The People's View

Glenn Greenwald no like us. :-(

2012-05-26T11:25:00.004-07:00

I was reading a piece by Ezra Klein today, and he referred to a tweet by Glenn Greenwald, so I wanted to go see it. But apparently, we've been a little too hard-hitting on him.

Aww. I huwt baby Glenn's feewings! Oh noes!

Time for the Left to Give Up Rank Stupidity on Federal Spending

2012-05-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

Some people are upset White House is answering their critics on government spending by... setting the facts straight (quick, gasp loudly!). No, not talking about just the Republicans here. The facts also seem to be upsetting the elite Professional Lefties in media and the blogosphere.

But being the sucker that I am for facts, I'm going to go to them first. Under President Obama, federal spending has essentially flatlined, and the federal budget deficit is smaller now than it was when he took office. Marketwatch released the a graph to make the point, showing federal spending under Bush and Obama, while TPM modified another chart from Marketwatch to color-code them (I assume so that Republicans can better understand it - they do love their color codes).

Awesome, right? President Obama has pulled us out of the worst recession in history except for the Great Depression, and he did it without increasing overall federal spending, like, at all.
Read more »

C!: Documenting Innocence

2012-05-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

In 1985 a white student was abducted and raped by an African American man at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Two weeks later the victim was shown six photographs of young African American men. Five were black and white side views; one was a color frontal shot of Timothy Cole, a 26 year old veteran who was studying at Texas Tech and who became a suspect because he talked to a detective near the scene of the abduction. The victim picked Cole’s picture, identified him at a live lineup the next day, and testified against him at trial. Cole’s brother and several friends also testified and swore that Cole was studying at home at the time of the crime. Cole was convicted in 1986 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. His appeal was denied.

In 1995, Jerry Wayne Johnson, a Texas prisoner serving a 99-year sentence for two rapes, wrote to Lubbock County police and prosecutors that he had committed the rape for which Cole had been convicted. His letters were ignored. In 1999 Cole, who was severely asthmatic, died in prison. In 2000 Johnson wrote another letter confessing to Cole’s crime to a supervising judge. It was summarily rejected. Eight years later, DNA tests obtained by the Innocence Project of Texas proved that Johnson was guilty of the rape and that Cole had been innocent. Cole was exonerated in an extraordinary posthumous court hearing in 2009, and pardoned by the governor of Texas in 2010.

The case of Timothy Cole is one of 873 exonerations outlined in a report from the National Registry of Exonerations, a new joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. The Registry will be updated on an ongoing basis. It is by far the largest collection of such cases ever assembled – and the most varied.

Read more »

Mark Halperin's Man Crush on Mitt Romney

2012-05-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

By now, everyone knows Mark Halperin of Time scored an interview with Mitt Romney. Reading the transcript, though, it was difficult to say whether it was a sit-down interview or a kiss-up. Not that I expect a whole heck of a lot from today's "journalists" - but if these 'journalists' are unwilling to challenge people running for the highest office in the land about obvious lies and falsehoods, why in the world are they there?

Where to begin. Well, let's start at the beginning.
Read more »

Progressive "journalism" watch: Goalposts (UPDATED!)

2012-05-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

So in the "progressive" Firedoglake we can find the horrifying, but expected news.

"Progressive News": "Pelosi Shifts the Goalposts – Now Draws Line on Bush Tax Cuts at $1 Million".

Ooh, a favorite story for the "progressives" and the GOP : Democratic Wimps Cave Again. Proof?

Regressive "News": "House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi,[...] fired off a letter to the Speaker asking for immediate consideration of an extension of just the “low end” tax cuts – which include the Bush-era marginal rates for households making up to $1 million. This represents a shift in the dividing line for the Bush tax cuts, which has traditionally been at $250,000.

You see Democrats don't know how to negotiate as well as genius progressive bloggers who know that digging in always works - that's how Custer won at the Little Big Horn, after all.

Reality: [in 2010] "Senate Democrats offered to extend the tax cuts for income up to $1 million, not Mr. Obama’s proposal of $250,000 per couple limit."

So Democrats have always set the line at $250K except when they didn't. And it couldn't be that Pelosi knows Boehner will never bring it up so she's trying to make the contrast of Democratic and GOP positions as stark as possible: she has to be "negotiating with herself".

The regressive analysis: "When the dividing line was $250,000 a year, the revenue was around $800 billion over a ten-year period. I don’t have a strong grasp of what the numbers would be at $1 million, but my guess would be half that, if not more. So from a deficit reduction standpoint, this makes pretty much no sense."

"Guess"? Where oh where could we find an actual analysis of how much is saved?

"let me just say about these high-end tax cuts: 80 percent of the tax cuts go to people making over $1 million a year — people making over $1 million a year." - Nancy Pelosi in 2010.

UPDATE: Poor thin skinned Mr. Dayen responds by calling me a "professional troll" and explaining the the marginal tax rate. The problem is that when you insist that the goalposts have moved and 10 seconds of google work shows that Democrats have proposed both the $250K and $1M figure in the past, you cannot justify your shoddy work by changing the subject (and getting that wrong too).

The power of example: Americans of color more likely to support marriage equality

2012-05-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

President Obama's stand in favor of marriage equality may not have given him much of a boost in the polls, but it certainly gave marriage equality a boost in public support. As noted on Colorline, The new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows continued if slow growth of support for same sex marriage, but what it really shows is a big uptick in support for marriage equality by people of color. 59% of African Americans, and 61% of minorities overall say that marriage should be available to all loving couples, gay or straight, compared to just 50% of white voters.

The bigger Bain backfire: Priorities USA sees Romney's exploitation of Booker and raises him a Palin

2012-05-22T15:23:00.001-07:00

After this Sunday's "flap" on Meet the Press by Mayor Cory Booker, they went out to celebrate, popping open the champagne. "Have you had enough of President Obama's attack on free enterprise?" asks a Romney campaign video in defense of Bain that quotes Mayor Booker, among a couple of other Democrats. Priorities USA Action has just released their response, flanked with prominent Republicans - including Mr. Romney's primary rivals and the GOP's 2008 vice presidential nominee - taking on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital.

Read more »

Hitting Romney where it hurts, and why running around yelling "Cory Booker!" won't help the GOP

2012-05-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

On this Sunday's Meet the Press, Newark mayor Cory Booker went "off-message" and took a GOP talking point bait - defending private equity firms and their business, in light of the Obama campaign going straight at Mitt Romney's business record at Bain Capital. I say he took a Republican talking point bait because he fell into the trap of the Republican party attempting to define the president's campaign anti-business, or even anti-private equity terms.

As Mayor Booker clarified later in a video message, however, this isn't about private equity in general, or about business. It is about Mitt Romney's claim that his particular business experience prepares him to do a better job at creating jobs at a faster rate in this country. As the president himself explained, this is about the difference between profit maximization for wealthy investors (the job of a corporate buyout specialist) vs. ensuring jobs for the middle class and the poor (the job of the President of the United States).

Read more »

NAACP endorses marriage equality as a civil right

2012-05-21T11:52:00.002-07:00

One of the first non-LGBT organizations to come out in opposition to Prop 8 was the California chapter of the NAACP. Today, the national NAACP has endorsed full marriage equality. The NAACP Board of Directors passed the following resolution in Miami, FL:

The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, educational, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.

This is a really, really big deal. No group speaks with more clarity on matters of civil rights - whether contemporarily popular or not - than the NAACP. NAACP's endorsement adds new wind to the sail of marriage equality. It, more than almost any other argument, confirms what the LGBT rights movement has sought to affirm: the right to civil marriage - a contract commonly available to all other couples - is a matter of civil rights. The fourteenth amendment requires equal protection (and application) of the laws - including laws regarding marriage - to all people.
Read more »

What GOP strategist's racist attack plan says about Mitt Romney and the Republicans

2012-05-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the New York Times exposed an undercover plan submitted to a conservative super PAC funded by Joe Ricketts (owner of TD Ameritrade and the Chicago Cubs) to attack President Obama's character by invoking Rev. Wright, and its revelation quickly forced Mitt Romney to repudiate it as well as the super PAC - Ending Spending Action Fund (catchy!) - to shelve it. The super PAC's head has been doing the rounds on media this morning, strenuously asserting that it is "deeply unfair" to associate the plan with the billionaire Mr. Ricketts, saying that the PAC asked for proposals from many strategists, and this plan was but one to be submitted.

But then, there's this quote, from Joe Ricketts, staring at you in the face, right in the proposal:

Joe Ricketts said it himself...

"If the nation had seen that ad, they'd never have elected Barack Obama."

CI: Birthing Behind Bars

2012-05-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

"When I went into labor, my water broke. The van came to pick me up, I was shackled. Once I was in the van, I was handcuffed. I was taken to the hospital. The handcuffs were taken off, but the shackles weren’t. I walked to the wheelchair that they brought over to me and I sat in the wheelchair with shackles on me. They re-handcuffed me once I was in the wheelchair and took me up to the floor where women had their children.

"When I got there, I was handcuffed with one hand. At the last minute, before I gave birth, I was unshackled so that my feet were free. Then after I gave birth to him, the shackles went back on and the handcuffs stayed on while I held my son on my chest."

That treatment, she recalled later, was "the most egregious, dehumanizing, oppressive practice that I ever experienced while in prison." Her experience is standard procedure for the hundreds of women who enter jail or prison while pregnant each year.

Upon her release, Reynolds started Women on the Rise Telling Her Story (WORTH), an organization of currently and formerly incarcerated women based in New York City, to give currently and formerly incarcerated women both a voice and a support system.

Read more »

House Democrats fight back against voter suppression

2012-05-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today, House Democrats did something really important. Something fundamental to our democracy. Today, House Democrats unveiled the Voter Empowerment Act - a legislation that would roll back many GOP state-sponsored efforts and laws to suppress the vote.

The bill will protect voters from restrictive voting measures that have been enacted in states across the country over the last year. These measures make it harder for millions of eligible voters to register or vote, and disproportionally affect our service members, the disabled, minorities, young people, seniors, and low-income Americans.

The Voter Empowerment Act would use Congress' power to enforce the 19th, 24th and 26th amendments to the Constitution by instituting a few simple things: easy access to registration (including online registration) and voting for everyone who is eligible - including same day registration, prohibiting the practice of targeting military personnel's right to vote on the basis of returned mail when they are deployed overseas (voter caging), and protecting the integrity of the voting process by properly training poll workers and protecting against voter intimidation.

At the head of the push for this bill is the legendary American hero Rep. John Lewis.

“The ability to vote should be easy, accessible and simple. Yet there are practices and laws in place that make it harder to vote today than it was even one year ago. ... We should be moving toward a more inclusive democracy, not one that locks people out,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), one of the bill’s sponsors and a 1960s civil rights icon.

John Boehner is walking into it... again.

2012-05-17T13:14:00.002-07:00

In August of last year, Speaker John Boehner put himself into a bind as the debt limit deal brought down the hammer on defense spending (and other Republican crony priorities) should a balanced approach to deficit reduction not be reached by Congress. Of course, Republicans wouldn't agree to any balanced approach that asks the wealthiest to pay a dime more. And just as we told you here at TPV, the President is standing by the deal and refusing to accept Republican attempts to upend it by severe cuts to assistance for the most vulnerable and the middle class.

But the debt limit deal of August 2011 raised the debt limit just enough to get us through the 2012 elections. So after that, there is going to be another big fight over the debt limit. And John Boehner is about to walk into another disaster for himself and his party. He is now threatening to let the United States default should the president be re-elected (and he will be) and remain opposed to European-style Romney-Ryan austerity measures. Boehner wants Tea-party size cuts in domestic programs plus huge tax cuts for the super rich by keeping the Bush tax cuts permanently.

John Boehner is bad at his job. Even the political side of it. By bringing this up, not only is he convincing the American people that his party has nothing to offer, he is handing President Obama something he's wanted: the ability to run against an extreme ideologue Congress that is hell bent on hurting people rather than compromising and signing on to a proposal for the greater good.
Read more »

We are all Mayans now

2012-05-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

Well, no, I don't believe that December 2012 will mark the Earth's demise. If I had a nickel for every prophet of doom, I could pay off my credit card debt.

But, this caught my attention:

Greek left-wing leader Alexis Tsipras has accused the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "playing poker with European people's lives" by insisting on austerity measures.

Mr Tsipras' Syriza bloc is predicted to come first in new elections called for 17 June. Syriza wants to renegotiate Greece's international bailout....

In a BBC interview, Mr Tsipras said if the "disease of austerity destroys Greece, it will spread to the rest of Europe".

Banks were profiting at the expense of thousands of Europeans - in Spain and Italy, as well as Greece - left in poverty and hardship, he said.

"Therefore the European leadership and especially Mrs Merkel need to stop playing poker with the lives of people," Mr Tsipras said.

The Bain of Mitt: How an $83,000 ad buy made Mitt Romney turn tail and run

2012-05-16T13:27:00.002-07:00

Years ago, I attended campaign training sessions. One of those sessions focused on a campaign's need for media and how to meet that need. It was divided into two categories: earned media and paid media. Earned media are interviews, news reports, letters to the editor - things that mention your candidate in the media that you don't have to pay for. The other is of course paid for - i.e. campaign ads. By bringing the hammer down on Romney's Bain record, Barack Obama's campaign just multiplied its investment in paid media several times over through earned media.

The Obama campaign says the full two-minute spot — dubbed “Steel” — will air just once in targeted markets during the evening news on Wednesday.

Independent media trackers tell ABC News the buy is roughly $83,000 — a tiny amount compared to the multimillion dollar recent ad buys by pro-GOP super PACs and the Obama campaign’s $25 million blitz initiated last week.

That's right. An $83,00 ad buy has everyone in the political world buzzing about it, and the Republican machine and right wing media completely spooked and beside themselves. And that's before it airs even once; it's scheduled to air in battleground states, once, tonight.
Read more »

I have had it with the pious baloney

2012-05-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

I hate to use a Gingrich term, and I don't care much for religion in political commentary, but I've had it. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Washington's archbishop for the Catholic Church, is very upset that Georgetown University would invite Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to speak at its graduation ceremonies.

[Georgetown President] DeGioia “does not address the real issue for concern — the selection of a featured speaker whose actions as a public official present the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history,” reads the statement from the archdiocese, which covers the District and suburban Maryland.

Yes, we're supposed to learn about religious liberty from the people who think women should not have the religious and moral freedom to choose whether or not they want to use birth control. We're supposed to take religious liberty lessons from archbishops who think that their views on religion and morality should be forced down the throat of everyone - Catholic or not - through the raw power of the state, whether it be the right of women over their own health care decisions or that of everyone to marry the person they love.

We're supposed to take religious liberty lessons from people who think healing the sick and making health care affordable and accessible to all - which is what Sebelius is implementing - should take a back seat to some invented right of a Church to control the health care decisions of women.

I have had it with the pious baloney.
Read more »

CNN's Ashleigh Banfield scrambles to shield Mitt Romney and vulture capitalists

2012-05-15T16:20:00.001-07:00

WTF, CNN? The "news" channel's Ashleigh Banfield today had Ben LaBolt from the Obama campaign on her show. She apparently decided that President Obama's ad about Mitt Romney's Bain Capital profiting off of the misery of bankrupt businesses and laid off workers was a little too potent for her corporate overlords to swallow. Watch:

Here are just a few of the baffling things from Banfield's questions:

First, Banfield astonishingly did not seem to know that she was hosting a political show, and kept complaining that LaBolt's response was nothing more than the official Obama campaign line. Uhh, lady! You put on the Press Secretary of a political campaign to answer questions about a political ad being run by that campaign. Were you under the impression that you were about to enter a confessional?
Read more »

"That's capitalism"

2012-05-15T12:10:00.003-07:00

That's the Romney campaign defense against charges that Bain Capital is a vulture company that moves in and takes advantage of companies with cash flow problems, turns their equity into debt, and walks away with a fat profit regardless of what happens to the company they took over. Here's what Romney surrogate and potential VP candidate Sen. Rob Portman had to say:

Still, Portman, 56, defended Romney’s business record, dismissing an advertising offensive by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that highlights job losses at a steel mill that was taken over in 1993 by Bain Capital LLC, the Boston- based private-equity firm Romney co-founded and led. The mill, GST Steel, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001.

“You know, that is capitalism,” Portman said. “There are not different kinds of capitalism; there’s the free market, and he can show where his efforts, net, created 100,000-plus jobs -- that’s pretty good,” Portman said of Romney.

The third part of anti-Obama left critiques

2012-05-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

To see just how weird the intersection of racism and economics can be in modern America, one need go no further than Yves Smith's influential "Naked Capitalism" blog and an article with the title:

Exclusive: How Obama’s Early Career Success Was Built on Fronting for Chicago Real Estate and Finance

Smith belongs with Matt Taibbi, William Black and others to a group of indignant critics of President Obama's supposed failure to restore the rule of law" in finance. These people portray themselves as pro-capitalism and anti-corruption. They claim things used to be a lot better on Wall Street back in the good old days of strong regulation and vigilant law enforcement (whenever that was). They are big fans of Paul Volcker, cheer Paul Krugman when he is critical of the Obama administration, and put a great deal of emphasis on things like "market price". Smith is by far the most informative and sophisticated of this group, but she's caught up in the same dysfunctional anti-Obama nuttiness that they all inhabit. In this post, Smith is introducing and recommending what she calls a "prescient" speech given in 2008 by the late Robert Fitch. Fitch's speech begins by attacking Obama for saying there is a common national good that transcends class - a point disputed by both Marxists and right wingers. Fitch then goes on to situate Obama as either a stooge of or participant in a group of capitalists (rapacious and evil, of course) who have been redeveloping the south side of Chicago. The obvious question is what it is that Smith can find compelling in such a cliched Marxist critique. Is she unhappy that Obama is not a Marxist devotee of the class struggle or is it something else? The answer can be found in the third part, the comments section which features an open sewer of racist resentment and paranoid conspiracy theorizing.

Let's take look at some examples after the break:

Read more »

Tax reform, GOP style: You pay more, so the rich can keep more

2012-05-14T15:59:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular Republican memes on tax reform is their complaint that "nearly half of American tax filers pay no federal income tax." That is true, however, nearly all of those Americans pay payroll taxes (which is a flat tax right out of one's income), the federal gas tax, and a ton of other taxes. The reason most of them don't pay a federal income tax is because they either don't make enough to pay income taxes or because of deductions they qualify for - like credits for mortgage interest, state and local taxes, student loan interest, etc. The Republicans have a plan to make sure middle class families and poor people pay while their rich buddies get off by paying zero - that's right, since they would lower the capital gains rate to zero.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

They're not advertising it, but Republicans in Congress, along with a few Democrats, are exploring the idea of limiting or ending some of Americans' most sacred tax breaks. They include deductions on contributions to 401(k) retirement accounts and possibly those on home mortgage interest, each of which save millions of Americans thousands of dollars each year.

Obama goes after Romney's vampire economics

2012-05-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

Mitt Romney - and many of the media lemmings that fall for his b.s. - keep saying that he wants to talk only about economics and jobs. He's the Republican candidate because he's the best person to have a debate with about jobs and the economy. All economics all the time is Mitt Romney's wish for this campaign.

Wish granted. The Obama campaign has just released the following ad, showing just one of Mitt Romney's Bain Capital horror stories of wiping out good paying jobs, and with them, entire families and communities. this ad will run in Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia.

The campaign has also put out an extended version of the story as a web video (embedded below), and launched Romney Economics, a site that details other examples of Mitt Romney's vulture capitalism.
Read more »

TPVideo Cast: Stop using "high school" as an excuse for bullying

2012-05-13T18:57:00.001-07:00

Today is Mothers' Day, and I want to wish a happy mothers' day to all the moms watching. Today's subject though, is a little sobering: bullying, and my reaction to Mitt Romney's use of "high school" as an excuse for it.

Civil rights for all: DOJ files suit against Arpaio

2012-05-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

I usually don't wade into immigration, and I'm not about to today. It's not because I don't have an opinion on immigration, being an immigrant myself. But as readers here know, I hate the pretense among many bloggers today of being an expert on everything, and I'm not about to take on that pretense. So no, I'm not about to write a big immigration piece.

But I am about to write a race piece. You're all familiar with Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona - the guy with a vengeance against brown people, couched under pretend-enforcement of immigration laws. You may also know that the Justice Department has just filed suit against Arpaio, after a lengthy investigation, alleging racial profiling and the violation of civil rights of Latinos - who are mostly not only legally present, but are citizens of this country.

What? Yes. I know it may be hard for right wingers to believe, but brown people have been Americans for a long time. Nearly two-thirds of Latinos in America are born in this country, and 30% of the rest are naturalized US citizens. In other words, more than 4 in 5 Latinos in America are American citizens.

Why do I even have to say this? Because unfortunately even in the second decade of the 21st century, way too many people are convinced that racial profiling is the way to enforce our laws, protect our borders and safeguard our country. Whether it's black drivers stopped and harassed by law enforcement for no apparent crime other than driving while black, or the right wing support for harassing Arab and Muslim Americans at our airports, or stopping and targeting brown people in the name of "immigration enforcement," it is detrimental to the law (as groups targeted stop cooperating with police and stop reporting real crimes), and a grave violation of civil rights that all people are entitled to.
Read more »

CI: Faith, Profits & Prisons

2012-05-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Criminal InJustice^† is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal InJustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Faith, Profits & Prisons
by Kay Whitlock

Two recent developments spurred the reprise of this post, originally published online in 2010 and now appearing in slightly edited form, here at Critical Mass Progress’ Criminal Injustice series.

Chuck Colson died in late April 2012. Like me, some of you remember him as special counsel to the president in Richard Nixon’s corrupt administration, a ruthless man, known for his devotion to political “dirty tricks,” who facilitated the infamous Watergate scandals that ultimately toppled a presidency. Colson eventually went to (white collar, minimum security, federal) prison for seven months on an obstruction of justice charge. Somewhere along the line, he underwent a religious conversion to a particular form of evangelical Christianity, and after his release, he founded Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM), which says it operates in 1,367 U.S. prisons, has more than 200,000 prisoners involved in its programs, and now builds on its re-entry (originally supported by then-Texas governor George W. Bush and Texas taxpayers) and recidivism prevention efforts outside of prison. At the time of his death, 1,300 radio stations carried Colson’s daily 4-minute radio commentary.

Rest in peace, Mr. Colson. Some will say he changed from a political operative to a simple man of Christ, and while I have no doubt his religious conversion was real, and that his prison work has mattered to many, I have something else to add to the summing up of his PRM work. In brief: Prison Fellowship Ministries built its base on the fact of mass incarceration, and then began to expand its base to post-prison work, anticipating shifts in public thinking about the disastrous “get tough” policies that led to, support, and sustain mass incarceration in the United States. And the disturbing political subtext to this is seldom explored. But the Colson/PFM work is often cited as lending conservative support to challenges to mass incarceration. This leads us to the second recent political development deserving of our attention.

Last week, Criminal Injustice cited and summarized new research from the Pew Center on the States identifying shifts in public thinking about the disastrous “get tough” policies and practices that led to, support, and sustain mass incarceration in the United States. Polling now suggests that U.S. voters feel too many people are in prison, the country spends too much on imprisonment, and policy changes should be pursued that shift nonviolent offenders to effective and affordable community-based alternatives. With these shifts in public opinion come possible new openings that we can utilize in the ongoing struggle to dismantle mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex that profits from it. And we should seize those openings.

But as we consider next steps forward, a few cautionary notes are in order.
Read more »

New purist meme: All credit for Obama's marriage equality stand is belong to rich white guys

2012-05-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

As the surprise and history-making of the President's support for same-sex marriage sets in, the president's detractors on the "Left" aren't exactly in a celebratory mood, with some taking credit for themselves, and some even rushing to equate gay marriage with marijuana legalizatoin.

But if there's one column that largely encapsulates the reaction Obama-will-never-be-good-enough crowd on the Left to the President's courageous decision yesterday to come out in favor of marriage equality, it's this one from Scott Tucker on Truthdig. His column, featured yesterday on Truthdig, calls the President's "politically cornered," electorally calculating and "one of the emptiest suits." It berates attributing courage to the president's statement as a "bemused state of mind." But here is what it's really about:

And the White House was definitely getting the news that major gay donors would not be signing checks until he “evolved” already.

Let's cut the bullcrap for a second, shall we? Tucker's "major gay donors" are really the major gay white donors. Because let's face it: it's not mostly the LGBT people of color that are sitting on a pile of cash in a position to write those big checks. In other words, translation: it was us white liberals that forced this black homophobe to speak out in favor of the gays.
Read more »