privatization

Here I go again – the at-will piece of human detritus that I am, according to Oregon’s great employers, twice now, non-profits, sacking me because I pushed the state’s vocational rehabilitation careerists outside their pathetic Little Eichmann lives by pushing for my clients – adults with developmental-intellectual-psychological disabilities – to get as much out of the state’s bureaucracies that are filled with middling folk who do not give a shit about people.

Margaret Thatcher, drinking your milkshake (source)by Gaius PubliusI had a different piece set up for the next few days, revolving around a recent interview by Noam Chomsky (which Howie wrote about here) that touches on our so-called "capitalism" and also on the Bernie Sanders candidacy.

The other day, a Member of Congress asked me if there's ever been a good DCCC chairman. My memory doesn't stretch all the way back to 1868, although the first chairman, James Rood Doolittle (WI), was a Democrat and then a Republican and then a Democrat again. He was a fanatic opponent of the 15th Amendment, which granted citizenship-- and the right to vote-- to the freed slaves after the Civil War.

In 1953 at the age of 5, I was positive that I’d grow up to be Superman.  When George Reeves paid his weekly visit to the family television set I was ready.  With a dish towel cape, hands upon my hips, wearing an invincible expression, I was ready to battle the bad guys with truth, justice, the American way, incredible strength, and an unparalleled flying technique.

Anti-water charge campaigners had a major moral victory over government plans to make the people pay for the financial crisis when Eurostat determined that Irish Water had failed the Market Corporation Test.  One reason given was that “sales must cover at least 50pc of production costs.

My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains, or his signature, would be on the contract.
— The Godfather (1972)

Silicon life forms declare war on "ugly giant bags of mostly water" — in other words, us.by Gaius PubliusWater is literally the stuff of life for living beings. All life began as single-celled organisms floating in water. In their earliest and simplest form, living things are organized bags of water capable of reproduction, whose "inside" water is held together by a permeable or semi-permeable membrane ("sack" or "skin") through which nutrients borne by the "outside" water (the environment) pass in, and through which waste passes out.

On July 16 this year protests erupted outside Greek parliament as lawmakers were approving further harsh austerity plan in exchange for a third European bailout. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras won by 229 votes to 64 while 32 members of his own Syriza party voted against the measures, including his ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
The vote took place after a fiery debate when Tsipras energetically defended his stand under threat of resignation.

Image: Minister of the Crown 'Fluffy' Mundell makes his escape from the back door into a waiting car.
 

It was not your usual celebration to mark the launch of a new venture. While Secretary of State for Scotland David ‘Fluffy’ Mundell was opening a food bank upstairs from a baker’s in Dumfries town centre, noisy demonstrators gathered in the street outside demanding he came down to explain himself. But ‘Fluffy’ chose to treat his constituents with contempt and slink out the back door under police protection and into a waiting car.
Photo by Stuart Littlewood