Category — Social Policy

Today, on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we are asking pro-choice bloggers to join us for Blog for Choice Day!

Blog for Choice Day provides us with an opportunity to raise the profile of reproductive rights in the blogosphere and the media, while celebrating Roe’s 35th anniversary. Plus, it’s a great way to let your readers and the mainstream media know that a woman’s right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected.

[From Blog for Choice Day 2008]

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For me, women have a right to their bodies, have a right to make decisions about their own lives, what people should know, and what communities have involvement in. The Right to Choose, and it is a right, is a right to one’s own body, the right to religious freedom, the right to privacy. It is a fundamental and basic liberty, and a basic construction of equality of the sexes. Without the right to choose, we are basically making women into a different class of people, a class divided on gender and reproduction and a class that is subservient to the master that is the state/husband acting in the interests of the unborn which until born in my view, has no rights outside the rights the bearer gives it. The movement to take away and/or subvert the rights and equalities of women through the operationalization and politicization of the rights of the ‘not alive’ to me is clearly wrong for a liberal society.

BBC NEWS | Business | The US sub-prime crisis in graphics:
The US sub-prime crisis in graphics
The US sub-prime mortgage crisis has lead to plunging property prices, a slowdown in the US economy, and billions in losses by banks. It stems from a fundamental change in the way mortgages are funded.
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the best explanation of the sub-prime crisis that i’ve seen.

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A new cosmopolitanism is in the air
Globalisation is anonymous control

A new perspective for a different approach to action

Only capital is permitted to break the rules

We, the consumers, constitute the counter-power

Sacrifice autonomy, gain sovereignty

A state towards which the nation is indifferent

Convert walls into bridges!

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This is indicative of the move toward a cosmopolitan political economy.

edu-Impact | college & university economic impact portal:
Welcome to edu-Impact, the College & University Economic Impact Portal.
Appleseed, a New York City-based consulting firm, created this portal in response to a growing interest in the regional economic and community development impacts of colleges and universities. This portal is the most comprehensive source of information on the subject.

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this is a handy site for economic impact studies related to universities.

Print Story: New software detects Web interference on Yahoo! News:
Increasingly worried over Internet providers’ behavior, a nonprofit has released software that helps determine whether online glitches are innocent hiccups or evidence of deliberate traffic tampering.
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we needed something like this. we just need it built into every OS now.

How to pay for a free press, by André Schiffrin:
How to pay for a free press

In a media world with one eye on the bottom line and the other on the official line, it’s getting harder to publish or broadcast anything that doesn’t promise huge sales and attendant profits, and that doesn’t say or show what is approved. But it’s still possible

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perhaps it is time to start a universal trust to support the free press?

TED | Speakers | Andrew Mwenda:
Andrew Mwenda: Journalist

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Intentions are usually problematic… people act under good intentions at all times.

Even GWB thought he was doing the right thing, remember that, good intentions are not always the best thing. Mr. Mwenda speaks about the problem of foreign aid and the problem of structural motivation and economics. I think he nails the african situation on the head. I like his example of if you have 10 ph.d.’s they will never be as effective as an entrepreneur in the market. I’m not sure that’s true, but I think it is closer to true than not.

Empirical Legal Studies: Distribution of 2006 Starting Salaries: Best Graphic Chart of the Year:
Distribution of 2006 Starting Salaries: Best Graphic Chart of the Year

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this important graph has underneath it some of the best discussions of what one should consider when thinking about going to law school. Law school has become another form of a school of social service for far too many people. a social service degree is far more costly than the money you earn to pay it back, and law school is quickly becoming that way for the majority.

Talking Points Memo | Annals of Reporting:
Actually, if you look at what he says, it seems Skube’s editor at the Times oped page didn’t think he had enough specific examples in his article decrying our culture of free-wheeling assertion bereft of factual backing. Or perhaps any examples. So the editor came up with a few blogs to mention and Skube signed off. And Skube was happy to sign off on the addition even though he didn’t know anything about them.

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in an ironic twist, michael skube and his editor contrive to do in print journalism what they intended to critique as part of the tendencies of the blogosphere. now… anyone who reads or watches the news, knows that print and other media are rife with unsupported opinion, look at the recent story about ving rhames’s dogs, or the NYT coverage of the Iraq war… (though the persistent presence of paid cia and military employees in the newsrooms is partially to blame there).

Feminism Friday: Using pregnancy to criminalize womanhood at Pandagon:
Of course, the other part of this is redefining what a child is, taking women’s participation in the creation of one out of the picture and relegating pregnant women to the role of mere incubators for children that men make. To call something a “child” from the moment a man shoots his load and not after a woman has grown the child for 9 months in her body is part of the project of using pregnancy as a tool to dehumanize women and subjugate us to men.

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Pandagon calls it the way that I see it.