Society's ChildS


Stock Up

Get what you give: CEO who slashed his salary to raise employees to $70k/yr seeing amazing growth

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© CNN MoneyDan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, recently slashed his Salary to give his employees a minimum salary of $70k/yr
You've got to spend money to make money and a generous CEO is making a lot more money a week after he invested in his employees. The company, Gravity Payments, has been flooded with new business since CEO Dan Price announced he'd raise every one of his employee's pay to $70,000 a year — and slashed his own annual pay from $1 million to the same $70,000.

"I'm actually shocked by the reaction from businesses," Price told CNN Money. "It has me on cloud nine."

Price says the credit card transaction processing company he founded has recorded the best week for acquiring new clients in the 11 years since he founded it. He says dozens of new clients have signed on with the company and he's thinking about expanding his staff to 120 people.

Good News Network reported last week Price announced he was raising the pay of 70 of his workers after reading a study on how having extra money made a difference in the lives of people earning under $70,000 a year. The raise doubled the salaries of 30 workers.

And more people want to work for his company. Gravity Payments received 3,500 job applications in the past week for two open positions — roughly five times what they usually get for an opening.

Comment: The media attention alone is well worth the money he reallocated. This kind of behavior is how you really invest in your business. Perhaps we'll see more of it in the future as this story spreads.


Oscar

Bare your sword: Japanese politician appears nude on campaign poster

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© AFP Photo / Toshifumi Kitamura
Politicians are always creative in trying to attract voters, but some go to extreme lengths. A Japanese nationalist has decided to win the hearts of his voters with a naked photo of himself holding a sword, the national flag in the background.

Sunday's second wave of unified local elections in Japan revealed that candidates employ various tools to gain votes, including nudity. Indeed, right-wing singer Teruki Goto, 34, decided to distinguish himself by preparing a poster of himself in his birthday suit.

The text on the poster, however, hides... well, everything that should be hidden.

Comment: Well, he definitely got exposure!


Candle

A growing number of British women are becoming nuns while others turn away from religion

British nuns
© Reuters / Ammar Awad
The number of women becoming nuns has trebled in the last five years as more and more opt for a religious lifestyle.

Last year 45 women became nuns, compared to just 7 in 2004. The Catholic Church said that of these, 14 were 30 years old or younger.

"In a really obvious sense, the women feel a religious calling to do so. On a more sociological level, these are women who have lived in the world and who find themselves in their late 20s, 30s or 40s making a conscious and hard choice to enter religious life," lecturer in Catholic Studies at Durham University Anna Rowlands told the Guardian.

"These days we live fairly transient lives, many people end up single and living between communities. Often the religious orders these women are joining are connected with serving the needs of the poor."

Comment: In trying times such as these it's interesting to see some seeking religion while others are turning away from it. On one hand it's understandable that some are looking for something more than the barren, materialistic reality, but on the other hand it's also forgivable that others reject the major religions given what they have come to represent.


Stormtrooper

Cops go car to car in traffic jam, issue $18,000 in fines for cellphone use at a near dead stop

cellphone fines
© The Free Thought Project
Writing tickets was like shooting fish in a barrel for Honolulu police earlier this month when they went car to car issuing citations for cell phone use.

According to motorists, police moved into the middle of the street during the worst traffic jam in years and began a ticket writing assembly line that made them over $18,000. In total, 65 drivers were given tickets that amounted to $290 a piece.

In an extreme traffic situation like this, it is understandable for people to use their phones to contact loved ones and rearrange their plans. This is especially important for those who are responsible for taking care of children or elderly people.

Police representatives admit that the ticketing strategy was unfair, but they claim that this operation was pre-planned and that the officers were not opportunistically taking advantage of the traffic jam. In fact, police representatives told local reporters that they were totally unaware of that the highway was in gridlock. This is despite the fact that it should have been obvious to the individual officers in the street, as well as their superiors back at headquarters.

"This cop was walking the highway and motioned for all these cars to move into the gas station parking lot, and they had an assembly line of cops giving tickets," commuter Tiffani Breeden told reporters after she was ticketed by police.

Honolulu Police Department Assistant Chief Clayton Kau said that the whole thing was just one giant misunderstanding.

"At the time, that they were doing that, they weren't aware of the traffic problem. When they were notified, at that point, they ceased enforcement action," Kau said.

Breeden, however, is not buying their story. "I knew about it at noon, in my office in Honolulu, and I'm not even a cop patrolling the streets. How are they unaware of street conditions?" she said.

During a press conference earlier this month, Captain Darren Izumo admitted guilt, saying that the operation should have been cancelled.

"I'll take the hit for that, in that we were concentrating on getting the westbound traffic flowing, so I failed to cancel that operation,"he said.

Even after admitting that the tickets should not have been issued to begin with, the police department is still refusing to cancel them. Instead they are asking the commuters to fight the tickets in court and take their chances with the judge.

Comment: Everybody that got a ticket that day should show up to court. Flood the court.


Cardboard Box

Cook who serves some of the most powerful people on earth needs food stamps to feed his family despite working 70 hours weekly

living wage
© Jason Reed/ReutersTell us this, Mr Senator: when will all federal contractors be paid a living wage?
Every day, I serve food to some of the most powerful people on earth, including many of the senators who are running for president: I'm a cook for the federal contractor that runs the US Senate cafeteria. But today, they'll have to get their meals from someone else's hands, because I'm on strike.

I am walking off my job because I want the presidential hopefuls to know that I live in poverty. Many senators canvas the country giving speeches about creating "opportunity" for workers and helping our kids achieve the "American dream" - most don't seem to notice or care that workers in their own building are struggling to survive.

I'm a single father and I only make $12 an hour; I had to take a second job at a grocery store to make ends meet. But even though I work seven days a week - putting in 70 hours between my two jobs - I can't manage to pay the rent, buy school supplies for my kids or even put food on the table. I hate to admit it, but I have to use food stamps so that my kids don't go to bed hungry.

I've done everything that politicians say you need to do to get ahead and stay ahead: I work hard and play by the rules; I even graduated from college and worked as a substitute teacher for five years. But I got laid-off and I now I'm stuck trying to make ends meet with dead-end service jobs.

Comment: It's a sad testament to American society that there are so many people like Mr. Olotara living in similar circumstances. The wealthy often portray those needing federal assistance as lazy and undeserving so that they do not have to take any responsibility for the heinous living conditions which vast numbers of people, including young children must endure. Only psychopaths could be cruel and heartless enough to ignore this suffering, and unfortunately there are far too many in the halls of power.


Alarm Clock

Best of the Web: Paradise Stolen: The Myth of Terrorism

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Stefan Verstappen's 5 minute video revealing the Myth of Terrorism: the real reason for the war on terror.

Alarm Clock

Becoming aware of internalized and societal oppression

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Many Western therapeutic models suggest that ongoing emotional/psychological discomfort and dysfunctional relationships originate in individual traumatic life experiences. Addressing such personal hurts through individual healing methods is certainly helpful and necessary. Yet there are other traumas that we—and everyone - suffers from. We cannot separate ourselves from the collective wounding caused by oppression, and the disconnecting impacts of racism, sexism, and other oppressions.

Oppression grants some of us advantaged statuses associated with being white, male, heterosexual or middleclass, etc. However, none of us as children consented to living in a world of racial, gender, sexual, or economic inequality, or to being members of a dominant social group. And if we were asked, we probably would say, "No!" Children - and grown-ups - have a deep longing for fairness and connection with others. Oppression* thwarts this innate longing. It breaks our hearts.

SOTT Logo

Pennsylvania students hold 'anti-gay' day at their high school

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© InstagramA band of Pennsylvania high schoolers in matching flannel shirts organized an "Anti-Gay Day," students said.
A band of Pennsylvania high schoolers in matching flannel shirts slapped hateful poster on gay students' lockers and drafted a "lynch list" to mark their self-concocted "Anti-Gay Day," students said.

As many as 100 students at Claysville's McGuffey High School took part in the Thursday protest a day after the school's Gay-Straight Alliance held its Day of Silence. GSA's day was organized to draw attention to and condemn bulling against gay students, according to the Observer-Reporter.

The homophobic students, mostly boys, wore flannel shirts on the same day and wrote "anti-gay" and drew crosses on the backs of their hands. The group stuck intimidating posters on gay students' lockers and scuffled with Gay-Straight Alliance members and their supporters, student Zoe Johnson told WPXI.

"Yesterday, there was pushing, posters hung on homosexual students' lockers. Teachers were having to run out and take them down," she said.

Other students said the group had a "lynch list," although they did not say what exactly the list meant. McGuffey Superintendent Erica Kolat said officials have not seen the rumored list, but that the school district was investigating the allegations.

The flannel-clad group wore red Friday to distinguish themselves again, students said. The band planned to continue its matching attire this week.

Comment: It's a shame that in 2015 young gay, lesbian and transgendered students still have to deal with bullying and harassment in our schools.


Stormtrooper

Outrageous! Chicago cops took clothes off dead body of DUI victim young woman, took pictures

DUI victim Jessica Mejia
Handout photo of DUI victim Jessica Mejia
Jessica Mejia, 20, was killed in the early morning hours of Dec. 31, 2009, while riding in a Mercedes driven by her ex-boyfriend, who was drunk when he crashed into a pole. The car rolled over in a ditch near 147th Street and Oak Park Avenue in unincorporated Cook County.

Now her family is filing a lawsuit and alleging that the Cook County Sheriff's Office improperly removed the clothing from Jessica's body and took roadside nude photographs after an accident is scheduled for trial next Monday, court records show.

The lawsuit, filed in late 2010 by Mejia's mother, Christina Mejia, and other relatives, alleges that responding sheriff's officers removed Mejia's clothes in violation of the department's own rules and took multiple nude photographs of her body. It alleges that the sheriff's office intentionally caused emotional distress to Mejia's family by shooting the photos.

Don Perry, the attorney representing Mejia's family, said the sheriff's office was wrong to photograph Mejia at the scene.

"This was a young lady that just died and was treated with less dignity than a deer carcass you find on the side of the road," Perry said.

Brick Wall

The role of police in U.S. public schools

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© Fusion.net/screen grab
A new video out of Mentor, Ohio, shows a white police officer seemingly starting a physical confrontation with a black high school student after the student was reportedly spotted with an electronic cigarette on campus.

In the video, captured by a fellow student, an officer is seen repeatedly pushing the student before tackling him to the ground and handcuffing him. The student backs away from the officer after the first shove, seemingly in an attempt to de-escalate the situation.

"Wait a second, why is the cop starting shit with him?" remarks an off-camera student who is watching the incident unfold.


Possession of nicotine or a tobacco product by a minor is, by all accounts, a minor infraction. In Ohio, it carries the penalty of a $100 fine, having to attend a tobacco education program, or both.

Or, as they used to do in my high school, authorities would just take it away from you. Case closed.

But that's not what happened here. The 16-year-old student was arrested on charges of resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and given a smoking citation. He was also reportedly given a 10-day suspension, which the school later said it had reversed after video of the incident went viral.

In a press release, the Mentor Police Department said the student "became verbally abusive and physically defiant as he attempted to push his way past the officer in order to board a school bus," at which point the officer had to use force.

Comment: These so-called public servants are not held accountable to the very laws the citizens are. They are above the law. The presence of the police on school campuses is also about instilling fear and compliance with the emerging Police State. As society unravels, social unrest will spread, bringing with it more brutality and repression.