VIDEO: Speaker Mattiello abolishes racism....in his head

RI House Speaker Argues White Privilege Doesn’t Exist, Accidentally Demonstrates White Privilege

BY JUDD LEGUM in Think Progress

To view this video direectly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHvI5FLI60I

One of Rhode Island’s most powerful Democrats doesn’t believe that “white privilege” exists. In a recent interview with the Providence Journal, Nicholas Mattiello, the state’s speaker of the House, said that that racial disparities are simply due to African-Americans’ and other minority groups’ failure to “take advantage” of the opportunities available to them.

Mattiello was invited to discuss racial issues with a panel from The Providence Journal, which is producing an extensive series on race in Rhode Island. He told the panel that, before he was asked that question, he had never thought of the phrase “white privilege.”

On social media, some observers noted that Mattiello’s ability to avoid thinking about racial issues was, itself, evidence of white privilege.

VIDEO: Raking is futile

To see this video directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbZPyBqUC_Y

Climate change election guide

One graphic says it all!

Hold Darden restaurants accountable

Leading restaurant chain needs to treat workers right

Abby McGill, International Labor Rights Forum

 

Leading Darden brands

Darden Restaurants, the owners of well-known eateries including Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse, could provide a living wage of $15 an hour for all its employees for about 35 cents more per meal served. 

Yet 20 percent of Darden’s 150,000 employees make only $2.13 an hour (the U.S. tipped minimum wage rate). Low wages make it hard for many of Darden’s workers to meet their families' basic needs, let alone afford healthy and sustainable food.

Known for gut-busting portions at rock-bottom prices, Darden also relies on sourcing unsustainable ingredients, including factory-farmed meat and dairy that pollute the environment and provide no consideration for the working conditions of the people who produce and package it.

That’s why we want you to join environmental, public health and worker organization allies to urge Darden to adopt a Good Food Menu that would foster environmental sustainability, good nutrition and a valued workforce!

With more than 1500 restaurants, serving 320 million meals every year, Darden’s purchasing and menu decisions have a huge impact on people’s health and our environment. 

Staffing Up for Corruption

Campaigns are hiring “donor maintenance managers” as personal concierges to millionaire supporters.

By Jim Hightower

Oh, great — just what America’s Big Money politics needed: more campaign consultants.

Already, candidates are walled off from people, reality, and any honesty about themselves by a battalion of highly specialized consultants controlling everything from issues to hairstyle. But now comes a whole new category of staff to add to the menagerie: “donor maintenance manager.”

We can thank the Supreme Court for this. Its malevolent Citizens United decision produced an insidious platinum class of mega-donors and corporate super PACs, each pumping $500,000, $5 million, $50 million — or even more — into campaigns.

No contracts for law-breakers!

Reining in the Beltway Bandits

By Phil Mattera in the Dirt Diggers Digest

A New York Times op-ed by lawyer Eric Havian argues that the best way to punish corporate fraudsters is to bar them from government contracts. Debarment of companies is an established practice, but it’s usually been employed in a half-hearted way such as the temporary exclusion of BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Havian, however, highlights the little known power of federal agencies to exclude individual executives from working in regulated industries, sometimes for life, if they are shown to have engaged in unsavory practices. He argues that bringing about such exclusions is much easier than prosecuting executives on criminal charges, as the Justice Department says it plans to do more often.

This is an intriguing idea but the problem is always the uncertainty as to whether getting tough with executives, even high-level ones, will succeed in changing corporate behavior. Ultimately, all individuals are expendable in large corporations, so the desire to boost profits by breaking the rules is likely to trump any inclination to behave properly to protect those in the executive suite.

Flexible thinking on guns and authority

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow CLICK HERE.

The lying game

Toward a clearer understanding of how humans behave when they bend the truth

University of Huddersfield

University of Huddersfield investigative psychology lecturer Dr Chris Street is making breakthroughs that are leading towards a clearer understanding of how humans tell lies and how their deceptions can be detected. 

For more than 30 years it has been said that we should trust our hunches and unconscious knowledge of body language. 

Yet his work, described in a new journal article, shows that we would be better off consciously relying on a single "cue," such as whether or not a person is plainly thinking hard.

But gathering reliable research data is a tricky proposition. To begin with, a set of lies and truths need to be collected. Ideally, participants should not be aware that they are taking part in experiments that are dealing with the subject of truth and lies. 

Dog of the Week

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I'm also good with other doggies and people of all ages.

Let me sit at your feet, walk by your side and I'll be your devoted companion forever.

Anti-science starting to fade?

Polls suggest that US Climate Denial is dying

By Richard Matthews

Over the course of recent years, polls that examine American attitudes on global warming suggest that climate denial may be dying. It would appear that Americans have gone through the five stages in what has been called the cycle of climate acceptance.  

This is an adaptation of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ seminal work, “On Death and Dying.” The first step is denial, followed by anger, depression, bargaining and finally acceptance. While many of these stages overlap or co-occur, the general trend from denial to acceptance appears to be borne out by polling data.

House Republicans neglect justice

Tea Party even worse

By Harry Rix in Rhode Island’s Future

“But woe to you Pharisees! For you…neglect justice…” Jesus (Luke 11:42)

The House is in crisis.

Favoring the wealthiest 0.2 percent, House Republicans would eliminate estate taxes, increasing deficits for a decade by $320 billion. 

Do families of mega-rich magnates, who own more than the bottom 90 percent, need charitable relief?

As for spending, Republicans’ 2015 House budget chops food stamps by $125 billion; cancels Pell Grants for many students; and block-grants Medicaid, cutting health care for the destitute.

Mainstream Republicans also oppose health coverage for 16 million new insureds; obstruct realistic laws reducing the annual carnage of 32,000 gun deaths; and reject crucial infrastructure repairs and jobs.

House Republicans neglect justice. They eagerly demolish both taxes and spending to benefit the uber-wealthy—at everyone else’s expense.

The Tea Party believes these policies are not sufficiently strict. Jim Jordan of Ohio spearheaded the sequester’ s automatic dire cutbacks—too large to execute—but enacted due to right-wing rigidity.

Science is funny!

This explains a lot

Dancing makes you feel good and help bond with others

From: University of Oxford

Dancing in time with others raises your pain threshold, Oxford University researchers have found.

A team from the University's Experimental Psychology and Anthropology Departments wanted to see whether our feelings of social closeness when dancing with others might be linked to endorphins – the body’s 'feel good' chemicals.

Endorphins are neurotransmitters that form part of the brain’s pain control system, but they are also implicated in social bonding. 

Welfare Reform Solutions for Low-Income Workers

The upcoming presidential race has brought out the worst in some candidates when it comes to the topic of low-income workers and wage inequality. Erroneously, some have tried to link poverty to immigration, dishonest practices and shear laziness. 

The truth of the matter is that social welfare and welfare reform is a complex, dynamic issue that is only made worse by political rhetoric.

Trying a Fossil Fiend

Villains like former coal CEO Don Blankenship make it easier to get riled up over climate change.

By Emily Schwartz Greco

Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders wants the Justice Department to investigate and potentially prosecute ExxonMobil for corporate fraud.

The Vermont senator is alarmed by reports that the energy giant spread doubt about climate change despite knowing since 1977 that global warming was both underway and fueled by its own operations. 

Bankrolling a disinformation campaign helped stymie climate action and “may have caused public harm,” Sanders said in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

A tobacco-style case against the whole oil and gas industry on racketeering charges may sound unlikely, but prospects are growing. And all heavily compensated executives who run fossil-fuel companies should heed the federal trial of a de-throned coal king in Charleston, West Virginia.

Prosecutors accuse Don Blankenship of conspiring to violate health and safety laws and to cover up that wrongdoing. The former Massey Energy CEO was also indicted for lying to shareholders and financial regulators about his company’s safety practices after an explosion killed 29 men at its Upper Big Branch coal mine in 2010.