And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when allof God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

– Martin Luther King, Jr. from The Great March on Washington

It’s almost 50 years later, and this rings truer than ever. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever get here.

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Not to be a broken record, but a couple of quick things:

1. It seems fairly obvious now that Penn State tried to sweep a lot of this under the rug. Yes, Paterno reported it up the food chain to his superiors, but both he and they did less than the bare minimum to confront this. I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why the police were never called at all. I guess it’s true that nothing comes before The Program.
2. Why didn’t the guy who saw the assault happen not stop it right then and there? Why did he go home, call his dad, then call JoePa… the next day? Nothing smells right about this at all.
3. The similarities between this pattern of abuse and the Catholic Church abuse scandals is eerie. The abuse by those who were trusted, the powerful men who turned a mostly blind eye, the attempts to cover it all up, everything. The only real difference here is that Penn State at least seems sort of interested in some form of credibility by forcing out those who did nothing.

I think it’s the last part that has me most conflicted, because the abuse scandals in the Catholic Church strike a raw nerve with me, and have for a while now. I was never abused, but I was pretty involved in the Church growing up being in Catholic school, and being an altar boy in my parish, etc., I understand about getting close with people who can take advantage. This is why it makes sense to me that parents trusted their kids with this guy, in the way that plenty of people trusted their sons with their local priest. In any event, it all sickens me to no end.

I hope that in the long run, we see justice served for these kids who were abused by this person. It will be a lot more than a lot of kids that were abused by the hand of the Church will ever see, and that continues to be a huge disgrace.

Technorati Tags: catholic church, jerry sandusky, joe paterno, sex abuse

Economic Wha?

That’s from a great cartoon from Tom Tomorrow that’s up at Daily Kos which I think succinctly sums up a lot of the media coverage that the Occupy Wall Street protests are getting. When you’re little more than an arm of the Wall Street machine, this sort of thing must make no sense at all.

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It says a lot that we’ll hear this kind of passionate defense of teachers from Matt Damon, but not our politicians, from either party. This is the kind of speech you’d expect from one of his movie characters, but instead it’s real and it means something. You never see that anymore.

It wouldn’t be all that bad if both he and Alec Baldwin got into politics. At least they have some passion that’s not spurred on by huge checks from lobbyists.

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The real goal is to reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks. The bankrupt moral equation codified in the Bush era — that tax cuts tilted to the highest bracket were a higher priority even than paying for two wars — is now a given. The once-bedrock American values of shared sacrifice and equal economic opportunity have been overrun.

The amazing (and sad) thing is how these people have so many little people lined up behind them and their figureheads. These days, everyone drinks the swill that the government is the enemy and needs to be choked to death. Doesn’t anyone realize that choking the government to death will eventually lead to the rest of us impaled on the sword of pure unadulterated greed? Do these tea partiers actually think the Koch brothers or any of these other oligarchs give a fuck about them and will know they exist once they’ve destroyed our nation?

Sadly, there likely isn’t any end in sight. The Democrats have, as usual, started the process of capitulating and slashing spending for important Federal programs to shreds in the name of “bipartisan compromise”.

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It’s telling when the most unvarnished truth in this whole Wisconsin debate is coming from one of the guys at Fox News.

It doesn’t happen all that often, but even these guys sometimes do offer a glimpse of truth. It’s a lot more than some of the other “news” organizations are offering.

Technorati Tags: fox news, shepard smith, unions, wisconsin

It would be nice if more Congresspeople had the stones that Anthony Weiner has. Imagine if they would call out the Republicans who fatten themselves at the trough while telling the rest of us that we are the problem with our collective bargaining, unions, and health care and pensions. Those fat cats who robbed us blind? Nope, they need more tax cuts, right? sign

Maybe someday, we’ll actually get there. I just won’t hold my breath. For now, we’ll have to settle for a brave few telling the many to put their money where their mouth is.

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Standard & Poor’s on Wednesday cut New Jersey’s bond rating a notch due to an unfunded pension shortfall and high debt… [...] New Jersey ranks near the top of municipal bond issuers with the widest spread over Municipal Market Data’s benchmark AAA-scale for their 10-year bonds, indicating investors already see it among the riskiest U.S. states for buying new debt. “The lower rating reflects our concern regarding the stresses from the state’s poorly funded pension system, substantial post-employment benefit obligations and above-average debt levels,” Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services credit analyst Jeffrey Panger said in a report.

So basically, our state’s economy is more fucked than we think. We’re not paying into the pension system. We continue to fix our crazy budget problems with one-offs, gimmicks, and God knows what else. Whatever we can’t fix, we just borrow and kick the can down the road further.

The kicker is that our deus ex governor has (quite successfully) beaten the drum to death that our state’s problems are caused not by poor planning, poor fiscal decisions, and ungodly borrowing to avoid tax hikes, but rather by cops, firefighters, and teachers and their evil unions.  To hear Christie tell it, public school teachers have not only caused your taxes to be too high, they also caused 9/11, are why we can’t find Osama, and hell, they caused global warming too (you know, if it existed). Our only hope is to banish the unions and turn over all your money and faith to for profit charter schools or your local religious school. He’s been so goddamn good at this that the prols have eaten it up and support his position wholeheartedly. Shit, even a bunch of Democrats are in love with him on this.

All this means is that we’re going to end up in the same boat we’ve been in for over a decade as one administration after another on both sides of the aisle has played parlor tricks to concoct our budget. We’re not going to actually even try to fix the issues that plague this state. Jon Corzine may not have been a great governor, but at least he tried to make some moves towards encouraging shared services and government consolidation at the local level. Under Big Boy Christie, home rule is still the supreme rule of the day (and I’m pretty sure it’ s because he’s from a very rich white people town and God forbid they’re ever tied to some poorer minority community). I’m also convinced that the government and the unions could work out some arrangements that would be mutually beneficial (for example, the teachers union could agree to tenure review every five to ten years. This protects jobs but would help ferret out bad teachers). Plus, our tax system can be reworked to sufficiently fund government but not be oppressive. I may not know the exact way in which we’d do that, but I know it can be done (consolidating services would really help. 21 county based school districts involves a lot less overhead than the 600+ we have now). Solving these kinds of crises are not easy, but it can be done.

Until we get back some spirit of cooperation and not a governor with stars in his eyes and the ability to bend the people’s opinion to his will, my great state will continue to be stuck, teetering on the edge of very precipitous fall. I just hope we’re not too late to pull back before we lose our balance.

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