A View From The Left- WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME-End The Endless Wars-Black Lives Matter

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

 

DEMOCRACY OF THE BILLIONAIRES - The Big Money and What It Means in Election 2016

Speaking of the need for citizen participation in our national politics in his final State of the Union address, President Obama said, “Our brand of democracy is hard.” A more accurate characterization might have been: “Our brand of democracy is cold hard cash.”  … In this election season, it’s clear that these skirmishes involving the ultra-wealthy and their piles of cash are transforming modern American politics into a form of theater. And the correlation between big money and big drama seems destined only to rise.   More

 

FEEDING THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

America’s military procurement machine may be the single most successful system of wealth transfer ever devised — moving tens of billions of dollars every year from ordinary taxpayers into the pockets of big defense contractors and their allies in Congress. But as a provider of working equipment to defend the United States against realistic threats, it is becoming more and more dysfunctional with every passing year… Spending on major military acquisition programs is projected to soar 23 percent, after adjusting for inflation, from fiscal year 2015 to 2022. Worse yet, Congress and the administration are spending much of that money on weapons that don’t even work as advertised.  More

 

MICHAEL MOORE: 10 Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy

When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs.

So, many things -- schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water -- were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as "dictators" over these cities.  Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That's where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody's happy.  Except those who were poisoned in the process. All 102,000 of them.    More

 

Story Goes National: RACIAL HOSTILITIES SIMMERED AT HISTORIC BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL

With court-ordered desegregation of public schools unfolding violently across this city in the mid-1970s, Boston Latin, then about 90 percent white, began admitting more minority students, remaining a place of relative calm in a city engulfed in protest.  But in the last two weeks, the school, a beacon of high achievement founded by Puritans in 1635, has emerged at the center of a new discussion of racial tensions. Two black students, employing YouTube videos and a hashtag, started a campaign to expose what they see as a hostile school climate — one in which, they said, racial insensitivity is too common and hate speech is not effectively punished… At Boston Latin, the students’ campaign has prompted calls for a sweeping discussion about racial equality in a city where the violence of a busing crisis has cast a long shadow.  “It is about time that we actually have the very real conversation about race, race relations and inequality that we need to move forward together as the city of Boston,” said Tito Jackson, a city councilor. “I don’t think that we’ve had the watershed conversation that we need to have on this topic and this issue.”   More

 

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Boston’s Airport Workers Need You!

Your support of the workers' struggle for justice and respect at Logan Airport has been instrumental in moving this campaign forward. Last year, we won an $11/hour minimum wage for over 1,500 workers at the airport.

This year, we're fighting for $15 - but we can't do it without you. We need your support for a bill that would guarantee a $15 minimum wage for all airport workers.

Here are two ways you can help:

1.      Join us at the State House on Tuesday, February 9th! Press conference at 1:30pm followed by hearing at 2:00pm before the Labor & Workforce Development Committee (Room number TBD)

2.      Call your legislators and let them know you support $15 for all airport workers. You can find out who your State Senator and Representative are here.

 

New evidence that voter ID laws ‘skew democracy’ in favor of white Republicans

Voter fraud is, for all intents and purposes, practically nonexistent. The best available research on the topic, by Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, found only 31 credible incidents of voter impersonation in an investigation of over 1 billion votes cast.

But that hasn't dampened Republican efforts to pass a spate of strict voter ID laws since 2008. And it hasn't hurt the public's overall enthusiasm for those laws, either… The net effect of all this? "Democratic turnout drops by an estimated 7.7 percentage points in general elections when strict photo identification laws are in place." Democrats weren't the only ones affected, either. The data showed that Republican turnout was depressed by 4.6 percentage points too.  But the laws disproportionately affected Democratic voters. "The turnout advantage of those on the right is three to five times larger in strict photo identification states, all else equal. These results suggest that by instituting strict photo ID laws, states could minimize the influence of voters on the left and could dramatically alter the political leaning of the electorate. "   More

 

Rightwing Protesters:  WAAAHHHH…but we don’t wanna get arrested!!

Let’s see what happens as their armed insurrection winds down.  How will the system treat the militant bullyboys?  Will they get pepper-sprayed in the face as did the college students peacefully sitting in a driveway at UC Davis during Occupy protests, or shot in the head with a police projectile as did Veterans For Peace member Scott Olson in Oakland?  Will they get two months in jail like Ed Kinane for stepping across a line at the School of the Americas; or six months in jail like grandmother Mary Anne Grady, for taking pictures of demonstrators outside the Reaper drone base in upstate NY; or a $20,000 fine like Kathy Kelly’s peace group, for taking medicine to people in Iraq before we invaded their country in 2003… So let’s see how the Rambo wannabes of Eastern Oregon handle themselves.  Seems they could use a few lessons in toughness from nonviolent peace and justice activists.     More

 

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