Category Archives: Civil Rights

Too Cute By Far.

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I don’t know if Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor; an honorable whistleblower or a self-serving snitch. Those distinctions will be up to history, the public and the courts to decide. But I do know that, if his revelations ultimately show as he claims, that US spying is out of control, he is going about his mission the wrong way.

The initial revelations were really nothing surprising. But they did get the attention of the entire nation and initiated a useful discussion of how much surveillance is necessary to protect us from terrorists. In that regard, Snowden did us all a great favor.

The fact that he obtained his information through lies and deception, however, raises as many questions about his character and his methods as it does about the NSA. And the fact that he is on the run, seeking asylum from some of our nation’s adversaries, raises questions about his motives.

Snowden’s most recent claims are as unsubstantiated as they are sensational. Moreover, they have caused great embarrassment to the US and strained relationships with our allies.

All of this leads me to believe that, if Snowden’s motives were honorable, he would have approached his task in a much different way. Before going public with his revelations, he could have approached Congressmen or Senators to see if he could find a receptive ear. There are many, like Senator Ron Wyden, who would have helped him accomplish his goals in a more effective and legal, but less sensational, way. If that approach wasn’t to Snowden’s liking, he could have had the courage to stay in the US, divulge his information to the press, and continue his quest through the courts, if necessary.

If he found either of those paths too daunting, he could have protected himself by providing all of his information to his accomplice, Glenn Greenwald, as insurance that it would eventually be made public. If his goal is, indeed, to protect the American public, the American people would have his back and prevent any extraordinary consequences. He would have been viewed as the hero he apparently thinks himself to be.

But Snowden chose a more cowardly, sensational path.

As a result, he finds himself trapped in a Russian airport and denied asylum by other nations. If he returns to the US, he will be arrested and spend a lengthy time in jail while awaiting trial. If he travels to most other countries in the world, he will likely face extradition. And any nation that will grant him asylum is likely to be one in which he won’t want to live.

I, for one, will not feel sorry for him. He had other, and better, options.

The Dismal State Of Our Union.

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Upon listening to the last day of Neal Conan’s Talk of the Nation on NPR, I was surprised by Ted Koppel’s response when asked about the future. Turns out, Koppel shares many of the same concerns as I do. For what it’s worth, here is a compilation of my own views of the current state of our union and its future.

Civil Rights – How depressing that people are still struggling for civil rights nearly 150 years after the end of slavery! The Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act was a huge setback, unleashing red states to suppress minority votes.

Abortion – Although abortion was made legal in 1973, women are still fighting to wrest control of their own bodies from the old men who control our political system. Amazingly, women are now forced to fight for access to contraception!

Environment – Most Americans say they’re concerned about our environment. They just don’t act like it. Most refuse to sacrifice anything on behalf of our planet’s future.

Hunger – In the richest nation on Earth, 50 million people are unsure of where they’ll get their next meal. That includes 17 million American children!

Energy – Nearly 40 years after President Carter had solar panels installed on the White House, we’re still addicted to fossil fuels. We spill more oil than most other countries use.

Healthcare  – The dirty secret is that we have no healthcare system. We spend more than twice as much as other advanced nations, yet achieve worse outcomes. And we spend more on pharmaceuticals than the rest of the world combined.

Wall Street – Greed has turned large banks into high stakes casinos. Their gambling habit not only cost individuals and pension plans trillions…many families lost their homes. Yet any attempt to regulate these banks has been undermined by millions in lobbying efforts.

Income Disparity – The US ranks among the world’s worst nations for income inequality. 400 Americans control more wealth than half of our population, and the gap is growing. Yet Republicans believe that 47 percent are sponging off the rest!

Jobs – Simply put, we don’t have enough of them. And far too few of them pay enough to support a family. Corporate leaders and politicians, on the other hand, each make enough to support dozens of families.

Privatization – We’ve privatized prisons, prison healthcare, schools, our military, even our intelligence efforts. Although all of these efforts have proven to cost more than publicly run institutions, Republicans are pushing for even more privatization.

Pensions – We lost tens of thousands of employee pensions over the past 40 years, replaced by IRAs and 401Ks which were originally intended to supplement defined benefit pension plans. The money once used for employee benefits now lines the pockets of CEOs, executives and investors.

Politics – Our politics have continued to move to the right, even though our population hasn’t. When Republicans are in control, they unabashedly cram through partisan legislation. When Democrats are in control, they tentatively nibble around the margins instead of doing what they were elected to do. Both parties rely on large corporations to finance their political campaigns.

Tea Party – This is a relatively small group that has had a large impact. Based on lies and meanness, it seems its goal is to take us back to the 16th Century.

Surveillance – Following 9/11, we traded privacy for increased security. The NSA tracks records of our phone calls, search engine terms and emails. Banks and credit card companies track our purchases. And surveillance cameras are everywhere.

Guns – While the NRA works to increase the availability of guns, even for criminals and the mentally ill, manufacturers make guns ever more lethal.

Education – Thanks to conservatives, public education is underfunded and teachers are woefully underpaid. Enough said.

Science – Many now claim that evolution is merely a theory. But so is gravity! Of course, these people also deny man’s affect on climate change. (See education.)

Religious Intolerance – Islam is not the only religion with extremists. The intolerance of all religions seems to be growing.

Anger and Pettiness – Within 20 years of the end of the Fairness Doctrine, 91 percent of talk radio was conservative…mean, angry, venomous Rush Limbaugh-style conservative… and it’s getting worse. (See Tea Party)

War – There’s no denying it. The US absolutely LOVES war. We glorify soldiers and their war machines with military-style ceremonies and flyovers at nearly every large event. And we spend hundreds of billions on “defense” to build bigger, badder war toys.

Iraq – Iraq cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. The result of our sacrifices is that we have turned Iraq into a vassal state of radical Iran.

Afghanistan – Despite setting a deadline for withdrawal, there is no clear outcome for this war. We may leave the country no better off than it was when we arrived.

Syria – Yet another opportunity to dive into a war with no real reason or plan. But it is a war and some of our politicians don’t want to be left out.

War on Drugs – This “war” may have ruined more lives than the drugs themselves. It disproportionately affects minorities, filling our prisons to overflowing. Indeed, we have a larger prison population than any other nation.

Militarization of Police – As our soldiers return from war, they’re increasingly hired by police departments. As a result, police become ever more militarized…with assault weapons and assault vehicles…and further removed from ordinary citizens.

Journalism – In the 1980’s, TV networks began measuring the success of their news organizations by ratings which instantly sensationalized the news and created the “sound bite.”  Worse, most news groups have lost their independence as they were gobbled up by conglomerates.

With all this, it’s difficult to be optimistic about the future, but the pendulum may soon swing the other way. I hope so.

The States’ Rights Court.

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Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled on three highly controversial cases, it seems that the decisions all have one thing in common – a desire to protect states’ rights. Even though the justices behind the majority opinions changed from one case to another, the Court showed a willingness to defer, when possible, to the states.

In the case of the VRA (Voting Rights Act), it seems that the majority believes that the VRA is an intrusion on the affected states. In voiding the criteria for pre-clearance of changes in voting laws in states that have a history of discriminating against minorities, the Court challenged Congress to create new criteria that reflect today’s political environment.

Disregarding the fact that the VRA has been a target of John Roberts since 1980, the majority opinion seems to be a win for those who believe in states’ rights. Unfortunately, on the issue of voting rights, many of our states have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted to protect the voting rights of minorities. In states like Alabama and Texas, the ink on the Court’s opinion wasn’t dry before Republican legislators introduced new efforts to suppress minority votes. Indeed, the Republican Party has been trying to suppress minority votes across the country.

If the Court was serious about protecting voting rights, it would have subjected all states to pre-clearance of changes in voting laws. It most certainly wouldn’t have passed responsibility along to our dysfunctional Congress.

In the cases of Prop 8 and DOMA, a different majority of the Court ruled. But the outcome was much the same.

On Prop 8, the Court ruled that, since the State of California chose not to defend the constitutionality of its own law in court, surrogates could not. On DOMA, the majority ruled that the legality of gay marriage is up to individual states, and it ruled that the federal government cannot deny benefits to gay couples who have been legally married.

As you can see, both of these rulings also seem to support states’ rights.

If the Roberts Court is so committed to protecting states’ rights over the federal government, a position most famously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the justices would be wise to remember what Jefferson wrote in defense of separation of Church and State: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

The same reasoning would be well applied to all civil rights. To paraphrase: The right of other citizens to vote, or to marry whom they choose, does me no injury. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

The South Will Rise Again!

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The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to shoot down sections of the Voting Rights Act may be one giant step backward in our nation’s centuries-long fight for equality and civil rights. It also represents an unprecedented power grab by the Court.

The Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson to prevent widespread voter suppression throughout the South. The law required offending states to obtain pre-clearance by the DOJ (Department of Justice) for changes in voting laws, including any attempts at redistricting aimed at marginalizing the minority vote. For years, this mandate has not only helped African-Americans and Latinos vote, it has helped them get the representation they deserve.

Yet, despite the law, states have never stopped trying to block minority votes.

For example, just last year, the DOJ prevented Houston, Texas from reducing voting centers from 84 to just 12. The plan was to eliminate voting centers in predominately African-American areas of the city. And last year, Teapublican-controlled legislatures throughout the country imposed strict new voter ID laws aimed at reducing minority voter turnout for President Obama. They also drastically reduced polling hours in some states, forcing minorities to stand in line up to 6 hours in order to vote.

All of this has been done under the guise of “vote integrity” to prevent felons and undocumented immigrants from voting, despite the fact there is absolutely no evidence of such illegal voting.

In gutting the Voting Rights Act, which was renewed by Congress in 2006 with near unanimous support, the Court has, in essence, overruled Congress. And, by stating that it is now up to Congress to come up with a new and more equitable way to enforce voting rights, it has given Congress a task the Teapublican-controlled House and the filibuster-prone Senate are clearly not capable of handling.

As a result, racists in Congress and in legislatures throughout the nation, particularly in the Old South and in Arizona, will feel free to run amok again. If you doubt this, all you have to do is to look at the way Teapublicans have pushed through Voter ID laws and anti-abortion laws with an array of bullying tactics and parliamentary tricks.

It’s Difficult To Disprove A Negative.

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Whenever someone accuses the government of a scandal, it’s almost impossible to disprove it. That’s because the accusation makes headlines. The truth doesn’t.

Nobody understands this principle better than Teapublicans.

When Bill Clinton was elected to the White House, he was forced to disprove a constant wave of scandals created by the GOP. Now it’s President Obama’s turn. That’s why we’ve seen a flurry of scandalous accusations about Fast & Furious, drones, Benghazi, the IRS, and NSA.

The headlines have been damning – based on outrageous claims by Rep. Darrell Issa, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Mitch McConnell and others. The truth has been less interesting.

For example, Issa made claims that Fast & Furious was a large scale gun-running operation overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder. The reality is that it was a small localized operation by a unit of the ATFE frustrated by Arizona’s lax gun laws and the inability to prosecute straw buyers.

Issa and others made the sensational claim that the president and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ignored the danger to diplomats in Libya then covered up their failures. The reality is that Ambassador Stevens twice rejected increased security and the talking points released by Susan Rice were crafted by the CIA and mid-level State Dept. officials.

Teapublicans claim that IRS scrutiny of Tea Party organizations seeking nonprofit status was orchestrated by the White House and President Obama. The truth is, the IRS director was a Bush appointee and, according to testimony by an IRS supervisor in charge (who is, incidentally, a self-described conservative Republican), the scrutiny of Tea Party groups was not ordered by the administration and was not politically motivated.

Teapublicans and many Democrats claim that NSA collection of data demonstrates that President Obama is an authoritarian fascist operating in defiance of the 4th amendment of the Constitution. The truth is, the NSA program began immediately following 9/11 and the Obama administration reigned it in, eliminating warrantless wiretaps and clearing the collection of data through the FISA court and Congress. Interestingly, the people of Europe were aware of our program long before Snowden’s revelations and the overwhelming majority approve of it.

All of this proves that, now that our press is driven by ratings and sensationalism rather than a desire to inform, unscrupulous politicians can take advantage of it. And no politicians are more unscrupulous than today’s Republican Party.

Scandalrama!

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As the Teapublican House, led by witch-hunter-in-chief, Darrell Issa, looks under every rug and in every nook and cranny for dirt on Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Tea Party applications for non-profit status, the NSA, and anything else that can be used as a hammer against the Obama administration, the real work of Congress languishes.

The House still has not resolved the federal budget and the debt ceiling. It has not yet brought sanity to the nonsensical sequester cuts. It has not proposed a single bill to create jobs and lower unemployment. It has not proposed a bill to rebuild and modernize our infrastructure. It has not yet passed a bill to reduce or eliminate the waiting time for veterans’ benefits. It has not yet passed an immigration bill.

The House has not considered tax reform to eliminate loopholes that would prevent multinational corporations to stash cash in offshore tax havens. It has not passed a bill to end the senseless gun violence. It has not passed a bill to close loopholes in background checks or to control the straw buyers who provide guns to gangs and drug cartels. It hasn’t even proposed a solution for climate change caused by increasing CO2 emissions.

Teapublican congressional representatives have largely ignored all substantive issues. Instead, they have focused on trumped-up “scandals,” the repeal of “Obamacare” and a myriad of restrictive social issues all revolving around women’s vaginas. As always, they seem fascinated by the “evils” of sexual orientation and the rights of the unborn.

Meanwhile, they ignore the rights and the needs of the already living.

Post Racial America?

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On the anniversary of the murder of civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, his wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams, was interviewed on Politics Nation with Rev. Al Sharpton. Although acknowledging that much has changed since that day 50 years ago, Myrlie Evers-Williams said, “Jim Crow is still alive and it’s dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, instead of a white robe.”

I believe that statement to be all too true.

Despite the fact that we have a president of African-American heritage, there are still racist attacks. As pointed out by Evers-Williams, on the night that President Obama was re-elected, there was rioting on the University of Mississippi campus. Across the country, Tea Party rallies have displayed racist representations of President Obama along with the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. Teapublican-dominated legislatures have put in place voter ID laws designed to suppress minority votes. African-Americans are arrested at a rate many times that of white Americans for drug use. As a result, our prisons are over-flowing with minorities. Teapublican politicians are determined to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, which is often the only medical provider in minority neighborhoods. And African-Americans are still arrested for “driving while black” in some cities and neighborhoods.

Post racial? I don’t think so.

Certainly, we have come a very long way since June 12, 1963. But we have a very long way to go until we have ended racism in the United States.

A Warning To Democrats:

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From recent polls showing, among other things, that 13% of Americans believe the president is actually the Antichrist, you may correctly assume that the Republican Party is full of a bunch of crackpots (aka the Tea Party). You may rightly believe that the GOP platform is akin to something coming out of the north end of a southbound bull. You may also believe that Americans will figure this out and hand the next election to Democrats.

On the last point, you are most likely wrong!

You assume that most Americans actually follow the news and politics. (They don’t.) You assume the media will expose Teapublican ideas for what they really are. (They won’t.) You assume that voters will realize the superiority of Democratic ideas. (Unlikely.) And you assume that minorities, most especially Latinos, will recognize that Democrats best represent their interests. (Not necessarily.)

Too many Democrats are content to allow Teapublicans to define the Democratic Party and Democratic principles.

We cannot sit back and expect independents, union members and minorities to turn the country blue. All across the country, the GOP is hard at work trying to rewrite voting laws to ensure control of the House and the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016.

Even though the Great Recession was caused by Republican infatuation with deregulation, and even though our slow economic recovery is the result of Teapublican abuse of the filibuster and a refusal to compromise, it’s all too likely that voters will hold the White House accountable.

Democrats need to be working to register voters, working to fight voter suppression, working to fight gerrymandering, and working to fight attempts to change the Electoral College. We need to refine our message to make it clear that Democrats support fiscal responsibility, real job growth and the interests of all working people. Also, it wouldn’t hurt for Democrats to make it abundantly clear that we better adhere to the actual teachings of Christ; to show compassion for the poor and powerless; to resist the temptation of greed; to resist the calls for war.

That’s not a religious message. That’s a philosophy that has been largely abandoned by those who claim to be followers. And it’s a philosophy that is appealing to the largest portion of our population.

Democrats also need to make it clear what GOP stands for – Guardians Of Privilege. The GOP supports ever larger tax cuts for the rich and obscene profits for multinational corporations, along with diminished salaries for working people. These GOPstoppers have shown that they are against civil rights, women’s rights and religious freedom. While decrying big government, they want to enforce their own brand of “values” in the bedroom and every other aspect of our society.

Democrats, we’re at a critical juncture. Even if you reject this message, you must understand that we are now in a perpetual campaign cycle. We can’t afford to wait.

Creating A Separate Justice System For Terrorism Is A Very Slippery Slope.

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Some Teapublican leaders are calling for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be treated as an “enemy combatant”, removing him from our traditional justice system and subjecting him to a military tribunal. Although this may be tempting to some, it is the slipperiest of slippery slopes.

Tsarnaev is an American citizen. He has the same right to a trial by jury as other accused terrorists and murderers, such as Timothy McVeigh and Jared Loughner. To treat him otherwise is to say that some American citizens are worthy of trial by a jury of their peers, and that other American citizens are undeserving of their constitutional rights.

This is the ultimate class warfare.

If we are to start down that path with Tsarnaev, where do we stop? Should all those accused of mass murder be denied a jury trial? Should jury trials be reserved only for natural born citizens? Should all naturalized citizens accused of crimes be turned over to the military?

The very act of declaring Tsarnaev an “enemy combatant” would undermine the bedrock of our justice system – that all citizens are equal, and that all citizens are innocent until proven guilty.

Iron Lady With A Tin Heart.

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Since the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, conservatives have nearly deified her in the same way they did Ronald Reagan. She’s credited with everything from helping to end the Cold War to single-handedly saving the British economy.

Certainly, she broke the glass ceiling through perserverance and determination. For that she deserves respect. But the rest of her legacy is far less certain.

Thatcher did everything in her considerable power to bust labor unions. She supported apartheid leaders in South Africa, calling Nelson Mandela a “terrorist.”  She refused to negotiate with the Irish Republican Army. She led her nation to war with Argentina in the Falkland Islands in order to defend the last remnant of the British Empire. Her decision to introduce a poll tax caused riots in Scotland, eventually leading to Scotland’s liberation movement. Her supply-side, free market economy suppressed inflation by suppressing salaries for workers. And she maintained cozy relationships with some of the world’s worst dictators.

Now, I understand the media’s hesitation to speak badly of the recently departed, especially of someone who was an ally. But the media does everyone a disservice by glorifying the good accomplished by Thatcher, and ignoring all of the bad.