ABC Evening News: ‘March 1972, Campaign News’

Source:ABC News longtime anchor Howard K. Smith.

Source:The Daily Journal

“In this rare clip, One of Nixon’s primary challengers drop out, the Republican accuse AT&T of not making the Democrats pay phone bills, African Americans have their own convention Jesse Jackson makes an apprentice, also news on Northern Ireland.” 

From E-Fan

One way to sum up the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, is to say it went to the guy who was damaged the least and not to the best candidate. Because there was really never any real danger to President Nixon losing reelection. But about how big of victory he would get and what he would do with it.

The Democratic race for president between Senator’s George McGovern, Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and others, was great TV and very interesting. And a very good look inside of the Democratic Party was between its establishment Center-Left, that Senator Muskie and Senator Humphrey represented and the more social democratic New-Left that Senator McGovern represented in 1972.

The story about the Black Panthers (a New-Left socialist and communist group interested in the state of the African-American community) was interesting. They were in and outside of the Democratic Party back then and much further left of the NAACP which is more of a progressive Center-Left civil rights organization who are definitely tied to the Democratic Party as their supporters are.

The word militant is perfect for the Black Panthers, because that is what they were. And at the very least were linked and associated with known terrorists and criminals. And were accused of being part of terrorists acts in the 1970s. They were looking for a much more radical direction for the African-American community than the NAACP.

Apparently big business’s and other special interests on the Democratic Party and Republican Party was also a big issue in 1972. Of course it was which is why I still don’t know why Congress has never passed a full-disclosure law on all federal candidates and incumbents. Actually I do, because neither Democrats, or Republicans want to disclose who contributes to their campaigns. Because a lot of those contributors are controversial and Democrats and Republicans don’t want to officially be associated with groups like that. But that along with ending gerrymandering completely is the only way you weed out corruption in American politics. Because of how liberal our First Amendment is. 

CBPP: James Honey: Protecting Public Assistance in Deficit Reduction

Source:Center On Budget & Policy Priorities fellow James Honey.

"At some point, the President and Congress will likely agree on a deficit package that includes both up-front savings and a target for more savings that they would achieve in 2013 by changing tax and spending policies.

The package also will likely include a backstop mechanism that’s designed to ensure that the 2013 savings come to fruition even if the President and Congress fail to agree on those policy changes.

In designing that mechanism (e.g., automatic across-the-board spending cuts), policymakers will face a decision that’s received little attention of late — whether to continue a quarter-century tradition of protecting low-income programs or to break faith with that tradition and risk serious harm to the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

Ever since the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings (GRH) law, with its annual deficit targets and its across-the-board spending cuts (or “sequestration”) to enforce them, policymakers have exempted low-income mandatory (or entitlement) programs whenever they’ve included backstop mechanisms of that kind in deficit-reduction packages.  That tradition includes both versions of GRH (1985 and 1987), the pay-as-you-go laws of 1990 and 2009, and the sequestration mechanism of last year’s Budget Control Act.  Most of these laws were enacted on a bipartisan basis.

Were policymakers to ignore this tradition, at risk would be such key safety net programs for the nation’s most vulnerable families and individuals as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income for poor seniors and people with disabilities, child care assistance, free and reduced-price school meals for low-income children, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Subjecting these programs to a backstop mechanism would impose enormous hardship on people already living on the margins, far below the poverty line, and it would likely result in increases in homelessness, hunger, and the number of people who can't access needed health care.  The effects on poor young children could be long-lasting.

The crafting of a backstop mechanism, and what’s in it, is part of a larger question: who should bear the burden of deficit reduction?

In the plan by its co-chairs, former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, the President’s fiscal commission concluded that any deficit reduction plan should “protect the truly disadvantaged.”  Similarly, a blue-ribbon private commission chaired by former Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin and former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici proposed a plan that avoided cuts in low-income mandatory programs other than Medicaid.  The plan produced in July 2011 by the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Six did the same.

Those who believe that deficit reduction should not increase poverty, inequality, the ranks of the uninsured, or other hardships for our most vulnerable citizens should honor the Bowles-Simpson principle to that effect.  Policymakers should not overturn more than 25 years of precedent, and instead should maintain the historic exemption for low-income entitlement programs from automatic cuts under a backstop mechanism." 

From the Center On Budget & Policy Priorities

I agree with James Honey that we shouldn't gut programs for low-income Americans, especially when economic times are tough (like right now) simply for deficit reduction. But the idea that there are no savings in any of these programs that can be achieved, that could be used for deficit reduction, is at best far-fetched and worst, simply partisan. 

You lower poverty and unemployment in America, you would automatically reduce the deficit, because you would have fewer Americans on public assistance. The way to do that, while at the same time putting people to work and back in school, is to have work and educational requirements, that could come with childcare assistance, for everyone whose not eligible to retire yet and physically and mentally able to work full-time, to go to work and back to school, while retaining their public assistance benefits, as they're working their way off of those programs, with work and education. 

Salon: Irin Carmon: 'The Latest War on Single Moms'

Source:Salon Magazine- left to right: Mr. Nanny State & Flip Flopper. Or perhaps these two distinguished gentlemen go by different names.

"The United States offers the worst support structure for single parents among all comparable countries -- and if anything like House Speaker John Boehner’s Plan B carries the day, it’s about to get worse.

Republicans used to love the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, because they incentivized paid labor and used the tax code instead of cash assistance or programs to help low-income parents, most visibly single mothers. But that was before the cry against the 47 percent, a substantial portion of whom didn’t pay taxes because of such credits.

In the Washington Post, Jamelle Bouie points to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing that the two tax credits for low-income families will be slashed under Plan B: “A mother with two children who works full time at the minimum wage of $7.25 and earns $14,500 a year would lose $1,560 of her Child Tax Credit, which would plummet from $1,725 to $165.”

This comes, of course, a few months after the party’s nominee answered a question about gun violence by complaining about single mothers, and about a year after the supposed intellectual force of the party, Newt Gingrich, offered the following plan for reducing child poverty: employing young children as janitors at school. For a substantial amount of time in between, the leading candidate among Republican primary voters, Rick Santorum, was the guy who, as a Senate candidate in 1994, had suggested forced paternity tests for welfare recipients and said single mothers were “breeding criminals.” He added then, "We are seeing it. We are seeing the fabric of this country fall apart, and it's falling apart because of single moms."

Republicans used to love the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, because they incentivized paid labor and used the tax code instead of cash assistance or programs to help low-income parents, most visibly single mothers. But that was before the cry against the 47 percent, a substantial portion of whom didn’t pay taxes because of such credits.

In the Washington Post, Jamelle Bouie points to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showing that the two tax credits for low-income families will be slashed under Plan B: “A mother with two children who works full time at the minimum wage of $7.25 and earns $14,500 a year would lose $1,560 of her Child Tax Credit, which would plummet from $1,725 to $165.”

This comes, of course, a few months after the party’s nominee answered a question about gun violence by complaining about single mothers, and about a year after the supposed intellectual force of the party, Newt Gingrich, offered the following plan for reducing child poverty: employing young children as janitors at school. For a substantial amount of time in between, the leading candidate among Republican primary voters, Rick Santorum, was the guy who, as a Senate candidate in 1994, had suggested forced paternity tests for welfare recipients and said single mothers were “breeding criminals.” He added then, "We are seeing it. We are seeing the fabric of this country fall apart, and it's falling apart because of single moms."

It's excellent timing, then, for Legal Momentum to release a comprehensive report comparing the U.S.' policies on single-parent families (which most often means single mothers) and their children, with those of other countries. Republicans love to talk about the negative outcomes documented among such children, but their proposed solution tends to be rhetoric about how women should just get married or -- more recently -- trying to cut the scant benefits that are keeping the poorest of these families afloat, from Head Start to food stamps to the aforementioned tax credits.

This is usually when someone brings up Sweden. But it’s not just Sweden: The comparison countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. When put in this relatively diverse and similarly wealthy company, the authors write, “We find that U.S. single-parent families are the worst off. They have the highest poverty rate. They have the highest rate of no health care coverage. They face the stingiest income support system. They lack the paid-time-off-from-work entitlements that in comparison countries make it easier for single parents to balance caregiving and job holding. They must wait longer than single parents in comparison countries for early childhood education to begin. They have a low rate of child support receipt.” 

Partly as a result of “welfare reform” policies, they note, “U.S. single parents have both above average employment rates,” including, often, full-time and year-round work, “and above average poverty rates.” How does that happen? Single mothers pushed into the workforce disproportionately end up in low-wage jobs, and a diminishing pool of them at that. (Over 80 percent of single parents in the U.S. are single mothers, less than half of whom have never been married.) The recession’s lasting impacts have meant a decline in employment rates for single mothers -- from 73 percent in 2007 to 66 percent in 2011 -- even as the last remaining benefits are being haggled down in Congress. Single mothers also tend to make substantially less than single or married men with the same education, thanks to discrimination, occupational segregation and the historic devaluing of jobs women tend to do.

The study takes a broad view of government policies affecting the most vulnerable families: It's about affordable daycare and paid family leave, but it's also about access to health insurance, subsidized or free early education for 3- to 5-year-olds, and child allowance program, payments many countries adopted to encourage fertility, something conservatives supposedly want too. (The earned income tax credit and additional child tax credit were meant to have a similar impact, but those were different days.)

Getting fathers to step up is increasingly popular to talk about in the U.S., but when that doesn't happen, this country is not among several countries offering "advanced maintenance programs," in which the government guarantees child support payments, up to a point, and then tries to collect from the deadbeat parent.

These are all concrete ways that other countries are protecting low-income families, including children who might be trapped in a cycle of poverty -- but they cost a lot more than demonizing single mothers." 

From Salon

The Nation: Greg Kauffmann: 'An Education Wish List'

Source:The Nation- public school buses in America.

"A Broader, Bolder Christmas: Top Ten “Gifts” for Under the (Education Policy) Tree... 

From The Nation

The Real News: Socialists Sweep Venezuelan State Elections As President Chavez Recovers in Cuba

Source:The Real News- left to right: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez & Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

"Greg Wilpert: It's likely Chavez will not remain in office and Maduro will head into elections" 

From The Real News

It's easy to win elections for the Chavez Socialists in Venezuela when the Chavez Administration prevents the Liberal Democratic opposition from getting their message out to the people and being the real opposition. 

AlterNet: Thom Hartmann: 'Why Do We Get Riled Up About Gun Rights & Not Rights to Healthcare & Education?'

Source:Thom Hartmann is a left-wing, nationally syndicated, radio talk show host.

"The suicide/mass-killing in Newtown has provoked Senator Dianne Feinstein to propose going back to the assault weapons ban that George W. Bush let lapse in 2004. That’s a nice start, but increasing numbers of Americans are calling for a ban on all guns, except for those carried by people who actually need them.

And there’s a strong argument to be made for it.

The Charles Koch Foundation, which was founded in 1974 and then changed its name to the Cato Institute two years later, would like you to know something about gun control. In a commentary titled “Gun Control, Myths and Realities,” their director of publications, David Lampo, writes:

[T]he facts show that there is simply no correlation between gun control laws and murder or suicide rates across a wide spectrum of nations and cultures. In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel “have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.”

Sounds pretty compelling, right?

It sounded so solid to the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that he quoted it in an op-ed for that publication right after the Newtown murders. And then he discovered that just because something comes from the former Charles Koch Foundation – now the Cato Institute – doesn’t mean that it’s true.

In an article titled, “Mythbusting: Israel and Switzerland are not gun-toting utopias,” Klein set the record straight when he interviewed assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, Janet Rosenbaum. She’s an expert who’s actually researched the issue of gun control and gun violence in Israel and Switzerland.

In both countries there is no equivalent of our Second Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Hellerand, two years later,McDonald. In other words, there is no “right” to own a gun in either of those nations.

It’s worth noting that both countries recognize physical and mental healthcare as a “right.” But here in America we reverse that – the Supreme Court tells us (largely by omission) that physical or mental healthcare are merely privileges, while they explicitly declare that we have the right to own a gun.

Not so in Israel or Switzerland.

As Dr. Rosenbaum told Klein, and today essentially repeated on my radio program: “Both countries require you to have a reason to have a gun. There isn’t this idea that you have a right to a gun. You need a reason. And then you need to go back to the permitting authority every six months or so to assure them the reason is still valid.”

As a consequence of this, she pointed out to Klein, “There are only a few tens of thousands of legal guns in Israel, and the only people allowed to own them legally live in the settlements, do business in the settlements, or are in professions at risk of violence.”

For centuries, Switzerland has had a citizen’s militia instead of a standing army, much like that envisioned by Jefferson and many of the other Founders for America. Every able-bodied male spends a bit of time in the militia and, so the story goes, has a gun in his home.

But the story is wrong, says Rosenbaum. Instead of keeping guns in people’s homes, she told Klein, in Switzerland, “They’ve been moving to keeping the guns in depots. That means they’re not in the household, which makes sense because the literature shows us that if the gun is in the household, the risk goes up for everyone in the household.”

And, interestingly, they’re doing the same thing in Israel. As Rosenbaum told Klein, “In Israel, it used to be that all soldiers would take the guns home with them. Now they have to leave them on base. Over the years they’ve done this — it began, I think, in 2006 — there’s been a 60 percent decrease in suicide on weekends among IDS [Israeli] soldiers.”

That’s because there’s a clear correlation between having a gun in the house and the risk of suicide, because suicidal impulses come and go, but if they come when guns are around they’re a lot easier to carry out. And, as in the case in Newtown and most of our mass shootings, to carry out in a way that is made very, very high-profile by being able to kill a bunch of other people at the same time.

We have our priorities totally wrong in the United States.

The Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which brings together corporate lobbyists and Republican state legislators to write “model” legislation to introduce in Republican-controlled states on behalf of the corporations, has been doing everything they can to help out the gun industry.

As reported by Alex Kane on AlterNet, they include:

·Guns on campus

·Doing away with waiting periods to buy guns

·More “Stand Your Ground” laws like the one ALEC got passed in Florida

·No borders to firearm movement between states

·Annulling local gun-control regulations

·Putting in jail government officials who take away people’s guns in emergencies

·Promoting more semi-automatic weapons like those used by the Newtown killer

So we have this “right to guns” in America, that the Koch brothers are heavily invested in. While the rest of the developed and civilized world has granted their people universal rights to free healthcare and free education, and declared that owning a gun is a “privilege” and not a right, the Kochs have helped make sure that we’ve done the exact opposite.

Which is insane.

We no longer have a “well-regulated militia” in this country – Jefferson lost that battle two centuries ago – and therefore there’s nobody who should have a “right” to a gun in America.

Instead of talking about “gun rights” in this country – a phrase that’s being used more and more thanks to a hard push by gun manufacturers lobbies and their bought-and-paid-for members of Congress – we should be asking who needs to own a gun. And, then limit gun ownership to only those people who can demonstrate that need.

Meanwhile, we should be looking at things that the rest of the developed world long ago determined are basic human rights – even the UN has enshrined them as such – and move toward making physical and mental healthcare free and fully accessible to all our citizens, along with a high-quality and free education from kindergarten through a PhD.

The former Charles Koch Foundation now named “Cato” is right that Israel and Switzerland are models we should look at, even though they got their facts about those countries wrong. In both countries people have rights to education and healthcare, and no right to own a gun unless they can prove they actually need one.

And it’s worked out very well for the citizens of both countries.

We should learn from – and copy – their example.

From the AlterNet

New America Foundation: The Next Social Contract

Source:New America Foundation hosting a discussion about early education.

"Research shows that education investments in the earliest years of life make the greatest difference in the educational outcomes of children. America has an opportunity to provide children with high-quality instruction throughout the earliest years of their schooling by making changes at the local, state and federal levels. These reforms would lead to significant improvements in the educational outcomes of our students, citizens and future workforce.

As the Obama Administration and Congress consider how to revamp education policy, join the New America Foundation's Education Policy Program and Next Social Contract Initiative for the release of a paper that argues for a fundamental rethinking of public policy related to children's primary years in education, starting at age three and reaching up through the third grade, and for a lively conversation about education reform." 

From the New America Foundation