26 January 2010
26 January 2010
26 January 2010
THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY…
0735 by Jeff HessVia Ta-Nehisi Coates:
If you want to truly understand History, you have to understand Power. If you want to truly understand Power, you have to understand Economics. If you want to know where the bodies are buried, follow the money.
The Civil War as bubble?
26 January 2010
MY COMMENTS…
0724 by Jeff Hess26 January 2010
FROM MY DAD…
0630 by Jeff Hess
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
26 January 2010
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0030 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
I avoid the trap of raising the goal as I go along, like an assembly line speedup. The object”s not to test myself. It”s to get my work done. p. 90
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
25 January 2010
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2130 by Jeff Hess
Let’s see. Election announced for October. Check. Leader of the opposition party under house arrest. Check. Announcement to release leader of the opposition party in November. Check. The State Peace and Development Council certainly has its Anas Leucopteras lined up for a postitive election experience (for the generals, that is).
From the BBC:
Burma’s home minister is reported to have told officials Ms Suu Kyi would be freed in November, when her current period of house arrest expires.
Ms Suu Kyi’s detention was extended last year, after a US man visited her house uninvited.
Critics say the junta intends to detain her until after elections this year.
Home Minister Maung Oo is reported to have made the comments about Ms Suu Kyi at a provincial town meeting four days ago.
The BBC’s South East Asia correspondent Rachel Harvey says it is a measure of how tightly information is controlled in Burma that it has taken this long for the reports to filter out.
Burmese officials have hinted many times that Aung San Suu Kyi may be released, our correspondent adds, but this is the first time in recent months that a putative date has been attached to the idea.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s own lawyer told the BBC he had heard the rumour but could not confirm it.
Quack.
25 January 2010
25 January 2010
IT WAS NOT WRITTEN: WE THE LEGAL FICTIONS…
0745 by Jeff HessThere is no journalist whose voice I respect more on matters of Free Speech, the First Amendment to the Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States than Lyle Denniston. His analysis of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is spot on (via Writes Like She Talks), but I take exception to this passage:
It does not matter that the right-to-vote scenario is quite implausible. The fact is that the decades-old image of American corporations as a destabilizing and perhaps even corrupting influence in politics has now been thoroughly re-examined by the Supreme Court, and the corporate “person” emerges from the process with – in the eyes of the majority – a burnished image of good citizen. There is a deep chasm of perception, between Thursday”s majority and the dissenters, about the nature of the corporate personality.
I’m unable to find any words in the decision that present the majority’s opinion, good or bad, of corporations. To think so distracts readers and citizens from Denniston’s real message, that corporations are creations of smoke and mirrors and, as such, ought to have no standing in politics.
Through our Constitutionally supported right to free assembly and speech, the board members of corporation, the officers of a corporation, the employees of a corporation and the share-holders in a corporation all have an unrestricted right to gather, converse and decide how they might support or oppose elected officials, candidates for office, proposed legislation and laws at all levels of public discourse. This is true for any group of people who choose to associate for whatever reason.
In the 21st century that support most likely takes the form of cash distributed as contributions to those whose influence is sought. That’s how politics works. Full stop.
I leave to those who are JD-impaired the task of finding, or crafting, the case that will reach the Supreme Court and transform, in the way Brown v. Board of Education was transformative, the place of the artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law that is a corporation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, at least, seems open to such an argument.
Campaign finance is a tiny corner of the insidious place corporations hold in modern society. Every bit of personhood conferred on these legal fictions diminishes we who are flesh and blood citizens, who are We The People. After all, it was another corporation, the East India Company that helped to spark our own revolution.
25 January 2010
FROM MY DAD…
0630 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
25 January 2010
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0030 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
If I don”t reach my five-page goal within three hours, I may stay at the typewriter a little longer and see if I can”t fulfill my quota. I”m not absolutely compulsive about this, but I know I”ll feel better during the rest of the day if I get my pages written, and I do so when possible. p. 89
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
24 January 2010
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2130 by Jeff HessMutiny is serious business, a capital offense where, if convicted results in speedy execution for all those who take part, or even fail to oppose the mutineers. The alternative is the rapid disintegration of authority and, if allowed to spread, a very real possibility of political and civil degeneration. What is going on in Myanmar’s army?
From The Irrwaddy:
Since Dec. 23, the BBC’s Burmese-language service has reported several cases of mutiny involving troops from Light Infantry Division (LID) 66, based in Prome, western Pegu Division; LID 77, based in Hmawbi and Pegu; and Military Affairs Security (formerly known as the Military Intelligence Service).
According to BBC correspondent U Than, who is based in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand, a number of people were killed or injured in exchanges of gunfire or during mass resignations of soldiers resulting from economic hardship.
The generals deny that any such unrest exists, of course.
24 January 2010
24 January 2010
A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN WALKS INTO A BAR…
0808 by Jeff HessThe bartender says, “Sorry, we don”t serve your kind here.” The Democratic congressman whimpers, “You”re right, I”m sorry, I never should”ve come in here, it”s all my fault, boo-hoo, please, bend me over, I”ll do whatever you want because I”m a little punk.” The bartender says, “Jesus Christ, you people are pathetic.”
24 January 2010
MY COMMENTS…
0712 by Jeff Hess24 January 2010
FROM MY DAD…
0630 by Jeff HessI could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
24 January 2010
FROM MY CHAPBOOK…
0030 by Jeff HessFound in my electronic chapbook.
Set goals for yourself. I work mornings, generally putting in two or three hours a day; when I work more than three hours my concentration flags and the work suffers. More often than not, the goal I set for myself is five pages a day [In three hours! JH]. p. 89
From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.
23 January 2010
GOOD MORNING MYANMAR…
2130 by Jeff HessThe life of a legal migrant worker is perhaps the toughest, other than out-right slavery, of any imaginable. Life as an illegal migrant worker is worse, and in South Asia, Myanmar’s State Peace and Development Council (aka, the military dictators) seeks to add to its people’s burden through bureaucratic machinations.
From Voice Of America:
The government has been talking with officials in Burma, Laos and Cambodia since 2004 on ways to clarify the status of migrant workers.
The Lao and Cambodian governments agreed to send officials to Thailand so their nationals could verify their nationality without leaving the country.
Officials in Burma, also called Myanmar, refused to send staff to Thailand. Instead, Burmese workers must go to registration offices just across the border to complete the process.
Thetis Mangahas, a migration expert with the International Labor Office, says while a comprehensive migration policy is necessary, the new rules trouble Burmese workers.
Mangahas says the workers worry about how the information they provide will be used.
“There are individuals who are in real fear about providing information that might cause the government of Myanmar [Burma] to retaliate or to take action against the families. So you have a very complicated situation here and it’s really as a result of policies which have not been thought through,” said Mangahas.
There are reports that when a worker files the paperwork to start the new process, Burmese officials use the address to harass families for additional taxes.
23 January 2010
MY COMMENTS…
2103 by Jeff Hess2103: Obama on SCOTUS Ruling: “Strikes at our Democracy Itself”
2053: Obama on SCOTUS Ruling: “Strikes at our Democracy Itself”
1814: Obama on SCOTUS Ruling: “Strikes at our Democracy Itself”
1134: Who”s terrified?
0922: Lee Fisher does not consider legalizing marijuana a viable option for creating jobs.
