"Ch-ch-ch-changes..."

Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

Tax cuts for the wealthiest of us!! Great idea!!

Need a stark breakdown of just why it is that attacks on public employees in Wisconsin and beyond are striking such a nerve? Take a look at this chart from the Center for American Progress comparing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy to budget cuts to 10 social safety net programs. 

Combine this visual depiction of our supposed "shared sacrifices" and "painful cuts" with the extremes of wealth and poverty our culture editor, Cord, shared yesterday—how the 400 wealthiest Americans are now richer than the bottom 50 percent of citizens—and it's not hard to understand why people are protesting.

Link to original post:  http://www.good.is/post/must-see-chart-tax-breaks-for-the-rich-versus-budget-cuts/

Men: On shifting sand?

"The yang of America’s labor force is this: over a 40-year career, a man earns $431,000 more than a woman on average, according to the Center for American Progress. The yin of America’s labor force is this: in this decade, for the first time in American history, men no longer inevitably dominate the labor force. Women were actually the majority of payroll employees for the five months that ended in March, according to one measure from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s mostly because about three-quarters of Americans who lost their jobs in the Great Recession were men." --Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times (see link below) When you add this kind of data to the fact that the former minorities are becoming the majority and that we have our first Black president, etc., etc., it's not a complete surprise that white, conservative, reactionary men resort to at least confusion, if not insecurity and, unfortunately, some ugliness (e.g., racism, etc.). That doesn't make it okay but it certainly helps explain a lot of their actions and reactions to our world of late. And I have news for ya'll on it---it's not going to get better. We're not going back to the way things were--or the way we think they were. Link to original post: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/opinion/22kristof.html?_r=1&hp