Friday fragments

Last updated on: July 15, 2011 at 1:04 pm by Fred Clark

Friday fragments 2011-07-15T13:04:06-04:00 Fred Clark

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I completely agree with Matt Yglesias that “Full Employment Is a Worker’s Best Friend.” He writes:

The real issue here is that instead of workers threatening to leave this crappy job and get a better one, people are clamoring to work at this warehouse. This is one small glance at why I keep urging progressives to start caring about monetary policy more. Nobody considers themselves a monetary policy activist. But if you’re interested in labor and working conditions, you’ve got to be interested in full employment. Full employment gives workers meaningful leverage. Mass unemployment gives it all to the bosses.

That’s nearly all true, but I do know many people who consider themselves to be “monetary policy activists.” Unfortunately they’re all gold-bugs and/or Ron Paul conspiracy buffs.

What would it mean to be the sort of “monetary policy activist” who seeks a goal of full employment and who has some hope of meaningfully contributing to that goal?

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While oil-puppets like Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, are fighting to waste your money on lousy, obsolete, 20th-century light bulbs by repealing efficiency standards that will save taxpayers $12 billion a year, the Liter of Light project is bringing light to the homes of poor Filipinos with plastic bottles, water and no electricity. Very cool.

(Hasn’t Barton heard about this project? Why isn’t he defending these people from Liter of Light’s assault on their freedom to sit in the dark?)

Speaking of good news to the poor, say hello to the newly renamed “Saunders Creek Home Owners Cooperative“:

The park officially became a homeowner’s cooperative on April 26, which means residents will have the option of buying into the cooperative in exchange for controlled rent spaces. Residents can bow out of the cooperative, but with a higher monthly rent for their space.

“The land at the park was up for sale, and residents started to worry about someone coming in and jacking up our rent. So the idea for homeowners in the park to purchase the land to be in control of the park started to circulate,” commented resident Vivian Downs. “It is nice knowing as residents we have more control of our futures than we may have had with someone else stepping in and purchasing the park.”

The park, which consists of 43 mobile home spaces, was purchased through private loans and funds from the residents and grants to help the homeowners achieve their goal.

Also very cool.

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Jane Smiley reviews Frank Schaeffer’s Sex, Mom, and God

[Schaeffer’s purpose] is to expose the insanity and the corruption of what has become a powerful and frightening force in American politics. He considers himself an eyewitness to the insanity during his childhood, and an eyewitness to the corruption during his early adulthood. The root of both, according to this book, is the perverse and destructive view that the “God-of-the-Bible” takes of women and sexuality — that women are inherently corrupt and that their sexuality must be controlled by men. Frank’s point in Sex, Mom, and God is that female sexuality is at the heart of the abortion debate that energized the religious right, and he asserts, from his experience of both his very troubled father and himself, that profound anxiety about women and hypocrisy about the sex drive shape the evangelical bid for power in the United States.

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I’ve written a lot over the years about the self-destructive addiction to offendedness and indignation. One of my main theories about indignation is that this addictive form of self-absorbed self-righteousness makes one not just less kind, but also less smart.

For an ongoing illustration of that principle at work, see Literally Unbelievable: Stories from The Onion as interpreted by Facebook.

Elsewhere:

Predestined to d-baggery?*
“You cannot send this smile to users of the same gender.”
Oprah Winfrey blazes another trail as the first black woman to be called the Antichrist by a right-wing “Bible prophecy scholar.“
Happy first birthday Neptune!

* Late edit: Changed the full word to the contraction. Keeps the precision of the classification while losing a bit of the vulgarity. But there’s definitely a whiff of Axe body spray coming from that article, a Maxim-ized notion of masculinity …

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