January 4, 2012

Police Think Poisoned Cat Meat Killed China Tycoon

Note: my reason for posting this is because a billionaire seems to have been killed by poisoning, not the whole China/Cat thing. It appears that one of the 1% just got killed apparently by another of the 1% (or a politician, who knows?).

(Ayn Rand's) Atlas just facepalmed.


http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/police-poisoned-cat-meat-killed-china-tycoon-15284374

Police Think Poisoned Cat Meat Killed China Tycoon

BEIJING January 4, 2012 (AP)
The sudden death of a billionaire in southern China is causing police to ask: Was it murder by cat meat?

Long Liyuan, 49, died on Dec. 23 in wealthy Guangdong province after sharing a dish of slow boiled cat meat stew, a southern delicacy, with two men over a business lunch.

One of the men, local official Huang Guang, was arrested by police on Friday on suspicion of poisoning the hotpot with a toxic herb. Police say Huang and Long had economic disputes.

Huang, deputy director of agriculture in Guangdong's Bajia township, is suspected of poisoning the hotpot with the herb Gelsemium elegans, according to a statement on the microblog of the investigating police. The poisonous plant is found in forests in parts of China.

January 4, 2012

Dear Free Traders: How much lower should our standard of living go?

Have we given up enough yet?

Does the fact that more Americans are having problems finding food than Chinese people, count?

How low should we go?


[img][/img]

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/formerly-great-cities-all-over-america-are-turning-into-open-festering-sores

[quote]Formerly Great Cities All Over America Are Turning Into Open, Festering Sores

Once upon a time, the people of the United States constructed beautiful, shiny cities from coast to coast that were the envy of the entire globe. We had the largest and most vibrant middle class that the world has ever seen and life was quite good in America. But now all of our prosperity is coming crashing down and many of our formerly great cities are turning into open, festering sores. Unfortunately, we are drowning in so much debt that we can barely even slow down the shocking decline of our cities. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of good jobs have been shipped out of the United States. As our economic infrastructure has been ripped out right in front of our eyes, an atmosphere of unemployment, poverty and despair has descended on many of our major cities like a soaking wet blanket. Today, many of our cities that once were considered to be some of the greatest in the world have been transformed into rotting, post-apocalyptic hellholes. When you visit many of these cities and look into the sunken eyes of the residents, you almost get the feeling that something has sucked all of the hope and all of the life right out of them. For a while, large numbers of Americans still believed that the right politician would bring them "hope" and "change", but now crushing despair is giving way to absolute desperation for millions of people. Desperate people do desperate things, and as our major cities continue to decay they are going to become very dangerous places to be.

Even in some of our most "prosperous cities" there are areas that closely resemble third world conditions. For example, in San Francisco there is an area known as "Hunter's Point" that is a complete and utter nightmare. In Hunter's Point, more than half of the population lives in poverty and more than half of all children live in a home where there is no father present. The following is what one reporter found on a visit to Hunter's Point....[/quote]

http://blogs.cfed.org/cfed_news_clips/2011/10/more-americans-than-chinese-st.html

[quote]More Americans than Chinese struggling to put food on the table: Gallup Poll
By CFED on October 13, 2011 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
The Huffington Post
October 13, 2011

More Americans than Chinese struggling to put food on the table: Gallup Poll

Millions of Americans are currently weathering the effects of a slow economic recovery. Many Chinese, meanwhile, find themselves struggling less to keep their families fed, according to a recent Gallup report.

Nearly 20 percent of Americans say they've had trouble putting food on the table in the past 12 months, up from nine percent in 2008, the Gallup report found. That's compared to six percent of Chinese respondents, down from 16 percent in 2008.

Though the U.S. economy is technically in a recovery, Americans' incomes have declined more since the recession's end than they did during the downturn. Nine in 10 Americans say they don't expect to get a raise that will be enough to compensate for the rising cost of food and fuel, according to an American Pulse survey.

At the same time, the Chinese middle class has been on the rise since the late 1990s. The middle-class explosion has been most prominent in the country's largest cities and government policies have helped to aid it along. Businesses are responding too: U.S. hotel companies are launching modestly-priced hotel chains in the country in hopes of attracting some of the scores of new middle class travelers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

And while the Chinese middle class is growing, the ranks of the U.S. poor are swelling. The nation's poverty rate jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010, the Cenus Bureau announced last month, as the total number of Americans in poverty grew to 46.2 million.

There's one area where Americans are struggling less: Eleven percent of Americans said they had trouble affording housing in the last 12 months, compared to 16 percent of Chinese, according to Gallup. Still, the share of Americans struggling to find housing is growing; in 2008, five percent of Americans said they struggled to pay for adequate housing.[/quote]

January 4, 2012

KKK store gets a new landlord. If you click this and die laughing DON'T BLAME ME!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/judge-black-church-rightful-owner-kkk-store-174103559.html

Judge: Black church rightful owner of KKK store

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — After a lengthy legal battle between a black South Carolina church and members of the Ku Klux Klan, a judge has ruled that the church owns a building where KKK robes and T-shirts are sold.

A circuit judge ruled last month that New Beginnings Baptist Church is the rightful owner of the building that houses the Redneck Shop, which operates a so-called Klan museum and sells Klan robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs. The judge ordered the shop's proprietor to pay the church's legal bills of more than $3,300.

Since 1996, the Redneck Shop has operated in an old movie theater in Laurens, a city about 70 miles northwest from Columbia that was named after 18th century slave trader Henry Laurens.

January 2, 2012

18 million empty homes. 3.5 million homeless. Move the homeless in! Overwhelm the police gangs!

Perhaps we should start moving the homeless into empty houses and force the cops to waste their time going after them.

Overload the courts. Every homeless person demands a jury trial. Cops either give up or consign themselves to overloading our already overcrowded prisons (like in California, where judges have forced prisons to let go of 40,000 prisoners!) by providing them with 3 hots and a cot at taxpayer expense. Taxpayers will revolt. The system will utterly crash.

Are there even enough police to handle such a mass movement???

January 2, 2012

Check in if you plan on doing something to make 2012 better

Me: Donating, manning the phone banks for Obama, whatever other major, minor or quick task I can get my grubby little hands on.

You...?

January 2, 2012

Elizabeth Warren / Paul Krugman 2016?

Just wondering.

December 30, 2011

Hey DUers, need some info on universal health care

I'm trying to think of ideas for UHC in America and I'd like to get some objective facts on existing systems in France, Canada and England. I think I have some info on Japan, but wow, there's nothing objective for these other countries. A billion editorials and political opinions but no "these are the benefits, these are the restrictions", etc.

I wonder sometimes, considering how hard it is to find concrete information, if anyone has ever given an informed opinion on these issues.

Ah well, I guess I should just be using Google to find info on the Kardashians. Plenty of stuff on that.

December 29, 2011

Re: Pre-Employment credit checks, I propose the following law

First let's start with the chain of hypocrisy here.

It's 2008 and you are a working class stiff just making ends meet, starting a job at the Acme Widget Sales store. Acme Widget Sales has just done a credit check on you to make sure that your credit history is good, and they've inferred from this that you're a responsible worker. Irresponsible workers damage productivity, ya know.

Little do you know that the owner, Richie, has a bit of a gambling problem (totally not like Terry from "Men of a Certain Age" ).

Well, 6 months into your employment, it turns out that Richie has to let you go due to "unforeseen financial circumstances". Then he fights your unemployment insurance because he doesn't want to pay extra taxes next year. It takes weeks to get through this and get your unemployment insurance.

You can't find work for the next 2 years hence. 2,000 resumes and 180 interviews later, your unemployment insurance runs out. You've already ditched paying your credit cards and you live like an absolute pauper, no cable TV, no cell phone, no Internet, but now you have no money coming in at all. Miraculously, though, Joey's Widgets, another company, decides they want to hire.

Facing eviction, you go in search of the only job opening around, and they do a credit check.

The only thing they see now is that your credit is ruined.

Nobody at Joey's Widgets knows that your former boss had a gambling problem, which directly led to you losing your job. They just know your credit is ruined.

No job for you! Say hello to homelessness!



Wouldn't it be nice of employers were forced to submit to intrusive background and credit checks? Even if it didn't preclude them from opening a business, which would in fact be analogous to what they inflict upon job applicants, the Government could make it so employees know more of the risks they're getting into by choosing one employer with a GAMBLING PROBLEM over one that doesn't have a gambling problem?

December 29, 2011

Offshoring: Should America be impoverished in order to help other populations become better off?

There are some people who believe that America should accept lower standards of living because we use too many of the world's resources, and that for us to oppose this is to be selfish.

The "reasoning" behind this is that other nations would be kept in poverty if we were to maintain our standard of living.

Of course the way I see it, the whole concept of offshoring can't even survive if other populations aren't impoverished. When they become better off, there's no supply of cheap labor. Their export-based economy will evaporate, and then what? Or better yet, our economy will collapse, and then they won't have anywhere to export their stuff to. Then what?

To rip off Margaret Thatcher: There's only so far the Third World can go by taking other people's jobs. When that blood vein runs out, then what?

And just so you don't think I'm making this up, I shall name names even at risk of censure.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=52324

I just gotta know what kind of Democratic Party I'm a part of... a family that cares about its own, or one that sells its own people out for the sake of others.

December 23, 2011

Thank you, DU, for the "CrossUSA" ad!

It's nice to see a company that advertises RURAL outsourcing as an alternative to FOREIGN outsourcing.

Rural outsourcing often pays less but it beats shipping jobs out of the country.

Again, thank you!