Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Old note.

Bikeriding through some of the poorest sections of St. Louis, starting just a block from the mansions where Ian lives, I thought for the first time ever— if some people here were to try to beat me up just because I'm white and not evidently poor, I wouldn't blame them.

I would be fighting back viciously, but I would understand where they were coming from.

This is the economic and social insanity of having little opportunity to do anything productive and unmet needs at the same time.

The massacres allowed them to take apart the systems of social assistance negotiated with the unions.

http://www.colectivodeabogados.org/article.php3?id_article=1364

Barack Obama, speaking to the BlogHer community, responded to a question about the economy and "helping families break the cycle of poverty."

Obama made his number one answer the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC:

It starts with just making sure that if people are working they get an adequate income.

I wrote back to everyone and a few others:

Even more: boycott ExxonMobil because of human rights abuses and environmental destruction, as well as the economic exploitation helping to bleed us dry.

http://www.stopexxonmobil.org/

http://www.amnestyusa.org/page.do?id=1101642

ChevvronTexaco is pretty bad too.

Buy Citgo!

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm

Hi ______,

Just to try to give the angle at which I come at the liberal / conservative question...

Instant Message conversation, Tuesday, February 26, 2008

prino1 12:41
i need quick help if you have a second... i am having a hard time understanding the conservative view of things

regardless of how I feel

i need to be able to explain and understad why conservatives think people are to blame for poverty

on a micro- individual level

i just can't wrap my head around it

benjamin melançon 12:42
and how am i supposed to help? the only thing conservative about me is that i don't like old things being taken down

This comment follows up on this blog post, "the political left", and following discussion, wherein it is determined that all love blankets, and all should have blankets, but the method of obtaining them is in dispute. The original author, Mikkel, said in his last comments that yes, 'we should give them money-- by giving them a job.'

Let's give people money, by giving them a job, by making sure everyone has money.

From my Kiva.org profile:

The way I heard the story is that Romney shut down the William Weld initiated Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth when they tried to expand their formal charge, and name, to include transgender youth.

I can't find a news article that verifies this explicitly, but that certainly sounds like what was happening behind the scenes.

And I interpret that as an attempt, reportedly somewhat successful, to cause fighting within the movement.

In the last paragraph of these notes I go off on a tanget about economic injustice and oppression and sex and gender injustice and oppression that I think is worthwhile.

The Economics Textbook of the 21st Century
From Adbusters #74, Nov-Dec 200

http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/74/The_Economics_Textbook_of_the_21st_...