Monday Miscellany! (#Snowden, #EDNA, #CorporateGreed, #RU486, and more)

[maxomai]

• Read Edward Snowden's A Manifesto for the Truth, and pass it along!


• More, much more, on the NSA's quest for total information awareness, here and here and here and here and here, and most of all here.


• The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a Federal bill that would make it illegal to fire someone on grounds of sexual orientation, has a veto-proof majority of sixty votes in the Senate, with several Republicans joining the Democrats to pass it. The bill now moves to the House, where it will die.


• Steve Cohen struck a deal with Federal prosecutors on charges of insider trading. He will plead guilty, pay a $1.2 billon fine, and serve no jail time. $1.2 billion is a lot of money - in fact, it's his bonus for the year. Cue seething rage in three, two.....


• Some good news on the reproductive rights front as the US Supreme Court has let stand an injunction on Oklahoma's stupid and odious ban on RU-486. Edit: This bodes well for the long game on Roe v. Wade, at least with this court.


• People keep asking what the working class has to do to make the 1% really afraid. The impolite, hard-nosed answer here.

Comments

[arkham4269.livejournal.com]

Is that like fining someone the amount they stole?

Funny how possess a little amount of weed can get you locked up for life if caught 3 times in certain states but really scam millions of dollars which affects thousands and you get nothing more than a speeding ticket.

Wall street managers are the new nobility

[maxomai.livejournal.com]

Case in point: Wall Street CEO drives drunk, collides with a 59-year-old woman throwing her scores of feet through the air, pleads guilty, gets sixteen days in Rikers.

Sixteen days. For homicide.

Needless to say, the families were not pleased. But you'll notice that this story has been mostly forgotten.

We're not heading to neo-feudalism. We're already there. It's just a matter of sorting out the details.