Notes On The Next American Revolution

The Article: What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About The Next American Revolution in The National Memo.

The Text: Chapter One: How to Detect a System Problem Without Really Trying

People toss around the phrase It’s the system pretty loosely in everyday language. Usually they mean that things are sort of set up, by either design or accident, to run the way they run—and that the game is pretty well rigged so that those at the top (and their organizations) control the action. You can’t really buck the system: Too much power, too much red tape, too much bureaucracy—they’ll wear you down.

And so on.

That’s not a bad way to start thinking about the big system that defines the overarching contours of our national life—namely, the large corporate-dominated economic system and the heavily constrained political system that set the terms of reference for almost everything else.

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A Ruined Life Is A Lot Worse Than A Bag Of Weed

The Article: Let’s stop wrecking lives over a bag of weed by in .

The Text: In a little office on the third floor of Metropolitan Police Headquarters on Indiana Avenue NW is a small window to the future — open to some, closed to many. This is where you get your D.C. “police clearance.”

If you have never been there, that’s because you have never applied for a job flipping burgers, mowing lawns or cleaning restrooms in the District. Room 3033 is the human resources department for the poor, the young and the disenfranchised. The piece of paper you get there — if you have no criminal record — is what you need to land a job. Without it, you’re out of luck.

For 29 years, I have defended clients facing marijuana charges in the District. At every initial appearance, without fail, the judge admonishes the defendant either to stay in school or to hold down a job. In the majority of cases, however, a job is not possible because most employers in this town will not hire entry-level workers who do not have a police clearance.

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“The Wire” Creator Eviscerates The War On Drugs

The Article: The Wire creator David Simon eviscerates the dystopia creating war on drugs by Ed Vulliamy in The Raw Story.

The Text: David Simon surged into the American mainstream with a bleak vision of the devastation wrought by drugs on his home town of Baltimore – The Wire, hailed by many as the greatest television drama of all time. But what keeps him there is his apocalyptic and unrelenting heresy over the failed “war on drugs”, the multibillion-dollar worldwide crusade launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971.

When Simon brought that heresy to London last week – to take part in a debate hosted by the Observer – he was inevitably asked about what reformers celebrate as recent “successes” – votes in Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana.

“I’m against it,” Simon told his stunned audience at the Royal Institution on Thursday night. “The last thing I want to do is rationalise the easiest, the most benign end of this. The whole concept needs to be changed, the debate reframed.

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US Student Loan Debt Skyrockets While Others Fall

The Article: Chart of the Day: Student Loan Debt Is Skyrocketing by Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.

The Text: You’ve probably seen this chart before, but it’s worth seeing again: Student loan debt is just flatly out of control. I understand why this has happened, and I understand why it’s hard to get a handle on, but we’re going to regret it if we don’t do something about this. We’re training a whole generation to be wary of going to college, and for those who do, we’re forcing them to start out their lives living under a mountain of debt. This is a recipe for disaster. More here from Maggie Severns.

It’s also yet another fault line between young and old that’s not likely to turn out well. My generation got a cheap college education when we were young, and we’re getting good retirement benefits now that we’re old. Pretty nice. But now we’re turning around and telling today’s twentysomethings that they should pay through the nose for college, keep paying taxes for our retirements, and oh by the way, when it comes time for you to retire your benefits are going to have to be cut. So sorry. And all this despite the fact that the country is richer than it was 50 years ago, and will be richer still 50 years from now.

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US Income Inequality Is Officially Off The Chart

The Article: US Inequality Now Literally Off the Chart by Salvatore Babones in Truth Out.

The Text: It is well known that the level of income inequality stretches much higher in the United States than in the other developed countries of Europe and North America. Now a report from the International Labour Organization shows that U.S. inequality has literally gone off the chart.

Income inequality in the United States is soaring so high, in fact, that the authors of the ILO’s new 2013 World of Work report couldn’t even place the United States on the same graph with the other 25 developed countries their new study examines.

Income inequality reflects the sum total of all the differences between the incomes enjoyed by different households in a country. Differences between rich and poor households, rich and middle-income households, middle-income and poor households all enter into total income inequality.

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