“You know what this mess tells me? That if you report a rape, you have to be perfect. You can’t make foolish choices. You can’t talk to a drug felon on the phone, (especially if they’re one of a disproportionate number of people of color incarcerated for drug crimes.) You can’t be too poor to hire investigators to do their own digging. You can’t live in housing associated with HIV. You can’t be an immigrant. You can’t be a woman. You can’t be a woman of color. Unless you’re the right kind of witness, you just can’t afford to tell the police or anyone else that a man with power, money, global connections and sense of entitlement raped you. Because you’re below his, the prosecution’s and The New York Times’s pay grade.” — DSK Rape Case Takeaway Number Five: You Have to Be the Perfect Victim (via minorjive)
(via thetart)
Poor people don’t pay taxes. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.
The U.S. suffers from high taxes. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. — 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.
U.S. corporations are over-taxed. Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high — 35 percent — if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay — the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.
(via jjarichardson)
“See the game? (According to Chris Wallace at Fox News,) I make fun of conservatives or Republicans because I’m a liberal, partisan ideologue; I make fun of liberals and Democrats because I want — as part of my brilliant yet cynical strategy — to maintain enough credibility to continue to make fun of conservatives and Republicans.
And that narrative of conservative victimization is the true genius of what Fox News has accomplished: any editorial judgment in news, or schools, or movies that doesn’t favor the conservative view is elitism and is evidence of liberal bias. Whereas any editorial judgment that favors the conservative view is evidence, merely, of fairness — and done to protect them from liberal bias.
And if you criticize Fox for this game, guess what that’s evidence of? How right they are about how persecuted (conservatives are). It is airtighter than an otter’s anus.”
— JON STEWART, calling out Fox “News,” on The Daily Show (via inothernews)
(via stfuconservatives)
(via trendhunter via nerdapproved)
(via theseaqueeen)
reblogged via langer:
It’s nice when banner headlines aren’t about war.
(via brooklynmutt)
[video]
Photo of the Day: The Empire State Building’s pre-scheduled rainbow light display honoring NYC Pride Week becomes that much more meaningful in light of the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage.
(via silentsigh57)
Gay Marriage Approved by New York Senate -
SO SO SO PROUD OF NEW YORK TONIGHT!!!