Letter from Chinese Laborer Pleading for Help Found in Halloween Decorations

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/LbrZvMRjEdnO.IFjdx5EhA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTMxMA--/

The letter reads: "Sir, if you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persecution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever."

"I was so frustrated that this letter had been sitting in storage for over a year, that this person had written this plea for help and nothing had come of it." Julie Keith told Yahoo! Shine. "Then I was shocked. This person had probably risked their life to get this letter in this package."

The letter describes the conditions at the factory: "People who work here have to work 15 hours a day without Saturday, Sunday break and any holidays. Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. Nearly no payment (10 yuan/1 month)." That translates to about $1.61 a month.

Keith, a mom who works at the Goodwill in Portland, Oregon, did some research into the letter. "I looked up this labor camp on the internet. Some horrific images popped up, and there were also testimonials about people who had lived through this camp. It was just awful."

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MORE:
http://shine.yahoo.com/work-money/letter-chinese-laborer-pleading-help-found-halloween-decorations-202400773.html

The important thing now is to make the Republicans pay the price for being obstinate



MORE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/28/come-together-breaks-washington-apart/

The Cliff, the Deal, and the Filibuster
by BooMan
Fri Dec 28th, 2012 at 09:07:05 PM EST

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In any case, while we're in the subject of the filibuster, it's helpful to keep it in mind as we go careening off the fiscal cliff. In his statement tonight, the president said that he was cautiously optimistic that a deal could still be reached but that, if no deal came into place, he would ask Harry Reid to bring a basic bill to the floor for an up or down vote.



Normally, the Republicans would filibuster a bill like this. However, they have a number of considerations that are not normally in play. Number one is the clock. The act of filibustering is actually the act of not agreeing to a motion to proceed. That forces the Majority Leader to invoke cloture which takes time to 'ripen.' Specifically, the cloture petition is ignored for one full-day, so one filed on Monday cannot be voted on until Wednesday. If the Republicans don't agree to an up or down vote on Sunday (the 30th of December) they will have effectively stalled the process through to the cliff. Do they want to do that?

And, if they are worried that the Democrats might have the momentum and unity to change the filibuster rules, using a high profile filibuster at the end of this Congress (in direct defiance of the president) would probably remove any doubt about the matter.

Of course, even if Harry Reid passes a bill in the Senate, that doesn't mean that John Boehner will be willing or able to match him in the House. But that creates a further conundrum from Mitch McConnell. Does he filibuster and take all the blame, or does he dump it all in Boehner's lap, split the Republicans, and lose the message war?

One thing is for sure. If there is no deal and there is a filibuster in the Senate, no one is going to cry for the Republicans when they lose some of their ability to obstruct in the next Congress.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/12/28/2175/3210

Source: Orlando Sentinel

Like Jordan, as many as 49,000 people across Central Florida were discouraged from voting because of long lines on Election Day, according to a researcher at Ohio State University who analyzed election data compiled by the Orlando Sentinel.

About 30,000 of those discouraged voters — most of them in Orange and Osceola counties — likely would have backed Democratic President Barack Obama, according to Theodore Allen, an associate professor of industrial engineering at OSU.

About 19,000 voters would have likely backed Republican Mitt Romney, Allen said.

This suggests that Obama's margin over Romney in Florida could have been roughly 11,000 votes higher than it was, based just on Central Florida results. Obama carried the state by 74,309 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast.

Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/os-discouraged-voters-20121229,0,215136.story

Source: Buzzfeed

Are These Guys Really In Charge Of The Republican Party?
From a DUI to fumbled fiscal cliff talks, there's no time for soul-searching in a leaderless party. “It's a shit show,” says one Republican.

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Conservative groups are splintering. The Romney campaign has dissolved into backbiting and billing disputes. A “plan B” to avert the fiscal cliff proved to be a colossal embarrassment. A teetotaling Idaho senator has been charged with drunk driving. But the most striking symptom of the GOP’s horrible moment is the party’s inability to get done what virtually everyone here knows is in its political best interest: A hasty surrender.

It’s difficult to find a Republican operative who is willing to say on the record that going over the fiscal cliff next Tuesday is a good idea. Provoking a crisis is bad politics: Republicans are resigned to taking the blame. And it’s bad for their policy agenda: They will likely be cornered into a broader tax hike than the best deal they could get from President Barack Obama today, and with none of the spending cuts that might now be on the table.

And yet, the dominant emotion among most Republicans here is one of sheer resignation.

“It’s a shit show,” one prominent Republican told BuzzFeed of the GOP’s messaging position. “Tax rates are going to go up on everyone, and we’re going to get the blame.”

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/are-these-guys-really-in-charge-of-the-republican

I’d put Fix the Debt in the predatory category; it’s quite clear that the organization (which is yet another Pete Peterson front, this time explicitly dominated by corporate interests) has an agenda more focused on cutting social insurance and corporate taxes than on reducing the deficit per se.

Meanwhile, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, exemplifies the hopeless confusion factor. By all accounts, he’s a good guy, with genuinely generous instincts. But in his message to employees, urging them to write “come together” on coffee cups, he gets the nature of the fiscal cliff completely wrong. In fact, he gets it wrong in two fundamental ways. He writes:



OK, first of all, the fiscal cliff is NOT A DEBT PROBLEM. In fact, it’s the opposite: the danger is that with expiring tax cuts, expiring unemployment benefits, and the sequester, we’ll reduce the deficit too fast. Deficit scolds are having a hard time reconciling their sudden concern about excessive deficit reduction with everything they were saying before – and evidently Mr. Schultz hasn’t gotten the message that we are now at war with Eastasia, and always have been.

And then, on top of that, he has the politics all wrong, in the characteristic centrist way: he makes it sound as if the problem was one of symmetric partisanship, with both sides refusing to compromise. The reality is that Obama has moved a huge way both in offering to exempt more high-earner income from tax hikes and in offering to cut Social Security benefits; meanwhile, the GOP not only won’t agree to any kind of tax hike at all, it also has yet to make any specific offer of any kind.

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MORE:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/a-double-shot-of-misunderstanding/

About those spoiled children we pay to govern us

Dan Amira is (rightly) incensed at all the complaining members of Congress -- and particularly the Senate -- are doing in the New York Times and elsewhere about having to come back to Washington to work on the the quote fiscal cliff crisis endquote.

http://prairieweather.typepad.com/big_blue_stem/2012/12/about-those-spoiled-children-we-pay-to-govern-us.html

SEMINOLE, Fla. - As a pawn shop owner, Frank James was always a big believer in gun rights and the second amendment. After all, it was his bread and butter business.

But after what he saw in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday, he's had a change of heart. "I basically broke into tears and looked up on the wall, seeing the types of firearms I am selling," James said.

At the Loan Star Pawn store in Seminole, a glass display case that once housed several Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles is now empty. The glass counters normally filled with handguns has been completely cleared.

"I'm not going to be part of it anymore," James said. He has several copies of the exact rifle suspected in the massacre.

http://wonkette.com/494735/florida-pawn-shop-owner-will-sell-no-more-guns-forever

Mr. President, Have Pity On The Working Man
By: TBogg Thursday December 27, 2012 10:25 pm


Courtesy of the NY Post, here is one of the people John Boehner and the Republicans are protecting from the onerous confiscatory upper end tax increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent:

They’re ready to jump off a real cliff.

New Yorkers of all income levels got a rude awakening yesterday when they saw in The Post how much more they will pay in taxes next year without a fiscal-cliff deal by Jan. 1.

[...]



Oh look, here are some kids who worked in coal mines for $3 a week!



I’m sorry. What was Peter Opie saying about “working your butt off”?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/jumping_out_of_their_kins_SpNwWIBDvSotYbcF7bQZ3O
http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/12/27/mr-president-have-pity-on-the-working-man-3/