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‘When do you reach a point where inequality is simply too much?’

Robert Reich

By Arturo Garcia

Economist Robert Reich found himself slightly agreeing with former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum in an interview with Bill Moyers, arguing that while he doesn’t support “equality of results,” the problem with the U.S. financial system is a lack of equality when it comes to opportunity.

“The question is not inequality, per se,” Reich told Moyers on Friday. “The question is, at what point do you tip over, do you get to a tipping point where the degree of inequality actually is threatening your economy, your society, your democracy? When do you reach a point where inequality is simply too much? Where most of your people feel like the game is rigged.”

Reich told Moyers that when the country’s tax laws are weighed in favor of the wealthy, that creates an educational system that steers families in lower socio-economic tiers to schools that lack comparative resources.

“A lot of middle class and poor people actually are paying, particularly through social security taxes, which nobody talks about,” Reich explained. “They all want to talk about income taxes. They’re paying a much larger share of their income.”

Reich, a former Secretary of Labor under Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, also explained what he described as an easy decision to team with director Jacob Kornbluth for the new feature Inequality For All, a long-form visual explanation of his theories on the surge in income disparity.

“There is something about film with which you can emotionally connect with people and open people’s minds and eyes and hearts,” Reich argued. “And on this issue of widening inequality there’s so much confusion, many people if they’re, you know, if they’re rightwing, they want to blame the poor, if they’re leftwing they want to blame the rich. There’s a lot of blame going around. But people are not looking at the actual structure of the economy as it’s evolving.”

Watch Reich’s discussion with Moyers, published on Friday, below.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/20/robert-reich-asks-bill-moyers-when-do-you-reach-a-point-where-inequality-is-simply-too-much/

By The Christian Science Monitor

Human right s groups have demanded a judicial investigation into why Moroccan police violently broke up a protest last month, in a unusually defiant move against the country’s increasingly repressive security forces.

A total of 22 rights groups and other NGOs have joined together in the request against Interior Minister Mohand Laenser and other police officials Few expect it to go anywhere, but activists say merely filing the complaint is an important step against impunity in the northwest African nation.

“We are not in a democratic country where all citizens are equal before the law. There are people for whom the laws are applied and other people who are never prosecuted,” says Khadija Ryadi, the coordinator of the coalition and former president of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights.

But, she says, “If things don’t move forward, we will exert pressure for justice to do its work and denounce the instrumentalization of justice by the state.

The protest in Aug. 2 in the country’s political capital Rabat was sparked by outrage over a pardon granted by King Mohammed VI to Daniel Galvan, a Spanish man who had been sentenced 30 years in a Moroccan prison for the rape of 11 children.

Dozens of people, including several journalists, were injured when police violently broke up the demonstration. Similar protests in other cities were also violently broken up.

It was a rare public display of opposition to King Mohammed who remains popular for most Moroccans.

Galvan had been convicted of the rapes in September 2011. The royal pardon, issued in July after a visit to the country by Spain’s king, was one of 48 granted to Spanish citizens convicted in Moroccan courts.  After the royal pardon, Galvan left Morocco for Spain. King Mohammed later rescinded his pardon, with the royal palace saying the king had been unaware of the nature of Galvan's crimes and had ordered a probe into his release. A Spanish judge later ordered him jailed based on an international arrest warrant.

Rights groups want to know who ordered police to violently break up the protests. Six weeks after the demand was submitted, however, judicial authorities have yet to respond, though the Interior Ministry has insisted it didn’t issue any order for the dispersal. Justice Minister Mustapha Ramid has said his department would launch also an investigation. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry has said it launched a separate investigation into the police crackdown..

Officials at the Interior Ministry refused requests for comment from the Monitor.

Morocco’s government has grown more repressive and human rights groups have grown bolder in their political demands, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings. In 2007, a top-ranking security official was sued by the Association of Human Rights for breaking up another protest, but the court declined to hear the case.

Authorities have said that police intervention is justified because the protests are unauthorized, though according to Moroccan law no previous authorization is required for a sit-in and the new constitution, adopted in 2011, guarantees the right to protest peacefully.

Younes Bensaid, an activist of the pro-democracy February 20 Movement, said he was slapped and insulted by a police officer at the Aug. 2 demonstration. He says the authorities didn’t only want to disperse the protest.

“The goal was to intimidate those who wanted to protest in other cities, to scare those protestors who are not activists who went out that day,” he says. “It was clear from the way they were beaten up.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/20/moroccan-rights-groups-move-to-challenge-repressive-police/

This article contains many live links within the text in the original post.

By Arturo Garcia

A group of Italian lawmakers interrupted a parliamentary debate on Friday to engage in a same-sex kissing demonstration in support of expanding the country’s anti-discrimination law to include the LGBT community.

According to The Local, the new measure, which expands a 1993 law to ban “crimes motivated by homophobia or transphobia,” passed in the Chamber of Deputies in a 354-79 vote, but is not expected to make it through the Senate of the Republic, generally considered the parliament’s “upper house.”

But dozens of members of the M5S party — short for MoVimento 5 Stelle, or Five Star MoVement — cut discussion short on Friday when they stood up and began kissing each other, while others held up signs calling for “more rights” for LGBT Italians. Some ministers also defended the protest online, with Federica Daga posting a picture of the protest on Twitter and writing, “Equal rights and dignity without gender. Because a kiss and a hug are not scary.”

Watch the M5S’s demonstration in support of LGBT rights, posted on the party YouTube channel on Friday, below.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/20/italian-lawmakers-hold-same-sex-kiss-in-to-protest-anti-lgbt-discrimination/

I love this song and most of you probably have heard it but there will be many of you that have not heard it so…...


MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS - SAME LOVE feat. MARY LAMBERT (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

Macklemore reacts to 'Same Love (Doggy style)' parody

Macklemore reacts to 'Same Love (Doggy style)' parody

This golden oldie is probably one of the best break out moments in a chick flick to date. So remember the awesomeness and rejoice in the love for all things phallical!

http://everythinggay.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/throwback-thursday-theme-song-the-penis-song-from-the-sweetest-thing/

Disney Villains' Grindr Profiles

Thank you, EverythingGay, for making these Grindr profiles for Disney Villians. Come on, like Scar didn't use a gay hook-up app on Pride Rock.






SHHHHH!!! No one call Barbie Please!!!