Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Union e-mails

'In dozens of e-mails sent between May 2011 and February 2012, Spiegelhoff threatens, harasses, and attempts to intimidate Galloway while berating her for votes that she cast in the state Senate. An e-mail sent on August 2011 has Spiegelhoff calling Galloway a "pig" after she was a guest on Wisconsin Public Radio.

Calling her service in the Senate "a reign of terror" and characterizing her work as "immoral," Speigelhoff cast himself as a leader of the recall effort declaring "I am actively working against you." Numerous e-mails contained threatening subject lines such as "we are coming for you," and "here we come." Another e-mail twice contained the threat, "stay home, Pam," something that could be interpreted as chauvinistic.

In August and September of 2011, weeks before the recall petition period could begin for an attempted Galloway recall, Spiegelhoff adopted the line that Galloway should resign instead of face a recall attempt. "I wish elections were right now so you could be thrown out of office. Do the middle class a favor-resign," one message concluded. "You overreached and you will pay the political price for it," another intimidating message reads. The harassment concluded with Spiegelhoff demanding that Galloway "[r]epent and beg forgiveness. . . ."

Before entering politics in 2010, Galloway was a surgeon specializing in breast cancer care. Spiegelhoff implied in several e-mails that Galloway didn't really care about women and was doing a disgrace to her medical profession by being a Republican. "[Y]ou are being used," he ranted in mid-February of this year. "You sold your soul and disgraced the medical community," he blasted after Galloway cast a vote he disagreed with.

Certainly a constituent should be free to express his opinions to his elected officials, but threatening and harassing statements like this do cross a line of decency. Fascinatingly, Spiegelhoff does not live in Galloway's district even though he signed a petition to recall her from office. When someone found Spiegelhoff's signature on the Galloway petition and recalled that he had publicly claimed that he did not live in her district (something verified by a check of his address), they wrote a letter to the editor holding him to account'

http://mediatrackers.org/2012/03/07/wisconsin-labor-leader-calls-female-gop-sen-pig-harasses-and-intimidates/

Sunday, March 18, 2012

George Carlin - Why You Are In Debt (explicit)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PkWf9M3rUw&feature=related 

Is Market Failure an argument against government? - David Friedman

I found the first 41 minutes to be an enlightening discussion about how economics leads to individual decision making and bad politics.  It is slightly technical, but I learned some new terms...

Also interesting is his discussion on Global Warming and population explosion starting at 65 minutes ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5maguX5x8c&feature=related