Fascinating portrait of an oligarch - Michael Dell, owner of Dell Computers.......
"How a homegrown geek outsourced, downsized, and tax-breaked his way to the top."
So what are you reading this on? A Dell? Read this and you won't ever buy another one as he seems to be an embodiment of all of the forces that have destroyed the middle class....bastard.....
Before he became the 15th-richest American, Michael Dell was hailed as a corporate wunderkind. His eponymous computer company's "dazzlingly efficient" factory in Austin, Texas, "may be the best hope of keeping blue-collar jobs in the United States," proclaimed the New York Times in 2004. Recently, Dell Inc. has been better known for gobbling up federal contracts and pulling financial shenanigans to line its executives' pockets—all while exploiting tax loopholes, outsourcing production, and laying off American workers.
Could this be a harbinger of the future? Life without police, 10/15 years from now where our toxic politics have cut budgets for all services to the point where life as we know it has broken down?
Welcome to Flint, Michigan today. Of course this chaos has started in poor areas like Flint that don't have many jobs....you can be sure upper middle class communities will continue to have well-funded police forces....
I am copying all of it because it's a short article.....
A sign taped to the entrance of police headquarters says it all: “Closed weekends and holidays.” Every weekday, the doors are locked at dusk.
It’s not that the cops here are scared; it’s just that they’re outmanned, outgunned and flat broke.
Flint is the birthplace of General Motors and the home of the U.A.W.’s first big strike. In case you didn’t know this, the words “Vehicle City” are spelled out on the archway spanning the Flint River.
But the name is a lie. Flint isn’t Vehicle City anymore. The Buick City complex is gone. The spark-plug plant is gone. Fisher Body is gone.
What Flint is now is one of America’s murder capitals. Last year in Flint, population 102,000, there were 66 documented murders. The murder rate here is worse than those in Newark and St. Louis and New Orleans. It’s even worse than Baghdad’s.
After the door is unlocked and I enter police headquarters, it is easy to see why. There are only six patrolmen on duty for a Saturday night. So broke is Flint that the city laid off two-thirds of its police force in the last three years. The front desk looks like a dusty museum piece.
I am assigned to ride along with Officer Steve Howe, a 20-year-veteran of the department. Caucasian. Late 50s. Medium build. Mustache. Clump of very well-kempt salt-and-pepper hair.
I sign a release form and am given a bulletproof vest.
“Isn’t that a little bit much?” I ask the sergeant on duty.
“You have to sign your life away,” he tells me.
Cops can be a suspicious, insular lot when it comes to reporters. But Howe and the others are blunt and self-effacing. “We ain’t cops anymore,” Howe says. “We’re librarians. We take reports. We don’t fight crime.”
He guides me through the yellowing jail cells upstairs that had to be closed down recently because of lack of manpower. “If you break into someone’s house, we can’t hold you,” he says with a straight face. “If you’ve got a weapon or you’ve murdered somebody, then county will take you. I don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel. Only darkness.”
We leave headquarters and head out into the night. Howe turns up the heat in his Chevy cruiser and switches on the computer.
“That’s something,” I say hopefully. “Some squad cars in Detroit don’t even have computers.”
“Hold on a sec,” he says. “Let it warm up.”
When it does, I see that there are more than 12 runs stacked up, including a kidnapping call that is more than six hours old. A home-invader call is two hours old. A “man with a gun” call is 90-minutes old.
“Sometimes, we don’t get to a call for two days,” he says. Last fall, an elderly couple called after being held up at gunpoint in their driveway. The police arrived on the scene five hours later.
Traffic tickets?
“Don’t make me laugh,” he says.
We drive 50 miles through the evening, and the city flashes by us in all its monotony. Liquor store. Gas station. Liquor store. Hi-C, 25 cents. Catfish steaks, $1.25. Regular unleaded, $3.65.
The action isn’t heavy tonight, either. Domestic disputes, mostly. A woman will not let her brother into the house, having already destroyed his furniture with a pipe and thrown his clothing into the snow. Another man has beaten his girlfriend and locked himself inside a neighbor’s house. Howe takes reports. The kidnapping call gathers dust.
We pass by an abandoned Victorian with a sign neatly spray-painted on the peeling door: “Please don’t burn.”
“Sorry, slow night,” Howe apologizes. “Last weekend we had four murders.”
Nature calls. Howe pulls into the 7-Eleven for a toilet break and a Big Gulp. As we get out of the car, I see a blue flash of light near the side of the store and the sound of gunfire. A shadow runs toward the apartment complex.
“Back in the car!” Howe barks at me.
Someone might have just become the 14th homicide victim of 2011, and winter hasn’t even broken yet.
Howe calls in: “Shots fired.” He gives the following description: A shadow wearing a hood. And in less than two minutes, the entire Flint police force on patrol swarms the area. All six of them. They find no gun and no victim. They do, however, round up a fidgety kid in a hood, but since he doesn’t have a gun, they kick him loose.
Frustrated, Howe heads back to the car and watches the kid walk away. Two more people are killed in Flint the following week.
The rise of Muslims in Europe - I can't vouch for this one way or the other, as it was made by the Christian Broadcasting Network and I don't know how right wing or [Beckishly] anti-muslim they are, but it seems to be true and is not sensational in any way.....
So let's do a Fox News - we report, you decide......4 minutes....
Long article from the NYT Magazine on sugar and it's effects on our bodies - we know eating too much sugar gives you diabetes, but the author goes further and makes the case that ingesting HFCS [high fructose corn syrup] and lots of sugar [as opposed to the natural sugar in fruits and vegetables] may, may be linked to the increase in cancer......
No judgement on this one [we report, you decide] but I will give you one factoid - in France if you are diagnosed with any type of cancer the first thing they do is put you on a sugar-free diet.....
A good read, and worth putting on your Times quota...
On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.
Scary 3 minute video - Chinese children from a kindergarten playing fairly decent ensemble guitar.......scary in it's hard to imagine the rigorous discipline required to get this good - in 4 year olds?
Yeeech......3 minutes.....
Guantanamo Prison is still in the news, so the President is consulting with General Flustercluck on what to do, but there's a shadow in the backgroundhat won't go away.....
Tom Tomorrow has a unique take on this issue.....
Good article from the Ft. Lauderdale SS detailing the constitutional amendments we need to pass in Florida to combat the lethal policies our wonderful Governor and the scum in the Legislature are foisting on us.....
Florida Gov. Rick Scott doesn't just look scary; he is scary — and he does scary things. As Floridians watch helplessly, millions are screaming "buyer's remorse," now that they finally understand the extent of Scott's radical agenda — and face what they did to themselves by failing to heed warnings.
In addition, the Florida Legislature, now tea party/Republican-dominated with overwhelming majorities, is matching Scott's madness. Under the pretense of achieving fiscal soundness,Tallahassee is giving Florida an extreme makeover — as a state in which corporate interests trump people's rights and religious zealots tell everyone how to live.
Floridians have a choice: They can grouse but do nothing — or they can retake the state and show the governor and Legislature that "the people" are still boss.
Voters should pass eight constitutional amendments to restore representative government in Florida:
Music video - Caitlin Rose "Own Side".
Unusual video with a very nice low key country song, but the video also seems to be a documentary about life in the South, with assorted country folk, professional wrestlers and a shot of someone smoking [a cigarette!].
Interesting.....3 minutes......
Todays clever dog video - Breakfast with Ginger
Todays Irish joke
'Twenty quid," she whispers.
Paddy had never had a hooker before, but decides -- what the hell, it's only twenty quid. So they hide in the bushes.
They're going at it for a couple of minutes when, all of a sudden, a light flashes on them.
It's a police officer.'What's going on here, people?' asks the officer.
'I'm making love to me wife,' the Irishman answers sounding annoyed.
'Oh, I'm so sorry,' says the cop, 'I didn't know.'=
'Well, needer did I,' says Paddy, 'til ya shoined dat light in her face!!!"
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