Gov. Trump-Lover Appointments Yet Another Corporate Creep to Fuck Up State Government

You know what would happen if every single corporate executive on earth - starting with the ones currently committing mass casualty event while masquerading as public servants - were loaded onto rockets and fired into the sun?

Lots of good.  Businesses would be run by the workers who actually do the work instead of playing games with stock prices and people's lives. Governments would be staff and run by people who have the education, experience and enthusiam about public service to actually be good public servants.
And we wouldn't be under attack by nonsense like this:

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Dec. 14, 2016) - Gov. Matt Bevin today announced the appointment of Terry R. Gill, Jr. as Secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development. 

The Cabinet is the primary state agency responsible for encouraging new jobs and investment in the state. Gov. Bevin says Gill is the right choice to help lead the Commonwealth to new heights.

“Kentucky is poised for unparalleled success in the years ahead,” said Gov. Bevin. “Thanks to a new pro-business majority in the legislature and our focus on eliminating bureaucratic red tape, Kentucky is becoming more business-friendly by the day. Terry brings integrity, business competence and a passion for economic development that will foster a stronger environment for job creation in every region of Kentucky. The Commonwealth is on track to becoming the undisputed engineering and manufacturing hub of excellence in America.”

Gill most recently served as President of OneTouchPoint, a $140MM marketing services organization. He was responsible for growth and M&A initiatives resulting in the creation of the largest privately held marketing services and technical printing company in the region. 

Prior to OneTouchPoint, Gill served as the Vice President of EnterpriseCorp, the arm of Greater Louisville Inc., which is focused on increasing the number of high potential companies headquartered in the Louisville and Southern Indiana market. Before coming to EnterpriseCorp, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of FetterGroup.  

Gill holds a BA degree in Marketing with a Minor in Economics from the University of Kentucky. In addition to his charitable and civic involvement, he is a Board Member and serves on the Investment Committee for AccessVentures, a Louisville based impact investment firm.

Government is not a business.  It is pretty much the opposite of a business, in that it is supposed to be operated for the good of all the people, not just the good of the owners.

Government doesn't seek to make a profit; it works to improve the lives of all of its citizens.

All the abominations of government - budget cutting, deregulation, tax cutting, corruption - are the effluent of corporate influence. 

Taxes, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, are what we pay for civilized society. When corporations and the rich demand their already scandalously low toxes be cut even further, they are saying they don't want to be part of a civilized society that includes everyone.

Fine. Ship them all to Somalia.  No taxes there.

Trump-taint-licker Bevin is a member and tool of the money power.  He and his corporate cronies have no place in any government.

How Religion Corrodes Civil Society

That religion is a net negative to society is a given among atheists, but now Andy Norman at Free Inquiry has made the effort to explain why and how.

If the gods were not passengers on the earliest human attempts to resolve differences with words, they soon hitched a ride. Ever since, religious pronouncements have been part of public discourse. Such talk can induce feelings of religious solidarity, and this reinforces the impression that religion is conducive to moral and civil order. In fact, though, religious talk is profoundly corrosive of civil society. By quietly subverting expectations of rational accountability, religious talk undermines reason’s power to reconcile, civilize, and humanize us. In this article, I mean to illuminate the mechanism by which religions compromise our prospects for truly civilized existence. Protecting public discourse from the deleterious effects of religious piety, it turns out, is a job that cannot be left to the so-called “wall of separation” between church and state, because the U.S. Constitution’s anti-establishment clause is woefully inadequate to the task; a considerably higher and sturdier barrier is needed. The time has come for a more far-reaching principle, one that insulates politics from all forms of unaccountable talk. The solution lies in the promotion and collective embrace of an idea central to humanism—the idea that each of us has a profound moral and civic obligation to yield to the force of the better reason.

SNIP

He concludes:

Should the introduction of religious pronouncements into public discourse, then, be considered a punishable offense? No. I am not suggesting that we introduce legal or constitutional restrictions on religious speech. Indeed, the right to speak freely—even in a religious modality—should be viewed as fundamental. It doesn’t follow, though, that we are obliged to listen to such speech or treat it as germane to public policy issues, still less that we give it “equal time.” A truly civilized people will regard the insertion of theology into politics as faintly ridiculous—as worthy of bemused disdain. (And sometimes worthy of ridicule, the ridiculous being—by definition—that which calls for ridicule.) Such a people will enforce rational accountability with politeness and good humor but also with seriousness, vigor, laughter, sarcasm, and irony. They will take a stand for the force of the better reason and recognize that doing so will sometimes offend the delicate sensibilities of the faithful. The making of a truly sustainable and prosperous civilization requires that we renew our collective commitment to rational accountability.

Privatizing Public Space

Of all capitalism's horrific crimes against humanity, the worst may be destroying the very idea of public space that no individual or corporation can deny to other people.

David Atkins at Political Animal:

On one hand this seems like a cross-section of American entrepreneurialism combined with high-tech democratization similar to using Uber or Lyft for transportation, or buying a hot restaurant reservation via smartphone app.  

But on the other hand it’s a very personal and physical representation of a disturbing trend toward the privatization of public space. There’s something fundamental about using a public space for free or low cost as long as you need it, then ceding it to the first comer for their own use. That’s the principle of the commons. What happens when you allow people to start becoming mini-grifters, overstaying in public spaces in order to make a quick buck off the next person who can afford to pay their price for public space at the expense of those who cannot?

What happens when those people then hire other people to sit in public spaces and sell them? That’s almost a textbook case of tragedy of the commons combined with rent-seeking abuse by unscrupulous hucksters.

As of now San Francisco is stopping the practice, which is sure to cause howls of protest from libertarian types. But what other choice is there? And isn’t this the perfect encapsulation of why regulation is needed if the public spaces, parking and otherwise, are going to survive?

The Real Price of Inequality

Economic inequality doesn't just mean that some people are way richer than others.  It means that the bigger the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest, the more damage it causes to the economy and society, harming everyone.

It's already driven the U.S. into the ranks of the Third World.

Down With Tyranny:

Lately you've been hearing a few political leaders, particularly Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Brian Schatz and Bernie Sanders in the Senate and some of the Progressive Caucus members in the House, talking about steeply rising income inequality. They're talking about the kind of inequality that's part of vicious cycle that inevitably leads to oligarchy, plutocracy or outright fascism, in which a few families, through an accumulation of wealth and power, can dictate the laws and even the societal norms and control the mechanisms of enforcement to such an extent that they can virtually enslave an entire passive population.

It can't happen here? The manifestations are already undeniable. The greed and rapacity of the .01% has become so overbearing and their refusal to pay their fair share of taxes so debilitating that a UNICEF report I ran across this morning, a report that would have scandalized an empowered middle class anytime between the time Harry Truman was president until the beginning of the new normal under Ronald Reagan. The report goes a lot deeper than the shocking chart at top of the page which ranks 29 developed countries according to the overall well-being of their children. The 5 countries ranked at the very bottom include 4 of the poorest-- Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Greece-- plus the U.S., which is both one of the richest and one with the least economic equality. Those 5 countries, along with Italy, Portugal and Spain, have child poverty rates higher than 15%. The only countries that have allowed the child poverty gap to widen to more than 30%. are Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and, of course, the United States.

Some of the manifestations of America's rush to the bottom:

• The only developed countries with infant mortality rates higher than 6 per 1,000 births are Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and the United States.

• Only in Greece, Hungary, Portugal and the United States does the low birthweight rate exceed 8%.

• Only Canada, Greece and the United States have childhood obesity levels higher than 20%. The United States had the highest proportion of children overweight at both the beginning and end of the decade, reaching almost 30% by 2009/2010.

• Romania, the UK and the United States have the highest rates of teenage births (above 29 per 1,000).

• Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the United States are the only countries in which the homicide rate rises above 4 per 100,000. Almost all other countries fall into the range of 0 to 2.5 per 100,000.

It's Not Like Poor People Are Really Human

Stealing from and humiliating homeless people is not shooting them dead in cold blood, or tasering them to death for nothing, but it reveals the same vicious, psychotic mindset that has no place in public servants being paid tax dollars to protect and serve the populace - the entire populace.

Carimah Townes at Think Progress:

Months after their conduct was discovered, two police officers were disciplined for making a game of stealing signs from homeless people in Midland, Texas — and many believe the cops’ punishment was not harsh enough to fit the offense.

In the town with an estimated 300 homeless people, investigators reported 8 signs in Officer Derek Hester’s patrol vehicle, and Officer Daniel Zoelzer was discovered to have trashed an additional 10. Both officers claimed that they took the signs after issuing trespass warnings, but no such warnings were recorded in 2013. Text messages between the two show the officers expressing concerns about being found out, although one of the men’s texts read, “Oh I don’t care lol I’m not worried.” After an internal investigation, which was not originally publicized, Hester and Zoelzer were suspended for three unpaid days.

Zoelzer and Hester were first probed when another, unidentified cop reported Hester for procuring brass knuckles and refusing to turn them in as evidence; the police department learned of the game when looking into the matter. The suspension occurred two months after the police department first heard about the officers’ misconduct, but despite backlash, Police Chief Price Robinson contends that the disciplinary measure was satisfactory.

Police Chief says three days' suspension is sufficient punishment for treating like dogs people they were supposed to be helping.

I think we've identified the source of the problem, and it's not homeless people.

Midland's also oil country, and an old hangout of Smirky/Darth's.  I'll bet Dubya and Cheney think what those cops did is fucking hilarious.

But Midland's full of poor-bashing amateurs compared to Georgia, where they want the poors to just die in the streets.

Whatever You Do, Don't Call the Police

That's not snark; that's life-saving advice.

The plan is working: undermine public confidence in government while turning law enforcement agencies into militarized gangs of thugs so that everyone needs a personal arsenal to protect themselves and voila! It's the North American Somalia, where only the super rich enjoy civilization.

Digby:

A man called police to report a bicycle accident. The police arrived and thought he failed to respond to their orders for him to leave the street quickly enough. He was brutalized, arrested and thrown naked into solitary confinement for the night. He made the mistake of thinking he had rights.

No charges were filed.

One friend told me that I should chalk this up as another of life’s brutal lessons, that I should just be quiet, move on, and record this in my personal diary (if I must), and only return to these thoughts again if I am one day rich and powerful, when my decisions and donations can make a difference in the police force and civil affairs, and even then I might not really care. Stay coy until you are out of reach of the system, he emphasized. You think you’re clear now, but how many things went the way you expected?

Is there a weird middle ground, an uncanny valley, where you have no access to justice? Unless you’re severely beaten with cameras rolling or really have nothing to lose, your wiser friends will tell you to shut up and deal.

Yes they will. This is how authoritarian societies get normal, everyday people to keep their heads down and be wary of involvement, worried that they don't have enough power to fight the system and too much to lose if they try. Don't get involved. Don't make waves. Move along.

And if it isn't the state, it's some power mad civilian with a gun looking for trouble.

Liberty.

Read the whole story. It could be you or me. It most certainly is anyone who makes the mistake of interacting with the wrong people without having white skin.

Another Reason to Despise the Rich: They're Destroying Society

Hating the rich is not envy; it's defending Democracy

Dave Johnson at Alternet

So what if a very few people have such enormous sums? These expensive excesses of food, wine and art don’t really affect regular people like you and me. But it turns out that the distortions caused by the excesses of the ultra-wealthy affect all of us a lot.

Take the housing market. You may have noticed headlines like the following: Hedge funds crowd first-time buyers out of housing market or How Big Institutional Money Distorts Housing Prices. If you live in certain areas of the country, like the San Francisco Bay Area, rents are soaring and it is unimaginable that you might ever purchase a place to live. The ultra-wealthy are purchasing houses by the hundreds to be rented out

Then, of course, comes the usual next step when the ultra-wealthy are involved: they use their wealth and power to get things the rest of us can’t. One frequent example is demands for tax cuts.

SNIP

This worship of the ultra-wealthy is manifested in policies that give privileges to the rich the rest of us don’t receive. The principle of one-person-one-vote gives way to power and our society eventually becomes ruled by the principle of one-dollar-one-vote.

Examples of our abandonment of the principles of democracy in favor of more-for-the-wealthier include the change from “high-occupancy lanes” where cars with two or three people can bypass traffic jams to toll lanes, where drivers who have more money can purchase the right to bypass traffic jams. We also experience this when we see first-class passengers allowed to bypass the long security lines at airports.

In a recent NY Times op-ed, The Extra Legroom Society, Frank Bruni writes about how people of greater wealth can purchase the right to board a plane earlier, even the right to bypass lines or make others wait while they go around again for rides at amusement parks. While these are examples of businesses, not our government, introducing tiers for the wealthier, they show how Americans have come to accept that people with more money should be allowed to bypass them.

Bruni writes, “But lately, the places and ways in which Americans are economically segregated and stratified have multiplied, with microclimates of exclusivity popping up everywhere. The plane mirrors the sports arena, the theater, the gym. Is it any wonder that class tensions simmer?”

These are a few examples of the excesses the super-wealthy indulge in, along with examples of ways their super-wealth harms the rest of us. There are far more examples in evidence these days. Our democracy—the ability of We the People to make our own decisions about how we should be governed—is what is really at stake as more and more wealth accumulates among fewer and fewer people.

Normalized Torture Not Just for Terrorists Any More

I'm sure most of you have seen this horrific story. The victim is suing, and with luck he will soon own the hospital, the county government and the homes and future incomes of the cops, judges and "doctors" who demanded, allowed and performed repeated anal torture on him for the crime of rolling through a stop sign.

But there's much, much more to this story.

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Obviously, in an even moderately just universe all of the police and medical personnel involved would have been relieved of their duties and be facing criminal charges. But another major culprit here is the magistrate who issued the warrant. Granted, the police and doctors appear to have gone beyond its technical terms. But, still, the idea that failing to come to a full stop and clenching one’s buttocks constitutes the “probable cause” the Constitution requires for a warrant for this kind of search is absurd. Law enforcement acted abominably here, but they did so in part because the magistrate failed. (Incidentally, this is one reason that that conservatives on the Supreme Court were dead wrong to exempt legal errors by magistrates from the exclusionary rule. Evidence obtained through an illegal warrant should not be admissible even if the officers were acting in “good faith,” although of course here everyone was acting in bad faith.)

Meanwhile:

Witnesses have seen U.S. Special Forces commit war crimes in Afghanistan.

And:

The border patrol will continue shooting dead the people who throw rocks at them.

The JSOC war crimes, featuring gratuitous and unnecessary torture that turned innocent villagers into rabid insurgents, are documented in Jeremy Scahill's brilliant and devastating book Dirty Wars.

The militarization of American law enforcement, featuring gratuitous and unnecessary violence and torture that turns law-abiding citizens into rabid cop-haters, is documented in Radley Balko's shocking book Rise of the Warrior Cop.

But the nation-destroying stupidity continues.

Digby:

There is a price we've all paid for normalizing torture in our society, whether it's through the "comic" use of electricity via the taser or our blase attitude toward the torture regime of George W. Bush. I don't think the scope of just how much we destroyed the basic moral fabric of our culture will be seen for many decades.