Letters To My Country: What Recession?
Cord Jefferson discusses an alarming upward trend in people robbing banks in order to keep their heads above water:
In Mississippi this week, a man walked into a bank and handed a teller a note demanding money, according to broadcast news reporter Brittany Weiss. The man got away with a paltry $1,600 before proceeding to run errands around town to pay his bills and write checks to people to whom he owed money. He was hanging out with his mom when police finally found him. Three weeks before the Mississippi fiasco, a woman named Gwendolyn Cunningham robbed a bank in Fresno and fled in her car. Minutes later, police spotted Cunningham’s car in front of downtown Fresno’s Pacific Gas and Electric Building. Inside, she was trying to pay her gas bill.
More examples:
The list goes on: In October 2011, a Phoenix-area man stole $2,300 to pay bills and make his alimony payments. In early 2010, an elderly man on Social Security started robbing banks in an effort to avoid foreclosure on the house he and his wife had lived in for two decades. In January 2011, a 46-year-old Ohio woman robbed a bank to pay past-due bills. And in February of this year, a Pennsylvania woman with no teeth confessed to robbing a bank to pay for dentures. “I’m very sorry for what I did and I know God is going to punish me for it,” she said at her arraignment. Yet perhaps none of this compares to the man who, in June 2011, robbed a bank of $1 just so he could be taken to prison and get medical care he couldn’t afford.
It’s an old trope that wealth and poverty breed immorality in equal measure. The only difference is, in the latter case, they’re doing it to survive. In the former case, they do it because they can.
h/t Sullivan
Source: letterstomycountry
Letters To My Country: The Rise And Fall Of The Fourth Amendment: A Case Study
Imagine, if you will, that you are David Holland. You live in New York City. It’s 1:40 a.m. You’re walking down East 129th Street in Manhattan. You’re in a poor part of town, near a housing project. It’s late at night. All of a sudden, you see four police officers turn the corner up ahead and…
Source: letterstomycountry
We’re keenly aware that when we develop and make something and bring it to market that it really does speak to a set of values. And what preoccupies us is that sense of care, and what our products will not speak to is a schedule, what our products will not speak to is trying to respond to some corporate or competitive agenda. We’re very genuinely designing the best products that we can for people.
Don’t worry about what the competition is doing. Worry about what you’re doing. That’s how you do the best work.
(via parislemon)
(via parislemon)
Source: telegraph.co.uk
On a boat! Whale watching!
It is so cold in Monterey! Thank god for Starbucks!!! =D
On the road to Monterey with the Leigh High School Wind Ensemble for a long weekend!
I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor’s office was full of portraits by Picasso.
Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness.
Leigh High School Senior Prom 2012!
AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Oh god….. =/
This is what happens when bubble wrap comes around the dog! I’m glad we haven’t been robbed because this dog would run away from a stranger with her tail tucked between her legs.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Source: mattkatawicz
And proud of it too!
Letters To My Country: On "Spiking The Football"
There’s been much talk of how Obama has “spiked the football” by utilizing the death of Osama Bin Laden for political gain in a campaign ad. John McCain has even gone so far as to cast shame on Obama for politicizing the event:
This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn’t ‘spike the ball’ after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected.
This is empty bluster. The Obama campaign’s use of Osama Bin Laden’s death for political gain is quite possibly the most predictable politicization of a policy decision at any time in recent history. Does anyone seriously believe that a Republican president would not have used OBL’s death for political gain had one been sitting in office when OBL was killed? Such doubts beggar one’s sense of reason.
More importantly, this is coming from the same party that has invoked the tragedy of 9/11 for political gain so many times that it became a joke on Family Guy. The same party who has been silent in the face of the unrepentant widespread profiteering thereof, which has occurred in the decade since, and even in the immediate aftermath:
Within minutes of the tragedy, Web entrepreneurs snatched up internet domain names like attackonamerica.com, later demanding prices that reportedly reached $75,000. A month after the attacks, Columbia Records rushed to market a compilation of patriotic songs called “God Bless America,” selling more than a million copies. More recently, a Port Chester mint has been hawking coins allegedly made of silver recovered from Ground Zero… A few days after the attacks…more than a dozen vendors [were] selling hats, t-shirts and photos outside Ground Zero.
I cannot take any of these people seriously. Not for a moment. Is it craven for Obama to politicize the death of Osama Bin Laden for political gain? Sure it is. But no more or less craven than using the memory of 9/11 to scare voters into voting Republican, or to paint dissenters of any stripe as unpatriotic. The Democrats are hardly innocent on this front (particularly since 2008). But I’d be hard pressed to say that there’s anything resembling parity when it comes to these sort of shameless appeals; particularly when they come from utterly ridiculous quarters.
Source: letterstomycountry
Hey, I'm Matt Katawicz! I'm a senior at Leigh. 
