I have student loans to pay back from law school. Recently, my loans were, without my knowledge, transferred to a new provider. When I went to create an account with the new provider, I discovered their website has a major accessibility issue. During the account creation process, you must elect an image as a part of their security features. There was no way for me to tell what the different images showed or for me to select an image. Unable to select an image, I was unable to create an account. Unable to create an account, I can’t make payments toward my loan.
Tess Gerritsen’s The Keepsake is the sixth book in the Rizzoli & Isles series. I have read each of the first six books in the series. While I have enjoyed all of them, The Keepsake is my new favorite.
Kyle Swenson’s Good Kids, Bad City is one of those books I read knowing it will infuriate me. I read it because I can’t think about this kind of injustice and racism enough. As a lawyer, I want so badly to respect the law. As someone who has learned enough to realize people enforcing, prosecuting, and judging the law as well as the law itself are too often not worth respecting, I can’t stop being disappointed. Far too often the “justice system” is really the injustice system. Way more often than many white people want to admit the reason the “justice system” becomes the injustice system is the color of the defendant’s skin.
Wishing to understand more about the history between the Israelis and Palestinians, I researched books to read. None of the lists I found listed Max Blumenthal’s Goliath. None of the lists also contained books that I believed tried to show the Palestinian side of the story. Frustrated, I asked a friend who knows more about this history than me to suggest some books. One of his suggestions was Goliath.
Reading Goliath I found myself looking up Israeli laws and news stories about different events. The picture painted of Israel by Max Blumenthal was not at all what we are taught to expect. Checking some of the things he covers, convinced me of the soundness of his work and the misunderstanding of reality many Americans have regarding Israel. In order to demonstrate what I’m saying, I will cover some of the laws I learned about from Goliath.
A year ago today was my first day working for the city of Portland, Oregon. It’s hard to believe it has been a year. In some ways, it has flown by. In other ways, it has seemed slow. Sitting here a year later, I can honestly say it has been a wonderful year!
It looks like spring is finally trying to spring. I won’t say it has sprung, because cool rainy weather may return this week. At least we have had a few nice days lately.
Welcome to Jonathan’s Verdicts. I’m Jonathan Simeone. The title of this episode is: Democrats Ignore People With Disabilities: The verdict for this episode is: no Democratic candidate for president talks about people with disabilities.
Our long national nightmare is over. Thankfully, we now know, as if there was any doubt, Beto is running! What we don’t know, other than his ego, is why Beto is running. America doesn’t need an empty suit with little experience, a moderate record, and an unwillingness to take many stands. In honoring Beto’s announcement, I’m going to make a second donation to Bernie Sander’s campaign. A commitment to progressive ideals and a willingness to fight for universal health care, at least a 15-dollar minimum wage, and more is what matters.
Welcome to Jonathan’s Verdicts. I’m Jonathan Simeone. The title for this episode is: A Jobs Guarantee Makes Sense. The verdict for this episode is: guaranteeing every American who wants a job a job isn’t radical.
Some of the benefits of everyone who wants a job having one include:
Fewer people getting government benefits
Government collecting more taxes
More projects getting done
More Americans having the dignity that comes with work
There are two factors that must also be considered:
There are currently about seven million jobs in the American workforce that employers want filled that aren’t filled.
Only about 75 percent of the working-age population is working.
So, we have millions of jobs unfilled. We have a crumbling infrastructure. Large areas lack broadband. Millions of Americans aren’t working.
Given those realities and the benefits that would come from a guaranteed jobs plan, how can you intelligently argue against a guaranteed jobs plan?
During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt introduced a host of jobs programs. Those programs created new roads and parks, brought electricity to millions and did much to modernize America. All of that while providing millions of Americans decent jobs.
After the Great Depression, the will for government-provided jobs through projects that invest in America disappeared. Over time, our infrastructure began crumbling, areas of our country fell further behind, and good working-class jobs became much harder to find.
If America adopted a guaranteed jobs plan that promised a living wage and union protection, millions of working-class people would find the kind of work they want, our communities would revitalize and modernize, fewer people would need benefits, and America would be a much better place to live.
Oh yeah, millions of Americans would choose these good government jobs over the low-wage, little to no benefit jobs offered by corporations. Oops, I think I answered my question. The idea of a guaranteed jobs plan is regularly criticized because corporations want to continue exploiting American workers.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Jonathan’s Verdicts. I appreciate your support.
Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah highlights the hypocrisy, connects the sleazy dots, and demonstrates the true character and history of the Christian right and its hold over the GOP better than any book I have ever read.
