The Coal Miner’s Daughter

Company Housing at Consolidation Coal Co. Mine No. 203 - Jenkins, KY

“Don’t forget where you came from.”

“An urban dweller with small-town values,” Susan Bodnar didn’t disappoint or forget her grandmother or her advice. She traveled far from the Pennsylvania coal-mining patch community of her childhood to make her own life as a professional in Manhattan, but kept returning to her family’s dying town.

Local unemployment numbers grew and insidious mining-related illnesses plagued my family – black lung, emphysema, kidney disease, brain tumors and other cancers, as well as psychological problems stemming from depression and alcoholism. Everybody chain-smoked.

Yet, this area of Pennsylvania and its people – my family – remained the place to which I always returned home.

Painfully honest, Bodnar recounted her struggles with stereotypes, identity and class on a CNN In America blog. Her compelling story inspired hundreds of readers to tell their own wrenching life stories.

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The Super Committee’s failure— does it matter?

H/T: Off the Charts

The super committee has failed to reach a debt-reduction deal, pretty much as expected. Given the proven inability of Republicans and Democrats to agree on tax hikes or entitlement cuts, a super committee success would have been remarkable.

So, where do we go from here? 

Republican Senator Tom Coburn wants to raise taxes!

Like all Republicans, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is opposed to raising any taxes. But he also has a history of railing against wasteful spending. This week he challenged his party by publishing an eye-opening report. Coburn excoriates the millionaires who use the social safety net as a luxury hammock. I’ve written about the billions Coburn calculates that the taxpayers pay for “welfare for the well-off.”

Read at Women’s Voices for Change.

Why gold?

I always thought gold was prized because it doesn’t tarnish, like silver, or rust, like iron. It’s soft and malleable and therefore easily worked into jewelry. It’s non-reactive, which is why it’s safe to keep a gold filling in your mouth indefinitely. These are all true, but it turns out that one specific property makes it uniquely qualified to be used as money. A chemist explains:

Why gold, why not argon

N. B. In an “upgrade” announced yesterday, WordPress no longer allows bloggers to post video without paying a fee.

Herman Cain & Rick Perry do stand-up

You really can’t make this stuff up. Jon Stewart had a ball with both of them. “I love him,” he said about Cain. The two videos, Herman Cain’s “brain freeze” and Rick Perry’s “oops,” will hound these wannabes until they finally accept that the presidency of  the United States is a gig way out of their reach.

Libya? All Cain knows is that he’s against whatever position Obama took:

 

Perry’s policy just keeps eluding him:

(If the link doesn’t work, watch it on YouTube)

 

Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson and Betty Friedan 50 years later

Always provocative, sometimes angry and often funny, a lively panel of four prominent women— Roberta Brandes Gratz, Melissa V. Harris-Perry, Sally Helgesen and Urvashi Vaid— assessed the legacies of Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson and Betty Friedan. On the 50th anniversary of the publication of  Jane Jacobs’ classic The Death and Life of American Cities, the women took issue with the premise that our world has changed fundamentally because of their ground-breaking books.

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Comedian Rachel Maddow skewers Herman Cain

From ComedyBeat:

Rachel Maddow’s sketch comedy turn lampooning Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s responses to charges of sexual harrassment and assault highlight her comic talent. Comedy has always been an integral part of her schtick, but her improv act raises her to a new level.

Running with a ball initially launched by Talking Points Memo, Maddow parodies Cain’s arguments that he didn’t and couldn’t have sexually harrassed or molested any of the women who are denouncing him.

But since when is sexual harrassment a laughing matter, at least for women?

The sketch runs from 00.01 to 00. 48. Watch.

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9: Who benefits?

It sure isn’t women. Sofia Resnick has done the math:

Under Cain’s plan, millionaires would get a 17.9 percent tax rate, or a 22 percent boost after taxes. But a single mother earning between $20,000 and $30,000? Her tax rate would be 24.9 percent. In other words, a single mom making $25,000 a year will have to give 25 percent of her income, or $6,250, to taxes.

Women make up 49 percent of the workforce, but 59 percent of low-wage workers. Because women earn less than men, they are concentrated on the left in the graph based on data from the Tax Policy Center. The graph shows how Cain’s plan would affect the different income groups. The 9-9-9 plan would increase the tax paid by the poorest by about 20 percent. It would make no difference to households earning $200 thousand, and lower the rate paid by those earning over $1 million by about 15 percent.

 

In 2010, women in salaried jobs earned just over  our fifths more than men.

 

discusses the gender-wage gap and its relevancy to tax-policy issues:

Daylight Saving Time—still a good idea?

This informative and entertaining video relates why some of us (not every country and only 48 states) change our clocks twice a year, a situation that makes for a motley map of confusion.

 

H/T: The Morning News via The Dish