damnedifIknow
damnedifIknow's JournalNCAA, NFL, NBA and WNBA should raise their voices, condemning Indiana’s religious freedom law
The NCAA Final Four is scheduled for Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend in this state capital. But college basketball’s biggest celebration likely will be disturbed by a series of protests over a new Indiana religious freedom restoration law that critics say could allow businesses to turn away gay and lesbian customers in the name of religious freedom and open the door for legalized discrimination.
Bigotry is apparently alive and well here in the heartland. I thought this ship had sailed with the passing of the civil rights laws in 1965.
The Indiana law could negatively impact athletes and visitors traveling here for the games and, if there is any justice, it should lead the NCAA, which has taken a moral
high ground based on principles of diversity and inclusion, to move major sporting events such as the women’s Final Four in 2016 and the 2021 men’s Final Four to a different site. The college governing body should also move its offices unless its concerns are alleviated. And it should prompt the Big Ten to consider moving its football championship game and basketball championship tournaments out of the state."
It’s time for the NFL, NBA and the WNBA, which all have franchises in Indiana, to raise their voices in unison, condemning this legislation, which needs to be repealed immediately."
Angie’s List has already said it will cancel a $40 million expansion project in Indiana, and the damage is only getting worse."
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/weiss-leagues-condemn-indiana-religious-freedom-law-article-1.2169880
When Will the NSA Stop Spying on Innocent Americans?
The law cited as the justification for the phone dragnet will expire on June 1 unless Congress acts to extend it. "
Unless Congress acts, Americans will soon benefit from one of the Patriot Act's most important safeguards against abuse: Language in Section 215 of the law is scheduled to expire in June, depriving the FBI and NSA of a provision they've used to justify monitoring the phone calls of tens of millions of innocents (though a primary author of the law insists that it grants no such authority). If you've used a landline to call an abortion clinic, a gun store, a suicide hotline, a therapist, an oncologist, a phone sex operator, an investigative journalist, or a union organizer, odds are the government has logged a record of the call. If your Congressional representative has a spouse or child who has made an embarrassing phone call, the executive branch may well possess the ability to document it, though government apologists insist that they'd never do so and are strangely confident that future governments composed of unknown people won't either."
*But after an independent review of the program, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a bipartisan agency within the executive branch, concluded that "the operation of the NSA’s bulk telephone records program bears almost no resemblance" to the statutory language that supposedly justifies it. In addition to declaring the program illegal and Constitutionally suspect, their report noted that "the Section 215 program has shown minimal value in safeguarding the nation from terrorism. Based on the information provided to the Board, including classified briefings and documentation, we have not identified a single instance involving a threat to the United States in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation."
Put simply, the phone dragnet risks the possibility of significant abuses yet offers scant benefits. It's the sort of excess in the War on Terror that ought to be easy to end."
n fact, even some within the spy community urged that course, according to AP. "The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits," the news organization reported. "
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/when-will-the-nsa-stop-spying-on-the-communications-of-innocent-americans/389375/
How the average American became a debt slave
After real money and real savings left the economy circa 1971, GDP growth rates fell. Wages atrophied. And now, for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths outnumber business births.
The body economic grew soft and mushy – unable to hold itself erect or to stand on its own two feet. Thenceforth, it needed the crutch of increasing credit.
The new credit-based monetary system meant that Americans had less real wealth. But until 2007, they could still get what they wanted by borrowing. Few noticed that they were borrowing from the company store and becoming slaves to their credit masters."
*Government and its cronies in the banking sector created money ex nihilo. This money cost them nothing. Still, they lent it out just as though it were real savings.
The typical American took the bait. He bought a house. He bought a car. He had a nice steak dinner and paid with a credit card.
Now, he was no longer a free man, in a free economy with real money in his pocket. He was a slave to the credit system. And he needed to work hard to keep up with it.
The feds got the money for nothing. But he had to pay for it. Most often, he couldn’t pay off his debt. So, he became a debt serf – beholden to his masters for his home, his transportation, his education, his health care… and even his food."
Here are the numbers from the Social Security Administration:
• 39% of American workers make less than $20,000 a year
• 52% of American workers make less than $30,000 a year
• 63% of American workers make less than $40,000 a year
• 72% of American workers make less than $50,000 a year
These flabby income numbers are also the result of the regulatory policies and artificial money that has been drip-fed to the American people over the last 44 years."
http://thecrux.com/bill-bonner-what-you-should-know-about-the-american-dream/
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