Friday, August 29th, 2014
LAUREN STILLER RIKLEEN, - Forbes
Stephan: This is a lovely story of how capitalism could be run. It illustrates very clearly the difference between the vampire capitalism that dominates our economy, and the compassionate capitalism we could have.
Market Basket employees clap and cheer while watching a televised speech by restored Market Basket CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, at a supermarket location, in Chelsea, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Workers at the Market Basket supermarket chain just successfully undertook a high-risk job action with potentially historic repercussions. But this was more than just a fight for leadership control. It was also a story about boomers standing up for workplace values.
The series of events, which resulted in the sale of the company’s 71 Massachusetts and New Hampshire grocery stores, offers hope that boomers may reclaim their generational legacy and bring it into the workplace.
What Went Down at Market Basket
The back story: Two months ago, Market Basket’s Board of Directors fired company president, Arthur T. DeMoulas, the latest scene in a decades-long drama between warring factions of the wealthy DeMoulas family, Market Basket’s owners. […]
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Thursday, August 28th, 2014
ED CAESAR, - Smithsonian Magazine
Stephan: Stonehenge has been a subject of fascination for centuries with all manner of interpretations and myths. Finally we are actually getting hard data about it. Here is a survey of the latest.
Click through to see the illustrations and charts.
(Photo by Henrik Knudsen, with thanks to English Heritage)
We walked the Avenue, the ancient route along which the stones were first dragged from the River Avon. For centuries, this was the formal path to the great henge, but now the only hint of its existence was an indentation or two in the tall grass. It was a fine English summer’s day, with thin, fast clouds above, and as we passed through fields dotted with buttercups and daisies, cows and sheep, we could have been hikers anywhere, were it not for the ghostly monument in the near distance.
Faint as the Avenue was, Vince Gaffney hustled along as if it were illuminated by runway lights. A short, sprightly archaeologist of 56, from Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, he knows this landscape as well as anyone alive: has walked it, breathed it, studied it for uncounted hours. He has not lost his sense of wonder. Stopping to fix the monument in his eyeline, and reaching out toward […]
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Thursday, August 28th, 2014
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, - Salon
Stephan: Today's news brought yet more stories of police shootings of people whose only real crime seems to be being black. It made me wonder how many people are killed by the police each year. It turns out that is a very hard number to pin down. So I went looking to see if anyone had written something recently about this. Here's what I found. I was amazed to learn were have 17,000 different police agencies.
Police officers point their weapons at demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, August 18, 2014. (Credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott)
The shooting of teenager Michael Brown has focused the nation (again) on the dangers faced by young, unarmed black men walking the streets of America. The sight of paramilitary police with guns pointed at peaceful protesters in a suburban town in the Midwest also got our attention. And as we wait for the legal system to determine if officer Darren Wilson will be held liable for the shooting, new questions are rising to the surface about the issue of officer-involved shootings in general. How often does this happen? How are these issues normally handled by prosecutors and the courts? And surprisingly, there is almost no way of knowing how often American citizens are killed at the hands of the authorities.
Most reporting in the last couple of weeks has cited the figure of 400 people killed in incidents of ‘justifiable homicide” by police officers each […]
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Thursday, August 28th, 2014
Daniel Strauss, - Talking Points Memo
Stephan: The Koch brothers are openly trying to buy the Senate. And please don't write me about George Soros, saying he does the same. He does not. This is straightforward classical fascism.
If Iowa elects this woman they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Click through to hear the actual audio.
AP Photo / Charlie Neibergall
Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in her state, and two other top 2014 Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, heaped praise on the political network created by conservative billionaire funders Charles and David Koch during a secretive conference hosted by the wealthy brothers this summer.
Ernst, and Rep. Tom Cotton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Arkansas both praised donors at the June 16 retreat in Dana Point, California for their success, according to The Huffington Post and The Nation. A third candidate, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) also said that said that his race against Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) would probably be decided by “third party” money.
The event was held at the St. Regis Monarch Beach resort. Audio was obtained by The Undercurrent and shared with The Huffington Post. In that clip, the three candidates are heard on a panel titled “The Senate: A Window of Policy Opportunity for Principled Leaders.” Some of the audio was redacted to retain the identity of the […]
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Thursday, August 28th, 2014
LAUREN WINDSOR, - The Nation
Stephan: This is what corruption looks like. Naked unashamed corruption. This is the senior Republican member of the Senate. I simply do not understand how anybody in Kentucky can vote for Mitch McConnell, but I know that tens of thousands will.
Click through to hear the audio capture.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. June 19, 2014. (Reuters/Yuri Gripas)
Last week, in an interview with Politico, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) outlined his plan to shut down President Obama’s legislative agenda by placing riders on appropriations bills. Should Republicans take control of the Senate in the 2014 elections, McConnell intends to pass spending bills that ‘have a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy.”
What McConnell didn’t tell Politico was that two months ago, he made the same promise to a secret strategy conference of conservative millionaire and billionaire donors hosted by the Koch brothers. The Nation and The Undercurrent obtained an audio recording of McConnell’s remarks to the gathering, called ‘American Courage: Our Commitment to a Free Society.” In the question-and-answer period following his June 15 session titled ‘Free Speech: Defending First Amendment Rights,” McConnell says:
‘So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill. And I assure […]
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