by Dell Cameron



Yesterday, American citizens from all walks of life gathered at polling locations throughout the United States with the hope of changing the course of their collective destiny. For over two hundred years, communities have been assembling in this fashion as participants in a great democratic experiment. For some, the polls are a responsibility, due to the lives they perceive have been sacrificed in order to protect their ability to cast their votes. Others vote out of conscious because it's a privilege others throughout the world are denied. Yet, there are others who feel – with some justice – that no candidate is capable of accurately representing them and that abstaining from the vote is just as much their right.

Some Americans may still be unaware of the extreme transformations our democratic process has undergone in only a few recent years. The important changes to note revolve around the donation processes and the invention of external campaign committees that, in some cases, directly influence the outcome of political elections. In 2010, the Supreme Court arrived at the conclusion that the First Amendment clause, which provides all U.S. citizens with freedom of speech, also guaranteed that corporations had the right to make independent election expenditures. In a split 5-4 decision, laws such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which had previously prohibited corporate and union political donations, were deemed unconstitutional.

On the Supreme Court decision, Noam Chomsky, MIT Professor of Linguistics and author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy wrote, “On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections –– a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international.” In Chomsky's opinion, “Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. “

What followed was an all out spending spree by corporations, unions and affluent individuals that dangerously altered the landscape of the American election system. During the 2012 cycle, spending by non-party affiliated organizations exploded. These organizations were often funded by only a handful of individuals and the number of individuals and organizations that were responsible for disclosing their donors dropped considerably in comparison to the previous election cycle. According to OpenSecrets.org, a cycle-to-date spending analysis revealed that by the end of the first week of October, spending by these organizations was more than the previous 11 election cycles combined totaling $517 million.

So as we examine President Obama's victory over Mitt Romney, the first question we should ask ourselves is who flipped the bill for his exorbitant $401 million campaign and what are their motives.

The top donor to Obama's campaign was a man named Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood producer and chief executive of DreamWorks Animation. Katzenberg's contributions to Obama's campaign included a $2 million donation to the Priorities USA action super PAC, a committee formed by former White House advisors. Katzenberg is also a bundler for the Democratic party – someone who elicits major financial support for political purposes once reaching their own personal donation limitations. Katzenberg, like many Hollywood elites, was a proponent of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a widely unpopular bill introduced by Congressman Lamar Smith (D-TX) that was shelved in Congress in January 2012 after worldwide online protests erupted. Opponents of the bill claimed it threatened the integrity of the internet and was in essence an attack on online freedom of expression. Despite a number of threats from Hollywood elites, such as former Senator, now MPAA head Chris Dodd, after Obama withdrew support for the bill, Katzenberg remained a steadfast support of Obama's campaign. The undeniably instrumental role Katzenberg played in the Obama 2012 campaign may foreshadow future support for a new SOPA-like bill on behalf of the White House.

Another billionaire who reached deep into his pockets for the Obama campaign was Jon Stryker, stockholder and heir to the Stryker Corporation, a medical equipment company based out of Michigan. Stryker's contribution exceeded $2 million during the 2012 election cycle and has previously generously donated to the Democratic Party. The Stryker Corporation has been involved in a number of controversies with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Drug Administration, which included failure to meet FDA regulations, the falsification of documents and unlawful kickbacks to physicians in exchange for the use of their products.

It's important to note that while the Obama campaign has taken advantage of the support provided to them by big-spending, individual backers, these types of contributions were much more prominent throughout the Romney campaign. Romney's largest backer, a Las Vegas Casino owner, dwarfed Obama’s supporters by providing him with financial support exceeding $34 million dollars. Romney, however, did not win the election.

In light of the enormous financial support campaigns receive from individual backers and political committees, it's not difficult to understand why some voters felt so disenfranchised this election cycle – and that the act of voting seemed to be an exercise in futility. How could anyone expect to find a candidate to represent their voice in government when the issues affecting them most aren't being presented to the candidates in the form of multimillion dollar campaign donations?

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence, which stated, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Forty-nine years later, in a letter to William Branch Giles, he expressed his concern over individuals that, in his words, had “nothing in them of the feelings or principles of '76.” He criticized the men of his time for leaving the intentions of American democracy behind in exchange for a aristocracy founded on banking institutions and monied incorporations that cloaked themselves under the guise of industry.

The dream of a perfect Democracy seems to have been abandoned in an age where hostile advertisements and televised debates intentionally exclude poorly funded third party candidates. With the acceleration of new laws that chip away at the foundation of a truly representative government, it's important we remember as a country what we once had and fight ferociously to reclaim it.

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by ChrisSick

It's 11:30PM EST.

The bar I've decamped in to watch election coverage has decided to turn off the television, now that CNN has declared for Obama. A very large, very drunk man is singing Queen's “We Are The Champions” quite badly. Every one is cheering madly.

Fox News' homepage has this headline:



You can almost hear the sobbing behind it. Early reports say Dick Morris has hanged himself in the Fox News studio. Or maybe I just fantasized that. Romney Central is angrily tweeting that every one should just chill the fuck out because they're disputing Ohio.

And reality.

Running through it, it was a very good night to be on this side of history. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin lost the Missouri Senate race to Claire McCaskill. Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Tammy Baldwin will represent Wisconsin in the Senate and become the first openly gay Senator in history. Tim Kaine won over George “Macaca” Allen. Linda McMahon outspent Democrat Chris Murphy 4-to-1 in Connecticut and lost.

Same sex marriage ballots are being decided in Maine, Maryland, and Washington and early reports look good, but I can't find any more information because someone is singing “Afternoon Delight” really loudly and the one earbud I have in to listen to Fox News is just sounding like torrents of weeping. Seriously, looks like same-sex marriage with be legal in Maine and Maryland and Colorado has legalized marijuana.

There's a long week ahead, surely some races will be contested or recounted. At the moment only Ohio is being disputed by the Romney campaign, but the Electoral College math looks to be such that even if Ohio were to flip for Romney it would not be enough to overcome Obama's lead. The New York Times is currently calling Ohio for Romney and still has Obama up 285 over Romney's 200.

As of midnight, Election Day 2012, it's clear that Barack Obama will be reelected President, the Democrats will continue to hold the Senate, the Republicans will continue to hold the House, and Colorado will be the new preferred vacation spot over California.

God bless America, I knew you wouldn't let me down.

This is Tactical Animal, signing off.

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by Julia C. Reinhart



While President Obama tried to improve the plight of the homeless, a President Romney wouldn’t even try. Without a major change in Congress, the fate of America’s homeless is unlikely to improve. States just don't have money to deal with the problem.

With the US Presidential elections upon us, much is still talked about the economy, foreign policy, and ‚yes, whether Barack Obama is actually a naturally born citizen, and thus eligible to be president – never mind it’s the job he has held for the past four years. Conservative Republicans trip over themselves in making offensive statements about abortion and rape, scaring women voters with a sense of self-determination. Liberal pundits meanwhile try to outbid themselves in doomsday scenarios on how the world would end should Mitt Romney be elected. None of these realize that there is a group of Americans who will be losers, no matter who wins the race for the White House: Middle and lower class Americans, from a high school teacher all the way down to the homeless man on the street.

The big white elephant in the room that rarely gets discussed during American electoral politics is the systematic neglect of the country’s infrastructure, and the policy consequences that have sprung from that, especially in the area of affordable housing and combating homelessness. According to a white paper published by the Political Research Institute at Brown University, non-military infrastructure spending in the United States from school buildings to highways and affordable housing has declined from 3.8% to 1.8% of all government held assets between 1951 and 2011. Since then, the country has seen six Republican and six Democratic presidents, hence this is hardly a partisan issue. Core elements of the infrastructure, such as electricity grids and phone systems, have been economized, meaning that profitability aspects drive availability and maintenance rather than need.

In rural areas as well as in low income neighborhoods in large cities, electrical grids are regularly delivered via overhead lines, as there are fewer customers and those that buy the services can’t afford the added value services that drive corporate profits. Meanwhile in areas of high density and high income, electrical wires tend to run underground, protecting them from falling trees, swirling tornados, and heavy snowfalls brought on by America’s often harsh weather patterns. Power outages in New York City brought on by Hurricanes Irene and Sandy are an illustrative example: While Irene brought on heavy rains over the five boroughs of the world’s financial capital, Manhattan suffered some flooding but little lasting consequence once the storm passed. Long Island and low lying areas of Brooklyn and Queens however, which are more exposed to cross-winds from the sea, and also subjected to the storm surge brought on by the Hurricane suffered measurable structural damage, downed trees and power lines, and about 4 feet of flood waters covering the lowest parts of Long Island’s southern shore and Staten Island, bringing on substantial beach erosion, but no deaths.

If Irene was a dry run, it did not prepare New York City’s infrastructure for a storm the size and power of Hurricane Sandy. While government officials went through the same preparation proceedings that helped them safeguard the city’s 8.5 million population during Irene, little was done to improve or protect the power grid from flooding. For days, weather forecasters announced that the storm surge with Sandy could be significant, and sandbags were duly deployed around lower Manhattan – rows of them 1-2 feet high leaning against doors and entranceways of buildings. Yet the South Ferry subway tunnel remained open towards the sea, and many of the transformer stations run by Con Edison, the local utility company, that were underground did not receive sufficient flood proofing.

So, when the storm surge came, transformer stations blew out as electric equipment, under high voltage at the time, was introduced to salt water, an explosive and corrosive mixture that left half of Manhattan and significant parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island in the dark. Subway tunnels flooded from above when the East and Hudson Rivers jumped their embankments and from below once water pushed into the South Ferry Tunnel and from there all the way up through the system. This time, the infrastructure shortages were hard to ignore, because they also significantly affected Manhattan. Weather damages in the outer boroughs, while having a significant impact on the local communities, go largely ignored in the public discourse of the city. Government officials, most of them Governor Andrew Cuomo are now loudly calling for infrastructure improvements in light of changing weather patterns.

While a good part of Manhattan’s intellectual elite, who live in areas like SoHo, Chelsea, and other Lower Manhattan neighborhoods, had to survive several days without power and water, leaving fresh food, drinking water and cell phone coverage in short supply, the worst impact of the storm disproportionally affected blue-collar and low income communities. Affordable housing in New York City is in short supply, and the housing projects and affordable single family homes that do exist are built on relatively cheap land, low lying areas and landfills that no high-level real estate developer would touch or use. Also, much of the lower priced single family homes were build before 1970, making for an aging housing stock build from cheap materials, which have a harder time resisting high winds and rising waters. Gas and waterlines tend to be old, cell phone coverage spotty even at the best of times, and power lines more often than not run tangled above ground. With the power out for as much as two weeks, and temperatures falling to the freezing mark, elderly residents of affordable housing units have already started to die from exposure. As the freeze and the power outage in the outer boroughs continues, many more may follow.

Many residents of public housing projects live on welfare and food stamps, a government allowance of $200 / month for a single person or $367 / month for a family of two. This amount often barely covers their basic needs for feeding their families, and leaves them ill-prepared to carry the extra burden of stocking up on food reserves when storms approach. The Rockaways, a particularly hard hit, and also very poor part of Queens located on a barrier island in the Long Island sound, saw survivors of Hurricane Sandy scrounge for food when emergency relief aid was slow to arrive. All the power lines to the island were cut, the bridge for cars was closed, and the subway tracks were flooded. Residents of the Rockaways were trapped on their island with little ability to go search or receive aid supplies, leaving them both cold and hungry for days before government relief services ramped up.

The lack of affordable housing combined with an outdated attitude towards the causes of homelessness is also one of the key drivers behind the city’s rising homeless population. In the early 1970s, as scores of veterans returned from Vietnam and struggled to re-integrate into society, many of the ideas shaping today’s governmental policy towards poverty and homelessness were formulated, operating on what then were perceived to be the key factors for homelessness: Drug or alcohol abuse, and mental illness. Unemployment, while existent, was less perceived to play a role. Fatima Shad‚ a Red Cross worker focusing on homeless outreach explains: “They thought, you choose to be homeless, and yes, they basically assume that it’s your fault that you’re homeless, you had to be a druggie, a drunk, crazy, or all three.”

The mentally ill have formed a large group among the homeless population, ever since the US government started to shutter mental health institutions in the 1950s, leaving many in need of serious long-term care without a support network that could keep them in a home. Many of the Vietnam veterans who wound up homeless did have mental and substance abuse issues, as did many other homeless who followed.

However, as Shad points out, the face of homelessness is changing dramatically: A long-standing trend of redevelopment and gentrification started in the 1960s, where entire poor neighborhoods are condemned and leveled to make room for real estate development projects that promise higher tax revenues to city and state governments. Due to a lack of funding for alternative low income housing and the recent flood of foreclosures brought about by the 2008 financial crisis, this gentrification process has given rise to a new form of homeless population: Those who simply can no longer afford to pay the rent or mortgage, because they’re either underpaid or underemployed. If you go into the housing courts, they’re packed, and everybody is two seconds away from an eviction: Shad explains: “It doesn’t stop. Monday morning through Friday night, case after case, people are begging marshals for mercy, and the court system, depending on the borough you’re in, might be a little more lenient, giving you another week or two before you’re being evicted. But once people go to shelters, if they don’t go to somebody’s sofa, they’re entering a very challenging world.”

It is also important to note that homeless statistics provided by the New York City government only count those actually housed in shelters. They don’t count people living on somebody’s couch, those living in subways, or those on the street who are not in a shelter environment. The official number of shelter beds in New York City is 46,000, which is the number of homeless Mayor Bloomberg keeps quoting. However, the number of people actually without a permanent home of their own is a high multiple of that. Most that do enter the shelter system are either part-time or fulltime workers, and get assigned to so-called “working shelters” where every resident is working.

Once homeless, keeping down a job becomes incredibly difficult. The New York City shelter system – still operating on the assessment that anyone homeless must have mental and substance or alcohol abuse issues – requires residents to attend a rigorous schedule of meetings and assessments in order to comply with requirements that allow them to stay. The appointments range from medical and psychological assessments, to workplace trainings. If a homeless person still has a full-time job, keeping these appointments is extremely difficult, as they’re usually set during business hours. This way a homeless person is trapped in a catch-22: On the one hand they have to go to work to earn a living that may be able to get them back on their feet and back to permanent housing, on the other hand, if they don’t keep the appointments requested by the shelter system, they get thrown back out into the streets. Once inside the shelter system many homeless do wind up losing their jobs, as employers tend to be unsympathetic with regards to the absences required by the shelter system. As Shad puts it, the homeless are being put on a hamster wheel with little chance of ever getting anywhere meaningful – and she thinks that is entirely by design.

Homeless shelters in New York City are private enterprises, which are reimbursed by the city for each bed and service they provide. For every mandatory meeting and assessment, the shelter receives a fee from the city in addition to the fees billed for the beds they provide. Furthermore, a homeless person that qualifies for food stamps gets their allowances confiscated by the shelter system, on the basis that they are being provided with three meals a day. A single person, who would normally receive $200 a month, is left with only $16.50 a month in food stamps for personal use. However, many in the shelter system are either on appointments or at work when the meals are served, so they miss out on them and are forced to find alternate sources for food.

If a homeless person works, the money that could be saved up for the security deposit on an apartment must so be used to buy food instead. Also, the meals that are served in the shelter system are highly dubious in nutritional value. No consideration is given to vegetarians, or those in need of a heart-healthy diets or ones for other specialist medical needs. Shad calls it “straight-up slop.”

One way to address the shortage of funds for food is to apply for public assistance, which results in more meetings and appointments for the shelter resident to attend, making it even more difficult for the person to keep down a fulltime job while conducting all the appointments and meetings imposed by the public assistance and housing authorities. In this day and age, and particularly in this economy it’s impossible for a person to do all these appointment and keep down a job. Shad elaborates, “More and more people come crying to me saying ‘I just lost my job.’ And when I ask why, they say, ‘I had to go to my public assistance meeting or I’d be kicked out of my shelter.’”

To make matters worse, Shad contends that shelter officials often schedule competing appointments with the public assistance authorities to compound the complications. Remember, they think it’s your fault you’re homeless, so you’re not supposed to succeed, because in their eyes you can’t.

Another side effect of a shelter resident applying for public assistance is that the shelter will receive a rent allowance in addition to the government subsidy these shelters receive for offering beds to homeless. Shad continues, “From there it just goes on and on, this is a money making enterprise. It’s human warehousing at its finest.”

The shelter system is incentivized to see its residents fail at re-integration. And how’s it even possible if there’s no affordable housing. Lack of investment in new stock has ensured that waiting lists for the homes that do exist are several years long. Voucher systems, which subsidized 70% of a person’s rent in the first year with an option of 50% subsidy in a second year, called Advantage systems, were introduced under President Clinton as a stop-gap measure to help reintegrate homeless shelter residents into the regular rental market. However, in the meantime, only very few new affordable housing units where built, and many landlords, especially in New York City, abused the system, by charging 30% above regular rates. With increasing budget pressures brought on by the 2008 financial crisis on federal, state, and city budgets, funding for these vouchers was finally cut completely in mid 2012. According to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress prepared by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 40% of homeless today are families, usually a single mother and children. Many of these families had Advantage housing vouchers that allowed them to transition out of a shelter into regular apartments. With the end of the Advantage voucher payments many of these families are now moving back into an already overcrowded shelter system.

Adding to the problem is the waves of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, many of whom are suffering from PTSD. While President Obama has talked on occasion about addressing homelessness amongst veterans, recently saying at a campaign event that "nobody who serves, nobody who fights for this country should have to fight for a job or a roof over their heads when they come back home,” little has been done in terms of tangible policy achievements. While his 2009 stimulus package did include allocations for affordable housing, his primary focus in this area was on mortgage owners under threat of foreclosure to refinance. However, Obama’s Affordable Refinance Program wound up helping only a small number of the targeted recipients, leading the Republican controlled house to kill the foreclosure relief program in 2011, calling it a waste of money, since the program only helped about 750,000 distressed homeowners, instead of the targeted 7 million. According to a Congressional Panel that studied the program before it ended, a major reason for the program’s failure was that “loan servicers, who act as middlemen between the distressed homeowners and the investors who own the mortgage, often find it more profitable to foreclose than to modify.” In his 2012 State of the Union address, Obama announced revisions to the program aimed at simplifying the process, but the plan is still awaiting Congressional action.

In 2010, Obama announced a plan, called “Opening Doors” that would, as he claimed, end homelessness in American by 2020. Lauded by advocates of homelessness issues as a major breakthrough, the initiative ultimately went nowhere as Congress declined to provide the $1 billion in funding it required.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, meanwhile, when touring Louisiana in September for his campaign, told victims of Hurricane Isaac, who became homeless after the storm to “Go home and call 211” – the number that provides information about health and human service programs to Louisiana residents. According to his campaign website, Romney’s housing plan consists primarily of making the government sell the roughly 200,000 homes currently vacant due to foreclosure and an easing of bank regulations to “restore a functioning marketplace and restart lending to creditworthy borrowers.” This plan also calls for an end to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government agencies who underwrite most mortgages issued to middle and low-income homebuyers. Those already without a home are not mentioned in Romney’s policy papers at all.

While President Obama tried, but failed, to improve the plight of the homeless, a President Romney wouldn’t even attempt to alleviate their plight. Without a major change of heart in Congress, the fate of America’s poor and homeless is unlikely to improve, no matter who wins the election today.


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by ChrisSick

By the time you read this, if I've done my job correctly — and there is little guarantee of that — the polls will already be opening on the East Coast. This endless election is almost over. I've only been writing about it, with varying degrees of regularity, since the end of August and I'm exhausted. I have new pity for the professionals who have been writing about this horror show we call an election since May of last year, when the evolutionary throwbacks who made up the Republican Primary contenders first stood tall on a stage in South Carolina, looking more like a well-dressed police line-up than candidates for leadership of this struggling superpower.

To attempt to summarize the strange odyssey of the last four years in under 2,000 words would be an impossible task, and more befitting some grizzled pro journalist ready to sellout from grind of print and into the bright lights of book-length reporting and television appearances than this humble column. That said, looking back I can think of at least three points worth making before we've collectively settled (in every sense of the word) who should be the next President:

Point 1: We had it right before we had it wrong, but mostly we are Wrong

In my first Tactical Animal column I wrote:

The conventional wisdom — ahead of the selection of Paul Ryan as Republican Veep — was that the election was going to come down to a narrow win for Obama that would leave him with a weaker electoral mandate and a less cooperative Congress than he began his first term with nearly four years ago. The conventional wisdom in the last days before the election is exactly the same.

The last two to three months since Romney secured the nomination and the race began in earnest have featured myriad ups and downs for both candidates. By the end of September Romney had racked up an impressive series of gaffes, a meandering and largely uninspiring convention, three or four campaign reboots, and a leaked video about how he loves America despite hating nearly half of all Americans. The conventional wisdom then was best surmised by a headline I, and others, ran with declaring that Mitt Romney would never be President.

Then, of course, came the first debate, in which an energetic and forceful Romney hammered a sleepytime-tea Obama. There was much liberal gnashing of teeth and movement of prediction markets. The media narrative of a shambling and useless Romney campaign that had no hope in hell of mounting a serious electoral challenge was discarded in favor of asking if Obama was even trying to win this election.

Just typing that is reminding me of the whiplash feeling I had closely watching the events unfold. But, a month after the Obama crater, we're back to Intrade predicting a 65% chance for him to win, and Nate Silver going even better predicting an 85% chance for an Obama victory. We're literally right back where we started, with Obama looking to win by less than two points, but for sure looking to win.

All of the gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands, and general calamitous reactions to every little news story, gaffe, comment, interview, debate, commercial, or event is, really, meaningless. Six months ago it looked like the President was going to beat Mitt Romney by a small margin and that Democrats would narrowly hold the Senate, while Republicans continued to hold the House. Today it looks exactly the same.

Everything between reaching that conclusions six months ago and that conclusion today was almost entirely in service of attracting viewers, clicks, and readers to SELL YOU SHIT. It was all just politics-as-entertainment, and taking part in it has lead me to conclude that I'd be much happier (and most likely more useful) writing about real, actual policy than about the tactics used to get you to buy into a political brand. I have no idea how full time political writers do this without massive amounts of heroin, but the truth is most likely they just have no souls.

Point 2: Whomever wins, cheated

Several times over the last week, I've been asked if the President is going to win reelection, mostly by close friends and passing acquaintances, in slightly panicked tones. Mostly my response has been, “How the hell would I know? What do I look like, Nate Silver?” Then I recall that I write this column and am generally acknowledged as Knowing Things about politics, so I gently but firmly reassure them that yes, the President is going to be reelected, and they can stop worrying or start, depending on the political affiliation.

Typically, I'm never asked how I know. Because people, frankly, aren't much interested in minutia. They want to be comforted, generally, and they want to be Right. Luckily, there's an entire industry that exists just to do that! It's called Right Wing Media. So when you wonder how I know, with a large degree of certitude, that the President is going to get reelected, I can helpfully point you to a Fox News story already claiming that massive election fraud is underway.

Although the story in question is related to electronic voting machines in Ohio, the implication is clear. If Obama wins this election, it will be due to a subversion of democracy, not an exercise of it by a populace that largely disagrees with the Right and doesn't find Mitt Romney to be an appealing candidate. It can't be that the electorate simply prefers Obama to Romney, at best it implies that Obama somehow duped the country with his big smile, and at worst it means Chicago-style election theft.

To me, and I'm sure many of my readers, these accusations sound utterly ridiculous. But to someone who's convinced that Nate Silver is trying to game the election for Democrats, that a Romney landslide is coming, and that Democrats only win elections through fraud. And following those links as opposed to taking my word for it might be instructive if you're wondering how people come to believe all of that:

The important takeaway here is that any and all attempts to “de-legitimize” the President are not new, and a smaller margin of victory on the sixth will only give them greater life. In 2008 Obama won by a margin of 7.2% of votes cast and 192 votes in the Electoral College. That didn't stop the Right's press and candidates from spending the last four years treating Obama as an illegitimate President. There's many reasons for such a strategy, but if nothing else, it was vindicated when several Editorial Boards endorsed Mitt Romney because of the idea that Democrats in Congress would be more likely to work with a Romney administration than Republicans have with Obama.

But there is a cost to this. The strategy of stymieing the President for political gain may very nearly have worked this election cycle, and certainly was useful to the 2010 midterm-Tea-Party-takeover. But convincing somewhere between a third and half of the country that the President is illegitimate, and that their political opponents are immoral little fucksaws who care more about accumulating power than serving the citizenry is dangerous for reasons I shouldn't really have to elucidate.

The Left, of course, worked most of the year to create their own counter-narrative about voter suppression through Voter ID laws. But, speaking of things that should be clear without further commentary, legitimate concerns about voter suppression amplified as an electoral tactic to motivate the base are a far cry from convincing the segment of the populace most fanatical about owning guns that their voting rights are being taken from them by electoral fraud on a massive scale. Which isn't to say that the Left won't play the same game as the Right if — somehow, despite all odds — Romney wins the Presidency. It's just to say that some concerns originate from a more “reality-based” community than others.

Either way, when the voting ends, we can easily find ourselves in a situation where the campaign will not:

Final point: Democracy is beautiful

All of the above points aside, forgetting all of the partisan bickering, and media narrative, and politics-as-bloodsport bullshit that I've spent the last two months writing about, if you're reading this on the morning of November 6th and watching the news to see how this all shakes out, you're watching a tremendous and beautiful moment in the history of human affairs.

Democracy is messy, ugly, and, at times, brutal. Our American version of it has many failings, from lacking a viable alternative to the two-party duopoly, to being vulnerable to fraud and abuse of the system, to the simple fact that we treat it not as a serious exercise in self-determination, but largely as a sporting match. But all those failings aside, in the long view, it's a pretty incredible thing that every few years the citizenry of this country comes together to decide who their leader should be.

I wish I had more time and space here to address some of the imperfections we have and ways to improve it. Perhaps they'll be more columns in the future, and those issues can and will be addressed. But the most important thing to remember today is that voting is a right and privilege, and people did and continue to die for those same rights of self-determination. It is a glorious thing to be allowed to step into a voting both and will my opinions into political action that determines the course of my country.

I hope you exercise that right today, regardless of whom you're voting for. Personally, I plan to vote early, and spend the rest of the day watching the news and laying down as much action as I can before all the betting windows close.

God bless America.


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by SG's Team Agony feat. Lexie

Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.


[Lexie in Speres]

Q: I can’t seem to make the leap from friend-zone to boyfriend-zone. Everyone I ask advise from says “just be yourself.” I be myself and it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Is it that girls just don’t want me?

A: Oh, boy. The dreaded friend-zone! First off, sure being yourself can work, but only to a certain degree. It can be a terribly slippery slope to make that climb from just friends to something more. Get the wrong footing off the bat and you’re a goner for sure.

You have to remember one important fact, not everyone is going to be in to you the way you are into them. Some people you’re just destined to be friends with. If I could give you a few pointers on trying to stay out of that zone, they’d be this.

Don’t be too nice/accommodating/helpful. If there’s one thing that screams friendship to me it’s having someone all too eager to lend a hand. This applies mainly at the start of building something, once you’ve moved into almost boyfriend-zone, crank up the helpful/sweet notch. Just make sure it’s not too soon or she’ll rely on you for little things and see you as that guy friend that’s so helpful. Be a little aloof/hard to reach. The more you step back the more she’ll want you.

Treat her well but know when not to push it. Take her out to a nice dinner, movie, concert, but afterwards send her on her way. Even though you want to take her to your place and bend her over that futon, don’t push it. Remember the whole hard to reach aspect? Play it up.

Don’t be whiney or complain. Nothing says unattractive like a whiney person. Especially if you throw in desperate and needy, you’ll automatically get thrown into the no boyfriend-zone.

Have something in common with her – I know this seems like a given, but I think it’s really overlooked. I get it, you want that hot bartender at your local bar, but if you just want to talk about Skyrim and the new Batman movie when clearly her eyes are glazing over, it might not work. When someone talks to me about things I have no real interest in, I tend to get instantly turned off.

Hopefully some of these pointers will get you in the right direction. Be yourself, and apply these and it might get you somewhere.

Lexie


***

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

by Laurie Penny a.k.a. @PennyRed


[Image of Staten Island Relief Workers by Jenna Pope a.k.a. @BatmanWI]

In the forty-eight hours since I landed in the United States, flying into storm-torn Brooklyn just days after a bunch of cars floated down Wall Street, nobody has mentioned the election to me once. You know, the presidential election, the one that’s happening in - what is it, three days? Right now, New Yorkers have more important things on their minds.

Access to food, fuel and electricity, for a start. People who do have these things are opening up their homes to friends and strangers who don’t. Across the city, volunteers are packing cars and heading to the disaster zones of Red Hook and the Rockaway, as well as to Staten Island, the borough worst hit when Hurricane Sandy battered through to flatten homes and devastate lives.

Like I said, nobody’s talking about the election. The island I always privately think of as Starship Manhattan spent days cut off from the rest of New York state, all of the lights out for days under 34th street, basements choked with brackish water, old people stranded in their homes. There’s an actual crisis taking place: houses have been destroyed, lives lost. The eighteen-month media circus that passes for representative politics in this country seems worlds away from the women in Staten Island weeping in front of the remains of their family homes on the nightly news.

With it being practically impossible for anyone without a car and a full tank of fuel to cross the city, I’ve just come back from volunteering down the street at the Williamsburg Church emergency blood drive. Right now New York is in a blood crisis. When the hospitals were evacuated during the storm, there was no time to collect the blood left in storage banks when the power went out, and by the time they got everyone to safety, that blood had rotted. Now they need new blood desperately.

When me and my friend Veronica Varlow went down to the Church to open our veins for the cause, I was told that my tangy British blood was not acceptable because I might be riddled with mad cow disease (this from people who haven’t even read my Twitter feed). They did, however, need volunteers to help shepherd those donors who were waiting patiently in line for up to three hours to hand over pints of superior all-American hemoglobin. So, I pinned on a badge and spent a few hours buzzing around filling out forms for people, cleaning tables and chairs, handing out snacks and tea and generally making myself useful. Even doing something so small to help the people helping to rebuild the city felt powerful.

Blood: when disasters happen, I’m always struck by the readiness with which people queue up to restock the banks of blood, platelets, and plasma. In the days after September 11, 2001, the donation centers had to start turning people away, and indeed, here at the Williamsburg Church we’re doing the same thing; with the donation line already thirty people deep, we’re running around with sign-up sheets where eager donors can leave their name and number in case we need more blood tomorrow.

There’s something so tender about that impulse. Sure, it says, we could raise money or go and help pump water out of basements in the Lower East Side, but wouldn’t it be simpler just to give you this part of my own body that was pumping in my heart five minutes ago? I’m pretty sure that if the New York blood centre were to put the call out tomorrow asking people to donate a pound of flesh cut from the chest closest to the heart because someone stranded on Staten Island needs it, there’d be plenty of volunteers, and not all of them would be kinky Shakespeare fetishists.

When there’s a crisis on, people want to help. Running around with the snack basket I was reminded of the floods of volunteers who gave their time, money and expertise to the Occupy camps last year. Practical anarchism. Everyone so keen to do whatever they could to help. Not just the kids from all over the country who kicked in their lives to sleep in the cold and be arrested multiple times in the name of a better future, but the shop owners who shipped out their spare produce. The trained nurses who turned up to administer basic medical care to those who had none. The parents who donated freshly-baked pies and soups to the kitchens. The librarians and academics who created an enormous library that, almost a year ago, I watched the NYPD rip apart and hurl into dumpster trucks, just because it was messing up their nice clean corporate dead-zone.

It’s no accident that the original Occupy Wall Street organizers were among the first to set up and co-ordinate volunteering efforts across New York. The group, which has drifted in recent months, immediately set about organizing teams and transportation to the worst-hit areas. The Zuccotti Park protest camp which was evicted last November and the enormous post-Sandy volunteer effort going on this week are different expressions of the same thing: overwhelming human response to crisis.

Crisis is what people in the United States have been living with for at least four years. Active emergency, turning people out of their homes and into the cold, destroying lives. It’s not crass to compare a climate disaster to a juddering crisis of capitalism, because the two are connected, not least because those most responsible are also those most likely to be snugly tucked away in gated compounds shrugging their shoulders when the storm hits. Like the crash, Hurricane Sandy hit the poorest hardest, smashing through Staten Island and Rockaway while the lights stayed on on the Upper East Side.

Nobody expected it to be quite this bad. Last year’s Hurricane Irene was bearable for most. But what I’m seeing here, at least in Brooklyn where I’ve been stuck for two days, is a city coming out of a six-month paralysis: finally, there’s a concrete task that people can put their hands to.

Sarah Jaffe’s brilliant piece at Jacobin draws attention to Rebecca Solnit’s work on the communities that arise in disaster zones:

Volunteerism, of course, can be regressive as well as radical. I am reminded of those “broom armies” in London in the middle of the August riots last year; the sea of white, middle-class faces holding up brooms they’d brought to unfamiliar areas of the city, the sweet intention to mop up after a disaster tempered by the idea that the kids from deprived areas who came out to fight the police could just be swept away like so much filth. Like any desperate human impulse, volunteerism can easily be co-opted, twisted into something violent, calcifying.

Greece, where I spent part of my summer documenting the human effects of economic collapse, isn’t the only developed country where people have been living in crisis for so long they are starting to numb down and accept it. As Imara Jones pointed out in The Guardian today, 50 million Americans, the same number as those in the states hardest-hit by Hurricane Sandy, are living in acute poverty, and nobody in the presidential race has deigned to talk to or about them, despite the fact that they also have votes.

How do we respond to crisis when crisis has become status quo? That’s the question facing the entire developed world this year, and neither of the men jostling to lead the nominally free world appear to have any sort of answer. The Occupy Sandy operation is not an answer either, not even the shadow-play of an answer, but it is deeply radical and compassionate. That means someone’s probably going to try to shut it down reasonably soon, especially if it continues to provide food and assistance to the needy after the floodwaters have receded. A community response to immediate external crisis can be spun as good PR for an administration, but a community response to structural, internal crisis is just embarrassing. In every case though, the most dangerous thing you can do in any crisis – the absolute worst thing you can possibly do – is sit at home and accept it.

Back to blood. Funny thing about blood: until the 1970s, America used to buy it. Blood donation, as the United States quickly discovered, is not something you want to inject with a market incentive when you have to juggle things like infection risks and supply shortages. All that changed when Richard Titmus’ book The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy was published in 1971, explaining why the values of public service beat the private market every time when it comes to social care. The private market in American blood was regulated until it became something like the British voluntary model - people coming in to open their veins for a biscuit and a cup of coffee, just because somebody else needs their blood more than they do. Quite a lot of my job at Billyburg church today was handing out packets of Oreos to younguns waiting in line to do just that – I still have no damn idea who donated those biscuits – and telling the people massing at the door that no, we have all the blood we need for today, thank you, come back tomorrow.

“There is in the free gift of blood to unnamed strangers no contract of custom, no legal bond, no functional determinism, no situations of discriminatory power, domination, constraint or compulsion, no sense of shame or guilt,” wrote Titmus. “In not asking for or expecting any payment of money, these donors signified their belief in the willingness of other men to act altruistically in the future.” There is still enough blood beating in the cynical hearts of New Yorkers to pound out an immediate, compassionate response to crisis. Today that gives me hope.

***

Occupy Sandy Relief information here can be found at interoccupy.net/occupysandy/ – a website put together by the good folks at OWS, which contains all you need to know about what you can do to help. Click here for the NYC Blood Drive list of donation centers and opening times.

Laurie Penny is a journalist, feminist, and political activist from London. She is a regular writer for the New Statesman and the Guardian, and has also contributed to the Independent, Red Pepper, and the Evening Standard. She is the author of Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (2011) and Discordia (2012). She has presented Channel 4's Dispatches and been on the panel of the BBC's Any Questions. Her blog, "Penny Red", was shortlisted for the Orwell prize in 2010.

by Steven Whitney

Daily tracking polls – and there are many – estimate the number of still undecided voters heading into this last weekend before the election hovering between 3 and 7%. That’s an astonishingly high number and even if half these voters are “undecided” merely because they crave media attention, in a race labeled a dead heat, even ½ of 1% could be decisive, especially in swing states.

For those voting strictly along party or ideological lines, the choice is clear. But for independents who vote more pragmatically, haunting indecision is an understandable reaction. Campaigns have always had their share of misrepresentations, deceptive advertising, the twisting of facts to suit particular messages or candidates, and outright lies. But never more so than this year, when the clear waters of choice have been muddied by the unprecedented amount of special interest money flooded into the race courtesy of Citizens United. Money used to fire a barrage of advertisements, commercials, direct mailing, and robocalls unparalleled in history, leaving the electorate overwhelmed, disoriented, and confused.

So let’s bullet point some of the more important issues - some hotly debated, others hardly mentioned at all – keeping it brief, simple, and factual.

The Economic Recovery:

According to TIGER (Tracking Indices for the Global Economic Recovery), the U.S. economy is “the sole bright spot” in a sluggish world economy.

"The global economic recovery is on the ropes, battered by political conflicts within and across countries, lack of decisive policy actions, and governments' inability to tackle deep-seated problems, such as unsustainable public finances that are stifling growth," their report states. "The U.S. economy remains the sole bright spot, with economic activity, employment and financial markets all showing unexpected although still modest strength."

Think about that – in a worldwide cascade of drowning nations, and under the guidance of the Obama administration, the U.S. is the only one staying afloat.

In comparison, those countries following the Romney/Ryan plan of extreme austerity are sinking faster than a mob informer wearing cement overshoes.

The Debt:

For the last four years, the question of what to do about our almost $16 trillion of debt has caused much division and the rise of the Tea Party. Too often forgotten in all the hullabaloo is the fact that the Democratic Clinton administration ended its term in office with a huge surplus which the Republican Bush/Cheney administration turned into a devastating deficit, bringing the entire world to the edge of financial disaster. The debt added by the Obama administration occurred mostly through the much-needed economic stimulus, and spending on our infrastructure and social programs.

As our slow but successful recovery proves, the money spent of the stimulus allowed the U.S. to stand out as the only shining light in the world economy.

As for money spent on our infrastructure and social programs, the first not only provided jobs but much needed repair on our roads, bridges, buildings, and highways while the second supported the very survival of those Americans hardest hit by the financial crisis.

Last weekend on Up with Chris Hayes, Ilyse Hogue of The Nation neatly clarified our two choices in handling the debt. We can clear our debt ASAP by expediting payments to China and Wall Street – our two biggest creditors – or we can invest in our own future – in education and training, in rebuilding our vital infrastructure, and by stimulating growth – while paying down our debt on a sustainable schedule.

Obama/Biden proposes investing in America’s future by cutting costs and raising taxes on the richest 2%.

Romney/Ryan wants to clear the debt quickly, so long as our wealthiest citizens and corporations are not taxed even one extra penny, by cutting education and social programs. They also want to cut funding to the arts, particularly PBS, despite the fact that Elmo of Sesame Street played a vital role in calming children during Superstorm Sandy.

Jobs:

850,000 jobs per month were lost during the last year of the Bush administration which, along with the mortgage and debt crises, brought our country to the precipice of another Great Depression. Recovery was understandably slow, but starting in February, 2010, the Obama Presidency has added jobs each month since, despite the fact that House Republicans have killed every single Jobs Act proposed. Last month, House Republicans even rejected the Veteran’s Jobs Act which would have provided training and jobs for 20,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Romney/Ryan has promised more jobs with more tax cuts, just as Bush did. But the Senate Research Committee released a study this past September which incontrovertibly showed that cutting taxes for the rich does not increase jobs. Senate Republicans squashed the report and it was leaked only this past week. Yet both Romney and Ryan kept hitting the stump with the same old trickle-down economics theory that has failed on a grand scale everywhere it’s been implemented.

Healthcare:

Obama instituted the Affordable Care Act and Patient Protection program, commonly called Obamacare, which eventually provides healthcare to every American, allows those with pre-existing conditions to be covered, and, importantly, cuts the costs of the programs. He supports Medicare, Title X, and Medicaid.

Romney intends to repeal Obamacare and go back to the insurance-run health programs that led to the explosive run-up in health care costs and 50 million uninsured Americans. He wants to replace Medicare with a voucher system –and vouchers will not help get you covered if you have a pre-existing condition. He also wants to hand responsibility of Medicaid to the individual states and eliminate Title X, a program that delivers comprehensive care to the poor.

Social Security:

Obama/Biden support Social Security and want to expand funding by raising the limit of employee contributions.

Romney/Ryan want to privatize Social Security without explaining what would have happened to those accounts during both the 2000 dot.com crash and the 2008 Bush/Cheney financial disaster.

Supreme Court:

At least three of our aging Supreme Court justices will retire in the next four years, most likely Ginsburg (79), Breyer (74), and Kennedy (75). Ginsburg and Breyer are often labeled liberal justices, while Kennedy has been rightly or wrongly considered the swing vote between the 4 conservatives and the 4 liberals.

If Obama selects the replacements, the Court would remain about the same, perhaps giving the so-called liberal justices a 5-4 advantage.

If Romney is elected, he would appoint solidly conservative justices, probably in their late 40s or early 50s, giving the Court a 7-2 plurality of conservative judges for years to come.

Human Rights:

Obama/Biden pledge equal rights for all Americans, regardless of race, color, and creed.

Romney/Ryan hope to kill the Equal Rights Act, the Voting Act of 1965, college grants, arts grants, and social programs that help seniors, minorities, and the poor. They also seek to place into law the Defense of Marriage Act, a constitutional provision that would define marriage strictly as a union between a man and a woman (no LGBTs need apply).

Religion:

Obama/Biden stands by the 1st Amendment right of Freedom of Religion, allowing all to practice their own personal spiritual choices without government interference.

Led by the Religious Right, Republicans want to introduce into law wide-ranging faith-based policies born of extreme Christian doctrine.

Women:

Women’s issues would normally come under Human Rights, but the Republican War on Women makes it a separate category in this election cycle.

Obama/Biden support all women’s rights and claims of equal status, including the right to preventative healthcare and the right of choice over their own bodies.

Romney/Ryan advocates repeal of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that mandates equal pay for equal work for women (and all minorities). They support the Religious Right in ordering government control over women’s bodies. And Republicans engage in frequent sexist invective to put women in their place. For a fuller assessment of their stand, read this short post on the War on Women.

Disaster Relief:

Especially in light of Hurricane Sandy this past week, it’s important to emphasize that the Obama administration has rebuilt and streamlined FEMA to not only respond to natural disasters but to prepare for them as well.

Romney/Ryan plan to dismantle FEMA and put individual states in charge of their own relief. This would, of course, give rise to uneven programs – some good, some bad – but none with the resources of the federal government. And, too, how does a state even initiate disaster response when its entire infrastructure has been destroyed? Other Republicans, like Eric Cantor, want to fund disaster relief only if it’s paid for in advance, as long as none of this money comes from the upper 2%.

The Environment:

Obama has pledged to fiercely combat Climate Change by sparking the birth of Alternative Energy Sources – and his administration has done just that, investing in clean, renewable, and sustainable energy projects. Some, like Solyndra, have failed, but his success rate of 93% is extraordinarily high for start-up companies. Indeed, it’s far better than the 80% success rate Romney had investing in already going concerns businesses for Bain Capital, even counting all the jobs Romney slashed or moved overseas to increase his own profit.

Neither Romney nor Ryan are convinced that Climate Change is real, and therein is a huge problem.

The War on Terror:

After 9/11, the Bush/Cheney administration over-reacted to such an extent that a new National Security nation was born within our borders – a true Orwellian nightmare.

Most troubling was both the use and potential abuse of NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) - allowing troubling practices such as rendition, indefinite detention, “enhanced interrogation,” and even assassination – alongside surveillance programs such as Trapwire, and the deployment of drones.

An old maxim states that leaders of countries never give up powers they have inherited from others. So the electorate must judge how each candidate might use those powers in the future – and in whose hands they might be used with the least potential for harm.

While there has been far too much collateral damage from the use of drone air strikes, we’re out of Iraq and we’ll be out of Afghanistan in 2014 – so it appears as if Obama is using these powers to shorten and end our involvement in these wars. And, too, Obama initiated and signed a START treaty with Russia that greatly reduced the number of nuclear weapons in both arsenals. He has also pledged to reduce all U.S. nuclear weapons by an astounding 80%, cutting our stockpile back to a level we haven’t seen since the 1950s. Plus, his projected budget cuts Defense spending.

Romney, on the other hand, is surrounded by the same neo-con advisors that served Bush and the Cheney/Halliburton combine. He has promised to dramatically increase Defense spending by as much as 40% and has already said we should confront Iran militarily.

So Obama – a man working toward a streamlined military – sounds like a much more responsible caretaker of these dangerous powers than Romney, who clearly wants to expand them.

Foreign Policy:

As has been clear for the last five years, Obama is respected as a global leader with integrity and credibility. He has improved relations with countries that Bush and Cheney insulted, and has worked in efficient partnership with many nations.

Romney, on the other hand, embarrassed himself everywhere he went on this past summer's overseas trip. He knows absolutely nothing about foreign affairs, even claiming Russia is our fiercest enemy, and has insulted The U.K., China, Japan, and almost every other nation he talks about.

Platforms:

If you think your country’s future is worth an hour or two of your time, read the platforms of both the Democrats and Republicans. Each one cuts through the verbal hijinks of candidates on every level by specifically stating party positions.

After reading these documents, if you still cannot divine the differences between the parties, or if you do understand all the variances but are still ambivalent, give it up - you probably shouldn’t cast a ballot you may later regret.

But since this election may very well define our destiny, the rest of you must decide which direction you want your country to take...and vote.




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Gotcha!

A.J. Focht



One announcement surpassed all others this week, shaking the foundations of this galaxy and those far far away as well. Disney bought out Lucas Film, and therefore the Star Wars franchise, for $4 billion dollars. A new Star Wars movie is already planned for 2015. What does this mean for the geek universe? Since Disney also owns Marvel comics, the potential for crossovers is high. Also the purchase begs the question, is Leia now officially a Disney Princess? And, if so, will she get bigger boobs and a fancier ball dress? In an interview, Lucas said he intends to donate a large portion of the sale profits to charity.

Some news has surfaced about The Amazing Spider-Man 2, including the film's villain. Jamie Foxx is reportedly in talks to play the shocking Electro. While Foxx is not confirmed, it is likely that Electro will appear in the film. Electro is one of Spider-Man’s first villains, appearing first in The Amazing Spider-Man #9.

Sin City: A Dane to Kill For is in the casting process and we already have some new faces. Jaime King is returning for the sequel, playing the sister of her character in the first movie. She is joined by newcomer Jamie Chung, who plays the part of Devon Aoki. A Dame to Kill For is currently set to hit theaters on October 4, 2013.

If you have a vacation coming up, why not choose Middle Earth? Or the next best thing, New Zealand? To get you in the Hobbitsville mood, Air New Zealand has created an inflight safety video using characters from the film. Director Peter Jackson even makes a cameo appearance.

One last message before Election Day, Joss Whedon has given his endorsement to Mitt Romney – apparently so he can drive this country into a corporate wasteland ending in a Zombie Apocalypse. So if you haven’t voted yet, listen to your nerd overlord and embrace the "Zomney Apocalypse." While you’re at it, go take a parkour class.

by Rachel Allshiny







Occupy Wall Street has hit the streets of New York in force once again. This time, instead of protesting the symbiotic relationship between big banks and politics, they are organizing relief efforts in the hardest-hit areas of the city in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

In the immediate aftermath of the super storm, Occupy Wall Street activists began coordinating aid to those in need in conjunction with climate activist group 350.org and recovers.org – a site that offers tools for organizing disaster relief within affected communities. This effort, dubbed "Occupy Sandy," combines the organizational power, established communication network, and autonomous agility of the Occupy movement to provide direct relief where it is needed the most. Occupy Sandy not only connects those who are able to donate supplies or volunteer their time with those looking for aid, but also fills in the gaps in services that organizations with non-profit status are not able to provide. For example, one recent Facebook post shows a photo of shopping carts full of perishable food that is unusable by Red Hook Initiative due to sanitation codes and the community center's 501c3 status. The caption recommends picking the food up to redistribute "DIY style," thus circumventing a frustrating technicality.

Remarkably, the Occupy Sandy effort is not limited to the hardcore Occupy activists who camped in Zuccotti Park and were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. The immediacy of the situation at hand and the speed at which Occupy networks were able to mobilize has drawn new recruits into a movement that had recently been losing steam.

Jeremiah Birnbaum, of Astoria, describes himself as apolitical and lives in a collective house with Occupy Wall Street organizers, but is not personally involved with the movement. He joined up with Occupy Sandy as a way to offer immediate help to those in need, particularly poor communities that are often overlooked. "We asked: Who is not being helped?" Birnbaum explained in a phone interview. "I could have gone to Red Cross and done two hours of training, or I could help people right now." He is working to coordinate efforts on the ground, matching abilities and resources to meet needs within the community, especially for those without access to the internet or social networking sites.

Birnbaum further described the process of contacting the city or other relief organizations as rife with red tape. "The bureaucracy is insane," he said. When he was unable to get in touch with ConEd about getting power restored to a nearby housing project, he turned instead to the Occupy Sandy network.He sent a text message asking his partner to request donations of flashlights, batteries, and candles through their website, providing his home address as a drop-off point. By the time he arrived home 15 minutes later, nearly 100 flashlights had been delivered. "I was stunned," he admitted. "People have been given the ability to help."

That, ultimately, may be the power of Occupy Wall Street moving forward; Restoring power to the people with their ability to organize and mobilize in a way that empowers individuals to make change within their own communities. "People ask me, are you from the Red Cross?" Birnbaum says. "We tell them no, we're your neighbors, and we're here to help you." This is where a leaderless, horizontal movement can shine. As Birnbaum puts it, "There's been this organic network created, and it works. It's time to get away from process to focus on taking action." Whether or not he will participate in future protests remains to be seen, but working with Occupy Sandy has initiated him into the Occupy community. "It's made me appreciate what Occupy has been doing behind the scenes for the past year."

Resources available for coordinating relief efforts through Occupy Sandy include a Google doc volunteer sign-up sheet, a donations page, and recovers.org pages for the communities of Staten Island, Red Hook, Astoria, and the Lower East Side. You can follow @OccupySandy on Twitter or search related hashtags, such as #SandyAid and #SandyVolunteer. You can "Like" the Occupy Sandy Facebook page or even sign up for text alerts by texting "occupysandy" to 23559.

All these resources and more have been collected on an Occupy Sandy hub by InterOccupy.

Photos by Jenna Pope (@BatmanWI), Julia C. Reinhart (@juliacreinhart), and @an0nyc.

by Greg Palast



For Mitt Romney, it's one scary Halloween. The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon (November 1) he will be charged by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other public interest groups with violating the federal ethics in government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bailout.

At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney's so-called "blind" trust.

The union chief says, "The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue. It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.”

“While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others,” King added.

The Romneys' gigantic windfall was hidden inside an offshore corporation inside a limited partnership inside a trust which both concealed the gain and reduces taxes on it.

The Romneys' windfall was originally exposed in The Nation magazine – see "Mitt Romney's Bailout Bonanza" – after a worldwide investigation by our crew at The Guardian, the Nation Institute and the Palast Investigative Fund.

The full story of Romney and his "vulture fund" partners is in the New York Times bestseller, "Billionaires & Ballot Bandits," available from Truthout with a contribution by clicking here.

According to ethics law expert Dr. Craig Holman of Public Citizen, who advised on the complaint, Ann Romney does not have a federally-approved blind trust. An approved "blind" trust may not be used to hide a major investment which could be affected by Romney if he were to be elected President. Other groups joining the UAW and CREW include Public Citizen, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Public Campaign, People for the American Way and The Social Equity Group.

President Obama's approved trust, for example, contains only highly-diversified mutual funds on which presidential action can have little effect. By contrast, the auto bail-out provided a windfall of over 4,000% on one single Romney investment.

In 2009, Ann Romney partnered with her husband's key donor, billionaire Paul Singer, who secretly bought a controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM auto parts division. Singer's hedge fund, Elliott Management, threatened to cut off GM's supply of steering columns unless GM and the government's TARP auto bailout fund provided Delphi with huge payments. While the US treasury complained this was "extortion," the hedge funds received, ultimately, $12.9 billion in taxpayer subsidies.

As a result, the shares Singer and Romney bought for just 67 cents are today worth over $30, a 4,000% gain. Singer's hedge fund made a profit of $1.27 billion and the Romney's tens of millions.

The UAW complaint calls for Romney to reveal exactly how much he made off Delphi – and continues to make. The Singer syndicate, once in control of Delphi, eliminated every single UAW job – 25,000 – and moved almost all auto parts production to Mexico and China where Delphi now employs 25,000 auto parts workers.


A version of this story originally appeared on Buzzflash. Forensic Economist Greg Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television. His latest New York Times bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, contains a comic book by Ted Rall and chapters by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.



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by Laurelin



There are moments in life when nothing has changed, yet all of a sudden everything is perfect. As I walk down the street from my house – the same street I walk every day with my head down – I suddenly look up and notice the leaves have changed colors and the sky is perfect. The wind blows and a single leaf falls into my outstretched hand, Tori Amos’s “Gold Dust” is playing on my iPhone, and I feel silly for being upset about such simple things when there is so much beauty in the world (“and then you’ll understand, we held gold dust in our hands…”). There are some songs you just remember, the songs you equate with moments, the songs that from that time forward will always remind you of autumn.

Taylor Swift’s “Enchanted” came through my ear buds on the way home from the bar one night two years ago on Boylston Street. I had met someone, our eyes connecting from across the bar, and after flickering away and back again a few times we wound up chatting; At the end of the night I had a new phone number in my phone and a smile on my face. She sang, “All I can say is it was enchanting to meet you, this night is sparkling, don’t you let it go, I’m wonderstruck, blushing all the way home.” And I was so hopeful, proudly wearing my newly blushing cheeks.

Ellie Goulding’s “Guns and Horses” reminds me of a year old summer fling, a boy who I would have done anything for after we broke up, even though I knew he and I never should have worked in the first place. He got a new girlfriend not long after our relationship ended, and I was devastated. His new girlfriend eventually broke up with him and it was his turn to be sad, and that’s probably why he and I started sleeping together again. I clung to those drunken nights with him, and always on the way home alone the next morning Ellie sang, “But I wish I could feel it all for you, I wish I could be it all for you, if I could erase the pain maybe you’d feel the same, I’d do it all for you, I would.” I wished so badly that he would choose me. He never did.

Oceanlab’s “Satellite,” while an upbeat electronic song, still makes me impossibly sad. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting to find different results. After being left not once, not twice, but three times by this abusive punk rock loser, I finally pulled what was left of my own self from the wreckage and managed to walk away with some shreds of my own personality and dignity left to cultivate and finally nurse back to full health. Each time I hear that beat and “You’re half a world away, but in my mind I whisper every single word you say,” I can’t help but cringe and remember the eight years when every day was spent feeling so hopeless and alone I could have just ceased to exist.

Taylor Swift’s “I Almost Do” has been on repeat as of late, and in my current state of mind I find myself reaching for the phone, wanting to reach out to someone and then remembering that I shouldn’t waste my time on people who don’t care. I delete his number and I feel foolish for wasting my time, silly for believing the things that came out of his mouth when I was as disposable as a Styrofoam coffee cup, only useful until you’ve sucked the last drop from the depths. It starts after I lock up the bar at 3 AM and I’m walking home alone as the city sleeps. “I bet this time of night you’re still up, I bet you’re tired from a long hard week, I bet you’re sitting in your chair by the window looking out at the city and I bet sometimes you wonder about me. And I just want to tell you it takes everything in me not to call you… every time I don’t, I almost do..”

I almost do. But I don’t, and I quicken my pace and I tuck the leaf that fell into my palm in the pocket of my black leather jacket. The wind picks up and I turn my head back towards the ground.



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by Aaron Colter


[Clio Suicide in Magica Sexualis]

Anthony Alvarado is an inquisitive man. Most of us grew up playing make-believe, pretending to be different people or different things. We played games like Bloody Mary, and often wondered how much we were told was real and how much in our minds what we perceived could be. Although magic and the occult have been seen as destructive elements in American society due to the puritanical roots of our religious culture, beings like monsters, wizards, ghosts and other worlds are no less improbable than the miracles of the Bible. Such strong beliefs, of any nature, can affect the way we perceive reality. Heaven, hell, angles and demons, how many people would swear on their very life that such manifestations are real?

Though children shed their belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy, millions of humans still trick their minds into believing fantastic creations. After being struck by a profound revelation, of sorts, Alvarado decided to write a book about the many ways a person can start to open those channels of accepting the impossible. His curiosity is documented in a new book titled D.I.Y. Magic, a short and easy-to-read guide to some seemingly opposing practical actions a person can take to start to hack their brain into believing all sorts of reality bending events. No reason why Christian fundamentalists should have all the fun playing inside their heads. But, be warned, sometimes, if you want to swim in the chaotic, hallucinating waters of the psyche, then you'll have to dive in the deep end.

Alvarado was kind enough to answer some questions about his inspiration for writing D.I.Y. Magic, which should be the perfect way to prepare that brain of yours for a truly frightening Halloween.


Aaron Colter: What made you want to write DIY Magic? It seems that the methods you mention have already been documented in other sources.

Anthony Alvarado: Some of the approaches have already been written about a ton, and so I didn't try to re-write the book on stuff like lucid dreaming or flotation tanks. And stuff like Tarot cards I added a new twist to them: what happens when you design your own Tarot cards?

Some methods, there is very little information out there. Like keeping yourself suspended during the hypnogogic state for example, that's pretty rare. I think a lot of people have stumbled on this trick from different paths, and been like, "Wow, this works, am I the only one who knows about this?" So yeah I hope for the reader it's like a good mixtape: some stuff is like an old classic in a new context, and some stuff is brand new for you.



AC: I'm assuming you tried all of the tactics mentioned in the book? Which was the most effective? Were there things you tried that didn't work at all?

AA: Yeah, I did try all of the tactics. I'm sure my girlfriend thought I was going crazy. Every day I'd be doing something weird. Taking naps with a big spoon in my hand and an empty bowl, or lying on the couch with ping-pong balls covering my eyes and listening to white noise, super loud.

Out of everything I tried, I was really surprised at how effective flotation tanks are. And I'm surprised that pretty much everybody hasn't tried these yet. One trip will make you a believer. The stuff that didn't work consistently I didn't include in the book. That doesn't mean that it might not work for some people: chanting, and dancing, and drumming – there are a whole bunch of rituals that are some people's cup of tea but not mine.

AC: Are there methods you still use today?

AA: Absolutely! I'm a fiction writer and I'm constantly searching for new ways to get into the deep end of whatever project I'm working on. My hope for this book is that it will find its way not only into the hands of people interested in magic, but writers, storytellers, poets, comics artists, musicians. My book is spinach for the muscles of the imagination! I've been playing around a lot lately with using Tarot and other idea/symbol generating engines to add an element of chance. I also have found that the more attention I pay to dreams in the morning, the more likely I am to have a flash of inspiration for a story while taking my morning shower.

AC: What's your favorite tip or suggestion in the book?

AA: I kind of like the simple ones. Like grow a beard or buy a weird looking jacket you would never normally wear, and watch how much it changes your day-to-day, because people react to you differently.

AC: How did you go about selecting the illustrations in the book?

AA: I was lucky to have my friend Jason Leivan, the owner of Floating World comics, curate all of the illustrations. He is really plugged into the underground comics and art scene, and the roster of artists he pulled together for D.I.Y. Magic is awesome. I felt honored to have illustrations by artists like Farel Dalrymple and Ron Regé, Jr. because I've been reading their comics for years.

AC: What's the most significant paranormal or outside-of-reality event you've ever experienced?

AA: I had a full blown mystic epiphany type experience, some years ago, that happened suddenly while I was walking past an oak tree. I won't go into detail about it here, because it would take pages and pages. It was basically this intense realization of . . . the incredible strangeness that the world exists. You know, why is there something instead of nothing? But it was overpowering. I could hardly talk for 24 hours. And it seemingly came out of nowhere. I was like, what the heck was that? Later, it was through reading about other people's experiences, that I started getting into a lot of the ideas that eventually became D.I.Y. Magic.

I've since learned that you can't really convey the reality of a mystic experience. If you try, it just ends up sounding cheesy, like listening to somebody else's drug trip. You can only write down pointers on how to get there.

AC: Do you think most modern mages, wizards, psychics, yogis, etc. are legit? How do you find the true believers from the snake oil salesmen? And, in the end, if you believe in it, does it even matter?

AA: What's the Bible say about judge a tree by its fruit? It's like that. I think you can tell by . . . well, is it working for them? And does it really work for you? The spell, or the yoga pose, or whatever.

At the same time, you've got a good point, does it matter? There is a teacher at the yoga studio I go to who is so amazingly cheesy, vapid, and New Agey, that I have a hard time not cracking up during downward dog. But his classes are just as demanding a workout as the other yoga teachers, so I guess it works. At least if all you want from the class is a good workout.

AC: If you could only give one piece of practical advice to someone trying to shake up the mundane, what would it be?

AA: Meditate. Just take 10 minutes every morning, sit down and empty out your thoughts. It does so much for you, and if everybody in the world did it we would be living in a different reality.





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by SG's Team Agony feat. Fabrizia

Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.


[Fabrizia in Cottonwood]

Q: I just found that my boyfriend is in fact a werewolf. However, I’ve got an issue with, err, zoophilia. And tomorrow will be full moon, and we have already planned a romantic dinner with candles and some French wine. I don´t want to hurt his feelings, but figure it might be best to back out. What do you think?

A: Sigh. Werewolves can be soooo inconsiderate. I mean, really, planning a romantic dinner during a full moon? What was he thinking? The bigger question you might want to ask is, were you the actual dinner? Perhaps you can cancel this time, then coordinate your future dates around his "time of the month" and have your own girls night out when he is in full wolf-mode. Personally, I would stick to dating humans. They are less hairy, smelly, and most important...they actually exist!

Fabrizia
xoxo

***

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

by Damon Martin


[Bob and Kemper Suicide in Droids You're Looking For]

For years, George Lucas has said that he wanted to pass along the Star Wars franchise to a new generation of fans, and with a $4 billion sale he's done just that.

Lucas, who was the 100-percent sole owner of Lucasfilm, sold the property to Disney on Tuesday for a reported $4 billion sale price. Half of the transaction will be paid to Lucas in cash, with the other half coming in the form of 40 million shares of stock.

The purchase of Lucasfilm will also ensure a new Star Wars movie currently titled "Episode 7" will make it into theaters in 2015.

Current Lucasfilm co-chairman Kathleen Kennedy will now become Lucasfilm President, reporting directly to Disney head Alan Horn. Kennedy will also oversee the Star Wars franchise, and along with George Lucas, will begin immediate development on Star Wars: Episode 7. This will be the first major Star Wars film in theaters since Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, which was released in 2005.

“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” said George Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lucasfilm via press release. “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers. I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.

"I’m confident that with Lucasfilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, and having a new home within the Disney organization, Star Wars will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come. Disney’s reach and experience give Lucasfilm the opportunity to blaze new trails in film, television, interactive media, theme parks, live entertainment, and consumer products.”

Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm adds onto its already impressive list of companies already under the corporation's control. Over the last few years, Disney has purchased Marvel Comics and Pixar Films, and now Lucasfilm joins the family as well.

Disney executives announced on a conference call with media that following the release of Star Wars: Episode 7, they will continue with episodes 8 and 9, with plans in place to release a new Star Wars film "every 2 to 3 years" after that. Executives stated that Episode 8 will likely land in theaters in 2017, followed by Episode 9 in 2019.

The purchase also includes the entire Indiana Jones franchise, Industrial Light and Magic, and Skywalker Sound. Disney also announced that the Star Wars franchise will become an integral part of their theme parks world wide.

But fans are no doubt wondering, will this move introduce a new generation to a rebranded and reinvigorated version of Star Wars or will the franchise be watered down with new films that ruin the legacy of the original trilogy and the iconic status of the sci-fi legend?

by Aadie Suicide



I am sure you have heard of them, the walking dead, the zombies. Flesh falling off there limbs, drained of blood, intellectually dull and hungry for brains – a walking dead horror story phenomena. But have you seen one or met one? Would you really want too? Looks can be deceiving, I had the pleasure of interviewing a Mr Rick Genest a.k.a. Rico the Zombie. This zombie art collecting gentlemen is full of heart, phenomenal inner strength (he survived a brain tumor at age 15), and intelligence to boot. With the majority of his body covered in ink inspired by the rotting corpse, you may know him as 'Zombie boy,' a Canadian artist and tattoo clad fashion model.

Aadie Suicide: Where did you grow up?

Rick Genest: From the ground, from the grave; alive with no pulse but a craving for brains. Growing up happened in different places and in different ways. I loved spending the better half of my time keeping it in the streets of Montreal.

AS: How do you like to spend your free time?

RG: Getting high on rooftops and low under bridges. Telling jokes and lighting smokes.

AS: Do you have any pets?

RG: My shadows were twin sister and brother Rottweiler cross German Sheppards, Skullz and Bonez. When they passed, I became more involved in circus…I recently gave away my 8 foot Albino Boa, Lucifer, due to excessive traveling and lack of time for her.

AS: What did you want to be when you where little?

RG: I do believe I did become what I wanted to be. I still want to creep more in horror movies, as well as freak more at sideshows. Asides from these things, I would like to spend more down time on taxidermy projects.

AS: If you weren’t the Zombie Boy that you are today, what career path would you be on and why?

RG: I always thought that zombies could do anything. Just more dead-ish.

AS: I understand your artwork is a tribute to the horror movie genre, what is your favorite director and film?

RG: There are so many masterpieces, it would be hard to choose. Ultimately, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

AS: What was the first horror movie you can recall seeing and how old where you?

RG: The earliest I can remember, Tremors, was the first to traumatize me. But it was The Adams Family and Batman that got to me first. As for comic books, Morbius The Living Vampire and Ghost Rider were my favorites.

AS: When you were 16 you got first Tattoo; What was it?

RG: My first tattoo was an outline of a Jolly Roger, but instead of a skull, a living zombie’s head.

AS: You were featured in Lady Gaga’s music video for “Born This Way.” How did that come about?

RG: As an illustrated man, street busker, and performing artist, I had not been a stranger to photography. Being tattooed as a living skeleton, I found work easily that way. I’ve preformed in stage shows, carnivals, landed small parts on TV, worked once as a talent on a movie named Carny staring Lou Diamond Philips. I worked at a pirate themed bar and often get stopped in the street for pictures. I had already been published in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Bizarre, and National Geographic, as well as others. One afternoon, a man named Ludo stopped me in the street and offered me a sum to model one afternoon for a fashion magazine named Dressed to Kill. This was the shoot that got the attention of Nicola Formichetti. Thierry Mugler is the brand name that Nicola Formichetti hired me to work for, and soon after, he offered me an appearance in Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way” video. I love showbiz, and it makes it so much more fun when you get to work with positively charged people like Gaga. She is one down cat – passionate about what she does, very head on earth, and treats everyone with respect.

AS: What is the general reaction you get from people who see you in public? Positive, negative or mixed?

RG: Most people can tell I’m just a tattooed man, but, previous to working with Gaga, often authority figures, the old fashioned, the elderly, and the upper class, would be quick to judge.

AS: Have you had to cover up any work you no longer favored or just to complete the art of the rotting cadaver? And if so, what was it?

RG: Many years ago I got my hyena head- Baphomet covered with a biohazard symbol.

AS: Since GaGa’s discovery of you, you have kind of exploded. How does that feel?

RG: I have a lot of work to do and Gaga gave me the chance to get things done. If any of you creeps out there are reading this, I’m the right monster for the job!

AS: Are you enjoying your new found fame?

RG: I have always loved entertainment and have been entertaining since I first discovered I could pick my nose. I’m grateful I’ve still got blood left.

AS: I saw a video clip of makeup artists completely covering over your tattoos. When you looked in the mirror, what was that like for you? How did that feel?

RG: The job was fun, and the people’s reaction funnier. I love practical jokes!

AS: You have your own Character Figure! That for me is basically one of the highest honors. What was that like for you?

RG: I have been turned into a metal statue and also a wax statue. Honestly, I was waiting for a downsized plastic guy. He is very well made; I thank the good people at Tonner.

AS: Any words of wisdom for people who have never had a tattoo but are thinking of getting one?

RG: Chewing gum helps with the tough spots.

AS: Do you have anything else you would like to say?

RG: Stay fresh or smell bad J



Photos by Colin Singer. For more info visit RickGenest.com/.

by Rachel Allshiny

Like most people, I use my Twitter account in a variety of ways. I interact with my friends, share interesting parts of my day, report on protest actions I attend, and check for on-the-ground news from other parts of the country and world. I also follow a variety of politicians and aspiring politicians, despite my disenchantment with most who currently hold or seek to hold public office. It's always useful to know what propaganda they are spreading.

When I received a direct message from Joe Biden last week, however, it didn't feel like the personalized interaction I suspect his campaign had intended. It felt like an invasion of privacy. What was so compelling that he felt he had to reach out to me in the backwoods of Twitter, where I chat with my closest friends? Had he finally noticed that I'd been deleting his emails for the past year (and then some), to the point that now they automatically land in my spam folder? Had the President himself noticed this and asked his buddy to talk to me on his behalf? Y'know, to soften me up a little. Or maybe the Vice President just wanted to remind me that no form of "private" communication is truly private when it comes to the insidious reach of the government.

Whatever the reason, I was creeped out. Then I opened the message and read:



Oh! He just wanted me to use my loyal Twitter following to help get him re-elected. Well, when you put it that way...err…no…I REFUSE!


The following is my response, sent via Twitter to @JoeBiden and @Obama2012.


Dear @JoeBiden,


Thank you for your kind offer and for noting my influence on Twitter. I built that influence by encouraging critical thought and discourse in politics and all else. Therefore, I will be happy to retweet any @Obama2012 tweets on the following subjects.


1. The unconstitutional nature of indefinite detention of citizens under NDAA.

2. The number of civilian casualties caused by US drone attacks.

3. The immediate closure of our detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.

4. The need for ACTUAL energy independence, i.e. clean and renewable energy sources.

5. The importance of unions, including teachers' unions, in securing workers' rights.

6. The proper use of punctuation, even on Twitter (see previous item).

7. Working to overturn the Supreme Court's decision re: Citizens United.

8. Addressing gender equality in terms beyond sexual, reproductive, or wages.

(More on 8: how insulting is it that even in discussions of equal rights we make women into sexual/reproduction objects.)

9. Making marriage available to all who seek it, regardless of the genders of those involved.

10. Single-payer healthcare.

11. Prosecuting war criminals for their crimes instead of whistleblowers for exposing them.

That's a partial list, @JoeBiden. Please DM me again if @Obama2012 starts talking about any of those and I'll be sure to follow/RT.

by Kristin Canty

Rawesome, Venice, CA


[The Third And Final Multi-Agency Rawesome Raid]

In the movie, Farmageddon…The Unseen War on American Family Farms, one of the stories covered was of a raid that occurred in Venice, CA, at a private food buying club called Rawesome. Whenever I was lucky enough to be in the vicinity and able to visit this club, it was like being a kid in a candy store…or, well, a raw foods lover in a raw foods store!

I was able to buy raw dairy products such as grass fed yogurt, butter, cream, cheese, and raw chocolate mousse – is that dairy? Raw meat and homemade delicacies such as ceviche and marinated raw meat salads were also available, along with salad dressings, pure olive and other freshly made oils, and a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and fermented drinks…all organic and raw.

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for me it was pure bliss. I was filming during one visit, and had the pleasure of having people come up to me to tell me their raw food healing stories. I heard many first person accounts of how the symptoms of diseases such as MS, Parkinson’s, cancer, arthritis, and other conditions, were alleviated greatly by a raw food diet.

Unfortunately, the FDA does not like stories of people being healed from food, and they don’t like raw foods in general. In the case of Rawesome Foods, multiple agencies (both local and federal) raided it three times. The last time, it was closed down. One of the club’s many suppliers, Sharon Palmer (a farmer who had provided raw goat milk for a time), the manager, James Stewart, and a Weston A Price Chapter leader, Victoria Bloch (who volunteered for Sharon), were all charged with multiple felonies. There were no actual felonies in the case, however, all three were charged with conspiring together to commit misdemeanor level offenses, which magically turned the charges into felonies.


[The Rawesome 3: Felonious Fresh Milk Dealers]

Thirteen months later, just before their preliminary hearing, Victoria Bloch and Sharon Palmer were both offered plea deals, which they accepted. Victoria pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of selling unlabeled milk and accepted a $100 fine and two years’ summary probation. Sharon Palmer pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of storing milk in unsanitary conditions, since on the day she was raided she was milking her goats to feed her livestock (Rawesome had picked up their milk up a day earlier). She received a $1,300 fine, 40 hours of community service, and three years’ summary probation. Both Victoria and Sharon would have preferred to have taken this case to a jury trial. But unfortunately, neither had the money to cover the high cost of defending themselves in a trial that would have lasted at least two weeks, perhaps more. James is still in jail, as he was considered a flight risk, and is awaiting either trial or the opportunity to plead out of the case.

There is still a separate Ventura County case awaiting both James and Sharon. And there is a change.org petition to set them free that was written by a Rawesome Foods club member. I fear that the Rawesome community has been torn apart by these circumstances. No one ever became sick from foods they had gotten at Rawesome Foods. Certainly, nobody ever complained about having access to some of the freshest, most delicious foods available. And nobody ever complained about the fresh goats milk Sharon provided to the club, as well as to a few of her own farm’s CSA members. On the contrary, I met happy, vibrant, healthy people who enjoyed the foods they sourced from these two wonderful people.

If you would like to learn more or help, please read and sign the Change.org petition.

***

Meadowsweet Farm, Lodi, NY



Steve and Barbara Smith, farmers in upstate New York were raided and shut down by New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets for their private buying club that provided raw milk, yogurt and cheese to many happy customers.

They went to court after the shutdown, and hoped a judge would find that the Department of Agriculture & Markets did not have authority over their private buying club. Unfortunately, the judge ruled against them, and said that the Department of Agriculture & Markets did have authority to shut down their LLC.

They were therefore forced to dissolve their club. They then sold the entire herd to the former members of the club. Currently, Steve and Barbara are under contract with the owners of the herd to milk and maintain the herd for them. They have had this herd share for two years now and they have a waitlist of people that would like to join in on purchasing a share. Unfortunately it is very difficult to obtain raw milk, so farms that supply it often have long waiting lists of customers.

In New York, as in every state except Wisconsin, it is legal to drink milk from your own cow and since the members own the cows, hopefully the Department of Agriculture & Markets willrespect that and leave them alone from now on.

The demand for raw dairy products is not going to go away, so hopefully more farms and farmers like Meadowsweet will pop up! We are thinking of the Smith family and their farm as the drought hit them hard and they had to sell off their beef herd in order to have enough hay to keep the dairy going through the winter.

For more information visit: meadowsweetfarm.com/

***

For background information on this, please go to farmageddonmovie.com, and watch the documentary, Farmageddon…The Unseen War On American Family Farms.

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by SG's Team Agony feat. Perdita

Let us answer life's questions - because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.


[Perdita in Eames]

Q. I'm 27, and I haven't had sex. Apparently, this is noteworthy and some kind of BFD. I'm not religious. I'm not waiting for marriage. I just haven't found someone I like and trust enough. When I was younger, my first serious boyfriend did not treat me well, which included some incidents that, looking back, were assaults, though not rape. So I think it's understandable that after that, I'm not looking to care about someone, have sex with them, and then be treated badly. I'd rather get to know someone first, before getting naked and making myself even more vulnerable. I'd rather feel safe that that isn't going to happen again.

I'd actually really like to be having sex, and I've wanted to for some time. But I can't seem to find anyone I'm attracted to, who is also attracted to me, who's cool with not stripping down immediately. I've dated several guys in the last couple of years, but when they want to have sex and I say I'd like to wait, they lose interest. No, I don't explain my past experience, because I don't believe I am obligated to give a good enough reason to postpone sex. A good enough reason should be, "I don't want to yet." I also shouldn't have to fall all over myself reassuring them that yes, I will have sex with them at some point in the future, as if they'd otherwise be wasting their time dating me.

I haven't had success meeting anyone at work or in my grad school classes, or anywhere else. I've asked friends, and no one knows anyone to set me up with. So my dating has primarily been guys I meet on online dating websites. Is there some hidden, untapped market for non-religious, smart, funny, feminist guys who don't think you're a nutjob if you don't want bone them before you even know them very well? If so, please share, or tell me what the heck I'm doing wrong here.

Signed,

Ladypants.

A: Hi Ladypants,

First of all, I’m so sorry to hear you are a victim of assault; it’s a terrible ordeal that no one should have to go through once, let alone multiple times. Given your past experiences I understand why you are so cautious of trusting others, and you have every right to feel this way.

However communication is key in building a strong, trusting relationship, and it has to go both ways. Your personal information is your business, but I think it will be healthier for everyone involved if you are a little more forward in regards to your expectations of the relationship from the beginning. It’s possible to say: “I’m very interested in you, I would like to get to know you more, and I’m definitely physically attracted to you. But due to some past negative experiences, I would like to wait to have sex.” Be direct and honest, because a little bit of honesty and openness goes a long way towards building trust.

And while you shouldn’t fall all over yourself to reassure someone, I don’t think it’s unfair to have multiple discussions on the topic, because you’re not the only person in the relationship. It’s important to for the other person to respect your feelings, but you also need to remember to respect their feelings as well.

As for the sex issue, if you want to wait for the “perfect moment” that’s totally cool, but sometimes you can miss quite a few good opportunities that way. Ultimately you need to take your time, and do what’s right for you. Just remember that communication is key, and that it takes two people to make a relationship successful.

Perdita

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