This Week in the LA Progressive: March 9 to March 15, 2009

Across the Border

Humvees in Tijuana: The US and the Mexican Narco-Wars. We need to clean up our own act before intervening in Mexico. Even under Obama we look too quickly to the military “solution” — no solution at all. –Diane Lefer

Unreliable Immigration Data Is Out of Date and Context. Mainstream media running a narrow story quoting dated, out-of-context data prepared by the immigration restrictionist group, the Center for Immigration Studies. –Andrea Christina Nill

Inside the Beltway

Reason Returns to the White House. In these times clear-headedness, logic, and a lot less knee-jerk political ideology are what’s needed more urgently than ever. –Mary Lyon

Howard Dean’s Return to DFA Can Spark National Activism. Dean is a proven fundraiser who can raise the money necessary to hire a fleet of organizers to work in swing districts for progressive measures. –Randy Shaw

Would You Believe 14 Million Emails Were Lost by the Bush White House? The RNC computer delete keys must be worn down and shredder manufacturer’s stock must have gone way up. –Jerry Drucker

Avoiding the Greater Depression

Now the Robber Barons Replace the Welfare Queens (and Rightly So). Heaven forbid we become more like those “socialist” Europeans, with their universal healthcare, less inequality, less poverty, and higher educational standards. –David A. Love

Is Obamanomics Conservative or Revolutionary? If you look only at the small print, Obamanomics looks conservative. If you look at the big picture, it’s revolutionary. –Robert Reich

California Budget: What Happened Last Fall — The New Budget Immediately Starting Bleeding Red Ink. The 2008-09 budget which was passed in September of last year ( two and a half months late) contained several overly optimistic assumptions concerning revenue. –Sheila Kuehl

Equal Access, Equal Justice

End “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Obama has cautiously advocated an eventual end to the policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that Clinton reached with the military back in the early nineties. –Ivan Eland

The Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Who Made the Hard Sell of Trust. The passing of Kenny Garner last week has left a stunned community pondering the question, “Who do we call now, when we want answers from LAPD?” --Anthony Asadullah Samad

U.S. Military Needs a Radical Homosexual. For Barney, the question has always been: What works? What can government do to see that people have the decent necessities of life? –Carl Matthes

The Return of the Mulatto: The Green-Eyed Monster. “It’s like when Henry Louis Gates’s children—in his own documentary—admitted they weren’t interested in Africa, because it was only ‘half them’.” –Jonathan David Farley

Middle East

One Step Forward, Two Steps Toward Monarchy. The powers go away only if something is done to deter their reappearance. One option would be for the Justice Department to enforce the law. –David Swanson

Reading The Videos: Israel’s Glamor v. Palestine’s Despair. The next time Israel unleashes its grotesque killing technology, we might consider whether Israel is being honest when it proclaims how fearful Israelis are. –Linda Milazzo

Why We Need a “Truth Commission” to Investigate Torture. Efforts to suppress the truth, even seemingly innocuous ones, like looking ahead instead of back, will only make the eventual revelations that much worse. –William J. Astore

Media Matters

Media Tries to Undermine Obama Agenda. Defensive against conservative charges that they are too pro-Obama, the punditry must bend facts, ignore history to show they are tough on the Administration. –Randy Shaw

Getting Ready for Our “Local Media for Social Change: A Southern California Regional Summit.” We hope to see you at the event and at our two-part breakout session. -– Dick Price & Sharon Kyle

New Voices

An Argument for Medical Marijuana. In this economic crisis, you can see how devastating the federal government’s war on medical cannabis is to the lives of Californians and Americans. –Cheryl Aichele

Unreliable Immigration Data Is Out of Date and Context. Mainstream media running a narrow story quoting dated, out-of-context data prepared by the immigration restrictionist group, the Center for Immigration Studies. –Andrea Christina Nill