{"id":13392,"date":"2014-08-06T00:03:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T07:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=13392"},"modified":"2014-08-06T00:03:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-06T07:03:50","slug":"open-thread862014-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/06\/open-thread862014-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;8\/6\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 107.&#160; I don\u2019t know why, but I just could not get comfortable last night, and I could not sleep.&#160; I had a short nap this morning, but it was nowhere near enough.&#160; I\u2019m hoping I can catch some serious Zs, when I finish writing.&#160; <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 5:02 (average 6:24).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-08-06-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/08\/01\/1318427\/-Elizabeth-Warren-pins-banker-to-the-wall-on-student-debt-relief\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren cares a lot about making student loans affordable\u2014and she happens to be a bankruptcy expert. This week, she turned that passion and that wealth of knowledge on Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association. <\/p>\n<p>You would think bankers would learn not to try to get sneaky in response to Warren&#8217;s pointed questioning. But this one had not learned that.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/haoKLe3rJxc?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Was Lizzie munching on Bankster Butt or what? Bankruptcy relief should include student loans, and the death of the borrower should terminate any student loan.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0umhn0XwFwI\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>: <\/font>Another Journey into the Parallel World of ALEC <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0umhn0XwFwI?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Kudos to Chris Taylor and Ed Schultz. When Republican politicians introduce ALEC boilerplate, they must be exposed and dumped.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/labor\/robert-reich-just-imagine-if-people-were-paid-what-their-work-really-worth-society\" target=\"_blank\">AlterNet<\/a>: <\/font>What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the&#160; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/afontevecchia\/2014\/03\/13\/seve-cohenpersonally-made-3-3b-in-2013-despite-having-to-shut-down-sac-capital\/\" target=\"_blank\">$2.3 billion<\/a> he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading? <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, what\u2019s the worth to society of social workers who put in long and difficult hours dealing with patients suffering from mental illness or substance abuse? Probably higher than their average pay of&#160; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/oes\/current\/oes211023.htm\" target=\"_blank\">$18.14 an hour<\/a>, which translates into less than $38,000 a year. <\/p>\n<p>How much does society gain from personal-care aides who assist the elderly, convalescents, and persons with disabilities? Likely more than their average pay of&#160; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/oes\/current\/oes399021.htm\" target=\"_blank\">$9.67 an hour<\/a>, or just over $20,000 a year. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">As always the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right, while the Reich on the Right, the Republican Reich, is wrong. Click through for in depth coverage of this subject.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0806Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0806Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/0806Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 107.&#160; I don\u2019t know why, but I just could not get comfortable last night, and I could not sleep.&#160; I had a short nap this morning, but it was nowhere near enough.&#160; I\u2019m hoping I can catch some serious Zs, when I finish writing.&#160; Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/06\/open-thread862014-2\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}