Richard “RJ” Eskow: Roughly two-thirds of Americans who make $10,000 per year or less are women. The gender balance only reaches 50/50 status as it approaches the income levels we commonly think of as ‘middle class.’
American Racism Past and Present
Sharon Kyle: 20 years after Los Angeles erupted in civil unrest, still with major differentials in employment, housing, healthcare, education, and wealth between whites and blacks, are we sitting on a powder keg again?
Romney’s Poverty of Thought
Steve Hochstadt: Romney thinks that the people who got the jobs he says he created are those irresponsible parasites who are hopelessly dependent on government. That is ironic.
Republicans at Home, and at Heart
Steve Hochstadt: Romney and his campaign advisers know that he was not telling the truth on that Boca Raton tape. But a bigger mistake was to put into the same basket all the people he doesn’t like.
What We Can Learn from Surveys
Steve Hochstadt: Once the enforced segregation of black and gay Americans into closets and ghettos was broken, discriminatory ideas have lost their persuasive power.
Interracial Marriages Break Records
David Love: Over one-third of people say that a relative is married to someone of a different race, and nearly two-thirds say it would be fine if a family decided to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity.
Harsh Enforcement May Not Drive Unauthorized Immigrants Out
Seth Hoy: The idea that harsh state immigration enforcement policies are “working”—that is, forcing unauthorized immigrants to return home—just doesn’t seem to hold water.
Americans, Your Country Isn’t So Great
David A. Love: A sustainable movement for social and economic justice must help this president to place him on the path of greatness that these crisis times demand, that his campaign promised. Nothing less than America’s future is at stake.
California’s Prop 16 is Worst Measure on June Ballot
Paul Hogarth: Every election cycle has an awful state ballot proposition, with plenty of corporate funding to fool voters. For the June primary, it’s Prop 16 – a thinly veiled power grab by PG&E to shut down competition to keeps its monopoly.
Is Texas Still Executing Mentally Disabled Prisoners?
Denkowski loses his license, 17 men on death row may have their cases re-evaluated, according to the Alexandra Andrews: Observer. But some have already been executed. In one case, Denkowski first determined that an inmate was mentally disabled but changed his mind when prison guards found books in his cell. The inmate said later that he stacked the books to use as a chair.
A Political Strategy to Get Rid of California’s Two-Thirds Rule
the campaign to repeal two-thirds has to be about the status quo, and whether California can afford to continue its budgets the way it’s been done. Talk about public health clinics shutting down, more teachers getting laid off, and more unemployed people.
The Consent of the Governed
“… to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men [and women], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” — Declaration of Independence “Your people, Mr. Jefferson, are a great beast.” So said Alexander Hamilton, the leader of America’s first conservative party, to the author of the Declaration of Independence and the […]
Ending the Annual Budget Impasse Ritual
The California budget process is broken due to the requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass the budget. I would like to suggest a different procedure that preserves the minority protections of the two-thirds requirement while encouraging negotiation and ensuring that there definitely will be a budget passed. Proposal: If no budget passes by the […]
