no. 415

no. 330

no. 314

"[W]hen I told friends and colleagues that I was resigning from my academic job to focus on writing, I was warned that I was making a dangerous mistake, that I could not possibly live on an income that was between twenty and thirty thousand dollars a year. When I pointed to the reality that families of four and more live on such an income, the response would be “that’s different”; the difference being, of course, one of class. The poor are expected to live with less and are socialized to accept less (badly made clothing, products, food, etc.), whereas the well-off are socialized to believe it is both a right and a necessity for us to have more, to have exactly what we want when we want it."

bell hooks, where we stand: Class Matters, chapter 4

via

no. 297

"The invisible hand does indeed allocate the efforts of private industry to the best possible uses, as long as 'best' and 'most profitable' can be used interchangeably."

Gin and Tacos, from the post Better Living Through Chemistry, or: Thanks, Free Market!

no. 266

no. 265

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.
Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.”

Martin Luther King

no. 179

White Liberals: “Charity first…after personal wealth and power.”

Because how are you going to tell everyone how we should help Africa if you can’t fly on a private jet to get to the 4-star resort / convention center?

At least when Republicans charge $5,000 a plate, they look you right in the eye and tell you it’s because they just really like money.

I’ll take callous assholes over callous assholes who fucking lie to me about it.

Oh, and while I’m on the topic: if the head of your “international charity” makes as much as a vice president of Wal-Mart, I’m not giving you any money. I make $400 a week. At least funding the Wal-Mart exec’s salary nets me a “Who Farted?” trucker cap and an industrial-sized can of Cheez Balls. If the only way your charity can find a qualified individual to run it is to bribe someone who otherwise wouldn’t do it, it’s not a charity. It’s that asshole’s ticket to a nicer house. And I’m not funding that.

Besides, in 2011, Wal-Mart gave almost a billion dollars to charitable causes around the world. Sure, they funded it with Chinese serf labor. But again, they’re fairly up-front about it.

The Virgin Prince

no. 178

You’re not going to curb the outsized influence of lobbyists and their wealthy masters as long as every American dreams of becoming a powerful aristocrat.

We reward the worst behavior because we all want to to win by behaving badly. Until you fix that social problem, you aren’t going to fix the political problem.


The Virgin Prince

no. 173

It’s not true that there’s too much money in politics. It’s that there’s not enough of your money in politics.

Scott Wallace

no. 163

"There are obvious, even significant differences between Obama and someone like Mitt Romney, particularly on social issues, but no matter how Obama markets himself this time around, a choice between these two will not in any way represent a choice between "change" and the status quo. This is a choice between two different versions of the status quo, and everyone knows it."

Matt Taibbi

no. 157

"Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world."

Edited on Tue Nov-29-11 12:49 PM by WilliamPitt
Credited to Jim Truther on Facebook

(via)

no. 106

“Make all politicians work for minimum wage and watch how fast things change.”

Jess

no. 99

“It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”

Mother Tereasa of Calcutta

no. 46

"Descartes popularized the idea that reality is limited to what we can measure. Economists have taken this error farther by thinking that value is the same as money, so they don't notice that many of the foundations of value and wealth in our society are declining.

...the dominant culture uses money not just to measure material value, but to measure human value and moral value: the more money that passes through your hands, the more successful and virtuous you are. By this logic, Jesus Christ was a parasite and Bernard Madoff was God."

via Ran Prieur, dated Oct 3, 2009, referring to an article at The Archdruid Report.