by Sandor Stern

Regarding Your Lexicon…

I love words –– not simply because they have been the primary source of income throughout my career but when chosen well, I love the sound in my ear and the arrangement of letters on my page. I love them for context and intention. They are the primary source of primate communication. That is why I am so puzzled by your lexicon that twists and turns established meanings into contexts and intentions that are far removed from origins.

Let us look at some together.

DONATION – a gift usually to a charitable cause. We also give donations to non-charitable causes like political parties. People give $5, $100, $1,000 in support of the shared political viewpoint they hope will win the election. But what about gifts of millions of dollars? Are they gifts or investments? When the oil billionaire Koch brothers give tens of millions of dollars towards the election of an administration that favors more oil drilling in the USA, is that a donation or an investment? When casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson makes a multimillion dollar gift to elect an administration friendly to his casino interests in the USA and off shore, is that a donation or an investment? On the flip side, when trade unions offer millions of dollars to their political allies is that donation or investment? Aren’t the unions wanting an administration that favors the workers? Yes, the aim is the same for billionaires and unions; elect an administration that will further their interests.

But the purpose is so very different.

The billionaires act to increase their personal wealth; the unions act to directly improve the wages and working conditions for millions of citizens in their organizations and indirectly improve those conditions for nonunion workers by raising the bottom line. As I’ve written in an earlier blog –– what’s better for the economy, a billionaire buying one Bentley or 99 workers each buying Fords?

When individuals like Bill Maher (and there were many of them) give a million dollars to an administration –– is that an investment? How? What does he gain? He is offering money to an administration that seeks to increase his personal income tax. He is actually donating against his own best interests. He is donating for what he perceives is the good of the country. That for me is the established meaning of the word –– donation.

JOB CREATORS – self explanatory, right? The idea behind this shibboleth is that businessmen create jobs and that if the government increases their personal income tax they will have less money for job creation. Let’s be factual –– businessmen do not create jobs. Business, not men, creates jobs; and business is driven by a demand for goods and services. What sane businessman would hire workers if his business did not require it to meet product or service demands? The past five years have revealed the fallacy of the job creator label. The demand for goods and services has been poor and in order to create profits the “job creators” have been cutting back on expenses through hiring non-union workers while avoiding overtime pay, pension and health benefits by assuring their employees work less than 40 hour weeks. That reduction in payroll effectively takes spending money out of workers’ hands and reduces the demand for goods and services: a Pyrrhic Victory in the end. These are your so-called “job creators.”

On the flip side, the rant that “government does not create jobs” echoes from the far right. In fact, government is less dependent than the private sector in the demand for goods and services for job creation. Aside from the millions of workers in municipal, county, state and federal jobs, how about those jobs that government directs towards private enterprise? How about those companies that supply the armed forces? How about those companies that are hired to build roads, bridges, subways? Do you think that The Army Corp of Engineers has its own manpower to fix the structural disaster of Hurricane Sandy? Do you take your own trash to the city dump? Do you wash the street outside your house or investigate the burglary that stripped your home of valuables or the fire that destroyed it?

ENTITLEMENT – the dictionary meaning is “to furnish with proper grounds for seeking or claiming something.” It’s that simple –– “proper grounds.” Somehow you have twisted the meaning of the word so it has a connotation of getting something for nothing. And now both Social Security and Medicare are derisively viewed that way. Folks, this is not charity or welfare. “Proper grounds” involves citizens paying for these government administered plans through a lifetime of hard work. Those payments entitle you to reap the promised benefits. If you pay for auto insurance and crash your car, are you not entitled to have the insurance pay the cost of repair? If you pay for life insurance, is your beneficiary not entitled to collect? How about your payments for health insurance or house insurance? How about your payments towards your personal pension? All of these plans entitle you to the benefits offered. If you don’t pay a Social Security payroll tax of 6.2% (4.2% last year thanks to Obama’s tax cut) to match your employer’s contribution of another 6.2%, you will not receive Social Security benefits. If you do not pay a Medicare payroll tax of 1.45%, you will not receive Part A Medicare benefits unless you pay a premium of over $450 a month. And if you want to add Medicare Part B to your coverage, you will pay a monthly premium of $100 to $250 depending on income. These are the “proper grounds” for entitlement and there is nothing demeaning about it.

WELFARE – the dictionary meaning is “concern with the improvement of disadvantaged social groups.” Medicaid is one example of a helping hand from the government dispensing your tax dollars. But before you start screaming for the demise of Medicaid look at the requirements needed to receive that money. Your maximum monthly income cannot exceed $500 and your total assets excluding home, car and personal possessions cannot exceed $2000. Do you know anyone who earns $500 a month and owns a home and a car? I don’t think so.

On the other hand, you don’t scream about another helping hand the government dispenses. How about billions of dollars in “welfare funds” to oil companies like Chevron and Shell and agriculture corporations like Monsanto that earn billions in profits every year? Those welfare funds were originally intended to help small oil companies and farmers with the costs of oil drilling and produce competition. Now that money goes to the major corporations that lobby successfully to keep the welfare funds pouring into their coffers. So are these the “disadvantaged social groups” your party favors? That’s a far cry from a helping hand to a person with a monthly income of $500.

BIG GOVERNMENT – we know “big” and we know “government” but what exactly is “big government”? What exactly warrants your derisive hostility? Is it the size –– as in the number of people employed? Is it the intrusiveness –– as in regulations?

If size is your issue -–– the claim that federal employment has grown over the past years is not true. According to statistics from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management federal employment has actually declined by 2 million since the 1960’s. With regard to your cry to reduce it even more better be careful what you wish. People without jobs are people without spending money. Not only will the demand for goods and services drop but the cost to the government in unemployment benefits and various welfare benefits will rise while government takes a hit from a reduced base of personal income taxes. That is a lose-lose situation.

As for government intrusiveness –– you need to explain to me why a government is bad because it regulates banks, insurance companies, mortgage companies, drug companies, food suppliers –– and any other business that directly affects the well-being of every citizen. And please explain to me why your fury over the intrusion of federal regulations does not extend to your desire for government intrusion in your bedroom (contraception, abortion, same sex marriage) and the workplace (gender equality with equal pay for equal work).

Just asking.

Your inquisitive friend,

Sandy

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by Lee Camp

It’s almost here. It’s almost time for that big shopping day each year when someone gets trampled to death as a thousand crazed zombie-like human beings scramble for the last few copies of the new zombie video game. And that’s the time when we all have to ask ourselves, “Are we progressing? Or is this a nation of children?”

[..]

by Blogbot

Every week we ask the ladies and gentlemen of the web to show us their finest ink in celebration of #TattooTuesday.

Our favorite submission from Twitter wins a free 3 month membership to SuicideGirls.com.

This week’s #TattooTuesday winner is Melissa Newman a.k.a. @_melal.

Enter this week’s competition by replying to this tweet with a pic of your fav tattoo and the #tattootuesday hashtag.

Good luck!

A few things to remember:

• You have to be 18 to qualify.
• The tattoo has to be yours…that means permanently etched on your body.
• On Twitter we search for your entries by looking up the hashtag #TattooTuesday, so make sure you include it in your tweet!

Check out the Tattoo Tuesday winners of weeks past!

by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I need to find a way to balance between commercial action films and making something I really want to make.” – Jet Li

I didn’’t expect Jet Li to hardly speak any English when I met him. It turns out that he spends hours learning to speak his lines in American movies in order for them to sound natural. But that didn’’t stop me from having a great conversation with the man. He’’s so intense in his movies but in person he was jolly and it was a real pleasure to make a DMX joke and have a smile break across his face.

I got a chance to talk with Jet Li about his movie Hero which is finally getting a release from Miramax in the United States, upcoming projects and kicking ass and taking names.

Read our interview with Jet Li on SuicideGirls.com.

Casiopea Suicide in Ray of Sun

• INTO: Books, high heels, dance, great music, good friends, pets, fruits, chocolate, work, modeling, travel, fairy tales and happy endings.
• NOT INTO: Violence of any kind!
• MAKES ME HAPPY: My friends, a good book, my mommy, my kitties, great music, my family, movies, latex, chocolate, good sex, hot and sunny days, my home, travel.
• MAKES ME SAD: Rainy and cold days, liars, cheaters.
• HOBBIES: Reading.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: My family, music, books, phone, and internet.
• VICES: I´m a total shopaholic.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Reading.

Get to know Casiopea better over at SuicideGirls.com!

Ramonne Suicide in Loves Nico

• INTO: Art and steal souls.
• NOT INTO: Drugs…
• MAKES ME HAPPY: Beer, friends, sleeping, rainy days, whiskey, cigarettes, kisses, hugs, being loved, music, surprises, gifts, bothering people 🙂
• MAKES ME SAD: Not being loved, infidelity, animal abuse, lies.
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: You, Coca Cola, music, sex, internet.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Studying and thinking of you ;).

Get to know Ramonne better over at SuicideGirls.com!

by Joanne Stocker, Kenneth Lipp and Dustin Slaughter

The baseball field behind Egbert Middle School is pitch black as our journalist team, led by Liam (who prefers his last name not be used), a Staten Island resident who swam flood waters to rescue neighbors as the nearby ocean swallowed his community, walk down an unlit street strewn with the detritus of Hurricane Sandy’s watery rage. Liam wants to show us what the neighborhood has been abuzz over: the site of what was a makeshift morgue, in the hopes that we might challenge what many here in Midland Beach see as an official orchestrated attempt to downplay Sandy’s death toll.

Midland Beach, a tight-knit working class neighborhood on the Island, has largely been washed away. What remains are uninhabitable homes and harsh utility floodlights that pierce the inky darkness to discourage looters, as unmarked police cars patrol the shells of former neighborhoods.

It is the closest to Hell any of us have ever been.

“It was in here,” he says as he beckons us to enter.

Taking just a few steps yields the stench of death. Like this smell, the truth of what happened here isn’t easily dismissed.

As with any story that spreads through a tight-knit community, especially in a disaster, there are inconsistencies and friends-of-friends third and fourth-hand accounts to rely on. Some say the flood victims, which rumor has it are to be found within the school, broke into the premises to seek shelter from the rising waters or the cold, only to meet with tragedy. Others claim that the bodies were found elsewhere and the school was used because the nearby Staten Island University Hospital’s morgue, with a capacity of no more than 50, could not handle the intake.

Rumors are natural, but this isn’t sensational gossip.

Earlier in the day, a New York City Housing Authority administrator [name withheld] at the South Beach housing development told us how her friend, a nurse, had been relocated to Midland after her hospital in Manhattan was evacuated. When we inquired specifically about the rumored school-cum-morgues, she said she could confirm that the school had been used as a morgue, and that the actual death toll was much higher. When we tracked down her friend, the nurse, she declined our request for comment. The NYC Housing Authority administrator later recanted her assertion over the phone, after telling us she had gone out to dinner with Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, and that she now accepted the official death toll of 18. However, the rumor was subsequently corroborated by an Egbert Middle School teacher, who wishes to remain anonymous. When questioned by us, she confirmed that the school wouldn’t open Monday morning because it was being used as a temporary morgue.

A sanitation worker and Staten Island local, holding his hands to his head in horror upon seeing the destruction on Cedar Grove Avenue for the first time, repeated again and again, “They’re lying,” – he was referring to the death toll. He told us of another New York Department of Sanitation employee, only 22 years old, who was part of a crew that “lifted 50 bodies into a front-end loader” in the Midland neighborhood just a day earlier. Workers from the Sanitation Department were a constant sight as they helped residents clean up debris.

The morgue rumor becomes even more disturbing when one takes into account the behavior of local press, such as the Staten Island Advance. In an early report, the Advance mentions a temporary morgue site off of Bedford and Mason Avenues – Egbert Middle School’s location – yet later Sandy reports in the paper make no mention of this. The Advance offered no retraction, but the makeshift morgue item was there…

And then vanished without explanation.

Contrast the reliable testimonies of Midland Beach residents with the strange behavior of the local press and adamant denials from local officials [see official statement] and one begins to see a narrative emerge: Regardless of whether Egbert Middle School was or is still being used as a makeshift morgue, the death toll in this forgotten borough that is a casualty of political expediency is likely much higher than officials would like the public to know.

We return the following day to volunteer where needed and talk to the people who call Midland Beach their home. It is the day of what was to be the 2012 New York Marathon.

“This is all Staten Island is to them – a starting line and a dump,” Chris Rich, a Staten Island firefighter tells us as he cleans up debris and mud from his gutted house. Throughout his neighborhood today, New York City marathon runners prance through decimated streets, leaping over piles of donations yet to be distributed, bringing severe congestion to a community just beginning to regain its senses after the catastrophe. To place it in even sharper relief, according to Rich, it was only that very morning that authorities had gotten around to removing three bodies floating in Bay Street Marina. One was tied to a pier to avoid it washing down shore. The person who reported the bodies was told that they would be left for the time being as efforts were to be exclusively “rescue” oriented, eschewing “recovery.” While the Staten Islanders were, and are, still counting their dead, they felt as if they were expected to indulge catastrophe tourism.

“These aren’t Christmas lights,” Rich says, appalled by runners and the attendant onlookers taking in the destruction and pausing for photographs with shell-shocked locals. “People are looking for their wedding rings…These people should be shot,” he says, referring to the vast number of runners who arrived on the island to jog the marathon despite its cancellation.

The ultimate cancellation of the New York City Marathon on Sunday, which would have started on the Island, was an empty political gesture. Michael Bloomberg, NY’s billionaire Mayor, had fought tooth and nail to satiate corporate sponsors and have the Marathon commence on time. He was forced to cancel at the eleventh hour, not out of respect for the suffering of locals or for prudent administrative reasons, but because the public outcry over the issue forced his hand.

Time and time again, we speak to residents who are disgusted by the marathon runners, who seemingly use the Islanders’ misery as a photo opportunity. Yet his decision to return at least two generators slated for use during the marathon to New Jersey once the event was canceled was the last straw for Rich. It is widely reported that these generators could have powered 400 homes – something Staten Islanders desperately need. Already their walls and floors are spawning mold and creating hazardous conditions that will likely render their homes permanently uninhabitable.

It is a cruel sort of political maneuvering. Residents in and around Midland Beach are left to fend for themselves as the Red Cross – as of last weekend – were still rejecting volunteers. Meanwhile FEMA was merely handing out business cards on Friday as they distributed food that could barely nourish families of two or more. We would later learn that fully-furnished, non-toxic FEMA trailers – at the time of this article’s publication – sit less than two hours away in a Wilkes Barre, PA lot.

One local nurse, employed by Columbia University, was denied an opportunity to volunteer by the Red Cross, ostensibly because she, an educated professional, could pose an insurance liability. “People are going to die out there tonight,” she said. When she tried to drive supplies over the Verrazano bridge, she was ID’d and then denied entry.

There is more, however, that sheds light on Bloomberg’s disconnected and cruel countenance upon those in whom he does not see a personal economic or political interest. A borough firefighter who prefers to remain nameless relates the story of how two nights ago the mayor personally ordered police at the 122 Precinct to either arrest or otherwise disperse volunteers who refused to cease relief efforts on Father Capodanno Boulevard, which runs close to the Lower Bay and was slammed by Hurricane Sandy. We ask him what he thinks the mayor’s motive is for doing so: “They [Bloomberg and his administration] didn’t want cameras coming down here and seeing people helping people, they wanted it to look like FEMA or the Red Cross was helping. The fact of the matter is, it’s not. Down here, it’s people helping people,” he says.

The 122 Precinct commander refused to obey Bloomberg’s order, instead ushering people off of the street and into a parking lot, away from any network news cameras. The consistent answer from Staten Islanders to Bloomberg’s misprision was a defiant self-sufficiency and tirelessly persistent community-mindedness.

It was clear that the only ones willing to be responsible for helping Staten Island would be its inhabitants. Local groups such as the Hallowed Sons, a collective of former firefighters and police officers, were seen on Cedar Grove Avenue, in the nearby town New Dorp, giving out hot meals. They were also organizing roving bands of teenagers, who, armed with dust masks and shovels, were helping gut uninhabitable basements and garages.

In Midland Beach, we come across Kelly, who arrived from Boston with a raft and shovels to help his uncle Mike save his home. After just four days, the garage was beginning to mold. Mike’s wheelchair-bound neighbor had died in the flood, despite the best efforts of those trying to rescue him. One of Mike’s daughters was out delivering supplies to others who, in their words, had it much worse.

Kelly offers to put us up for the night. “We have a generator and heat,” he says, as the men pass beer around. Their hospitality and determination is characteristic of Island residents. “Come back in a year, you’ll see a new house!”

Images: Dustin Slaughter, Kenneth Lipp, Joanne Stocker, Joe Fionda and Lex Hortensia