Patrick's Rants

Have you seen the clip where Mitt Romney tells a down and out unemployed worker that he’s “unemployed too”? If I was raking in over $20 million dollars a year, I wouldn’t work either.
The whole GOP field is in the top 1%. Who do you think all those people are protesting?
Romney releases his $21 million income tax return At least Newt “works” for his millions (as indicated by his 30% effective tax rate vs. Mitt’s 14%)

Gabby Giffords releases a video to declare she will resign from Congress this week. So Palin with your bulls eye target placed squarely over Gabby’s Tucson district wins. With a bullet.

I have been slow to enter the political fray with just a post here and there about the hypocritical repugnicans. Newt Gingrich keeps saying that Barack Obama is the Food Stamp President. Obama has put more people on food stamps that any other president in history. If that is true, as my friend Leonard would say, let me retort. During The Great Depression – which we know was worse than today’s economic environment – there was not a food stamp program. That’s right, Obama has put more people on food stamps (according to Neuter) than any time in history. But only because during the worst economic disaster food stamps didn’t exist.

We have not seen the despair nor the near total collapse that the US saw during the Depression, mostly because of the things implemented after and because of the Depression. It’s funny though, we built the national highway system and the national parks system to put people to work during the Depression. Some of those roads and bridges haven’t been fixed since and probably won’t due to the Repugnicans blocking any kind of infrastructure bills.

Read more on the Depressioncauses.com

Yahoo has a decent roundup of the numbers:
75,000 sites go dark to protest SOPA and PIPA.
http://sopastrike.com/on-strike/ and Chris Dodd shows how clueless he is by saying,

“With today’s announcement, we hope the dynamics of the conversation can change and become a sincere discussion about how best to protect the millions of American jobs affected by the theft of American intellectual property,” Dodd said. “The threat posed by these criminal operations has been widely acknowledged by even the most ardent critics. It is incumbent that they now sincerely work with all of us to achieve a meaningful solution to this critically important goal.”

It is not. It is Not. IT IS NOT THEFT. It is copyright infringement. It is theft just like taking a photo of the Statue of Liberty is theft. Can we stop using this term? Neither is it piracy. Piracy happens on the high seas – sometimes the low seas. But definitely on the water – where they shoot at you and board your boat. And sometimes they get shot through the eye while their lifeboat bobs up and down on rough waters by navy seals. So it’s not piracy.

Now. Let’s address the idea that millions of American jobs are at stake. Copyright infringement occurs after those millions of people have already been paid their hourly wage to haul cables and hold cameras and serve food on the set. They were already paid. They won’t be paid any more or any less because Jerry made a copy. So let’s stop pretending that it’s about the “little people”. The little people are all union and their biggest threat is the studio.

Illegally copied movies have always been a problem for the movie studios. Illegally copies cassettes have always been a problem for the recording industry. Swap meets and flea markets were full of these copied movies and songs. The movie studios and recording studios weren’t clamoring to have the streets in front of the swap meets closed down based upon someone deciding that there were “stolen” movies at the swap meet. No. The people selling illegal copies were arrested and punished. The whole stinking swap meet wasn’t shut down. That’s what the movie and recording studios want. They want the whole swap meet shut down. And they want the telephone pole where someone posted a flyer chopped down. And they want the corner gas station to be seized if someone posts a flyer on the wall. And they want the road to the gas station ripped up, too. That’s what SOPA and PIPA would have done. Over react to an overblown problem.

Stop calling it “piracy”. Stop calling it “theft”. Call it what it is, infringement. Stop adding stupid laws to prevent me from watching a movie I bought on whichever device I choose. Stop convincing manufacturers to build defective CDs and players so I can’t listen to the CD I bought in my car. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act could have effectively outlawed the sharpie marker if it was used to “circumvent” the copyright stripe on your CD.

These bills were over reaching and draconian. The movie studios want to have meaningful protections? They need to start with meaningful and realistic language.

Some sites on the internet have gone “dark” to show what could happen under the proposed SOPA and PIPA bills being considered in congress. Please visit the action pages of these sites:
Wikipedia Google Craigslist

And from the People’s Email Network (PEN):

Though not as heinous on its face as some other legislation we have
seen pushed in Congress lately, the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA) would take a giant ax to the roots of the internet in an
attempt to a deal with a problem up the branches somewhere.

Junk SOPA Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1091.php

The bill is so poorly written and vague in its definitions that it
would potentially criminalize innocent behavior, an open door to
selective prosecutions. Worse yet, it would give single troll
complainers the power to completely and unilaterally shut down
websites on false accusations, and force those sites to engage in
lengthy legal battles to restore themselves.

Even those who originally supported the concept of SOPA are appalled
at the blunderbuss tactics of the bill as presented, and Congress
must go back to the drawing board, with the input of those who really
know how the internet works, to come up with a bill that will not do
more harm than good.

Though advertised as a bipartisan bill, on closer inspection only two
Democratic sponsors were initial sponsors, Schiff and Berman, whose
districts include all the big Hollywood movie studios. What a
coincidence! And we should add, having just finished producing a
movie ourselves we have great sympathy for those who deserve to be
paid for their creative work, for how else can we righteously
compensate our valiant cast, crew and support people? But this SOPA
bill is absolutely the wrong way to do it.

And after you submit the action page you can now request a bulk order
of the new “Occupy America” bumper stickers that have been so very
popular. Demonstrate your support for the spreading occupy movements.
We are just asking about a dollar each in bulk to help cover our
costs, which include sending free single stickers to anyone who wants
one. We just got in the latest shipment and all remaining single
sticker requests are going out now. Here is a direct link to the bulk
order page.

Bulk Occupy America bumper stickers:
http://www.peaceteam.net/bulk_occupy_stickers.php

And you can still make all the single sticker requests you like at

Single Occupy American bumper stickers:
http://www.peaceteam.net/all_bumper_stickers.php

Mark Your Calendars For A Radio Appearance By The Pen

In the meantime we are getting attention in the progressive media. On
Jan. 16 at 2PM PST, yours truly, The Pen, will appear live on the
Harrison radio show in Los Angeles on KPFK to discuss these latest
developments. You can tune in from anywhere over the internet at
either http://www.smartshow.org or http://www.goharrison.com.

We’d also like you to know we are doing the final tweaks now on the
mix for the theme song for “The Last War Crime” movie and anticipate
getting it posted on iTunes in about a week. It would be wonderful if
we could make a splash on iTunes about the song, as a way of
introducing people to the movie itself. We pulled in the top rock and
roll and jazz studio musicians in Los Angeles for this, and the best
background singers on the planet, who have worked with everyone from
Natalie Cole to Phil Collins. It’s one hopping rock and roll track
entitled, “It’s A Crime”, so please stay tuned for that.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
Contributions to The People’s Email Network are not tax-deductible
for federal income tax purposes.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function
at http://www.usalone.net/out.htm

usalone451b:90158

Building the 5 bucket worm stack. Easy and inexpensive worm system.

Red Wiggler Composting Worms 2lb Pack

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.(wikipedia)

It is interesting that it is more important that Disney is able to maintain their copyright on “Lady and the Tramp” than it is for a drug company to recoup their research and development costs for life saving drugs. Copyright law, as it is written today, protects books, movies and music for life + 70 years for the original writer – 95 years for a work for hire. This means that a book that might have cost a few thousand dollars to get published, such as Moby and Ahab on a Plutonium Sea, will continue to be be covered under copyright long after anyone cares about it. Copyright and patent law were intended to give writers, artists and inventors the incentive to publish their ideas and works so they could benefit from publishing the works. The idea was never to give artists perpetual income, but to encourage the creation of new ideas and works, to allow others to build upon what came before. And, I believe, by limiting the income potential the same artists would be encouraged to continue creating. Instead, by extending copyright law for 70 years beyond death, JK Rowling’s (unborn) grandkids might end up being spoiled brats who never work a day in their life. How is that promoting the useful arts?

Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a more in depth article on these locked up copy protected works.