Thursday, April 17, 2008

Investigator found polygamist ranch 'scary'. A child protection supervisor today testified she encountered several pregnant teen girls at a polygamist ranch who believed it was acceptable to be "spiritually united" with a man at any age. The supervisor testified at a hearing aimed at determining who gets custody of more than 400 children removed from ranch. [CNN.com] 8:08:02 PM    comment []

Tom Hayden: Obama Should Answer Bitterness with Green Industrial Policy for Pennsylvania. There's been much talk about the white working class in recent days, but few white working class voices in the debate. Carl Davidson is white working class to his core, an early leader of Students for a Democratic Society, one of the key organizers of the 2002 Chicago anti-war rally at which Barack Obama spoke. Carl repairs computers and trains inner city working class youth for high-tech employment. He did some work on Obama's computers back in Chicago. Carl recently moved home to Western Pennsylvania and now does local organizing as webmaster for progressivesforobama.blogspot.com -- Tom Hayden By Carl Davidson When I heard Hillary Clinton and John McCain claiming, against Barack Obama's recent observation, that there was no 'bitterness' among working-class voters in Western Pennsylvania, I burst out laughing, 'they've got to be kidding!' Unfortunately they weren't, and now the cable news punditry and right-wing talk radio has a new diversionary cause of the week to dump on Obama in lieu of serious discussion of policy and programs. I'm born and bred in Beaver County, Western PA, which, in 1960, was the most blue-collar county in the entire country-steel, strip mines, and everything related to both. My grandfather died in the mill, Jones & Laughlin Steel, crushed by a crane, and another cousin met the same fate a few decades later. My parents are both in the Pennsylvania Bowlers Hall of Fame (and Barack would do well to stick to basketball!). After a long stint in New York City and Chicago, which were irresistible in my youth, I'm now back home, living in Raccoon Township. Take it from me. There are a lot of bitter voters in these mill towns and the townships outside them. If they don't express it to the coiffured media, they do to each other. It's easy to see why. The towns are mostly empty, ravaged by deindustrialization. And the brown fields where the mills once stood are so poisoned grass won't even grow. After sitting empty for years, the first new structure to go up not too long ago on one near here was a new prison. Does this mean it's a clear path for Obama? Not at all, it's a rough climb, full of difficulties. But he's doing better than anyone expected. None of the polls are that trustworthy, because some tell the pollsters the 'right' answer, while others, such as new youth voters with only cell phones, are hard to find. Obama's closing on Clinton, now by a five point spread. The more people see him, the more they like him. But both Democrats run neck-to-neck against McCain in November. This is not a 'safe state' for anyone, anytime. 'White male identity politics' is the unpredictable elephant in the room. I've talked with older blue collar voters who claim John Edwards was their runaway favorite, but are now leaning to John McCain, in spite of their hatred for the war. White workers generally split three ways, roughly proportional, between the three candidates. Younger working-class voters, male and female, white or black, are not so caught up in it, and they are Obama's ace-in-the-hole. If his campaign can get them to the polls in droves, he can win it. That's the long and short of it, and if you can get here to help, please do so. Everything counts. The bitterness runs deep, favors no single candidate, and comes in several varieties. Retired steelworkers here had their pensions stolen by speculative capital, winning only part of them back by hitting the streets. There's also another kind of bitterness in Pennsylvania's demographics. It's now one of the oldest population areas in the country. My young nephews and nieces, even with some local college degrees or courses behind them, have a hard time finding work. Many young people have moved away to Florida or California, leaving older relatives behind. Here in Raccoon, they're now shutting down the elementary school, claiming 500 pupils doesn't justify the expense to keep it open. It means an hour on the bus for youngsters from a perfectly good school, and, yes, many parents are bitter. Aliquippa is the nearest town to me, known as home of Mike Ditka and Tony Dorsett. In my youth, it was a bustling blue-collar town of 20,000-some 10,000 workers in the mill, a mixture of Serbs, Italians and African-Americans. Now it's down to 6000, mostly poor and Black. They were the hardest hit of all, lacking the rural family homesteads to fall back on. Now joblessness, crime and addiction take a very bitter toll on the families still there, with nowhere to go. Does this mean it's all bleak? No, not at all, although Hillary Clinton is just dissembling, or worse, to assert that there's no bitterness, only resilience and hope, in these towns. People here like to pull themselves up independently whenever they can, like the Scots-Irish and Germans who predominated here in the 1800s. Their class solidarity means they'll accept a hand-up, and offer one, too. But they don't like hand-outs at all, unless you're at death's door, which is why their anti-'Fat Cat' populism also contains antipathy to some features of liberalism. It's also why Obama gets a standing ovation when he tells college students he'll help, but challenges them to give back, with community service work. This blue-collar populism runs the political gamut-left, center and right. You can get colorful examples in the hot debates in the interactive pages of the online edition of the largest daily paper, the Beaver County Times. Pick any topic or candidate -- you'll get fierce denunciations of the rich man's war for oil, combined with warnings against Hillary' 'socialism', claims that Obama's a secret Muslim, and despair that McCain's a clone of Bush. In this lively public square, Obama or any candidate would do well to discern the main themes. Don't get me wrong. People here are open and friendly. They don't expect you to agree with them, or vice versa. But they do expect authenticity, so when you get out organizing, speak from the heart, and don't put your head higher than anyone else's, and expect the same in return. At the top of their list is stopping the war now, since it's preventing any solutions to anything else. Next, do something about health care -- single payer is best, but either Obama's or Hillary's plan rather than nothing. Then debt relief and fuel prices, although no miracles are expected here. Finally there's creating new jobs and new wealth. This is probably most important strategically, but people have been spun so many promises, they're cynical, and Obama was right to point it out. Still he should look deeper here, and more often. What gets people's attention are 'high road' programs like the Apollo Alliance, new 'green' industrial jobs building the infrastructure of energy independence. All those wind turbines and wave generators and whatnot have to be built somewhere, and what blue collar Pennsylvania, white and Black, knows how to do very well is build things that create high value and new wealth. This is what gets people's attention, not rebates, handouts and McJobs. Obama's a natural on this subject, and he'd best spend less ad money on how's he's not in thrall to lobbyists, and spend more as an advocate of green industrial policy that would give these mill towns real hope for change. Carl Davidson is a peace and justice activist, a 'Solidarity Economy' organizer, and webmaster for 'Progressives for Obama'. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 5:08:06 PM    comment []

David Sirota: Newsflash: Populism Is Popular. Cross-posted from CAF Whenever pundits and political elites express surprise at the power of populism, I always think back to the tongue-in-cheek headline of Chris Hayes' In These Times article that read "Economic Populism Proves Popular." Populism is an ideology that says that government should - gasp! - reflect what actual people want. It is just so damn funny when the same political Establishment professing reverence for our democracy then expresses outrage and surprise that politicians once in a while are forced to reflect what the public wants. So I was laughing today when I read this Bloomberg News piece breathlessly telling us that "Democrats Pushing Obama, Clinton Toward Populism" - as if that's something so outrageous and odd as to be shocking. Here's the critical news from Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina - three states whose primaries are coming up: Democrats in all three states had a negative view of trade, with 58 percent in Indiana, 55 percent in Pennsylvania and 61 percent in North Carolina saying it has hurt the economy. At least three in 10 in each state say it hurt a lot. This finding conforms with earlier polling showing voters of both parties are sick and tired of lobbyist-written trade policies that undermine our economy and destroy the environment and human rights in the developing world. Additionally, the same poll shows the public is angry about our politicians using their power to hand over more goodies to the banks and Wall Street firms that created the financial crisis: A majority in each state favors a government bailout of homeowners in danger of foreclosure, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of likely Democratic voters...After mortgage lenders, voters in the three states faulted insufficient government regulation, as well as irresponsible borrowers, for the housing crisis...Respondents in all three states say, by margins of 2 to 1 or better, that the federal government should regulate the financial industry more aggressively. That news outlets seem so surprised that the public supports populist policies to deal with our economic crisis just shows how out of touch with mainstream public opinion our political elite is from the rest of the country. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 3:38:15 PM    comment []

NYT’s Lichtblau: Bush Torture Program And CIA Tape Destruction ‘Could Lead To Criminal Action’. ABC News recently revealed that President Bush[base ']Äôs most senior advisers convened in 2002 and approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics. Days later, Bush told ABC he “approved” of the tactics. Questions have been raised as to whether senior officials, including Bush, could be prosecuted for approving torture. ThinkProgress discussed the issue with The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University. Lichtblau won the Pullitzer Prize for his December 2005 story breaking the news that Bush was illegally spying on Americans after 9/11. As legal affairs editor of The New Republic, Rosen is considered “the nation[base ']Äôs most widely read and influential legal commentator.” Discussing the potential for criminal prosecution against senior advisers, Lichtblau argued that a more probable scenario is that low-level officers who executed the interrogation orders face prosecution: I certainly don’t think it’s likely that you would see international war crimes or, even in a Democratic administration, criminal prosecutions. … I think more likely, if you’re looking at criminal action, the more likely scenario is against the low level case officers who may have actually been carrying out interrogations and using severe interrogation tactics bordering on torture. … If that could be established or of course we have now the destruction of the CIA tapes, and that cover-up could very well lead to, conceivably, I should say, lead to criminal action if it were found that that were done to withhold evidence from the courts or 9/11 Commission. Rosen came to similar conclusions, but urged Congress to more strongly assert its constitutional oversight role to “haul” Vice President Cheney and chief of Staff David Addington to testify: Congressional oversight, congressional hearings, censure, political pressure. [base ']Ķ The time is ticking away, and they have the ability to haul these people up and ask Cheney and Addington what they were thinking when they endorsed these programs. That’s the appropriate remedy — not some hope of criminal prosecution. Watch it: <script type="text/javascript"> var flvlichtblaurosen32024021886 = new SWFObject('/wp-content/plugins/flvplayer.swf?file=http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/04/lichtblaurosen.320.240.flv&;autoStart=false', 'em-flvlichtblaurosen32024021886', '320', '260', '6', '#ffffff'); flvlichtblaurosen32024021886.addParam('quality', 'high'); flvlichtblaurosen32024021886.addParam('wmode', 'transparent'); flvlichtblaurosen32024021886.write('flvlichtblaurosen32024021886'); </script> Observing Congress[base ']Äôs aggressive and effective oversight during the U.S. Attorney scandal, Rosen argued that the ongoing debate over FISA and surveillance is lacking similar oversight, as Congress has not firmly drawn the line in the sand: When it comes to oversight of FISA, both to refining the law in ways that would protect liberty and security and also holding Addington and Cheney accountable for having arguably broken it, they have not done so. … By contrast, Democrats are pretty undecided about exactly where the line should be on FISA and in fact many of them seem inclined to give the Administration far more than many in the civil liberties community think is appropriate. Lichtblau has published a book, Bush[base ']Äôs Law: The Remaking Of American Justice, which details the development of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and the White House’s attempts to thwart Lichtblau along the way. Read an excerpt here. [Think Progress] 2:59:22 PM    comment []

Hannity Spoonfed Left-Field Debate Question To Stephanopoulos The unseen influence of Fox News wormed its way into tonight's nominally ABC-hosted debate, when Senator Barack Obama was asked to account for his tenuous connections to former Weather Underground leader <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers";>William Ayers, who famously <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all";>began a New York Times article with this statement: ''I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough.''* The question was posed by George Stephanopoulos, who neither conceived of the question himself, nor disclosed the primary source of his donated inquiry: Fox News talking head Sean Hannity. The blogosphere has been up on this from jump street. On Tuesday, <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5518957";>Democratic Underground was among the first to note that Stephanopoulos was "Taking Notes From Sean Hannity for Tomorrow Night's Debates": Hannity asked George what kinds of questions they'll be asking at the debate tomorrow and they discussed a few things. When Hannity asked about the first question below about Ayers and whether George had plans to ask such a question, George replied, "Well, I'm taking notes now Sean." It did actually sound like he was pausing to take notes. And Hannity continued to feed him more: 1) Ask Obama about his relationship with Ayers and WeatherUnderground and Axelrod's comments, "They're friendly" 2) Ask Obama why he attended the Million Man March From there, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/16/13329/3501/457/496866";>DailyKos jumped on the story like a pissed-off mouse on cheese, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/4/16/13329/3501/411#c411";>breaking an important update along the way: ABC contacted UIC for a photo of Ayers to be used tonight. Granted, this may be simply for the sake of having it on hand, but it seemed pretty clear that it IS going to be coming up in the debate. Perhaps unused to receiving such a strong dose of the harsh stuff from the media (or unprepared - is there no one at the Obama campaign that's reading DailyKos?), Obama passed on the opportunity to knock ABC for asking the question. He offered a game enough response, noting that he was on friendly terms with Republican Senator Tom Coburn, who once advocated for the application of the death penalty to the providers of legal abortions: OBAMA: Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements? Because I certainly don't agree with those, either. So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, that somehow their ideas could be attributed to me, I think the American people are smarter than that. They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn't. MSNBC's Keith Olberman was one of the few in the traditional media to note the Hannity connection to Stephanopoulous' question. [WATCH.] <iframe src="http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1507884255"; width="486" height="412" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> *An interesting point about this Ayers article: an extra dose of damnation has been laid on this statement because the article in which it appears carries the dateline of September 11, 2001, as if to say the statement is trebly offensive because it coincided with that tragic day. But these criticisms are insincere: obviously, the article was slated to go to press before the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and was available at newsstands in advance of the attacks as well. As our own Rachel Sklar pointed out tonight, no one from the New York Times was covering any other beat on September 11th other than the terrorist attacks. - The Huffington Post News Team [huffpolitics on The Huffington Post] 1:11:24 PM    comment []