And here is the twitter of one John Johnston:
Posts tagged "America"
Theodore C. Sorensen
The man behind the throne in many respects of JFK’s administration. What an amazing time for American politics, where the world felt like it could be lost in a second but also that the world was waiting there to be taken.
“I still believe that the mildest and most obscure of Americans can be rescued from oblivion,” Sorensen once said, “by good luck, sudden changes in fortune, sudden encounters with heroes. I believe it because I lived it.” A man whose words truly shaped the world around us and live on in their infamy.
The startling vote came up at a City Council meeting here on Tuesday, provoked by a run-of-the-mill budget dispute over services that had spun out of control: decriminalize domestic violence.
Three arms of government, all ostensibly representing the same people, have been at an impasse over who should be responsible for — and pay for — prosecuting people accused of misdemeanor cases of domestic violence.
City leaders had blamed the Shawnee County district attorney for handing off such cases to the city without warning. The district attorney, in turn, said he was forced to not prosecute any misdemeanors and to focus on felonies because the County Commission cut his budget. And county leaders accused the district attorney of using abused women as pawns to negotiate more money for his office.
After both sides dug in, the dispute came to a head Tuesday night.
By a vote of 7 to 3, the City Council repealed the local law that makes domestic violence a crime.
…“To have public officials pointing fingers while victims of domestic violence are trying to figure out who will protect them is just stunning,” said Joyce Grover, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
The New York Times, “Facing Cuts, A City Repeals Its Domestic Violence Law.”
Jesus H. Christ.
(via inothernews)
Nuts. Actually nuts.
Bridgeport, Connecticut has the nation’s widest gap between the rich and poor, according to census data. The city’s richest 5% earn $685,000 while the bottom 20% make less than $15,000.
“If you’re looking for ground zero for the growth of inequality in the United States, Connecticut is the place,” Stephen Adair, professor of sociology at Central Connecticut State University, told The Daily.
What does that mean in practical terms? The top 20 percent in the Bridgeport area — which includes Fairfield County, one of the wealthiest areas in the United States — took home nearly 60 percent of its income, while the bottom 20 percent took home 2.5 percent of the region’s money. In this nexus of billion-dollar hedge funds and bombed-out housing projects, the top 5 percent raked in a mean income of $685,000, while the bottom 20 percent’s mean income totaled less than $15,000.
To put that in perspective, if the Bridgeport metro area were a country, it would rank 12th from the bottom in the world for economic equality — lower than Mexico, Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe.
An interesting find in America, showing the case of the 99%
Google Crisis Map: Sandy Edition
Embedded is Google.org’s Sandy Crisis Map with data pulled in from the US Naval Research Laboratory, the National Hurricane Center, the US Geological Survey and weather.com.
The pins show emergency shelter locations.
Visit Google.org for a larger version, as well as the ability to filter the various data it’s pulling in.
If Hurricane Sandy doesn’t persuade Americans to get serious about climate change, nothing will. Read more.
