Never give up

A nice post (short, go read it) in response to the recent revelations about our increasingly intrusive "security" establishment. The take-home quote for me is this one:

Things can still get better. Disappointment is the price of wanting a better world. You need to stop being surprised that no-one else is fighting for it, and start being surprised you’re not doing more.

I'm always surprised (frustrated?) to not be doing more, and I think I'm willing to pay the outrage-exhaustion tax to keep myself in the game. Those who care need to fight.

Privatizing the costs of being a crappy employer

Glad to see California take on Wal-Mart for paying their employees so badly that most of them need public assistance to get up to subsistance living -- that is, for outsourcing their healthcare and some of their wages to the public. I hope that people fighting the arrival of these creeps in their communities bring up the point that while they may provide low-cost shopping, they do it at the cost of impoverishing their employees and the cities where they work.