What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298013346&sr=1-1

Why We All Need Planned Parenthood

"Planned Parenthood http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ serves more than three million women, men and teens nationwide every year and right now its ongoing existence is again in jeopardy. From XXFactor's 'Going After Planned Parenthood,' http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/target-planned-parenthood published yesterday:


There are 154 co-sponsors in the House for a bill denying government funding to any organization that provides abortion services. Congress already prohibits any government money being directed toward abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, and has since 1976. The $300 million-plus in government funding and contracts Planned Parenthood currently receives goes toward providing family planning and medical assistance to 1.85 million low-income women. As Gail Collins points out in "The Siege of Planned Parenthood," http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/opinion/05collins.html?_r=2&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB there's no comparable organization in this country offering those services. If Planned Parenthood closes its doors (the clear hope of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence and the 154 colleagues who've jumped on his bandwagon), then those women will go without-when for every dollar in public funding spend on family planning services http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/09_HPU19.3Frost.pdf, Medicaid saves $4.02 the next year.


Right-wing pro-life action groups have been attempting to discredit PP's benefits for years, and they've lately been resorting to one of their favorite tactics - sending fake pimps and prostitutes to clinics http://jezebel.com/#!5754808/a-new-planned-parenthood-video-and-more-misunderstandings with cameras in some kind of To Catch An Abortion Provider style propaganda campaign.



http://jezebel.com/#!5758256/why-we-all-need-planned-parenthood

Pyramid of Capitalist System

How the United States really works.

Toffler

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Alvin Toffler

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she|

wth silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus 1883

http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm

Private Prison Industry & Arizona Immigration Law

Before Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/deporting-us-citizens-name-compassion went on to champion what would become the state's controversial immigration bill, he held a closed-door meeting with state legislators and corporate executives at a Washington hotel. At this meeting, the 50 or so people in the room—all members of the "conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government" American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home—drafted and unanimously voted on model legislation that would become "almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law." According to an NPR investigation , several representatives of the country's largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America http://www.correctionscorp.com/, were among them. Over the past several months, NPR scoured campaign finance reports, corporate records and lobbying documents to gauge how deeply the private prison industry was involved in passing Arizona's immigration bill.

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2272725/entry/1/

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/straight-out-right-wing-playbook

Corporations

The Reagan Ruins

By Robert Borosage

February 1, 2011 - 1:46pm ET

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The celebration of Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday doesn't come until early March, but the devotions have been going on for years. For conservatives, Reagan is the lodestar, the genial demigod to whom all must avow fealty. In a Time cover story, Michael Scherer and Michael Duffy suggest that Obama considers Reagan "The Role Model." Richard Norton Smith, writing about the "Reagan Revelation," attributes Obama's uptick in the polls because he's been "acting positively Reaganesque," reaching out to the business community, scoring bipartisan victories on tax cuts, delivering a sermon in Tucson that Smith calls "worthy of the Great Communicator at his most consoling."

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020501/reagan-ruins

Low-wage conservatism

MINIMUM WAGE FOLLIES....I promised myself I wasn't going to read George Will's column today about abolishing the minimum wage, but unfortunately a reader sent me the link and I clicked on it before I knew what it was. Weak man that I am, I then went ahead and plowed through it.
It's mostly just a data dump of half facts and cherry picked numbers, and the only assertion of any importance comes at the end:

The minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices.

This, in a nutshell, is the core problem with conservative economics: it views workers as commodities. Naturally it follows from this that we should be free to treat workers like commodities, rather than as human beings.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_01/010514.php