tweets.
2013-05-06
post/49794041387
Sharing his secrets for “abundant living,” Romney urged the new grads to go out, get married, and procreate like crazy.
‘Get married,’ he said, and “Have a quiver full of kids if you can.”
Also, hurry. Staying single until your thirties could be a big mistake. A quiver full of kids aren’t born over night.
“Some people could marry but choose to take more time, they say, for themselves. Others plan to wait until they’re well into their 30s or 40s until they think about getting married,” he said, “They’re going to miss so much of living, I’m afraid.”
”post/49794013219
2013-04-15
post/48069787242
After an hour-long hearing Monday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan ruled that he had no jurisdiction to act on the petition from Musa’ab Al-Madhwani.
Hogan said it was “clear” that Al-Madhwani was trying to affect the conditions of his confinement—a subject Congress specifically sought to put beyond the reach of the federal courts through language in the Detainee Treatment Act passed in 2005 and signed by President George W. Bush in 2006.
”post/48069782154
Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.
I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone.
”(via iamdanw)
2013-04-03
post/47037311496
Pimlico Secondary School, London, 1967
(Greater London Council Department of Architecture & Civic Design)
Demolished 2010, replaced by an academy. What a deeply sad symbol of the regression from the egalitarian ’60s to the modern day.
2013-03-20
post/45848706852
Green card holders by occupation and gender, from this story in the Mercury News about H-1B visas:
new numbers obtained by this newspaper reveal a stunning imbalance in a program that admits highly skilled immigrants to the United States, often for Silicon Valley jobs: More than 70 percent of those special visa holders who entered the country in 2011 were men.
(Disclosure: I entered the US under the H-1B visa programme in FY2010 and continue to live and work here.)
2013-03-18
post/45708268921
Many thought the old-fashioned streetcars assigned to Geary looked more and more antiquated, almost like the cable cars on Powell.
Certainly that belief was shared by many merchants on Geary Boulevard, the wide section of the thoroughfare running westward from Masonic Avenue through the Richmond. They were lobbying City Hall for a ‘Great Wide Way’, replacing streetcars with buses … and more parking for automobiles.
Planners who were eying the part of Geary between the Richmond and Downtown echoed this pro-auto sentiment. The Western Addition had been a vibrant community of Victorian homes before World War II. The section along Geary was populated mainly by Japanese-Americans. When World War II started, they were infamously hauled away to internment camps. African-American newcomers, who had come west to work in war industries, largely took their place. By the mid-1950s, there was talk of ripping down the Victorians along that part of Geary to gouge out a broad expressway to get automobiles downtown more quickly.
”What Might Have Been - Geary, a 2008 update of a story from the Market Street Railway’s newsletter in 2002.
This pretty much encapsulates the bad transport decisions of the 1940s and ’50s in the US: replacing streetcar (tram) tracks with widened roads served by buses (always subservient to private cars), a willingness (some would say eagerness) to demolishing houses in minority neighbourhoods in favour of freeways, and merchants demanding more parking.
At least the latter two arguments tend to have fallen out of favour, but business still seem to complain about parking all the time.
In the end the B Geary survived until the late 1950s, but the desired expressway was built in the early 1960s. Current plans for a “bus rapid transit” scheme seem to be as far away as they were in 2008.
