LilaTovCocktail: social justice-advocacy

Showing posts with label social justice-advocacy. Show all posts

Showing posts with label social justice-advocacy. Show all posts

Cleveland Housing Court calls banks to account for absentee landlordism

6/18/09

Photo: Judge Ray Pianka and his personal bailiff Miriam Ortiz-Rush at a celebration held by ESOP (Empowering and Strengthening Ohio's People),which advocates for homeowners in or on the verge of foreclosure.

I first heard about the Cleveland Municipal Housing Court back in 1992, when the current judge, Ray Pianka, was a Cleveland City Councilman and my husband, now a magistrate in Housing Court, was a Housing Court Prosecutor for the Cleveland Law Department.

The court in those days was much smaller, and the problems more plebian than they are today. His caseload consisted mainly of landlord-tenant disputes, evictions, people who let their grass grow too long or whose garages were collapsing, and "collectors," those puzzling folk who hoard so much stuff their homes become a hazard. Likewise, there were the "cat people," people who had so many cats --30, 40 -- that their homes became giant litter boxes, to their neighbors' dismay.

Once he prosecuted a guy who was keeping a pig in his yard -- and large livestock are forbidden by city codes.

"Why, sir, do you keep a pig?" my husband asked the defendant.
"Something to do," the urban pig farmer replied, shrugging.

Oh, but that was during the reign of Mayor Michael R. White, when Cleveland's neighborhoods were more stable, its housing stock more valuable, and restoration of old houses at its height.

That was before Cleveland became "ground zero" for the national mortgage crisis. Before Judge Ray Pianka, longtime advocate for the city's neighborhoods, became judge and expanded the Housing Courts services. As the Plain Dealer explains,

Judge Raymond Pianka is at the center of the area's mortgage crisis as presiding judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court's Housing Division. He has made the job into a nationally prominent position, whether he's ordering Wells Fargo to stop selling foreclosed homes or fining companies $1,000 a day when they fail to appear in his court on charges of neglecting their properties.

Today's PD offers video of Plain Dealer reporter Sandra Livingston talking with Michael McIntyre about Pianka's actions and the housing crisis. You can watch it here.

In addition to the PD, Pianka and the Housing Court's determined, innovative approaches to the problems brought on by the mortgage crisis have featured prominently in the national press.

"Dirty Deeds," in BusinessWeek, Jan. 2008
"All Boarded Up" in the New York Times, March 2009

Sins of Omission: Without any pretense of objectivity, Fox News ignores Obama's presser

4/29/09

What I did with Photoshop today ...

In the same way the GOP seems to be knowingly turning its back on mainstream America, Fox gave the White House the cold shoulder today, declining to broadcast Pres. Obama's press conference marking 100 days in office. (They chose instead to enrich our cultural landscape with episodes of "American Idol" and "Lie to Me.")

It's the first time that a major news agency declined to air a prime-time presidential press conference. Fox News did send reporters to the presser, but coincidentally, I'm sure, no members of the Fox press were invited to ask the president a question.

In the last 100 days, Fox has provided a forum for any vituperative wingnut desirous of attacking Obama, no matter how unfounded the accusation, unproven the conspiracy, or unkind the personal insult. (Take a look at FAIR: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and their monthly magazine, Extra!, for sustained and in-depth criticism of Fox News' tactics.)

You can see numerous examples of Fox-sponsored mudslinging over the past 100 days in this video made by ThinkProgress.org. As the video's creators explain:

"On the first 100 days of the Obama presidency, the conservative movement has undergone a period of radicalization. From knee-jerk opposition to the President's policies, to petty insults and conspiracy theories aimed at smearing Obama, to the embrace of the radical tea party protests, the Republican party has responded by lurching further to the right."

Where are the Republicans headed with all the demagoguery? Nowhere good. During the last 100 days, as the Obama administration worked on bailouts and foreclosures and health care and equal pay and foreign policy and more, the GOP has decreased its support base and the damaged Americans' opinion of the Republican Party.

Still, in a two party system, lack of overall equilibrium is disturbing. If Republicans continue to stampede, frenzied as lemmings by paranoia and knee-jerk opposition to anything they didn't think of first, will they take the rest of the country with them of the cliff?

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released today showed that only 31 percent of Americans approve of how Republican leaders in Congress are handling their jobs, down 13 percent from February.
Millions of whites who voted against President Obama in November have changed their minds and now support him, according to a new national poll from Quinnipiac University.
In a poll of registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, just 27% identified themselves as Republicans, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.

You wouldn't know any of this from watching Fox News, which is living in a fantasy world of its own making. Media watchdogs like MediaMatters.org have a full-time job keeping track of the falsehoods streaming out of Fox News on practically an hourly basis, as demonstrated by the list of MediaMatters.org stories in the category Attacks on Barack Obama from just the past two days:

The "Worst Media Moment of Obama's First 100 Days" is... Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Rush calls Obama "cold" and "partisan" for commenting on Fox-sponsored tea parties Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Limbaugh on Obama's view of American values: "We're not gonna waterboard Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, we're going to murder a million babies a year" Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Limbaugh on Obama comment that Al Qaeda not constrained by constitution: "he's basically again saying 'Look, I kind of envy al Qaeda' " Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Limbaugh on auto bailout: "Don Obama has made Don Corleone look like Daffy Duck" Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Limbaugh, Beck assign political motives to response to swine flu Monday, April 27, 2009
Limbaugh: Obama is "poison to prosperity" Monday, April 27, 2009
Limbaugh says his friend believes "Obama is terrorist attack number 2; Obama is the follow-up to 9-11" Monday, April 27, 2009
Limbaugh and friends speculate on who's really "running the show": Axelrod, Soros, King Abdullah, or Alinski? Monday, April 27, 2009
Limbaugh on swine flu: "President Bamster is going to exploit it" Monday, April 27, 2009

Astounding, isn't it?
(For more links to media watchdogs and critics, visit Stephen Macek's Media Criticism page. For more on Fox, see Robert Greenwald's "Out-Foxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.")

'Insularity and Arrogance' in Northeast Ohio: Has the region's brand gone sour?

4/20/09

"Outside an orbit of about 40 miles from Tower City, no one seriously considers Cleveland+ to be a regional brand. People in Akron and Yongstown joke about it, though."
Ed Morrison · Clevecentrism
Brewed Fresh Daily

Maybe I'm the wrong audience, but I've never liked the Cleveland+ brand.

For one thing, it had to be explained to me. No, it's not like HIV+, which is pronounced HIV positive. It's pronounced Cleveland PLUS. Plus what? Apparently plus all those other less important cities that don't bear mentioning ...

The branding is explained at length on the website.

Cleveland+ is an entirely new way to look at Northeast Ohio — as one
united region leveraging all of our strengths.

Focus group testing "in multiple markets and included regular leisure travelers, business site selectors and C-level executives" found that:

Cleveland+ works for marketing Northeast Ohio for travel, meetings and conventions, and business. Many of the other names did not.
Cleveland+ leverages the most recognized city in the region.
Cleveland+ allows for the linking of our other major cities.
Cleveland+ provides a memorable icon for marketing materials.
Cleveland+ has a positive connotation to it.

And yet ....

The phrase boils Akron, Canton, and Youngstown -- and all the small towns and suburbs in between -- down to a footnote on the main attraction: Cleveland. The implication is that Cleveland will be the epicenter of northeast Ohio's economic future, which directly contradicts the idea of regionalism.

I'm sure it was tough to find a good name for the northeast Ohio brand (although Northeast Ohio isn't that bad, is it?) The problem is that regionalism is a complicated concept, involving countless resources and relationships. How to come up with a brand that indicates the richness of the region? And at a moment when regional connections are still in their infancy?

I don't know the answer, but I'm certain that Cleveland+ is not the solution. The brand reduces the region down to less than the sum of its parts.

And the flawed brand has become an emblem of Clevecentrism: an implicit and unchanging focus on Cleveland as the locus of the area's future.

According to community development guru Ed Morrison, reducing the region to nothing more than Cleveland plus enhancements to be named later is arrogant and insular. And insularity is detrimental to the whole idea of creating a region strong enough to compete in a global economy.

Morrison comes to the topic by way of the R2P: Return to Pittsburgh blog by Jim Miller, who argues that TeamNEO's competitiveness with other rust belt regions (like Pittsburgh) weakens northeast Ohio's ability to recognize and nurture existing regional relationships:

I'm still angry about Team NEO's ignorance of the economic challenges facing Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities. Team NEO is reinforcing the same dysfunctional geography that birthed the obvious gap between Pittsburgh and Cleveland in President Obama's proposed high speed rail initiative. Framing Pittsburgh as competition ultimately hurts other Northeast Ohio communities, particularly Youngstown.

Surprisingly, at least to me, Pittsburgh leadership seems to appreciate Youngstown's plight better than Cleveland does.

Morrison agrees and offers as proof the ever-widening gap in per capita income between Cleveland and Pittsburgh over the last decade. He concludes:

"Insularity and arrogance impose costs. These costs rise as regional and global economies become more inter-connected.

The legacy of this generation of Cleveland’s business leadership is already being written, and the picture is not pretty."

A really big shoe for you... statue honoring man who threw shoes at Bush erected in Saddam's hometown.

1/30/09

File under: Ars longa, vita brevis.

From the Daily News:

Many Iraqis considered it poetic justice when a journalist tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush last month.

Now the bizarre attack has spawned a real life work of art.
A sofa-sized statue of the shoe was unveiled Thursday in Tikrit, the hometown of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad-based artist Laith al-Amari described the fiberglass-and-copper work as a tribute to the pride of the Iraqi people.

The statue is inscribed with a poem honoring Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who stunned the world when he whipped off his loafers and hurled them at Bush during a press conference on Dec. 14.

In the Arab world, even showing someone the sole of a shoe is considered a sign of disrespect.

h/t @Mickeleh
("From the "greeted as liberators" division")/

Newsweek wants us to appreciate the legacy of Dick Cheney. Good luck with that.

1/13/09

I don't know why anyone would, but if you're tempted to drift into nostalgia or sympathy for Dick Cheney, as Newsweek magazine does in its recent cover story, consider the evidence of his Cheney's inhumanity to (non-white) man offered by (one-time Newsweek press critic) Charles Kaiser in the Columbia Journalism Review .

Newsweek suggests that Obama may find that the expanded presidential powers which Cheney pushed for too good to relinquish. While Cheney is often vilified as "a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined," his methods, says Newsweek, "kept the nation safe and secure."

Plus, says Newsweek, Cheney probably never intended any of this torture stuff to go so far:

The issue of torture is more complicated than it seems. America brought untold shame on itself with the abuses at Abu Ghraib. It’s likely that the take-the-gloves-off attitude of Cheney and his allies filtered down through the ranks, until untrained prison guards with sadistic tendencies were making sport with electric shock. But no direct link has been reported.

This, says Kaiser, doesn't just strain credulity; it's just plain wrong.

Leave aside for a moment the comforting image of “making sport with electric shock.” (The ACLU has documented the deaths of at least 160 prisoners in U.S. custody during the Bush administration, of which more than seventy were caused by “gross recklessness, abuse, or torture”: an unfortunate side effect of that “sport,” I suppose.) Let us focus instead on that tossed-off assertion of “no direct link” between Cheney and his allies and what happened on the ground in Iraq and Guantánamo.

The truth is, we know for a fact that all of the most heinous methods of torture used by this administration were aired at White House meetings attended by Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet. George Bush confirmed that those meetings took place in an interview with ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz last year. And just one month ago, Cheney boasted to ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl that he had personally approved of the program which led to waterboarding of alleged terrorists.

He's a very, very scary man. Which reminds me -- can't they prosecute Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld for something? His arrogance in the face of his mistakes -- like launching an invasion with no occupation plan or exit strategies and failing to adequately arm and armor troops -- offended even the hawkiest of hawks high in the Pentagon.

Hattip: The Daily Kos

Dick Cheney Lie Count On David Letterman

1/12/09

The title really explains itself, as Letterman says.

Regarding clips of Cheney, my personal favorite is this amazingly prescient clip of 1994, in which Cheney explains why invading Iraq and toppling Saddam would be disastrous. If only he'd listened to himself.

For more fun with Dave and Dick, don't forget Letterman's contention that Cheney "just couldn't care less about Americans" and has sold them out to the oil companies in return for "some great annuity when they're out of office."

Ah, what will we do when we don't have grim-jawed Dick to kick us around anymore?

"I hate to crush your buzz, but this is NOT a 'post-racist' society": Obama worries, part 2

12/12/08

About 3 weeks ago I wrote a blog post called Why am I so worried that Obama will be assassinated? Should I be? in which I confessed to being unable to stop myself from worrying that Obama might be assassinated.

Over on blogher the post began attracting more readers and comments (13!) from people who shared my worries and wanted to talk about why. Just yesterday *.Lee wrote:

Like many, in my lifetime, I never, ever thought that I would see a black man in the Oval Office. ... I couldn't be more pleased and proud as to what that says about America, but there is the shadow of worry in my heart as well. I didn't think that the country was 'ready' for a woman or a black man as President. I was wrong. ... And no doubt, as the old adage goes, a black man has to work twice as hard to be considered half as good... and no doubt, there will be those who will never be ready, and will never accept this historic event.

The readiness of America is an important issue, because frankly, although America found a way to elect a black President, it hasn't jumped at the chance to take a good clear look at the race issue.

It's a thought I have every time I hear someone gush about how the election was "color-blind" and racism is dead, how this is a brave new world of equal opportunity and love among brothers.

Not where I live. And I'm pretty sure, not where you live, either.

I haven't wanted to dim the afterglow or undermine the enormity of Obama's achievement, but I'm considering making bumper stickers saying, "I hate to crush your buzz, but this is NOT a 'post-racist' society."

I'd be feeling better about race in America if Obama's election didn't feel like such an anomaly.

I'd feel better about the safety of the Obama family if at any time during the 44 years since the Civil Rights Act, we'd seen a steady increase in the number of African-Americans elected to serve in our federal government.

But in fact there have only been three black senators since the post-Reconstruction period -- and one of them was Barack Obama. (His current seat was once held by Carol Mosely Braun, the only African American woman to have served in the senate).

OK, it's partly an issue of demographics. To be elected by a statewide electorate, any African-American candidate needs a lot of white votes. Even in the states with the highest African-American population, black people are still outnumbered by white people by two to one.

But the problem is more than a shortage of numbers. It's a shortage of narratives. Our national imagination is bereft of stories and images of capable, competent African-American in public office. Oh, praiseworthy African-American politicians exist -- it's just that no one has been singing their praises.

Just after Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones died, I tuned into a local NPR station discussion of who might take over her congressional seat and how that might be decided. One caller in particular stuck in my mind, a citizen who had been sought out by WCPN's "The Sound of Ideas" (9/10/08).

"In this entire mix, somehow it is completely forgotten that there are roughly 200,000 voters out in the eastern fringe of the 11th district that are white voters," said Marta Kirsch of Pepper Pike. "What I'm not hearing, not seeing, it has never been broached, is the possibility of nominating a white person for this job. There seems a disequity in that and it's very uncomfortable for me."

Fmr. Rep. Louis Stokes fielded her question with more patience that I would have, pointing out that the unique demographics of Ohio's 11th District make it the only Ohio district to elect ever elect an African-American Congressperson -- the first was Stokes himself, and the second was Tubb Jones, his handpicked successor (Jones succeeded by Marcia Fudge). Otherwise, Stokes said, it is unlikely that any African-Americans would have been elected to Congress from Ohio.

After the show ended I was haunted by the bald-face bias in the caller's complaint. She clearly did not believe that an African-American congressperson would look after the interests of the white minority in his/her district. It wasn't clear whether she thought an African-American congressperson would be unwilling to act on behalf of white constituents or unable.

The ludicrous implication is that white politicans can be trusted to act in the best interest of African-American constituents, but not the converse. If white people perceive Obama as the exception is due entirely to the man's formidable knowledge of government, his intelligence and authority.

Still I'd rather be launching our first African-American First Family, with its 2 little girls, into a much more tolerant and trustworthy world.

Our country desperately needs more images of and stories about competent, intelligent, creative and commanding Africa-Americans -- in government and everywhere else. We need to elect them, and then we need to brag on them.

If a college-educated liberal Democrat has that sort of biased understanding of the impact of race on leadership ability, I shudder to think what her opposite number (poorly educated, conservative and/or Republican?) imagines when she get a mental picture of an African-American leader.

Toy shopping? First check the toxin levels...

12/6/08

In case you don't have enough to worry about as you shop for holiday toys for your kids, you should know that many toys on the shelves of mainstream retailers contain high levels of known toxins like lead, cadmium, chlorine, arsenic, bromine and mercury.

But, you ask, doesn't my government regulate this? Don't they recall dangerous toys?

Well, not so much. Remember the politicians who have been wined and dined by corporate and industry lobbyists, who gave out big corporate tax breaks and who deregulated willy-nilly without establishing any kind of oversight?

They oversaw the toy industry with the same degree of insouciant negligence with which they overlooked sub-prime lending, global warming, and junk bonds.

Find out about the toys on your list

You can read more about toxins in our kids' toys through the links at the end of this post. But for right here and right now, you can find out about the safety of particular toys using the search HealthyToys.org's database. Visit their website, install the HealthyToys.org search widget on your website or blog, and try out MomsRising.org's mobile interface.

Search for toys on the go

Use your cell phone to text healthytoys [toy name] (e.g. "healthytoys Elmo") to 41411.

MomsRising.org and HealthyToys.org will reply with search results.

Help inform other parents!

Print this flyer and post it at school, at work, and at the grocery store, so other parents can shop chemical-safe, too.

Read more about Toy Safety

The U.S. government doesn't require full testing of chemicals before they are added to most consumer products, including children's toys, according to HealthyToys.com. And once they are on the market, the government almost never restricts their use, even in the face of new scientific evidence suggesting a health threat.

If you the gory details, you can consult the stunning 2005 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found, for example, that

EPA has used its authority to require testing for fewer than 200 of the 62,000 chemicals in commerce since 1979;
For existing chemicals, only 5 chemical groups out of 62,000 have been restricted by EPA in 29 years.

Toxic toys in the press this week

Reuters: US consumer commission sued over chemicals in toys
U.S. Public Interest Research Group: Trouble In Toyland: The 23rd Annual Survey of Toy Safety
Detroit News: Some toys have toxic chemicals
U.S. News: Safety First for Holiday Toys

Whole Foods' half-assed labeling

11/28/08

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that some of the 300 food products they found on the shelves of Whole Foods Market are not as allergen-free as they claim.

Whole Foods Market has long trumpeted its premium chocolate bars for being made the old-fashioned way, in Switzerland.

But two years ago it added another manufacturing claim to the product's labels—one that would appeal to millions of Americans who suffer from potentially life-threatening food allergies.

"Good manufacturing practices," the labels stated, were "used to segregate" potential allergens such as tree nuts, soy or milk.

The labels were informative, comforting and also untrue.

A Tribune investigation found that the chocolate bar was, in fact, manufactured in a way that posed a risk to people with allergies.

These mislabeled product could have harmful or fatal effects on people with severe food allergies who assume the products are safe and free of nuts, soy, gluten or whatever allergen they're susceptible to.

Read the original story.

Refugees: by the numbers
(Bloggers unite to aid refugees day)

11/10/08

Today Bloggers Unite and Refugees United have come together in to support, raise money for and spread awareness of the millions of refugees around the world.

Driven from their homes by war, natural disasters, genocide, and persecution, refugees have lost more than just a place to call home. They're frequently deprived of basic human rights such as:

Bloggers Unite

the right to physical safety
the right to food, water, and sanitation
the right to work
the right to own property
the right to legal representation and access to courts
the right to move freely outside encampments
the right to learn the fate of family members
the right to be reunited with family members
the right to determine their own futures

Refugees by the numbers

14 million - the number of refugees worldwide. (Source)
24.5 million - the number of internally displaced people (IDP). (Source)
1 in 500 - number of refugees in world population. (Source)
1 in 250 - number of IDP in the world population. (Source)
10,000 - projected number of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children detained by U.S. authorities in 2008. (Source)
4,600 - number of unaccompanied illegal immigrant children detained by U.S. authorities in 2000. (Source)
4 million - number of IDPs in Sudan, the largest IDP population in the world.

14,000 - number of Sudanese refugees living in Djabal camp in the deserts of eastern Chad. (Source)
80 - the percentage of all refugees that are women and children. (Source)
2.5-3.5 million - estimated number of refugees with physical, sensory or mental disabilities. (Source)
2 million - the number of Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries in the five years since the U.S.-led invasion. (Source)
2.7 million - number of internally displaced Iraqis in the five years since the U.S.-led invasion. (Source
400 - number of individual reports of physical abuse by U.S. Border Patrol over the past two years from migrants in custody on the Arizona/Sonora border. (Source)
1951 - date of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the key legal document defining refugee status and rights and the legal obligations of signatory states.
143 - number of countries which had ratified the UN Convention as of 1 March 2006. (Source)
Sept. 11, 2001 - date after which many countries passed emergency legistlation curtailing the rights of refugees. (Source)
8,536,500 - number of refugees who are "warehoused" in refugee camps that have been in existence for 10 years or more. (Source)
280,000 - the number of people the U.S. government detained in jails and other facilities last year, more than triple the number of people in detention just nine years ago. (Source)

Take Action:

What would it take to out-shout The Republican Jewish Coalition??

11/3/08

During every major election, readers of the Cleveland Jewish News (CJN) write in to protest the ads run in the CJN by the The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). (This year for the first time there was an organized campaign by a "new, dovish pro-Israel" group called J Street, which flooded many Jewish newspapers with letters urging them not to run RJC ads attacking Obama. Source: JTA)

Sometimes readers write letters to the editor excoriating the paper for printing the ads (see "Reprehensible to print Republican ads").

But for income-strapped community newspapers like the CJN, printing those ads have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with economics. The CJN doesn't endorse the ads -- the paper doesn't make any political endorsements of any kind.

But the CJN's operating costs are paid for by advertising (not, as commonly believed, by Federation or even subscriptions). So the paper will print pretty much any ad it is paid to run, barring those that are anti-Semitic; contain hate speech or incite hate crimes; break the law or encourage others to break the law.

Sometimes the RJC's propaganda has barely met even these loose standards. This year in particular, the RJC's newspaper ads, direct mailings, and emails seem to many to have been excessively divisive, inflammatory, or misleading.

Even now, at the 11th hour, the RJC is living down to its reputation as chief fear-mongerer and mud-slinger with "a wave of incendiary new mailers," reports TalkingPointsMemo.com. One flyer reads: "Barack Obama's friends and advisors: Pro-Palestinian, Anti-Israel, even hostile to America," and claims that his friends' "anti-Israel views" are "dangerous, naive and reckless." (click picture to view enlarged)

Then there's the Wailing Wall mailer, which claims Obama has reneged on his support for an undivided Jerusalem, a claim strongly disputed by the Obama camp:

Jewish voters favor Obama over McCain by a ratio of more than 3-to-1, according to Gallup poll results released Thursday. Republicans are desperate, sure, but their tactics stink. They're unlikely to sway Jewish voters at this point, but they could have lasting repercussions within the Jewish community.

Four years ago, the RJC used similar tactics to attempt to discredit John Kerry among Jewish voters. According CNN:

"More than any year in the past, Republican operatives have crowed about the increasing proportion of the Jewish vote going to Republicans this year," Ira N. Forman, the National Jewish Democratic Committee's Executive Director said in a statement about the Gallup poll results. "In fact, for every election since at least 1972 we've heard 'sky is falling' predictions concerning the Democratic proportion of the vote. However, it looks like this is going to be one more year when political pundits, some in the media, Jewish Republicans, and other partisans were wrong in their over the top forecasts," Forman added.

But this year, latent racism and overt anti-Muslim sentiment have made our politics even uglier. After the election, will the bad taste just go away? Or will it coagulate in our throats and choke us?

Letterman hands O'Reilly his hat

10/31/08

This video went up on YouTube yesterday, Oct. 30, and has already been viewed 1,430,610 times. Why? Because it is incredibly gratifying to see Letterman deflate O'Reilly's bloated ego and rhetoric. My favorite lines:

O'Reilly: Do you want America to win in Iraq or not?
Letterman: [heaves a sigh] First of all ...
O'Reilly: It's an easy question. If you don't America to win in Iraq ...
Letterman: (exasperated) It's not easy for me, because I'm thoughtful.

Technorati tags: David Letterman, Bill O'Reilly, Iraq war, humor, politics, YouTube

12 Ways To Safeguard Your Vote In Under 10 minutes

10/29/08

I'm posting the beginning of this EXCELLENT post from the blog Jack & Jill Politics. I can't think of any way to improve upon it. (If you can post a comment here or at Jack & Jill Politics.

12 Ways To Safeguard Your Vote In Under 10 minutes 23 Oct 2008 Author: Jack Turner

We’re not going to lose this election this year. We cannot. It’s that simple. Ensuring victory means being diligent in every aspect of your vote: make sure you vote the right way! and make sure that your vote is counted. YES! magazine has put together this 12 step guide to safeguarding your vote. Please complete it, and report back in the comments. I’m serious. (also bookmark the voter suppression wiki)

It took me 9 minutes to complete and read their steps, and I was moving slowly. 10 minutes is a minor investment to ensure your vote will be counted.

BEFORE ELECTION DAY

Check your registration. Even if you think you’re registered, you may not be. Check online at www.CanIVote.org.
Vote now. Check if early voting is possible in your state. If you’re voting by mail, check carefully where you need to sign, how to seal the envelope, and how to mark the ballot. And note: Some ballots require extra postage.
Practice your vote. Electronic voting machines can be difficult to use. Verifiedvoting.org is preparing links to video demos of how to vote on the machine you will find at your polling station. If you’ll be using a paper ballot, check out the sample included in your voter pamphlet.

Read more at Jack & Jill Politics: additional steps you can take to safeguard your vote.

Election Protection & Video the Vote: Make Your Vote Count

10/28/08

Power to the people & their videocams!

The Internet is surely the best thing to happen to community organizing since, well, the megaphone. And YouTube is the second best thing.

This election has provoked the creation of a ton of inspiring and clever videos, some made by "plain folks," all of which are more persuasive than the television ads put out by the candidates' campaigns. Take this excellent video spot from Election Protection:

Inspiration is great, but even more crucial has been the use of YouTube video to impart a boatload of information to a globe full of people in only 90 seconds:

Voter fraud v. election fraud

Do you understand the difference between "voter fraud" (a myth) and "election fraud" (sadly, a reality). Blogger Brad Friedman sums it all up in a mere 84 seconds.

Video your vote

Election Protection and other voter rights groups urge you to become videographers yourselves: If you have problems at the polls, video what is happening and upload it to YouTube, says Brad Friedman in this brief excerpt of an interview with Meet The Bloggers.

To help the poor, let's stop idolizing the rich

10/15/08

"Worst of all is the rich politician who 'suffers' for the common man."

Taylor Caldwell, Answer as a Man (1980)

I don't have anything against rich people -- heck, some of my friends are rich people. They'd be even better friends if they'd share the wealth with me a little more, but for some reason most rich people don't like to do that.

What I do resent is the widespread assumption that rich people -- particularly those who inherited wealth, like George W. Bush or John McCain -- make better leaders.

The only thing we know for sure about the very wealthy is that at some point in history, they or one of their ancestors was in the position of and of the temperament to take advantage of their fellow man's labor or natural resources.

By and large, they are rewarded for this behavior with lives of luxury, the best academic and vocational choices for their children, secure retirements, and general approbation.

But let's not keep handing them the keys to the country. There's no doubt that richest 1% of Americans (who currently hold wealth worth $16.8 trillion) know what kind of leadership is good for them. But there's no evidence that they know what's good for the other 99% of us.

Or, as Barbie Snodgrass of Columbus, OH told George Packer, author of a recent New Yorker article titled "The Hardest Vote: The disaffection of Ohio’s working class":

“Someone who makes two hundred or three hundred thousand a year, who eats a regular meal, who doesn’t have to struggle, who doesn’t worry if the lights are going to be turned out—if he doesn’t walk in your shoes, he can’t understand.”

Today, on Blog Action Day, more than 10,000 sites are blogging about poverty, but I find I can't write about poverty without also writing about wealth and privilege.

It may seem petty to skewer McCain for his inability to remember how many homes or cars he owns or the outfit that Cindy McCain wore at the Republican convention, which Vanity Fair estimated cost between $299,100 and $313,100 -- more than the cost of the average American home, which costs $266,000.

But it's very relevant. If poverty and fiscal restraint are merely academic concepts for you -- if you have no visceral experience of living on a budget, delaying purchases, juggling bill payments, bouncing checks, or not being able to afford to give your children things you'd like them to have -- then you only understand one side of the dynamics of economic power in America.

Poverty is really a lack of power -- not just economic, but also political, physical, and social -- and the least powerful suffer the most: children. Among the 21 most affluent nations, the United States has the highest percentage of children living in poverty. Our rate is more than double that of the country next in line.

Average, ordinary guys

The insult added the injury of politics has got to be rhetorical posturing of rich politicians who pretend to be average Joes. Remember George H.W. Bush's well-publicized love of pork rinds?? This was a man who, as a presidential candidate in 1987 or so, had never seen a grocery store scanner before.

John McCain: "Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets. But we sure do."

We? We? John McCain's net worth is is $40.4 million, not including Cindy's estimated worth of $100 million (she won't share her tax returns because "she's not a candidate.") The Obamas net worth is $1.3 million, most of it book royalties earned in the past year.

Sarah Palin: "I know what Americans are going through. Todd and I, heck, we're going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don't like the idea of just an everyday working class American running for such an office."

The Palin's combined income of nearly a quarter-million dollars last year was five times the median household income for Wasilla's 7,000 residents. They own a single-engine plane, two boats, two personal watercraft and a half-million-dollar, custom-built home on a lake that is worth three times the average of other homes in town.

"If you're pulling in a quarter-mil, own a plane and two boats, and live in a half-million-dollar, custom-built lake house, don't have the audacity to call yourself "an everyday working class American," and then whine about the condescension of the "Washington elite," writes Steve Benen.

Who pays $270,000 a year on household help?

10/10/08

John McCain!

Hattip to the Daily Kos for this YouTube video. The Kos writes "Whoever did this one needs to sign it at the end. Hilarious!" and we agree.

Great Debate Bingo Card!

10/1/08

MomsRising.org invites you to use their Debate Bingo Card to keep track of positions and buzzwords during the Biden v. Palin debate tomorrow night.

I'm sure you could turn it into a drinking game without too much effort. On second thought, if you were to drink each time one of these buzzwords was mentioned, you would probably stay pretty sober.

I'm shocked by how few of those topics -- topics of paramount importance to anyone raising children -- I expect to be mentioned tomorrow night. No one in this election is talking about:

Paid family leave
Flexible work options
Part-time benefits
Improving work-life balance
High quality, subsidized early childhood education
High quality, subsidized after-school programs
Paid sick days
Wage gap / Pay equity
Living wages

So if you'd like to get drunk during the debate, you might want to add a few sure-fire key words to your bingo card, like:

Bailout
Wall Street
Main Street
Maverick
Washington insider
Middle-class taxes
Foreign policy
Alaska
Bridge to Nowhere

Good luck (to all of us. Look like we'll need it)!

McCain campaign needs a time out

9/24/08

The Daily Kos is keeping a running list of responses to McCain's ploy to reschedule the presidential debate scheduled for Friday. [Update: word's just in that he'd prefer to reschedule the presidential debate in the slot reserved for the vice-presidential debate, and push the vice-presidential debate back to, well, never.]

Reactions to McCain's proposal kindly gathered for us on the Kos:
Rep. Barney Frank told a group of reporters outside the House chamber:

"It's the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys." (MSNBC)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

David Letterman:

"You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves... I think someone's putting something in his metamucil."

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sara Palin. Where is she?"

And my personal favorite:

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jesse Walker, of Reason magazine offers "The Shorter John McCain":

"I'd rather debate pressing issues behind closed doors with my colleagues than on national TV where voters might see me."

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Daily Kos reader SteamPunkX:

McCain Suspends Campaign Due to Lack of Interest

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Reid to McCain: Don't Come Back to Capitol

ABC news reports that "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that it would NOT be helpful for him to come back to Washington, D.C., to work on the Wall Street bailout bill."

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Senator Schumer on CNN: "Well, I thought what Sen. McCain did was just weird."

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Finally, the Daily Kos has some fun facts about McCain's attendance in this session of the Senate:

Of all senators, John McCain has been the most absent.

There have been 643 votes taken in the current Senate session: McCain has missed 412 of them.

McCain has not voted in the Senate since April 8th. Since March, he has missed 109 of the last 110 votes.

He missed votes on the GI Bill, energy policy, and in 2007 he missed all 15 critical environmental votes in the Senate.

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