Obviously, José Feliciano's God is a much different one than the one our "shoot-first-and-fuck-the-asking-questions-later-part" president says speaks to him and the one worshiped by the "shoot-first-and-fuck-the-asking-questions-later-part" fundamentalist founder of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Killing's Not The Answer
Monday, February 26, 2007
Farmers Branch landlord ordinance update
It's nice to see several positive developments inspired by the negative, mean-spirited, unneeded and irrational Ordinance No. 2903 proposed by the xenophobic and disingenuous members of the Farmers Branch City Council. “I am running for City Council as the candidate that thinks our city can do better,” says Salerno. “The apartment ordinance – immigration Ordinance 2903 – will cost our community hundreds of thousands of dollars and take our focus and attention away from the things that matter most, like better schools, economic progress and a stronger sense of community. “I will launch this campaign by issuing a challenge to business and community leaders to come together, bridge the divides in our city, and build a true blueprint for economic and social progress. That should be priority No. 1 for any council candidate.” Hopefully, commonsense will rule the day in the May 12 election and 2903 will be rejected. In the event it does win approval, however, I think a judge will enjoin it from taking effect until a trial determines its legality.
Let the Voters Decide, an all-volunteer multi-ethnic alliance of commonsense individuals, businesses and community and political organizations, secured over 1,700 signatures (over 90% of whom were non-Hispanic) of Farmers Branch citizens on a petition that demanded the City Council either repeal the original landlord Ordinance No. 2892 or to put that ordinance up for vote on the city's May 12 city council election. Ordinance No. 2892 was spearheaded by City Council member Tim O'Hare last August. Without offering up a scintilla of evidence, O'Hare claimed that unauthorized immigrants were "a large cause of" alleged declines in Farmers Branch schools and retail operations. That was intentional deceit on O'Hare's part because (1) the facts do not at all support his charge, and (2) his real reason for pushing the anti-immigrant ordinances was divulged by an attorney who knows Tim O'Hare:
Tim O'Hare specfically told me his plan to get ever more big injury cases: 1) run for City Council; 2) either wait his turn or hope for something politically bad to happen to the current mayor of Farmers Branch; 3) get elected Mayor of Farmers Branch; and 4) when he was done with his term in the Mayor's office, he would sit back and get "all the good cases" in Farmers Branch and beyond. Why? Because his political fame would ensure he was the "go to guy" in Farmers Branch.
That O'Hare is pushing people's hot button and manipulating the unauthorized immigrant issue for personal political and financial gain, there can be no doubt. (As best as I can tell, Michelle at calle vienna was the first to report on this attorney's revelation in a couple of posts she did this past December--here and here.)
As it worked out, Ordinance No. 2892 was enjoined by a district court judge on the ground that it may have been adopted in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Seems the dastardly City Council members attempted to effectuate Ordinance 2892 through a sneaky and undemocratic closed-to-the-citizens session--and they got caught!
But, rather than doing the right thing and just repeal the landlord ordinance and letting the issue go after being presented with and verifying the people's petition, the stubborn City Council members instead crafted Ordinance No. 2903, which would only go into effect if a simple majority of the voters vote for it in the May 12 election.
Given that the issue will be submitted to the voters, the alliance's next logical step in their campaign to defeat Ordinance 2903 was to organize a voter registration drive, and that's just what they've been doing:
But, as reported by the Dallas Business Journal two days ago, Let the Voters Decide isn't the only anti-Ordinance 2903 organization registering voters in Farmers Branch, the last day for which is April 12: The Apartment Association of Greater Dallas says the Farmers Branch immigration ordinance unfairly penalizes Farmers Branch apartment communities.
The association is holding a voter education and awareness campaign beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Lakeview at Parkside Apartments, 3950 Spring Valley Road, in Farmers Branch.
The group said it wants to register new voters and inform apartment residents and other community members about the negative economic and social impacts it says the ordinance will have.
Ordinance 2903 requires apartment owners and managers to collect proof of citizenship or proof of legal residence from people who want to rent apartments or renew their leases. Farmers Branch voters will vote on the ordinance on May 12.
"Along with unfairly penalizing apartment residents and holding them to a different standard, Ordinance 2903 will eventually cost the business community millions of dollars in lost economic gains," said Gerald Henigsman, the association's executive vice president, in a written statement. "The cost for apartments to comply with the ordinance, fewer apartment rentals, and the net effect of lower commercial tax revenues could be a devastating blow to the Farmers Branch economy."
The association represents more than 2,030 properties representing more than 425,000 units in an 11-county North Texas area. The group also represents 635 companies that provide services and products to property owners and management companies.
In addition, as reported by Patrick McGee at the Star-Telegram, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials held a workshop smack-dab in the middle of Farmers Branch yesterday where about 150 volunteers helped legal residents from throughout the region complete citizenship applications. (I first learned of this news report from a post by Dig ad veritas yesterday at Dig Deeper Texas--a group blog "of moms in and around the San Antonio area who are tired of biting their tongues because we don’t think 'liberal' is a bad word.")
And in addition to that, the Green Party of Dallas County has endorsed the efforts of Let the Voters Decide and a second group, United Farmers Branch, to defeat the landlord ordinance. The Dallas County Greens have also been recruiting and providing volunteers to register voters.
These are all positive and constructive developments to ensure that Ordinance No. 2903 isn't passed into law. But the real answer to ensure that Farmers Branch's financial and human resources aren't squandered over such nonsense is to elect rational, commonsense folks to the city council. Commonsense folks like Tony Salerno who recently announced his candidacy for a seat on the Farmers Branch City Council:A new voice emerged today in the race for Farmers Branch City Council, as long time resident, businessman and community volunteer Tony Salerno declared his candidacy for the May election. Salerno announced a “vision for tomorrow” that includes opposing controversial Ordinance 2903, serving as a champion for new business development and forming a special committee to restore the community’s sense of unity and promise.
Guillermo Ramos, another Farmers Branch resident opposed to the landlord ordinance, and the individual who filed the lawsuit that resulted in the original landlord ordinance (2892) being enjoined, was also reportedly going to run for one of the two at-large city council seats up for election, but I haven't been able to find anything more about his candidacy since the 29DEC06 report of it. (If anyone has any up-to-date info on Ramos' candidacy, please let me know.)
Many folks who not in any way feel threatened by immigrants and understand that the unauthorized immigration issue is primarily a human rights matter, are putting a whole lot of their creative energy and other resources into the effort to defeat this anti-immigrant ordinance and to also elect voices of reason on the city council. And I sure wish them every success.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
EFCA alone not enough
Journalist and author Joe Conason penned a dead-on piece over at Salon.com yesterday on the two-faced position of Bush and Cheney in vigorously advocating democracy and liberty abroad while promoting the vigorous suppression of it here in this country:
Nobody talks about the democratic way more fervently than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who have so often proclaimed that the historic mission of the United States is to expand liberty around the world. The Bush administration frequently denounces governments that suppress free speech, intimidate citizens and tamper with elections, expressing outrage over violations of human rights and self-determination in states such as Cuba, Iran, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.
So what would our great advocates of democracy say about a regime that routinely deprives people of their livelihood for speaking out freely on public issues? What would they say about a place where citizens are forced to listen to propaganda -- or where voters have to run a gantlet of armed police to enter a voting booth? How would they describe a system that distributes bribes, spies on dissidents and threatens everyone who dares to vote the "wrong" way with the direst possible consequences?
If they told the truth, they would be forced to admit that those awful conditions still exist on American soil, oppressing millions of workers whose employers use such tactics to prevent them from forming or joining a labor union. (Remainder of story here, and I recommend it as a good read.)
Conason's latest book, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush, is now out and AlterNet has an excerpt from it here.
And building on an excellent post by Ezra Klein at TAP about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), Nancy Scola's "Who Workers Fear" piece at MyDD yesterday helps debunk the "but-the-union-will-intimidate-the-workers" smoke-screen raised by corporate and other anti-labor interests in protest of EFCA. At trip to both of those posts I also recommend.
Like Klein and others, I don't think EFCA would pass a senate filibuster, or garner enough votes to override a certain veto by Bush. There's more than sufficient objective evidence to warrant the reforms in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that EFCA provides, but I don't see it getting out of the senate in the 110th Congress.
Even when it is passed into law, which I believe will be the case in the 111th Congress, I also don't see EFCA resulting in increasing union membership in this country to a level I think is necessary for labor unions to serve as the major organized voice for democracy, liberty and progressive politics in this country. But don't get me wrong, the argument that EFCA will not add significantly to union membership rolls is not an argument for not passing it. In addition to allowing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to certify workers' choices for union representation based solely on the submission of valid signed union designations from a simple majority of the workers, EFCA would also provide two other important and much needed revisions to the NLRA:
- stronger penalties for violation of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations, and
- mandatory mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
But, in terms of serving as the catalyst for huge U.S. union membership growth, I think EFCA alone will not be responsible for that. Sure, I think union membership will increase as a result of EFCA, as it rightly should, but I believe such growth will be relatively modest. If EFCA were responsible for, say, a 15% increase in union membership ranks over the 2006 level (an increase of about 2.3 million members), that would certainly be terrific and nothing at all to scoff at. But for reform to result in an increase of union membership to the level, say, of 1/3rd of the workforce, an increase of over 27 million union members from the 2006 level, our brainwashed culture would need a frontal lobotomy to change the philosophical disorder that is one of the primary contributors responsible for the ultra-low unionization rates in the U.S.--the doctrine of individualism.
Friday, February 23, 2007
First Amendment and private property
As a follow-up to my post immediately below, we had about 20 folks show up on a gorgeous day yesterday to deliver letters to Representative Chet Edwards (D-TX-17). The letter writers, which were greater in number than we letter deliverers, voiced their objection to the war in Iraq and urged Edwards to work for the withdrawal of our troops from that country as soon as that could possibly be done. Some of the authors also thanked Edwards for his vote in favor of the congressional non-binding resolution that disapproved of Bush's plan to send more combat troops to Iraq.
22FEB07 - in front of Rep. Chet Edwards' College Station, TX office. Image by Ski
Chet Edwards was not in his office at the time of our visit there, but the sole and kindly staffer who was ensured us she wouldn't close the office for lunch (hers) until we all had delivered our letters. In addition to delivering our letters, one of the event's organizers was also thoughtful enough to bring Edwards a plate of home-baked cookies in thanks for his vote on the non-binding resolution.
So, although I wish 2,000 folks had shown up for this event, it never-the-less went as well as could be expected--until it was all over that is. That's when the cops showed up.
Seems that a branch manager of Bank of America, which has a branch office on the ground floor of the same commercial building housing Chet Edwards' office, had called the College Station police and complained about our group being on that property. Now mind you, that manager, nor any tenant of the building, nor the building owner, had asked us to leave the property at any time during our approximately 45-minute assembly there. We started meeting in the parking lot of that building at about 11:45, held a small rally (picture above and at The Eagle) at about noon that was filmed by local TV station KBTX, after which we all entered the building and went upstairs to Chet Edwards' office on the second floor, where one-by-one we turned in our letters--and the home-baked cookies. One of the organizers of this event was then interviewed on camera by KBTX right outside of Edwards' office. Some members of our group, including my better half Annie and me, started leaving the premises a tad before that interview was complete and the remainder of our group kind of straggled out piecemeal. As Annie and I pulled out of the parking lot I noticed that two police officers had come up and appeared to be talking to maybe five or six folks from our group who had stopped outside of the building's front door to chat a moment before going their separate ways. As I said earlier, by that time we had all been on this commercial property for about 45-minutes and no one had said squat to any of us with respect to moving our assembly off of it.
Having organized and/or participated in a fair share of union rallies and protests in the labor movement, I have experienced first-hand the tension between private property and First Amendment rights. Going into this rally I knew that at some point during our assembly we would probably be asked to remove ourselves from that private property. No big deal, had we been asked to leave we would have just moved ourselves 40-feet or so to the public sidewalk and held our rally there. At the end of the rally, we simply would have walked, as a group or not, right back onto that private property and entered the building to go upstairs to Edwards' office. In that scenario I don't know whether the property owner (had one been there) would have then tried to prevent our entering back onto the property, but if such an attempt would have been made, I for one would have refused to comply. And if necessary I would have gone to jail over that issue. Fortunately, though, we were not faced with that scenario because no one ever objected to our being on the property until, apparently, shortly before nearly everyone of us had left or was in the process of leaving. I can't imagine, however, that the legal system would ultimately condone an attempt by a commercial private property owner to prohibit constituents from peacefully accessing their congressional representative's public office housed on the private property. We weren't an unruly mob, we were non-threatening, we didn't block ingress or egress, and there were, embarrassingly, only 20 of us, of which some were a fair bit into their senior years. But, hey, this is Texas, remember, land of the "shoot first and think and ask questions later fagettabout asking questions later," and maybe property rights here trump all!
Anyway, as it worked out (the story of which was later relayed to our entire group from one of the rally's dawdlers "detained" by the police) the bank manager had no legal standing to order us off the property because the Bank of America doesn't own the building; they are just a tenant, no different in that respect than Representative Chet Edwards. Once the police determined that BofA didn't own the property, they allowed all the dawdlers to leave without citation, albeit not without a lecture/warning about trespassing and the consequences of such on the trespasser.
So, that leaves this question: Does a citizen in Texas have the right to enter onto commercial private property (that's open to the public for various public business) against the property owner's objection for the purpose of peacefully accessing the public office of their congressional representative? What's your take or answer?
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Stop the war lobbying effort
As part of a nationwide lobbying effort aimed at convincing congressional representatives to do what it takes to end the war in Iraq, many of us in the Brazos Valley Texas area will today meet at noon at the College Station office of Congressman Chet Edwards (D-TX-17) for the purpose of presenting him with letters from his constituents in opposition to our country's war in Iraq. Following is my letter:February 22, 2007
The Honorable Chet Edwards
111 University Drive East Suite 216
College Station TX 77840
Dear Representative Edwards:
Thirty-nine years ago, in a speech he gave at Kansas State University in March of 1968, Bobby Kennedy said the following about another proposed escalation of U.S. troops in Vietnam:But isn't this exactly what we have always done in the past? If we examine the history of the conflict, we find the dismal story repeated time after time. Every time -- at every crisis -- we have denied that anything was wrong; sent more troops; and issued more confident communiques. Every time, we have been assured that this one last step would bring victory. And every time, the predictions and promises have failed and been forgotten, and the demand has been made again for just one more step up the ladder.
It is impossible when reading this passage, as well as his entire speech, to not be startled with its applicability to the quagmire we have created for ourselves and others in Iraq today.
As a direct result of a president and vice-president whose inclinations are to shoot first and think and ask questions later—if those two prerequisites are considered at all—we have created a horrific mess in Iraq for ourselves, for the Iraqi people and for other countries in that region. As a direct result of President Bush's refusal to let inspections, diplomacy, negotiations, politics and other non-violent means continue their mission in Iraq, tens of thousands of our family members, neighbors and fellow citizens have been killed or maimed, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children have been killed or maimed, too. We have given away, mismanaged, lost and had stolen billions and billions of American's tax dollars in Iraq. Our military presence in Iraq has created more terrorists, civil war and instability in the middle east, and we have squandered our good will in the international community. The damage we have caused to the Iraqi society is immense and most of it irreparable. And the awful terrible tragedy of it is, all that harm and suffering was done unjustly and needlessly. Invading Iraq is our country's worse ever folly and I am writing to urge you to please do everything that you can to not allow this madness to continue.
I am asking you to please oppose the president's plan to escalate the war in Iraq and to also push for the immediate commencement of a phased withdrawal of all U.S. troops from that country. As you read this, Britain and other military forces are withdrawing from Iraq and we now need to do exactly the same with our country’s forces.
Bobby Kennedy also said in his Kansas State University speech:[T]his is a year of choice -- a year when we choose not simply who will lead us, but where we wish to be led; the country we want for ourselves -- and the kind we want for our children. If in this year of choice we fashion new politics out of old illusions, we insure for ourselves nothing but crisis for the future -- and we bequeath to our children the bitter harvest of those crises.
That passage, too, is as applicable today as it was nearly four decades ago. You are in a position, Congressman Edwards, to help our country make a different choice, to not “bequeath to our children the bitter harvest” of unwise choices by President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my views and I would welcome your response.
Sincerely,
Walter S Szymanski Jr
Edwards voted in favor of the nonbinding congressional resolution that disapproved of the president’s plan to send more combat troops to Iraq, saying it was the "appropriate and right thing to do," but I don't believe he will do more than that at this time to either stop the escalation or to call for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. Hopefully, our letters and meeting with him today (if we're able to do so) will help him to take that next step.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
NLRB Secret Ballot - in name only
"A secret-ballot election is the American way" cry the anti-union pushers in protest of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which, in addition to making other long-needed corrections in labor law, would require employers to recognize a union where a majority of the workers designate a union to represent them through signed authorization cards. Such card-check recognitions are perfectly legal under current law. Employers, however, are not required to honor such designations by their workers and may insist that the workers use a so-called secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to establish their union even if 100% of the employees provide the NLRB with signed authorizations designating the union as their bargaining agent. The EFCA would allow workers to have their union certified as their bargaining agent by the NLRB if a majority of them have signed valid authorizations.
But why do I say it's a "so-called" secret-ballot? University of Oregon Professor Gordon Lafer answered that question at a Congressional hearing two weeks ago:In the American democratic tradition the principle of the secret ballot is not simply the fact that you go into a voting booth and pull a curtain and nobody sees what you do. It is your right to keep your political opinion private to yourself before, during and after the act of voting; that you can't be lured or coerced into a conversation that is designed to make you reveal your political preferences. In the NLRB, while the vote does take place in a booth where nobody sees what you're doing, management is allowed to engage in a series of behaviors in the lead up to the vote that force the vast majority of workers to reveal how they're going to vote long before they ever step into the booth.
Listen to Professor Lafer testifying two weeks ago before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Hearing on Strengthening America’s Middle Class Through the Employee Free Choice Act:
Folks, it's simple: if the NLRB union representation election process were free and fair we wouldn't today be talking about the need or not of an Employee Free Choice Act. But the record is abundantly clear: management's unlawful conduct is rampant in the leadup to a union representation election. According to the NLRB, 31,358 workers received backpay in 2005 as a result of illegal firings and other unlawful discrimination by employers. It is impossible for American-style democratic free and fair elections to take place in such an evil atmosphere.
As professor Lafer pointed out in his written statement, "the [NLRB election] system is profoundly broken, profoundly undemocratic, and...profoundly un-American."
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Unionmaid from Pittsburgh
Anne Feeney, "unionmaid, hellraiser and labor singer" will be performing at at house concert in College Station, Texas tonight that my better half Annie and I are going to.
Despite three decades in the labor movement, most of that time which was on the Left Coast, I only first became aware of Feeney last summer when she played at the always cool Revolution Cafe & Bar in downtown Bryan, Texas. Feeney is a terrific performer and we're anxious to hear her belt out some down home, foot-stompin' and hand-clappin' folk & protest songs--a nice taste of which you can listen to here: Jail for Justice
Friday, February 16, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Billions of dollars wasted in Iraq
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money:Opening Statement of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (pdf file)
Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Hearing on “Iraq Reconstruction: An Overview”
February 15, 2007
Last week, our Committee focused on the $12 billion in cash that our government sent to Iraq. We learned that no one knows what really happened to that money or even whether it ended up in the hands of terrorists. All we know is that the cash is gone and billions were wasted.
Today we get more bad news. The Director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency is going
to testify that there are more than $10 billion in questioned and unsupported costs relating to Iraq reconstruction and troop support contracts.
This estimate is three times higher than the $3.5 billion in questionable charges that the
Government Accountability Office warned us about last year. And in this new report, $2.7 billion in suspect billings are attributed to just one contractor: Halliburton. My staff has prepared a memorandum on this subject and, if there is no objection, I will enter it into the record.
Even worse, the actual amount of waste is likely even higher. The Defense Contract Audit
Agency arrived at its $10 billion estimate after reviewing only $57 billion of Iraq contract spending. But American taxpayers have already spent over $350 billion for the war in Iraq. There’s $300 billion still to audit. The total amount of waste, fraud, and abuse could be astronomical.
Let’s add it up. Last week’s $12 billion in cash and today’s $10 billion in questionable
charges combines for $22 billion. And there’s still the potential for tens of billions more in waste. It’s no wonder that taxpayers all across our country are fed up and demanding that we bring real oversight to the “anything goes” world of Iraq reconstruction.
[emphasis mine]
And here's an excerpt from an Associated Press report tonight by Hope Yen:
The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House of Representatives committee that their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.
More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.
"There is no accountability," said David M. Walker, who heads the GAO, the auditing arm of Congress. "Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable."
Hey y'all out there with the "W" or "Bush/Cheney" bumper sticker on your pick-'m-up truck or car, does this news give you a couple of billion reasons to plaster the below sticker over it?:
Naw, I betcha they won't. I haven't heard nary a one of them "W" supporters cry about the billions of taxpayer dollars lost through waste, fraud, and abuse in this incredibly inept and unnecessary war on Iraq that Bush and Cheney got us into. No, the "W" supporters would rather just cry about such nonsense as "illegal aliens" "invadin' 'n takin' over the country" 'n "our way of life" 'n "costin' us millions in welfare payments 'n edjukatin' their brown babies" 'n "bankruptin' hospitals gettin' free medical care" 'n "not payin' taxes" 'n "sendin' all their money outta the country to a foreign land" 'n "not speakin' English" 'n...ad nauseum.
Think I'm gonna buy me up a passel of these here Impeach 'em stickers and slap 'em over the top of every damn stupid "W" decal I see--in Crawford!
Texans don't need no stinkin' edjukayshun!
How Texas Ranks Among the 50 States [pdf file]
(50th=lowest, 1st=highest)
* State Aid Per Pupil - 46th
* Current Expenditures Per Student - 40th
* Per Capita Spending on Public Elementary-Secondary Education - 38th
* High School Graduation Rate - 35th
* Average Teacher Salary - 32nd
* Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) Scores - 47th
* Percentage of Population over 25 with a High School Diploma - 50th
And if Republican Texas state legislator Warren Chisum, whom Molly Ivins called "the Bible-thumping dwarf from Pampa", gets his wish, kids in Texas, with the second highest public school enrollment in the country, will wind up with the same ignorant science background as his:
The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a Georgia lawmaker's call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges.
The memo assails what it calls "the evolution monopoly in the schools."
Mr. Bridges' memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect's beliefs.
"Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, Ga. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years.
[Full story at The Dallas Morning News]
It makes me sick to know that someone in a position to do some real good in helping to improve the education system in Texas is so blinded by his absurd religious beliefs that he prefer kids in this state graduate scientifically illiterate rather than learn globally-accepted sound science. Yes, Molly, Chisum is a mental midget and the Texas education system—and the education and future of its kids—will be degraded still further as a result of his petty mind.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Peaceful dispute resolution works
The New York Times
February 14, 2007
Editorial
The Lesson of North Korea
It is welcome news that North Korea has agreed to move toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel oil and international acceptance — including the hope of eventual recognition by the United States. When dealing with Pyongyang (and for that matter, the Bush administration), a lot can slip betwixt the cup and the lip. But if all goes as agreed, the world will be safer.
The obvious question to ask is: What took so long? And even more important: Will President Bush learn from this belated success? Will he finally allow his diplomats to try negotiation and even compromise with other bad and undeniably dangerous governments?
Mr. Bush could probably have gotten this deal years ago, except that he decided he didn’t have to talk to anyone he didn’t like. So long as the White House refused to talk, North Korea churned out plutonium. And once American negotiators were finally allowed to mix their sanctions with sanity and seriously negotiate, they struck a deal.
What took so long you ask? It took so long because our country hasn't established a cabinet-level Department of Peace, a department whose mission would enhance national security by finding alternatives to violent conflict in the world, alternatives such as those created and utilized in convincing North Korea to move forward with dismantling its nuclear weapons. It took so long because we Americans haven't made peace a priority.
But, you say, it looks like we're securing a peaceful resolution to a contentious issue in North Korea without a formal U.S. Department of Peace, so why do we need to go to the trouble and expense of formally establishing one when its proposed mission can be accomplished with other resources?
Because it is simply too dangerous and irresponsible to human life to leave peaceful resolution of conflict to what amounts to hit-and-miss chance. Think about it. There is no overall systematic and pro-active approach by our government that is responsible for researching, analyzing, developing and advocating peaceful solutions to domestic and international problems that we face. At the same time as that failure we've somehow as a nation (mis)managed to have small-minded men predisposed to shoot first and ask questions later serve as leaders of our Executive Branch. That dangerous-to-humanity combination has resulted in Iraq, a bigger U.S.-sanctioned folly, I believe, than Vietnam. Talking about President Bush's Iraq escalation plan at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this month, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel declared Bush's 2007 State of the Union speech "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” Not so. The escalation isn't the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, our country's decision to attack Iraq in the first place is.
I believe that had a U.S. Department of Peace been already established at the time Bush and Cheney took office, tens of thousands of American military men and women might not have lost their lives or had their limbs blown from their bodies, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children killed or horribly maimed in this war might not have suffered that fate either. There was not a single U.S. Government voice for peace; only official, and misleading, voices for bombs and bullets.
Under a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace (as proposed in HR 808) the Secretaries of Defense and State would be required to consult with the Secretary of Peace concerning nonviolent means of conflict resolution in any case in which a conflict between the United States and any other government or entity is imminent or occurring. There isn't any such mandate now, of course, because there isn't any department or agency within our federal government charged with the responsibility for taking a pro-active search for non-violent solutions. And the reason there isn't an official voice for peace is that not enough of us know enough about that choice to force its creation. As I see it, whether you're talking about workers organizing unions, or about eradicating the scourge in this country of capital punishment, or about choosing peace methods over violent ones, education is key to choosing change. Plus, we're fortunate enough in this country to have a system that allows us the freedom to choose change.
The Preamble of our U.S. Constitution provides us with the fundamental reasons for organizing ourselves into a union of states in the first place, and one of the principle reasons is to insure peace:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.That our government is, therefore, responsible for establishing a national priority on peace is inassailable. We organized ourselves and our government to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for our common defense, to promote our general welfare, and all for the purpose of our securing and enjoying liberty, that is, the freedom of choice.
We the People of the United States are free to create and employ, if we so choose, non-violent strategies and techniques in an effort to resolving disputes peacefully. And We the People of the United States, with an authority superior to presidents, legislatures and judges, owe it to ourselves, to one another, to our posterity, and not unimportantly to our past, to prioritize peace with a U.S. Department of Peace.
--
There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.
—Elise Boulding, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Dartmouth College and
Former Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The dogs of war
[The following post is a slightly-expanded version of a column I wrote for The Eagle, published on 13JAN07]
In questioning whether it is possible to fight war and manage conflict at the same time, the authors of Leashing the Dogs of War , acclaimed as "the definitive volume on the sources of contemporary conflict and the array of possible responses to it," conclude the following:
Our conclusion...is that peacemaking and conflict management are central for creating a less divided, less conflicted world—no matter the complexities and, at times, high odds against success.
The book provides ample evidence that the international community—both its leading official actors and its nonofficial components—can check hostile adversaries of the international order and make peace at the same time. We are learning to leash the dogs of war.
So, with respect to resolving domestic and international contentions, why are we not as willing to employ sophisticated ways of making peace as we are in using violence and waging war?
We have expended prodigious amounts of money, time, and creative energy in developing sophisticated weapons of war, such as laser-guided bombs that from a position miles away can be steered dead center down the smokestacks of an enemy, yet we fail and refuse to develop and employ sophisticated techniques aimed at creating peaceful solutions to contentious issues. It seems we’d rather kill or maim someone’s children, sisters, brothers, and parents, killing and maiming our own children, sisters, brothers, and parents in the process, than to leave no stone unturned in an effort to resolve conflict without bloodshed.
Why haven’t we as a country developed a Culture of Peace, that is, a set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiation? How come we scoff at the idea of establishing a Cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace, while at the same time we voluntarily send our children and other members of our families directly into the path of bullets and bombs? I defy anyone to argue that our current approach isn’t barbaric, insane and criminal.
Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, speaking of his leadership during the Viet Nam War, said, “We knew nothing about Vietnamese religion, psychology or culture – and we had no one to tell us.” And yet here we are 32-years after our war on Vietnam ended, arming our children and other members of our families in the military with all of the high-tech gadgets of waging war our country can imagine, but we haven’t done a damn thing with providing our society with a high-level infrastructure for creating peace. We're still using the same asinine and bloody paradigm of employing bombs and bullets to resolve conflicts.
That there is no high-level dedicated approach by our federal government to reject violence and create nonviolent solutions to international and domestic conflict doesn't make sense. Domestically, a Department of Peace (legislation for which has been introduced in the 110th Congress by Representative Dennis Kucinich) would be responsible for developing policies to effectively reduce the levels of our domestic violence, child abuse, violence in our schools, racial violence, mistreatment of the elderly and animal abuse, all of which are a national disgrace of the first magnitude. Internationally, the Department of Peace would develop policies and make recommendations to the President and Congress on the most sophisticated ideas and techniques regarding peace-creation among nations, including the protection of human rights. But establishing a Department of Peace and making peace a national priority is not going happen unless each one of us makes it a priority in our own lives to learn more about this and collectively act to make it happen. As Wilhelm Reich said in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, the responsibility for wars falls directly upon the shoulders of the citizenry, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands.
I have a few more questions: What kind of world do we want for our families and communities? What possibly could be of greater support to our troops over the long haul than a sophisticated effort to make active duty on the battlefield less necessary? And most importantly at the moment, what are we going to do to help make peace a national priority and a major institution of the U.S. Government? Are we willing to stand up and be a voice for peace, or do we prefer to just continue our current bloody and barbaric conflict resolution model?
The very agonies of war and the dark night of suffering that has
lasted for centuries are awakening civilization to a new understanding:
the peoples of the Earth have a sacred right to peace.
—Douglas Roche, Canadian Senator
[Tip 'o the hat to Annamarie Deneen at Verbena-19 where I first came across this quote.]
Monday, February 12, 2007
An opening for the citizens to act
I have previously expressed doubts about the wisdom and realistic chance of impeaching President Bush--primarily because of a fear that doing so would elevate an even more dangerous monster, Dick Cheney, to Commander-in-Chief. Plus, I argued, keeping El Pendejo in office would help weaken Republicans, and in so doing, lessen their ability to promote and implement their regressive and anti-worker agendas and chances of getting themselves elected or re-elected. It's like the way I feel about Creationists: the more they blather on about the earth being only 6,000-years old or that evolution, especially human evolution, is a lie and that so-called intelligent design should be taught in science classes, the more it will serve to make religion, especially their lunatic brand of Christianity, all that less credible.
Getting back to impeachment, though, what I am firmly in favor of is holding congressional investigations into both Bush and Vice President Cheney. I am one of the millions of people around the world who believe that there is ample evidence to affirmatively answer the question posed by former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega and others, as to whether President Bush and Vice President Cheney (as well as others within their administration) defrauded our country into supporting a war against Iraq. I believe that there is ample prima facie evidence (especially in light of the Acting Defense Department Inspector General’s intelligence report issued last week) that the president and vice president: mislead, and continue to mislead, Congress and the American people over the Iraq war; supported, and continue to support, torture; violated, and continue to violate, Americans' civil liberties through their domestic spy program; and, use their offices to punish critics, any and all which constitute impeachable offensives of high crimes and misdemeanors. I think formal congressional impeachment hearings would not only be the best venue to answer that question, but would also serve as an invaluable tool in helping to make people in this country acutely aware that they were duped. Not of course for the purpose of making folks feel bad that they were defrauded, but to capitalize on that realization in helping to shape publicly-demanded solutions designed to greatly lessen the chances of such Executive Branch-level of high crimes and misdemeanors from ever happening again.
And that's why I support New Mexico's Senate Joint Resolution 5 that petitions Congress to commence the investigation of and impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney.
American Chicks
Winning in every one of the five top Grammy categories they were nominated for (best group country performance, best country album, best record, best album, and best song of the year), the Dixie Chicks took home five Grammies last night. I suspect, however, that the recognition meaning the very most to them is the standing ovations they received.
"I think people are using their freedom of speech here tonight with all these awards. We get the message... I'm very humbled," said Natalie Maines.
Count me as one of the folks who couldn't be more pleased that these talented Americans stood up to and parried all of the petty-minded hatred spewed at them right smack back into the fetid, sick, ignorant and bigoted minds it arose from.
Congratulations, Dixie American Chicks!
Saturday, February 10, 2007
A trilogy of cat
(Image by Walter Szymanski. If you're interested, you can purchase a ceramic
"Sky City Cat" online from the Southwest Indian Foundation.)
Friday, February 09, 2007
The Little Man
(Original source of photo unknown to me, but I swiped it from here.)
The Little Man does not know that he is little, and he
is afraid of knowing it. He covers up his smallness and
narrowness with illusions of strength and greatness, of
others' strength and greatness. He is proud of his great
generals but not proud of himself. He admires thought
which he did not have and not the thought he did have.
He believes in things all the more thoroughly the less he
comprehends them, and does not believe in the correctness
of those ideas which he comprehends most easily.
—Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Thursday, February 08, 2007
State's right collides with individual's right
It seems to me that columnist Mark Davis at The Dallas Morning News has it right in his column yesterday with respect to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination executive order issued last Friday by Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry's Executive Order RP65 requires* all girls in the state age 11 and 12 to receive the HPV vaccine prior to entering sixth grade, effective September 2008 (*except for those girls whose parents choose to opt their daughters out for reasons of conscience, including their religious beliefs).
About the mandated HPV vaccination Mark Davis writes:
We have to figure out whether the HPV shots belong on the short list of things we are going to allow the state to require. Those who fear the slippery slope are not unreasonable: What's the next thing the state is going to decide is so good for us that decision-making is taken away from families?
But I have always felt that the slope is not so slippery if we distinguish between genuinely good ideas and bad ideas. Those judgments will differ, but as far as it goes, it seems that a state obligation to inoculate our daughters against a virus that can lead to cancer is not the most egregious government overreach of our times.
As Davis also recognizes, at its most basic, this is a classic collision of interests. On the one hand, what is the limit of a government's right (and obligation!) to regulate for the general welfare of the governed, and on the other, what is the extent of an individual's right to live his or her life free from state regulation?
In an article for the American Journal of Public Health (April 2005, Vol 95, No. 4), Lawrence O. Gostin wrote about this collision of interests:
A century ago, the US Supreme Court in Jacobson v Massachusetts upheld the exercise of the police power to protect the public’s health. Despite intervening scientific and legal advances, public health practitioners still struggle with Jacobson’s basic tension between individual liberty and the common good.
In affirming Massachusetts’ compulsory vaccination law, the Court established a floor of constitutional protections that consists of 4 standards: necessity, reasonable means, proportionality, and harm avoidance. Under Jacobson, the courts are to support public health matters insofar as these standards are respected.
If the Court today were to decide Jacobson once again, the analysis would likely differ—to account for developments in constitutional law—but the outcome would certainly reaffirm the basic power of government to safeguard the public’s health.
I possess no formal training in civic law, but from what I know about it at this point, Executive Order RP65 seems to meet the Jacobsen legal standard. It also seems highly likely to me that a legal challenge will be made against this mandate and then we'll all know whether it really does pass this test--or even whether a new standard will evolve.
Additionally, it's been argued to me that Perry should have formulated his executive order to allow parents to opt-in to the vaccination, rather than opting-out of it. Opt-in approaches have been proposed in school districts in some communities with respect to comprehensive sex education, but wouldn't an opt-in only approach in either case be more costly for a school district to administer and also result in lots less participation from the students? That being the case, our society would then suffer a preventable harm.
Texas now requires (pdf file) vaccination against Hepatitis B for every student, K through 12. I don't see the difference between that requirement and Perry's order for the likewise communicable disease of Human papillomavirus.
But, got a different opinion? Spell it out in a comment and let me know.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Wanted: U.S. Department of Peace
Q: Your views on the Iraq war?Those are the answers former House Majority leader and U.S. Representative (R-TX-26) Dick Armey gave in a recent interview with Dave Montgomery at McClatchy Newspapers (available here).
A: I'm not sure that it was the right thing to do. You might say removing Saddam from power was a right thing to do. Maybe it was, but was that necessarily then our responsibility to do that? And was it our responsibility to do that by invading a country that had in no way declared any war on us?
Q: You voted for the resolution to go to war.
A: I did, and I'm not happy about it. The resolution was a resolution that authorized the president to take that action if he deemed it necessary. Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively. I had a tough time reconciling doing that against the duties of majority leader in the House. I would have served myself and my party and my country better, though, had I done so. (emphasis mine)
And therein lies the explanation of how it came to be that we invaded Iraq. It is impossible for any human being to faithfully act in a way true to the principles they believe in. But when you're a political leader making decisions about who lives and who dies, an inability (self imposed or not) to stand up and speak against a wrong is a key ingredient in a recipe for needless and horrific human tragedy.
Amazingly, Dick Armey is not alone among the responsible decision makers in admitting his actions were wrong. Twenty-eight of the 77 senators who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq now say they wouldn't have done so had they known then what they know now. Bullshit. I think many of them are just using the "if-I-had-known-then" excuse to hide the fact that like Armey they, too, knew better and should have also vocally and aggressively opposed invading Iraq.
Millions of people around the world protested loudly and clearly that military force against Iraq wasn't justified. Millions of folks took (and continue to take) their convictions to the streets in protest of using war as the answer. But because Dick Armey and other political leaders best in a position to prevent this massacre felt constrained from publicly advocating their true doubts about and objections to invading Iraq, hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been murdered and maimed.
I don't know of any vote of import cast by Armey that I agreed with, nor do I know how it is that he (and other politicians guilty of the same offense) is able to live with his conscience given all of the blood spilled (and spilling still) in Iraq, but I will give him all the credit for his candid admission that he failed in his core responsibility to faithfully execute the duties of the office to which he had been elected by not aggressively opposing our invasion of Iraq when he recognized in the first place that it was the wrong thing to do.
Given human nature and the nature of political party politics, I don't believe we can rely on current or prospective political representatives from learning from Armey's wrong doing. I think there will always be human and institutional constraints which prevent every one of us from always being faithful to our beliefs and responsibilities. I do believe, however, that we can do immensely better in creating an environment that advocates against war and violence as a tool to resolve problems. And it seems to me that an excellent start in doing that would be with passage of HR 808, a bill introduced into the House of Representatives yesterday that would create a U.S. Department of Peace, which would be responsible for researching, articulating and facilitating nonviolent solutions to domestic and international conflict.
Thirty eight years after John Lennon wrote the song Give Peace A Chance we're still bombing and shooting people to resolve our differences. When comes the end?
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Dying slowly ever day
“I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all...so we will rest and anybody who wants the oil — which is the core of the problem — can come and get it. We can not live this way anymore; we are dying slowly every day.”
That heartbreaking outcry, reported in The New York Times today, was from Haydar Abdul Jabbar, a 28-year old car mechanic who was standing near a barber shop in a Baghdad market where a one-ton truck bomb exploded on Saturday, killing at least 130 people and wounding hundreds more.
The horrible utter hopelessness we have wrought on the Iraqi people.
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