Capitol Area Progressives is dedicated to the development, promotion and implementation of progressive policies and legislation. Capitol Area Progressives advocates progressive issues and candidates at local, state and national levels through a variety of mechanisms: campaign consulting and training; community education and action; grassroots organizing; lobbying; and fundraising. Capitol Area Progressives believes in returning the power of our democracy to our citizens and, as envisaged in our constitution, establishing a government "of the people, by the people and for the people."
Aug. 10, 2010, 12:45 a.m. EDT
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch)—“How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.”
Get it? Not “destroying.” The GOP has already “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse.”
Jobs recovery could take yearsIn the wake of Friday’s disappointing jobs report, Neal Lipschutz and Phil Izzo discuss new predictions that it could be many years before the nation’s unemployment rate reaches pre-recession levels.
Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats’ Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider—someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology—says about America, helps all of us better understand how America’s toxic partisan-politics “holy war” is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.
But why focus on Stockman’s message? It’s already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?
We’ve arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.
Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:
Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy
Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: “If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt ... will soon reach $18 trillion.” It screams “out for austerity and
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman reported Monday that she has spent more than $99 million in her quest to become California’s governor, while Democrat Jerry Brown is saving money for what could become the most expensive gubernatorial contest in American history.
The former eBay chief executive reported Monday that she spent nearly $20 million in the six-week period ending June 30, which included the weeks immediately before and after California’s primary. Her campaign said the first-time candidate spent $71 million to win the GOP primary against state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
Brown, who faced no serious challenger in the Democratic primary, has spent just $450,000 on his race to date, although the number climbs to $774,000 once donated services are included. Whitman’s figure jumps to $100.3 million when such services are included.
Brown has $23 million cash on hand, while Whitman has about $10.3 million.
While the former two-term governor and current state attorney general courts donors, Brown’s campaign has
Democrats blasted the Republicans for their close ties with the Tea Party movement, warning that some Tea Party ideas could find their way into Republican policies.
Land Ownership at the Crux of Haiti’s Stalled Reconstruction
Posted by admincathlyn on 07/15 at 07:29 AM
Written by Kim Ives
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 14:00
Source: Haiti Liberte
At a UN Conference on Mar. 31, about 60 countries and multilateral banks promised $5.3 billion for Haiti’s reconstruction over the next 18 months. Only about 10% of those promises have been delivered on (some of it just forgiven debt), and of that money delivered into a World Bank managed fund, only a fraction has been spent to help Haiti.
Meanwhile, private citizens around the world gave hundreds of millions of dollars to NGOs and impromptu efforts like the Clinton-Bush Foundation, but (where statistics are available) less than 25% of those contributions, sometimes much less, have been spent while desperation in Haiti grows. Much of the blame for Haiti’s faltering recovery has focused on this trickling release of money and the disorganization of inefficient, administratively costly NGOs which have received most of the funds to date.
But big NGOs reply that they are ready to build new storm resistant houses – the most urgent priority, everybody agrees, as the hurricane season bears down on the 1.7 million displaced people still living under tents and tarps. The problem, Bekele Gelata, the secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross Societies said last week, is that the Haitian government has not provided open land on which to build large numbers of houses. “We have high hopes that the Red Cross will get a little land soon,” he said.
In this way, the Jan. 12 earthquake reveals that the principal fault-line in Haiti is not geological but one of class. A small handful of rich families own large tracts of land in suburban Port-au-Prince which would be ideal for resettling the displaced thousands. The lands are located near the city, often with water and some trees, and are largely undeveloped.
However, these same families control the Haitian government and, more importantly, have great influence in the newly formed 26-member Interim Commission to Reconstruct Haiti (CIRH), co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. Thirteen of the CIRH directors represent multilateral banks like the IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank and donor nations like the U.S., France and Canada. The other thirteen members represent Haiti’s elite.
The most prominent elite representative on the CIRH is Reginald Boulos, who heads one of the Haitian bourgeoisie’s most powerful families and backed both the 1991-94 and 2004-06 coups d’état against former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. (Despite regular and massive demonstrations asking for the Haitian government to facilitate his return, Aristide remains in exile in South Africa, without a passport or laisser-passer to return home.)
The CIRH is empowered for the next 18 months under a “State of Emergency Law” to seize land for rebuilding as it sees fit. (It is no coincidence that the time period for the “state of emergency” and the $5 billion injection coincide). But the elite families on this body in charge of expropriations are not volunteering their own well-situated land to benefit Haiti’s homeless.
As a result, only one major displaced person camp, Corail-Cesselesse, has been built about 10 miles north of the capital, on a forbidding strip of sun-baked desert situated between Titayen and Morne Cabrit, two desolate zones where death-squads dumped their victims during the anti-Aristide coups. The 6,000 person camp is several kilometers from Route National One, where transport toward the capital runs. One resident said he had to leave the camp at 4 a.m. for a three hour commute to his job in the city. Another resident said bus fares cost $1, a lot of money in Haiti.
Long-time democracy activist Patrick Elie told Democracy Now! on the quake’s six month anniversary that “the Haitian elites over centuries [have] appropriated land which [...], especially after independence and the end of slavery, would have been common property, and they appropriated vast tract of land, pushing the peasants – the newly freed slaved who did not want to work on the plantation system anymore – to the mountains.”
This appropriation process – some call it theft – is not ...
Yesterday, we made note of a new study from the Kennedy School of Government that found that America’s major newspapers, after decades of reliably and accurately referring to waterboarding as torture, suddenly stopped doing so around 2002, when America started waterboarding people like the dickens! Adam Serwer offered this comment on the matter:
As soon as Republicans started quibbling over the definition of torture, traditional media outlets felt compelled to treat the issue as a “controversial” matter, and in order to appear as though they weren’t taking a side, media outlets treated the issue as unsettled, rather than confronting a blatant falsehood. To borrow John Holbo’s formulation, the media, confronted with the group think of two sides of an argument, decided to eliminate the “think” part of the equation so they could be “fair” to both groups.
Well, today Yahoo’s Michael Calderone has comment from a New York Times spokesman, who—while maintaining that the Times’s official position is that the study is “misleading”—nevertheless comes right out and confirms that they are in fact precisely the unrescueable cowards that Adam Serwer says they are:
However, the Times acknowledged that political circumstances did play a role in the paper’s usage calls. “As the debate over interrogation of terror suspects grew post-9/11, defenders of the practice (including senior officials of the Bush administration) insisted that it did not constitute torture,” a Times spokesman said in a statement. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves. Thus we describe the practice vividly, and we point out that it is denounced by international covenants and in American tradition as a form of torture.”
The Times spokesman added that outside of the news pages, editorials and columnists “regard waterboarding as torture and believe that it fits all of the moral and legal definitions of torture.” He continued: “So that’s what we call it, which is appropriate for the opinion pages.”
Isn’t that great? Waterboarding is totally torture so long as we are “outside of the news pages,” where journalists at the Times are free to
PHOENIX — Police enforcing Arizona’s toughest-in-the-nation immigration law are allowed to consider if a person speaks poor English, looks nervous or is traveling in an overcrowded vehicle.
They can even take into account whether someone is wearing several layers of clothing in a hot climate, or hanging out in an area where illegal immigrants are known to look for work.
But top police officials issued a stern warning to officers Thursday, telling them in a training video not to consider race or ethnicity and emphasizing that “the entire country is watching.”
The officials cautioned that opponents of the law may secretly videotape police making traffic stops in an effort to prove that they are racially profiling Hispanics.
“Without a doubt, we’re going to be accused of racial profiling no matter what we do on this,” Tucson Police Chief Roberto Villasenor tells officers on the video, which was posted online. The recording demonstrates how officers should determine when they can ask someone for proof they are in the country legally.
Arizona’s law, sparked by anger over a surging population of illegal immigrants in the border state, generally requires officers enforcing another law – like speeding or jaywalking – to question a person’s immigration status if there’s a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally.
Under the law, officers are also allowed to consider if
It may be fashionable to dismiss the Tea Party and its radical, right-wing pals, but we do so at our peril.
Few things are more confounding to liberals and progressives than the rise of the Tea Party movement, and the media’s infatuation with it. Just as we breathed a sigh of relief with the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president, after eight disastrous years under the reign of Bush the Younger, in swept a furious wave of misanthropic pique.
Really, we shouldn’t have been surprised. Just as a recession hit of unprecedented force, yielding high unemployment, conservatives found themselves sidelined, Obama’s triumph coming on the heels of the Democrats’ congressional victories of 2006. That partisan change would have been enough to make conservatives ornery, but the cultural change represented by the nation’s first African-American president struck fear into the hearts of many—especially after liberal San Franciscan Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to wield the gavel of the Speaker of the House.
The inevitable backlash against such a sweeping shift, shepherded by an array of corporate-funded entities, culminated in the creation of the Tea Party movement—a dangerous brew of resentment and fear that threatens to roll back the majority the Democrats enjoy in the House of Representatives, and set the nation on a path to a right-wing government even more restrictive and regressive than that of the Bush era.
But bad economies create bad politics, notes economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. Economic downturns traditionally, over the course of history, usher in swings to the right, Krugman writes. The administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an aberration in this regard, and, perhaps, as Michael Tomasky suggests, in the course of American history. But since the Great Depression offers our most recent experience of severe economic crisis, its story is etched in the progressive mind as the narrative for how the nation naturally responds to economic catastrophe.
More than a year ago, Robert Reich warned of the vitriol we see today from the Tea Party movement, as well as its likely targets. “Make no mistake: Angry right-wing populism lurks just below the surface of the terrible American economy,” Reich wrote, “ready to be launched not only at Obama but also at
Stanley McChrystal, the general and chief architect of the counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, was relieved of his command on Wednesday, following a series of disparaging quotes that he and his aides made about the president and civilian leadership.
It was a remarkable conclusion to a frantic two-day period of frenzied coverage, climaxing with a Rose Garden appearance in which the president explained his rationale. In the end, it will remain a confounding episode for both historians and politicos alike. It was not McChrystal’s connections to a scarring episode of detainee abuse and the cover-up of a revered soldier’s death or his disparagement of the vice president’s proposal for Afghanistan that did the general in. It was a series of interviews with Rolling Stone magazine, of all things.
“The conduct represented in the recently published article,” said President Obama, “does not
Oil spill stress starts to weigh on gulf residents
Posted by admincathlyn on 06/23 at 07:50 AM
latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-mental-health-20100621,0,6108606.story
By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, 7:56 PM PDT, June 20, 2010
Reporting from Grand Isle, La.
As the slick looms larger, mental health workers fear a rising tide of despair.
Ordinarily this time of year, Adam Trahan would be out on the Gulf of Mexico on a shrimp boat, trawling from South Pass to the Chandeleur Islands. Instead, last week he was trawling between the bar at Cisco’s Hideaway on Oak Lane and Artie’s out on the highway, fishing for Bud Light.
“I look out there and I see my life ruined,” Trahan, 53, said in his long Cajun drawl from the ocean-side deck at Artie’s. “There ain’t no shrimpin’, there ain’t no crabbin’, there ain’t no oysterin’. Well, the only thing I know is shrimpin’. That’s all I know. Now you tell me: Where do I go from here? It’s heartbreakin’, baby.”
A few blocks away, Dean Blanchard, owner of a seafood company that ships 15 million pounds a year of gulf shrimp and fish, gets up in the morning, walks to his empty warehouse, trudges back again, sits down in front of the TV and stares at CNN’s oil spill coverage. Then he heads back to the warehouse.
“I’m just walking around in a circle, more or less,” he said. “I don’t know what to do. I never been this confused in my life.”
While listless, oil-soaked pelicans may be the most memorable images of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the fishermen and business owners marooned along the Gulf Coast already are proving just as big a challenge for the mental health workers dispatched from Louisiana to Florida to help vaccinate against the fast-growing epidemic of despair.
The symptoms are well-documented: The Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 touched off a wave of
The US Supreme Court endorsed Monday a broad reading of the law criminalizing “material support” to terrorism, a statute that critics argue targets legitimate free speech.
In a six to three vote, the highest US court sided with the government and found that an NGO could face prosecution for providing non-terror-related support, including rights training, to US-designated terror groups.
The case involved the Humanitarian Law Project, a human rights group, which the court ruled could face prosecution under the material support statute for providing human rights or conflict resolution training to groups including the Kurdish PKK or the Tamil Tigers.
“The material-support statute is constitutional as applied to the particular activities plaintiffs have told us they wish to pursue,” the court ruling said.
In a press release sent to RAW STORY, the Center for Constitutional Rights argues that the ruling “criminalizes” free speech, and that even former President Jimmy Carter could face potential prosecution.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to criminalize speech in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the first case to challenge the Patriot Act before the highest court in the land, and the first post-9/11 case to pit free speech guarantees against national security claims. Attorneys say that under the Court’s ruling, many groups and individuals providing peaceful advocacy could be prosecuted, including President Carter for training all parties in fair election practices in Lebanon. President Carter submitted an amicus brief in the case.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority, affirming in part, reversing in part, and remanding the case back to the lower court for review; Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. The Court held that
A new poll showing Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) in deep general election trouble has compelled a progressive group that opposed her nomination in the Democratic primary to restart their feud with the White House over her candidacy.
On Thursday, a new Rasmussen poll shows Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) beating Lincoln by a margin of 61 percent to 32 percent. Rasmussen is notably viewed with skepticism by progressive organizations. But the group Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which poured heavy manpower and resources into electing Lt. Gov Bill Halter in the Democratic primary, jumped on the findings as evidence that Lincoln is as good as dead, electorally.
Noting that the last time a poll was conducted for a prospective general election in Arkansas, Halter trailed Boozman by 9 points (Lincoln trailed by 20), the group’s co-founder Adam Green offered a sharp swipe at the administration.
The White House, Bill Clinton, and the big corporations they partnered with just flushed $12 million down the toilet. They worked to defeat the more electable Democrat in the primary—not to mention the Democrat who would have had Obama’s back on key votes. Rahm Emanuel will go down in history as
KABUL, Afghanistan—U.S. geologists have discovered vast mineral wealth in Afghanistan, possibly amounting to $1 trillion, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman said Monday.
Waheed Omar told reporters the findings were made by the U.S. Geological Survey under contract to the Afghan government.
“The result of the survey ... has shown that Afghanistan has mineral resources worth $1 trillion,” Omar said. “This is not an overall survey of all minerals in Afghanistan. Whatever has been found in this survey is worth $1 trillion.”
Omar refused to provide details, referring reporters to the Ministry of Mines. An official at the ministry refused to discuss the survey, saying details would be released at a news conference later this week.
A 2007 report by the USGS said most of the data on Afghanistan’s mineral resources was produced between the early 1950s and 1985 but much was hidden and protected by Afghan scientists “during the intermittent conflict over the next two decades.”
The New York Times reported the $1 trillion figure in Monday’s edition and quoted senior American officials as saying untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan are far beyond any previously known reserves and were enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.
Americans discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium, according to the report. The Times quoted a Pentagon memo as saying Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and cell phones.
“There is stunning potential here,” the newspaper quoted Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command as saying. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
Geologists have known for decades that Afghanistan contained substantial mineral resources, including
The federal trial over California’s same-sex marriage ban heads to one full day of closing arguments Wednesday, with gay couples’ attorneys expressing confidence that they’ve made a strong case that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco will preside over the final hours of a trial that began in January with more than two weeks of dramatic testimony and presentations of evidence.
Gay plaintiffs’ attorneys will try to clinch their arguments that Proposition 8 violates the federal constitutional rights of gays to equal protection and that no compelling reason exists beyond prejudice and discrimination to bar them from marriage.
Th attorneys for the proponents of Proposition 8, who include the sponsors of the ballot measure, ProtectMarriage.com, will try to seal their argument that a universal, traditional purpose of marriage is procreation and child rearing.
Because of that, Proposition 8 attorneys argued in January, voters in 2008 had a rational reason for barring gay people from marrying – even if opponents of gay marriage can’t prove that same-sex marriage harms children raised by gay couples or harms heterosexual matrimony and families.
Proposition 8 co-author Andrew Pugno, a Sacramento- area attorney and Republican state Assembly candidate, said closing arguments for his side will focus on the novelty of gay marriage and question how it can be a fundamental right if it is relatively new.
He said U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down bans on marrying someone of another race – or guaranteeing prisoners’ rights to marry – are not legal precedents that apply to gays.
He said the defense, led by Charles Cooper, another high-profile seasoned trial attorney, “will emphasize that voters have a right to believe that opposite-sex relationships are unique and deserving of the unique status of marriage.”
“It’s as simple as the bees and the birds,” Pugno said. “It’s common sense and reasonable that the ideal for a child is to have a mother and father, and that it’s rational for the state to promote this.”
Pugno said he didn’t want to speculate on how Judge Walker might be leaning.
“I will say this,” he said. “We have a solid record built up for an appeal.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney David Boies, a high-profile lawyer who represented Al Gore during the 2000 presidential voting recount, said the defense faltered in January when its witnesses acknowledged that they couldn’t prove that gay marriage would harm others.
“None of the defendants’ witnesses supported those propositions. In fact all of the (defense) witnesses who spoke on those issues ended up giving contrary testimony,” Boies said.
Boies has an unlikely court partner on the gay-rights side in Ted Olson, a Republican who was George W. Bush’s attorney during the 2000 ballot dispute that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Boies said witnesses and one of the defense’s own top attorneys admitted in court, under cross-examination and questioning by Walker in January that “people are allowed to marry under all sorts of circumstances where procreation is not the goal, (and) not even possible.”
In anticipation of closing arguments, Walker recently submitted a long list of questions to both sides that show he is thinking about the basic arguments each laid out in January and in court documents.
The judge wants attorneys to submit answers in writing before Wednesday or to address his queries during their oral closing arguments.
Walker will issue a ruling at a later date. Whatever he decides, it is sure to be appealed to
California voters face a clash between corporate cash vs. progressive populism. Nothing less than the biggest statehouse, the biggest Senate seat, and the future presidency of America is at stake here in the Golden State.
Can corporate cash always beat progressive populism? Absolutely not - but it will be spent at historic levels over the next five months. Corporate cash funded the nominations of Meg Whitman (R-eBay) for governor and Carly Fiorina (R-Hewlett Packard) for senator. http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/gov/59.htm
One element from NO on 16 and 17 - the money is the message - for good and for ill. When a candidate or a company brandishes wealth during a recession, big spenders risk voter backlash.
Whitman vs. Brown for Governor
Republican and Independent women are excited about Meg Whitman—she beat men to rise to the top of eBay corporation and she beat a well-known conservative in Steve Poizner to win the nomination. She spent over $80 million—70 dollars per vote—and thus far has outspent Jerry Brown 200 to 1. Whitman did move to the far right on immigration which will hurt her with Latinos and moderates in the general. Jerry Brown is a party of one more like Arnold Schwarzenegger (who says he’s not endorsing) so don’t expect to pigeonhole him. He was a good mayor, a law and order leader with a military school in liberal Oakland—and has been an activist Attorney General.
Whitman wants to make Brown out to have been a big spender but older voters—the stars of midterm elections—remember the blue Plymouth instead of the Reagan town car, the mattress on the floor instead of the governor’s mansion, and his reputation as a cheapskate. Brown flubbed with his Goebbels gaffe—but some of Whitman’s people responded in kind attacking him as the
These are some of the things that keep American conservatives awake at night.
Modern American conservatism is based on an almost endless series of grievances. Author Thomas Frank coined a term for it: the conservative “plenty-plaint”—a long and ever-evolving list of personal and cultural gripes dressed up as an ideology.
But there’s also fear! And while it spans the breadth of the movement, this is the year of the Tea Party revolt, when the grassroots right, disgusted with the idea of semi-affordable health-care and tepid financial reforms, is rebelling against even its own establishment. And the divide between the grassroots base and its leadership extends to the very fears that animate them. As we’ll see, the conservative movement’s business-attired hacks and the hard-right Tea Party types waving misspelled signs out in the streets have some very different causes for alarm.
So, here are ten of the most interesting things that absolutely terrify Wingnuttia. First, a few terrors of the real hard-core Right. For the Tea Partier, the midterm GOP primary voter, it’s not just the anxiety over social change that typifies more traditional conservatism. A broad chunk of the GOP base today is animated by wildly unrealistic terrors—monsters stalking them as the sun sets, perhaps hovering just beyond their peripheral vision.
1. Government Concentration Camps
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, who’s been facing uphill prospects for re-election in Nevada, is breathing a sigh of relief that his newly nominated Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, isn’t a typical civil libertarian. According to Talking Points Memo, Angle endorses the views of (and may be a member of) the “Oath Keepers.” It’s a fast-rising right-wing group “whose membership of uniformed soldiers and police take an oath to refuse orders they see as unconstitutional—including enforcement of gun laws, violations of states’ sovereignty, and ‘any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,’” according to TPM.
Fear of Obama’s Kenyan shock troops rounding up good conservatives and throwing them into Thunderdome-esque detention centers is nothing new on the Right. For years, conspiracy theories about “FEMA camps” have been percolating among the more feverish true believers. At TrueSlant, Matthew Fleischer wrote about a friend discovering that one of her co-worker’s believed there to be an imminent threat:
FEMA was building camps to round up and annihilate Christians. The roundup would start soon, but it would move slowly and quietly. Whole families would disappear and not be
Editor’s note: CNN political contributor James Carville was chief strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Carville is a resident of New Orleans, Louisiana, where he teaches political science at Tulane University and serves as co-chairman of the 2013 Super Bowl Host Committee.
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN)—Henry Ford once described history as “one damned thing after another.” And he didn’t even live in Louisiana.
Much has been made of my “outburst” toward the Obama administration on May 26, with George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” when I exclaimed, “Man, you got to get down here and take control of this! Put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving. We’re about to die down here!”
But those emotions had been percolating below the surface like the crude that threatens our way of life today.
While it is important to note that both BP’s and the administration’s tepid responses to this catastrophe are unacceptable, it is also essential that the rest of the country understand that this feeling of neglect has festered amongst South Louisianians for generations. It’s just one damned thing after another, so the anger rising out of the Gulf is not new.
For too long, the federal government and industry alike have simultaneously abused and neglected, patronized and plundered, and now polluted the people of Louisiana. And our plight now is a national emergency.
We felt the effects of this neglect for the past five years, after rebuilding a city which was 80 percent flooded due to shoddy construction of flood control systems and levees by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And we feel ourselves ever more vulnerable due to the nonstop degradation of our wetlands, which serve as our first line of defense against hurricanes and powerful storm surge.
For decades, massive engineering projects across the country have made us more vulnerable. We lose a chunk of land the size of a football field every 38 minutes. Since World War II, we’ve lost wetlands the size of the state of Delaware. I bet Joe Biden would be screaming on national television too if it was happening on his turf. Or if the Hamptons lost 16,000 acres a year, you bet there’d be a Million Hedge-Fund Managers March on Washington to demand action.
And the loss of coastal wetlands has everything to do with activities across the rest of the country, starting with the deprivation of
Yesterday, Chevron discovered a leaking pipeline that was spewing 50 gallons of crude oil per minute into Red Butte Creek in Salt Lake City, UT. By the time crews capped the leak, more than 21,000 gallons — between 400-500 barrels — of oil had spilled out, “coating geese and ducks” and closing the city’s largest park. The Salt Lake City Tribune writes:
Chevron pledged to clean up the 6-mile mess, but the company could not quantify the damage. As of late Saturday, Chevron said the leak had been stopped. But company representatives could not say when it began, how much oil spilled into city waterways and why — despite pipeline monitors — it apparently took hours to learn of the accident. [...]
Gov. Gary Herbert (R) put out a statement calling the spill
Here’s what Coast Guard Rear Adm. James A. Watson wrote to BP’s chief operating officer on Friday:
“Recognizing the complexity of this challenge, every effort must be expended to speed up the process.” BP’s plans don’t “go far enough to mobilize redundant resources” in the event of an equipment failure or another problem. “BP must identify in the next 48 hours additional leak containment capacity that could be operationalized and expedited to avoid the continued discharge of oil.”
Translated: You’re dragging your heels and aren’t even using all the equipment you have, damn it. You better, or I’ll ... I’ll ... .
BP spokesman Jon Pack said the company received Watson’s letter and would respond to it as soon as possible.
Translated: Too bad. Have a nice weekend.
The administration has not used legal authority to order BP to do a thing, because it hasn’t asserted any legal authority.
Meanwhile, the White House backed off its suggestion earlier in the week that it could stop BP from paying a giant dividend to its shareholders. That suggestion had caused BP shares to plummet and pressure to build on Britain’s new Prime Minister David Cameron. 12 percent of dividends paid to pensioners in the UK come from BP. Cameron and Obama had a friendly chat Saturday, assuring one another BP is important to both countries.
You see where all this is heading. At some point there’s likely to be a direct conflict. Like any big corporation, BP has legal duties to repay its creditors and to maximize the share prices of its stockholders. Its duties to the United States are still vague and unknown. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 can be interpreted in various ways. So far, the administration hasn’t tried.
Yet BP is still in control of what’s happening in Gulf to stop the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
BP still has lots of money. But the final cost of plugging the leak in the Gulf, containing the spill, cleaning up after it, and paying all damages—including lost wages to millions of workers whose jobs have been lost or will be if the spill keeps tourists away—could easily be tens of billions of dollars. And right now BP’s first responsibility is to its creditors and shareholders, not to the American public.
So if it’s UK pensioners versus American workers and property owners, who wins? More to the point, who’s going to decide? Most likely, a judge—or several judges, here and in the UK, through a mountain of litigation that will keep thousands of attorneys, solicitors, and barristers busy for decades.
In the meantime, months or even years could go by as Coast Guard admirals and rear admirals, as well as the White House, tells BP it needs to spend more to stop and clean up the mess it’s created, it’s going way too slow, and it’s not divulging what it knows. And BP shrugs and says it’s doing all it can.
I’ve got a better idea. Wouldn’t it be far simpler for the White House (stating that the Pollution Control Act of 1990 gives it authority) to put BP’s American operations into temporary receivership? That way, Obama can take over BP’s assets here and use its expertise to stop the leak and clean up the mess as soon as possible—and leave the subsequent years of bickering to the courts.
Extra bonus: It shows the public the president is really in charge.
The free-spending role of corporations in California’s electoral system has come under fire as the state prepares to vote on two referendum which opponents have condemned as a “hijacking” of democracy.
Whether its a bid to legalize marijuana or ban same-sex marriage, single-issue referendum, known in California as ballot initiatives, are part of the fabric of the state’s political scene.
But two ballot measures being presented to voters at Tuesday’s June 8 primaries have raised questions about an electoral system which allows corporations to bankroll campaigns with millions of dollars.
The highest profile initiative—Proposition 16—is backed and financed by Pacific Gas and Electric, the private, for-profit electric company which supplies energy to nearly two thirds of northern California.
Proposition 16 would require any city or county in the state seeking to start its own municipal utility to get approval from two thirds of its voters.
Opponents of the initiative say that if approved it will give PG&E and other existing companies a virtual monopoly, locking out potential public sector rivals in perpetuity.
“I think it’s outrageous that a regulated company could decide to write its own business advantage into the state Constitution,” John Geesman, a former member of the California Energy Commission, told the Los Angeles Times.
So far PG&E has spent an estimated 46 million dollars on its campaign, blitzing local television, radio and newspapers with hard-hitting ads touting the measure as the “Taxpayers Right to Vote.”
Opponents however are hamstrung because the law forbids municipal power providers from spending any money on electioneering. The “No on 16” campaign is staffed exclusively by volunteers and has so far raised only 80,000 dollars.
This article covers the following races:
City Council: 1, 3, 5, 7
Board of Supervisors: 1, 2, 5
State Assembly: 5, 9
Welcome to SN&R’s down and dirty guide to the June primary election in Sacramento County. We’re not pretending that all candidates are created equal. This rundown is about who’s going to win and why, and what they’re likely to do if elected.
It’s true that these are some of the most competitive elections that Sacramento has seen in years. For example, four seats in City Hall are contested by four or more candidates.
But many of the most powerful players are the same as always. Unions and developers in particular will decide who wins political power and who loses it. Probably not the best way to run a government, but at least we can help you sort out who’s who, and who’s paying, in the June 8, 2010 primaries.
City Council District 1
Incumbent Sacramento City Councilman Ray Tretheway is in a tough battle in District 1 against challenger neighborhood activist Angelique Ashby.
Dude, where’s my fire station?
In 2006, City Councilman Ray Tretheway didn’t even have an opponent for re-election. And during his 2004 re-election campaign, he easily beat his opponent, Jon Chase, 66 to 34 percent. Now Tretheway looks like the most likely incumbent in City Hall to lose office.
Neighborhood activist Angelique Ashby has won an array of institutional endorsements. The Sacramento police and firefighters unions, The Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento Metro Chamber, have all jumped on board Ashby’s campaign.
And though Tretheway is a committed environmentalist—and executive director of the Sacramento Tree Foundation—it’s Ashby who’s won support of the Green Democratic Club of Sacramento County, a fairly new Democratic group focused on environmental issues.
“What’s important about her is not that she’s an environmentalist,” says Jude Lamare, a club member and a longtime watcher of environmental issues in the Natomas area. “It’s that she asks the right questions.”
District 1, with more than 100,000 people in it, is now twice a large as any council district in the city. It’s an area of newcomers, and many don’t know Tretheway. “And the things they were expecting didn’t come. That park didn’t come, that fire station didn’t come. They start to wonder, ‘Is this the right place for my family?’”
Tretheway conceded that residents get frustrated that services and amenities haven’t always kept up with the area’s rapid growth, not surprising, he says, when you add 45,000 residents in 10 years. “There was an expectation that everything would grow up together at the same time. But the reality is that it’s done in stages.”
Tretheway says the city budget, the rail yards, the possibility of city charter reform, all call for a veteran’s skill. “My experience and achievements are critical now to keep us moving forward. It’s important not to stop and have to restart.”
A third candidate, civil-rights activist Efren Gutierrez, has positioned himself as a progressive outsider. He notes that the council hasn’t had a Latino member since the death of Mayor Joe Serna. And he says that he’s an alternative to the other two candidates who are receiving large campaign contributions from powerful interest groups. “I don’t owe nobody nothing,” Gutierrez explains.
It’s a good thing Congress scrapped that pesky public option. Who would really want it anyway because everyone knows that private industry is always more efficient and better to work with, right? Thanks for killing the recovery and glad to see the protection you received has been appreciated.
Small businesses in California are being hit this year with double-digit hikes in health insurance costs that could hurt the state’s economic recovery as companies curtail plans for hiring and expansion to pay their insurance bills.
Five major insurers in California’s small-business market are raising rates 12% to 23% for firms with fewer than 50 employees, according to a survey by The Times.
Similar increases are being felt by many small businesses across the nation, including those in Texas, Ohio and Florida — mainly the result of escalating costs for medical care and pharmaceuticals, insurers say.
NEW ORLEANS — Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama.
The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science’s Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume recorded since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.
The thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet, and is more than 6 miles wide, said David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school.
Hollander said the team detected the thickest amount of hydrocarbons, likely from the oil spewing from the blown out well, at about 1,300 feet in the same spot on two separate days this week.
The discovery was important, he said, because it confirmed that the substance found in the water was not naturally occurring and that the plume was at its highest concentration in deeper waters. The researchers will use further testing to determine whether the hydrocarbons they found are the result of dispersants or the emulsification of oil as it traveled away from the well.
The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce.
The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may are the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak.
Hollander said the oil they detected has dissolved into the water, and is no longer visible, leading to fears from researchers that the toxicity from the oil and dispersants could pose a big danger to fish larvae and filter feeders such as sperm whales.
“There are two elements to it,” Hollander said. “The plume reaching waters on the continental shelf could have a toxic effect on fish larvae, and we also may see a long term response as it cascades up the food web.”
A five-term incumbent senator with the backing of every major institutional player in the state lost his re-election bid this evening. The handpicked candidate of the most powerful Republican lawmaker in the Senate did much the same. A Democratic congressional aspirant who ran against his own party’s health care reform platform won a special election in a district John McCain carried in 2008. And a two-term incumbent with the backing of the president found herself in a run-off election by night’s end.
Tuesday’s slate of dramatic primary elections created a whirlwind of dramatic storylines about the state of American politics. But if there was one thread to tie it all together it was that the traditional constructs of party politics—perhaps the notion of a left v. right continuum itself—was in need of updating.
Certainly, the mini-super Tuesday of 2010 established the fact that incumbency is no virtue in the current climate. Indeed, for the first time since 1980, incumbent senators of both parties—Republican Robert Bennett of Utah and Democrat Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania—have lost their seats in primary races. The tremors indicating as much were felt hours before results came in on Capitol Hill where lawmakers seemed thankful for the distance they had from primary process.
“This is an election where people are sending a message from the ballot box,” Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) told the Huffington Post. “I think the message should be heard here.”
Behind the Arizona Immigration Law: GOP Game to Swipe the November Election
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/11 at 07:34 AM
by Greg Palast for Truthout.org
April 26, 2010 @ 10:37 am
On our investigation in Arizona discovered the real intent of the show-me-your-papers law.
[Phoenix, AZ.] Don’t be fooled. The way the media plays the story, it was a wave of racist, anti-immigrant hysteria that moved Arizona Republicans to pass a sick little law, signed last week, requiring every person in the state to carry papers proving they are US citizens.
I don’t buy it. Anti-Hispanic hysteria has always been as much a part of Arizona as the Saguaro cactus and excessive air-conditioning.
What’s new here is not the politicians’ fear of a xenophobic “Teabag” uprising.
What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote—and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.
In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.
Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer’s command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.
That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if you’re not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And arresting such criminal voters is easy: after all, they give their names and addresses.
Captives of Sheriff Joe’s prison, Maricopa County, ArizonaSo I asked Brewer’s office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?
No, not one.
Which raises the question: were these disenfranchised voters the criminal, non-citizens Brewer tagged them, or just not-quite-white voters given the José Crow treatment, entrapped in document-chase trickery?
The answer was provided by a federal prosecutor who was sent on a crazy hunt all over the Western mesas looking for these illegal voters. “We took over 100 complaints, we investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case.”
This prosecutor, David Iglesias, is a prosecutor no more. When he refused to fabricate charges of illegal voting among immigrants, his firing was personally ordered by the President of the United States, George W. Bush, under orders from his boss, Karl Rove.
Iglesias’ jurisdiction was next door, in New Mexico, but he told me that Rove and the Republican chieftains were working nationwide to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria with public busts of illegal voters, even though there were none.
“They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments,” Iglesias told me. The former prosecutor, himself a Republican, paid the price when he
BP Oil Spill: 7 Secrets BP Doesn’t Want You To Know (PHOTOS)
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/07 at 07:52 AM
Huffington Post
Gazelle Emami
Updated: 05- 5-10 10:20 AM
BP’s announcement that they’re taking responsibility for the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, not for the accident, sounds more like they’re patting themselves on the back. BP CEO Tony Hayward said Monday they are dealing with the cleanup and compensation to those affected, and while they have been dealing with it, their initial efforts also highlight that they’re ultimately looking out for themselves. The company offered settlements to coastal residents of no more than $5,000 if they give up their right to sue. This extends to out-of-work fisherman they’ve hired to help with the clean up. BP has since removed the language from the contract, once they were criticized for the move. They also initially attempted to downplay the seriousness of the the spill, saying the rig was leaking 1,000 barrels a day when in fact it was leaking five times as much.
BP’s green logo and multimillion-dollar green rebranding are meant to fit in with the company’s motto of going “beyond petroleum.” But this has just distracted from years of a horrible environmental record. In 2007, a customer survey found that BP had the most environmentally-friendly image of any major oil company. But even back in 2006, their greenwashing game was apparent-- Guardian analysis found that their green campaign overemphasizes their investments in alternative forms of energy, when those investments are just a blip on their history of huge investments in and profits from fossil fuel energy. In the first quarter of 2010, they made $73 billion in revenue, $72.3 billion of that came from the exploration, production, refining and marketing of oil and natural gas. Only $700 million came from solar and wind energy.
A ProPublica report last week chronicles BP’s involvement in some of the biggest oil and gas disasters of the past five years due to their negligence. In 2005, an explosion at BP’s Texas oil refinery left 15 workers dead and
Americans have a more positive response to the word “progressive” than they do “capitalism,” according to a new Pew research poll.
The poll, conducted Apr. 21-26 attempted to gauge Americans’ honest responses to various concepts. Strikingly—perhaps due to the recent financial crisis, repeated bank bailouts and ire at Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs—more Americans have positive views of liberals than they do of capitalists.
“There is a substantial partisan divide in views of the word ‘progressive,’” Pew researchers note. “However, majorities of Democrats (81%), independents (64%) and Republicans (56%) have a positive reaction to ‘progressive.’”
“Family values” scored highest in the poll with 89 percent support, followed by “civil rights,” with 87 percent. “State’s rights” also received more positive responses than “progressive.” The poll’s findings were first highlighted by Think Progress.
Capitalism scored highest among white college graduates with family incomes above $75,000. Socialism did best among those between the ages of 18-29 who approve of President Barack Obama and have incomes below $30,000.
“More than twice as many blacks as whites react positively to “socialism” (53% vs. 24%),” Pew’s pollsters note. “Yet there are no racial differences in views of “capitalism” – 50% of African Americans and 53% of whites have a positive reaction.
“Those with a high school education or less are evenly divided over “capitalism” (44% positive vs. 42% negative),” they continue. “Among those with some college experience, 49% react positively to “capitalism” as do 68% of college graduates. Those with a high school education or less are more likely to express a positive view of “socialism” than do those with more education.
“People with family incomes of $75,000 or more are the only income group in which a clear majority (66%) reacts positively to the word ‘capitalism,’” Pew adds. “Views of ‘socialism’ also are much more negative among those in this income category (71% negative) – and those with incomes of $30,000 to $75,000 (64% negative) – than those with incomes of less than $30,000 (46% negative).”
Operation Iraqi Freedom By Any Other Name Would Smell As Foul
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/02 at 08:22 PM
By Jessica Wood
Published: Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The Obama administration’s renaming of Operation Iraqi Freedom, fools no one.
President Obama’s administration hopes to shed new light on Operation Iraqi Freedom by faking a smile and renaming the war to Operation New Dawn, according to an article by The Washington Post.
Operation New Dawn will come into effect as early as September 2010.
Other titles such as “Get Us the Hell Out of There Already,” “Yeah, I Don’t Know Why We’re Occupying Iraq, Either,” and “This is All a Scam to Get Your Fucking Oil” seemed to be too descriptive for Obama and his minions. After much debate, Operation New Dawn came out on top.
Seriously, though, Operation New Dawn? If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought Stephanie Meyer decided to torment us with yet another piece of crappy “literature,” but that is besides the point.
I would like to think the current administration doesn’t take us to be such fools that we could be tricked into a sham like that. But, alas, here we are again.
Empty promises and fancy titles do not, and cannot, make up for the fact that the United States has been at war in Iraq for more than seven years now.
Seven years of death, destruction and a massive deficit caused by the United States gives Operation New Dawn a bittersweet tone — one more bitter than sweet.
According to the Congressional Research Service, $747.3 billion dollars have been spent funding Operation Iraqi Freedom. What’s even more disturbing about this figure is that it does not account for soldiers’ regular pay, or their potential future medical costs.
United States soldiers have been sacrificing their lives for a seemingly pointless war, their death toll reaching 4,394 as of April 16. This is according to a figure posted by defense.gov. Let’s not forget about Iraqi soldiers. Their death toll is 9,431 as of March 29. That figure was estimated by usliberals.com.
Is Operation New Dawn sounding better yet? Didn’t think so.
Since March 2003, there have been 95,888-104,595 documented Iraqi civilian deaths, according to iraqbodycount.org.
Approximately 100,000 innocent Iraqi bystanders have fallen victim to America’s constant need to be the most powerful nation in the world, and this number does not even include American civilians or others of the like.
Honestly, one could go on for days with statistics and figures that blatantly outline why the U.S’ occupation of Iraq has gone on for far too long.
There is probably a reason why the United States is the only country occupying Iraq besides, well, Iraq, but we love our rose-colored glasses far too much to take them off.
How high must the death toll climb and how empty must our pockets become for those in the White House to wake up and realize that the U.S. is involved in its most counterproductive conflict to date? Changing the name of the war does not change the war.
Certainly the situation in the Middle East cannot be mostly blamed on Obama. Instead, blame should be placed on seven years of poor decision-making by the past and present administrations.
However, President Obama has been on the hope-train for far too long. He cannot expect to mask one of America’s darkest conflicts with a hokey name and consider it progress. Things were bad enough when “Dubya” decided to include “Freedom” in the title.
AP/Huffington Post First Posted: 05- 1-10 09:06 PM | Updated: 05- 2-10 11:27 AM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama shared some words of wisdom on Saturday, saying there a few things in life harder to find and more important to keep than love.
“Well, love and a birth certificate,” Obama quipped at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, poking fun at those who question his place of birth. “I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth.” Obama was born in Hawaii, but birthers question whether he was born overseas.
Obama also jabbed Jay Leno, the comedian headlining the dinner. Obama dinged Leno as “the only person whose ratings fell more than mine.”
He said he was glad he spoke before the “The Tonight Show” host, “because we have all seen what happens when somebody takes the time slot after Leno.” Comic Conan O’Brien left NBC after his stint hosting “The Tonight Show” following Leno didn’t work out.
He took aim at his own administration too, cracking jokes about Vice President Joe Biden and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Republicans were also the victims of many Obama punch lines. The president noted Sen. John McCain’s claim this year that he was not identified as a maverick. “We know what happens in Arizona when you don’t have an ID. ... Adios amigos,” Obama quipped, referring to a new law in Arizona that targets illegal immigration.
He wasn’t hesitant to mention the attention-hungry couple who crashed his state dinner last fall. “Odds are that the Salahis are here. There haven’t been people that were more unwelcome at a party since Charlie Crist,” he said about the Florida governor who decided to defect from the Republican party.
Although his poll numbers are down, Obama said he hears he’s popular on Twitter and Facebook. “Or as Sarah Palin call it, socialized media,” he said.
WATCH Obama’s speech:
Leno picked up on the Palin joke to take a dig at Obama, saying the president isn’t as aloof as some critics say he is. “He loves to socialize – health care, car companies,” Leno said, naming a few
It’s time for senators—especially the Republicans—to square their upcoming votes on financial reform with their long-professed desire to protect families, said consumer advocate and federal bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday in an interview with the Huffington Post.
“Everyone in Washington claims to be on the side of families and to support reform,” said Warren, a member of the 2010 TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people. “But the test is who votes to paper over problems with another regulatory system designed to fail and who votes for real Wall Street accountability even if it means that some donors will be disappointed.
“I’m tired of hearing politicians claim to support families and, at the same time, vote with the big banks on the most important financial reform package in generations. I’m deep-down tired of it.”
Of all the proposals in the 1,400-page Senate bill attempting to reform Wall Street and protect American consumers, none is more contentious than the one calling for the creation of a consumer-focused agency dedicated to protecting borrowers from abusive lenders.
Reform-minded Democrats want a powerful independent entity able to defend powerless families from the banks and financial firms that squeeze profits out of customers through tricks, traps and outright predatory loans.
Moderates want to say that they voted for a bill that protects consumers—even if it really doesn’t.
Republicans profess a desire to protect consumers, acknowledging regulators’ past failures, but they also don’t want to stem the flow of credit or needlessly harm lenders’ ability to make a buck.
The Senate bill, authored by the banking committee’s chairman, Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, calls for a consumer entity to be housed inside the Federal Reserve. It largely, though, adheres to Warren’s four tests: a chief appointed by the president, an independent source of funding, the authority to write consumer rules and the ability to enforce them against unscrupulous lenders. The unit, thus, focuses squarely on consumers. Ensuring banks’ profitability is left to banking regulators.
The Republicans’ counter-proposal, released this week, fails all four of Warren’s tests.
It calls for a council led by the heads of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Reserve. They’d issue rules, supervise “our nation’s largest financial institutions, large non-bank mortgage originators, and other financial services providers who have violated the consumer protection statutes,” and enforce the rules.
Warren isn’t thrilled with the idea of allowing bank regulators—whose top priority is
LiberalViewer: “Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law Un-American?”
Posted by admincathlyn on 04/27 at 06:28 PM
From Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update to the ACLU, criticisms of this draconian Arizona law are widespread and well-founded, as I show in my latest video.Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law Un-American?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOpRXyjIiY
Arizona’s recently enacted anti-immigrant law is so draconian that it led to criticisms from President Barack Obama, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, and Seth Meyers on Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, as I show in this video. ...
MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show - 26 April 2010: Rachel reports on the Arizona “immigration” law. The bill was introduced by Republican state senator Russell Pearce, who circulated a white separatist e-mail screed, and who also got caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. The guy taking credit for writing the law is Kris Kobach, a birther running for secretary of state in Kansas, and who is an attorney for the legal arm of FAIR, an “immigration reform” group whose founder, John Tanton, argued in 1986 about whites being out-populated by non-whites. The group has been funded for nine years of its existence by The Pioneer Fund, formed “in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.”
REPORTER (VIDEO): “What does an illegal immigrant look like? Does it look like me?”
GOV. JAN BREWER (R-AZ) (VIDEO): “I do not know. I do not know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I can tell you that I think that there are people in Arizona that assume that they know what an illegal immigrant looks like.”
MADDOW: “In the meantime, ‘papers, please.’
Before this bill was actually signed into law, we told you about the guy who introduced it in the first place. It’s this guy, Republican state senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for having sent an email to his supporters that included a white nationalist screed - accusing the media of pushing the view of ‘a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood non-White aliens pouring across our borders...’ Mr. Pearce sent that around to all his supporters, a move he latter apologized for. Russell Pearce is also famous for having been caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. You know, like a real neo-Nazi; not some sort of metaphorical, Godwin’s Law-invoking neo-Nazi, but an actual neo-Nazi guy. See, with the swaztikas? Russell Pearce is the guy who introduced this radical ‘immigration’ bill in Arizona that just became law.
But if you want to meet the guy who’s taking credit for writing the new law. That would be a gentleman named Kris Kobach. Kris Kobach is a birther. He’s running for secretary of state in Kansas right now. His campaign website today brags ‘Kobach Wins One in Arizona.’
The guy who helped write Arizona’s new ‘immigration’ bill is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That’s the legal arm of an immigration group that’s called FAIR - the ‘Federation For American Immigration Reform.’ FAIR was founded in 1979 by a man named John Tanton. Mr. Tanton is still listed as a member of FAIR’s board of directors.
Just for some insight into where FAIR and John Tanton are coming from, seven years after he started FAIR, Mr. Tanton wrote this: ‘… to govern is to populate… will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? ... As whites see their power and control over their lives declinging, will they simply go quietly into the night? or will there be an explosion?’
That’s FAIR, who helped write Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law. After John Tanton got FAIR off the ground, for nine of the first years of the group’s existence, the group reportedly received more than a million dollars in funding from something called The Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as a group formed ‘in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.’
For the last seventy years, The Pioneer Fund has funded controversial research about race and intelligence, essentially aimed at proving the racial superiority of white people. The group’s original mandate was to promote the genes of those ‘deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.’
... John Tanton’s FAIR was long bank-rolled by the Pioneer Fund.
Which actually makes sense after you read some more of Mr. Tanton’s writings: ‘I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.’ In 1997, John Tanton told The Detroit Free-Press that America will soon be overrun by illegal immigrants ‘… defecating and creating garbage and looking for jobs.’
Defecating is the problem… I guess.
Again, this genuis is the guy whose group is behind Arizona’s new radical immigration law. They take credit for writing it. FAIR is bragging about having ‘assisted Senator Pearce in drafting the language of SB1070.’ In drafting that language, FAIR may have slipped in a little something special in there for themselves. FAIR makes a living off of suing local and state governments over immigration laws. Tucked inside Article 8 of Arizona’s new law is a provision that if groups like them win their cases ‘a court may order that the entity that brought the action recover court costs and attorney fees.’
Which could create a nice financial boon for the formerly eugenics movement-funded, advance-the-white-majority, promote-the-genetics-of-white-America anti-immigrant group whose attorneys helped write the new law.
Congratulations, Arizona. This thing is going to help make you really, really, really famous for a really, really, really long time.”
CROIX-DES-BOUQUETS, Haiti — You name it, Camp Corail has got it. And Camp Obama does not.
The organized relocation camp at Corail-Cesselesse has thousands of spacious, hurricane-resistant tents on groomed, graded mountain soil. The settlement three miles (four kilometers) down the road – named after the U.S. president in hopes of getting attention from foreigners – has leaky plastic tarps and wooden sticks pitched on a muddy slope.
Corail has a stocked U.N. World Food Program warehouse for its 3,000-and-counting residents; the more than 8,500 at Camp Obama are desperate for food and water. Corail’s entrance is guarded by U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police. Camp Obama’s residents put up a Haitian flag to mark their empty security tent.
The camps, neighbors in the foothills of a treeless mountain, are a diptych of the uneven response to Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake. More than $12.7 billion has been pledged by foreign governments, agencies and organizations, including $2.8 billion for humanitarian response and another $9.9 billion promised at the March 31 U.N. donors conference.
In one camp, which dignitaries and military commanders visit by helicopter, those billions are on display. A short hop down the road, they barely register.
“We’ve heard the foreigners have given a lot of aid money. But we’re still living the same way as before, and we’re still dying the same way as before,” said Duverny Nelmeus, a 52-year-old welder-turned Camp Obama resident-coordinator.
Haiti’s needs are still enormous, but more than 100 days after the quake, the plan for dealing with them is unclear. Even the death toll is confusing: Government estimates hovered around 230,000 until the U.N. donors conference when, without explanation, the total jumped to 300,000.
There are officially 1.3 million people displaced by the magnitude-7 earthquake. Hundreds of thousands have massed in settlement camps that, like Camp Obama, sprouted with little or no planning. These Haitians live in makeshift tarp homes and shanties, govern their affairs with self-formed security committees and make do with whatever aid arrives.
It was said early on that nearly all the displaced needed to be moved ahead of the arriving rainy season to carefully planned camps like Corail. But it took months to procure land.
By March, aid officials decided instead that people should start going home, saying thousands of houses are still habitable or can be repaired.
It was even better, they said, for most to stay where they were: Agencies deemed just 37,000 people in nine camps at high risk for flash floods, said Shaun Scales of the International Organization for Migration.
But many people are not moving, nor do they want to stay where they are.
Persistent aftershocks and rumors of more to come – President Rene Preval warned of an impending earthquake at a news conference this month – are keeping people from going back. Private landowners and schools are threatening to evict squatters. Those who remain are suffering.
What they want is a better option. And for a few lucky people, right now, that’s Corail. The product of a coordinated effort by aid agencies, the United Nations, the U.S. military, the Haitian government and other entities, it has sprung up seemingly overnight on a cactus patch where
Published on Monday, April 19, 2010 by TruthDig.com
by Chris Hedges
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.
“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”
“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”
“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”
“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear
Published on Saturday, April 24, 2010 by the Guardian/UK
by Matt Taibbi
The investment bank’s cult of self-interest is on trial against the whole idea of civilization – the collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even if we can
So Goldman Sachs, the world’s greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality.
Morally, however, the Goldman Sachs case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America sometime in the 80s - and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends such as boybands and reality shows in spreading across the western world like a venereal disease.
When Britain and other countries were engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the American housing bubble two years ago, few people understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centered objectivist religion, fostered back in the 50s and 60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.
While, outside of America, Russian-born Rand is probably best known for being the unfunniest person western civilization has seen since maybe Goebbels or Jack the Ripper (63 out of 100 colobus monkeys recently forced to read Atlas Shrugged in a laboratory setting died of boredom-induced aneurysms), in America Rand is upheld as an intellectual giant of limitless wisdom. Here in the States, her ideas are roundly worshiped even by people who’ve never read her books or even heard of her. The rightwing “Tea Party” movement is just one example of an entire demographic that has been inspired to mass protest by Rand without even knowing it.
Last summer I wrote a brutally negative article about Goldman Sachs for Rolling Stone magazine (I called the bank a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity") that unexpectedly sparked a heated national debate. On one side of the debate were people like me, who believed that Goldman is little better than
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite,
the meaning is the exact opposite.
This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and it is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen...forward and backward.
This is a video that was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled “u @ 50” by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awestruck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant.
Ethan McCord had just returned from dropping his children at school earlier this month, when he turned on the TV news to see grainy black-and-white video footage of a soldier running from a bombed-out van with a child in his arms. It was a scene that had played repeatedly in his mind the last three years, and he knew exactly who the soldier was.
In July 2007, McCord, a 33-year-old Army specialist, was engaged in a firefight with insurgents in an Iraqi suburb when his platoon, part of Bravo Company, 2-16 Infantry, got orders to investigate a nearby street. When they arrived, they found a scene of fresh carnage – the scattered remains of a group of men, believed to be armed, who had just been gunned down by Apache attack helicopters. They also found 10-year-old Sajad Mutashar and his five-year-old sister Doaha covered in blood in a van. Their 43-year-old father, Saleh, had been driving them to a class when he spotted one of the wounded men moving in the street and drove over to help him, only to become a victim of the Apache guns.
McCord was captured in a video shot from one helicopter as he ran frantically to a military vehicle with Sajad in his arms seeking medical care. That classified video created its own firestorm when the whistleblower site Wikileaks posted it April 5 on a website titled “Collateral Murder” and asserted that the attack was unprovoked. More than a dozen people were killed in three attacks captured in the video, including two Reuters journalists, one carrying a camera that was apparently mistaken for a weapon.
McCord, who served seven years in the military before leaving in the summer of 2009 due to injuries, recently posted an apologetic letter online with fellow soldier Josh Steiber supporting the release of the video and asking the family’s forgiveness. McCord is the father of three children.
Wired’s Kim Zetter reached McCord at his home in Kansas. This is his account of what he saw.
Wired.com: At the time you arrived on the scene, you didn’t know what had happened, is that right?
Ethan McCord: Right. We were engaged in our own conflict roughly about three or four blocks away. We heard the gunships open up. [Then] we were just told … to move to this [other] location. It was pretty much a shock when we got there to see what had happened, the carnage and everything else.
Wired.com: But you had been in combat before. It shouldn’t have surprised you what you saw.
McCord: I have never seen anybody being shot by a 30-millimeter round before. It didn’t seem real, in the sense that it didn’t look like human beings. They were destroyed.
Wired.com: Was anyone moving when you got there other than the two children?
McCord: There were approximately two to three other people who were moving who were still somewhat alive, and the medics were attending to them.
Wired.com: The first thing you saw was the little girl in the van. She had a stomach wound?
McCord: She had a stomach wound and she had glass in her eyes and in her hair. She was crying. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went to the van immediately, because I could hear her crying. It wasn’t like a cry of pain really. It was more of a child who was frightened out of her mind. And the next thing I saw was the boy…. He was kind of sitting on the floorboard of the van, but with his head laying on the bench seat in the front. And then the father, who I’m assuming was the father, in the driver’s seat slumped over on his side. Just from looking into the van, and the amount of blood that was on the boy and the father, I immediately figured they were dead.
So, the first thing I did was grab the girl. I grabbed the medic and we went into the back. There’s houses behind where the van was. We took her in there and we’re checking to see if there were any other wounds. You can hear the medic saying on the video, “There’s nothing I can do here, she needs to be evac’d.” He runs the girl to the Bradley. I went back outside to the van, and that’s when the boy took, like, a labored, breath. That’s when I started screaming, “The boy’s alive! The boy’s alive!” And I picked him up and
The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.
After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own “Rules of Engagement”.
Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.
WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.
WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.
WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work.
CA DEM PARTY PASSES PLATFORM TO END THE DEATH PENALTY
Posted by admincathlyn on 04/20 at 09:29 PM
04.20.10
Left to right: Christine Thomas, Cathlyn Daly
Posted by: Cathlyn Daly, President, Capitol Area Progressives
Christine Thomas, Capitol Area Progressives’ Council Member, is a tireless advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. Christine is a delegate to the California Democratic Party (CDP) and was selected by the Chair of the CDP to serve on the Platform Committee. Christine works as a paralegal in the habeas unit of the Federal Defenders office where she works with state cases that have exhausted all appeals in the state court, and meets regularly with prisoners on California’s Death Row. This past weekend, Christine help lead an extraordinary effort to incorporate the abolishment of the death penalty into the CDP platform which has long reflected the values of the Democratic Party. However, it has been a steep political battle within the party ranks to pass an anti-death penalty plank due to the party eststablishment’s belief that passage of such a plank would be electoral political suicide. With Christine’s determination, passion and organizing skills, and with the force of progressive organizations behind her, the California Democratic Party made history this past Sunday, 04.18.10. Below is an email Christine sent out to fellow democrats following the victory at the convention this past weekend.
____________________
From Christine Thomas:
In an amazing culmination of the hard work of so many, from the podium of the 2010 California Democratic Party Convention came highlights of the changes and additions to the Platform of the CDP: “The California Democratic Party believes in the human rights of all people, and has taken a position opposing the death penalty in this year’s platform,” which was met with resounding applause by attendees/delegates.
Under the guidance of Chairman John Burton, the California Democratic Party’s two-year Platform of 2010 took on many progressive improvements, of which the Criminal Justice Plank led the way and addressed not only support to end the death penalty, but support to end juvenile life without parole sentences (JLWOP), support for non-partisan sentencing commissions, support for increasing high school graduation rates which correlates to direct drops in homicide and violent crime rates, support to reduce prison overcrowding, opposition to prison privatization, and support to reform three strikes/Proposition 13. [see complete 2010 Criminal Justice Plank Platform below]
I want to thank all of you who took part in public information events, writing and testifying at regional Platform Committee hearings, and keeping opposition to the death penalty front and center in newspapers throughout the State of California. You have been the movement, and we would not have this accomplishment of moving the largest block of the country’s largest political party to have the courage to take a stand against the death penalty without you.
Special thanks to: the ACLU, Death Penalty Focus (DPF), and CA Crime Victims For Alternatives to the Death Penalty who sent persuasive position reports to our committee for consideration while contemplating this addition to our platform, Natasha Minsker, Death Penalty Policy Director, ACLU Northern California and Stefanie Faucher, Associate Director, Death Penalty Focus for helping us get the word out to their members who were also Democrats to get them to hearings and to write letters and e-mails.
James Clark, Death Penalty Field Organizer ACLU of Southern California who came all three days to the convention with volunteer activists to place ‘anti-death penalty’ stickers on nearly every attendee at the Platform Committee hearing and distributed abolitionist literature in strategic locations throughout convention reaching over 1000 attendees at this years convention, arming each of them with current facts on why the CA Democratic Party’s courageous position against capital punishment was the correct position.
Finally, thank you to Paul Comiskey, who provided us 1000 copies of A Taxpayers Guide to the California Death Penalty, to distribute to convention attendees. [Note: Paul is working on an updated/shorter version of this powerful pamphlet which will go to the press in the near future. If you would like to help support his efforts in covering the costs of this print run, please contact him directly at: paulcomiskey@hotmail.com This powerful little pamphlet carries a comprehensive, concise message on why it would be in Californian’s best interest to end this sentencing structure.
Keep moving forward,
Christine Thomas
CDP 2010 PLATFORM – CRIMINAL JUSTICE PLANK
Criminal Justice
Strong families and safe communities are the highest goal of our society. Crime prevention and rehabilitation are essential to our families, our communities, and our State’s budget. Prosecution represents a failure on behalf of the individual and on behalf of society.
In recognition of current law enforcement supported research, demonstrating a 10 percentage-point increase in graduation rates has historically reduced murder and assault rates by approximately 20 percent, we support decreasing crime rates by increasing high school graduation rates through evidenced based methods including structured pre-school for all, truancy programs, and after school programs.
We are determined to put an end to family violence and gang activity, drug and alcohol addition, unemployment, poverty and racism. We are dedicated to ensuring that our criminal justice system provides fair and equitable treatment for all. We believe in the human rights of all citizens. Smart on crime must include evidence-based criminal justice prevention programs as the best use of taxpayer funds.
To promote safe communities, California Democrats will:
Provide state-of-the-art equipment and training in the latest crime fighting techniques;
Enhance victim-witness advocacy that respects the rights of crime victims and provides therapeutic assistance “and financial compensation; and support comprehensive services for victims of crime;
Strictly enforcing fair penalties for all violent crimes, especially those against women, children, the elderly and disabled;
Support the establishment of a non-partisan sentencing commission to review inequitable sentencing laws;
Reduce prison overcrowding and the drain on our economy by decreasing penalties for minor drug offenses and other victimless crimes, making the punishment fit the crime;
Implement community-based policing to break down barriers between law enforcement officers and the people they serve, and increase law enforcement accountability to the communities they serve;
Promote responsible gun ownership and reasonable gun safety and work with gun owners and sporting associations to promote gun safety education;
Strengthen the efforts to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals;
Continue to support the common sense ban on deadly assault weapons;
Prosecute white-collar criminals and improve methods for recovering financial losses;
Protect consumers against identity theft and violations of privacy to ensure they know what personal information is collected by businesses and government (such as social security numbers, financial data, phone numbers, street and email addresses) and how that information is used;
Employ DNA testing when appropriate to ensure that innocent people are not convicted and guilty people are not set free;
Prohibit the use of so-called “secret evidence” in courts and tribunals;
Challenge the practice of profiling, from detainment through charging and sentencing;
Promote strong families and communities by making rehabilitation, education and job readiness the top priority within our State prison system;
Promote dialog that examines the inequity between public school funding and prison expansion in California, and support efforts to address high school dropout rates;
Oppose privatization of prisons;
Promote prison reform policy so that no person incarcerated in any jail, prison, or other place of criminal detention, within the jurisdiction of any branch of government, State, local or Federal, shall suffer physical violence by other inmates or by guards, other than what the latter must do to subdue someone whom they are legally entitled to subdue;
Oppose sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP);
Replace the death penalty with a term of permanent incarceration, which will serve to protect the public, provide swift and certain justice for victims’ families, and save the state an estimated $1 billion over the next five years;
Reform the “Three Strikes”/Proposition 13 law to provide judges with more sentencing discretion, eliminate non-violent non-serious crimes from the application of this law, and makes these changes retroactive.
The surprising flash point of this weekend’s state Democratic Party convention was the race in the 36th Congressional District, where U.S. Rep. Jane Harman,, D-Venice, is fighting off an insurgent campaign by Democratic challenger Marcy Winograd.
The fireworks began Saturday afternoon when Harman was speaking to the party’s progressive caucus, only to be dragged into a debate with Winograd, who is the president of the Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles.
Harman reportedly was booed and heckled by the hostile caucus audience, which was unhappy with her vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq and some of her pro-Israel stands.
Winograd joined in the ridicule, questioning Harman’s Democratic credentials. Tensions boiled over Sunday after Winograd had collected enough signatures to overturn the vote of the district’s delegates to endorse Harman, throwing the matter to a debate by the general session. Harman ultimately won the California Democratic Party’s endorsement.
Among the other contested endorsements, Assemblyman Dave Jones of Sacramento beat out Assemblyman Hector de la Torre of South Gate for insurance commissioner. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom didn’t receive the required 60 percent endorsement
It’s a measure of the small bore political stakes of the California Democratic Party convention that the weekend’s only drama played out over an inconclusive fight for the party’s endorsement in an internecine contest for lieutenant governor — a conflict over a second-tier office that has far more to do with personalities than policy.
During a two-day convention when one officeholder after another pleaded with 3,000 activists to match the passion of the conservative Tea Party movement in the 2010 campaign, the convention remained a mostly sedate affair, with delegates wistfully recalling the sense of purpose in President Obama’s historic 2008 victory, while trying to get excited about candidates for insurance commissioner and lieutenant governor, ferhevensakes.
“At this point, I think the polls are showing that there is more enthusiasm with the tea party (movement)” Senator Barbara Boxer candidly told reporters, “and I think it is absolutely a fact that we have to match that enthusiasm.”
This just in: in the long-awaited balloting in the Lite Gov’s race, S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom out-polled L.A. City Council member Janice Hahn, 52-to-42. According to a furious exchange of late-night spinning memos eblasted by the two camps, this was either a great victory for Hahn, for denying her rival the 60 percent needed for the endorsement, or a key tactical win for Newsom, who skunked his foe in her own back yard.
Zzzzzzz.
As a practical matter, the question of how much energy and enthusiasm the Dems can muster — in a non-presidential election year, when the political winds now strongly favor Republicans, when the Donkey Ticket is led by two old war horses, aged 69 and 72, and when the GOP’s
After leaving the California Democratic Party convention here Sunday, gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown stopped by the city’s oldest African American church. Coincidentally, the message the pastor preached at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church: “Yesterday’s victory does not guarantee victory today.”
The symbolism is apt for Democrats and the 72-year-old Brown as he seeks to return to the governor’s office he occupied from 1975 to 1983. A little more than a year and a half since the excitement generated by President Obama’s presidential victory, Democrats in the nation’s most populous state spent the past three days searching for something to stir enthusiasm for their 2010 campaigns.
Or, as Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer put it, to at least match the excitement the Tea Party is building for conservative candidates.
Early polls show Brown in a statistical dead heat with Republican Meg Whitman, the billionaire former eBay CEO. In the Senate race, several polls show Boxer virtually tied with Republican former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in head-to-head matchups, with Assemblyman Chuck DeVore not far behind. Boxer described her challengers as the most formidable the three-term senator has ever faced.
Some liberals have drawn comfort from the fact that Democrats hold a commanding lead in the number of registered voters in California - one of the leading indicators of how people vote, particularly in non-presidential-election years.
But others, from grassroots activists to officeholders, worry about whether Democrats - particularly Brown and Boxer - can motivate the young and first-time voters who propelled Obama’s 2008 victory.
‘Many months to go’
Standing outside First AME Church after briefly addressing the congregation, Brown downplayed the need to
The California Democratic Party convention may be lacking a clear statewide vision for the state’s future. But one thing that’s not lacking is local leadership to expand the Democratic ranks. While there’s a lot of attention being paid to the major statewide races in the media, it’s in the races for state legislature and Congress where the future of this party and this state is being made.
There are two places in California that stand out to me as the locations of expanded and renewed Democratic power: the Central Coast and Orange County.
Yesterday, before the Taco Truck Throwdown got under way, a group of Democrats from the five counties that comprise the 15th State Senate district - Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara - gathered by the pool to hear John Laird rally the troops for his likely campaign to win back SD-15 from the Republicans.
Laird is one of the most important Democrats in the state, a solid progressive who can provide some of the leadership California needs. When - and it does seem it’s a question of when, not if - the legislature confirms Abel Maldonado as Lieutenant Governor, Laird will have the chance to help get Democrats to 2/3rds in the State Senate (along with neighboring SD-12, where Anna Caballero is running to replace Jeff Denham).
His campaign will not only show how Sam Blakeslee, the likely Republican, is a rubber stamp for the right wing, but will also make a clear case for why Democrats are the party to bring economic recovery to the Central Coast and protect our core services, from schools to parks.
Given the importance of winning 2/3rds, and the fact that Laird is simply a great candidate, this race will have to be one of the top priorities for Democrats in addition to the key statewide races.
In addition to the fight for 2/3rds, Orange County is where a potentially transformative fight for the future of this state is unfolding. While usual group of wingnut Republicans have been ignoring the needs of their OC constituents, grandstanding to please the Grover Norquists of the world, their constituents and their districts have undergone dramatic change. Irvine, the largest city in AD-70 and CA-48, has become a diverse city that regularly elects Democrats to city offices, including mayor. Other cities in Orange County have followed similar trajectories, and find their basic needs are being neglected by a Republican establishment that takes their power for granted.
We’ve already seen signs this is changing. In 2008, Debbie Cook won 46% of the vote in CA-46, challenging Dana Rohrabacher. That same year, Bill Hedrick won 48% of the vote against Ken Calvert in CA-44, and Barack Obama actually carried CA-48. Here in 2010, candidates in Orange County are bucking the conventional wisdom that OC is red - and that 2010 is a year for Democrats to play defense.
Beth Krom is running for Congress in CA-48, challenging incumbent Republican John Campbell, a birther who has done hardly anything to help his constituents and has in fact actually undermined them through his votes against funding local projects and health care. Krom has a strong base in Irvine, where she served as mayor. Krom has been working the local communities hard, and addressing their health care, education and economic concerns, while Campbell continues to ignore all of these. Krom’s successful local background gives her the credibility to make the case to local voters; she is the right kind of candidate to win here.
Similarly, Melissa Fox is running a very strong campaign to succeed wingnut hero Chuck DeVore in AD-70, which covers much of the same ground as CA-48. Fox drew a large crowd to her event Saturday morning at Starbucks and is getting more attention from Democrats around the state as another strong candidate who understands the district’s needs that the wingnuts have so long neglected. Fox has a particular focus on education, which resonates in a district that prides itself on good schools but face deep budget cuts that jeopardize educational quality - and in turn, jeopardize home values.
Krom and Fox aren’t getting the kind of institutional support from the state and national parties they deserve, which is unfortunate. Democrats need to aggressively expand the field going into 2010 not only for the short-term tactical benefits of tying down Republican resources, but also to help achieve the longer-term goals of turning places like Orange County blue.
That should not be read to imply that Krom and Fox can’t win. They can, but it won’t happen unless Democrats across the state mobilize to help them out. And in case you’re still not convinced, consider the case of Bill Hedrick.
Hedrick was written off as a longshot candidate in 2008 against Calvert, but running without much national funding, outspent 5-1, Hedrick got 48% of the vote, nearly knocking off Calvert. Hedrick is back to build on that success, and is doing so by espousing a progressive populism. Hedrick understands that his district, straddling the Orange/Riverside county line, includes many voters who are drawn to populism - but it could be populism from the right or the left. Hedrick is embracing it from the left, calling for no more troops to be sent to Afghanistan and taking a strong anti-Wall Street position. Hedrick isn’t getting financial backing from the DCCC here in 2010, but is positioned well to give Calvert all he can handle.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention two other key red-to-blue efforts this year. In suburban Sacramento, Dr. Ami Bera is
Published on Thursday, April 15, 2010 by Salon.com
by Joan Walsh
can we stop pretending the anti-Obama movement is a populist, anti-elite uprising?
Salon’s Numerologist, David Jarman, nails it today: He combines the widely covered CBS/New York Times poll on the Tea Partiers—no surprise, they’re white, and they think President Obama is doing too much for black people; some surprise, they’re wealthier than the average voter—with a less-covered University of Washington poll that finds they also doubt the hard work, intelligence and trustworthiness of black people.
The Times poll was enlightening: Yes, they’re white, older, male and Republican; 56 percent make over $50,000 a year and 12 percent make over $250,000. They’re more likely to rely on Social Security and Medicare than the average voter—and, no surprise, they tend to approve of those two programs. The Times goes on:
More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites—compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
As my friend Digby points out, make that “way more likely: 52% of them think that as compared to only 28% of the general public.” (Digby delves into much more detail about the poll, here.)
But Jarman also digs into a University of Washington poll released last week that looked at the views of Tea Party supporters in seven battleground states. Not only do they think too much is made of the problems facing black people, they have bigoted views about black people generally. Jarman explains:
People who think that “the U.S. government has done too much to support blacks” were 36 percent more likely to support the Tea Party than those who didn’t think so. Among whites who approve of the Tea Party, only 35 percent said they believe blacks are hard-working, only 45 percent believe blacks are intelligent, and just 41 percent believe that they’re trustworthy.
And Tea Party supporters don’t like it when anyone notices the racists in their midst?
I’ve written before that I find it galling when the wealthy, white Pat Buchanan (who by the way spent much of his adult life on government health insurance) lectures me about being “condescending” to the Tea Partiers, as though they’re a grass-roots uprising of the vulnerable against the elites. That’s garbage: They are a well-funded uprising of the elites against the vulnerable. And they’d be nowhere if their mission wasn’t largely supported by the top of corporate America (and the GOP shadow government in waiting).
The idea that the Obama administration’s policies somehow favor black people will come as a surprise to many in the black community who are concerned that the president hasn’t done enough to directly address the crisis of unemployment, especially among black men. I happen to believe Obama’s race-neutral employment policies, targeted to place, not race, are the way to tackle the problem. But I have an idea for Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson: They should hook up with the Tea Partiers. That’s an audience that really needs to hear their complaints about how little Obama is doing for black people.
Framing, Value-Shifting, the California Budget Crisis,
and Why Democrats So Often Act Like Republicans
This is a case study of how inadequate polling can lead Democrats to accept and promote a radical Republican view of reality. This paper compares two polls, one excellent and revealing, the other inadequate, misleading, and counterproductive. The issues raised are framing and value-shifting (where voters shift, depending on the wording of questions, between two contradictory political world-views they really hold, but about different issues). It also discusses how polls can reveal the difference between what words are commonly assumed to mean, versus what they really mean to voters—and how polls can test this.
It is a truism that poll results can depend on framing. For example, the NY Times reported last month on a NYT/CBS Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell poll on whether “homosexuals” or “gay men and lesbians” should be allowed to serve openly in the military. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats said they support permitting gay men and lesbians to serve openly. Fewer Democrats however, just 43 percent, said they were in favor of allowing homosexuals to serve openly. That’s a 36 percent framing shift on the same literal issue, but not surprising since the words evoked very different frames, one about sex and the other about rights. Newsworthy for the NY Times, but hardly earthshaking.
But a recent poll by David Binder [1] [1], perhaps the premier California pollster, showed a framing shift of deep import for Democrats—a shift of 69 percent on the same issue, depending on the framing. It was noteworthy not just because of the size of the framing shift on the main question, but because the shift was systematic. Roughly, around 18 percent of voters showed that their values are not fixed. They think BOTH like liberals and conservatives—depending on how they understand the issue. With a liberal value-framing, they give liberal answers; with a conservative value-framing, they give conservative answers. What is most striking is that conservatively framed poll questions are all too often written by Democrats thinking they are neutral. The result is a Democratic move to the right for what are thought to be “pragmatic” reasons, but which are actually self-defeating.
Here is the background.
California is the only state with a legislature run by minority rule. Because it takes a 2/3 vote of both houses to either pass a budget or raise revenue via taxation, 33.4 percent of either house can block the entire legislative process until it gets what it wants. At present 63 percent of both houses are Democrats and 37 percent are far-right Republicans who have taken the Grover Norquist pledge not to raise revenue and to shrink government till it can be drowned in a bathtub. They run the legislature by saying no. This has led to gridlock, huge deficits from lack of revenue, and cuts so massive as to threaten the viability of the state.
Unfortunately, most Californians are unaware of the cause of the crisis, blaming “the legislature,” when the cause is only 37 percent of “the legislature,” the 37 percent that runs the legislature under minority rule.
I realized last year that the budget crisis was really a democracy crisis, and that a ballot initiative that could be passed by only a majority could eliminate the 2/3 rules, replacing minority rule by majority rule. The idea was to
Tea Partiers Get Their News From Fox & More Likely To Justify Violence Against The Government
Posted by admincathlyn on 04/15 at 12:40 PM
ThinkProgress.org, 04.15.10
Last night, the New York Times and CBS News released a poll finding that the “18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.” The poll, which “oversampled” Tea Party supporters “for the purpose of analysis” and “then weighted” them “to their proper proportion in the poll,” found that Tea Partiers are more likely than the general public to think President Obama “favors blacks over whites“:
The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
According to the poll, Tea Partiers are also more likely to believe that President Obama was born in another country, with 30 percent believing that compared to 20 percent of the general public. Supporters of the Tea Party are also more likely to believe that violence against the government is sometimes justified:
In terms of where the Tea Party turns for news, the poll found that 63 percent watch Fox News “most for information about politics and current events.” Additionally, 53 percent of Tea Partiers consider “shows hosted by people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity” to be news rather than entertainment:
The Tea Partiers, who view Sarah Palin very favorably but aren’t sure she is ready to be president, have a distorted image of whether or not their views reflect America. According to the poll, 84 percent of Tea Partiers believe that “the views of the people involved in the Tea Party movement generally reflect the views of most Americans.” Only 25 percent of the general public, however, believe that the Tea Party reflects their views.
Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated
Posted by admincathlyn on 04/15 at 11:52 AM
New York Times, April 14, 2010
By KATE ZERNIKE and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.
They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”
And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”
The Tea Party movement burst onto the scene a year ago in protest of the economic stimulus package, and its supporters have vowed to purge the Republican Party of officials they consider not sufficiently conservative and to block the Democratic agenda on the economy, the environment and health care. But the demographics and attitudes of those in the movement have been known largely anecdotally. The Times/CBS poll offers a detailed look at the profile and attitudes of those supporters.
Their responses are like the general public’s in many ways. Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as “fair.” Most send their children to public schools. A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president, and, despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers. They actually are just as likely as Americans as a whole to have returned their census forms, though some conservative leaders have urged a boycott.
Tea Party supporters’ fierce animosity toward Washington, and the president in particular, is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich.
The overwhelming majority of supporters say Mr. Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and that he does not understand the problems of people like themselves. More than half say the policies of the administration favor the poor, and 25 percent think that the administration favors blacks over whites — compared with 11 percent of the general public.
They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.
Asked what they are angry about, Tea Party supporters offered three main concerns: the recent health care overhaul, government spending and a feeling that their opinions are not represented in Washington.
“The only way they will stop the spending is to have a revolt on their hands,” Elwin Thrasher, a 66-year-old semiretired lawyer in Florida, said in an interview after the poll. “I’m sick and tired of them wasting money and doing what our founders never intended to be done with the federal government.”
They are far more pessimistic than Americans in general about the economy. More than 90 percent of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with about 60 percent of the general public. About 6 in 10 say “America’s best years are behind us” when it comes to the availability of good jobs for American workers.
Nearly 9 in 10 disapprove of the job Mr. Obama is doing over all, and about the same percentage fault his handling of major issues: health care, the economy and the federal budget deficit. Ninety-two percent believe Mr. Obama is moving the country toward socialism, an opinion shared by more than half of the general public.
“I just feel he’s getting away from what America is,” said Kathy Mayhugh, 67, a retired medical transcriber in Jacksonville. “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted April 5 through April 12 with 1,580 adults. For the purposes of analysis, Tea Party supporters were oversampled, for a total of 881, and then weighted to their proper proportion in the poll. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all adults and for Tea Party supporters.
Of the 18 percent of Americans who identified themselves as supporters, 20 percent, or 4 percent of the general public, said they had given money or attended a Tea Party event, or both. These activists were more likely than supporters generally to describe themselves as very conservative and had more negative views about the economy and Mr. Obama. They were more angry with Washington and intense in their desires for a smaller federal government and deficit.
Tea Party supporters over all are more likely than the general public to say their personal financial situation is fairly good or very good. But 55 percent are concerned that someone in their household will be out of a job in the next year. And more than two-thirds say the recession has been difficult or caused hardship and major life changes. Like most Americans, they think the most pressing problems facing the country today are the economy and jobs.
But while most Americans blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the current state of the American economy, the greatest number of Tea Party supporters blame Congress.
They do not want a third party and say they usually or almost always vote Republican. The percentage holding a favorable opinion of former President George W. Bush, at 57 percent, almost exactly matches the percentage in the general public that holds an unfavorable view of him.
Dee Close, a 47-year-old homemaker in Memphis, said she was worried about a “drift” in the country. “Over the last three or four years, I’ve realized how immense that drift has been away from what made this country great,” Ms. Close said.
Yet while the Tea Party supporters are more conservative than Republicans on some social issues, they do not want to focus on those issues: about 8 in 10 say that they are more concerned with economic issues, as is the general public.
When talking about the Tea Party movement, the largest number of respondents said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government, more than cutting the budget deficit or lowering taxes.
And nearly three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.
But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.
Others could not explain the contradiction.
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”
Marjorie Connelly, Dalia Sussman and Marina Stefan contributed reporting.
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