For your reading pleasure, the libertarians over at Cato Institute have produced a very useful Policy Analysis document on Ending Corporate Welfare As We Know It.

Here’s a tidbit on how the government wisely uses your tax dollars: through sugar price support programs, the United States spends $1.4 billion ($1,400,000,000) of your money to make sugar cost more. About 40% of the giveaway benefits the largest 1% of sugar farms, with the 33 largest sugar cane plantations each receiving more than $1,000,000 each, all so that you can pay more at the grocery store (the total cost to the consumer in higher sugar prices is estimated to be several billion dollars every year).

Next time a Republican complains to you about welfare recipients, it would be good to point out the biggest and most unproductive welfare leeches in the United States are monster corporations in industry and agribusiness. By comparison, TANF, WIC, and other traditional poverty-based welfare programs consume a tiny percentage of the federal budget and have relatively high success rates in supporting people through temporary dire circumstances. But for some reason I don’t see Tommy Thompson developing a welfare-to-work program for General Motors or the big sugar cane plantations, even though they stay on billion-dollar doles year after year after year.

A group of women in the rural village Turkey of Sirt have garnered international media attention through enacting a real-life Lysistrata: they are striking from sex with their husbands to demand improvements to the city’s antiquated water system [Salon]. Since the boys were not the ones who have to hike miles out to the fountain, don’t have to wait in endless lines to collect water from the trickling fountain, don’t have to haul it home, and don’t have to be responsible for most of the household washing, the boys had not been doing much of anything to get the system fixed. Since the strike began, they have suddenly decided it might be a good idea to petition the municipal government for it to be fixed and have even offered to work on it themselves if the government will get them the parts.

Eye-roller for the day: Our women are right to protest, but we’re the ones who are suffering, grumbled Ibrahim Sari to the Milliyet newspaper. Poor boys!

If you post in Internet discussion groups or chat on IRC, you may recognize yourself in Mike Reed’s Flame Warriors. It has been suggested that I myself am Issues or Weenie. I hope that I bear no resemblence to Stone Deaf, but I find the profile hilarious.

Sidebar for Laura: I am thinking that Contristo is well described as Acne.

I would like to point out that not only is The Feminist Blog a rad weblog publishing feminist news content every day, but Katilinne also nicely linked to Geekery Today after I sent her some fan mail. And, hey, The Weblog Review gave it a 4 out of 5. Give it a read every now and then.

Read the rest of The Feminist Blog Rocks …

Now that they no longer have a smiley-faced administration that will jerk their chains while not doing anything, a lot of gay advocate’s groups are finding out that community organizing is, in fact, a good idea [Advocate]. One of the sad things is how much mainstream liberal and left groups have lost the will to grassroots, community organizing. Conservatives, on the other hand, didn’t: throughout the Clinton Presidency they used the "liberal" administration in Washington as a smokescreen while hard Right-wing groups across the country used localized campaigns to push their agenda. A common tactic was to identify a single community facing a particular issue – such as a recently-enacted anti-discrimination bill, or the addition of an abortion clinic – and pour tons of money from all over the country into that one locale. Since local change inspires community activists, and sets precedents, it inevitably trickles up to the national level. It’s about time that more social justice groups started taking it local.

Speaking of which, the upcoming SURGE Conference will focus on developing local actions while maintaining a global perspective. Consider coming! I went last year, and it was a great experience; I plan to be going again this year.