The Quest for environmental justice in the south

The Quest for Environmental Justice in Dixie
by Michelle Chen

Some of the most toxic communities in the country confronted the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, hoping for a sign that the new administration is more willing than its predecessor to deal with the legacy of environmental racism in the south.

EPA Region 4 includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The region is dotted with poor, Black and Latino communities who live and work in the midst of hazardous waste and industrial pollution. The Obama administration is looking to appoint a permanent administrator for the area, and community activists are looking for accountability.

At a meeting in Atlanta with acting administrator A. Stanley Meiburg, the Associated Press reports, environmental justice advocates—representing 36 organizations, ranging from the Sierra Club to the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association—expressed frustration with a federal bureaucracy that has allowed ecological assaults to fester:

They argued that EPA officials have been bullied into overlooking environmental transgressions, and demanded everything from apologies to families impacted by pollution to a floor-to-ceiling overall of the federal agency charged with protecting human health and the environment.

Earlier this month, the groups sent a letter to Rep. John Lewis calling for a federal probe into the EPA's failure to act on its environmental justice mandates in Region 4 communities. The letter catalogued some of the issues that have surfaced over the years:

yet another legacy of the Bush era.

Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan by Natalie Portman
Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").

I've also been afraid to feel as if I know better than someone else -- a historically dangerous stance (I'm often reminded that "Hitler was a vegetarian, too, you know"). But this book reminded me that some things are just wrong. Perhaps others disagree with me that animals have personalities, but the highly documented torture of animals is unacceptable, and the human cost Foer describes in his book, of which I was previously unaware, is universally compelling.

The human cost of factory farming -- both the compromised welfare of slaughterhouse workers and, even more, the environmental effects of the mass production of animals -- is staggering. Foer details the copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air that result in great spikes in human respiratory ailments, the development of new bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics on farmed animals, and the origins of the swine flu epidemic, whose story has gripped the nation, in factory farms.

I read the chapter on animal shit aloud to two friends -- one is from Iowa and has asthma and the other is a North Carolinian who couldn't eat fish from her local river because animal waste had been dumped in it as described in the book. They had never truly thought about the connection between their environmental conditions and their food. The story of the mass farming of animals had more impact on them when they realized it had ruined their own backyards.

But what Foer most bravely details is how eating animal pollutes not only our backyards, but also our beliefs. He reminds us that our food is symbolic of what we believe in, and that eating is how we demonstrate to ourselves and to others our beliefs: Catholics take communion -- in which food and drink represent body and blood. Jews use salty water on Passover to remind them of the slaves' bitter tears. And on Thanksgiving, Americans use succotash and slaughter to tell our own creation myth -- how the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to harvest this land and make it their own.

And as we use food to impart our beliefs to our children, the point from which Foer lifts off, what stories do we want to tell our children through their food?

I remember in college, a professor asked our class to consider what our grandchildren would look back on as being backward behavior or thinking in our generation, the way we are shocked by the kind of misogyny, racism, and sexism we know was commonplace in our grandparents' world. He urged us to use this principle to examine the behaviors in our lives and our societies that we should be a part of changing. Factory farming of animals will be one of the things we look back on as a relic of a less-evolved age.

I say that Foer's ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

But Foer makes his most impactful gesture as a peacemaker, when he unites the two sides of the animal eating debate in their reasoning. Both sides argue: We are not them. Those who refrain from eating animals argue: We don't have to go through what they go through -- we are not them. We are capable of making distinctions between what to eat and what not to eat (Americans eat cow but not dog, Hindus eat chicken but not cow, etc.). We are capable of considering others' minds and others' pain. We are not them. Whereas those who justify eating animals say the same thing: We are not them. They do not merit the same value of being as us. They are not us.

And so Foer shows us, through Eating Animals, that we are all thinking along the same lines: We are not them. But, he urges, how will we define who we are?

Connecticut Do America a Favor Get Rid of Joe Lieberman

Connecticut Do America a Favor Get Rid of Joe Lieberman
Is there a more hypocritical figure in American politics than Joe Lieberman? The Connecticut senator declared Tuesday that he would support a filibuster of any health care reform bill that has a public option—even the version with the “trigger” compromise accepted by Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe—because it might cost money.

“I think that a lot of people may think that the public option is free,” said Lieberman, one of the Senate’s big spenders, in a suddenly frugal mood. “It’s not. It’s going to cost the taxpayers and people that have health insurance now, and if it doesn’t, it’s going to add terribly to our national debt.”

This from a senator who, as much as anyone, helped run up the national debt since 9/11 by pushing to raise the military budget to its highest level since World War II. It is a budget inflated by enormous expenditures on high-tech weaponry irrelevant to combating terror, such as the $2-billion-a-piece submarines—produced in his home state of Connecticut—that he claimed were needed to combat al-Qaida, a landlocked enemy holed up in caves. The same week that he and others in Congress passed a $680-billion defense bill larded with pork of the sort he has always supported, Lieberman is worried about the impact of a very limited public option on the debt.

Lieberman, whose state is also home to insurance companies that are opposed to any consumer-friendly medical coverage alternative, boldly stated that his opposition to even the most limited version of a public option should not be surprising: “I think my colleagues know for a long time that I’ve been opposed to a government-created, government-run insurance company.” Perhaps during his filibuster to prevent a vote on the public option Lieberman can square that position with his longtime support of the massive government–run insurance programs Medicare and Social Security.

By R. Scheer.......more at link

Chamber Of Commerce To Begin Ads Against Health Care Reform

Please Mr. President Break Up the Big Banks

Breaking Up the Big Banks, and Why Congress Won't Do It
And now there are five -- five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called"talent," and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do. And like a giant, gawking adolescent who's just discovered he can crash the Lexus convertible his rich dad gave him and the next morning have a new one waiting in his driveway courtesy of a dad who can't say no, the biggies will drive even faster now, taking even bigger risks.

What to do? Two ideas are floating around Washington, but only one is supported by the Treasury and the White House. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one.

The right idea is to break up the giant banks. I don't often agree with Alan Greenspan but he was right when he said last week that "[i]f they're too big to fail, they're too big." Greenspan noted that the government broke up Standard Oil in 1911, and what happened? "The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that's what we need to do." (Historic footnote: Had Greenspan not supported in 1999 Congress's repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, which separated investment from commercial banking, we wouldn't be in the soup we're in to begin with.)

Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, whose only problem is he's much too tall, last week told the New York Times he'd like to see the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act provisions that would separate the financial giants' deposit-taking activities from their investment and trading businesses. If this separation went into effect, JPMorgan Chase would have to give up the trading operations acquired from Bear Stearns. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch would go back to being separate companies. And Goldman Sachs could no longer be a bank holding company.

But the Obama Administration doesn't agree with either Greenspan or Volcker.

*Robert Reich

Dragging Texas into the 21st Century

Texas, the Eyes of Justice Are Upon You by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
On October 13, we lost a resolute champion of the law, a man who left his impact on the lives of untold numbers of Americans.

His very name made his life's work almost inevitable, a matter of destiny. William Wayne Justice was a Federal judge for the Eastern District of Texas. That's right, he was "Justice Justice." And he spent a distinguished legal career making sure that everyone -- no matter their color or income or class -- got a fair shake. As a former Texas lieutenant governor put it last week, "Judge Justice dragged Texas into the 20th century, God bless him."

Dragged it kicking and screaming, for it was Justice who ordered Texas to integrate its public schools in 1971 -- 17 years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision made separate schools for blacks and whites unconstitutional. Texas resisted doing the right thing for as long as it could. Many of its segregated schools for African-American children were so poor they still had outhouses instead of indoor plumbing.

This small town lawyer appointed to the federal bench by President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered Texas to open its public housing to everyone, regardless of their skin color. He looked at the state's "truly shocking conditions" in its juvenile detention system and said, repair it. He struck down state law that permitted public schools to charge as much as a thousand dollars tuition for the children of illegal immigrants.

And Justice demanded a top-to-bottom overhaul of Texas prisons, some of the most brutal and corrupt in the nation. He even held the state in contempt of court when he thought it was dragging its feet cleaning up a system where thousands of inmates slept on the dirty bare floors of their cellblocks and often went without medical care. The late, great Molly Ivins said, "He brought the United States Constitution to Texas."

Some say that justice stings. William Wayne Justice certainly did -- and his detractors stung back with death threats and hate mail. Carpenters refused to repair his house, beauty parlors denied service to his wife. There were cross burnings and constant calls for his impeachment.

After he desegregated the schools he was offered armed guards for protection. He turned them down and instead took lessons in self-defense.

You need to understand that while so many Texans have fought and are fighting the good fight in the Judge Justice tradition, others believe in the law only when it sides with them. They long for the good old days of Judge Roy Bean, the saloonkeeper whose barroom court was known in the frontier days as "The Law West of the Pecos." His judicial philosophy was simple: "Hang 'em first, try 'em later."

The present governor of Texas seems to be channeling Judge Bean. During his nine years in office, Rick Perry -- "Governor Goodhair" as Ivins called him -- has presided over more than 200 executions, dwarfing the previous record of 152 set by his predecessor in the Governor's Mansion, George W. Bush. (The most, it is said, of any United States governor in modern history.)

Lethal injection is practically a religious ritual in Texas. In fact, before their sentencing verdict that will send Khristian Oliver to die in just a couple of weeks -- on November 5th, to be exact -- jurors in the East Texas town of Nacogdoches consulted the Bible and found what they were looking for in the Book of Numbers, where it reads, "The murderer shall surely be put to death," and, "The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer." Although it was noted that referencing holy writ was an inappropriate "external influence," two appeals courts upheld the jury's sentence and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Governor Perry will do almost anything to please the vengeful crowd in the Coliseum with their thumbs turned down. Did we mention that next year he's up for reelection? When it turned out recently that five years ago the state may have wrongfully executed a man for a crime he didn't commit, Perry pulled some particularly shady moves.

In February 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death for allegedly setting a fire that killed his three young daughters. Governor Perry has willfully ignored evidence from top arson investigators that the blaze was not homicide but an accident.

Now Perry has fired the chairman and three members of the state's Forensic Science Commission just as they were about to hear further scientific testimony that might prove Willingham's innocence. This week, Perry told reporters that the controversy is "nothing more than propaganda from the anti-death penalty people across the country."

They can be short on mercy in Texas. All the more reason to mourn the loss of Justice -- William Wayne Justice. Rest in peace, your honor.

Why the double standard on beer and weed

Why is it bad to smoke weed and OK to sell beer? By David Sirota
For better or worse, our American Idiocracy has come to rely on athletes as national pedagogues. Michael Jordan educated the country about commitment and just doing it. A.C. Green lectured us about sexual caution. Serena Williams and John McEnroe taught us what sportsmanship is -- and is not. And Charles Barkley outlined how society should define role models.

So when a single week like this one sees both the Justice Department back states' medical marijuana laws, and a Gallup poll shows record-level support for pot legalization, we can look to two superjocks -- Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps -- for the key lesson about our absurd drug policy.

This Tale of Two Supermen began in February when Phelps, the gold-medal swimmer, was plastered all over national newspapers in a photo that showed him hitting a marijuana bong. Though he was smoking in private, the image ignited a public firestorm. USA Swimming suspended Phelps, Kellogg pulled its endorsement deal and the Associated Press sensationalized the incident as a national decision about whether heroes should "be perfect or flawed."

The alleged imperfection was Phelps’ decision to quietly consume a substance that "poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol," as a redacted World Health Organization report admits. That's a finding confirmed by almost every objective science-based analysis, including a landmark University of California study in 2006 showing "no association at all" between marijuana use and cancer.

Alcohol, by contrast, causes roughly one in 30 of the world's cancer cases, according to the International Journal of Cancer. And a new report by Cancer Epidemiology journal shows that even beer, seemingly the least potent drink, may increase the odds of developing tumors.

Which brings us to Armstrong. This month, the Tour de France champion who beat cancer inked a contract to hawk Anheuser-Busch’s alcohol. That's right, less than a year after Phelps was crucified for merely smoking weed in private, few noticed or protested the planet's most famous cancer survivor becoming the public face of a possible carcinogen.

"Apparently, it’s perfectly acceptable for a world-class athlete to endorse a substance like alcohol that contributes to thousands of deaths each year, as well as hundreds of thousands of violent crimes and injuries," says Mason Tvert, a co-author of the new book "Marijuana Is Safer." "Yet a world-class athlete like Michael Phelps is ridiculed, punished and forced to apologize for marijuana, the use of which contributes to zero deaths, and has never been linked to violent or reckless behavior. Why the double standard?"

Dick Cheney Unrepentant War Criminal

Dick Cheney Unrepentant War Criminal

Cheney's full comments Wednesday:

In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed.


As Salon's Glenn Greenwald noted last June, "The U.S. has prosecuted those acts as torture in the past. Multiple media outlets and even the U.S. Government have routinely described those acts as “torture” when used against Americans, rather than by Americans. The tactics are ones we copied from manuals designed to inure our own troops to the torture techniques used by some of the world’s worst tyrants. They resulted in numerous deaths. Until the Bush administration decided to call it something other than 'torture' so that they could do it, nobody had any questions about whether this was 'torture.'"

AT&T Urges Employees to Astroturf Fight Against Net Neutrality

AT&T Urges Employees to Astroturf Fight Against Net Neutrality
AT&T has "asked' its employees to fake it in the fight against Net Neutrality.

The company’s top policy officer sent a memo to workers on Monday urging them to hide their company affiliation before posting anti-Net Neutrality comments to the Federal Communication Commission’s Web site.

“We encourage you, your family and friends to join the voices telling the FCC not to regulate the Internet,” AT&T Senior Executive Vice President James Cicconi wrote in an internal communiqué forwarded to Free Press (and posted here). “It can be done through a personal e-mail account by going to www.openinternet.gov and clicking on the ‘Join the Discussion’ link.”

Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion.

If that weren’t bad enough, Cicconi urges them to choose from a list of talking points sanctioned by the PR department -- fearful perhaps of what employees might say if they went off script.

Some of the talking points are hard to read without rolling your eyes.

For example: Cicconi suggests that employees write that Net Neutrality will “jeopardize efforts to deliver high-speed Internet services to every American.” Yet he’s unable to provide any rationale for this claim, other than saying that universal access is a goal that “can't be met with rules that halt private investment in broadband infrastructure.”

Really?

AT&T is loath to mention that it made considerable network investment when it had to abide by Net Neutrality conditions, and invested considerably less when it didn’t.

As a requirement of its 2006 merger with BellSouth, AT&T agreed to operate a neutral network (by adhering to the four principles of the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement as well as a fifth principle of nondiscrimination) for two years.

AT&T’s network investments increased immediately following the imposition of the Net Neutrality merger condition and continued to rise over the two years of the merger agreement. When the neutrality condition expired on Dec. 29, 2008, the company sharply reduced its investment.

So when Cicconi says that Net Neutrality means no buildout, the opposite is true.

By pressuring the company’s employees to pose as average citizens and post AT&T talking points, Cicconi is asking them to be doubly deceptive. Not only are they asked to hide their true identities but also to spread misinformation on behalf of a company that seems to be getting more desperate by the day.

Patriot Act Redux

Patriot Act Redux
During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama, touting his background as a professor who taught Constitutional Law, often waxed eloquent about his commitment to civil liberties and to correcting the Patriot Act's threats to basic constitutional protections.

It was part of his stump speech on the campaign trail. And in one of the presidential debates he said "I like to think that had I been in the Senate [in 2001], I would have [voted] against the Patriot Act."

And so, it might have been expected that when the Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee began consideration, last week, of whether or not to renew some of the more controversial provisions of the Patriot Act, they would have made an effort to fulfill the president's campaign promise. And that the White House would have weighed in, in favor of reform.

Three sections of the Act (the so-called "library provision", the use of roving wiretaps, and the "lone wolf" provision) are due to expire, at years end, and this, therefore, was the time to either let them expire or, as the New York Times advocated "add missing civil liberties and privacy protections, address known abuses and trim excesses."

Of particular concern to civil libertarians was the fact that the three sections of the Patriot Act in question have allowed law enforcement to wire tap and to seize the records of businesses, institutions (including libraries), and individuals without judicial review or oversight and without ever establishing evidence of suspected terrorist activity.

Civil libertarians of the right and left urged the Senate not to reauthorize the three provisions without providing new restraints on law enforcement and adequate protections, ensuring that rights be safeguarded. Alas, the Committee voted last week, with the White House's blessing, to send to the full Senate, for its consideration, a reauthorized Patriot Act largely intact.



...But Not Without Some Comic Relief

The debate within the Committee had one comic (or tragic) moment. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) attempted to amend the proposed Patriot Act reauthorization with a provision that would have required law enforcement to demonstrate a terrorist connection before they could use the Act's sweeping powers to wiretap or seize records.

In arguing against Senator Durbin's effort, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said that his amendment was unnecessary since she felt that the bill, as proposed, already included protection enough. To make her case, she then went on to read aloud what she thought was the bill she favored, concluding triumphantly that what she had read provided adequate safeguards.

All well and good, except as Senator Durbin then pointed out, "you just read my amendment."

Unabashed, Klobuchar voted against the Durbin amendment that she had just read aloud and praised.

And this is how our laws are made!

Rewriting the Bible to Fit The Rightwing Conservative Agenda

Rewriting the Bible to Fit The Rightwing Conservative Agenda
So we may soon have ourselves a conservative Bible. Besides Fox News, I mean.

This new Bible is from Conservapedia, a website that bills itself as a conservative alternative to the perceived liberal bias of Wikipedia, the user-edited online reference.

You may judge Conservapedia's own bias by reading its definition of liberal: ``someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing.''

For the record, Wikipedia defines conservative as a word referring ``to various political and social philosophies that support tradition and the status quo, or that call for a return to the values and society of an earlier age. . . .''

Now, having protected unwary Americans from -- ahem -- Wikipedia's bias, Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly (son of Phyllis) tackles perceived bias in the Good Book. He proposes to correct the Bible by creating a new translation based upon 10 principles, including: concision (as opposed to ``liberal wordiness''); an emphasis on ``free market parables'' and the exclusion of ``liberal passages'' he says were inserted into the original text. One such would be the well-known story of the adulterous woman brought before Christ by a crowd eager to see her punished; Jesus says the one without sin should cast the first stone.

As Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman demonstrates in his book, Misquoting Jesus, that passage and others were indeed inserted into the Gospels -- by copyists whose transcriptions were once the primary means by which Bibles and other books were disseminated. We're talking about the era before the printing press, i.e., pre-15th century, so apparently, ``liberals'' have been at this a long time.

Of course, conservatives are not the first folks to recast the Bible in their own image. Oxford University Press was justly ridiculed in 1995 for a PC Bible whose touchy-feely innovations included gender-neutral language so as not to offend women and a ban on phrases like ``the right hand of God'' in deference to southpaws.

But if Oxford's excesses resulted from a misguided attempt at inclusiveness, the forces guiding Schlafly are less benign. He is part of an ongoing crusade to delegitimize any institution, any information source, any inconvenient fact that contradicts conservative beliefs. Rather than trust those beliefs to stand or fall in the free market of ideas, some conservatives now apply a kind of intellectual protectionism. So now you have your conservative newspaper, your conservative radio station, your conservative university, your conservative ``facts'' and, apparently, your conservative God, and you may build yourself a conservative life in a conservative bubble where you need never contend with ideas that challenge, contradict -- or refine -- your own.

But here's the thing: When no authority can be regarded as unimpeachable by both right and left, when no fact can be universally accepted as such, when anything you prefer not to believe is automatically dismissed as a product of ``bias,'' you impoverish intellect and render informed debate impossible.

You may think Dwyane Wade is the best there is, and I may prefer Kobe Bryant, but if we can't agree they both play a game called basketball, if you say it's basketball but my conservative dictionary tells me it's actually checkers, then we can't even have the debate; our assumptions are too fundamentally incompatible. We live in different realities.

As in the recent spectacle of Americans shouting past each other like Martians and Venusians arguing in Farsi.

Conservapedia's effort to remake Jesus of Nazareth in the image of Dick Cheney suggests a future filled with more of the same. A conservative Bible?

Lord, have mercy.

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

Today's progressive pro America reading

Today's progressive pro America reading:

Just a few of the wacky things conservatives believe.

Specter rips GOP: ‘A Party of obstructionism.’

Beck-led Fox News "czar" witch hunt moves to ridiculous smear of Anita Dunn


Good healthcare policy makes good politics -- and vice versa

Anita Dunn Punks Conservative Pundits with Mao Reference

Beck-led Fox News "czar" witch hunt moves to ridiculous smear of Anita Dunn
In attacking Anita Dunn, claiming that she "worships" her "hero" Mao Zedong, Glenn Beck has targeted yet another Obama administration official in his Fox News-assisted witch hunt of President Obama's so-called "czars." Beck and Fox News have previously attacked with falsehoods and spurious claims White House officials Kevin Jennings, Cass Sunstein, Harold Koh, and Van Jones.
Beck identifies latest target: White House communications director Anita Dunn

Beck falsely claimed Dunn "worships" Mao Zedong, "her hero." Throughout most of his October 15 Fox News program, Beck falsely claimed that Dunn "worships" and "idolizes" "her hero" Mao Zedong. In fact, in the video that Beck aired as evidence to support his claims, Dunn offered no endorsement of Mao's ideology or atrocities -- rather, she commented that Mao and Mother Teresa were two of her "favorite political philosophers," and based on short quotes from them, she offered the advice that "you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths" or "let external definition define how good you are internally."

Beck ignored numerous conservatives who previously spoke similarly of Mao. In airing footage of Dunn calling Mao and Mother Teresa two of her "favorite political philosophers" and using those comments to falsely link Dunn to the murder of tens of millions of Chinese under Mao's reign, Beck ignored numerous conservatives -- including Barry Goldwater's "alter ego" Stephen C. Shadegg, Cato Institute president Edward H. Crane, and GOP strategist Ralph Reed -- who have approvingly cited the tactics of Mao, Vladimir Lenin, and the Viet Cong, stating that they had used those tactics in their political work, or have otherwise highlighted their philosophies. Moreover, in a 2008 presidential campaign speech, Sen. John McCain stated that "there was a lot of people who said that my political career was not going to succeed. In fact, in the words of Chairman Mao, it's always darkest before it's totally black" [emphasis added]," as The Washington Independent noted.

Reported Missing, Rep. John Shadegg's (R-AZ) Integrity

Reported Missing, Rep. John Shadegg's (R-AZ) Integrity

Yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) ranted against health reform. While his colleagues have used inflammatory rhetoric to denigrate various health proposals — like inventing imaginary “death counselors” and saying reform will “absolutely kill seniors” — Shadegg’s speech hit a new low. Shadegg said health reform will result in “Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag healthcare”:

SHADEGG: You know, it occurs to me, and I’ll go through these other scandals very quickly, but what we’re really getting here is we’re not just getting single-payer care. We’re getting full on Russian gulag, Soviet-style gulag health care [...] It appeared in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. You can Google it. You can pick up the phone and call Kim Strassel. You can ask her about Soviet-style gulag health care in America, where powerful politicians protect their constituents.



The Soviet gulags were a network of prisons and forced labor camps that held as many as 20 million people during Stalin’s reign of terror. It is estimated 1.5 million died in the camps.

One assumes that Shadegg thinks seniors on Medicare are in a gulag. How out of touch do Republicans have to be before America demands that cut out the delusional nonsense.

RNC Claims Baseball Great Jackie Robinson was a Republican

RNC Claims Baseball Great Jackie Robinson was a Republican
{ } the GOP may have muddled is message by including individuals who would scoff at today's Republican Party.

As pointed out by a Democratic source, the inclusion of baseball star Jackie Robinson on the list seems particularly egregious. The former Dodger, who broke baseball's color barrier, was far from a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Robinson's ties to the GOP seemed more driven by a personal admiration for Nelson Rockefeller -- the New Yorker who would end up being vice president under Gerald Ford -- than it was core ideological convictions. In his biography, Robinson said that as the Republican Party leadership tilted towards Barry Goldwater conservatives, he began to have "a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler's Germany."

Writing on page 340 of the autobiography, "I Never Had It Made", Robinson went so far as to insist that he be called an independent, "since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics." In 1968 he campaigned for Hubert Humphrey.

"I was not as sold on the Republican party as I was on the governor," Robinson wrote of Rockefeller. "Every chance I got, while I was campaigning, I said plainly what I thought of the right-wing Republicans and the harm they were doing. I felt the GOP was a minority party in term of numbers of registered voters and could not win unless they updated their social philosophy and sponsored candidates and principles to attract the young, the black, and the independent voter. I said this often from public, and frequently Republican, platforms. By and large Republicans had ignored blacks and sometimes handpicked a few servile leaders in the black community to be their token "niggers." How would I sound trying to go all out to sell Republicans to black people? They're not buying. They know better."

"I admit freely that I think, live, and breathe black first and foremost. That is one of the reasons I was so committed to the governor and so opposed to Senator Barry Goldwater. Early in 1964 I wrote a Speaking Out piece for The Saturday Evening Post. A Barry Goldwater victory would insure that the GOP would be completely the white man's party. What happened at San Francisco when Senator Goldwater became the Republican standard-bearer confirmed my prediction."

"I wasn't altogether caught of guard by the victory of the reactionary forces in the Republican party, but I was appalled by the tactics they used to stifle their liberal opposition," Robinson wrote of that 1964 convention.

Conservatives claim the stimulus has already failed

The $800 Billion Deception

In other words, nearly eight months after its passage, a large majority of the stimulus has yet to start impacting the economy—as was the plan. And as was also the plan, the most visible parts of the stimulus are only taking effect now and will remain active through 2010. As you drive around town, it's difficult to visualize tax rebates or aid to states—the fast-acting components of the stimulus. But as I drive around my town today, I can see workers laboring at a $4 million, stimulus-backed road project that is just getting started and will run through the spring of 2011.

Head of NFL players union opposes Limbaugh’s bid

Head of NFL players union opposes Limbaugh’s bid: Sports are meant to reject ‘discrimination and hatred.’ - Limbaugh is known to take vacations at expensive London hotels where he orders up French champagne and Cuban cigars. How the millionaire that had his maid do the pill shopping for his drug addiction, probably lonely after his third divorce wants to buy a multi-million dollar sports franchise. It turns out that leading a lazy immoral life does pay.

'Blue Stonehenge' Discovered By UK Archaeologists

The drawing shows the sensational discovery of “Blue Stonehenge” by a team led by archaeologists from Manchester, Sheffield and Bristol Universities on the West bank of the River Avon last month.

Professor Julian Thomas, from The University of Manchester and a co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, said the monument was a circle of bluestones, dragged from the Welsh Preseli mountains, 150 miles away around 5,000 years ago.

However, the stones, he said, had since been since removed, leaving behind nine uncovered holes. The team believe they were probably part of a circle of 25 standing stones.

The Recession Hits Education

The Recession Hits Education

If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.

But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.

Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board.

About that erosion: there has been a flurry of reporting recently about threats to the dominance of America’s elite universities. What hasn’t been reported to the same extent, at least as far as I’ve seen, is our relative decline in more mundane measures. America, which used to take the lead in educating its young, has been gradually falling behind other advanced countries.

Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.

Even without the effects of the current crisis, there would be every reason to expect us to fall further in these rankings, if only because we make it so hard for those with limited financial means to stay in school. In America, with its weak social safety net and limited student aid, students are far more likely than their counterparts in, say, France to hold part-time jobs while still attending classes. Not surprisingly, given the financial pressures, young Americans are also less likely to stay in school and more likely to become full-time workers instead.

But the crisis has placed huge additional stress on our creaking educational system.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States economy lost 273,000 jobs last month. Of those lost jobs, 29,000 were in state and local education, bringing the total losses in that category over the past five months to 143,000. That may not sound like much, but education is one of those areas that should, and normally does, keep growing even during a recession. Markets may be troubled, but that’s no reason to stop teaching our children. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing.

There’s no mystery about what’s going on: education is mainly the responsibility of state and local governments, which are in dire fiscal straits. Adequate federal aid could have made a big difference. But while some aid has been provided, it has made up only a fraction of the shortfall. In part, that’s because back in February centrist senators insisted on stripping much of that aid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the stimulus bill.

As a result, education is on the chopping block. And laid-off teachers are only part of the story. Even more important is the way that we’re shutting off opportunities.

For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on the plight of California’s community college students. For generations, talented students from less affluent families have used those colleges as a stepping stone to the state’s public universities. But in the face of the state’s budget crisis those universities have been forced to slam the door on this year’s potential transfer students. One result, almost surely, will be lifetime damage to many students’ prospects — and a large, gratuitous waste of human potential.

So what should be done?

First of all, Congress needs to undo the sins of February, and approve another big round of aid to state governments. We don’t have to call it a stimulus, but it would be a very effective way to create or save thousands of jobs. And it would, at the same time, be an investment in our future.

Beyond that, we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.

Why Limbaugh and Many Conservatives Are Really Afraid of a Black President

Why Limbaugh and Many Conservatives Are Really Afraid of a Black President
... in Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, "Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," and, of course, everybody says the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white. Newsweek magazine told us this. We know that white students are destroying civility on buses, white students destroying civility in classrooms all over America, white congressmen destroying civility in the House of Representatives. -- Rush Limbaugh,
Sept. 15, 2009

Ever the statesman, and often candid to a political fault, former President Jimmy Carter said recently that much of the animosity directed toward President Barack Obama is "based on the fact that he is a black man."

A lifelong Southerner, Carter acknowledged that the inclination of racism still exists, and that "it has bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country."

Though courageous, the former president's pronouncement will surely be considered controversial to many Republicans and Democrats alike. Some will view Carter's comments as politically inexpedient.

The topic of race in general, and charges of racism in particular, is political dynamite that typically explodes in the hands of the accuser -- just ask [Harvard] Professor Skip Gates, [New York] Gov. David Paterson, or Obama (whom I will return to momentarily).

Unless someone is wearing a Klan hood while yelling, "Nigger, Go Back to Africa," the charge of racism seems to offend the accused these days more than the actual victims.

This is true, in part, due to the most prevalent view of the problem of race and racism in this country. In the eyes of many, the responsibility of moving beyond racial conflict in America is placed at the feet of minority communities of color, as opposed to the dominant society.

We've all heard it. America will move beyond race to a colorblind society only when minority groups cease dwelling on difference. Such a view permeates the melting pot ideal of American folklore, the myth of meritocracy and even the "post-racial" dimension of electoral politics.

Thus, for Carter to call out this segment of the white community, he is disrupting the conspiracy of silence concerning racial injustice that demands the allegiance of politicians on the national scene.

Think about it. Is this not the racial bargain that Obama accepted to become the nation's first African American president? Matters pertaining to race have been avoided unless absolutely necessary (cough, cough, the Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright).

And in terms of policy, obstacles faced by any particular group, like disproportionate unemployment among communities of color, for example, are obfuscated by anemic and ineffectual broad-based prescriptions. Rising tides lift all boats, right?

Yet Obama's enormous success in life, whether as a highly educated community organizer or as America's commander in chief, exposes the paradox this sort of faux post-racialism presents.

It's a one-sided deal for people of color; as "post-racial" in effect means post-black, post-brown, post-red and post-yellow, while leaving the normative racial framework of whiteness intact. Race is the challenge people of color must confront and, dare I say, "get over."

But a post-racial America does not demand the same of those who identify with, and claim the social construction of, whiteness and perceived privileges and cultural superiority therein.

This is why, it would seem, Obama's body standing behind the American presidential seal has a critical segment of America losing its hold on reality -- a reality, I would argue, few have ever been forced to acknowledge up to this point.

Whether it's the birthers, tea-baggers, deathers, indoctrinators, or "You lie!"-ers, they have neither veiled their racial animus nor cloaked their white nationalism. The prevalence of racist images of Obama brandished by protesters juxtaposed with calls of "taking our country back" are reminiscent of D.W. Griffith's fictional America as depicted in the film Birth of a Nation.

And the pride with which this segment of society has rallied the troops around its shared sense of whiteness reveals that their skin color is the one true object of pledged allegiance and determinant of professed patriotism. [See "Unregulated Capitalism and Christian Fervor: Report from the 9/12 Rally at the Capitol" from Sept. 17.]

Herein lies Carter's perceptive point. Obama can't win with these folks, because they are blinded not just by his race but also by an uncritical devotion to their own. His pigmentation rather than his policies cut against the grain of what these persons wrongly consider "natural" or "American."

More specifically, his very being is a haunting rejoinder to such white Americans of what they are not -- indeed what they have never been. This African American man with an Arabic name has dared to usurp all of the cultural and cognitive tropes that white supremacy has historically claimed for itself. He is calm in the face of their unrestrained emotion. The more illogical they act, the more rational he comes across. And, of course, the more eloquent and erudite he presents himself, the more he provokes the Joe Wilsons of the world to mindlessly blurt out, "You lie!"

In the process, Obama has transformed such opponents into the racial other, an uneducated and uncultured blob of white (and largely Southern) backwardness that is beyond the pale of social redemption or acculturation. Wilson and the remaining Sons of Confederate Veterans have, in effect, become this "black man's burden."

Maybe this helps explain Glenn Beck's ridiculous yet probably heartfelt assertion that the president has a "deep-seated hatred for white people."

The president reminds Beck, along with those who identify with Beck's form of white neo-nationalism, of the lie of their own professed superiority -- a place of comfort and privilege in America that was neither deserved nor ever attained, yet still claimed based on the pinkness of their skin and straightness of hair. Obama's apparent success only further dismantles this lie and pours salt in socially insecure wounds.

Prosecuting Heads of State

Scott Horton notes a worldwide trend. Too bad the trend did not arrive here in time to prosecute Bush, Cheney and Condi Rice, Prosecuting Heads of State
Is an Italian law that grants senior officials of the government immunity from criminal prosecution during the time they serve in office consistent with the Italian Constitution’s guarantee that all citizens are equal before the law? The Italian Constitutional Court answered that question yesterday with a decisive “no.” It concluded that senior officials of the government had to be accountable through the same mechanisms of criminal justice as all other citizens. Anything short of this, the Court reasoned, would violate the Constitution’s promise of equal protection. The ruling deals another serious blow to the idea of head-of-state immunity, a doctrine which has been under siege since roughly the end of World War II. According to Prosecuting Heads of State, a study recently published by Cambridge University Press, more than 90 heads of state have been prosecuted for serious crimes committed while in office in the last twenty years, in many cases involving war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Berlusconi ruling, like the recent successfully concluded prosecution of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, therefore fits into a clear emerging trend in democratic states against the notion of immunity for heads of government and in favor of their accountability under the domestic criminal justice system.

Republicans The Party of Corporate Communism

Republicans The Party of Corporate Communism
As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.

Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.

And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.

If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.

We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 23.7 trillion in capital. Everything from innovation in medical delivery systems to accessible space travel, free energy to the driverless car; all of these things may never come to bear because those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.

Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws not only to benefit their outdated, failed companies, but also spend a small pittance of their ill-gotten gains lobbying and favor-trading with politicians so the government will continue to protect them from competition and their well-deserved failure.

The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression have all resulted directly from the abdication of proper government.

Even with all that -- the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it. Only true rules-based capitalism ensures constant adaptation and implementation of the latest and best practices for a given business, as those businesses that don't adapt fail, and those who deploy the latest innovations to their customers benefit, prosper.

The concept of communism is rightly reviled in this country for the simple reason that it is blind to human nature, allowing a small group of individuals near-total control, while sticking everyone else with the same crappy systems -- and the bill. America spent countless lives and half a century fighting against this system of government. So why are we standing for it now?

Lost Honor McCain laughs at Imus joke comparing President Obama to 9/11

With their homophobic smears of Jennings exposed, anti-gay right now targeting EEOC nominee Feldblum

With their homophobic smears of Jennings exposed, anti-gay right now targeting EEOC nominee Feldblum
Following their discredited and homophobic smears of Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, the right-wing media is at it again, this time using anti-gay rhetoric to target Chai Feldblum, President Obama's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) nominee. Rather than address Feldblum's qualifications, right-wing media have advanced their anti-gay agenda by targeting statements made by Feldblum and a statement she signed that have nothing to do with the job for which she has been nominated.


Fox’s Shep Smith Takes Down Fox News Talking Point On Public Option: ‘It’s Not A Government Takeover!’

“Why would we not want a public option?” Shep Smith asked Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), kicking off a tense and lively exchange this afternoon on Fox News. When Barrasso quickly launched into his Frank Luntz-inspired GOP talking points, calling it a “government take-over of health care,” Smith — who’s been known to go off the Fox News reservation from time to time — pushed back:

SMITH: It’s not a government take over, Senator! That’s not fair and we both know it. It’s not a government takeover because what it would be is a government option if you have insurance now and you like it you can keep it. … That’s not a government take over if we’re being fair is it Senator?

Barrasso struggled to muster a response. “Well compare it to Medicare, which we know right now is going bankrupt,” he said. Later, Smith engaged in fierce advocacy in favor of the public option:

SMITH: As the costs have gone up, the insurance industry’s profits on average have gone up more than 350 percent and it’s the insurance companies which have paid and have contributed to Senators and congressman on both sides of the aisle to the point where now, we can’t get…what more than 60 percent of Americans say they support, is a public option. This has been an enormous win for the health care industry. That is an unquestioned fact. [...]

[E]very vote against a public option is a vote for the insurance companies, sir. It is!

Again, Barrasso replied with trite talking points. “We’re not even allowing the people of America to read the bill,” he said, later adding that “Washington is incapable” of running health care. “I want to be clear,” Smith told Barrasso, “this wouldn’t be Washington running the system, Senator. It would be a government run plan paid for by the people who sign up for the plan.” Watch it:

As Smith railed against insurance companies, Barrasso responded, “I’m not going to defend the insurance companies — I’ve been fighting them for the last 25 years of practicing medicine.” In fact, the Wyoming senator has received a considerable amount of contributions from the health care industry: Over $500,000 from health professionals and nearly $100,000 from the pharmaceuticals and health products industry over his career and nearly $40,000 bundled from health care lobbyists in the last two years.

“Big Government” spins AMA report card

The vast right-wing conspiracy is back and Obama is the target

The vast right-wing conspiracy is back and Obama iis the target

What Obama should anticipate -- indeed, what he is already encountering -- is a cascade of slurs, threats and rhetorical violence that reanimates all of the worst themes of the bad old days. That wave will inevitably damage the president and his hopes for change, even if the majority of Americans is less receptive to right-wing messages than they once were. The greasy machinery once used to grind Clinton down has grown larger and more sophisticated by orders of magnitude, from Fox News Channel (which did not exist during his first term) to all of the conservative digital outlets that enable echoing and organizing on a truly vast scale.

The negative mythologizing of Obama bears a remarkable resemblance in tone and style if not precisely in content to the attacks on Clinton. "It's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did," said the former president -- presumably a reference to the wilder fantasies circulated in conservative publications about Obama, from the forged Kenyan birth certificates to the president's supposed plans to inflict corruption, homosexual radicals and Muslim jihad on innocent Americans. While some of the current themes mimic those deployed against Clinton, there are generational differences and the obvious fact that Obama is not just notionally "the first black president." That status evokes a special animus on the far right, of course -- although Clinton at least had earned the lifelong hatred of his most dedicated enemy, "Justice Jim" Johnson of Arkansas, for fighting segregation and racism in Arkansas.

Back when videotapes still had to be circulated by mail order, the Clinton-hunters did a brisk business with "The Clinton Chronicles," a "documentary" alleging that as governor of Arkansas he oversaw an enormous, unchecked racketeering enterprise that encompassed international bank fraud, cocaine smuggling and multiple murders, facilitated by a kind of backwoods dictatorship. Nothing resembling that remarkable work of extremist art, once promoted by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, has appeared so far in the crusade against Obama -- but that doesn't mean nothing is in the works. Many of the same organizations and operatives behind the original Clinton smears are still active and some have amassed considerable wealth and influence over the intervening decade.

The signs of a resurgent right-wing smear industry, and the role that would be played by the old VRWC in the Obama era, first became clear toward the end of last year's historic election. Suddenly in the final months of the campaign, long after conservatives had despaired of another Swift-boat triumph, a curious outfit called the National Republican Trust PAC emerged from the shadows with two exceptionally nasty independent commercials -- and millions of dollars to spend airing them. Between the end of September and Election Day, the mysterious NRT PAC raised and spent enough money to qualify as the single largest non-party purchaser of airtime in the 2008 election.

Using a photo of Mohammed Atta, the first NRT ad connected Obama to the 9/11 hijackers with the false claim that he wanted to permit illegal immigrants to get drivers licenses. FactCheck.org described that ad as "one of the sleaziest false TV ads of the campaign." The second ad attempted to remind voters about Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor at the Chicago church where the Obama family worshiped, whose black nationalist sermons caused them to break with him during the presidential campaign. The script criticized Obama for failing to protest Wright's sermons sooner and warned that the Democrat was "too radical" and "too risky."

These blunt instruments of political warfare were less interesting than their creators. The executive director of NRT PAC, responsible for the production of those ads, was Scott Wheeler -- who had worked, years before, on the making of "The Clinton Chronicles," according to reporter Murray Waas. Behind Wheeler was the mastermind of the NRT PAC and one of the central figures in the anti-Clinton network of the '90s: Christopher Ruddy.

Now editor and publisher of Newsmax, the enormously successful right-wing magazine and Web site, Ruddy was the journalist who spun the most fanciful theories about the death of Clinton White House lawyer Vince Foster. Working at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, owned by billionaire and avowed Clinton foe Richard Mellon Scaife, Ruddy popularized the canard that Foster had not committed suicide, as determined by five official investigations, but more likely had been murdered -- possibly to cover up corruption in the Whitewater land deal or because of an illicit affair with Hillary Rodham Clinton or both.

Beyond spreading paranoia about the Foster tragedy, Ruddy and Scaife both played central roles in the distribution of nearly half a million copies of "The Clinton Chronicles" and other covert machinations against the Clinton White House –- most notably the "Arkansas Project," a $2.4 million scheme to dig up or invent crimes by the president and first lady, with assistance from several unsavory characters, including die-hard segregationist Jim Johnson, a couple of private detectives and a bait-shop owner.

Ten years later, life has changed for Ruddy and Scaife. They're partners in Newsmax, based in West Palm Beach, Fla., and now the largest conservative publication in the country, both online and off. With 130,000 print subscribers its circulation is nearly twice as large as the Weekly Standard, and with nearly 4 million unique monthly visitors to Newsmax.com, it is larger than the Drudge Report. According to Forbes, which profiled Newsmax last spring, the low-budget site and its affiliates brought in nearly $30 million last year. More important than its profits is its sway over conservative readers.

Lets Treat Pfizer Like ACORN

Lets Treat Pfizer Like ACORN
In the wake of the Congressional witch hunt against the community organization ACORN, initiated by Republican minority leader John Boehner and supported by all but seventy-five Democrats in the House and ten in the Senate (Independent Bernie Sanders also voted no), a small number of Democratic lawmakers are pushing back. Last week, in response to the Defund ACORN Act, which seeks to prohibit federal funds to the community group, Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, introduced an ACORN act of her own. It is titled the "Against Corporations Organizing to Rip-off the Nation Act of 2009," also referred to simply as the ACORN Act. HR 3679 seeks to "prohibit the Federal Government from awarding contracts, grants, or other agreements to, providing any other Federal funds to, or engaging in activities that promote certain corporations or companies guilty of certain felony convictions."

While some lawmakers are focused on exposing the hypocrisy of targeting ACORN and allowing the fraud- and abuse-plagued war industry to go untouched, McCollum's legislation takes aim at massive healthcare corporations. "It's time Congress get serious about taxpayer funding of corporate cheats, crooks and criminals," says McCollum. "Last month Congress took action to defund a nonprofit serving poor Americans but failed to act against the corporate crooks that are actually guilty of felonies--including defrauding taxpayers. Why are companies that break the law as a business strategy allowed to receive taxpayer funds? A government contract is a privilege, not a right. If a company commits a felony against the people of the United States, then that privilege must end." Significantly, McCollum's co-sponsors on the legislation include Wisconsin Democrat David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Obey was one of those 172 House Democrats who joined Republicans in voting to defund ACORN on September 17. McCollum, who voted against the Defund ACORN legislation, says that her own legislation is "modeled after" that one but "respects the Constitution by requiring a corporation to be guilty of a felony before federal funds are cut off."

McCollum's bill cites the 2008 Corporate Fraud Task Force Report to the President, which found that in fiscal year 2007, "United States Attorneys' offices opened 878 new criminal health care fraud investigations involving 1,548 potential defendants. Federal prosecutors had 1,612 health care fraud criminal investigations pending, involving 2,603 potential defendants, and filed criminal charges in 434 cases involving 786 defendants. A total of 560 defendants were convicted for health care fraud-related crimes during the year."

McCollum's bill singles out Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc., a subsidiary of Pfizer. Last month Pfizer agreed to pay a $2.3 billion settlement, which the Justice Department calls "the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice." The settlement stemmed from Pfizer's "illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products," where the company marketed dosages that had not been approved by the FDA.

Who Decides in a Democracy, the Military or the Voters

Who Decides in a Democracy, the Military or the Voters
The war in Afghanistan poses two important questions: What should be done and who should be "the deciders"?

Congressional Republicans say the answer to the first query is military escalation. But according to polls, most Americans disagree. At the same time, many experts wonder "whether or not we know what we're doing," as President George W. Bush's former deputy national security adviser said last week.

One thing's for sure: The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says he wants more troops. His new memo calling for a bigger Afghanistan deployment prompted President Obama to begin carefully considering different ways forward. Republicans lambasted Obama for letting "political motivations ... override the needs of our commanders," as Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., said. Likewise, the Washington Post insisted that Obama's failure to promptly back McChrystal's surge proposal could "dishonor" America, while the New York Times said no matter what the president wants, "It will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal."

The coordinated assault sharpens that question about who "the deciders" should be - elected officials or the military?

The Washington Establishment clearly believes the latter. In the purest articulation of the argument, Ronald Reagan asserted in 1980 that Vietnam was lost not because of flaws in mission or strategy, but because politicians allegedly forced soldiers to fight "a war our government (was) afraid to let them win."

Avoiding another Vietnam, says this school of thought, requires a figurehead government - one that delegates all military decision-making power to generals and effectively strips it from elected civilians who will supposedly be too "politically motivated" (read: influenced by voters). This authoritarian ideology explains not only today's vitriolic reaction to the president's Afghanistan deliberations but also some of the most anti-democratic statements ever uttered by American leaders. It explains, for instance, Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that public opinion "doesn't matter" when it comes to military policy. Of course, the Constitution deliberately gives "political figures in Washington" final say: Article I empowers Congress to declare and finance wars; and Article II states that while the White House "may require the opinion" of military officers, ultimately "the President shall be Commander in Chief."

Those provisions were no accident. By separating political from military power, and vesting our elected representatives with ultimate authority, the Founders purposely constructed a democracy that seeks to prevent the dictatorial juntas that often arise when no such separation exists.

The Constitution views "political motivations" and a "disconnect" as democratic forces guaranteeing that public opinion, via elected "deciders," is somewhat involved in military policy.

Certainly, Obama and Democratic congressional leaders may still end up defying public will by making the lamentable choice to escalate the Afghanistan War. But after recent quagmires justified by knee-jerk subservience to military prerogative, America should at least applaud these lawmakers for refusing to immediately rubber stamp that course of action. In exploring all options, they are honoring the Constitution's separation of powers - and our nation's most democratic principles.
Copyright 2009 Creators.com

David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book is "The Uprising." He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network-both nonpartisan organizations

Republicans Favorite Sport, Demonizing ACORN

Republicans Favorite Sport, Demonizing ACORN
Over the last 18 months, conservatives have launched a nationwide assault on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which is now peaking with widespread media coverage and Congressional action. This isn’t the first time that the 37-year-old organization has been under attack. With chapters in more than half the 50 states, it is arguably the largest national network that consistently organizes truly poor people, the vast majority being immigrants and people of color. In that time, ACORN has helped communities organize for desperately needed changes, from living wage ordinances to policies that protect every child’s right to a high quality education. In this time, ACORN has angered many a local politician and multinational corporation, and these folks would be perfectly happy not only to see ACORN go down, but also to deal a blow to poor people organizing for power.

There are three major accusations against the group. First, that there is widespread financial corruption; second that they engage in massive voter fraud; and finally that they have too many different entities hiding their relationship to each other to get around legal limitations. As a natural outgrowth of its organizing, ACORN has provided critical services, including mortgage counseling, voter registration and tax preparation. These services were sometimes funded through federal government contracts, and it is those contracts that Congress is now threatening to end.

The only hard fact is that there was embezzlement. Though problematic, it was addressed both within and outside of the organization. The rest is a mash-up of misinformation with a lot of red-baiting and race-baiting, as Peter Dreier, the Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and others have reported.

These fabrications are designed to arouse distrust of collective action. The campaign against ACORN serves as an attack on organizing as a whole, which no community of color can afford not to do. We can see it from the denunciation of President Obama’s background in community organizing to Glenn Beck’s attacks on environmental leader Van Jones, cultural leader Yosi Sergeant and FCC Diversity Chief Mark Lloyd. This attack, like those, is a warning to anyone who adopts organizing as a social change strategy.

Does ACORN need tighter internal controls? Certainly, and so do most community organizations, which are perpetually cash-strapped, in part because funders are never interested in funding “overhead” and “administration.” If the search for “corruption” among community-based organizations gathers steam, I guarantee that any number of groups will be tied up in investigative hell for years. It’s dangerous to imagine that once they’re done with ACORN, the right won’t come looking for that one mistake you made years ago that can be attached to a bunch of lies to discredit and take down your organization. Obviously, we should pay attention to our inner workings, whether someone is paying for that or not, but even the most rigorous internal scrutiny won’t save us from a well-funded opposition that is willing to lie.

The attack on ACORN isn’t about fighting corruption. If it was, then dozens of corporations with federal contracts far larger than ACORN’s would be under investigation now, or would already have been cut off. The anti-ACORN Senate bill implicates any government contractor that has fraudulent paperwork, or is accused of violating lobbying or campaign finance laws. That list includes Blackwater, the private security contractor that has been implicated in civilian deaths during the Iraq war. Florida Congressman Alan Grayson is collecting a list of such contractors.

Of course, Congress could make ACORN obsolete by passing and enforcing laws that protect poor people from being pushed to the margins of society. Instead of paying ACORN to register voters, the federal government could actually punish voter suppression, which is largely directed at people of color and immigrants. It could adopt automatic voter registration systems that would be triggered by an 18th birthday or driver’s license being issued. It could pass predatory lending laws that protect us from insane interest rates, and then ACORN wouldn’t have to counsel its members about avoiding foreclosure.

The assault on ACORN is an assault on community organizing. Organizing is essential to building the power of poor people, immigrants and people of color to protect their interests. This is the time to stand up for ACORN, not just to keep this vital part of our national infrastructure, but also to prevent the hate from tying up all of us. That’s why we must demand that our election officials and media outlets stop this unwarranted campaign against the poor and people of color.

Rinku Sen is the President and Executive Director of the Applied Research Center (ARC) and Publisher of ColorLines magazine.