Tuesday, November 12th, 2013
Stephan: This is what you always see when wealth disparity becomes too great in a country. Armored cars are one of the signs of paranoia on the Right, arising from their awareness that things are grotesquely unfair. We are beginning to look like any one of a dozen authoritarian banana republic nations. You know the list.
Bloomberg reports that Texas Armoring, a San Antonio-based company specializing in armoring vehicles for the super-rich (the biggest in the world), is enjoying an unprecedented sales boom.
Currently, they armor about 200 vehicles per year. In the next five years, the company’s CEO, Trent Kimbell, expects that number to double.
‘If you’re rich and need protection, you are going to come to us to armor your vehicle,’ Kimbell says. The part about being rich makes sense. Including the vehicle, the low-end cost is $80,000, the high-end is $500,000. Protection itself ranges from being fortified against handguns all the way up to repelling an AK-47 and M-16.
Not surprisingly, politicians and celebrities are a large part of the clientele, including Steven Segal and Mel B (aka ‘Scary Spice’). Not every customer lives in the United States. Executives who fear kidnapping in places like West Africa are also clients.
Kimbell says his company offers what he describes as ‘James Bond-type accessories.’ These include smoke screens and electrified door handles.
Kimbell says the increase in demand for his product is connected to an increase in the perception that threats are on the rise.
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Monday, November 11th, 2013
Esther Yu-Hsi Lee, - Think Progress
Stephan: Here we see evidence validating the previous story.
On Saturday, nearly 40 armed men, women, and children waited outside a Dallas, Texas area restaurant to protest a membership meeting for the state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun safety advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
According to a spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action (MDA), the moms were inside the Blue Mesa Grill when members of Open Carry Texas (OCT) - an open carry advocacy group - ‘pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks.
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Monday, November 11th, 2013
Stephan: Here is more factual evidence as to why I believe the racist Theocratic Right is not just the most toxic movement in American society, but also the the most physically dangerous.
Most of us here probably already know this, but it bears repeating: The biggest terror threat in the US is from homegrown right-wing groups and individuals:
In the U.S., 56 percent of terrorist attacks and plots have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, 30 percent by eco-terrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently reported the highest number of extremist hate groups ever recorded in U.S. history, with the sharp rise attributed to massive growths in white supremacist, anti-immigrant and radical anti-government groups. Anti-Muslim hate groups have also increased by 300 percent.
Why is this not something we’re likely to see from any news outlet the average American is likely to encounter on a daily basis? Because the conservatives will do anything to keep this news suppressed:
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Monday, November 11th, 2013
Stephan: I hope this story is wrong, but I fear it may be correct. If true only massive citizen action can stop this.
What Cuts Are Being Proposed?
Obama is proposing, along with the support of Republicans and many Democrats, to change how annual increases in Social Security benefits are calculated. Obama wants to switch to a different formula, called Chained CPI. This switch would result in a benefit cut of $230 billion dollars over 10 years. All this is being done under the guise of ‘strengthening
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Monday, November 11th, 2013
CHARLES MONTGOMERY, - Salon
Stephan: Wal-Mart could not exist in its present form without billions of dollars of tax payer subsidies. They are so blatant about it, they instruct their workers to apply for food stamps, and other social benefits, because that is the only way people can afford to work there. Now this analysis lends further evidence as to why the Wal Mart business model should be regulated by law, and why the minimum wage should be raised to $10. This is a completely cynical business model, and it has made six members of the family richer than 138 million Americans -- including all their workers -- combined. NEVER shop at Wal-Mart.
For all that this is also a good news story, because it is the story of how a few people, supported by one wealthy man, who was committed to helping a city he loved, saved Asheville.
Jobs, Money, and Geometry
Most of us agree that development that provides employment and tax revenue is good for cities. Some even argue that the need for jobs outweighs aesthetic, lifestyle, or climate concerns-in fact, this argument comes up any time Walmart proposes a new megastore near a small town. But a clear-eyed look at the spatial economics of land, jobs, and tax regimes should cause anyone to reject the anything-and-anywhere-goes development model. To explain, let me offer the story of an obsessive number cruncher who found his own urban laboratory quite by chance.
Joseph Minicozzi, a young architect raised in upstate New York, was on a cross-country motorcycle ride in 2001 when he got sidetracked in the Appalachian Mountains. He met a beautiful woman in a North Carolina roadside bar and was smitten by both that woman and the languid beauty of the Blue Ridge region. Now they share a bungalow with two dogs in the mountain town of Asheville.
Asheville is, in many ways, a typical midsize American city, which is to say that its downtown was virtually abandoned in the second half of the twentieth century. Dozens of elegant old structures were boarded up or encased in aluminum siding […]
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