Politics
The New Urbanists held their big annual meet-up for four days last week and I stomped a big carbon footprint flying down to West Palm Beach for the doings. I don't know who exactly picked West Palm, but it was at once peculiar, disheartening, instructive, and exhausting.
The Congress for the New Urbanism has been throwing this yearly fandango since its founding in 1993 as a fire-eating reform movement dedicated to transforming the horrifying and toxic human habitat of America. Hopes were lofty in the early days that the US public would recognize the self-evident benefits of ditching suburban sprawl for walkable towns, but it didn't...
The following blog entry is by Sarah at the Healthy Home Economist. Thanks, Sarah!
The vaccine industry went home with its tail between its legs after suffering an enormous and...
Finance, Business, Economics, Foreign Policy, Elections, Military, Politics, Environment, Energy
Europe may soon be choking on that plat du jour of government a la Hollandaise with the side of chopped Greek salad. The whole world, in fact, has got something like a giant hairball stuck in its craw. The hairball is composed of filaments of lies wound over a core of supernatural indebtedness. The lies are promises that the debt will be paid back.
For two months the financial markets have gone sideways on a cushion of the European Central Bank's Long term Financing Operations and the hot air of austerity chatter. The illusion of remaining airborne may dissolve now with the Hollandaise denunciation of Franco-German team...
MONTPELIER- A rainy Tuesday morning was not enough to deter the huddled masses yearning to breathe free as more than 500 people marched on the state Capitol to collectively demand that legislators “Put People First.”
Organized by the Vermont Workers’ Center, a coalition of organizations such as Migrant Justice, 350.org, the Vermont...
Replicating post-WW II occupations is planned for Afghanistant. Sixty-seven years after war's end, US troops still occupy Germany, Japan and Korea. They're part of America's growing empire of bases.
Status of forces (SOFA) agreements establish the framework under which US forces operate abroad. The Department of Defense Technical Information Center calls them agreements "that defines the legal position of a 'visiting' military force deployed in the territory of a friendly state." They delineate:
"the status of visiting military forces (and) may be bilateral or multilateral. Provisions...
Vermont's philosophical exemption to vaccines has been available to Vermonters since the childhood immunization act was put into place in 1979 and has its roots in the conscientious objections of the smallpox era. This is because any medical procedure that carries with it known risk, requires the informed consent of the patient or the parent. Vaccinations are meant to induce artificial immunity, but we must hold fast to our natural-born rights to regulate our own immune systems without interference from pharmaceutical products.
It is an issue of grave concern to the future of...
Divestment. What does this mean? It means Dis-investment. Some divestments in the past and the reasons include:
- Denies the validity of the Geneva convention
- Won't sign the 1997...
BURLINGTON- On a cool, clear sunny Thursday morning at Burlington High School about 40 students walked out of their very first class in protest of institutional racism and discrimination within BHS.
Comprised mostly of English Language Learners (ELL) students from Somalia, the group assembled in front of the school refused to attend classes as they angrily chanted “END RACISM AT BHS” and “WE DIDN’T FAIL THE SCHOOL, THE SCHOOL FAILED US!” in reference to the disproportionate levels of out-of-school suspensions, inadequate testing...
It’s not much in the news in the U.S., because people might get the wrong idea about all the good things austerity can do for a nation, but Greece is falling apart and democracy is dying there. Some will argue that democracy is not doing all that well in the U.S., but Greece points to how bad it can get. Shops are shuttered, beggars wander aimlessly, hospitals report rising and alarming rates of suicide and mental illness. The Orthodox Church in Athens reports a food emergency and children starving.
In order to protect the banks and bondholders from losses on the debt they piled on Greece — much of it artfully concealed...
Dear friends of the US constitution and international law, and unwilling participants in the US Empire. As long as you give the US government your tax money, they don't have to listen to a word you say. As Alexander Haig once said, "Protest all you want, as long as you pay your taxes." Here is my latest letter to the IRS:
IRS PO Box 9052 Andover, MA 01810-9052
Dear IRS employee that is reading this letter (no responsible person was given),
I recently received the revised “Amount due” forms from your office. They state that I owe $7,144.77 for 2006 and $1,476.88 for 2007 (see enclosed copies). I do not deny that I owe taxes for those years, and penalties and interest have been added. I would like you to consider...
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