Jack Saturday

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 72, 73, 74, 75

Senate Democrats tried unsuccessfully this week to raise the federal minimum wage, which stands at just $5.15 an hour. It has not been increased in nearly a decade, and at its current stingy level, the rate flies in the face of Americans' belief that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded. A minimum-wage worker earns just $10,700 a year, nearly $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.
from
A Look at Republican Priorities: Afflicting the Afflicted
Editorial
New York Times

Published: June 23, 2006




Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an estate-tax cut that is a repeal in everything but name. The so-called compromise would exempt more than 99.5 percent of estates from tax, slash the tax rates on the rest and cost at least $760 billion during its first full decade. Of that, $600 billion is the amount the government would have to borrow to make up for lost revenue from the cuts, which would benefit the heirs of America's wealthiest families, like the Marses of Mars bar and the Waltons of Wal-Mart Stores.
from
A Look at Republican Priorities: Comforting the Comfortable
New York Times
Opinion
Published: June 23, 2006




Formally, authoritarian ethics denies man's [sic] capacity to know what is good or bad; the norm giver is always an authority transcending the individual. Such a system is based not on reason and knowledge but on awe of the authority and on the subject's feeling of weakness and dependence; the surrender of decision making to the authority results from the latter's magic power; its decisions can not and must not be questioned. Materially, or according to content, authoritarian ethics answers the question of what is good or bad primarily in terms of the interests of the authority, not the interests of the subject; it is exploitative, although the subject may derive considerable benefits, psychic or material, from it.
Erich Fromm,
Man For Himself



The man[sic]
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys:
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches, and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men [sic], and, of the human frame,
A mechanised automaton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley




Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Some Comments On Social Workers

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Saturday, June 17, 2006

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 70, 71

"We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more
Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree
We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty."
James Sloan Gibbons, 1810-1892
Quaker Abolitionist

"Song of the Conscripts",
New York Evening Post, July 16, 1862

In the Civil War a drafted conscript could pay money instead of serving in the army. Many rich and middle class men did so leaving a higher proportion of the poor to be drafted.The song is sometimes misattributed to William Cullen Bryant.
politicalquotes.org


P. J. O'Rourke At The Draft Physical

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Monday, June 12, 2006

Early Rapper, 1963

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Saturday, June 10, 2006

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 68, 69, 70

…a common acronym: TGIF. Everyone in the United States knows what that means: "Thank God it's Friday." The majority of Americans don't just know what TGIF stands for, they feel it in their bones. That's a way of saying that a majority of Americans do work they generally do not like and do not believe is really worth doing. That's a way of saying that we have an economy in which most people spend at least a third of their lives doing things they don't want to do and don't believe are valuable. We are told this is a way of organizing an economy that is natural.
from
The Four Fundamentalisms and the Threat to Sustainable Democracy
Robert Jensen
ZNet Commentary June 08, 2006





Wherever he goes, Mr. Mangano, 58, who was director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, emphasizes that it is cheaper to put the chronically homeless right into apartments, and provide medical and addiction treatments there, than to watch them cycle endlessly through shelters, soup kitchens, emergency rooms, detoxification centers and jails.

"Cost-benefit analysis may be the new expression of compassion in our communities," he said at the Denver meeting.

Mr. Sena refused to disclose more about his history or use of public services. But in a study here, officials found that 25 men were taken into emergency detoxification centers for an average of 80 nights each in one year, at a total cost of $772,000. Officials have found that they can provide housing and most medical and other services for about $15,000 a year per person.
from
New Campaign Shows Progress for Homeless
By
ERIK ECKHOLM
New York Times
Published: June 7, 2006



The Old Guy’s Annual Labor Day Message
Bruce (Utah) Phillips

Hip hip hooray,
the eight hour day
potato chips and beer!
Go all the way,
the four-hour day,
the four-day week is near!
(The boss don’t care;
he gets his share,
and a mighty big share I hear.)
But who can scoff
At another day off
And potato chips and beer?
Well, tel the pol
We want ‘em all;
The bosses are up the creek.
‘Till they obey
a no-hour day
we’ll just take us a no-day week!

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Value Added To Untouchables In India

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Saturday, June 03, 2006

Anti-Job, Pro-Freedom Quotes Of The Week 66, 67

"Man [sic] holds in his hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty."
JFK

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
FDR