Cold Water Flat

2007-11-26T11:26:00.000-06:00

I am just now resuming blogging, but this blog is no longer active. I have migrated all posts to my new blog, Cold Water Flat, at WordPress.

Please c'mon over to my new blog for a visit and, if you'd like, please remember to add my new URL to your bookmarks.

Peace.

Farmers Branch

2007-05-22T14:33:00.000-05:00

Although I haven't written very much lately about Farmers Branch, Texas and its nativist elements and anti-immigrant actions, I have regularly kept up with that nasty situation. But the good news about that mess is that yesterday United States District Judge Sam A. Lindsay has found that Farmers Branch Ordinance 2903 is preempted by the Supremacy Clause and issued a temporary restraining order (available here as a pdf file) that restrains and prohibits the City of Farmers Branch, and its officers, agents, servants, employees, representatives, or attorneys "from effectuating or enforcing Ordinance 2903." Ordinance 2903 (available here as a text document) requires landlords and property managers of apartment complexes in Farmers Branch to document the U.S. citizenship or “eligible immigration status” of certain tenants prior to allowing the tenants to lease an apartment.

Here's Judge Lindsay's official conclusion:

All in all, the court concludes that only the federal government may determine whether an individual is legally in the United States. Farmers Branch, rather than deferring to the federal government’s determination of immigration status, has created its own classification scheme for determining which noncitizens may rent an apartment in that city. Farmers Branch has failed to adopt federal immigration standards. The Ordinance adopts federal housing regulations that govern which noncitizens may receive housing subsidies from the federal government, not federal immigration standards that determine which noncitizens are legally in this country. Because Farmers Branch has attempted to regulate immigration differently from the federal government, the Ordinance is preempted by the Supremacy Clause.

Judge Lindsay's ruling is a very well-reasoned opinion and I don't think anyone, not even the Farmers Branch City Attorney, is at all surprised by his ruling.

Nor should anyone be surprised to see or hear some folks rant on about how Judge Lindsay's order denies the citizens of Farmers Branch, who just voted two to one in the May 12 election in favor of Ordinance 2903, to democratically run the affairs of their city as they see fit. Such "will of the people" arguments are nonsense, of course, because voter-sanctioned acts that fly in the face of our Constitution and other laws can't be legally sustained. As many courts have now ruled, the power to regulate immigration is unquestionably and exclusively a federal power, and that's as it should be.

A more interesting development in Farmers Branch, though, is a new law suit that argues minorities are underrepresented because of the at-large city council system in Farmers Branch. As reported yesterday by the Associated Press, the lawsuit seeks creation of single-member districts, in which a city council member is elected to represent a specific section of the city. We have single-member city council districts here in Bryan, which is the electoral system I prefer, but as best as I can tell the majority of Texas municipalities use the at-large system. Given that Latino's comprise close to 40% of the population of Farmers Branch, I'd say they are entitled to elect a member to their city council that they prefer, but unless they've got some pretty strong evidence to support their argument, I suspect they'll have a tough time convincing a court to throw out their current at-large system.

Blogging takes dedication, discipline and talent

2007-05-22T10:32:00.000-05:00

I've learned that, for me, posting regularly on a blog takes a lot of dedication, discipline, and talent. I'm not one of those folks who can sit down at a keyboard and just type away with their thoughts flowing coherently, with only minor editing needed for publishing. That's not a new revelation to me; in my earlier life as a labor union rep I always struggled writing arbitration post-hearing briefs by their due date. I've always done much better with oral argument than with writing, but still, I do like to write--just as long as it's at my pace. Also, a blog is like writing an arbitration post-hearing brief in that you better have your facts straight. Research, fact gathering and fact checking has eaten up a lot of my time blogging. I must admit, though, that the time I spend on those tasks is exaggerated to a goodly degree because of my becoming distracted when stumbling upon other topics that grab my attention while doing the background work. More discipline here on my part would help in the goal of regular postings, but I'm not there yet.

But the biggest factor in keeping a blog up to date is having the time to do so--and lately I haven't had as much free time as I've enjoyed in the past. For the past two months I've been helping long-time friends remodel an old farm house on their property in Hempstead, TX, a little ranch community of 6,500 that is about a 40-minute ride down the road from me. My friends commenced this project a little earlier this year and it consists of tons of demolition work, shoring up foundation beams, bumping out a few perimeter walls, adding site-built roof trusses and roofing, adding a partial wrap-around porch, converting a front room into a bedroom with a new bathroom, reconstructing a kitchen from scratch, redoing plumbing and electric, new flooring, residing, maybe some HVAC and attic work, ...and the list goes on.

Anyway, barring anything unforeseen, I'll probably continue helping my friends out on this project for the next couple of months, which will also probably mean I won't be doing as much blogging as I'd like. So, if you two regular readers of my blog think it worthwhile, please bear with me and let's see if I can't do better at this blogging stuff.

McGovern socks it to Chickenhawk Cheney

2007-04-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.

That's a part of what George McGovern had to say today in response to V.P. Dick(head) Cheney's wild-assed allegation that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq. McGovern also had this to say:

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?

We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.

On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

McGovern's entire piece is well worth the read and I recommend it highly.

Half-staff for war dead - part 2

2007-04-24T09:47:00.000-05:00

"Why did we lower flags to half-mast for students and faculty killed in the Virginia Tech shootings but do not do the same for our fallen soldiers in the Middle East?" That's the question recently posed by Sgt. Jim Wilt from his Army outpost near Kabul, Afghanistan.

I noticed the blurb of this story over at Truthdig.com this morning, which also provided the link to Associated Press writer Alisa Tang's full story at Yahoo News:

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Army sergeant complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq.

In the article issued Monday by the public affairs office at Bagram military base north of Kabul, Sgt. Jim Wilt lamented that his comrades' deaths have become a mere blip on the TV screen, lacking the "shock factor" to be honored by the Stars and Stripes as the deaths at Virginia Tech were.

"I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. service member," Wilt wrote.

He noted that Bagram obeyed President Bush's order last week that all U.S. flags at federal locations be flown at half-staff through April 22 to honor 32 people killed at Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old student gunman who then killed himself.

"I think it is sad that we do not raise the bases' flag to half-staff when a member of our own task force dies," Wilt said.

I not only think that's a sad fact, too, I also believe it's disgraceful that we don't do this.

I don't know whether they'll print it or not, but this morning I sent the following letter on this matter to the editor of The Bryan-College Station Eagle:

The 296th Texan was killed in Iraq on Saturday, Cpl. Ray Michael Bevel, 22, of Andrews, but Governor Perry has yet to order flags flow at half-staff in honor of any of them. Other state governors have done so, including the governors of Arkansas, Michigan, California, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Oregon, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Connecticut and New Mexico.

Nothing in the Federal Flag Code prohibits the flying of the American flag at half-staff on each day an American soldier is killed in war. In fact, Governor Perry used his authority to order that flags at state buildings be flown at half-staff in memory of the shooting victims at Virginia Tech. Surely he has the authority to do the same thing each time a son or daughter of the Lone Star state is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Even some Texas cities and counties (Sunset Valley, San Antonio, Bexar County, and Fredericksburg for example) have lowered flags to half-staff in honor of the soldiers killed in Iraq from their areas. So why doesn't Governor Perry do so?

Yes, the last Monday in May is reserved each year to commemorate U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country, but according to the Federal Flag Code, the flag is supposed to be flown at half-staff only until noon on Memorial Day. As I see it, our state and national flags should be flown for 24-hours at half-staff on federal, state, county and municipal properties on each and every day an American soldier looses his or her life in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I'll let you know if it gets published.

Half-Staff for War Dead

2007-04-22T15:44:00.000-05:00

How come our country's flag hasn't been flown at half-staff on each and every day an American soldier has lost his or her life in Iraq?

According to Section 3(m) of the Federal Flag Code (Public Law 94-344):

By order of the President, the flag shall be flown at half-staff upon the death of principal figures of the United States Government and the Governor of a State, territory, or possession, as a mark of respect to their memory. In the event of the death of other officials or foreign dignitaries, the flag is to be displayed at half-staff according to Presidential instructions or orders, or in accordance with recognized customs or practices not inconsistent with law. In the event of the death of a present or former official of the government of any State, territory, or possession of the United States, the Governor of that State, territory, or possession may proclaim that the National flag shall be flown at half-staff. The flag shall be flown at half-staff thirty days from the death of the President or a former President; ten days from the day of death of the Vice President, the Chief Justice or a retired Chief Justice of the United States, or the Speaker of the House of Representatives; from the day of death until interment of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Secretary of an executive or military department, a former Vice President, or the Governor of a State, territory, or possession; and on the day of death and the following day for a Member of Congress.

Not a single thing in the Federal Flag Code prohibits the flying of the American flag at half-staff on each day an American soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet, as noted by Brad Friedman at The Brad Blog, to date, George W. Bush has failed to attend even one funeral let alone ordered flags lowered to half-staff for a single one of them.

Some governors, though (for example, the governors of California, Michigan, Oregon and New Mexico), have ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff to honor soldiers from their states who were killed in Iraq. As best as I can tell, however, the governor of Texas inexplicably hasn't seen fit to likewise honor the 219 fallen sons and daughters of Texas who have lost their lives in Iraq (316 including those killed in Afghanistan). Even some Texas cities and counties have started to fly the flag at half-staff for this reason. But not the Lone Star state itself. How come, Perry?

Yes, the last Monday in May is reserved each year to commemorate U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country, but the flag is flown at half-staff only until noon on Memorial Day (Federal Flag Code, Section 2(d)) and that simply is not sufficient to honor our war dead. Flags should be flown at half-staff on federal, state, county and municipal properties on each day an American soldier is killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Please click here to go to The Petition Site where Jean Matricaria has started an American Flag at Half Staff for our Soldiers petition. Jean is hoping to gather the same amount of signatures in support of her petition as the amount of U.S. soldiers who lost their lives in the Iraq War--3,323 to date. Jean says:

We have a beautiful custom to show respect for our deceased Presidents - our American Flag at half staff. Our flag stands for the People and Freedom. I would like to see our flags, across the USA, at half staff until the war is over. What better way to let our soldiers and their families know that they are in our thoughts and prayers everyday. That they are appreciated by all of us.

I'm with you, Jean, and I happily signed your petition. I will also be writing my federal, state, county and municipal representatives about this matter.

Employment-at-will lawyers

2007-04-19T07:01:00.000-05:00

One of the issues that has received scant attention in the news reporting of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys is any mention of the employment at-will doctrine--a doctrine that union-represented employees, including these union-represented attorneys, in this country aren't at all worried about.

Under the legal doctrine of employment at-will, which the ACLU rightfully labels "a relic of 19th-century antilabor laws," unless there is some sort of a contract between you and your employer that says differently, or you live in the state of Montana, you are employed at the whim of your employer:

Employment At Will: What Does It Mean?

Job applicants and new employees are often perplexed to read -- in a job application, employment contract, or employee handbook -- that they will be employed "at will." They are even more troubled when they find out exactly what this language means: An at-will employee can be fired at any time, for any reason (except for a few illegal purposes, spelled out below). If the employer decides to let you go, that's the end of your job -- and you have very limited legal rights to fight your termination.

"If you are employed at will, your employer does not need good cause to fire you. In every state but Montana (which protects employees who have completed an initial "probationary period" from being fired without cause), employers are free to adopt at-will employment policies -- and many of them have. In fact, unless your employer gives some clear indication that it will only fire employees for good cause, the law presumes that you are employed at will.

How come union-represented folks aren't concerned about at-will employment? Because union-represented workers are protected from unjust discipline and termination by their union contract, virtually all of which contain some form of a "just cause" provision. Simply stated, a just cause provision requires the boss to have a legitimate reason in order to discipline or discharge employees. A typical union contract just cause provision reads:

With respect to nonprobationary employees, disciplinary action, including termination of employment, shall be for just cause only. Unless the nature and circumstances of the offense warrant a more severe sanction, such discipline shall be progressive and shall be limited to written warning, disciplinary probation, suspension without pay, and dismissal.

Look though you might, you'd be hard-pressed to find a real definition of just cause in any union contract. That doesn't mean, however, that there isn't a widely-accepted definition of that crucial clause. In 1966, arbitrator Carroll R. Dougherty, in a now classic labor arbitration case, articulated seven tests of just cause:

Did the employer give to the employee forewarning or foreknowledge of the possible or probable consequences of the employee’s disciplinary conduct?
Was the employer’s rules or managerial order reasonably related to (a) orderly, efficient and safe operation of the employer’s business; and (b) the performance that the employer might properly expect of the employer?
Did the employer, before administering the discipline to the employee, make an effort to discover whether the employee did, in fact, violate or disobey a rule or order of management?
Was the employer’s investigation conducted fairly and objectively?
At the investigation, did the decision maker obtain substantial evidence or proof that the employee was guilty as charged?
Has the employer applied its rules, orders and penalties even-handedly and without discrimination to all employees?
Was the degree of discipline administered by the employer reasonably related to (a) the seriousness of the employee’s proven offense; and (b) the record of the employee in the service of the employer?

A just cause provision in a union contract is the greatest nullifier of an employer's common law right to terminate employees at-will, which makes it a principle reason why employers fight tooth and nail to prevent their employees from organizing.

It seems to me that the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys was politically-motivated, but, would their firings for "performance-related reasons" be upheld if they were covered under a just cause provision? To find the answer to that question, take a look at test question number five and let me know what you think.

Unplanned hiatus

2007-04-18T20:44:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to let you know that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth--permanently anyway; just a short and unplanned break in blogging.

I plan to continue with this blog and will start back posting very soon.

Peace!

Thwarting workers

2007-03-27T14:05:00.000-05:00

On March 1 of this year Congress passed the much needed labor law reform bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act of 2007 (EFCA), and a vote on the senate version of the bill is expected soon.

As currently written, EFCA would modify the National Labor relations Act (NLRA) in three important ways. First, it would require stronger penalties for violation of workers rights to organize. Second, it would provide for mandatory mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes if needed. And third, it would allow workers to form or join a union on the basis of signed authorization cards from a majority of the employees.

Through a massive campaign of disinformation, corporate executives and their Republican representatives are exerting a vigorous effort to prevent EFCA from becoming law--but not for their stated reason of preserving the right of workers to select union representation by the use of a secret-ballot election. EFCA would not, as their disinformation campaign would have folks believe, abolish secret ballot elections in union representation elections. Under EFCA, workers could still certify their union representation choice through a secret-ballot election if that's what they wanted to do. Plus, establishing a union through signed authorization cards is already permitted under current law.

So why, then, are corporate executives adamantly opposed to EFCA? Because what EFCA would do is to eliminate management's ability under the current law to insist on a so-called secret-ballot election when presented with signed union authorization cards from from a majority of its workers--even from 100% of the workers! By being able to insist on an election, management gains weeks and weeks of time of time during which they put on a virulent, one-sided and many times illegal anti-union campaign designed to intimidate and coerce their workers from joining or supporting a union. It is this time frame that corporate executives are really fighting so hard to preserve, and it is no surprise that they are doing so through the use of lies and misrepresentation--the very same tactics they use every day in this country to thwart their employees right to freedom of association.

Sadly, the NLRA has become a union-avoidance tool of management (pdf file). EFCA would help to restore the NLRA to its intended purpose, which, as the law itself says (in the last paragraph of Section 1), is to "[encourage] the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and...[protect] the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection."

(NOTE: a version of this post, edited by the editors of the newspaper, appeared in today's edition of The Bryan-College Station Eagle.)

Student war protests

2007-03-25T15:12:00.000-05:00

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." --Elie Wiesel

That's the signature line my better-half Annie uses on her personal email account. Too bad the young Brandeis student who did the radio essay (on PRI?) last week about the sparse involvement in the Iraq war protests by students in this country is not familiar with that quote. I haven't been able to locate that essay online, but as I remember it the gist was that students weren't apathetic about the Iraq war, it was just that they didn't think protests would do very much to stop it..."protests will only take you so far," she said.

I don't believe that protests will only "take you so far, but that'll have to be a point for another post. Sparse involvement of students in Iraq war protests around the country, however, has often been a topic of discussion at such protests that I've participated in. It looks, though, that student participation in and organization of antiwar protests is on a fast-track increase and much more pervasive than it might appear. Take, for example, these recent news headlines as compiled by a resurgent Students for a Democratic Society (which provides links to all these stories):

3/9/2007 - The Students Are Stirring: A Campus Antiwar Movement Begins to Make Its Mark, by Ron Jacobs - MR Zine - Interview with Kati Ketz of UNC-Asheville SDS about March 20

UNC-Chapel Hill
3/21/2007 - ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ Students protest war by hundreds on anniversary
3/20/2007 - War protesters leave classes, flood streets

Maria Carillo High School (Santa Rosa, CA)
3/21/2007 - Maria Carrillo students protest war

University of Alabama-Tuscaloosa
3/21/2007 - Protesters: ‘Get out of Iraq now’

Rutgers University (New Jersey)
3/21/2007 - Rutgers students walk out of class to protest war
3/21/2007 - Protest halts traffic - Hundreds rally at Rutgers, on Route 18 against war
3/20/2007 - 400 protesters swarm downtown New Brunswick, NJ, shut down highway, block recruiting center

University of Illinois - Chicago
3/21/2007 - Photos from UIC walkout and march

University of Minnesota
3/21/2007 - Students spread message, stop traffic

UNC-Asheville
3/21/2007 - Students walk out of class to protest the war in Iraq

Winthrop University (Winthrop, SC)
3/21/2007 - Winthrop students turn out to protest Iraq war

New York University
3/21/2007 - A walkout in the park: On Iraq’s 4-year anniversary, about 150 protest

University of Iowa
3/21/2007 - Hundreds Rally for Peace
3/9/2007 - Some to Head to Pentagon for Protest

Grand Rapids / Activate SDS (Michigan)
3/21/2007 - Antiwar March Confronts Congressman Ehlers at his Home

Drew University (New Jersey)
3/21/2007 - Video clips of walkout and march

Cherry Hill High School (New Jersey)
3/21/2007 - Cherry Hill students mark anniversary in war protest

Brown University (Rhode Island)
3/20/2007 - Students arrested at SDS ‘die-in’ downtown
3/19/2007 - R.I. Students Protest Weapons Manufacturer

Middlebury College (Vermont)
3/21/2007 - Students observe Iraq war anniversary

Harvard University
3/21/2007 - Memorial steps host Iraq war vigil

University of Florida
3/21/2007 - 200 UF students march against the war in Iraq
3/19/2007 - Local Activists Join in National Anti-War Protest

North Carolina State
3/21/2007 - Walk out brings high school, college students together

Enloe High School (North Carolina)
3/21/2007 - Walk out brings high school, college students together

Southeast Raleigh High School (North Carolina)
3/21/2007 - Walk out brings high school, college students together

Macalester College (St. Paul, MN)
3/20/2007 - Macalester Students Walk Out Against War

Michigan State University
3/21/2007 - MSU student war protest

Southern Illinois University
3/20/2007 - Anti-War Protest at SIU

Binghamton University
3/20/2007 - Students Participate in Walkout to Protest War

Sacramento State
3/20/2007 - Shoes Display Student Protest of War

UCLA
3/19/2007 - Groups to Hold March in Protest of Iraq War

UC-Santa Barbara
3/18/2007 - Critical Mass (Bike Ride) Against War in Santa Barbara
3/9/2007 - Strike Against War Continues With Bikes

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
3/15/2007 - Protesting for Peace

Ventura College
3/15/2007 - Students rally against Iraq war; 50 from Ventura College Join In

University of Maryland
3/15/20007 - Sparse Protest Marks Iraq Milestone

I'd say that's an impressive amount of student antiwar activity, and certainly more than I was aware of. In addition, Sam Graham-Felsen has a good piece on the increase and broad array of students and student groups in antiwar demonstrations, in which he makes this eye-opening observation: "Four years ago numerous polls found that students, like the majority of the population, overwhelmingly supported the war. Now students, more than any other age group, oppose the war." (emphasis mine) Peter Rothberg also makes this same statement in his March 21 "Students Against War" blog post, also for The Nation magazine.

Wow, that's amazing. I hadn't seen that reported before, but it seems to me like a corner has definitely been turned with respect to student antiwar activities. And if student antiwar involvement continues to grow, we may soon see a tipping point in this country where Congress will be forced to reign in the Bush-Cheney war machine. That point can't come soon enough.

Roses and Linen

2007-03-20T13:06:00.000-05:00

While in Silver City, New Mexico, last week, Annie and I had the pleasure of sitting in with a fine group of folks from the Grant County Peace Coalition who were planning a “Roving Peace Occupation / Happening / Peace Walk” under the banner “Come Home, America” in observence of our country's 4th Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

“Come Home, America,” a gathering of

roving musicians, street actors, clowns, friends, old hippies, young hippies, students, weirdos, moms, dads, kids, carnivores, vegetarians, disgruntled postal workers, lovers, peacemongers, enviros, pissed-off Gen Xers, gays, lesbians, veterans, bicyclists for peace, cowboys, disgusted Republicans, clergy, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, potential cannon fodder, business owners, anarchists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, rock stars, AND EVERYONE WHO’S SICK OF 4 YEARS OF THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF IRAQ, AND A POSSIBLE INVASION OF IRAN, AND WHO JUST WANT TO LIVE IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

is taking place today from 3 PM until dark in downtown Silver City. While our travel schedule didn’t allow us to participate in this gathering, Annie and I did help the cause a skosh by volunteering to apply “IMPEACH MINT” labels to mint candies and “Bring Me Home” labels to plastic toy soldiers. The IMPEACH MINT candies and Bring Me Home (a Mouths Wide Open Army Men Project) toy soldiers are being distributed to fellow citizens during the event.

Today is, of course, the fouth anniversary of our country attacking, without provocation or justification, Iraq, and as in many communities across this land, commonsense folks in Silver City are taking to the streets to collectively and visibly voice their disapproval of the war and to call for the withdrawal of American troops. Here in the Bryan/College Station Texas area about 40 of us or so gathered last night to protest the Iraq war and also in remembrance of the soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq. One particularly thoughtful protester, a member of the Brazos County Veterans for Peace, brought with him a couple of dozen white roses and distributed them to other participants, who in turn waved them at passerbys. Why white roses? Well, along with linen, such as the American flag that covers the caskets of U.S. casualties killed in Iraq, a rose is one of the traditional gifts for a four-year anniversary.

Also while in Silver City, Annie and I sat in on a meeting of the Southwestern Chapter of the New Mexico ACLU, and they, too, were a fine group of folks. Their meeting wasn't at all any different than any of our Brazos Valley ACLU Chapter and we felt right at home among them.

Annie and I have both felt drawn to New Mexico from very early on in our individual lives, primarily because of la tierra y la gente, that is, the land and the people--like the kind of folks we met last week from the Grant County Peace Coalition and the ACLU. But there's also something else that draws us to the Land of Enchantment. Like maybe because New Mexico is descended from the sky. To say that we’re anxious to move there permanently in two years would be a sure-fire understatement. We can hardly wait.

Impeach 'em both!

2007-03-09T20:03:00.000-06:00

NOTE: My better half Annie and I are off to New Mexico for Spring Break, so this will be my last post until we return on the week of March 19.

Although I'm not registered to vote in NM (because we haven't yet moved there full time), I have been following with pride the tremendous effort by many in that state to impeach Bush & Cheney. In a Republican orchestrated maneuver in which nine Democratic senators joined, NM Senate Joint Resolution 5 died yesterday. Had it passed, SJR 5 would have required the NM state government to send a petition to the U.S. House of Representatives asking that impeachment proceedings immediately begin against Bush and Cheney.

Via Steve Terrell's Legislature Blog, here's what NM Senator John Grubesic, co-sponsor of SJR 5 had to say after this resolution died:

This country was founded by rebels. This country was forged in violence, ferocity, dissent and uproar. This country is vanishing before our eyes, not because we are blind, but because we are willing participants in its destruction.

Today on the Senate floor you witnessed an excellent example. The Impeachment Resolution — (Senate Joint Resolution 5) – died quietly with no debate whatsoever. The dignity of the New Mexico State Senate was maintained as we followed carefully designed rules of procedure to ensure that nothing disrupted the workings of this austere body. We did a great job of making it appear that government was working.

However, we have to ask, which government and on whose behalf? The action taken by the Senate was not the action taken by a body that protects the freedoms of a sovereign people. The action was a carefully orchestrated option designed to protect the integrity of an institution and perpetuate the well-oiled workings of government. A government that has evidently forgotten that we serve at the please of those we govern.

It is clear that, from the highest levels of government in our country down to our State, very few of us want to deal with the unpleasant political mess that impeachment could become.

Our actions today showed where our priorities are – we forgot that the Constitution was not designed to serve government, but to protect the people.

There should have been debate, argument, uproar. Instead, we quietly gutted the sovereign power of the people with polite political procedure.

When future generations look back on our time, the shock will not be because of the violent, impolite nature of the fight that preceded the destruction of Constitutional government, but by the meekness with which we watched it die.

Grubesic is correct, there should have been debate, argument and uproar...but all across this land, not just in the Land of Enchantment. That there wasn't is a tragedy and another failure of timid and turncoat Democrats.

Vermont (Bush only) and Washington (Bush and Cheney) are two other states where state legislature impeachment measures have been introduced, but I haven't been following either of those measures so I really don't know much about them or their chances for success.

And wouldn't you just love to hear the following words from one of our Representatives of the People prior to Bush & Cheney & Gang leaving office on January 20, 2009?:

Mr. Speaker:

Under the standards set by the United States Constitution, President Bush—along with Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of State Rice—should be subject to the process of impeachment, and I have filed H. Res. _ in the House of Representatives.

Well, in fact, those are the exact words former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney said in introducing her Articles of Impeachment on December 8, 2006. No one in Congress has yet filed any such resolution in the 110th Congress, but I wouldn't rule it out despite what Pelosi said. My sense is that there is plenty of movement around the country and in the Halls of Congress to impeach Bush, Cheney or both.

For those of you who are against impeaching Bush, like I was, because you don't want the eviler Cheney to be promoted to take his place, I recommend you take a moment and read this terrific piece by David Swanson, a co-founder of After Downing Street. After you've read it let me know if you still feel impeachment proceedings shouldn't be undertaken.

See you after Spring Break.

Peace.

Iraq War protest at Snow-job A&M Lecture update

2007-03-05T20:49:00.000-06:00

There are couple of new articles about the Iraq War protest that I wrote about below. The first article is from The Dallas Morning News:

65 protest war during Snow speech at A&M
Demonstrator: Many in conservative places want fighting to stop

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, March 4, 2007
By RICK ROJAS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

COLLEGE STATION, Texas – Tired, shivering from the cold, but pumped, the five girls were huddled together at the bus stop after protesting for several hours against the war in Iraq.

They had been among about 65 protesters, mostly students at Texas A&M University, demonstrating Friday outside the Annenberg Center at the George Bush Presidential Library complex. Tony Snow, press secretary to the current President Bush, spoke inside on the president's relationship to the news media. The protest was notable because it took place at Texas A&M, which has a reputation for conservatism.

"We want to let them know that [there are] a lot of people, even in a conservative place like College Station, who don't support this war," said Melana Kasper, a 20-year-old junior kinesiology major.

Standing outside the Annenberg Center and holding signs like "Love our soldiers, hate the war; Bring them home," the protesters chanted, "Support our troops, stop the war" as people left the lecture. Former President George Bush and Barbara Bush attended, but it was not known whether they saw or heard the protesters.

While most of the people ignored the protesters, some responded.

"If we could get a few Corps boys out here," referring to A&M's Corps of Cadets, "they would take care of these people," one elderly man muttered angrily as he walked away from the protesters.

The second article is from The Battalion, the independent Texas A&M student-run newspaper:

Protesters oppose Iraq war
By: Rick Rojas and Candace Birkelbach
Issue date: 3/5/07 Section: News

A group of students and members of the community gathered outside the George Bush Presidential Library Complex during a lecture given by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow to protest the war in Iraq on Friday.

Community members, Texas A&M faculty and political action group moveon.org joined forces to stage a protest directly outside the Library, while a group of students marched over from the Century Tree holding banners and shouting slogans while beating drums and tambourines.

"Our goal is to show Tony Snow and the Bush administration the public's disapproval of the war, which is not only resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians of Iraq and United States troops, but also to express outrage at the economic cost of the war," said Wes Kimbell, a junior international studies major who coordinated the student-led protest.

Kimbell said he initiated and planned this protest because he is totally against the illegitimate war in Iraq. He said the war has cost the United States more than $360 billion, which drains the pool of loans available for student loans and health care.

There have been more than 3,000 deaths of U.S. servicemen and women, and some people don't realize that more than 120 Iraqis are dying every day from the turmoil, Kimbell said.

"We want to give awareness to the student body and show that there are people here who aren't gung-ho Bush," Kimbell said. "We are people who realize and understand the costs of war and want to avoid it at all costs."

Students participated in the protests for a variety of reasons.

"I came out here because of personal beliefs," said Sarah Campbell, a freshman management major who participated in the protest. "We all support the troops - we're proud of all the work they're doing, and a lot of our friends, people our age, are going there."

Tony Snow's appearance at the Bush Library directly encouraged some students to voice their opinions about the war.

"(Snow)'s kind of the hit man," junior kinesiology major Melana Kasper said of her reasoning for spending her Friday night protesting his visit. "We want to let them know that a lot of people, even in a conservative place like College Station, don't support this war."

Jean McCarthy, a Republican and a member of the Bush Library from Houston, said Bush had worked to make this University and Library a place for education and the actions of the protesters distracted from that.

"It's very low class," McCarthy said.

Colt Jim Clemens, chair of the College Republicans, said Americans should be more supportive of Bush's efforts in Iraq.

"I am pleased by people forming opinions and expressing views in a civil rights manner," said Clemens, a junior political science major. "However, I do believe this war is winnable and that the president and U.S. troops deserve all the support we can give them, and we should do everything in our power to ensure success for the war in Iraq."

David McWhirter, English professor and coordinator of the community and faculty protest, said Snow is a major player in the Bush administration and should not speak anywhere without having to hear from people who oppose the war.

"We are opposing the escalation of the war and support an immediate and orderly withdrawal," McWhirter said. "Everyday, Snow provides misinformation, spin and lies that have contributed to this misguiding and illegal war."

While Congress has taken some action, leaders are timid in putting an end to the war, even if American people want it to stop, McWhirter said.

Some students said they had interesting experiences while participating in the protest.

"It's not every day you get to play tug of war with a 70-year-old woman over a sign," freshman history major Jessica Googins said about a woman coming up to her behind the railings, and snatching her sign that read, "Love our soldiers, hate the war, bring them home."

One can’t come away from that protest experience, or from reading these two accounts (which provide much more detailed coverage than the short-shrift given to the protest story by The Eagle and KBTX) and my recounting below, without a realization that many of the folks who attended that Snow-job lecture haven’t a clue exactly how unpatriotic they truly are.

Oh, sure, those faux patriots I’m speaking of talk a great talk, but they all fall flat on their scowled, pinch-nosed faces when it comes to recognizing and respecting the rights to peaceable assemble and free speech enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Can anyone believe that the unidentified “elderly man” quoted in the last paragraph of the above Dallas Morning News story who said, "If we could get a few Corps boys out here," referring to A&M's Corps of Cadets, "they would take care of these people,” truly understands or respects the civil liberties we have in this country? It seems to me that he is also guilty of doing the same thing that Chickenhawks George “AWOL-from-the-National-Guard-1972-'73" Bush and Dick "I-had-other-priorities-in-the-'60s-than-military-service” Cheney do: employ violent means through younger surrogates to resolve differences of opinions.

“Take care of these people?” That doesn’t sound like an American patriot to me; it sounds like he’s been watching too many Godfather reruns. Actually, it’s much more serious than that; he sounds to me like a small-minded and ignorant hate-filled fascist.

And what’s with that “low-class” remark from Ms. McCarthy, the Republican member of the Bush Library from Houston who is quoted in The Battalion’s story above as saying the actions of the anti-war protesters were “very low class”? Low-class? What an elitist prig.

From attempting to yank anti-war signs from the hands of peaceable dissenters, to wishing them bodily harm, to yells of “go home,” to nasty disapproving looks, to elitism, those Republican lemmings guilty of uttering or approving such things are sorely in need of a civil liberties education. So I have a question for them:

Do you consider the so-called pro-lifers who demonstrate, picket and harass women entering Planned Parenthood health and medical clinics “very low-class”? Are you going to call in a Corps of Cadets to “take care” of those protesters? Are you going to yell at them to “go home”? Are any of you going to attempt to yank away any of their placards?

What’s that you just said? Those protesters have inviolable First Amendment rights to picket and demonstrate? Why yes, I agree, they certainly do. But tell me, why is it that you only recognize such civil liberties for groups or actions you support and not for groups or actions you don’t? Oh, I see, it’s a civil liberties for me, but not for thee low classes kind of a thing.

Republican lemmings

2007-03-03T07:00:00.000-06:00

White House press secretary Tony Snow was in College Station, Texas tonight giving a lecture at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center adjacent to the Texas A&M University, and I was among the 50 or so anti-war protesters there who greeted the gullibles folks who came to hear his speech.

In fact, I was the first protester to show up and from the first moment I held up my "Stop Bush's Endless War" sign I started getting disapproving glances from many of those arriving for the Snow Job. "Go 'W,'" said the first person to see me. "Go down 'W,' said I in response. "Go home," said another. "I am home," I responded.

My homemade sign

And so it went, rolled eyes, raised eyebrows, frowns, scowls, tsk, tsking, and much heading shaking.

One guy walking in by himself heard our chanting, looked our way, read our anti-war signs and immediately put a huge scowl on his face and continued on his path without saying anything. "Hey, mister," said the young woman standing next to me, "you dropped something." No response from the frowner, noteven a look back to see if he dropped his car keys or something. "You dropped your smile back there," finished the woman. That drew chuckles from our crowd, but only more head shaking from the elder, white, well-groomed, well-dressed Republican lemmings right behind him going in to hear the "Flautist at the Gates of Dusk." "Some of you folks are too old to be on that side," said one of the elder, white, well-groomed, well-dressed Republican lemmings as he and his companion came up to the barrier separating us patriotic folks who believe the best way to Support Our Troops is to get them the hell out of Iraq from the send-in-more-troops crowd who disapprove of those who actually use their First Amendment rights to protest an unjust war. "Well," said one of the older protesters off to my left, "given that wisdom usually accompanies aging, we were thinking the same about you folks." The elder lemming, who appeared to me to have had downed a couple of bourbons and water earlier in the evening, struggled a bit to respond intelligently, but all he could come up with was, "Do y'all have wisdom?" "Enough to know that sending more of our families into the paths of bullets and bombs in Iraq isn't the answer," I said. And before he could respond I said: "Now let me ask you a question. As President Eisenhower once said, 'When comes the end?' When is this war going to end?" "When it's over," yelled his male companion angrily. Ah, the wisdom of Republican lemmings.

For me, and I think many of the half-dozen or so of us who arrived early, the high-point of our anti-war demonstration was when a group of about 40 A&M students joined our ranks, albeit a bit too tardy to be noted by the main crowd of Republican lemmings. They had assembled on the A&M Campus and marched, chanting and singing all the way, about a mile or so to join us. As you might imagine, those of us old enough to have been there had emotional flashbacks to the Vietnam War protests as we watched the A&M students marching up to our location, holding anti-war signs, beating drums and bongos, and chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho! This Iraq War has got to go!" (I forgot to bring my camera with me to the protest, so I don't have any pictures to share here, but if I can get a copy or two from one of the other demonstrators that took some I will post them.)

This was the largest turnout of anti-war A&M students that I've seen at any of our local Iraq War protests and I damn sure hope that their public showing will serve to draw out yet more students at the next anti-war demonstration.

Killing's Not The Answer

2007-02-27T15:53:00.000-06:00

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.

Farmers Branch landlord ordinance update

2007-02-26T08:43:00.000-06:00

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.

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.
“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.”

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.

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.

EFCA alone not enough

2007-02-24T21:49:00.000-06:00

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.

First Amendment and private property

2007-02-23T07:57:00.000-06:00

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?

Stop the war lobbying effort

2007-02-22T10:12:00.000-06:00

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.

NLRB Secret Ballot - in name only

2007-02-20T15:02:00.000-06:00

"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."

Unionmaid from Pittsburgh

2007-02-17T12:40:00.000-06:00

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

What ARE we fighting and dying for?

2007-02-16T13:39:00.000-06:00

Billions of dollars wasted in Iraq

2007-02-15T21:33:00.000-06:00

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!

2007-02-15T15:31:00.000-06:00

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.

Peaceful dispute resolution works

2007-02-14T15:17:00.000-06:00

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

The dogs of war

2007-02-13T09:44:00.000-06:00

[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.]

An opening for the citizens to act

2007-02-12T14:43:00.000-06:00

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

2007-02-12T08:55:00.000-06:00

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!

A trilogy of cat

2007-02-10T17:12:00.000-06:00

(Image by Walter Szymanski. If you're interested, you can purchase a ceramic
"Sky City Cat" online from the Southwest Indian Foundation.)

The Little Man

2007-02-09T21:34:00.000-06:00

(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)

State's right collides with individual's right

2007-02-08T13:14:00.000-06:00

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.

Wanted: U.S. Department of Peace

2007-02-06T12:46:00.000-06:00

Q: Your views on the Iraq war?

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)

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).

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?

Dying slowly ever day

2007-02-04T21:37:00.000-06:00

“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.

Employee Free Choice Act reform

2007-02-04T08:55:00.000-06:00

PaulVA over at group blog MyDD wrote a good post last Thursday, How Employers Get Away With Highway Robbery, which I recommend you taking in if you'd like to get a clear understanding of the corrupt state of labor law in our country today.

There's a tiny piece of his post, though, that I'd like to expand on here. PaulVA said:

"Employers who illegally fire workers for union activity are only required to pay back wages minus what the worker has earned in the meantime."

Actually, the "back wages" part? That's only in theory and not fully true in practice. And the part about interim wages? That's not quite the whole story, either.

In every case of illegal discharge of an employee that I brought to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in my 30 years as a union rep where the NLRB (aka the "Board") indicated to the employer that it would issue a formal complaint against it if it didn't informally settle the case, or where the illegal discharge went to a formal hearing and was settled by the parties prior to the closing of the trial, the employer would offer something less than 100% reimbursement, usually 75-80% (but sometimes less) of the actual full amount of wages stolen from the worker by the illegal discharge. In almost all of those cases the NLRB agent or attorney assigned to the case pressured the union and/or the worker to accept the employer's less than full backpay offer. Typically, the NLRB agent or attorney would insist that the case wasn't as strong as the union or worker believed it to be and, they'd say, there was a good chance of an adverse ruling from the administrative law judge. Better to take the guaranteed 75% (minus taxes and interim earnings*), they'd say, than to chance losing it all. Further, it doesn't matter whether the union, which investigated, prepared and filed the unfair labor practice charge (ULPC) against the employer in the first place, is agreeable to the employer's offer or not. The Board will accept employer offers to settle the case for less than full backpay whether the union likes the offer or not.

In theory I understand and don't generally argue with the reasoning that a guaranteed half-a-loaf is better than an unguaranteed full loaf. Union reps use that same rationale at times in negotiating a settlement of a worker's grievance with an employer. But I don't know of any union that take that approach as a matter of pro forma policy with each and every grievance, which in my experience is damn near what the NLRB staff did with discharges and other ULPCs involving potential backpay. Some NLRB regions were worse at this than others, but it happened all the time in every region I had cases in.

Board agents and attorneys were always mindful of not adding anything more to their caseload and they were also keen to show settlements of cases for their end-of-period reports. The easiest way for them to accommodate such concerns is to settle cases as early and as informally as possible, even if it means settling for less than full restitution of a worker's lost wages. When that approach is the modus operandi, however, it seriously interferes with securing the "make whole" remedy for the worker that the law is supposed to ensure and for showing the illegally fired employee's co-workers, who have been watching the process intently to see what happens, that the law really protects their union and concerted activities.

By the time the NLRB's investigative machinery gets to the point where the employer is told by the Board that they will be taken to trial unless they voluntarily settle the unfair labor practice, the employer and the NLRB agent know full well that the fired worker is by then anxious, and many times financially desperate, to settle. It doesn't take much talking on the Board agent's part, therefore, to convince the worker to accept the employer's 75% offer--an amount the employer always makes contingent upon the worker agreeing to waive his or her right to reinstatement. And what real choice does the worker have? Put yourself in that worker's shoes. You've been fired for union activity and are having a hard time getting a new job, or one that pays equally well as the one you were fired from. Bills (including medical bills because you lost your medical insurance when you were fired) are piling up and the family's being forced to make financial sacrifices. Would you waive your right to return to work (for an employer who grossly violated your rights and paid and treated you so miserably in the first place that you and your co-workers sought out union representation to make improvements) to get a cash settlement of a portion of the wages that were stolen from you? In my experience, virtually every worker caught in this situation agreed to those employer terms.

*As to the deduction of interim earnings, the real situation here, too, is different than what it appears to be. If a fired worker can't establish to the satisfaction of the employer and the Board that he or she has made a dedicated and verifiable effort to secure employment elsewhere from the moment they were fired, they will not be eligible for any backpay, let alone a partial payment of one.

In addition, as PaulVA pointed out in his post, punitive damages, which are effective in detering a guilty party from pursuing such illegal acts in the future, are not assessed against employers found guilty of illegally firing employees because of their union activities.

So, what we have here in the real world is that an employer pays a less-than-full (and tax-deductable) backpay award to an employee it fired (provided the employee has assiduously sought work for the entire period of the discharge) because management identified the worker as a union "pusher," and in the process they get the illegally fired worker to waive his or her right to reinstatement to their former job. That's not a penalty for the employer; it's a fuckin' key victory for it in its anti-union campaign! It's a key victory employers intentionally seek out because it most assuredly will not go unnoticed by other employees that the worker fired for union activity never returns to work with that employer. The message couldn't be louder or clearer: "Mess around with that union, bub, and you're outta here." The employer doesn't have a better weapon in its anti-union arsenal to thwart a drive by its workers to unionize, except, maybe, for the threat of closing the operation down or outsourcing the work if the workers elect union representation--a threat used by company bosses and their union busting consultants in every organizing campaign I worked on in three decades.

All-in-all, the system truly sucks big time and is sorely in need of the minimal reforms proposed under the Employee Free Choice Act.

Molly

2007-01-31T21:28:00.000-06:00

Free Speech Zone: An Evening with Molly Ivins, June 9,2005
Photo courtesy of Wade Harris and Brazos Progressives (used with permission)

On June 9, 2005, I and several hundred other Brazos Valley lovers of Molly Ivins and civil liberties got to meet, see and hear Molly up close and personal. Our Brazos Valley Chapter of the ACLU had some months earlier asked her if she would please come speak at a fund raiser for our recently reconstituted Chapter. We knew of Molly's historical commitment to helping civil rights groups, but we were still surprised and so very pleased when she readily agreed to help us out. Our evening with Molly was an astounding success on all counts. It was a standing room only crowd at the College Station Hilton that night and we couldn't have enjoyed it more. Among other things, Molly strongly encouraged us that night to not sit on our laurels waiting for the right-wing swinging pendulum to head back to the left of its own volition. She told us to get out there and push it back. And she said, don't forget and "have fun" doing it."Drink beer and have some fun." Can't argue with that now can we? (Go here to view some pictures of Molly at the BV-ACLU fund raiser, hosted on the the Brazos Progressives web site.)

Molly's final column, Stand Up Against the Surge, was published on January 11. She died oh so prematurely today at the age of 62. Here's what she counseled in the final paragraph of her column:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

As so many others have acknowledged, Molly was a true national treasure. And I can think of no better way that this national treasure would feel honored than by following her last encouragement to us: Step outside, hit the streets, raise hell, make the ridiculous look ridiculous, bang pots and pans in the streets and demand to stop it now. And don't forget to let the troops know we're trying to get them out of there.

Thank you so damn much, Molly, for your years of advocating for social justice with such wit, wisdom and good humor. You are an inspiration to all who fight for peace and civil liberties and it's a crying shame that you were taken from us way too soon. Folks are sure going to remember you lovingly, though, as we're in the streets and halls of congress, pushing that pendulum back to the left where it damn well belongs. And later, after each of our struggles, when we gather in our neighborhood pubs, laughing and drinking beer as you exhorted us to do, you can be damn well sure that you'll be there with us round the table, too. Here's lifting a cerveza to you Molly!!! ¡Muchísimo gracias por todo, y ojalá que descansas en paz amiga!

(If you'd also like to honor Molly Ivins in another way, donations can be made in her name to the Texas ACLU or the Texas Observer.)

The times they are a-changin'

2007-01-31T10:49:00.000-06:00

Among other things, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 amends the Uniform Time Act of 1966 by changing the start and end dates of Daylight Saving Time (DST) starting this year. Clocks will now be set ahead one hour on the second Sunday of March (instead of the first Sunday of April) and set back one hour on the first Sunday in November (rather than the last Sunday of October). This will make electronic clocks that had pre-programmed dates for adjusting to daylight saving time obsolete and will require updates to computer operating systems. (Source: Wikipedia)

However, the Secretary of Energy has to report the impact of this change to Congress, which retains the right to resume the 2005 DST schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete. (Source: Daylight Saving Time)

With respect to updating computer operating systems, the latest Macintosh OS X update (10.4.6), the system I use, is aware of the DST changes enacted by this law. I don't know squat about the PC's OS, though, so you'll have to go elsewhere for that info if you want it.

According to the folks who put together the Daylight Saving Time website (definitely worth a visit), which is a public service exhibit of the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement (IDEA), DST does save energy. Studies done by the U.S. Department of Transportation show that DST trims the entire country's electricity usage by a small but significant amount, about one percent each day, because less electricity is used for lighting and appliances. Energy use and the demand for electricity for lighting homes is directly related to the times when people go to bed at night and rise in the morning. In the average home, 25 percent of electricity is used for lighting and small appliances, such as TVs, VCRs, and stereos. A good percentage of energy consumed by lighting and appliances occurs in the evening when families are home. By moving the clock ahead one hour, the amount of electricity consumed each day decreases.

Here's another interesting tidbit gleaned from the Daylight Saving Time web site: The extension of DST into November has been proposed as a way to encourage greater voter participation, the theory being that more people would go to the polls if it was still light when they returned home from work. (Hell, I think tons more folks would vote if we had some form of proportional representation in this country--or just docked people three months' wages if they don't vote as they do in Bolivia, but I digress.) Anyway, the 2008 presidential election (Nov. 4) will take place after DST ends for that year (on Sunday, Nov. 2), so we won't know whether this theory will hold water until the 2010 mid-term election, which will be conducted on November 2, five days before the DST change on Sunday, November 7.

Yes, Mr. Dylan, the times they are a-changin'--at least in those communities that haven't opted out of DST coverage.

Tax me, please!

2007-01-30T10:19:00.000-06:00

[Carbon] tax is taboo in Washington, but now there's a place it dares speak its name: the Carbon Tax Center, which opened this week with the aim of becoming "the village square for civic and political conversations about the why, who, and how of taxing CO2 emissions in the U.S. and, eventually, the world." A Taboo Link, John Tierney - TierneyLab, NYT, 24JAN07

Why carbon taxes? Why a Carbon Tax Center?

Charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly and steeply enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point. It’s a basic economic principle that prices of goods and services should reflect ("internalize" as the economists say) all of the societal costs (such as pollution) that production of the goods or services imposes on society. Yet the prices of gasoline, electricity and other fossil fuels don’t include many of these societal costs, particularly their impact on global warming. The necessary transformation of our fossil fuels-based energy system to reliance on energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable fuels simply won’t happen without carbon taxes sending accurate and powerful price signals into every corner of the economy and every aspect of life.
This principle is obvious to professional economists, familiar to most policy-makers, and understandable to citizens. Nevertheless, the forces arrayed against carbon taxes are many — not just fuel corporations with a massive stake in keeping the U.S. addicted to fossil fuels, but deep-seated assumptions such as faith that we can pull through with a mix of native ingenuity and advanced technology. (Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby brilliantly dissected this myth in a 2006 column.) We would love to agree, but our long experience in the energy arena, including advocating for efficiency and renewables, convinces us that higher fuel prices, delivered via equitable, progressive carbon tax-shifting, will also be essential.

America needs a full and candid discussion of carbon taxing in the national arena and at the state and local levels as well. We have formed the Carbon Tax Center to advance this discussion. We are mindful of the difficulties of proposing new or increased taxes in the U.S. (Our insistence on progressive tax-shifting is partly a response to this difficulty, though it is also rooted in our determination to ensure that carbon taxes improve rather than set back equity in America.) CTC will provide intellectual and practical support, as well as a sense of community, to help carbon tax proponents in every region and across the political spectrum coalesce into an irresistible civic force.

That's the Carbon Tax Center's answer to the "Why?" question, and the rationale for this tax sure makes sense to me. Seems like a majority of the business and political leaders who attended the recently concluded World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos think so, too.

We love it enough to try to save it

2007-01-29T17:40:00.000-06:00

I was going to write a little post about marching with the Austin peace demonstrators this past Saturday, that is until I read NYT's columnist Bob Herbert's column today on his experience at the March on Washington. As you would fully expect from Herbert, he does his usual stellar job of thoughtful writing in his piece. But all that would have been needed to tell the story of our Texas rally is to replace "Washington" in Herbert's byline with "Austin" and the rest pretty much would have fit up perfectly with our experience here.

We, too, had a "a beautiful sunlit blue" sky to cheer us on, and although the Capitol building we had in view as we marched up Congress Street in Austin wasn't the one housing the folks enabled to stop the war and start the formal investigative process to impeach Bush, it was still obvious to all that we were marching straight to the doors of governmental power. Here's what I mean:

Photo by me

Not as much as an "emotional backdrop" as the Capitol building in Herbert's description, but upon first noticing the above view over the heads of the protesters in front of them as they marched up the street, I'd bet that most folks in the Austin rally readily imagined they were shoulder-to-shoulder with the marchers in DC.

Herbert went on to eloquently write in his column:

You can say what you want about the people opposed to this wretched war in Iraq, try to stereotype them any way you can. But you couldn’t walk among them for more than a few minutes on Saturday without realizing that they love their country as much as anyone ever has. They love it enough to try to save it.

I found his words startling as they exactly describe the very same realization that came to me at several points as I walked among the protesters taking pictures and saying hello. We, too, had "...gray-haired women with digital cameras and young girls with braces...guys trying to look cool in knit caps and shades and balding baby boomers trading stories about Vietnam...many ordinary families...a good-natured crowd" (Go here to view images I took of some Austin peace marchers that fit Herbert's description to a "T".)

The folks marching in Austin "love their country as much as anyone ever has," too. It's the evil monsters running it that we despise.

And the goal of the Austin protesters was no different:

The goal of the crowd was to get the attention of Congress and persuade it to move vigorously to reverse the Bush war policies. But the thought that kept returning as I watched the earnestly smiling faces, so many of them no longer young, was the way these protesters had somehow managed to keep the faith. They still believed, after all the years and all the lies, that they could make a difference. They still believed their government would listen to them and respond.

Yes, we most certainly can make a difference. The people forced the politicians and power brokers to end the war in Vietnam and the people will do it again with this latest folly, too. As Herbert wrote, "The public is way out in front of the politicians on this issue." And we all can see lots of those politicians pedaling furiously to catch up.

Thank you, Mr. Herbert, for writing such a thoughtful and articulate post for me.

Best overall!!

2007-01-29T13:11:00.000-06:00

For the Nashville Scene’s annual country music poll, over 80 critics from all over North America, from big-city newspapers and glossy mags, from alternative newsweeklies and self-published fanzines, voted on the best country acts and records of 2006:

BEST ALBUMS:
1. The Dixie Chicks: Taking the Long Way

BEST SINGLES:
1. The Dixie Chicks: “Not Ready To Make Nice”

BEST FEMALE VOCALISTS:
4. Natalie Maines

BEST LIVE ACTS:
2. The Dixie Chicks

BEST GROUPS AND DUOS:
1. The Dixie Chicks

BEST INSTRUMENTALISTS:
10. Emily Robison

and...

BEST OVERALL:
1. The Dixie Chicks

YEE-FUCKIN'-HAW!!

The Great Immigration Debate...

2007-01-29T09:30:00.000-06:00

of 1691:

Lots'sa feet on the street...

2007-01-29T00:04:00.000-06:00

an' can't'cha just feel the heat, George?

Below are a couple of the pixs I took at the Austin peace rally on Saturday (I've posted the remainder here):

Georgie boy, you're too ignorant and vain to recognize this, but you've never been the decider; the decider is the people. And the people are going to stop you...and Mr. "Whatever-votes-Congress-takes-on-Iraq,-it-won't-stop-us" Cheney.

Another American for peace

2007-01-27T09:52:00.000-06:00

In solidarity with national gatherings in major cities such as Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco and Chicago, I'm off to the Austin, TX Solidarity March for Peace. I hope to bring back a few few good pixs, which I'll post here. Today is a national day of protest against Bush's war in Iraq and I'm hopeful that folks in the street today will help in the Congressional efforts to withdraw us from that quagmire.

14.6 million union members

2007-01-26T21:12:00.000-06:00

According to a report issued yesterday by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, 14.6 million wage and salary workers were union members in this country last year, down slightly from the 2005 level.

The 2006 union membership rate for private industry workers was 7.4 percent, while the rate for all government workers was 36.2 percent.

Why the great disparity between the private and public sectors unionization rate?

One good reason is that about one-third of the workers in the private sector are not entitled to union representation under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Private sector employees excluded from union representation by law include: self-employed individuals, domestic workers, farm workers, workers employed by a parent or spouse, confidential employees, supervisors, and managerial employees.

In a 2005 paper, Paula B Voos of Rutgers University described the very different situation in the public sector:

Even though public sector labor relations statutes commonly have been modeled after the NLRA in many respects, they also have major differences both from that law and from one another. When Adrienne Eaton and I reviewed these statutes in 2002, we found that eleven of them provided collective bargaining rights not only for first-level supervisors, but also for individuals at higher levels in the management hierarchy; these states were Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Washington. New Jersey, for instance, gives rights to employees up to the level of "managerial executive." Hence, a greater proportion of the workforce is eligible for union representation in the public sector.

If a greater proportion of a given workforce is eligible for union representation, it only stands to reason that the union membership rate is going to be higher in that workforce. Although the eligibility factor accounts for a goodly portion of the disparity between the private and public sectors unionization rates, it doesn't account for all of it.

Another significant factor for the disparity is the huge and ongoing losses of unionized manufacturing jobs in this country. Deindustrialization over the past decades has cost millions of union members their good-paying jobs. Technology can account for the loss of many of those jobs, but millions of manufacturing jobs were also exported overseas or to Mexico, a phenomena that hasn't been seen yet with federal, state or local government jobs. In 1950 about one-third of all jobs in this country were in manufacturing. By 2005, however, manufacturing represented only about 11 percent of all U.S. employment. But, considering that only about half of those manufacturing jobs are jobs typically open for union representation (the remainder are sales, design, distribution, financial planning, clerical, and human resources positions, etc.), it's not really surprising to see a report of only a 7.4 percent unionization rate in the private sector.

However, I think the biggest reason behind the disparity is corporate resistance to unionization, which is vastly more prevalent in the private sector than in the public. Many of the governmental entities that allow for some sort of labor relations activities with their public employees are officially neutral with respect to discouraging or encouraging their employees to unionize. I'm not saying that employer resistance is nonexistent in the public sector, just that it doesn't at all come close to the wretched level in the private sector. In a recent study on this issue the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago found that:

[U]nion membership in the United States is not declining because workers no longer want or need unions. Instead, falling union density is directly related to employers’ near universal and systematic use of legal and illegal tactics to stymie workers’ union organizing.

Kate Bronfenbrenner's widely referenced and highly respected September 2000 report to the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission found that sixty-eight percent of manufacturing employers made threats to close all or part of the plant during the organizing drive.

Not only are threats of plant closing an extremely pervasive part of employer campaigns, her report also found they are very effective: "The election win rate associated with campaigns where the employer made plant closing threats is, at 38 percent, significantly lower than the 51 percent win rate found in units where no threats occurred."

Here are a few more statistics compiled by the AFL-CIO on private-sector employer resistance to unionization:

Employers that illegally fire at least one worker for union activity during organizing campaigns: 25%
Employers that hire consultants or union-busters to help them fight union organizing drives: 75%
Employers that force employees to attend one-on-one meetings with their own supervisors against the union: 78%
Employers that force employees to attend mandatory, closed-door meetings against the union: 92%
Employers that threaten to call the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during organizing drives that include undocumented employees: 52%
Workers in 2003 who received back pay because of illegal employer discrimination for activities legally protected under the National Labor Relations Act: 23,144
Percentage of unions newly formed by workers whose employers do not agree to a first contract within two years: 45%
____________________________
Sources: Kate Bronfenbrenner, Uneasy Terrain: The Impact of Capital Mobility on Workers, Wages and Union Organizing, Cornell University, Sept. 6, 2000; Human Rights Watch, Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards, 2000; Membership survey for the AFL-CIO, Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 2005; National Labor Relations Board annual reports; Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service annual report, 2004.

Employer suppression of unionization and a dysfunctional labor law is so egregious in the private sector that in 2000, Human Rights Watch published a report that concluded:

"[L]egal obstacles tilt the playing field so steeply against freedom of association that the United States is in violation of international human rights standards for workers."

Clearly, the evidence is overwhelming, all of the cards in the deck are stacked against U.S. private-sector workers who dare to form or join a labor union. Research, though, shows that 59 percent of currently unorganized American workers would like to have collective bargaining agent. There can be little doubt that overt employer opposition is a major cause of this unfulfilled demand--and a major cause of the disparity between the private and public sectors unionization rate.

Education, agitation, mobilization

2007-01-25T10:38:00.000-06:00

The Nation has an excellent editorial in their just released February 5 issue. The following passages from it resonated particularly well with me (emphasis mine):

For the Republic

World opinion is against it. The American people are against it. The Democratic Party is against it. The Congress of the United States is against it. The Iraq Study Group is against it. The Iraqi people are against it. The Iraqi government is against it. Many Republican lawmakers are against it. The top brass are against it. But George W. Bush is going to do it: send 21,500 more troops into Iraq. Can a single man force a nation to fight a war it does not want to fight, expand a war it does not want to expand--possibly to other countries? If he can, is that nation any longer a democracy in any meaningful sense? Is its government any longer a constitutional republic? If not, how can democratic rule and the republican form of government be restored?

[A]lmost everyone declares by now that there is no military solution in Iraq, only a political one. But the hard truth is that there is probably no political solution, either. Certainly, it is beyond the power of the United States to achieve one. Only Iraqis have the capacity to solve their political problems, yet there is no sign that they are headed in this direction. On the contrary, they are sliding deeper into a sort of half-smothered, underground civil war of extraordinary brutality. The professed mission of the American troops is to stop this internal war. But how can that be done with an M-16? "Whom do you shoot at--the Sunni or the Shia?" Senator John Warner has appropriately asked. Perhaps both? In that case, which Iraqis are American troops fighting for ?

[T]he problem with American policy was never that it chose this or that bad strategy in Iraq but that it planted itself in Iraq at all. Once that was done, all strategies were bad, condemning the United States to stumble from error to error--doing more of the fighting, doing less; attacking Shiites, attacking Sunnis; helping Shiites, helping Sunnis; writing a Constitution, letting "the Iraqis" write a Constitution; disbanding the Baath Party, inviting back the Baathists; letting Kurds opt out of Iraq, dragging them into Iraq. Now, four years into the game, American policy has gone from mistaken to unintelligible--its actions not so much misguided as irrelevant to the ghastly conflict now under way.

[T]he deepest theme of the whole three-decade story, now presented in almost outlandish caricature by the President's tug of war with the nation and the world over Iraq, is the issue of power and how it shall be constituted in the United States, and the deepest question the crisis presents is whether this country will continue to be a constitutional republic or bow down to the new system of one-man rule asserted by President Bush. It's an issue that must concern every citizen, and the antiwar movement is in fact reviving it.

Should Congress...impeach President Bush while letting him fight his war? Decency and respect for human life forbid such a conclusion. What is quite permissible, however, is to recall that investigations that could lead to impeachment may, as one ingredient of Congress's activity, strengthen rather than weaken the efforts to end the war. Investigations, resolutions, legislation, not to mention citizen action, can all find their place as part of the common effort.

So, can a president be forced to not fight a war he wants to fight, to not expand a war he wants to expand--possibly to other countries?

Absolutely; as the editorial talks about, it's been done before. Despite the overall failures of main-street media to live up to their core purpose, for the past four years folks have been educating, agitating, and mobilizing other folks against Bush's war on Iraq--and all that work is now starting to pay off. We've put people into Congress who should be supportive of those investigations that could strengthen efforts to end the war. More people are talking among themselves about ending the war. More people are calling and writing their elected representatives and editors of newspapers demanding an end to the fighting. More college campuses and cities are passing anti-war resolutions. A nonbinding resolution has been introduced in the Senate saying the U.S. commitment in Iraq "can only be sustained" with popular support among the American public and in Congress. And more people are marching in the streets in protest of this unnecessary war. In two days, I'll be joining other protesters marching in the streets of Austin against the war, as will thousands of other folks in numerous cities across the country, including the January 27 March on Washington. Our goal? Show Bush that his war on Iraq is not supported by the American public.

I recommend your taking a trip over to The Nation to read the full editorial, it's well worth it. I also hope you'll join in the peace rallies this weekend. Bush's bullets and bombs can be stopped--just as quickly as a sufficient number of of us tell him so.

Education, agitation and mobilization has always produced change. And it'll do so again this time.

Let's Work Together

2007-01-24T11:26:00.000-06:00

I sure would have tuned into Bush's SOTU address last night had I thought I was going to hear this:

Who's singing? Why these guys are. Also, go here for a great clip of "Living the Blues - The Story of Canned Heat."

Farmers Branch proposed ordinance

2007-01-22T16:24:00.000-06:00

Members of Farmers Branch City Council are scheduled tonight to vote on repealing their divisive Ordinance No. 2892 and replacing it with divisive proposed Ordinance 2903.

As reported here:

David Urias, a staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the proposed ordinance appears very similar to the one passed in November, which MALDEF is challenging in a federal lawsuit.

"They made slight refinements based on some of the challenges that were made to it, but overall it is still an attempt to turn apartment owners into immigration officials," Urias said. "The city would still mandate that they check persons' documents and that is going to be a big problem for our client tenants and apartment owners."

I agree.

I also maintain that putting Ordinance 2903 up for simple majority vote by the residents of Farmers Branch, which 2903 does, doesn’t confer on it any special legitimacy. I understand the value of folks being given an opportunity to express their feelings on this issue through a referendum. Doing so will give Farmers Branch residents a direct say-so in the affairs of their community, and obviously that is the preferred way to go than the sneaky behind-closed-doors shenanigans the City Council members used with Ordinance 2892.

Still, if 2903 were to pass muster with the voters (assuming a court ruling doesn’t prevent a vote on it in the first place), that doesn’t at all mean that the ordinance is legal. California Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative designed to deny illegal immigrants social services, health care, and public education, passed with 58.8% of the vote. Majority support for that initiative, however, didn’t stop a court from finding it was an unconstitutional measure on the basis that federal law overrides state authority in immigration matters.

The pushers of ordinances 2892 and 2903 would undoubtedly use majority approval as legitimacy cover to continue to push this matter forward on political and legal fronts. But doing so would really only serve to prevent the City Council from executing their duties intelligently, respectfully, honestly, with respect for all cultures, religions, and races and without prejudice. Unless, of course, they don’t subscribe to that mission.

I'm with Stupid

2007-01-22T12:01:00.000-06:00

The only way I’d tune in to Bush’s sixth constitutionally required State of the Union address tomorrow night is with confirmation from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office that Pelosi, who’ll be sitting directly behind Bush and to the side of Cheney, will be wearing this t-shirt:

I will not, however, pass up the Democratic response to be given by Virginia Senator Jim Webb, a former Secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan and a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran whose son is stationed in Iraq. Can’t wait for that.

Real cowboys don't eat horsemeat...

2007-01-21T09:04:00.000-06:00

or slaughter them so someone else could eat them either:

"The lone cowboy riding his horse on a Texas trail is a cinematic icon. Not once in memory did the cowboy eat his horse."
--Judge Fortunato Benavides, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision this past Friday overturning a lower court ruling invalidating a 1949 Texas law that banned horse slaughter for the purpose of selling the meat for food.

The only thing that could have made me happier about the 5th Circuit's ruling is if it had applied to all three of Texas' horse slaughter plants and not just the two that it did. As soon as I get the opportunity I'll look into why the third Texas horse slaughter plant wasn't included in this ruling.

In the meantime, The Humane Society of the United States has a very good press release on this great news.

I was very wrong

2007-01-20T21:11:00.000-06:00

I have deleted my "Farmers Branch Chris McGuire Right" post that I published yesterday because I had it all wrong.

In that post I stated that the Farmers Branch City Council's new proposed ordinance might be more challenging to defeat legally because it was tied into the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's regulations that require rental tenants to submit evidence of citizenship or immigration status to apartment owners and/or property managers. I stated that because I thought the tie-in with the HUD regulations was a new and clever way on the part of the FB City Council to maintain their controversial measure banning landlords from renting to unauthorized immigrants. But I was very wrong about that because their original Ordinance 2892 also contained that same tie-in with the HUD requirements. Now, I looked at Ordinance 2892 before castigating it several times here in the past and I should have recalled that it too has a clearly-stated tie-in to the HUD citizenship/eligible immigrant status requirement. But I failed big time to remember that fact when writing my post yesterday. The whole premise of my argument was, therefore, senseless. I should have done a side-by-side comparison of the old and new ordinances and then reported on the differences. I failed to do that and my failure resulted in my publishing an inaccurate and very non-credible post.

I wrote a hit-piece not fully knowing what I was talking about and I regret doing that very, very much.

In order to accumulate the wisdom enabling us to do the right thing in life, we're supposed to learn from our misjudgments and mistakes. I certainly have done so with my blunder here. Color me chagrined.

Why EFCA?

2007-01-19T16:27:00.000-06:00

I've written about the need for the Employee Free Choice Act (here, here, and here), but the following commentary in The American Prospect online edition by Bruce Raynor, president of UNITE HERE, provides a powerful and poignant example of everything that's been wrong for the past quarter century with the National Labor Relations Act and National Labor Relations Board:

Losing By Winning
What one NLRB case this year tells us about our broken collective bargaining laws.
By Bruce Raynor
Web Exclusive: 12.21.06

"There's no reason to subject the workers to an election."

In the past year, full-page ads taken out in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal by the anti-union organization Center for Union Facts featured this quotation and my picture, alongside pictures of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Then, the caption: "Who Said It?"

Here's the answer: I said it. And I believe it. And the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision in August that shows just how right I am.

Eight years ago our union made the mistake of putting our faith in the current NLRB election system on behalf of a group of tough, dedicated, largely immigrant warehouse workers at the Goya Foods facility in Miami, Florida, who were looking to improve their economic lot and to be treated with respect and dignity on the job. Now, in 2006, these workers have won every single legal decision brought before the NLRB, but they have not gotten good raises, a union contract, better treatment or any other improvements. If this is winning, it's hard to imagine what losing looks like.

Back in 1998, workers at Goya Foods of Florida, the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States, voted overwhelmingly for union representation by UNITE (now UNITE HERE) by a combined vote of 83 to 31 in two separate elections. These elections vicious "vote no" campaigns by company management, which included harassing workers who supported the union, threatening workers, and holding mandatory meetings full of anti-union diatribes. In an amazing show of courage and mutual support, the Latino workers persevered and won the union election in the giant Florida warehouse of this very profitable company. The workers were looking for a solution to their problems of poor treatment, low wages, expensive health insurance, and supervisor favoritism, and hoped they had found it by electing to have union representation.

After the union was certified at Goya, the company embarked on a concerted campaign to frustrate the workers' desires. The plan was to utilize the delays and the lack of powerful remedies inherent in our country's labor laws to weaken and divide the Company's employees to the point where they would give up on forming a union.

The workers and their union representatives fought back tenaciously. We forced the company to the bargaining table and kept them there. We organized rallies, car caravans, meetings, and other public events to keep the workers' spirits up and to involve the Miami community in our struggle with a company that largely serves the Latino community. We filed scores of charges with the National Labor Relations Board, challenging the company's recalcitrant conduct in bargaining, their unilateral changes in working conditions, and their discriminatory treatment of those who dared to openly support the union.

Eventually, the NLRB's General Counsel charged Goya with at least twenty-three separate, textbook violations of U.S. labor law, including the usual threats of job loss, plant closings, interrogation, discrimination in work assignments, and the firing of at least four union supporters. Later in 1999, the Company ceased bargaining with us and -- illegally -- withdrew recognition of our union.

The union, the workers, and the General Counsel took the case to a trial under federal labor law before an Administrative Law Judge in June 2000. In February 2001, the judge ruled in favor of the union and workers on every single issue in a well written and thoughtfully reasoned decision. He ruled that the four Goya workers were fired illegally for supporting the union and recommended that the NLRB order their reinstatement and back wages (no penalties are provided by the National Labor Relations Act). He found the company guilty of threats against workers who supported the union, interrogation of union supporters, and failure to bargain in good faith as required by federal law.

Of course the Company appealed -- creating another delay of justice. But by July of 2001, the record was complete: the briefs were in, the Board had the transcripts and the exhibits, and the case was, as they say, "ripe for decision."

I don't know what the Board was doing over the next five years and two months.

(please go here for remainder of article)

In the last Congress, close to a majority of representatives in the House (216) and in the Senate (44) co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act. Given the political makeup of the current 110th Congress, we should see a majority in both houses signing on as co-sponsors once this most important piece of legislation for workers' rights is introduced in a couple of weeks.

Farmers Branch brown-out ordinance--out the window?

2007-01-18T22:28:00.000-06:00

The Farmers Branch city attorney has been directed by the members of the city council to draft a new ordinance for them to consider next Monday night, which would repeal the divisive apartment ordinance adopted in November that penalizes apartment managers who rent to unauthorized immigrants. (See other posts here labeled Farmers Branch.)

Stephanie Sandoval of The Dallas Morning News has written an excellent and detailed piece on this today:

FB considers repeal of immigration ordinance
Move would reverse decision to enforce law until May election
05:11 PM CST on Thursday, January 18, 2007

Farmers Branch officials on Monday will consider tossing out a controversial ordinance banning apartments from renting to illegal immigrants and reversing last week's decision to implement the ordinance until voters decide in May if they want to keep it.

City Council members held a special meeting Wednesday night, and directed the city attorney to draft a new ordinance for them to consider Monday night, which would repeal the apartment ordinance adopted in November and which is the subject of four lawsuits. That ordinance requires apartment management to obtain proof all tenants are U.S. citizens or in the country legally.

The ordinance the council is to consider Monday also is to include revisions to the citizenship or residency requirements in the apartment ordinance and call for that revised ordinance to be put to the voters on May 12. If approved by voters it would go into effect May 22. It was unclear whether the ordinance would specifically target illegal immigrants.

The council's directive from Wednesday night also appears to make concessions to issues raised in a lawsuit claiming the city violated state open meetings act when they adopted the ordinance in November.

The directive specifically states that the new proposed ordinance will be posted on the city's Web site no later than 6 p.m. Friday, and that the agenda for Monday’s meeting will include a public hearing before the council votes on it.

(rest of story here)

Seems to me that this is an attempt on the part of the FB city council to limit their city's mounting legal liability..and to try and save their own political asses, too, although I suspect it's now too late for that.

Marcha Migrante II

2007-01-18T10:40:00.000-06:00

Another march on Farmers Branch:

In addition to the major march on Farmers Branch, Texas being organized for April 1, it looks like Marcha Migrante II will also soon be coming to that city. Marcha Migrante II is a 5,000 mile journey that begins on February 2 in San Diego, California and is scheduled to arrive in Farmers Branch on February 14, Valentine's Day. Interestingly, the name Valentine comes from the Latin word valor, meaning worthy. Given Farmers Branch's recently adopted measures naming English the official language and fining some, but not all*, landlords who rent their apartments to unauthorized immigrants, I'd say they merit the Marcha Migrante II visit.

(*The rental ordinance only applies to property owners, managers and tenants of buildings that contain three or more apartments, but does not apply to property owners, managers and tenants of single-family rental homes or buildings with less than three apartment units.)

Nasty Texas weather...

2007-01-17T20:51:00.000-06:00

No, that's not a small people porch, that'd be to the right a bit. This is the puppy porch to the doggie door, which, thankfully, none of the five inside and one outside cats have yet learned to use. Ben, our half-lab half-corgi dog, aka, The Trickster, enjoyed breaking off the icicles and bringing them into the house to munch on--while sitting atop our new living room chair! Like me, our weenie dog, Cowboy, is way too much of a cold-weather wuss to be much interested in playing with frozen water.

As to "OK"., our outside kitty, I rigged up a little cabin for her in the back of my utility trailer under our carport. The Trailer has a camper top on it and I propped a small electric heater on the open tailgate. For comfy inside accommodations, I then threw down an old spread on top of a carpet scrap on the floor. It ain't much for looks, but it sure works. OK is a warm, dry and happy kitty despite the frightful weather:

Here's a better shot of OK:

He's a beautiful brute, no? We're happy he's adopted us.

Farmers Branch April 1 Rally

2007-01-17T19:21:00.000-06:00

According to a report in yesterday's edition of Al Día , a Dallas, Texas Spanish language newspaper, organizers are planning an April 1 "Mega March" on Farmers Branch, Texas in protest of that town's ordinance penalizing apartment owners who rent to undocumented migrants.

In the Al Día report, Domingo García, an attorney and civic leader, said that Congress will be discussing immigration reform around April or May and that the march would help emphasize to Congress that reform is needed. Elizabeth Villafranca, president of the Farmers Branch chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens said that they wanted the Latino community of Farmers Branch to feel supported.

Planning of the march has barely begun, but according to the newspaper report, the planners are looking to turn out 100,000 marchers. I don't know if that's a misprint on the papers part, and I gotta wonder how realistic that goal is, but I'd sure like to see those many folks marching in Farmers Branch--especially down the street where divisive Ordinance No. 2892 pusher Tim O'Hare lives.

Meanwhile, I wonder what Gary Greer, the incoming city manager for Farmers Branch, thinks about the terrible mess O'Hare and his cohorts on the city council got the city in? Guess we'll have to stay tuned for that.

Another Republican's call to get outta there!

2007-01-17T15:20:00.000-06:00

In yet another call for Bush to withdraw our forces from Iraq, Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to President Reagan and a treasury official during the administration of Bush The Elder, had this to say in his New York Times column today:

I think Bush should have the courage to do what Ronald Reagan did in Lebanon. Reagan sent American troops into that country as part of a multinational peacekeeping force in 1982. But after the situation continued to deteriorate and, in October of 1983, 241 Marines were killed when a truck loaded with explosives blew up outside their barracks, Reagan pulled out.

At the peak of the Cold War, this was a very hard thing for Reagan to do. He knew it would show weakness and undermine his position in dealing with the Soviet Union. But he realized, as Bush does not, that you cannot undo a mistake by continuing to make it. All you can do is stop making the mistake, cut your losses and move on.

That'd be terrific, Bruce, but the problem is, Bush, unlike the man I wrote about earlier today, isn't a stand-up guy. He doesn't have any courage; he's a spineless delusional deceiver and he's not going to withdraw from Iraq--unless enough of us raise enough hell to force him to.

Please call your congressional representatives and urge them to stop the escalation. (Go to Project Vote Smart's homepage and enter your 9-digit zip code to find contact information on all of your federal and state representatives. Don't know your 9-digit zip? Go here and the U.S. Postal Service will quickly serve it up to you.)

Happy Birthday Champ!

2007-01-17T12:06:00.000-06:00

Dave Anderson has penned a nice Happy Birthday piece in the NYT today about one of my heroes:

Muhammad Ali is 65 years young today and despite Parkinson's disease invading his body, don'tcha know he still has that twinkle of mischief in his heart if not his eyes.

"I am the onliest of boxing's poet laureates," he said. And he was that:

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned?
Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
His hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see
Now you see me, now you don’t
George thinks he will, but I know he won’t.

I done wrassled with an alligator
I done tussled with a whale
Only last week I murdered a rock
Injured a stone, hospitalized a brick
I’m so mean I make medicine sick.

- Before the "Rumble in the Jungle" 1974

He is also a stand-up guy. During the height of Ali's boxing career he refused on conscientious objector grounds to be inducted into the Army during our war on the North Vietnamese people:

No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end. (Source: Voices of A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove eds.)

Ali was convicted for his refusal, but the U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-0 opinion overturned that conviction:

Petitioner appealed his local draft board's rejection of his application for conscientious objector classification. The Justice Department, in response to the State Appeal Board's referral for an advisory recommendation, concluded, contrary to a hearing officer's recommendation, that petitioner's claim should be denied, and wrote that board that petitioner did not meet any of the three basic tests for conscientious objector status. The Appeal Board then denied petitioner's claim, but without stating its reasons. Petitioner refused to report for induction, for which he was thereafter tried and convicted. The Court of Appeals affirmed. In this Court the Government has rightly conceded the invalidity of two of the grounds for denial of petitioner's claim given in its letter to the Appeal Board, but argues that there was factual support for the third ground. Held: Since the Appeal Board gave no reason for the denial of a conscientious objector exemption to petitioner, and it is impossible to determine on which of the three grounds offered in the Justice Department's letter that board relied, petitioner's conviction must be reversed.

--CLAY, aka ALI v. UNITED STATES, 403 U.S. 698

Colin Powell said of Ali, ''I wouldn't call him a draft dodger. . . . He stood up and said this is something I cannot do and I will take whatever consequences come from that decision. I admire that in a man.'' (Source: The Prettiest of Them All, Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, December 19, 2001.)

As I said, Ali is a stand up guy; that's one of the reasons I consider him a hero.

If you'd like to send Ali a birthday wish, just surf on over to the Muhammad Ali Center where they have set up a page where you can do just that.

Peace to you and all the best, Champ!

Homo stupid

2007-01-15T07:51:00.000-06:00

I like this comment by Chris to Latina Lista's post, The Point of No Return for Immigration Reform: The Proof is in the Pizza

Chris said…

"How far back do we go to figure out who was here first."

Sioux? Cherokee?

To be honest, large tracts of the Southwest were simply taken from Mexico by American business interests.

I'm not really clear on why you continually say that others here "don't care" about illegal immigration. It may simply be the fact that the vast majority of the reality based community don't see it as the biggest (not even close) problem facing our problem today? Aren't fine young Americans coming home in body bags on a daily basis? Is this nation running a $9 TRILLION deficit? Is our Constitution, and thus very way of life, under siege from an administration out of control? Is our country not chock full of facilities that have both "special" nuclear materials (HEU, and plutonium primarily), and completely inadequate security?

Now tell me again why I should care more because someone comes from a neighboring country and takes a job in my community, than someone coming from a neighboring town or state.

Quite frankly, I am FAR more concerned that the financial mismanagement in Washington will within my lifetime result in an America that people won't want to come to anymore. To my mind, that is a far worse problem than an America that everyone wants to come to.

This garbage has been going on for years:

"They're coming to take you jobs!"
"Who?"
"The Italians!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"

"They're coming to take your jobs!"
"Who?"
"The Irish!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"

"They're coming to take your jobs!"
"Who?"
"The blacks!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"

"Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."
Benjamin Franklin- 1751

I hadn't seen that Ben Franklin quote before, but it is disheartening to think that two and one-half centuries later we have so many folks in this country still spewing this same nonsense. Are we supposedly Homo sapiens ever going to get over racism and our hatred of strangers, or are we doomed to remain Homo stupid forever?

Anyway, very nice writing, Chris, thank you.

Bush isn't the decider, we are

2007-01-15T06:15:00.000-06:00

From Molly...

WE simply cannot let it continue...

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

United for Peace and Justice is organizing the January 27 March on Washington that Molly references, and wouldn't it be something to have as many folks turn out for it as did for the 1963 March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have A Dream speech?

The people always are the deciders, of course, but getting enough of us into the streets demanding change is the tricky thing to do. President Bush, though, is making that task less difficult with each passing day.

Keep Bush I say

2007-01-14T20:30:00.000-06:00

New York Times Op-Ed columnist Frank Rich has a good column in that paper today that challenges Senators McCain or Warner to dump President Bush for the good of the country:

The question now is how to minimize the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered to serve the president’s endgame of passing his defeat on to the next president. The Democrats can have all the hearings they want, but they are unlikely to take draconian action (cutting off funding) that would make them, rather than Mr. Bush, politically vulnerable to blame for losing Iraq.

I have long felt that it will be up to Mr. Bush’s own party to ring down the curtain on his failed policy, and after the 2006 midterms, that is more true than ever. The lame-duck president, having lost both houses of Congress and at least one war (Afghanistan awaits), has nothing left to lose. That is far from true of his party.

Even conservatives like Sam Brownback of Kansas and Norm Coleman of Minnesota started backing away from Iraq last week. Mr. Brownback is running for president in 2008, and Mr. Coleman faces a tough re-election fight. But Republicans not in direct electoral jeopardy (George Voinovich of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) are also starting to waver. It’s another Vietnam-Watergate era flashback. It wasn’t Democrats or the press that forced Richard Nixon’s abdication in 1974; it was dwindling Republican support. Though he had vowed to fight his way through a Senate trial, Nixon folded once he lost the patriarchal leader of his party’s right wing.

That leader was Barry Goldwater , who had been one of Nixon’s most loyal and aggressive defenders until he finally realized he’d been lied to once too often. If John McCain won’t play the role his Arizona predecessor once did, we must hope that John Warner or some patriot like him will, for the good of the country, answer the call of conscience. A dangerous president must be saved from himself, so that the American kids he’s about to hurl into the hell of Baghdad can be saved along with him.

Given my current liberal political persuasions (two points to right of Ted Kennedy, three points to left of Hillary Clinton), it's amazing to me that I once supported Goldwater, but I did. And the reason I did was because I felt that unlike almost all politicians, Goldwater was a direct talker, that is, he didn't camouflage his feelings about his beliefs, political or otherwise. (Coupla' examples: ''I believe Reagan did know of the diversion of Iranian funds to the Contras. He had to know. The White House explanation makes him out to be either a liar or incompetent.'' And, “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”)

I still detest politicians who speak politician talk, but to get back on point for this post, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that Senator John McCain will play the role Frank Rich attributes to Goldwater. McCain has become far too much of a double-talking political whore for that. As to Senator John Warner, I like his position on gun control (he supports it), abortion (he's pro-choice), embryonic stem cell (he supports it) and global warming (in 2005 he signed onto a Sense of the Senate resolution declaring that "global warming is happening, it is caused by human activity, and needs immediate attention"), but while he may be one of the Republican Party's "patriarchal" leaders in the senate today, I don't think he has anywhere near the standing to lead his party's back turning on Bush.

Despite the fact that I'd like nothing more than to see Republican support for Bush dwindle to the point of forcing him from office (for the same reason articulated by Frank Rich), I just don't see that even coming close to happening. Also, if Bush goes, Cheney steps up. And if that happened we can for sure forget about minimizing the damage before countless more Americans and Iraqis are slaughtered. Better to work on controlling Bush in his weakened state than turning things over (officially) to Cheney. Besides, the person who can--and will--continue to damage the Republican Party the most is Bush. And for that reason, too, Bush should stay.

Farmers Branch didn't deliberate behind closed doors!

2007-01-13T20:52:00.000-06:00

Various news reports have characterized the behind-closed-doors discussions of several anti-immigrant measures by Farmers Branch City Council members as "deliberations." That isn't accurate. I don't mean that the City Council members are not guilty of discussing those measures behind closed doors (in violation of Texas's open meetings act); that part is true. What I'm talking about is the deliberations characterization. That's the untrue part.

Deliberate in this context means, of course, carefully thought out in advance, unhurried and with care and dignity. And by that measure the members of the Farmers Branch City Council failed miserably.

How else to explain their inconsideration of a September appeal by a task force of businesspeople charged with revitalizing Farmers Branch that urged the members of the city council to reconsider those immigration measures? How else to explain their decision given the fact that their city doesn't have the financial resources to pay for the large legal bills they knew they'd have to spend defending their measures in court? How else to explain their November 13 decision to adopt their anti-immigrant ordinances given the fact that they were aware that two weeks earlier a federal judge had issued a temporary order blocking the city council of Hazleton, Pennsylvania from enforcing an unconstitutional edict just like one of theirs?

Given these and other facts, no reasonable person could possibly conclude that the members of the Farmers Branch city council carefully thought out in advance their course of action in this matter. They didn't deliberate, they defaulted on their obligations to act in the best interests of their city and its residents.

What are a city council's obligations? I'd say the following mission statement nails it down pretty well:

The Mission of the City Council of the City of San Marcos is to provide the best leadership and stewardship of resources entrusted to our care by the citizens and employees of San Marcos. The Council will execute their duties intelligently, respectfully, honestly, with respect for all cultures, religions, and races and without prejudice.

As best as I can determine, the Farmers Branch City Council doesn't have an official mission and/or vision statement (or at least an online-accessible version). I can't imagine, however, that anyone would seriously argue that the obligations of the members of the Farmers Branch City Council differ in any way significant from the obligations outlined in the San Marcos City Council Mission statement. That being the case, doesn't it follow, then, that with their adoption of these divisive measures the members of the FB City Council have violated their official obligations?

I think so and I also think they all should be recalled from office for their dereliction of duty.

Now, I've never set foot in, nor do I know anyone in, Farmers Branch. Despite that, however, I have no doubt that many residents of that town have worked hard through the years to build themselves a healthy community. It's a damn shame that their efforts and dedication are now being destroyed by the folly of the current city council members.

Farmers Branch: cash drain No. 4

2007-01-12T10:03:00.000-06:00

Just in from The Dallas Morning News:

Fourth lawsuit filed over city's immigration rules

A fourth lawsuit has been filed against this Dallas suburb over its plans to outlaw apartment rentals to illegal immigrants and make English the city's official language.

Six dozen merchants contend the rental ordinance and English resolution have hurt their businesses by making Hispanic customers afraid to patronize them. They say the city's improper attempt to enforce federal law is hurting commerce. In a suit filed Thursday, the merchants are seeking damages for loss of revenue and future profits. (Emphasis mine; read rest of story here.)

Those idiotas on the FB City Council need to revoke their foolish measures now before they bankrupt their already financially-strapped city.

Bush's last desperate act

2007-01-11T21:14:00.000-06:00

President Bush's decision to escalate the war in Iraq is a last desperate act of a stubborn, dysfunctional, delusional, disingenuous and narrow-minded belligerent who deep down knows full well that he's going down in infamy.

What more evidence of that is needed than the nonsense we heard him speak last night in his announcement to the world of his decision to escalate the war. There couldn't possibly be one soul on earth, not even his mother, who really thought ahead of time that he was going to do the right thing and not escalate the misery, death and destruction being wrought daily by his folly.

Bush is done. Over. Spent. And someday in the not too distant future, maybe as he looks into the mirror while shaving, that realization will seep into his conscience. But in the meantime, many folks will have their lives violently taken from them as a direct result of his incompetence.

Farmers Branch ordinance restrained

2007-01-11T14:12:00.000-06:00

Just in: State District Judge Bruce Priddy has ordered Farmers Branch to not enforce its anti-immigrant ordinance scheduled to go into effect on Friday.

The case before Judge Priddy is one of several lawsuits filed in state and federal courts challenging anti-immigrant measures adopted in November by the Farmers Branch City Council, a matter I last wrote about here.

Hope the Farmers Branch city attorney and council members haven't been planning any vacations for the near future; I think they're going to be, as they should, spending a lot of time answering to some judges--to the detriment of attending to the real needs of Farmers Branch residents.

Bush bumper stickers

2007-01-11T13:22:00.001-06:00

Like the friend who sent them to me, I need a laugh today, too (sorry, but I don't know where the friend got them from or I'd give credit):

Wolf massacre expected...again

2007-01-11T10:43:00.000-06:00

The Nez Perce word for wolf is "he’me," meaning "big brother"

Sometime this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), an agency of the Department of the Interior, is expected to release a proposal to strip gray wolves of crucial Endangered Species Act protections across most of Wyoming and to also prematurely delist wolves in Idaho--where the state is poised to kill up to 75% of the wolves living in the Lolo district of the Clearwater National Forest. Under the original FWS stipulation, gray wolves living in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming were to be treated as one population to ensure their long-term survival, even after they had biologically recovered according to the criteria of the Endangered Species Act. Therefore, the plan was to only delist the species after all three states had submitted acceptable wolf management plans. Though Wyoming has not yet proposed how they would manage the wolves in their territory, the FWS is now considering delisting the species in Idaho and Montana anyway.

Why the change from the original plan? In a word, Bush.

Last year President Bush nominated, and the Senate confirmed, former Idaho governor Dirk Kempthorne, a pro-development Republican, as Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior (replacing ethically-challenged Gale A. Norton). Kempthorne has such an abysmal environmental record as a senator and a governor that the National Resources Dense Council labeled him a "Gale Norton in pants."

Here's an sample of Kempthorne's views from an Endangered Species Coalition report:

Opposes recovery of Endangered wolves
As governor, Kempthorne signed a memorial asking the U.S. Department of Interior to remove all wolves from Idaho, and calling for the eradication of wolves in Idaho "by any means necessary," and claiming that recovery of imperiled wolves and grizzly bears “has no basis in common sense, legitimate science, or free-enterprise economics.”[3] Days after signing an agreement to shift federal management of the Endangered wolf to the state of Idaho, Kempthorne released a plan to exterminate 75% of the wolves in some packs. Kempthorne blamed the endangered wolves for a decline in the elk populations, but the elk had been declining in those areas since before wolves had been reintroduced, and biologists stated that the available habitat couldn’t support increased elk herds.

The FWS proposal could allow the use of aerial gunning and other lethal control methods to kill as many as two-thirds of the wolves in Wyoming and as many as 54 of Idaho's 65 wolf packs--regardless of the wolves’ history of interaction with humans and livestock. If the FWS is not prevented from issuing this proposal, this could become the worst wolf massacre to occur in the lower 48 states in decades.

Despite Kempthorne, if enough of us object to this proposal we may may be able to save some of these wolves, at least for now. Please call the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mr. Dale Hall, and Mr. Kempthorne and urge them both to maintain federal protections for gray wolves:

Mr. Dale Hall, Director
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
1849 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20240
1-800-344-9453

Mr. Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
1-202-208-3100

The Defenders of Wildlife also have a convenient website where you can send this appeal to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Global warming

2007-01-10T11:13:00.000-06:00

Not that President Bush will read, or pay any attention to a just released report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center that determined:

The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the warmest on record....

A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases.

Thankfully, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is now the Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, replacing Senator James Inhofe (Grumpy Old Pendejo-OK) who preaches that global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." (Actually, Senator, the myth of an Intelligent Designer by far remains the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people--but that's the topic of another post to come.) (And in case anyone should doubt that Inhofe is a certified pendejo, recall these two examples: in December of 2002 Inhofe said that Senator Trent Lott's expression of regret for having opposed a national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was "a stupid statement" and had he been a senator at the time of that vote that he would have voted "the same way" ; and, on the day after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Inhofe told CNN, "We are not sure how many federal employees are missing because we don't know how many were playing hooky." )

But unlike Inhofe, Boxer has been and remains a terrific advocate for environmental issues. Right out of the box from the November election she promised major policy shifts on global warming, air quality and toxic-waste cleanup. Boxer calls global warming a dire threat to the nation and she plans to hold in-depth hearings on the issue (as does Rep. John Dingell, D-MI, the new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee). Inhofe (whose term, thankfully, expires in 2008) refused to acknowledge that the clear consensus among scientist is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities. Bush, whose impeccable scientific credentials leads him to believe that both evolution and so-called intelligent design should be taught in schools so that people can understand what the debate is about (ahh, George, wake up, there ain't no real debate you pinche pendejo !), will still try and ignore accepted scientific evidence on global warming, but Boxer and Dingell are certain to provide this matter the full and fair hearings it deserves.

Bush's war escalation

2007-01-09T22:41:00.000-06:00

Nicholas Kristof has a good op-ed piece in the NYT today:

An Escalation of American Blood

A surge in the number of troops in Iraq might have helped in 2003 or early 2004.

But in 2007, President Bush’s plan seems to represent a warmed-over variant of approaches that have already been tried and mostly failed, that are opposed by some top American military commanders and ordinary Iraqis alike, and whose most likely outcome will be many more Americans in body bags or wheelchairs.

The reality is that we’ve already tried surges. There was one of 20,000 troops in early 2004, a similar one in the fall of 2005, and one a bit smaller in the summer of 2006.

As recently as July, Mr. Bush cheerily described a plan “to deploy additional American troops and Iraqi security personnel in Baghdad in the coming weeks.” He explained that this would “bring greater security to the Iraqi capital ... [and] root out those who instigate violence.”

By October, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, was acknowledging that the recent troop increases “had not met our overall expectations of sustaining a reduction in the levels of violence.”

Bush isn't going to listen to, let alone read, Kristof, of course, but I wonder if Bush would stop and listen to himself:

June 28, 2005

Some Americans ask me, if completing the mission is so important, why don’t you send more troops? If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave. As we determine the right force level, our troops can know that I will continue to be guided by the advice that matters: the sober judgment of our military leaders. (A big thanks to the folks at ThinkProgress who have posted a video of Bush saying this.)

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

Yes,'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
-Bob Dylan, Blowin' In The Wind

Another wrong-headed move by Farmers Branch

2007-01-09T09:12:00.000-06:00

Despite facing several lawsuits filed against their city because of their actions, the thick-headed pendejos on the Farmers Branch, Texas City Council decided (5-0) last night to let their anti-immigrant ordinance barring apartment owners (but not--go figure--house or duplex owners) from renting to unauthorized immigrants go into effect this Friday. They had a chance last night at their council session to do the right thing and revoke or at least put a stay on this anti-immigrant measure until a court ruled on it, but they failed miserably to do so. Now a judge is going to have to slap them down. In the meantime lots of businesses and hard-working folks are going to be hurt and that city will have to spend thousands of dollars (that it doesn't have) defending this incredibly stupid measure.

A petition signed by over 1,200 registered voters of Farmers Branch, however, forced the City Council to put their anti-immigrant apartment ordinance on their May 12 election ballot, where voters will have an opportunity to accept or reject it. Submitting this divisive and hateful issue to a referendum sounds like the democratic thing to do, but voter approval of it still wouldn't make it legal--or right. Federal judges have already issued restraining orders in at least two cases against ordinances similar to the contested Farmers Branch measure. In November a federal judge in California issued a temporary restraining order blocking the City of Escondido from implementing a housing ordinance that penalizes landlords who rent to unauthorized immigrants. According to a report at ImmigrateUSA.com:

Throughout the three-hour hearing, Judge Houston appeared particularly concerned over the possibility of tenants being identified as illegal immigrants and being evicted without due process or a public hearing. He also expressed concern that landlords could lose money from forced vacancies or be sued by prospective tenants who allege they were falsely shut out of housing based on their immigration status. "They're out of pocket either way as a result of this ordinance," Houston said.

And on Octer 31, 2006, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the Hazleton, Pennsylvania City Council preventing it from enforcing its "Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance." In that case Judge James Munley found (citations omitted):

After a careful review, the threat of irreparable injury is present in the instant case. For example, Plaintiff Jane Doe 1 risks being evicted from her apartment along with her two young children, although not an “illegal alien” under the laws of the United States. Plaintiffs John Does 5 - 6 and Jane Does 3- 4 are minor school-age children residing with their parents in Hazleton, who may be forced to leave Hazleton and their schooling if the ordinances are enforced. Plaintiff Brenda Lee Mieles is a United States citizen who may be evicted from her residence because of her inability to establish her citizenship. Plaintiffs Rosa and Jose Luis Lechuga have suffered and continue to suffer a great loss of business in their store and restaurant located in Hazleton, which they blame on the ordinance. A monetary price cannot be placed on such matters as plaintiffs’ housing, livelihood and education. Therefore, monetary damages would not be sufficient to make the plaintiffs whole, and the plaintiffs’ risk irreparable injury if the temporary restraining order is not granted. We find that this factor weighs heavily in favor of granting the temporary restraining order.

The third factor we must consider in deciding this matter is “whether granting the preliminary relief will be in the public interest.” We find that this factor favors granting a Temporary Restraining Order. The plaintiffs have shown they will suffer irreparable harm from enforcement of the ordinance. We find it in the public interest to protect residents’ access to homes, education, jobs and businesses. No evidence offered by the City suggests that the public interest in enforcement outweighs these concerns. As stated above, defendant offers only vague generalizations about the crime allegedly caused by illegal immigrants, but has nothing concrete to back up these claims. Moreover, since the plaintiff makes claims that implicate constitutionally protected rights, the public interest would best be served by delaying enforcement of the City’s ordinances until this court has an opportunity carefully to consider their constitutional implications. See Council of Alternative Political Parties v. Hooks, 121 F.3d 876, 883-84 (3d Cir. 1997) (holding that “In the absence of legitimate, countervailing concerns, the public interest clearly favors the protection of constitutional rights”).

Clearly, the City of Farmers Branch would have suffered absolutely no harm and would have saved itself thousands of more dollars in legal fees had the members of its City Council done the right thing last night and put their ordinance on hold until the legal dust settled. But no, they were too stupid to do that. But maybe their stupidity is being augmented by another factor. Michelle over at group blog calle vienna feels certain that the principle City Council pendejo pushing the anti-immigrant Farmers Branch measures proposed and got those ordinances passed in a deliberate scheme to further his career as a politician. And a Dallas lawyer who knows that pendejo well has the direct evidence to back Michelle up. According to attorney Angel Reyes, Tim O'Hare, Farmers Branch City Council Member, Place 2, and Deputy Mayor Pro Tem, told him of his plan to get 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.

As Angel Reyes says, Tim O'Hare "wants to spend a few years in public service, only to then trade those years for a lucrative private practice predicated on the connections he gained while in public service." And at the expense of hard-working folks struggling to make a better life for themselves and their families. What a deplorable scheme and despicable schemer.

As pointed out by Michelle a few days ago, in April of last year Kathleen Matsumura wrote (Farmers Branch Vision or Nightmare?) that Farmers Branch is "a 60-year old city with an infrastructure that needs an estimated $52 million of investment in the next decades." $52 million needed to rebuild Farmers Branch's decaying infrastructure and those idiot City Council members insist on going forward with this anti-immigrant nonsense. What a sick pathetic bunch.

I'm between Ted & Hillary...

2007-01-06T13:07:00.000-06:00

Although Victor Kamber and Bradley O'Leary's 25 question liberal versus conservative Political Quiz is over 12 years old now and probably useless except for a chuckle or two, I just used up less than five minutes of my life's allotment answering it anyway. Scoring a 7, I fell midway between Ted Kennedy (to my left) and Hillary Clinton (to my right). Damn, I'm not as liberal as I thought.

Farmers Branch fiduciary malfeasance

2007-01-05T21:10:00.000-06:00

As expected by just about everyone I guess, including los pendejos on its City Council, Farmers Branch, Tejas has now been sued, and thricely if I've got the count correct, over its anti-immigrant apartment ordinance (which I wrote a bit about last year here and here). (I say anti-immigrant because I believe that fear and dislike of foreigners is the primary factor motivating the pushers of that ordinance and its Resolution Declaring English as the Official Language of the City of Farmers Branch.)

On the day after Christmas the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas (ACLU-TX), of which I'm a proud card-carrying member, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) filed suit in Dallas federal district court on behalf of Farmers Branch residents and landlords challenging that city’s ordinance on the grounds that it "runs afoul of federal immigration law and places landlords in the untenable position of acting as federal immigration officers." The complaint also alleges that the ordinance is so poorly drafted that it excludes even some authorized immigrants from renting in Farmers Branch apartment complexes.

Two earlier lawsuits have also been filed against that city's ordinance: On December 22, 2006, the owners of three Farmers Branch apartment complexes filed suit in federal court asking that a ban on renting to illegal immigrants be declared unconstitutional (Illegal-immigrant laws facing another challenge). And in a separate suit filed on December 4, a Farmers Branch real estate agent charged the city with repeatedly violating the state's open meetings laws by discussing in closed session the apartment ordinance and another ordinance that targets property maintenance.

I don't know what's in the water up north there in Farmers Branch, but just about a year ago now their then chief of police resigned after public exposure of a racist statement he made to a review board that was looking into the hiring of new police recruits for that city, one of which was an individual of Vietnamese heritage. The statement? "As long as I’m police chief, we won’t have any gooks in this department."

I don't know whether the Farmers Branch police department hired that Vietnamese recruit or not, but as much as I'd like to believe that chief's apology, his comment and these recent Farmers Branch anti-immigrant ordinances and resolutions sure seem to me to reek of racism. You know, if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck....

But, while there may not be any overt evidence of racism playing a role in the Farmers Branch City Council's adoption of these contested ordinances and "English Only" resolution, given the ongoing disastrous financial state of affairs of their city, no one can doubt that by their recent anti-immigrant actions the members of that City Council knowingly violated their fiduciary obligations to the residents of their city. How so? Well, take a look at this excerpt from the Farmers Branch 2006-2007 City Budget:

After an extended economic downturn, proposed General Fund revenues (excluding photographic red light enforcement) have returned to 2001-02 adopted budget levels. This fact alone emphasizes the challenge that the City has faced over the past five years. Significant cost reductions were implemented during this time in order to adjust to the reduced revenues of approximately $5 million during the lowest point of the downturn. Services have been maintained to residents by a rise in property taxes twice over the past three years to maintain the effective tax rate necessary to produce the same amount of property tax revenues as received in the prior fiscal year, the elimination of 37 full-time positions, along with employees sharing a greater portion of health insurance cost increases along with redesign of the health insurance benefits, and a planned use of fund balance. These reductions were made along with the elimination of General Fund pay-as-you-go funding of capital improvement projects, outsourcing of services, and a consistent drive to cut costs wherever and whenever possible. (emphasis mine)

The City of Farmers Branch is now and has been in such an extended economic downturn, with reduced revenues of approximately $5 million, that they had and have to: twice jack up property taxes over the past three years; eliminate the jobs of 37 full-time workers; force their remaining employees to pay more for their "redesigned" (and we all know only too well what the hell that means) health insurance benefits; and engage in a consistent drive to cut costs wherever and whenever. In fact, Farmers Branch is now so fuckin' penny-pinched that they are begging for money in an online version of a street corner beggar holding out a tin-cup to passerbys.

Their city was and is in a severe financial crisis and those pinche pendejos adopted a couple of stupid and hateful ordinances they knew would result in their winding up in state and federal courts defending. If their acts in adopting those ordinances isn't malfeasance punishable by their removal from office, then I don't know what the fuck malfeasance is.

And if there is a scintilla of ethics or morals in any of the members of the Farmers Branch City Council they should follow the example set by their disgraced former police chief and resign immediately. They should also have to personally pay back every damn last penny their idiotic actions have and will cost the citizens of that town.

Back from Silver City...

2007-01-03T16:39:00.000-06:00

My better half, Annie, and I are now back in Texas from our wonderful Winter Solstice vacation in Silver City, New Mexico--but we’re really wishing we weren’t.

No offense to our fine Lone Star friends, but New Mexico has our heart and we can hardly wait to move there permanently in two years when Annie retires.

It snowed a bit in Silver City while we were there, and here’s a shot of two of our furry pals playing around in a bit of the fluffy white stuff:

This isn’t much of a post because our home’s DSL internet connection is down for some reason and I’m sending this using my local library's wireless system. We’re also using this problem with our DSL service to investigate the pluses and minuses of switching our internet service to cable. So, until we sort this all out, my postings will be sporadic. But please do check back soon as I’m hopeful we’ll have reestablished our home’s internet service by the end of next week, and hopefully before.