outrages Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

Military Sexual Assault

Sexual Assault in the Military

Yesterday, in the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, about 15 or 20 of the military brass sat in front of our senators and tried to justify their current system of military justice and the ongoing sexual assault of women in the military. I wish I had something brilliant to say. I really don’t. I find the whole situation sad. No, that’s not right. Outrageous. Pitiful. Intolerable. For almost 20 years women have been fighting in the front lines of our military, yet we have thousands if not tens of thousands of military assaults and rapes against our own by our own. This has to be fixed. We can accept no more excuses.

I was thinking that I needed to write something about how our women in the military need to feel as safe as they do in the normal civilian population. I was gonna say something like the military should be as safe, if not safer. But, as I mentioned a couple months ago, women are not all that safe in the general population. Somehow, the crimes of rape and sexual assault do not seem to be prosecuted with the same vigor as “regular” assault or other violent crimes. We simply need to fix this.

By ecthompsonmd|2013-06-06T21:44:48-04:00June 5th, 2013|Civil Rights, Military|1 Comment

Time to refocus on what’s important

Sometimes it’s easy to get confused and upset after spending 10 minutes listening to the mainstream media. It seems that every day there’s a new outrage. Whether it is a football player who wanted to pray before a game and was not allowed to or a grandmother who’s being kicked out of her house in some sort of illegal foreclosure scam, or any of 100 of other different outrages, the media wants to keep us in this fevered pitch so we will tune in tomorrow. When our blood is boiling, we don’t think straight. We lose our priorities as we jump from one infuriating scenario to the next.

In theory, the Christmas season (including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa) is supposed to reconnect us with the things that are important – family, friends and our pursuit of happiness. Without jobs, without a living wage, it is hard to enjoy our family and friends because we simply cannot pursue happiness. This is what is important. The above short video from 2008 is a funny but poignant reminder about all the things that we are fighting for. We are fighting to end unnecessary wars which do nothing to increase our security. We are fighting so that everyone has the same rights in the eyes of the law. We are fighting so the law looks at corporations as stacks of paper instead of regarding them as people. We are fighting so that we can drink our water without poisoning our families and swim in the local streams without spontaneous combustion. We are simply fighting for a better and sustainable future.

By ecthompsonmd|2012-01-02T08:45:20-04:00January 2nd, 2012|Party Politics|1 Comment

Badness at BOA

Summary: the MSM hasn’t really reported this yet and I don’t know if it is true. I don’t have any contacts inside Bank Of America but this looks like something that corporate America would do. There used to be shame in laying off people. Not any more. Reagan changed that. Now Wall Street wants and expects a company to trim the fat.

From Daily Kos:

I just got a call from a friend who works in HR at Bank Of America in Delaware. I wanted to diary this to add to the list of ‘outrages’ perpetuated by this bank. Just to clarify, they did nothing illegal. Just crappy. And it was probably naive of people to continue to work for a company based on what’s been said as supposed to written contracts.

Today was a big layoff day for Bank Of America, but the media hasn’t yet reported it. I will update this as soon as they do. (UPDATED BELOW) I don’t have an exact number of the jobs lost today, but as soon as I get a number I’ll post. I’m hesitant to guess at this point, as they are still in the process of letting people go until tomorrow.

So what makes this more cruel than their usual layoffs?

When Bank of America absorbed MBNA into it’s organization, they gave away three year protection packages to long term and high ranking employees here which meant that if they were laid off within that three year period, they would gain an additional one month to a year of severance.

This package expired on December 31st of last year, and today, five weeks after expiration, a large amount of employees that fell under that umbrella of protection are being let go. The HR rep estimates that 90% of employees that were let go today fell under that category. (more… )

By ecthompsonmd|2009-02-04T00:29:21-04:00February 4th, 2009|Corporate Wrongs, Economy|Comments Off