Your 'Need to Know' File

An Educational Trip
In 2000, an Indian tribe and a gambling services company sent $50,000 in checks to a Washington think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, covering most of the cost of an educational trip to Britain taken by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), according to a person involved in arranging DeLay's travel. Two months later, DeLay voted against a bill opposed by gambling interests. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff arranged for the donations to the think tank and went along on the journey, according to the source.

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Watch out for that "assembly line" label.

Dan Gillespie never thought he'd have to look so hard for work.

When the Seattle-area resident left the Air Force in 1980, he earned a computer science degree and enjoyed 20 years of steady work. He saved enough money to buy his wife's childhood home last year.

Three months later, he was laid off.

Gillespie, 53, hasn't found a job since. Even the corner store won't hire him. He and his wife sold the house last month.

"The computer jobs are gone," he said. "So what's next? We can't all move into gene splicing."

Long-term unemployment, defined as joblessness for six months or more, is at record rates. But there's an additional twist: An unusually large share of those chronically out of work are, like Gillespie, college graduates.

The increasing inability of educated workers to quickly return to the workforce reflects dramatic shifts in the economy, experts say. Even as overall hiring is picking up and economic growth remains strong, industries are transforming at a rapid pace as they adjust to intense competition, technological change and other pressures.

...certain jobs may never be replaced. For example, jobs designing computer chips may vanish because of fundamental changes in chip design or production or because the industry has shipped the jobs overseas, experts say. Or businesses' efforts to boost productivity may mean that computer programs shrink the number of loan officers needed to process applications at a bank.

Erica Groshen, a co-author of the New York Fed study, noted that though the United States manufactures less, white-collar workers increasingly produce goods and services on Information Age assembly lines.

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Don't worry. There will always be something to do

The Senate marched Wednesday toward passage of landmark legislation that would make it harder to erase medical bills, credit card charges and other debts by declaring bankruptcy.



Democratic opponents made last-ditch attempts to soften the bill's impact and restrict practices of the credit industry that they said were especially hurting the poor.

Not a dent was made in the legislation, which was armor-plated by the Senate's Republican majority against amendments and enjoyed bipartisan support. With Senate passage expected Thursday and House approval likely next month, the bill would deliver to President Bush (news - web sites) the second of his pro-business legislative priorities since the GOP augmented its majorities in both chambers in November's elections.



Somewhere to stay

Ordering the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. bankruptcy laws in a quarter-century, the legislation would rework the centuries-old system — created soon after the Republic was founded — under which indebted people meet their obligations to creditors while also being able to get a fresh start.

It would establish a new income-based test for measuring a debtor's ability to repay debts, require people in bankruptcy to pay for credit counseling, stiffen some legal requirements for debtors in the bankruptcy process while easing some for creditors, and enable credit card issuers, retailers and other consumer lenders to recover more of what is owed them.

Opponents say it would fall hard on low-income working people, single mothers, minorities and the elderly and would remove a safety net for those who have lost their jobs or face mounting medical bills.



And good people to hang with

"The bankruptcy courts are filled with cases of hardworking single mothers who were pushed over the financial brink because they failed to get the child support they deserve," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., author of an amendment addressing single parents. "Yet this bill would only tighten the screws, looking to squeeze out a few more dollars for the credit card companies."

...

In a series of near-party-line votes Wednesday, the Senate quickly dispensed with several Democratic amendments. Some targeted credit card companies, which have championed the bankruptcy overhaul legislation and are accused by critics of granting credit irresponsibly.

Banks, credit card issuers and retailers have lobbied vigorously for bankruptcy revisions that would force more people to repay at least part of their debt. Such a bill nearly passed in 2002. But it failed when the Senate accepted, but House Republicans rejected, a Democratic amendment barring anti-abortion protesters from using bankruptcy to avoid paying court fines for blocking abortion clinics.

This year, with four more GOP senators, the abortion provision was rejected Tuesday on a 53-46 vote. Later the Senate voted 69-31 to limit further amendments, close the debate and hold a final vote this week.

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A major attack on Hip Hop has been called by the political right.

Ludacris can laugh since the damage Bill O' Reilly wanted to do to him just helped him blow up, but the right wing political oriented people are trying to pit older blacks and females against our younger hip hop oriented people. (I don't mean that Ludacris is in anyway a willing part of the attack on Hip Hop nor that he is doing anything wrong. I'm just giving some perspective.)

Divide and conquer is their mantra. The way to get a people back to slavery is to get them fighting against each other and then slip up behind them and throw the rope around them or as in this case, doing what they did in Africa getting our own people to sell us to them.

Those people trying to destroy Hip Hop are ostensibly our own people! Yet, behind them we know that the big white Republican images of Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Karl Rove tower.

Read what some of our own people have written.

Davey D. reporting on the phenomenum does a fine job just like any whore reporter, giving the right wing side without much diserning analysis. That's all you have to do. You aren't really saying it, just reporting what the conservatives want you to cover. This is the kind of reporting that got 1500 --mostly working class-- troops killed in Iraq. Where is the balance Davey? Because you are supposedly a Hip Hop fan you don't need any? Last time I read something at Davey D's site it said rap was dead 2 years ago. Hey, Davey, guess what!

Now he is informing us that one Lisa Fager who runs the Hip Hop Media Watchdog site www.industryears.com says there are clear studies that show that Hip Hop lyrics hurt young African American women and in fact the whole community.
Davey D: Women carry the fight against hip-hop misogynists

I went to Ms. Fager's site and first you get confronted with a form to fill out to notify the FCC of some dastardly lyrics or talk that burns your ears on any media channel. Yep she's going to make sure the man can fine everyone right now and you can help her do it! Though probably not if they are Repbublican.

I tried to search through and find her "studies" that clearly show that young African American women get their images of themselves from Hip Hop.

What I found seems to say that they talked to young black homies (guys and girls). That's the studies she was apparently talking about. Too bad because that is not scientific research.

But when they talked they learned a lot more from the youths than the young people told them. Or how else do you interpret this:

[[“Even though they never said it directly, many of
these youth feel like they are in dead-end situations, with no way of getting out. They are vulnerable.
They are in pain. They are afraid.”]]

Of course you would have to be a superior person to know what these youngsters weren't telling you.

Much of the other information garnered by the reporting group at the study: HIP-HOP SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS ARE RISKY, DISRESPECTFUL AND LACK TRUST appears to have been extracted by pushy questioning. They even hit on so called "virginity envy". And never deal with the fact that most of what they "found" could apply to any teen group Black, White, Hispanic, Native American, or Asian, not just our teens. I'm wondering how much "taxpayer money" went into this "study. We know that the Bush administration likes to use our money for their propaganda.

One thing that Lisa Fager got right on her site is the fact that the biggest fan base in in white suburban kids.

Another more mainstream source noted that:
[[In fact, hip hop's audience is largely made up of suburban white boys. They purchase four out of five recordings. This makes rap's thug minstrelsy a largely white phenomenon.]] New York Daily News
By the evidence of my living room poll--the numbers and types of kids sitting around my living room any afternoon with my kids watching Hip Hop music videos, I'd say that teenage white girls are keeping up with those guys. Anyway teen groups mingle in color and sexes, like my girls and their multicultural friends in our working class neighborhood.

Soooo if hip hop is so bad. If the videos will turn a good kid to a tramp then why or why do we read that:[[ A study by the nonpartisan research center ChildTrends showed that the number of teens having sex declined from 54 percent in 1991 to 46 percent in 2001.]] Chicago Tribune

Huh? Anyone have an answer?

Yes, HIV is rising, but early sex is declining. How can you blame any of that on Hip Hop though? Apparently Hip Hop is doing its best to make our kids promiscuous, but failing.

Yes, our young poor people are suffering, but it is typical Republican tactics to try blame anyone other than themselves as they take away the money for good health care for our children and families (indeed they have prevented us from having it in the first place).

But lets jump on the bandwagon of the "Blacks for Moral Superiority". I'm sure there is good money to be made selling our brothers back into chains.

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Yes, the USS America will be sunk this Spring in the Atlantic ocean, giving a visual rendering to what the boy king is doing to the whole country.

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As we know, privatization accounts will not do anything to "fix" the coming shortfall in social security.

What do Americans want the Bush administration to do to fix Social Security

I ran across this poll.


Pretty obvious isn't it?

In case you don't know. People who make above 87k a year pay no more Social Security tax than those who make that amount.

That is the "cap" mentioned in the poll.

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Yes, Greenspan, an extreme right wing kind of guy, says tax Americans twice by using income tax and national sales tax.

Lovely thing playing with the tax code is. You can always find ways to make the middle and working class pay more while you call it simplification.

Greenspan clearly showed who's side he's on when he did a Limbaugh on "Democrats".

Not a compassionate muscle in the old man's body.

"You can't tax the rich."--George Bush

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If you wear fur you owe it to yourself to watch this film at link

A year-long undercover investigation concluded last month captured video footage of fur farmers in China swinging raccoons and foxes by their hind legs and smashing their heads into the ground—breaking the animals’ necks or backs but leaving them fully conscious, panting and blinking as they are skinned alive.

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The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter J. Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism," he said. "They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

On a day when the top half-dozen U.S. national security and intelligence officials went to Capitol Hill to talk about the continued determination of terrorists to strike the United States, their statements underscored the unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.

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Credit card companies are telling Congress to reject a cap on interest at 30%.

This is similar to the rejection of the 20% cap on interest that was taken off over a decade ago.

Now a large portion of credit card users have rates above 20%.

Therefore I think it's safe to assume that we can look for 30% interest rates to be common in the future.

The Bankruptcy bill gives credit companies the ability to force consumers to pay for the usury with future earnings locking people into a virtual debtor prisons that have been rejected by some judges today.

A side note shows that the Supreme Court in 1996 which contained a majority of justices placed by Reagan and Bush 41 (with Nixon's Rehnquist added in for good measure) gave great leeway to credit card companies to practice predation by canceling many state laws' effects on the companies.

One can assume that Congress believes that a bill passed this year will be forgotten by the 2006 election.

Some facts in this post from Boston Globe

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