Yesterday I submitted some comments for two blog posts at Hatewatch, the blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The first one was about how workers are exploited. What I said I'm sure has been said better by others, but I have never seen an explanation of exploitation like this one. I think it's pretty good and might be helpful for people.
The post is here. A few things I need to clarify about my comments:
1. When I talk about workers exerting themselves, I mean PHYSICALLY exerting themselves.
2. Of course the wealth re-distribution of progressive taxation involves funding stuff like free universal health-care, free day-care, etc.
3. The figure of 300 (actually something like 100-400 is a better way of putting it) only makes sense with national corporations; with small businesses 20 is probably much more accurate and small business owners probably work more than their employees do (in general, what I'm talking about doesn't apply much to small businesses (there are certainly plenty of exceptions where it DOES apply), depending on how you define small- I lean towards saying it's 1 to somewhere around 50 employees)
Here's the comment:
"
Tom Shelley said,
on October 21st, 2010 at 11:57 am
A response to Rick Nettleton:
How have Democrats contributed to hate? You seem to think that Democratic hate for conservatives is comparable to the hatred against Muslims, LGBT people. I mean the problem with the Tea Party isn’t that they hate liberals, it’s the racism, and homophobia and anti-muslim bigotry. You can’t compare that with hating conservatives.
No, corporations and rich people are not paying their share of taxes. They can easily give more and still live better than the rest of us. Progressive taxation is an important way to re-distribute wealth. And why is it necessary to do so? Because to one degree or another, workers are exploited by the bosses. The details differ a bit from job to job, but for the most part, workers are exerting themselves A LOT more than the people at the top of the corporation; they’re also using their heads almost as much as those at the top. And yet the people at the top make about 300 times more than the workers at the bottom. That is obscene.
As far as business and the nation’s wealth- 1) the WORKERS are responsible for building this country and 2) that wealth is not enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of the population.
Tom"
The second comment is here. Some things I need to clarify:
1. The 9.12 project is partly based on the following (from the 9.12 website, here):
"This is a non-political movement. The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the greatest nation ever created.
That same feeling – that commitment to country is what we are hoping to foster with this idea. We want to get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again."
Here's the comment:
"
#
Tom Shelley said,
on October 21st, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Some thoughts on the 9.12 project:
I hadn’t heard of it beforte this post (I am not following current events and politics as much as I should). I looked at the web-site and I find the idea of Glenn Beck promoting civic unity and bringing Americans together ridiculous. First there is what he has been saying recently (see http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=glenn+beck&x=0&y=0 for some good examples (certainly his talk of hunting progressives the same way Israel went after Nazis)). I mean, he called Obama an anti-white racist and now he wants us to all come together? Then, as far as the spirit of American unity since 9/11 we have plenty of evidence that a new McCarthyism took over the political right, as The Progressive has docuemented at- http://www.progressive.org/list/mccarthy?page=18 .We have Coulter writing a book that calls all liberals/leftists traitors. She said that the American Taliban (the teenager captured sjortly after 9/11) should be executed because she believes that liberals need to be physically intimidated.
During WWII the UK had a coalitiion government because they saw that in that war they needed unity. Bush could have had a few cabinet positions given to Democrats (Cllinton, in the late 1990s when we were NOT in a major and prolonged war, had a Republican for a Secretary of Defense) but he didn’t, and instead used 9/11 to push his radical agenda.
i think I’m missing ione more element of this, but I think I’ve made my point. It’s a joke for Beck to talk about unity.
Tom"
This blog is mostly about 3 themes- Irish Republicanism, Star Trek, and opposition to bigotry, primarily in America (racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc.). It is mostly about Northern Ireland. It will mostly be about these issues in general and past events and will only sometimes touch on current events. Feel free to comment on the earlier posts.
About My Blog
My blog is about history, popular culture, politics and current events from a democratic socialist and Irish republican perspective. The two main topics are Northern Ireland on one hand and fighting anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia on the other. The third topic is supporting the Palestinians, and there are several minor topics. The three main topics overlap quite a bit. I have to admit that it’s not going to help me get a graduate degree, especially because it’s almost always written very casually. But there are some high-quality essays, some posts that come close to being high-quality essays, political reviews of Sci-Fi TV episodes (Star Trek and Babylon 5), and a unique kind of political, progressive poetry you won't find anywhere else. (there are also reviews of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and reviews of Roseanne)
(my old blog was not showing up in Google search results AT ALL (99% of it wasn't being web-crawled or indexed or whatever) and there was another big problem with it, so this is a mirror of the old one although there will be some occassionnal editing of old posts and there will be new posts. I started this blog 12/16/20; 4/28/21 I am now done with re-doing the internal links on my blog) (the Google problem with my blog (only 1% of this new one is showing up in Google search results) is why I include a URL of my blog when commenting elsewhere, otherwise I would get almost no visitors at all)
(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)
(I just recently realized that my definition of "disapora" was flawed- I thought it included, for example, Jews in Israel, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and with the Irish diaspora, the Irish on that island. I'll do some work on that soon (11/21/20 I have edited the relevant paragraph in my post about Zionism))
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