Day: May 23, 2008

Yet Another FLDS UpDate

Texas has been ordered to return the children detained after the religious compound raid  within 10 days or file an appeal to the ruling……well they filed an appeal….go figure!

A day after an appeals court ruled that the children were illegally taken from their homes in West Texas, lawyers from the State Department of Family and Protective Services planned to file for an emergency stay of the court’s request that the children be released from state custody, a spokesman for the Texas Supreme Court said on Friday.

The spokesman, Osler McCarthy, said he did not know how long it would take for the court to rule, or whether the court would hear oral arguments.

Although that court did not explicitly order the children’s immediate release, it raised the prospect that many of them would be reunited with their families, possibly within 10 days. The children have been in foster homes scattered across Texas since early April, making their parents travel hundreds of miles to visit them.

In a statement after the ruling on Thursday, the Department of Family and Protective Services said: “Child Protective Services has one duty: to protect children. When we see evidence that children have been sexually abused and remain at risk of further abuse, we will act.”

Now it will fall into the lap of the Texas Supreme Court….since it is a civil rights thing, and Texas is not the best place for civil rights…it will be interesting to see how it will rule…..

OMG! Is It June 4th Yet?

Please oh please let us move on…I am so damn weary of the Clinton paths to the nomination…..if it continues, someone, somewhere will go postal.

In case there was any confusion, Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff this morning made very clear her path to the Democratic nomination.  For the ump-teenth time and about a ga-zillion different ways to achieve the nomination.

This is the path as of 1638 hrs on 22 May 08, Have Michigan and Florida’s lost delegations seated in full, stretch the number needed for the nomination to 2,210 (from the 2,026 it is now without those states) and fight for the remaining pledged delegates and uncommitted super delegates.

Wolfson pointed out polls out today which suggest that Clinton would be a stronger candidate against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in some key states including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He said those strengths give her an easier electoral map to follow to win the presidency that Obama in the fall – an argument which has been the central one to Clinton’s remaining in the race.

“Our case has to be made on who would be the best candidate against John McCain,” Wolfson said, adding that the Clinton campaign is not saying Obama could not win in key states – only that it may be harder for him to do so.

Now will this be the spin until June 4th?  God I hope so, this whole Clinton path to nomination is a mind numbing experience.

Nader/Gonzales In ’08

Here are 12 issues of the Nader/Gonzales campaign.
Adopt single payer national health insurance
Cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget
No to nuclear power, solar energy first
Aggressive crackdown on corporate crime
and corporate welfare
Open up the Presidential debates
Adopt a carbon pollution tax
Reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East
Impeach Bush/Cheney
Repeal the Taft-Hartley anti-union law
Adopt a Wall Street securities speculation tax
Put an end to ballot access obstructionism
Work to end corporate personhood

Read what these candidates are saying.

Editorial: Talking About The Working Class

I found this editorial on the People’s Weekly World website and thought I would get others opinion of it.

If Marx and Engels were around today, listening to the corporate media pundits on cable and in print, they might have started their Manifesto with, “A spectre is haunting the U.S. 2008 elections – the spectre of communism.” All of a sudden these folks have discovered the working class. Talk about the disappearing middle class.

Problem is though, corporate media has only discovered a caricature of the working class. Since punditry depends so much on “slice and dice” analysis, their “working class” seems to be only a very narrow section that they define as “blue-collar, white male workers.”
In fact working class describes the overwhelming majority in this country. Part of the problem is that class is not determined mainly by income. Sure, poor people are mostly working class, but so are most people who have “middle” incomes. Union jobs, skilled jobs, and most white collar jobs are also working class. Middle income people don’t live off the profits of other people’s work. If you are employed by a company that makes profits from your work then you are working class.

But the more worrisome problem with the pundits’ new discovery of the working class is an obvious racist bent. Implicitly African Americans and Latinos are poor people who supposedly don’t work, and only white blue collar workers are working class. As in, so and so candidate is getting the “working class” vote

In this “discovered” world Black, Brown and white workers seem to occupy parallel universes. In fact almost every workplace, every factory, every office is a multiracial, multinational beehive of interaction. One of the most important characteristics of working class is the social interaction and cooperation that it takes to get most work done – you have to work together.

People who work together also influence and learn from each other in many ways. African Americans and Latinos are overwhelmingly working class as are whites. Sure some are influenced by racist ideas, but in today’s world what binds workers together is much stronger than the negative influence of racism. Workers are bound together by declining incomes and a bad economy, by lack of health care, by high gas and food prices, and by rejection of a brutal and unnecessary war.

Barack Obama is getting a larger percentage of the total working class vote than any other Democratic Party presidential candidate since the 1960s. And that vote, united, scares the hell out of rightwing Republicans and corporate America.

About the only time any of these pundits give a crap about the working class is when they have to do some sort of political analysis and try to explain why a thing is happening.

Court Rules Against Texas In FLDS Raid

Texas overstepped its authority when it removed some of the 460 children taken from a polygamist compound last month, a state appeals court ruled on Thursday.

Texas Child Protective Services last month raided the isolated compound in west Texas and removed the children in response to allegations of abuse.

But the court said that the state had not proven that the children were in immediate physical danger, and therefore were improperly separated from their parents.

“Essentially this decision from the Third Court of Appeals said that Child Protective Services had absolutely no evidence that would justify them going in there and removing these children from this household,” said Cynthia Martinez, who represents 48 of the mothers whose children were removed.

How will this effect the children and the parents…time will only tell, but the track of civil rights has been returned to…..maybe now the rights of the children will become more important than the harassment of a religious sect.

News Flash: American Axel Strike Is Over!

UAW workers at American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. ratified a contract between the union and the company Thursday, union officials said, ending a 12-week strike against the Detroit supplier that rippled through the auto industry.

The landmark deal for American Axle drops the company’s labor costs to become more competitive and marks a painful turning point for workers who face adjustment to steeply lower wages.

The vote in favor of the contract at UAW Local 235 in Hamtramck — representing 2,000 workers — ensured that the deal would be ratified nationwide.

The UAW said 78% of workers nationwide approved the contract. In Hamtramck, 71% of workers voted for the contract — 1,172 in favor to 479 opposed, said Erik Webb, cochairman of the local’s election committee.

On Monday, union locals in Three Rivers near Kalamazoo and near Buffalo, N.Y., representing about 1,650 workers in all, ratified the deal.

The deal ends a strike that forced General Motors Corp. to shut or cut output at more thaAs workers voted n 30 plants, forcing the automaker — and as a result, several suppliers — to lay off thousands of workers. The lost production further weakened the nation’s economy, and the layoffs ensured Michigan would continue to have one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates.

I have seen several things blamed for the end of the strike.  One was the cost of gas and the demand for SUVs decline. The union lost its leverage, in part, because of the shift in U.S. vehicle sales toward small cars. The strike, took place just as production for American Axle’s bread-and-butter products — SUV and pickup axles — is declining. Automakers are cutting production of those vehicles as consumers turn to more fuel-efficient cars.

The strike is over and the workers have been screwed!  AGAIN!

Iraq War Funding Bill

In case my readers are interested in just what this bill contains.

Highlights of a Senate bill passed Thursday to pay for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring. Key provisions would:

_Provide $165 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of this year and several months into 2009, when there is a new president.

_Extend unemployment benefits for workers whose benefits have run out. The extension would cover up to 13 weeks nationwide and an additional 13 weeks in states with unemployment rates of 6 percent or greater, including Michigan, Alaska and California. The cost is estimated at $11.1 billion over 10 years.

_Expand education for active-duty members of the armed forces since Sept. 11, 2001. Under a formula related to years of service, the measure aims to provide the equivalent of a four-year education at a state university. The cost is estimated at $51.6 billion over the next decade.

_Block new Bush administration regulations that would cut federal spending on Medicaid health care for the poor and disabled by $13 billion over the next five years.

_Provide $8.7 billion in foreign aid and international food assistance over 2008-2009, including $450 million for Mexico to combat drug trafficking, $100 million below the administration’s request.

_Provide $5.8 billion to strengthen New Orleans levees, as requested by the administration, plus $3.1 billion to help Louisiana “match” federal contributions, and $1 billion for Mississippi coastal protection.

_Provide $3.1 billion for military base construction and base closure accounts.

_Provide $1.2 billion for science and health programs, including $200 million for NASA, $200 million for the National Science Foundation to bolster U.S. competitiveness, and $400 million for the National Institutes of Health.

_Provide $400 million for rural schools.

_Provide $451 million to rebuild roads and bridges damaged by natural disasters.

_Provide $490 million in anti-crime grants to states and local governments.

_Provide $437 million for trauma centers for veterans to help their recovery from war-related injuries, especially traumatic brain injury.

Just take a look at the earmarks that were added onto the bill–does that seem right to you?

Senate Passes War Funding Bill

Senate Republicans have broken with President Bush to help Democrats add support for veterans and the unemployed to a bill paying for another year of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The 75-22 vote also added billions of dollars in other domestic funds such as heating subsidies for the poor and money for fighting wildfires to funding for military operations overseas.

Shortly afterward, the Senate voted 70-26 to approve $165 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, when Bush’s successor will set war policy. All told, the measure contains $212 billion over the coming two years, plus about $50 billion more through 2017 for veterans education benefits.

The vote on the domestic add-ons was a rebuke to Bush, who has promised to veto the measure if it contains the domestic measures. However, the president still has enough GOP support in the House to sustain a veto.

“Our troops deserve better than having essential war time resources held hostage to billions in unrelated spending,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “Congress should pass a clean war funding bill when they return from Memorial Day recess.”

The House still has to act on the bill. Last week, it voted to reject money for continuing the war. It endorsed the help for veterans and the unemployed, but kept its version clean of most other domestic programs.

The Senate has not found away to help bring the troops home, but at least this bill has some benefits for the troops once they do make it home.