Month: September 2012

Dreamers at the DNC

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

Dreamers at the DNC

by digby

Did you know that Dream kids from all over the country are going to the Democratic Convention?

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After 10 states and more than fifteen cities, we will arrive in Charlotte, North Carolina today.

The city is the home to one of the biggest promoters of the 287(g) deportation program. It will be host to the Democratic National Convention. And it is the place that people like Isaide Serrano, a pregnant mother of five and member of La Familia Unida who faces deportation court on Tuesday, live their lives.

Charlotte is also the site of our last week of the No Papers No Fear Ride for Justice.

[ Can you donate to feed the riders for the rest of the week? ]

While the immigrant community and our friends have opened their doors wide to welcome us, County Commissioners Bill James and Jim Pendergraph have tried to do the opposite. In hearing about our pending arrival, James introduced a proposal to investigate students’ immigration status in Mecklenburg County.

The bill was handily voted down but what’s happening in Charlotte is a microcosm of our whole journey. A city with so much potential, being held back by the backward prejudice of hateful politicians and propelled forward by good people working for change. It’s a town like every town, tangled in immigration policies and trying to decide between exclusion and inclusion.

We’re showing up to support Charlotte and the nation in turning that tide from hate to human rights. We’ll meet with groups resisting deportation to reach a new level of organizing and we’ll continue to risk everything to inspire officials to do more. We’ll be marching against Wall Street South on Sunday, celebrating our culture on Monday, and rallying throughout next week.

When we started in Arizona we showed we were no longer afraid. In Birmingham, we showed that it’s no longer acceptable to talk about about us without us. In Knoxville, our oldest and youngest riders stood up to the spread of the deportation machine. After so many stops, we’ve seen that today’s immigration policies are causing a nation-wide human rights crisis and we’ve met migrant communities ready and strong enough to stop it.

Starting tonight, we’ll bring all of that with us to Charlotte.

If you haven’t already, sign-up on the social media team to receive breaking updates as events happen this week.

Stay tuned for more!

No Papers No Fear Riders

PS Can you donate $30 to help cover food for the riders for the rest of the week?

PPS Watch the latest videos, hear a new song from Olmeca, and read up on the No papers no fear blog. http://nopapersnofear.org

I think the party should be featuring some of these kids on the stage. But they don’t want anything to do with them, unfortunately.

Still, they’ll be there, brave as always, facing down what could be a hostile police force looking for a reason to mess with them. If you can help, they could use it.

One of the riders wrote on their blog:

One of the riders, Eleazar said the other day, “Vamos para contar nuestras penas.” [translation: We are going to tell of our hardships]. As the Democrats enter this convention to renew their purpose, these bus riders arrive in Charlotte fighting for their lives. We need the Democrats to change course on the racist criminalization of our communities. We demand an end to the InSecure Communities program, 287g. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio must be brought to justice. These are lofty goals, but with many miles behind us, tears, and memories of the many stories of so many people who live this every day – we’re here to try.

This group of riders comes to say here I am. This is how these policies have affected me, my family, my community. To come out of the shadows and shine a light on the things no one sees, perhaps no one knows. To tell a story in hopes of reaching understanding. Willing to risk it all to be heard and considered. To show we have no fear, but that we also do not hate.

So Charlotte it is. Why not the RNC? They’ve chosen their side of history. The wrong one.

We can’t wait for it to be politically safe or feasible to pressure Obama and the Democrats. We’ve come too far to go back. There is too much to lose, and too many have been lost along the way.

J. Edgar’s favorite snitch: The named an airport after him

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

J. Edgar’s favorite snitch

by digby

The right wing is going to go completely nuts over this new book called Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power.

Perlstein reviews it here:

In January of 1965, FBI agents closing in on mobster Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno discovered that the hellion son of an FBI informant code-named T-10 was raising hell alongside Bonanno’s own teenage son. Agents looked to exploit the two boys’ relationship to help break the case—until, that is, J. Edgar Hoover ordered his underlings to instead warn informant T-10 that his son’s mob associations might harm the confidential source’s fledgling political career. The Justice Department never did manage to pin a decent indictment on Joe Bananas. But T-10—and his fledgling political career—did just fine. He later became the fortieth president of the United States.

This is just one of at least a dozen revelations about one of the most studied men in history in Seth Rosenfeld’s new book. “Here was Ronald Reagan,” writes Rosenfeld, “avowed opponent of big government and people’s over-dependence on it . . . taking personal and political assistance from the FBI at taxpayer expense. . . . Moreover, he seems to have been unaware, or unconcerned, that in doing so he was becoming beholden to the Boss,” who now possessed the sort of blackmail-worthy secret anyone who has seen the recent film J. Edgar knows made even presidents slaves to the FBI. But such questions were moot when it came to Reagan: As readers of this unbelievably good book will learn, he was unblackmailable. There had never been any favor too big for Reagan to volunteer for Hoover, and no favor too small for Hoover to tender him in return—including, in March of 1960, sending out agents to track down a rumor that his daughter Maureen was living with a married man.

Rosenfeld reveals that Reagan’s relationship with the FBI, which began in 1947, when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, was far deeper, and creepier, than anyone has ever known before. But documenting the depth of that covert alliance is only one of the amazing things this sweeping book accomplishes. The product of more than thirty years’ indomitable work acquiring the files via the Freedom of Information Act to yield these new secrets, this volume is also an outstanding primer on the postwar Red Scare; a riveting account of the origins, development, and philosophy of the New Left; and a penetrating look into the mind of Reagan. But most of all, it is the best account I’ve read of how the FBI corroded due process and democracy.

Read the whole review. It sounds extremely interesting.

One of the things this sort of history does is remind us that we’ve been dealing with this police state apparatus for a very long time. The technology and bureaucracy has replaced the malevolence of one powerful man, but it’s the same phenomenon.

Alan Simpson offers a novel reason why Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

Alan Simpson offers a novel reason why Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles

by digby

Hmmm. Can this be for real? I was watching Ali Velshi on CNN fulminating about the alleged debt crisis and he asked Alan Simpson about Paul Ryan’s odd description of the Simpson-Bowles outcome in his speech the other night. Simpson said something I hadn’t heard before:

Simpson: We went to Ryan and Hensarling and Camp. I said to them look, if you vote against this because you were scared of Grover Norquist that he would beat you over the head while he’s wandering the earth in his white robes and they said, “No. We voted against it because if you get rid of the employer deduction of employee health care premiums, the employers are going to be stunned. They’re going to look around and say, ‘what do we do now?’ And they’re gonna bloat Obamacare further. They’re going to take their people into the new health care plan.” That was their response.

And that’s good enough for me. He can explain himself. He had his reasons.

Look at Durbin. Gutsy guy. He’s the assistant leader of the Democrats in the senate. Think of what harry Reid must have done to him …

Velshi: But we need gutsy!

Simpson: … “Good God Durbin, you’re messing with precious Medicare!”

Velshi: We need that leadership!

Simpson: Sure, but you’re not going to get any guts out of anybody.

So they told Simpson that the real hold up on the GOP side of the commission was the employer health care tax deduction because then all the employers would put their employees into Obamacare? I wouldn’t be surprised if they told him that. He’s not exactly what you’d call “well-informed.” But the fact is that the whole country is now under “Obamacare” in one way or another and that includes employers. If companies that employ over 50 people don’t cover their employees, they’ll get hit with a substantial fine.

Now, I’m sure that the idea of ending the employee health insurance deduction is something that businesses don’t want to happen, for obvious reasons. But to hang it on the fact that it would put more workers into the private insurance market which would “bloat Obamacare” is just bizarre. But it was good enough for Simpson.

Later he said that there wasn’t even one politician running in this campaign who would be willing to cuts programs and raise taxes. Man, President Obama just can’t get any respect.

*I should note that this little exchange illustrates just how absurd this promise that we can raise revenue by lowering all tax rates but “closing loopholes” and “ending tax expenditures” is.

Mother of exiles, my foot: RNC delegates’ white slip showing again

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

Mother of exiles, my foot

by digby

I know that bigotry exists in the hearts of humans, but I’m stil astonished that some of them are so willing to be public about it. Think Progress notes this entry in a public journal of one of the GOP delegates to the RNC this week:

The man was offended that a Mexican was working in the “American” section? My God, has this person ever been to America? I think the best part has to be that he told them he was “offended” about this. Civilly of course.

They have updated their post:

For those of you who have not taken the Epcot experience, it is a trip well worth taken. Epcot gives you a real world experience all in one day. The shops, the buildings, the shows, and the food is all inherent to where you are. Each staff member is identified by a name tag, referencing their country of origin. As noted, only in the country of the United States, within Epcot, was a staff member representing and working, who did not have a name tag representing that country. I would say being offended may been too harsh, disappointed or dismayed may have been a better choice of words.

Here’s a little tid-bit about America they have apparently forgotten:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus, 1883

There have always been nativists, so there’s nothing all that new in this. Still, if I might borrow a phrase from our fine RNC delegate friends, it’s disappointing and dismaying that they’re still spouting their nonsense after all this time. In fact, I might even call it offensive.

Never say Romney doesn’t have a plan to fix the economy

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

The Plan

by digby

People keep complaining that Romney hasn’t revealed any plan to fix the economy. But he has. He laid it all out in his acceptance speech:

And unlike the President, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has 5 steps.

First, by 2020, North America will be energy independent by taking full advantage of our oil and coal and gas and nuclear and renewables.

Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. When it comes to the school your child will attend, every parent should have a choice, and every child should have a chance.

Third, we will make trade work for America by forging new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences.

Fourth, to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator that their investments in America will not vanish as have those in Greece, we will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.

And fifth, we will champion SMALL businesses, America’s engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.

So, they are going to create jobs by opening up drilling, privatizing schools, off-shoring business, slashing government, cutting taxes and cutting regulations.

In other words, the same exact agenda they always have. Well except for the war-as-stimulus he might have to start. Other than that, the GOP agenda remains what it always is — good for whatever ails you, no matter what.

The same struggle the whole world over, by @DavidOAtkins

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

The same struggle the whole world over

by David Atkins

Liberals of the world unite:

SIDI BOUZID, Tunisia — Bearded and sweaty, they pressed in, their faces shining in the shadow and light beneath billowing tunics hanging for sale outside a mosque. The sun edged higher. A veiled woman hurried past and a boy stepped closer to listen to men complain about no jobs in fields or factories, no water in thousands of homes.

“I didn’t trust the old government and I don’t trust the new one. They lie. I trust in another revolution,” said Khalid Ahmedi, his disgust sharpening as shopkeepers slipped past him to pray. “The constitution must be based on the Koran and our prophet. I say to the enemies of Tunisia: We are the sons of Osama bin Laden.”

In this town where a fruit seller set himself on fire and inspired uprisings that swept the Arab world, men quote scripture to ease the ills around them. Tunisia has been regarded as a model for its relatively smooth shift from generations of autocratic rule toward democracy. But even as the downfall of President Zine el Abidine ben Ali in 2011 revived political discourse, it roused deep-seated strands of puritanical Islam that are challenging civil freedoms.

The moderate Islamist Nahda party dominates a coalition government but is under pressure from Salafis and other fundamentalist Muslim groups to tilt the nation closer to sharia, or Islamic law. A proposed bill would protect “sacred values” and criminalize acts such as images and satire against religion. A draft constitution designates women, who make up about 25% of the constituent assembly and are among the most liberated in the Arab world, as complementary to men in family life.

“The extremists here are like the Ku Klux Klan in America,” said Bayrem Kilani, a folk singer whose satirical lyrics have upset both Islamists and Ben Ali loyalists. “We have two ways to go now: the way of modern democracy or the way of medieval theocracy.”

Liberal cosmopolitans all around the world are going to have to recognize a united battle against backward conservatism all around the world. It’s always the same battle.

The only wrinkle is making sure that releasing the people from the grip of autocracies doesn’t land them into theocracies, and that releasing people from either one doesn’t land them into the clutches of corporate kleptocracies.

Meat puppets

Published by digby on September 1, 2012

Meat puppets

by digby

I keep thinking this must mean something, but I can’t figure out what:

Jason Mecier spent about 100 hours constructing the political portraits, dubbed “Barack Obameat” and “Meat Romney” and used 50 bags of jerky to create each meat mosaic.

Time for drinkie winkies. It’s been a long week.