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JUSTICE & FREEDOM
We were told that hate crimes would decrease if we passed laws that unconstitutionally made a criminal's thoughts as well as the crime an offense. It doesn't seems to have worked like that. Reports the NY Times: Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said the department brought more federal hate crime cases this year than in any other year since 2001. Those haters just don't read the legislation.
POPULATION
Kate Kelland, Reuters - 200 million women across the world want contraceptives, but cannot get them. Addressing this need would slow population growth and reduce demographic pressure on the environment.
In most countries with good access to birth control, average family sizes shrink dramatically within a generation. . . But policymakers in rich donor nations are wary of talking about contraception for fear of being accused of advocating draconian ideas like sterilization or one-child policies.
Pete Murphy - The biggest obstacle we face in changing attitudes toward overpopulation is economists. Since the field of economics was branded "the dismal science" after Malthus' theory, economists have been adamant that they would never again consider the subject of overpopulation and continue to insist that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacle to further growth. Even worse, economists insist that population growth is vital to economic growth. This is why world leaders continue to ignore population growth in the face of mounting challenges like peak oil, global warming and a whole host of other environmental and resource issues. Because they are blind to population growth, there's one obstacle they haven't considered: the finiteness of space available on earth. The very act of using space more efficiently creates a problem for which there is no solution: it inevitably begins to drive down per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment, leading to rising unemployment and poverty.
CULTURE
SOCIAL POEMS, POLITICIAL POEMS
STATES
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - Counting both initial and mid-year shortfalls, 48 states have addressed or still face such shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2010, totaling $193 billion or 28 percent of state budgets - the largest gaps on record. Fiscal year 2011 gaps total $97 billion or 16 percent of budgets for the 39 states that have estimated the size of these gaps. These totals are likely to grow as revenues continue to deteriorate, and may well exceed $180 billion.
AFGHANISTAN
Jeremy Scahill, Counterpunch - At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
We were told that hate crimes would decrease if we passed laws that unconstitutionally made a criminal's thoughts as well as the crime an offense. It doesn't seems to have worked like that. Reports the NY Times: Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said the department brought more federal hate crime cases this year than in any other year since 2001. Those haters just don't read the legislation.
POPULATION
Kate Kelland, Reuters - 200 million women across the world want contraceptives, but cannot get them. Addressing this need would slow population growth and reduce demographic pressure on the environment.
In most countries with good access to birth control, average family sizes shrink dramatically within a generation. . . But policymakers in rich donor nations are wary of talking about contraception for fear of being accused of advocating draconian ideas like sterilization or one-child policies.
Pete Murphy - The biggest obstacle we face in changing attitudes toward overpopulation is economists. Since the field of economics was branded "the dismal science" after Malthus' theory, economists have been adamant that they would never again consider the subject of overpopulation and continue to insist that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacle to further growth. Even worse, economists insist that population growth is vital to economic growth. This is why world leaders continue to ignore population growth in the face of mounting challenges like peak oil, global warming and a whole host of other environmental and resource issues. Because they are blind to population growth, there's one obstacle they haven't considered: the finiteness of space available on earth. The very act of using space more efficiently creates a problem for which there is no solution: it inevitably begins to drive down per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment, leading to rising unemployment and poverty.
CULTURE
SOCIAL POEMS, POLITICIAL POEMS
STATES
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities - Counting both initial and mid-year shortfalls, 48 states have addressed or still face such shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2010, totaling $193 billion or 28 percent of state budgets - the largest gaps on record. Fiscal year 2011 gaps total $97 billion or 16 percent of budgets for the 39 states that have estimated the size of these gaps. These totals are likely to grow as revenues continue to deteriorate, and may well exceed $180 billion.
AFGHANISTAN
Jeremy Scahill, Counterpunch - At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.
3 Comments:
What a strange time we live in that "hate crimes" legislation is embraced by most 'progressives'.
Liberals traditionally pretended to care about legal principles, such double jeopardy. Not any more -- not if they don't like the accused.
The law is supposed to be "no respecter of persons" -- judge the act, not the person.
I think it should be obvious that the cause of the increase in hate crime prosecutions is not an increase in hate crimes but the increase in hate crime laws. Prior to the laws, there could be no prosecutions.
FoE
Moreover, the fact that there are more prosecutions than any year since 2001 just shows that the Bush 43 DoJ didn't pursue/prioritize them, not that there are more hate crimes being committed
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