Healthcare, Prisons, Racism, Ageism, Politics, LGBTQ
Tom Hall: There has been a campaign to politicize loyalty. Those who hate government are loyal. Those who cling to old fashioned ideas that politics should be “of the people, by the people, and for the people” are disloyal. Those who question no-bid contracts for inadequate body armor, unsafe housing for our troops in war zones, or Bush’s $7++ billion gift to Wall Street bankers, are enemies of freedom.
Mario Solis-Marich: While Arizona struggles with budget deficits its’ legislature has decided to legalize racial profiling in a effort to arrest and deport undocumented families. While Arizona has been a hotspot in the immigration debate for some time the lightning rod has been Joe Arpio, the publicity starved Sheriff who is under federal investigation for civil rights violations. This week the Arizona state legislature has trumped Arpio by giving local police a statewide mandate to pull people over based on the color of their skin or their facial features.
Jim Fuller: Obviously, the peddling of weapons to Mexican drug gangs is highly profitable. Remember, 40,000 recovered weapons in 2008 alone, and nobody knows how many still in the hands of gangsters, but certainly many times that 40,000 figure. And there are thousands of sales to drug peddlers every day along the border. Money, money, money. America’s gun makers are going to protect that highly profitable business every way they can, and that inevitably means stirring up the knuckle draggers who front for them in every battle in the stupidly mistaken belief that they are “protecting our Second Amendment rights.”
Craig Williams: In a sense the Golden State is now a near corporate dictatorship, between an executive office that can be bought and usually is, minority rule in the legislature and underfunded local party organizations masquerading as party organizations, party organizations that don’t responsibly communicate and mobilize their members. Most registered Democrats are for all practical purposes ex-communicated from the party, except at election time.
Sherwood Ross: Morocco has shown its disrespect for international law by illegally occupying the western Sahara and also by forging a pact with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to receive kidnapped terror suspects upon whom Morocco’s secret police inflict grotesque tortures. If Rabat will accept a prisoner kidnapped from another country without a prior legal hearing, how safe are you going to be?
Mario Solis-Marich: While Arizona struggles with budget deficits its’ legislature has decided to legalize racial profiling in a effort to arrest and deport undocumented families. While Arizona has been a hotspot in the immigration debate for some time the lightning rod has been Joe Arpio, the publicity starved Sheriff who is under federal investigation for civil rights violations. This week the Arizona state legislature has trumped Arpio by giving local police a statewide mandate to pull people over based on the color of their skin or their facial features.
Craig Williams: In a sense the Golden State is now a near corporate dictatorship, between an executive office that can be bought and usually is, minority rule in the legislature and underfunded local party organizations masquerading as party organizations, party organizations that don’t responsibly communicate and mobilize their members. Most registered Democrats are for all practical purposes ex-communicated from the party, except at election time.
Friday Feedback: Once again it is stated by Dr. Reich that education is the best way out of the recession and job loss problems faced by many Americans. This is at a time when states are cutting funding for education causing teacher layoffs, program cuts and an ever increasing sense of unease among parents of school-age children. Technical schools are seeing their enrollments rise as many recognize that their former occupation either no longer exists or exist at a markedly lower pay scale.
Marcy Winograd: Ultimately, we have to ask what the Democratic Party stands for? Who will it endorse? Someone who rushes us to war, covers up illegal wiretapping, and votes with Wall Street to make it easier for banks to foreclose? Or someone committed to global diplomacy, the Bill of Rights, and an end to run-away greed ?
David Swanson: If you wanted to increase violence, he writes, you would take the following steps that the United States has taken: Punish more and more people more and more harshly; ban drugs that inhibit violence and legalize and advertise those that stimulate it; use taxes and economic policies to widen disparities in wealth and income; deny the poor education; perpetuate racism; produce entertainment that glorifies violence; make lethal weapons readily available; maximize the polarization of social roles of men and women; encourage prejudice against homosexuality; use violence to punish children in school and at home; and keep unemployment sufficiently high. And why would you do that? Possibly because most victims of violence are poor, and the poor can organize in rebellion against the rich when they aren’t terrorized by crime.
Bob Barber: “I lie because I have to, It takes away the pain of Truth, of complicated thinking, It keeps me safe From competition, from Uncertainties.”
Andrea Christina Nill: Though Reid has by no means tabled immigration reform, getting a bill won’t be easy. The legislative calendar is packed and leaves little room for obstacles or distractions. Reid seems confident that he already has 56 votes, but he may be pressed to find the last few supporters he’ll need to get a piece of legislation past cloture. And while his statements seem to have left the prospects for reform unchanged, of more significance might be the fact that Graham was quoted today saying: “immigration is going nowhere this year.”
Berry Craig: My guess is the Tea Bagger-tilting, neo-Confederate GOP is disturbing the eternal rest of some other Republicans. I remember Republicans whose politics were considerably to the left of Dixie Democrats. Some were even liberals to one extent or another.
Rev. Irene Monroe: Studies have proved over and over again that the overwhelming majority of pedophiles are heterosexuals. And most of these pedophiles are not only married heterosexual men, but are married heterosexual men with children.
Paul Loeb: It’s been a frustrating time since November 2008, but our challenge is to spend less time bemoaning our disappointments and more energy engaging with ordinary citizens the way so many of us did a year and a half ago. If we give people enough ways to act on our present crises, we never know how history might turn.
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