Liberal Democrat

Liberal Democrat
Individual Freedom For Everyone

Friday, February 22, 2013

Salon Magazine: David Sirota: 'Not All Democrats Are Elizabeth Warren'

Source:Salon Magazine- U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat, Massachusetts)

"Despite its success in recent elections, and despite the image of unity it projects, the Democratic Party is in the throes of an epic identity crisis pitting its corporate money against its stated principles. The recent actions of two of the party's rising stars -- Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- tell the deeper tale of that crisis. It is a microcosmic story, suggesting that the 2016 election may be a decisive turning point in the party's history.

The money side of the schism is embodied by Hickenlooper. As the new vice-chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the former petroleum geologist and beer mogul represents a cabal of Democratic politicians whose brand couples moderate positions on social issues with hard-edged corporatism on economic ones.

Corporatism, of course, is a vague label, but in Democratic politics it typically refers to helping campaign contributors bust unions and dismantle environmental regulations, with the expectation that servile labor and environmental leaders will sit by as their movements are decimated.

Despite its success in recent elections, and despite the image of unity it projects, the Democratic Party is in the throes of an epic identity crisis pitting its corporate money against its stated principles. The recent actions of two of the party's rising stars -- Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- tell the deeper tale of that crisis. It is a microcosmic story, suggesting that the 2016 election may be a decisive turning point in the party's history.

The money side of the schism is embodied by Hickenlooper. As the new vice-chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the former petroleum geologist and beer mogul represents a cabal of Democratic politicians whose brand couples moderate positions on social issues with hard-edged corporatism on economic ones.

Corporatism, of course, is a vague label, but in Democratic politics it typically refers to helping campaign contributors bust unions and dismantle environmental regulations, with the expectation that servile labor and environmental leaders will sit by as their movements are decimated.

Hickenlooper’s actions this month show how the formula works.

On labor issues, after a summer of staging media events to thank firefighters for combating wildfires, the Colorado governor publicly threatened to veto legislation that would enshrine the right of those firefighters to choose to form a union. Of such basic legal protections, Hickenlooper flippantly declared that he does "not believe it is a matter of state interest."

On environmental issues, it is the same story. Hickenlooper this week testified against federal legislation that would compel energy companies to disclose what toxic chemicals they use when fracking for natural gas. His testimony made headlines after he insinuated that fracking fluid is so harmless that Americans can safely drink it.

While Hickenlooper's claim was later debunked, few observers were surprised he would utter such a pernicious lie. After all, with Hickenlooper's electoral career bankrolled by fossil fuel firms, he has not just ignored the scientific evidence that shows fracking is dangerous; he has also denied that climate change is happening, offered to back corporate lawsuits to overturn municipal drilling regulations and appeared as a spokesman for the oil and gas industry in its political advertisements. Additionally, the Denver Post reports that Hickenlooper's regulators "rarely penalize companies responsible for (drilling-related) spills."

If you find this repulsive, then you are probably on the other side of the Democratic Party divide, the one personified by Warren.

Though a freshman legislator, she is already a celebrity thanks to her longtime advocacy on behalf of the poor, her fiery tenure running the panel that audited the 2008 bank bailout and her 2012 election victory over a Wall Street-financed opponent. This week, as if deliberately underscoring her commitment to live up to the Democratic Party's populist billing, Warren rejected the unspoken Washington rule requiring junior lawmakers to keep quiet. Instead, she used her first committee hearing to slam Obama administration regulators for being weak on financial crime.

In assuming such a posture, Warren, along with Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Al Franken, D-Minn., represents what the late liberal Sen. Paul Wellstone called "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party." In other words, unlike Hickenlooper's cadre, she doesn't represent the business elites who buy politicians like shares of stock. She represents the millions of voters who win the party elections.

For his part, Hickenlooper has deployed cronies to stoke rumors of a presidential candidacy. Meanwhile, the ABC News headline "Elizabeth Warren 2016?" summarized the sentiment of liberals who are buzzing about a possible Warren White House bid.

Regardless of whether the two run, it is likely that the 2016 Democratic presidential primary will feature their archetypes, forcing the party's coalition to choose a side. It is also a good bet that because those archetypes are at odds with one another, whichever side wins will decide the party's direction for generations." 

Thursday, February 21, 2013

See Progress: Heather Boushey: 'Middle Out Economics 101'

Source:Center For American Progress I believe at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

"CAP's Senior Economist Heather Boushey, explains how middle out economics helps bolster the United States economy." 


If you watched and listened to this video, you'll hear or see nothing that has to do with raising taxes across the board, or even just on the wealthy. Or arguing for a bigger, stronger, national government. Or less individual choice and more government control of the marketplace. Or paying people not to even bother working. Or some national basic income, so no one has to work for a living. 

What I just laid out and what you didn't see or hear in this video, is not what President Barack Obama and the Center For American Progress is proposing. But instead an alternative to both supply side economics, that's just about lowering taxes and regulations on the wealthy. As well as an alternative to social democracy, which is what American leftists are proposing in America, that we simply change our form of government and become a social democratic state.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Think Progress: Jeff Spross: 'Moving The Goal Posts: Simpson-Bowles Renege On Their Own Plan For More Revenue'

Source:Think Progress- left to right: former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles (Democrat, North Carolina) & former U.S. Senate Alan Simpson (Republican, Wyoming?

"Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles will release a new plan today to reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade. The pair of deficit hawks previously co-chaired a 2010 commission on fiscal reform (which failed) and then released a proposal for $6.3 trillion in deficit reduction.

That plan became a go-to talking point for Republicans — except, of course, whenever Obama recommended similar targets.

The new Simpson-Bowles plan adds an additional $2.4 trillion in savings onto the approximately $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction the United States has already carried out since 2010. Roughly three-fourths of that new $2.4 trillion would come from spending cuts and savings on interest payments:

The outline below is not meant as a revision to the original Fiscal Commission plan, but rather builds upon where elected leaders were in their negotiations last year. […]

[W]e call for an additional $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next ten years. Roughly one quarter of those savings should come from health care reforms and another quarter from tax reform. The remaining savings should come from a combination of mandatory spending cuts, stronger discretionary caps, cross-cutting changes such as adopting the chained CPI for inflation-indexed provisions in the budget, and lower interest payments. This $2.4 trillion should exclude savings from policies such as the war drawdown.

There’s a very simple problem with Simpson and Bowles’ latest proposal: It represents a massive shift away from their own previous target and towards even more spending cuts.

As the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities previously laid out, the original 2010 Simpson-Bowles plan split its $6.3 trillion in deficit savings between $2.9 trillion in spending cuts, $2.6 trillion in tax revenue, and $800 billion in reduced interest payments on the debt. Since then, the country has passed roughly half of those recommended spending cuts — but less than a quarter of the recommended tax increases, according to recent calculations from the Center for American Progress.

Between the budget deals in the spring of 2011 and the Budget Control Act, which averted the debt ceiling crisis that same year, spending has been cut by $1.5 trillion and interest payments reduced by another $200 billion. Then the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which solved the impasse over the “fiscal cliff,” raised $600 billion in new tax revenue.

So if Simpson-Bowles are interested in “building upon” what lawmakers have already achieved, the logical thing to propose is another $1.4 trillion in spending cuts plus another $2 trillion in additional tax revenue. Or if they’re happy with their new $4.8 trillion target — rather than the original $6.3 trillion — their new proposal should heavily favor tax increases, since deficit reduction so far has favored spending cuts by three to one. Instead, Simpson and Bowles are proposing $1.8 trillion in new spending cuts and reduced interest payments, and only $600 billion in additional revenue.

This continues a trend amongst Republicans and deficit hawks. They’ve consistently treated every new round of deficit reduction as if it exists in a vacuum, throwing the cumulative spending cuts already achieved down the memory hole.

It’s also worth mentioning that their goal of bringing debt below 70 percent of GDP by early next decade is likely major overkill. There is no magic debt-to-GDP ratio at which safety is guaranteed or doom is assured. There’s also plenty of reason to the think America’s debt-to-GDP ratio can be stabilized at well over 70 percent without significant threat to the budget’s fiscal sustainability. The Economic Policy Institute recently calculated that debt stability over the next decade could be achieved with as little as $670 billion in additional deficit reduction — $580 billion in actual policy savings, plus $90 billion in resulting interest savings." 

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Intelligent Channel: Alex Cherian: ‘U.S. Senator & Future Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy (1967)’

Source:The Intelligent Channel- U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Democrat, New York) visiting San Francisco, California in 1967.
Source:The Daily Journal

“Senator Robert F. Kennedy, future presidential candidate, visiting San Francisco (1967) – from THE EDUCATION ARCHIVE. Kennedy was on a 10-state, 15-city tour to evaluate President Lyndon Johnson’s ambitious War on Poverty campaign. San Francisco State’s archivist Alex Cherian provides a 2013 introduction. Copyright belongs to Young Broadcasting of San Francisco, Inc. Special appreciation to Pat Patton and KRON-TV for helping to make this material publicly accessible.” 


This video is the exact reason why I wish former U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone was still alive and had he lived I believe he not only would’ve been reelected to the Senate, but would’ve pushed what Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin L. King called the Poor People’s Campaign and tour from the late 1960s. But Senator Wellstone would’ve started this campaign the 21st Century once he returned to the U.S. Senate.

Not many people were talking about poverty in America back then at least not many public officials at the Federal level. And not many public people who were at, or near the height of Martin King were talking about.

Poverty and yes that it actually existed back then in a country that was then and now the richest country in the world and yet we have 1-5 or 1-4 then Americans living in poverty in Appalachia, the Delta in Mississippi, inner-city ghettos like in big cities like Detroit and Los Angeles, Baltimore and so-forth. That how can a country that’s as rich as ours have so many people who don’t have enough to live a good life.

Another thing that I respect about Senator Kennedy’s campaign was that it came right after the so-called War on Poverty was announced by President Lyndon Johnson. Because that so-called war really didn’t go far enough and I’m not talking about money.

What Senator Kennedy was looking at were not only the what people in poverty go through and their living conditions, but also how to help these people move out of poverty and make a good life for themselves. Where the so-called War on Poverty was more about how to do we prevent these people from starving, going homeless, without clothes and healthcare and so-forth.

The War on Poverty, didn’t take the next step and building off of a system that prevents people from essentially dying. But how we do we empower them so they don’t have to live in poverty at all. Which I believe had Bobby Kennedy had lived, we would’ve seen those ideas come from him later on.

This is just one example of why RFK’s assassination was so tragic, because of the attention and the focus to these issues he would’ve brought. And why we need people with that type of power to focus people on these issues today since we are still dealing with the same issues that we were talking about as a country forty-five years ago. And be able to finally focus on how we actually solve these problems. Instead of just talking about them. 

Monday, February 18, 2013

Chris Hedges: 'Profiting From Human Misery'

Source:Common Dreams columnist Chris Hedges.

"Marela, an undocumented immigrant in her 40s, stood outside the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on a chilly afternoon last week. She was there with a group of protesters who appear at the facility's gates every year on Ash Wednesday to decry the nation's immigration policy and conditions inside the center. She was there, she said, because of her friend Evelyn Obey.

Marela, an undocumented immigrant in her 40s, stood outside the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on a chilly afternoon last week. She was there with a group of protesters who appear at the facility's gates every year on Ash Wednesday to decry the nation's immigration policy and conditions inside the center. She was there, she said, because of her friend Evelyn Obey.

Obey, 40, a Guatemalan and the single mother of a 12-year-old and a 6-year-old, was picked up in an immigration raid as she and nine other undocumented workers walked out of an office building they cleaned in Newark, N.J. Her two children instantly lost their only parent. She languished in detention. Another family took in the children, who never saw their mother again. Obey died in jail in 2010 from, according to the sign Villar had hung on her neck, "pulmonary thromboembolism, chronic bronchiolitis and emphysema and remote cardiac Ischemic Damage.' "

"She called me two days after she was seized," Marela told me in Spanish. "She was hysterical. She was crying. She was worried about her children. We could not visit her because we do not have legal documents. We helped her get a lawyer. Then we heard she was sick. Then we heard she died. She was buried in an unmarked grave. We did not go to her burial. We were too scared of being seized and detained."

The rally--about four dozen people, most from immigrant rights groups and local churches--was a flicker of consciousness in a nation that has yet to fully confront the totalitarian corporate forces arrayed against it. Several protesters in orange jumpsuits like those worn by inmates held signs reading: "I Want My Family Together," "No Human Being is Illegal," and "Education not Deportation."

"The people who run that prison make money off of human misery," said Diana Mejia, 47, an immigrant from Colombia who now has legal status, gesturing toward the old warehouse that now serves as the detention facility. As she spoke, a Catholic Worker band called the Filthy Rotten System belted out a protest song. A low-flying passenger jet, its red, green and white underbelly lights blinking in the night sky, rumbled overhead. Clergy walking amid the crowd marked the foreheads of participants with ashes to commemorate Ash Wednesday.

"Repentance is more than merely being sorry," the Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps, the executive director of Casa de Esperanza, a community organization working with immigrants, told the gathering. "It is an act of turning around and then moving forward to make change."

The majority of those we incarcerate in this country--and we incarcerate a quarter of the world's prison population--have never committed a violent crime. Eleven million undocumented immigrants face the possibility of imprisonment and deportation. President Barack Obama, outpacing George W. Bush, has deported more than 400,000 people since he took office. Families, once someone is seized, detained and deported, are thrown into crisis. Children come home from school and find they have lost their mothers or fathers. The small incomes that once sustained them are snuffed out. Those who remain behind often become destitute.

But human beings matter little in the corporate state. We myopically serve the rapacious appetites of those dedicated to exploitation and maximizing profit. And our corporate masters view prisons--as they do education, health care and war--as a business. The 320-bed Elizabeth Detention Center, which houses only men, is run by one of the largest operators and owners of for-profit prisons in the country, Corrections Corporation of America. CCA, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, has annual revenues in excess of $1.7 billion. An average of 81,384 inmates are in its facilities on any one day. This is a greater number, the American Civil Liberties Union points out in a 2011 report, "Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration," than that held by the states of New York and New Jersey combined.

The for-profit prisons and their lobbyists in Washington and state capitals have successfully blocked immigration reform, have prevented a challenge to our draconian drug laws and are pushing through tougher detention policies. Locking up more and more human beings is the bedrock of the industry's profits. These corporations are the engines behind the explosion of our prison system. They are the reason we have spent $300 billion on new prisons since 1980. They are also the reason serious reform is impossible.

The United States, from 1970 to 2005, increased its prison population by about 700 percent, according to statistics gathered by the ACLU. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the ACLU report notes, says that for-profit companies presently control about 18 percent of federal prisoners and 6.7 percent of all state prisoners. Private prisons account for nearly all of the new prisons built between 2000 and 2005. And nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government are shipped to for-profit prisons, according to Detention Watch Network.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which imprisons about 400,000 undocumented people a year, has an annual budget of more than $5 billion. ICE is planning to expand its operations by establishing several mega-detention centers, most run by private corporations, in states such as New Jersey, Texas, Florida, California and Illinois. Many of these private contractors are, not surprisingly, large campaign donors to "law and order" politicians including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

In CCA's annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission for 2011, cited by the ACLU, the prison company bluntly states its opposition to prison reform. "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws," it declares. CCA goes on to warn that "any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration" could "potentially [reduce] demand for correctional facilities," as would "mak[ing] more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior," the adoption of "sentencing alternatives [that] ... could put some offenders on probation" and "reductions in crime rates."

CCA in 2011 gave $710,300 in political contributions to candidates for federal or state office, political parties and 527 groups (PACs and super PACs), the ACLU reported. The corporation also spent $1.07 million lobbying federal officials along with undisclosed funds to lobby state officials, according to the ACLU. CCA, through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), lobbies legislators to impose harsher detention laws at the state and federal levels. The ALEC helped draft Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant law SB 1070.

A March 2012 CCA investor presentation prospectus, quoted by the ACLU, tells potential investors that incarceration "creates predictable revenue streams." The document cites demographic trends that the company says will continue to expand profits. These positive investment trends include, the prospectus reads, "high recidivism"--"about 45 percent of individuals released from prison in 1999 and more than 43 percent released from prison in 2004 were returned to prison within three years." The prospectus invites investments by noting that one in every 100 U.S. adults is currently in prison or jail. And because the U.S. population is projected to grow by approximately 18.6 million from 2012 to 2017, "prison populations would grow by about 80,400 between 2012 and 2017, or by more than 13,000 additional per year, on average," the CCA document says.

The two largest private prison companies in 2010 received nearly $3 billion in revenue. The senior executives, according to the ACLU report, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million. The for-profit prisons can charge the government up to $200 a day to house an inmate; they pay detention officers as little as $10 an hour.

"Within 30 miles of this place, there are at least four other facilities where immigrants are detained: Essex, Monmouth, Delaney Hall and Hudson, which has the distinction of being named one of the 10 worst detention facilities in the country," Phipps, who is an immigration attorney as well as a minister, told the gathering in front of the Elizabeth Detention Center. "The terrible secret is that immigration detention has become a very profitable business for companies and county governments."

"More than two-thirds of immigrants are detained in so-called contract facilities owned by private companies, such as this one and Delaney Hall," she went on. "The rise of the prison industrial complex has gone hand in hand with the aggrandizing forces of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which, by the way, has filed suit against the very government it is supposed to be working for because they were told to exercise prosecutorial discretion in their detention practices." [Click here to see more about the lawsuit, in which 10 ICE agents attack the administration's easing of government policy on those who illegally entered the United States as children.]

There is an immigration court inside the Elizabeth facility, although the roar of the planes lifting off from the nearby Newark Airport forces those in the court to remain silent every three or four minutes until the sound subsides. Most of those brought before the court have no legal representation and are railroaded through the system and deported. Detainees, although most have no criminal record beyond illegal entry into the United States, wear orange jumpsuits and frequently are handcuffed. They do not have adequate health care. There are now some 5,000 children in foster care because their parents have been detained or deported, according to the Applied Research Center's report "Shattered Families." The report estimates that this number will rise to 15,000 within five years.

"I am in family court once every six to eight weeks representing some mother who is surrendering custody of her child to somebody else because she does not want to take that child back to the poverty of Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador," Phipps said when we spoke after the rally. "She has no option. She does not want her child to live in the same poverty she grew up in. It is heartbreaking."

We have abandoned the common good. We have been stripped of our rights and voice. Corporations write our laws and determine how we structure our society. We have all become victims. There are no politicians or institutions, no political parties or courts, that are independent enough or strong enough to resist the corporate onslaught. Greater and greater numbers of human beings will be consumed. The poor, the vulnerable, the undocumented, the weak, the elderly, the sick, the children will go first. And those of us watching helplessly outside the gates will go next." 

Sunday, February 17, 2013

CBS News: Bill Plant: 'Federal Budget Faces Severe Sequestration Cuts'

Source:CBS News talking to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on Face The Nation.

"As the deadline for reaching a compromise on spending cuts approaches, both Democrats and Republicans continue to point fingers. Bill Plante reports on the severe consequences the federal budget may face.' 

From CBS News

If the U.S. Government, at least in Washington, was forced to lie in the real world, instead of their made up political fantasy world, there would be an easy solution and compromise here: 

Republicans get some entitlement reform as it has to do with Medicare and how it pays for health care, and perhaps raising the age of eligibility of Social Security for wealthy, white-collar workers. And Democrats would get cuts to corporate subsidies having to do with private jets and other corporate welfare. 

But the problem, is the U.S. Government doesn't live or operate in the real world in Washington. They just come down for a visit every now and then, where there's a crisis. Both parties are just listening to their bases. 

Tea Party Republicans are basically saying you can balance the budget by eliminating most if not all regulations, as well as taxes involving corporate America, and gutting Food Assistance, Public Housing, Food and Drug Safety, that sort of thing. 

Democrats don't really want to cut anything, other than perhaps defense and really just want to raise taxes and on the wealthy and corporations. But not to reduce the deficit. But to spend that money on more government social programs. 

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Noam Chomsky: 'Public Education & The Common Good'

Source: Professor Noam Chomsky.
I was watching BookTV on C-Span 2 today. (because I'm a current affairs as well as history and political junky, whose interested in things besides celebrity culture and technology. If that offends you, too bad.) And I was watching a presentation from Tom Allen who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997-2009. He and Chuck Hagel who served in the Senate from that same period actually came to Congress the same year and left the same year. Without ever serving in the same chamber. (Just a little food for thought) And Representative Allen has a new book about the broken U.S. Congress about why he believes Congress is not working and so-forth.

And I'm not going to focus on Congress in this post. I only mention that because in his presentation, Tom Allen was talking about the need to balance individualism and freedom with community and responsibility. 

Professor Noam Chomsky in this presentation talks about the need for community. Basically arguing that someone paying taxes to fund public education, might not see a direct benefit from that. But those taxes probably funded their education and so-forth that we pay taxes that funds what we need directly by also what we've used in the past. 

Take education, or what we'll be consuming in the future, like Social Security or Medicare and perhaps Unemployment Insurance. And all of that is true. But my argument is that without individual freedom and individualism, we wouldn't have the resources to fund those programs. Or not enough money to fund those programs.

Liberal democracy at its best recognizes the need for individual freedom, individualism, individual responsibility, and community as well. That we won't do very well if we are lacking in just one of those areas. That freedom becomes too expensive if we constantly have to subsidize the bad decisions of others. Or when we can't profit from the good decisions that we make, that we should subsidize success, but that there also has to be consequences that we have to deal with when we mess up. But also an opportunity to work our ways out of those failures.

So that's exactly what individual freedom and responsibility and community are about. That we are all part of the same society that empowers us to be successful. But then with what we do with those opportunities is up to us and when we do well, we are rewarded. But when we don't do well we have to deal with the consequences of those decisions. But then there's an opportunity for us to survive and get ourselves on our feet.

So liberal democracy at its best and I believe at its core, is a national system not necessarily Federal, but a system and philosophy where we all have the freedom to live our own lives. As long as we are not hurting innocent people with what we are doing. And that we are rewarded when we do well, but also have to deal with the consequences of our good and bad decisions. But when we do mess up, there's a community that helps us get ourselves up on our two feet. Which is individual freedom and responsibility to go along with community.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

The Atlantic: Heather Boushey: 'The Economics Behind Barack Obama's New Liberal Agenda'

Source:The Atlantic at President Barack H. Obama's 2013 State of the Union, in front of a joint session of the 113th Congress.

"A higher minimum wage and universal pre-K might sound like hackneyed progressive goals. But they're supported by broad economic research -- and common sense." 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Salon Magazine: Jared Bernstein: 'Raise The Minimum Wage!'

Source:Salon Magazine with a look at workers pay.

"From saving working families much-needed cash to reducing poverty, it's a great way to kickstart the economy. 

It’s a great idea, one I’ve espoused on these very pages. The President suggested raising the federal minimum from its current level of $7.25 up to $9 by 2015 and then index it to inflation. An increase of that magnitude would directly lift the wages of 15 million low-wage workers, according to the WH.

Clearly, in an economy where for decades growth has failed to reach our lowest wage workers, it’s time to raise the wage floor to ensure that low-wage workers have a decent shot at a fair wage.

From the WH fact sheet:

Raising the minimum wage mostly benefits adults, and especially working women: Around 60 percent of workers benefiting from a higher minimum wage are women, and few are teenagers – less than 20 percent.

Raising the minimum wage helps parents: The average worker who would benefit from a rise in the minimum wage to $9 an hour brought home 46 percent of his or her household’s total wage and salary income in 2011, according to the Current Population Survey. 

For a working family earning $20,000 – $30,000, the extra $3,500 per year from raising the minimum wage would cover:

* The family’s spending on groceries for a year; or

* The family’s spending on utilities for a year; or

* The family’s spending on gasoline and clothing for a year; or

* Six months of housing.

Raising the minimum wage will boost wages without jeopardizing jobs while improving turnover and productivity: A range of economic studies show that modestly raising the minimum wage increases earnings and reduces poverty without measurably reducing employment, and that in fact employers may see a more stable workforce due to reduced turnover and increased productivity... 

Brendan Owens: 'Article Review 2: Compensating Our Military Veterans'

Source:People For Polity is Brendan Owens personal blog, who I met on Facebook.

"The above study examined the association between substance abuse disorder (SUD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and symptoms and mechanisms underlying those associations.  Participants of the study were assessed at the beginning of the study and six months following inpatient SUD treatment.  Since the treatment was necessary to conduct this study, it can be classified as interventionist.
Because SUD and PTSD occur together often, a more clear understanding of this dynamic may identify areas for intervention.  This also includes how different substances may be related to different PTSD symptom clusters.  For example, hyperarousal symptoms were associated with alcohol problems.  
Details of the study after the break…
At the study’s onset, 133 participants received inpatient SUD treatment at a psychiatric hospital.  51 percent were women, and 90 percent were white.  The average age was 37 years old.  Variables the study examined included sex [male, female], age [18-55], PTSD [yes, no], and SUD [alcohol, opioids, cocaine, cannabis, sedatives, stimulants].

Interviews and self-reports were conducted at the baseline and 6 months post-discharge.  90 percent of the participants completed follow-up assessments.  A PTSD Scale assessed PTSD, while the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised assessed traumatic exposure.  The number of symptoms endorsed indicated the PTSD and symptom cluster severity.  After six months, these same procedures were repeated. 
The study found that the most common SUD in this sample to be alcohol use disorder at 69 percent.  34 percent met the criteria for opioid use, 23 percent for cocaine abuse, 19 percent for cannabis use disorder, 15 percent for a sedative use disorder, 4 percent abusing hallucinogens, and 2 percent abusing stimulants.  
At the six month point, the majority of participants had used alcohol or other drugs at least once (67 percent).  38 patients were still suffering from PTSD, while only 14 reported no longer suffering from the disorder.  
Individuals with PTSD were more likely to meet the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders criteria for mood disorder than those who were not diagnosed as indicated on... 

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The Nation: Greg Kaufmann: 'Revealing The Real TANF'

Source:The Nation Magazine with a look at poverty in America.

"The TANF program expires in March, and the American people need to know what it’s all about before it’s renewed.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again: the American people have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program created in 1996. Both parties tout it as a “success,” but if you look at the numbers—and at the real lives of people who turn to the program for assistance when they are out of work—the picture is bleak, to say the least.

This March, TANF is set to expire and will need to be renewed. It will mark yet another opportunity to have an honest, fact-based discussion about the program. So it was good to see a top-notch panel of experts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) yesterday talking about TANF—“Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future.”

The speakers included Witnesses to Hunger member Shearine Mcghee, a former participant in the successful TANF subsidized jobs program that was created through the Recovery Act but allowed to expire in 2010. Kudos to CAP for having as one of the experts on poverty someone who has actually lived in poverty—it’s way too rare in this town, especially in Congress where public policy decisions are made without testimony from the people who are most affected.

Dr. LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), opened the discussion with an overview of how the program has performed as a safety net and in boosting employment—since the promise of TANF was that it would serve both purposes and thereby create pathways to self-sufficiency. 

Her top line statistic in assessing TANF as a safety net—a statistic that I wish every member of Congress and every progressive activist had on his or her bulletin board, and that the mainstream press would deign to report every now and then—is this: Before welfare reform, for every 100 families with children in poverty in the US, 68 were able to access cash assistance; now that number has fallen to just 27 (and Pavetti thinks it will be even lower when the 2012 data comes in). The benefit for those lucky twenty-seven families who are able to access it is less than 30 percent of the poverty line in most states—so less than $5,400 annually for a family of three.

“TANF does provide an important safety net for unemployed or underemployed families, but it reaches very few families in need, and when it does reach families they get a very small amount of cash,” said Pavetti. 

Pavetti also pointed out that in 1995—the year before TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—AFDC kept over 2.2 million poor children from falling into deep poverty (defined as below half the poverty line, or less than $11,500 for a family of four today). This means that AFDC successfully lifted over 62 percent of poor children out of deep poverty. But in 2005, TANF lifted just 21 percent of children who would otherwise be in deep poverty, or just 650,000 kids. TANF has directly contributed to the number of people living in deep poverty rising from 12.6 million in 2000, to 20.4 million people today. This includes over 15 million women and children (and nearly 10 percent of all children). 

“So we have a lot less effect [today] on families and [are not] helping them deal with very, very deep poverty,” said Pavetti.

But it was her report on TANF as an employment program that I found most striking. She demonstrated that the (mostly) conservative claim that the TANF work requirement led to huge employment gains for single mothers is bogus. It’s true that in the late ’90s there was a significant increase in employment, but that’s largely because there was a booming economy. Those gains began to decline in 2000 and have vanished today.

“[By] 2011, we basically had lost all of what we had gained,” said Pavetti. “We’re back to where we were in 1996—actually a little bit below it.” Indeed in 1996, 64 percent of single mothers with a high school education or less were working, and in 2011 it was 62 percent. 

Pavetti said that the “more compelling story” is told by comparing the employment of single mothers with and without a high school degree, to single women with similar educational backgrounds and no children. In the early 1990s, there was a significant gap between the two groups. But since 2000, the likelihood of employment for a single mother with kids is almost exactly the same as it is for a single woman without kids. The more significant determining factor for earned income is level of education. 

“This is not a story about parent responsibility,” said Pavetti.“It’s really about what are the labor market opportunities for individuals who have a high school or less than high school [education].”

Pavetti suggested that TANF needs to be reformed to allow parents more educational opportunities so that they can advance in the labor market. Currently, the federal statute is very rigid about which kinds of education and training activities can be counted towards work requirements for TANF participants. She also suggested a renewed focus on a subsidized jobs program—like the one that placed 260,000 unemployed low-income parents and young adults in jobs during the recession. The program enjoyed bipartisan support from governors before House Republicans allowed it to expire. (Many people waged a strong fight to save the program, including Pavetti, who maintained a sort of vigil through her blog, counting down the days until it was scheduled to “die.”)

Mcghee talked about the powerful role that the subsidized jobs program played in her life. She said she was “thankful” for a medical assistance/medical billing work-training program that she enrolled in through TANF.  But when she graduated, prospective employers wanted her to have at least one year of experience in her field. So she found herself instead applying for fast food and other low-wage jobs for which she was then overqualified—what witnesses call “graduation to the same poor wages.”

The federally subsidized Way to Work program allowed her to work for the Coalition Against Hunger doing SNAP outreach, and educating other mothers and families about nutrition. With that work experience, Mcghee was able to obtain a job as a nutrition assistant for the Philadelphia WIC program, where she has been employed for two years.

“The Way to Work program gave us the job readiness that we needed to further our employment,” she said.

Witnesses to Hunger founder Dr. Mariana Chilton—an associate professor at Drexel University School of Public Health and co-principal investigator for Children’s HealthWatch—talked about the tension between education and work for mothers in poverty.

“It’s a real struggle,” she said. “It’s what the women in Witnesses to Hunger call ‘the monster under the bed.’  Because they know they need to improve their education in order to make a better wage. But as [one] Witness said, ‘What am I supposed to do? Tell my kids I can’t feed you for two years—just wait while I go to school and then I’ll feed you?’ So there’s a real Catch-22 between advancing education to get the better job, or going into work and getting stuck in this dead-end job. We need to find some better ways to work with this system.”

Dr. Kristin Seefeldt, assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan and author of Working After Welfare, has been interviewing women in poverty and deep poverty for decades. She also talked about the difficulties women participating in TANF encounter as they try to further their education. In the late 1990s, she said these women were able to find stable jobs with decent wages—enough to get by—and could plan on waiting until their children were a little older before they returned to school.

“Now it’s different,” said Seefeldt. “That sort of choice is no longer there—the jobs aren’t giving that many hours, the wages aren’t enough to support [a family]. So either women get trapped [in low-wage work].”

Because they can’t obtain the education they need through TANF, many end up taking on huge debt while working multiple jobs. Seefeldt described a woman determined to get her Licensed Practical Nursing (LPN) degree who now works two jobs—because the hours of her “main job” were cut back.

“So she sits beside rehab patients in the middle of the night and tries to do her homework then, and she has another job during the day,” said Seefeldt. “And her kids are either in the car with her—driving from one place to the next—or they’re at a relative’s house. All of them are almost never home. That’s going to go on for another couple years, and I don’t think that’s a situation anyone wants to be in.”

Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman—director of the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy—moderated the discussion and noted that some of the program’s resistance to education is found in TANF’s original underpinnings.

“At the very beginning, the philosophy of TANF was work first,” he said. “The premise was that job training doesn’t work, and that letting somebody get educated first before they go to work is wrong—they should get experience and that’s the path to later success. That’s an over-simplification, but there are many states out there that still buy into that attitude.”

Deborah Schlick, project manager of Transitions to Economic Stability at the Minnesota Department of Human Services, said that the “assumption that we need to push people into work” is unfounded. She reported that 80 percent of the parents in Minnesota who turn to TANF for assistance have been in the state’s labor market, and 50 percent are “coming straight out of a job.” She also noted that only 40 percent of the state’s workers are able to collect unemployment insurance, so very low-wage workers with children are forced to turn to TANF. Schlick suggested that to improve TANF she would “start with an assumption that poverty is a measure of circumstances, it’s not a measure of the person. I think misunderstanding that has gotten us in a lot of trouble.”

You go to a discussion like this and you get a sense of just how deep the knowledge is—sixteen years after TANF was created—about why the program doesn’t work and how it could easily be improved. And yet, Republicans and some Democrats continue to get away with pushing the notion that it is a success. 

I’m not sure what it will take to reveal the truth to Americans about how this program is failing low-wage working families and families that are unable to work. But I sure hope I won’t be writing another version of this article six months from now. Instead, I’d like to write about a creative, coordinated campaign by advocates and families across the country that is focused on revealing the real TANF, and that refuses to be distracted by the same old lies told by the same old people. 

A Reader’s Comment on “Time to Take on Concentrated Poverty and Education”

Missing from This Week in Poverty’s list of projects designed to alleviate the effects of concentrated poverty are projects aimed at providing more access to books. There is very consistent evidence showing that:

1. children of poverty living in high-poverty areas have little access to books at home, at school, or in their communities

2. more access to interesting, comprehensible reading material means better development of literacy

3. providing access to books increases literacy development

The major source of books for children of poverty is the library. Studies done in the US and internationally show that library quality (more books, more staffing, presence of a credentialed librarian) is associated with reading proficiency.

Recent research suggests that the presence of a library can cancel the negative effect of poverty on reading achievement.

Improving school and public libraries and supporting librarians, in high poverty areas, is a quick and easy way to improve the quality of life and school performance. For a fraction of what we are paying for tougher standards and massive testing, every child in the US could have access to an excellent supply of books and other reading material." 

Saturday, February 9, 2013

President Lyndon B. Johnson: 1967 State of The Union Address

Source:LBJ Library- President Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat, Texas) addressing a joint session of the 90th Congress, in 1967.

"We now have 2K (2048x1556) film scans of some of our 16mm films. This is a 1280x720 MP4 copy of our high resolution scan. To order high resolution copies without the timecode and serial number burn-in, please contact Johnson.Library@nara.gov

President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1967 State of the Union Address to Congress, January 10, 1967. 

Index terms: Speeches; Congress; State of the Union Address
LBJ Library video MP588 donated by CBS. For research purposes only. Use/publish only with permission from CBS." 

From the LBJ Library

PBS: The Great Depression: The New Deal Response

Source:PBS- Americans living through The Great Depression, in the 1930s.
Source:The Daily Journal

"PBS Presentation: The Great Depression"

From PBS

In 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt became President of The United States he inherited the Great Depression, which was basically an economy that was sinking and collapsing with basically no money anywhere, or no money being created. And anyone who had money at this point in the private sector was not spending, or investing the money. The Federal Government was literally the only game in town that it could spend and afford to borrow the rest to make up the difference of money.

America needed money to be invested in the country to get people working again and creating jobs so people had money to spend to generate economic growth, or at least create a floor for the Great Depression and buy time for the American economy to recover. Which is very similar, but not exactly how the Obama Administration and Congress responded to the Great Recession in 2009. We can argue about the effects of these proposals, but that’s how they were designed. And at least to a certain extent were effective in dealing with the Great Depression in a successful way.

The New Deal represented economic progressivism in the United States and the creation of the safety net. The New Deal and President Roosevelt wasn’t looking to end American capitalism, but to save it and create a system that could respond to people who fell through the cracks of it. And be able to spend money and invest in the economy when no one else had the resources in a very centralized and anti-federalist way putting a lot of responsibility with the Federal Government to respond to economic crisis’ like this.

President Roosevelt brought a progressive approach to the New Deal designed to save American capitalism, not end it or replace it. Which is one of the reasons why his critics on the right as well as left, like Wendell Willkie a Classical Liberal similar to me called President Roosevelt a Socialist.

Thats the situation that Franklin Roosevelt inherited as President in 1933 and how we got the safety net in this country known as the New Deal, our first phase of the safety net in this country. Where previously we were more of an economic libertarian country, where support for these policies seemed extreme or far-left, or something. President Roosevelt made these polices seem mainstream. 

Friday, February 8, 2013

PBS: American Experience- LBJ and The Economy: The Legacy of The War on Poverty

Source:American Experience- Presidential historian Robert Dallek, talking about President Lyndon Johnson and his Great Society.
"President Johnson took on the economy by waging a "war on poverty." "His vision was of helping the disadvantaged to help themselves," Robert Dallek says."

From American Experience

I've been blogging a lot about poverty in America the last month or so, at least once a week. And with the State of The Union address coming up this Tuesday I will be blogging about past State of the Union speeches. And Lyndon Johnson will be one of those speeches because like him or not he certainly made a mark about how we think about these issues in this country especially as it relates to the role of government especially the Federal Government and what we should do to help the needy in this country.

Robert Dallek Lyndon Johnson's historian may be correct that President Johnson's vision or goals for what he called the War on Poverty, ( I don't like that term myself but thats a different subject ) but Dallek might be right in the sense that maybe what President Johnson wanted to do with the safety net and this broad expansion of it was to empower poor people to be able to live the American dream like the rest of the country. And that all they needed was an education, job training to go along with financial assistance in the short-term to make that happen.

But the problem with the Great Society was similar to the New Deal: these programs weren't really designed that way. But instead designed to help people survive as they live in poverty. My position on public assistance is pretty clear: make it as effective as possible so it becomes obsolete. Meaning its no longer needed and that people won't want to live on it and be comfortable collecting from it.

Public assistance to me is so the people on it only have enough financial assistance to pay their bills, place to live, enough food to eat, enough clothes, basic healthcare. But that they would be under contract, that the way they pay back the country, is by bettering themselves. Getting an education, job training and getting a good job so they can pay back plus interest the financial assistance. They received from people who work for a living.

But for the most part thats not what we got out of the New Deal and Great Society. The basic design was that we have all of these poor people who lack the skills to be able to take care of themselves. "Let's take care of them for them so they don't not only have to starve and so forth. But also so they don't have to take responsibility for their own decisions and for their own lives. Because the Federal Government meaning the tax payers are going to do that for them." And forty seven years later we are still fighting if you want to call it that, this so called War on Poverty.

The Great Society had some good things in it that has helped reduce poverty in America. Early education, Head Start, the Job Core for young people from low income neighborhoods. Medicare and so-forth, but the basic design of it which I biggest problem with welfare state economics or democratic socialism was that most of these programs were designed to take care of people. Rather than empowering these people to be able to take care of themselves.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Nation:Eric Alterman: 'The Missing Link in Barack Obama's Liberalism'

Source:The Nation I think trying to get inside the mind of Barack H. Obama.

"The president's inaugural address touched all the important bases, except one.

Consensus! Left and right agree that Barack Obama not only gave a powerfully liberal inaugural address, but that he touched on all the important bases. “In effect, Mr. Obama endorsed the entire liberal agenda as the guiding star of his next four years in the White House,” wrote Fred Barnes in The Wall Street Journal. New Yorker editor David Remnick called it “Barack Obama without apology—a liberal emboldened by political victory and a desire to enter the history books with a progressive agenda.” 

Curiously, the so-called “center” appeared to be more upset about this than conservatives. While the latter at least grasped the concept of having been defeated in an election, the punditocracy’s wise men wanted to pretend it never happened. National Journal pundit (and Karl Rove e-mail buddy) Ron Fournier bemoaned what he termed Obama’s “sad capitulation to the times. It is as if Obama threw up his hands in (understandable) disgust with his polarizing rivals and declared, ‘If I can’t beat ’em, I’ll join ’em.’” He blamed the president for “raising expectations—this time for combat over a liberal agenda that will save the planet, fortify the middle class, protect entitlements, regulate guns and extend gay rights.” (Actually, Obama didn’t mention gun control, but never mind…) Looking for a wing-man, Fournier cited his fellow punditocracy pooh-bah, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who insisted “the country needs a president who can do more than advance, incrementally, a partisan agenda”; instead, he should “somehow rally the country to restructure Medicare and Social Security.” (Emphasis, one assumes, on the word “somehow.”) David Brooks, meanwhile, rather bizarrely imagined Obama and congressional Democrats working to kill the GOP by “invit[ing] a series of confrontations with Republicans over things like the debt ceiling—make them look like wackos willing to endanger the entire global economy.” (“I’m sorry, officer. Something I said must have inspired that gentleman to embark on a rampage of rape and murder.”) 

I’m happy to admit that the delusional “Can’t we all just get along?” spirit of Obama’s first term didn’t prepare me for the strong speech he gave starting his second. Like most liberals, I was moved by the poetry of inclusion. I was especially pleased by the marker he laid down on climate change. And I loved the way he stuck it to conservatives not only politically, but philosophically—like Ronald Reagan, but in reverse.

What troubled me was not so much the speech itself but the reaction it inspired. For if this is the sum total of contemporary liberalism, it has an awfully big hole in the middle. Sure, we liberals love gay rights, women’s rights and civil rights, but that is supposed to be—at most—only half the story. Liberalism’s social and cultural agendas shone brightly in the inaugural day sun; its economic component, not so much. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy noticed this, explaining: “In a world of tight budgets and congressional gridlock, one of the advantages of emphasizing civil rights is that it doesn’t cost any money.” 

Obama cannot be said to have ignored the plight of the poor and the middle class; indeed, some of the poetry of the address came on exactly this topic, as when he asserted that “the commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” But the crisis of inequality that threatens not only our economic recovery but also our democracy went almost entirely unmentioned. You’ve heard the statistics: household income in 2011 fell to its lowest level in sixteen years, while the gap between rich and poor is now larger than it has been in the past forty. As corporate profits rose to their biggest share of the national income in seventy years, workers’ wages fell to their smallest share in the same period. And wealth is even more concentrated at the top than income. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans now own more than 35 percent of the nation’s household wealth, and 38 percent of the nation’s financial assets.

Remember, we live in a country in which the Supreme Court defines money as speech. Political campaigns, whether official or Rove-ian, are funded by the wealthiest 0.05 percent. And their power can be measured by the ability of corporate lobbyists to force members of Congress to dance to their tune or risk unemployment themselves. 

Previous progressive presidents, at least since Franklin Roosevelt, could have looked to a strong union movement to help narrow these gaps, both politically and economically. But thanks in part to a vicious campaign to change labor law in favor of corporations as well as a national shakedown of workers aided by “free trade” agreements like NAFTA and GATT, our national unionization rate is just about one-third what it was when Dwight Eisenhower put his hand on the Bible sixty years ago. (The labor movement, too, went unrecognized in the inaugural address, as it has in almost every Obama speech, despite the relentless assault it faces in Michigan, Wisconsin and, of course, Congress.)  

If liberals really are ready to give up on fighting inequality, then while you may be able to marry your same-sex partner anywhere in the country one day, you had better be wealthy if you want your children to have any hope of going to college or making a decent life for themselves. Already, according to a Pew report last year, we know that nearly three-quarters of children raised in the bottom 20 percent of income brackets remain stuck below the middle of those brackets in the future, while a mere 4 percent can expect to make it to the top 20 percent. Figures like those spell the end of the American dream, whether it’s defined economically, socially or politically. And if Barack Obama would prefer to focus on other causes, however worthy, we had better find a way to change his mind." 

Robert Reich: 'The Economic Challenge Ahead: More Jobs & Growth, Not Deficit Reduction'

Source:Robert Reich is a left-wing political activist & writer, with a law degree.

"Can we just keep things in perspective? On Tuesday, the President asked Republicans to join him in finding more spending cuts and revenues before the next fiscal cliff whacks the economy at the end of the month.

Yet that same day, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal budget deficit will drop to 5.3 percent of the nation’s total output by the end of this year. 

This is roughly half what the deficit was relative to the size of the economy in 2009. It’s about the same share of the economy as it was when Bill Clinton became president in 1992. The deficit wasn’t a problem then, and it’s not an immediate problem now. 

Yes, the deficit becomes larger later in the decade. But that’s mainly due to the last-ditch fiscal cliff deal in December. 

By extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the top 2 percent of Americans and repealing the alternative minimum tax, that deal increased budget deficits by about $3 trillion above what the budget office projected last August. 

The real deficit problem comes after that – when rising healthcare costs combined with 76 million decaying boomers will cost us all a fortune. 


"The answer is to move from fee-for-service health care to pay-for-healthy-outcomes, including lots of preventive care. This will almost certainly require a single payer instead of our balkanized healthcare system drowning in paperwork as each part of it bills and tries to collect from every other part. 

Right now the central challenge is to reignite the economy – getting jobs back, improving wages, and restoring growth. 

Deficit reduction moves us in the opposite direction. That’s because most consumers (whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity) are still losing ground, and businesses won’t expand and hire without more consumers. 

So government has to be the spender of last resort. 

Under these circumstances, increasing taxes on the middle class (as, for example, Republican legislators and governors are eagerly doing by raising sales taxes, and as the federal government did last month by raising Social Security taxes) makes it even harder for consumers to spend. Which means slower growth and fewer jobs. 

Likewise, cuts in government spending, such as occurred in the fourth quarter of 2012, cause the economy to contract – as it did in the fourth quarter. 

In other words, we’re still having the wrong discussion. It shouldn’t be how to cut the budget deficit. It should be how to bring back good jobs and economic growth. 

Deficit hawks and government-haters are still framing the debate. That bodes ill for all of us." 

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Mike Gardner: Ronald W. Reagan vs Robert F. Kennedy- The Vietnam War (1967)

Source:Mike Gardner- U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Democrat, New York) in the United Kingdom in 1967.

Source:The Daily Journal

“The two debate against an angry English student in an early international town hall debate.”

From Mike Gardner 

Governor Ronald W. Reagan (Republican, California) and Senator Robert F. Kennedy (Democrat, New York) appearing on an international townhall between America and Britain, in 1967 over the Vietnam War. This photo is probably from BBC News, but the video from which the photo is from is not currently available online right now. 

Source:BBC News- Governor Ronald W. Reagan & Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1967..
Governor Reagan and Senator Kennedy were not just considered as potential presidential candidates against President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, but both were considered strong presidential candidates, that would both have their own political bases and the ability to raise a lot of money to run strong, national presidential campaigns in 1968. 

Salon Magazine: Natasha Lennard: 'Bureau of Prisons Agrees to Solitary Confinement Review'

Source:Salon Magazine with a look at solitary confinement in prison.

"Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., announced Monday that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has agreed to a full review of the use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. An independent auditor will carry out the review on the recommendations of a congressional hearing held last year by a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee chaired by Durbin.

“The United States holds more prisoners in solitary confinement than any other democratic nation in the world, and the dramatic expansion of solitary confinement is a human rights issue we can’t ignore,” noted Durbin. As Reuters noted, prisoners in isolation often are confined to small cells without windows for up to 23 hours a day. "[M]ore than half of all suicides committed in prisons occur in solitary confinement," noted Reuters, adding that in Durbin’s state of Illinois, 56 percent of inmates have spent some time in segregated housing.

Solitary Watch, an online project aiming to highlight the widespread use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, noted that in 2010, a spokesperson for the BOP said that federal prisons held approximately 11,150 prisoners in some form of segregated “special housing.” "This figure includes the 400 men held in ultra-isolation at the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum (ADX) in Florence, Colo., which is currently the target of federal lawsuits claiming conditions there lead to mental illness and suicide, and violate the Constitution," Solitary Watch noted Tuesday.

Civil liberties and human rights groups welcomed the news of the review, hoping that it would lead to a significant curtailing of the isolating of prisoners. "We hope and expect that the review announced today will lead the Bureau to significantly curtail its use of this draconian, inhumane and expensive practice,” David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said in a statement." 

Monday, February 4, 2013

Austin Millbarge: ‘A Grace Kelly Tribute (2007)’

Source:Austin Milbarge- The Amazing Grace Kelly appearing in High Society, from 1956. High Society would've been an appropriate nickname for Grace as well.

Source:The Daily Journal

“No copyrights infringement intended.
My tribute to Grace Patricia Kelly, one of the most beautiful woman of all time, and great actress.
song: Yanni – Face in the photograph
enjoy:-)” 


Grace Kelly was one of those special women who had the best of all worlds at least physically. One of the most gorgeous, as well as adorable woman whose ever lived to go along with a nice body. And the only problem is that she died way too soon at fifty-three.

The American Princess I believe is the best and most accurate nickname that you can give Amazing Grace, because that is what she was, even if informally. Because that is how she presented herself and how she carried herself.

Amazing Grace was a gorgeous, baby-face woman, with an incredible voice and personality, as well as intelligence and humor to go with those other qualities. And feeling for other people, that she wasn’t the only important person on the planet. And that all people mattered and were important also.