Gil Scott-Herron died a few days ago. If you are not familiar with his work, he is the grandfather, the god father of rap, hiphop, spoken word. Here is a video of Gil talking about his work. Gil is best known for the revolution will not be televised piece.

The Supremes gave orders to California to do something about the prison over-crowding recently. It was a split 5-4 decision as most controversial decisions will be from the current court because there are 4 strongly conservative ideological votes on the court (alito, roberts, scalia, thomas for those tracking the justices) one swing vote (kennedy) and…

Rachel Maddow doesn’t seem happy with Obama. You make the call.

The Washington legislature continues to crawl through the special session. You can see where they have been by tracking the slimy trail. Well. I guess that’s a little harsh. But here is a note about the current status from my friends at POWER: POWER is an organization of low-income parents and allies advocating for a…

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” — George F. Kennan (1904-2005) US advisor, diplomat, political analyst, and Pulitzer-prize winning…

Critter’s Crap breaks down economics for us. It’s really quite clear. Over a long period of time, the numbers show that the economy grows at a rate of 2.1%. We can and should have a discussion about steady state economics in light of resource depletion, but for the purpose of evaluating economic activity, income and…

I am thinking about suggesting that the progressives, radicals, and rabble (that’s me) consider sending out an SOS. Yes, an emergency call.  I think we are there. In this instance I think the SOS will be an emergency call for a Summer of Solidarity (think Summer of Love). Those of us who voted in 2008…

“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” — David Brin (1950- ) Author I don’t know much about sane folks, but I get the drift here from Mr. Brin. I figure the realm of politics attracts…

The dead will rise and attempt to communicate with the legislators about SB 4944, 4945, 4946 and 4947 “It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead.” — Thomas Jefferson M and I are pretty busy preparing for the Friday…

Washington State is pushing college tuition up as part of the budget cutting stage of the Great Recession.  This is exactly the wrong way to go, but it is driven generally by free market forces, forces for deregulation, bubble economy speculators who understand that the current flattened tax table provides the opportunity of a lifetime…