Yesterday, a few thousand New Yorkers participated in a Wisconsin solidarity/pro democracy rally in Manhattan in City Hall Park and on the other side of Broadway. It was part of a collection of protests nationwide aimed at fighting the corporate oligarchs and the corrupt politicians they have bought.

Here's some of a promotional email I received about yesterday's protest from Democrats.com.

This Saturday we're drawing a line in the sand. The entire progressive movement is putting everything we have into one massive display of progressive solidarity nationwide.

We won't let Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker - or any other billionaire-bought TeaParty Governor - break the unions. Unions created America's middle class and if they disappear we'll all end up as corporate slaves.

The entire progressive movement - Netroots, unions, environmentalists, and community groups - will hold solidarity rallies in major cities, including every state capital, this Saturday around noon.

We'll demand an end to the attacks on workers' rights and public services across the country. We'll demand investment to create jobs. And we'll demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share of taxes.

People may not be familiar with Democrats.com. It is not an official arm of the DNC. It is a site of grassroots, liberal Democrats who push the party to the left while opposing the rightist campaigns of the GOP.

There are a couple of things I should mention about the photos that follow:

1. Like it says on more lascivious queer blogs than this one, "click to embiggen."

2. The photos that I took towards the end of the protest didn't turn out at all. I think my cell phone was too low on power at that point. It's a shame because I didn't get shots of some great signs. But, as you can see, I got quite a few pics that did work.

Across America, the far right is working to gut government's ability to protect the most vulnerable among us, while at the same time attacking the middle class. If we let them succeed, our communities will be hit first, and hit the hardest.

Instead of asking the wealthiest of us to contribute their fair share in tough times, these politicans are trying to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, WIC, Americorps, Head Start, and even trying to destroy the right of workers to organize for better workplace conditions — all of which help uplift and protect our communities. And they're doing it while many elected officials in both parties overlook the corporate recklessness that has squeezed budgets across the country in the first place.

MoveOn.org played a major role in organizing and promoting the protests. They certainly deserve credit for that. I've noticed that MoveOn.org is great at mobilizing action when Republicans do horrible things. Yet, when Democrats do horrible things, they usually look the other way. Sometimes they even support horribe rightist policies from Democrats like Harry Reid's efforts to fund the Iraq War during the last two years of the Bush regime and Obama's wealthcare plan for the HMOs, health insurers, and Big Pharma. MoveOn.org promised their members not to support a bill without a strong Public Option and broke that promise when it was time for the actual vote.

In the future, I would really like it if MoveOn.org held Democrats to the same standards as Republicans. Maybe the Democrats wouldn't act like Republicans so often if groups like MoveOn.org were a bit less partisan in their approach.

I also would like to express my appreciation to all the people who showed up to the NYC protest in the cold on such short notice. There are plenty of people in NYC who are more than happy to take stands for social justice if there are opportunities to do so.

 

The extreme right always has held people who work for a living in utter contempt, but seldom do they put that contempt for hard work out on the Internet for people to see. But, the fringe right website which ironically refers to itself as the "American Thinker"...(I'll give you a chance to stop giggling.)...really went overboard on this one.

From a 2/21/11 Rant from the "American Thinker": (bolding mine)

That really frosted me. Why in hell was I bothering to get a postgraduate degree while a semiliterate guy who barely made it through high school got $400 a week for not working half the year? The scales fell from my eyes. Management wasn't the root of all evil. Union workers were just as lazy, greedy, and corrupt. I now saw the union as a grand rip-off. The union working man wasn't some noble, virtuous saint, fighting the good fight against the Robber Barons, as I'd always been taught. He was a drunken, stoned, uneducated, vulgar slob, ripping off a piece of the action for himself. And in my state he had the full force of the law and the state government behind him. So private sector employers fled.

I've been in grad school, and I've done temp work in a factory. In the real world, factory work is a lot harder and mind numbing than graduate school. But, the extreme right doesn't respect real work. They are propagandists for the idle rich who consider actual work to be far beneath them.

In spewing nonsense for the wealthy elites, the rightist pundits start to identify with the wealthy, including aping their prejudices. Vicarious classism and elitism become the sports of the day.

And, if you think that they only hate working people who belong to unions, think again. The right's efforts to cut programs that benefit working people like public education, Social Security, and Medicare so they can give ever larger tax cuts for the lazy, do nothing, rich proves that the right hates and sabotages all workers. They focus more venom on union members because union members aren't getting screwed over as badly as the rest of working people.

When it makes so money spewing propaganda for wealthy parasites, I guess it isn't surprising that the rightist noise machine projects its own worst qualities on people who do real work for a living. Making false accusations against unions and union workers is intellectually lazy.

 

DistributorCapNY did a great public service by posting a list of the evil corporations advertising on Glenn Beck. Check it out!

Thanks to DCap for doing this.

By the way, it's important to boycott every Fox/Murdoch media outlet, entertainment or "news" because one subsidizes the other.

 

People in this country are realizing that the pro democracy protests in Wisconsin and Ohio are an important part of resisting the totalitarian tactics of the wealthy oligarchs in this country. A lot of queers really get this. For instance, Pride at Work, an LGBT labor group sent out a message to its members in support of Wisconsin. From that email:

Rallies. Crowds spilling into the streets. Seas of people marching together in solidarity. Every day this week, nonstop.

This isn’t just happening in Egypt...but in Madison, Wisconsin.

Schools are closed. Workers, high school and college students, community members, faith groups and concerned citizens have dropped their daily lives to rally against Gov. Scott Walker’s draconian attacks on middle-class jobs and his proposal to strip Wisconsin teachers, nurses, social workers and other public employees of their collective bargaining rights.

Walker’s immediate attack is aimed directly at some 200,000 public workers—but the brave men and women taking to the streets come from every walk of life and recognize that all working people—public and private sector—are in jeopardy. And they know that if we don’t all speak out and stand together, we’ll all be targets.

The right to collective bargaining is vital for all workers, and particularly so for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. For example, Wisconsin state laws do not include protections against discrimination based on gender identity and expression - so a union is likely the only form of protection for transgender workers.

Even for cis queers, having a union as backup can really help. If you are being discriminated by an employer, courts are an important venue for justice. However, it's your meager resources for lawyers vs. the employer's array of expensive corporate lawyers. Having union support really can help even things out. Of course, making workers of all sexual orientations and gender identities vulnerable is what a corrupt politician like Scott Walker is all about.

Pride at Work is asking people on Facebook to like the We Are One solidarity page.

The grassroots queer group, GetEQUAL, who played a major role in passing LGBT civil rights legislation in the last Congress, is supporting the protests on it's Facebook page. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force also is supporting the peoples' movement.

This shows that there are queer organizations that understand Harvey Milk's vision of queer civil rights as part of a larger movement for civil rights and social justice. The HRC is ignoring the pro democracy protests, showing that all it cares about is big money donations from wealthy donors. Middle class and poor LGBT people don't even appear on the so called "Human Rights Campaign's" radar screen. However, they are happy to profit off of Harvey Milk's name by renting his former shop in the Castro to sell their tacky crap.

The Green Party also is supporting the pro democracy protests. From their 2/22/11 press release.

Green Party leaders declared today that the party solidly supports Wisconsin's public-sector employees protesting a bill introduced by Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate their benefits and collective bargaining rights.

"We in the Green Party are standing out front on this issue by standing with our labor and public service brothers and sisters here in Wisconsin," said AJ Segneri, co-chair of the Wisconsin Green Party (http://www.wisconsingreenparty.org).

On Feb. 17, the Wisconsin Greens issued a statement affirming that their party "salutes the state's public workers, and stands in solidarity with their fight to retain full collective bargaining rights with their employers" (http://www.wisconsingreenparty.org/?q=node/97).

Notes: This is not a prioritized list. This is part of a series of blog postings that will appear over the next few weeks.

21) Negotiated a corporate controlled trade deal with South Korea.

22) Opposes the US withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.

23) Opposes the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, and other corporate controlled trade agreements.

24) Continues Most Favored Trade Nation status with China.

25) Opposes increasing tariffs to balance budgets.

26) Opposes making it a felony to ship US jobs abroad.

27) Supports Israel's military siege of Gaza.

28) Gone along with Israel's illegal settlements in Palestinian territory.

29) Opposes the Gaza flotilla and has refused to challenge Israel's violations of the human rights of Americans involved in it.

30) Has used the IMF and World Bank (which the US dominates) to impose The Shock Doctrine on Greece and Ireland.

31) Opposes Medicare for All.

32) Opposes even the Public Option.

33) Participates in unconstitutional National Hate Breakfast.

34) Opposes moratorium on foreclosures.

35) Opposes subjecting hedge funds to the same regulations as legitimate mutual funds.

36) Opposes criminalizing derivatives.

37) Obnoxiously flaunts Christianity even though this is not a Christian nation. (at least according to George Washington and other founders)

38) Opposes a ban on all offshore oil drilling.

39) Continues government contracts with Halliburton, KBR, Xe, etc. despite their blatant misconduct.

40) Opposes closing unnecessary military bases abroad.

Stay tuned. There's more to come.

Please put other items in the comments. I've already done more of this list in posts scheduled in the future, but there is room for new items at the end.

It's another year, and the pro child molester RCC clergy are meddling in politics again to fight against birth control and abortion. Obviously, misogyny and racism play a huge role in these violations of the Roman Catholic Church's tax exempt status, but we all know the biggest reason for this: they want an ever increasing supply of children to molest.

The RCC clergy continues to protect the identities of child rapists among its ranks. Their insincere public apologies are coupled with behind the scenes political pressure on law enforcement to prevent criminal investigations of the rampant child rape in that church.

Enough!

It's time to take serious action to stop the constant child molestation in the Roman Catholic clergy. It's time to bar entrance to RCC churches and schools to anyone under the age of 18.

Pro child molestation activists might claim that such a rule is unconstitutional. They would claim that the RCC is exercising its constitutional rights by engaging in its business activities including religious services and religious brainwashing.

However, adult bookstore operators have a constitutional right to engage in their activities too. However, we protect children by making those businesses adults only. If we can put age restrictions on constitutionally protected businesses so that children don't see visual images of sex, than we certainly can put age restrictions on constitutionally protected churches to prevent children from being raped.

I'm sure that supporters of child rape will be deeply offended by this. Tough shit. This is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate proposal to dramatically reduce a heinous, inexcusable crime that the RCC's clergy continue to actively promote.

 

Wal-Mart's favorite dictatorship, the fascist regime in China, is joining the list of totalitarians in suppressing dissent. (Reuters: 2/21/11)

Over the weekend, Chinese police and censors showed the Communist Party has little to fear from protesters hoping to emulate the unrest that has unseated Egypt's long-time president, Hosni Mubarak, and now threatens Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Police dispersed dozens of people who gathered in central Beijing and Shanghai on Sunday after calls spread on overseas Chinese websites urging "Jasmine Revolution" gatherings. The police and foreign reporters outnumbered aspiring participants and curious passers-by caught up in the crowd.

There were no signs of protests in Beijing on Monday.

It's a small start, but a start nevertheless. After what the murderous Chinese regime did during the last series of pro democracy protests and how they ruthlessly suppress dissent, it isn't terribly shocking that people there are reluctant to try again.

If the Chinese eventually do win their freedom, I wonder where Wal-Mart will start shipping American jobs to.

Meanwhile, a study has shown that most US corporations and corporations that do business here in the US pay no federal income tax. (Those that do pay income tax pay far, far less than they should.)

It's bad enough that those fuckers keep shipping our jobs to foreign countries like China, but it's even worse that most of them pay nothing in taxes.

 

If you have followed the New York Times' coverage of the pro democracy protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, you can't help see how that once proud newspaper has become a Faux News style propaganda rag for the rich, for their corporations, for the GOP and against middle class and poor Americans.

I for one am sick and tired of that paper's content being comparable to that which one flushes down the toilet. If you don't like this, you should contact their circulation department, the one that is responsible for newspaper sales. As a customer, former customer, or someone who refuses to pay for their biased garbage, that's where you have the most leverage.

circulation@nytimes.com

Whenever you see a biased article, it also is a good idea to directly email the reporter(s) propagandist(s) who wrote it.

I'm sure you have a list of grievances against that rightist propaganda rag. Here are some of mine.

1) Refusing to acknowledge the fact that the Wisconsin and Ohio protests are pro democracy protests.

2) Failing to acknowledge the fact that the teabagger counter protests which the Times is promoting are tiny and completely staged by the Koch brothers.

3) Running public relations pieces glorifying Scott Walker instead of doing actual news coverage.

4) Censoring the fact that Wisconsin's deficits could easily be converted to surpluses by making Walker's rich campaign contributors pay their fair share in taxes.

5) Failing to acknowledge that the right to organize unions and the right to strike are universally recognized human rights.

6) Giving far more ink and pixels to the side of the rich and the Republicans than to the side of middle class Americans.

7) The general pattern of rightist propaganda at the NY Times.

8) The heavy news censorship at that paper which rivals that under Soviet Pravda.

You don't need to live in NY to take part in this action. This is a national propaganda rag, and they want circulation dollars from throughout the US. Please contact them now!

circulation@nytimes.com

Photos: Nemo's great uncle

qnr

 

Economic issues have played a role in pro democracy protests in the Middle East and the US.



Hat Tip: Monkey Muck

The video points out that Scott Walker started with a budget surplus only to give money to corporate special interests, which created the deficit.

 

It's good to see that the pro democracy protesters in Wisconsin are too patriotic to buy the anti American propaganda pushed by the foreign propaganda network, Faux News. That network is part of a broader terrorist propaganda network controlled by the infamous Australian fascist, Rupert Murdoch.



(Hat Tip: Freak Out Nation)

Note: I had to replace the video.

 

Photo: doomyeti

This is a wonderful idea!

Stand with Wisconsin workers against the right-wing attack on their rights.

Public employees are teachers, police officers, sanitation workers, firefighters, snow plow drivers ... they are our friends, family and neighbors ... most are not rich, but they work hard and earn their benefits. I oppose attempts by politicians to gut their benefits and take away their rights, all to satisfy a partisan, political agenda.

I stand in support of Wisconsin's public employees, the Wisconsinites across the state protesting on their behalf and the state senators who have left the state in order to prevent Gov. Walker's draconian proposal from passing in the legislature.

Signed,

Please Sign the Petition!

In the eyes of the wealthy and corporate overlords, including the execrable Koch Brothers, every middle class American is a Wisconsin public employee. In other words, they are lowering public employee benefits and taking away basic freedoms from public employees as part of a broader strategy to keep stealing more and more from the middle class and the poor so they can hoard it for themselves.

We need to stop letting politicians in both parties get away with lying about phony "budget crises" that are purely imaginary. Making the rich pay their fair share in taxes would obliterate every state budget deficit and would generate budget surpluses that could be used to create desperately needed jobs and meet important human needs of the non rich.

The vast majority of the money held by the wealthy elites and their corporations really is rightfully ours. It's time that we insist that the politicians that supposedly represent us take it back for us.