Reconsider is the brain child of my good friend Angela Barbash. It’s a business and a non-profit based around a simple idea that no one else seems to have thought of. Please check out the video, and if you have any spare cash to donate so Angela and her crew can begin this very important work, please throw them a few dollars.

We hear so much about Detroit’s decline and rebirth around here that it almost feels like a joke to post something else about it, but I wanted to highlight a new documentary that is comparing Detroit to Lodz, Poland, another city that was dependent upon manufacturing, and had to deal with similar situations when those jobs left. It looks pretty interesting, and my friend Dina got her music used in the preview, so I thought I’d share it.

It looks like the film will be highlighting the artistic revival in Detroit, which seems to be what people keep talking about, and for good reason. Not only is there a lot of really interesting stuff happening, but it may be our best shot. After all, it seems to be working for Grand Rapids.

Here’s is the Michigan Radio story about the film, and the film’s website in case it caught your eye.

I am however still motivated by the current challenges that my community faces. One of those challenges I was interviewed about by the local newspaper AnnArbror.com. I talked to a reporter about  the growing need for emergency food assistance, the budget cuts, and the lack or resources. I was happy with the way he wrote about the subject, and if you’re interested you can read the entire thing here.

And while I’m on the subject of food banks, Matt Ygelsias wrote and excellent article in Slate about how to best help your local food bank (hint: it’s not dropping an old can in a box once a year.)

I suppose this can be called a shift in focus. I hope to start writing again more frequently, and I’m sure I’ll touch on the broader themes and causes of the difficulties that people in South East Michigan face, but I don’t anticipate caring about the GOP debates anytime soon.

Hold on everybody, it’s getting colder and weirder every day.

If you don’t watch it, you should take away just how easy it is for lobbyist to get what they want for their clients. According to Abramoff, it’s as easy as offering a congressman a job…

 When we would become friendly with an office and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I would say or my staff would say to him or her at some point, ‘You know, when you’re done working on the Hill, we’d very much like you to consider coming to work for us.’ Now the moment I said that to them or any of our staff said that to ’em, that was it. We owned them. And what does that mean? Every request from our office, every request of our clients, everything that we want, they’re gonna do. And not only that, they’re gonna think of things we can’t think of to do.

And the results are real, as a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows, higher levels of corruption equal more special tax breaks for businesses.

But we’ve passed reforms, right? Haven’t things gotten better? According to Abramoff “The system hasn’t been cleaned up at all.” We all have a lot of work to do.

And that’s really why the Occupiers are so mad. It’s not that someone else got rich, it’s that they have so little control over their own destiny. After years of school and tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, all they have to show for it is a part time job at the mall, while the people who already have so much are raking it in faster than ever.

That message, that the 99% deserve to be rewarded for their work too, is scaring the 1%. Why else are we seeing scenes that look a lot more like Iran than America. In Oakland an Iraq War vet was shot in the face by a Police rubber bullet. He survived looking for nonexistent WMD’s in Iraq, but when fighting real live Mass Destruction like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America he ends up with a fractured skull. He probably enlisted with ideals like “defending our freedom”, but at home he isn’t allowed the freedom he thought he was protecting.

When scenes that looked like this happened overseas, The Obama administration was quick to condemn government violence against peaceful protesters. I wonder how long it will take to break there silence when it is happening to their own people. If I were a gambling man, I would bet ‘not soon.’

Great stuff.

Of course, not everyone reads a story like this and feels the same way I do. Some look at this post and think “Suck it up whiner.” Those people have created their own tumblr called We are the 53%, a reference to the current Republican claim that 47% of people pay no taxes. For right now, I won’t focus on how that number is completely false, or on how a lot of the people on this tumblr are actually not even in the 53%, but rather on how odd I find it that all of a sudden conservatives seem to be all for raising taxes.

The people who actually don’t pay any income taxes are split up into five major groups. The first three: retired people, children, the unemployed all have no income to tax, the last two are people who have income but are so poor that they receive a refund, and those who have enough deductions through either utilizing tax incentives or donating to charities.

So recapping the 53%er’s argument…

Making rich people paying their fair share = Class Warfare (you freeloading hippie)

Making the poor, elderly, and children pay taxes on the income they don’t have = Compassionate Conservatism.

Luckily, it looks like Occupy Wallstreet is gaining steam in all areas, even among Fox News readers. That’s good news, because this has the potential to be the most important movement since civil rights. But along the way, let’s not forget to be inclusive of all the percents, even the 2%.

And whenever you look at the poverty level it’s important to know that the figure was originally based off of food costs. Since it was created in the 1950s, most living expenses like housing and health care have increased much more than food, but we still measure it the same way. Here is a helpful image which demonstrates just how much the cost of health care has increased compared to food.

As you can see, we have an incredibly outdated method for seeing how many people are actually living in poverty. But the news doesn’t get any better for poor people, especially in Michigan. Next weekend, thousands of people will start losing their cash assistance, and food stamps has just been severely cut forcing about 15,000 people to lose some level of help in buying food.

You might ask, why has poverty increased so much when our economy is now so much bigger than it was in the 1950s? If there is so much more money, where is it? That is an excellent question that for some reason no one in the news media bothers to ask. The Census Bureau’s report has some helpful information on that as well.

As you can see, yearly income for the poor has risen only $2,600 over 45 years, and if you ask me, that’s a pretty lousy raise. Income for the middle class has risen even less, but for the top 10% it’s jumped over $50,000. That jump is even higher when you look at the top 5% and 1%.

When we cut services for the poor and continue tax cuts for the rich we are literally taking money out of the pockets of the neediest amount us and handing it to billionaires. It’s completely inhumane, yet to suggest that we don’t continue this reverse Robin Hood mentality is said to be committing class warfare. This proves to me that conservatives in this country don’t know what real class warfare is, and if they are going to accuse us of it just for stating facts we may as well actually wage it.

I’m incredibly thankful that some people in New York and Chicago are taking to the streets for the Occupy Wallstreet movement. More and more I believe that civil disobedience is going to be the only thing that creates some real change. And these peaceful protesters are already facing the kind of violent resistance you would expect from people trying to protect the wealthy. Here is a clip posted today of women who are standing still being caged in and maced by police.

I hope this leads more people to action. The only way our politicians will start putting people ahead of profits is if we demand it of them.

GOP members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today called attention to a proposed regulation that would restrict the transportation and importation of nine types of snakes, including the Burmese Python.

In a new report entitled “Broken Government: How the Administrative State has Broken President Obama’s Promise of Regulatory Reform,” GOP members cited the proposed snake ban as one of seven examples of red tape choking off job growth in an already ailing economy…

…Florida officials, led by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), are pushing for the new rules because the Everglades are under attack by 100,000 gigantic Burmese pythons who have been accidentally introduced by negligent pet owners. The outside invaders have been on a rampage, devouring native birds and other creatures. One python grew so big that it managed to devour a six-foot alligator before exploding. No really. This actually happened. There’s a photo.

Yes. Of Course. Stupid big government. Think of all the jobs we’ll create!

Snake Avoiders

Snake Hunters

And of course Snake Bait

Here they are last wednesday when Brian Williams asked about Rick Perry’s record on executions.

Now, whatever your thoughts on capital punishment are, I hope you find it disturbing that a crowd of people is so jubilant in the death of so many others. But it didn’t stop there. Last night’s debate on CNN, it happened again when Ron Paul was asked about what to do with an uninsured person who needs medical treatment. The crowd cheers at the idea of just letting him die.

This is not someone who has been convicted of murder, just someone who either couldn’t afford a high premium or was mistaken in thinking he wouldn’t need the coverage. And this is the crowd of people who most identify as Christians. You know Christ, right? The guy who preached things like love, compassion, forgiveness, caring for the sick and poor, and loving your enemies.

Can you imagine what the Tea Party would do to a guy like that?