Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Alternate Realities Roundup 11/27
Posted By Eric S. Peterson on November 27, 2012, 9:39 AM
Big-box behemoth Walmart saw employees and protesters rally outside of 1,000 stores worldwide for Black Friday.---
Top of the Alty World
“Wal-Mart Worker Uprising: Protests Held at 1,000 Stores on Black Friday”—Democracy Now!
The Economist previews the important issues U.S. and Mexican leaders will need to hash out in this week’s summit, including Mexico’s admonition that the drug war is “impossible” to stop.—The Economist
Slate looks at why Asian-American voters favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in the 2012 election by a more than 3-to-1 ratio.—Slate
Truthout has obtained the autopsy report of a Guantanamo Bay-detainee death ruled a suicide, despite conflicting claims from officials, who previously said the detainee’s body showed no signs of “self-harm.”—Truthout
Top of Alty Utah
Organized labor shunned Democrats in key legislative races this election.---Salt Lake City Weekly
Most areas of the city avoided crime over the holidays except for the North Temple neighborhood.—Salt Lake City Weekly
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality sets new air standards ahead of the winter smog season.—KCPW
Rantosphere
Utah blogger Daniel Burton compares the state’s no-tax plan with the proposal submitted by outgoing Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon for a 17.5 percent property tax hike.
“It’s a contrast that is impossible to miss: One government faces growth and another is struggling to compensate for spending beyond its ability to afford. And the solution that the County looks to is a permanent tax increase, the ‘most odious of all taxes,’ as one friend put it -- a property tax on the single-most-important thing that people own: their home. While a person can easily choose how much they spend, or don’t spend, to assure that they can live within their means, a homeowner can hardly do anything about a property tax but pay it–if they can afford it.”—Publius Online
The Long View
New York takes a look at the “Truce on Drugs” since the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Oregon and what that will mean about draconian drug laws and policy.
“The war on drugs has always depended upon a morbid equilibrium, in which the cost of our efforts to keep narcotics from users is balanced against the consequences—in illness and death—of more widely spread use. But thanks in part to enforcement, addiction has receded in America, meaning, ironically, that the benefits of continuing prohibition have diminished. Meanwhile, the wars in Mexico and elsewhere have escalated the costs, killing nearly 60,000 people in six years. Together, those developments have shifted the ethical equation. ‘There’s now no question,’ says Mark Kleiman of UCLA, an influential drug-policy scholar, ‘that the costs of the drug war itself exceed the costs of drug use. It’s not even close.’”—New York
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