This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

The wonderful thing about the Human Rights Council is that while one of their banner causes has been equal treatment of the LGBT community in all aspects of life, they also do great research and in-depth analysis as well as activism. One great example of this is the most recent workplace acceptance study, which went to a number of popular companies and workplaces in America to see how well they cope – if they’re friendly at all to it – with having LGBT individuals on staff.

The results are actually surprising – some companies that proudly fly their progressive colors in many cases are anything but accepting of gays and lesbians or transgendered people, and some old standard companies you would expect to be stodgy and conservative have very progressive human resource policies. Here’s a snippet of how the companies are judged, and one strong performer, Microsoft:

Businesses are rated on a scale from 0 to 100, based on whether or not they have policies that support LGBT employees. These include anti-discrimination protections, domestic partner benefits, diversity training and transgender-inclusive benefits. This year we provided an unofficial score to businesses that have not, after repeated attempts, responded to the survey. An unofficial score is reflective of the information that HRC has been able to collect without help or input from a business.

So Microsoft may have fared well in the study – and that’s likely part of the reason the company is an HRC National Partner. But how about some of the other companies that you likely shop with every day? They say vote with your wallet, and this is a great opportunity to find out how some of the companies you likely patronize treat their employees – regardless of their sexual orientation or expression.

[ HRC :: Buying for Workplace Equality 2011 ]

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

Bill Boyarsky has an excellent column at TruthDig that resonates with me partially because of how disaffected I think a number of progressives feel right now – and not about their own disillusionment about the Democratic party or some failing of the Obama Administration, instead it’s with other progressives that are so mired in their own idealism that they can’t see incremental progress or measured response when it’s right in front of their faces.

Quick examples: many progressives ask why the Obama Administration isn’t taking a harder line against the current Egyptian regime, to which I point out that while Mubarak has been an ally of the United States for the 30 years he’s been in power, the United States has never had a difficult time calling him out on his human rights abuses, and for the United States to get involved in this very Egyptian revolution would be faulty at best and could potentially end horribly at worst, depending on who winds up in power when everything is said and done. Sometimes, we need to understand that not everything in the world is about the United States. Sometimes the White House doesn’t have to say anything – the American people can voice their support if they choose to – but sometimes, it’s not about us.

Another example – the health care law: sweeping reform passed in Congress and now in two states shut down by court challenges that have rules parts of it unconstitutional. Will the American people stand up and champion their own well being and prosperity, or will what President Obama has stood for on our behalf go down the drain because of in-fighting among progressives who didn’t want to support it if it didn’t have a single-payer option?

I see a lot of this kind of infighting, and Republicans are eating it up – as long as they can portray progressives and liberals in America as fighting amongst themselves and not having a clear plan or direction, they can take center stage and shape the message however they choose – on the national debt, on Social Security, on cuts to public spending, and even after the State of the Union address – when many “new media” progressives were so busy whining about what the President didn’t say that they didn’t have the time or the spare brain cells to think about what he did say and how much it meant.

Sadly, I can only rail against them so much, because when it comes time to vote, they’ll inevitably do the right thing – if they get out to the polls at all.

Not to digress any more than already done, Boyarsky tickled this nerve when he pointed out exactly how much the far right, which even after Arizona hasn’t bothered to embrace the so-called “new civility” or tone down their violent and hateful rhetoric, has to gain if we can’t get our act together and support who we have, even if it’s not who some people want. He puts it a bit more bluntly than I:

The selfish negativity expressed by Republicans in the House health care debate last week showed why we should fight hard for President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012.

Although their speeches were so canned, repetitive and boring that it was almost impossible to listen to them, the message was clear: Beat Obama, dismantle the health bill and take government out of the business of helping people.

It’s no surprise that Republicans and those on the right would happily abdicate the well being of the American people to special interests and leave them without any safety net of any kind – as long as they get to line their pockets in the process, and it’s equally no surprise that libertarians believe that there’s no need for government or for the voice of the people at all and that the free market that’s poisoned Americans with tainted food, killed us with bad medicine, shipped our jobs anywhere the work is cheap and kicked our families out of our homes are somehow also best suited to take care of us. What is a surprise is that progressives, mired in their own righteous indignation at times, can’t collectively solidify to beat back these waves of repression.

One of the GOP’s major proposals is eliminating Medicare as we know it, except for those now being covered. Current Medicare recipients would get a small tax credit to purchase policies in any state, opening the door to unregulated marketing of health insurance that may not cover necessities such as maternity care and cancer screenings. Government would also provide a small cash grant and let you invest in a medical savings account. Social Security would be gutted, with recipients being encouraged to turn over a third of their government pensions to the stock market. Ryan’s Budget Committee may also try to eliminate funds to implement the health care law.

Another House Republican plan, this one from the tea party-influenced Republican Study Committee, would cut federal funds given to states for Medicaid medical care for the poor.

That program is one of the best features of the health care act that the House voted to repeal last week. By 2014, the working poor, now excluded, will be eligible if the plan is not repealed.

Boyarsky goes on to explain how the health care law as it stands has already started to benefit the American people, even months after it was enacted:

Young adults under 26 are remaining on parental policies. Policies can’t be canceled unless the insurer proves fraud. There are no longer lifetime limits on benefits (such limits permitted cancellation after a certain limit had been reached). New policies must offer free preventative services. Patients can choose their primary care, OB/GYN or pediatric physicians from their insurance network without referral from another doctor. There is a new right to appeal insurance company decisions. Medicare recipients have received a $250 rebate from the prescription drug plan. Small businesses are receiving tax credits for offering health insurance to employees. People with pre-existing conditions can buy insurance. You can use the nearest emergency room without suffering insurance company penalties.

By 2014, the landscape will change much more. Consumers will shop for the best policies at state exchanges, with competition hopefully driving the price down.

Of course, key parts of this plan are threatened by the lawsuits brought by Republican state attorneys general, who may succeed in the current Supreme Court. But even so, much of the law will remain, and be revised and strengthened over the years, just as happened with Social Security and Medicare.

The Republicans want to repeal the entire package and wipe out the other government programs created to help people in economic distress. All they have to offer is a ringing call for a return to Victorian days, as proposed in Rep. Ryan’s roadmap. And they insist on doing it as the country is barely recovering from a recession caused by Republican policies. That’s reason enough for us to start working now to make sure Obama wins another term.

To these points, I tell progressives and liberals and anyone interested in the well being of their neighbors, their families, and their countrymen to look close at the real threat that stands in front of us. While we’re complaining about not going far enough, there are forces at play to bring us farther back than where we started. There’s no doubt that John McCain would have done nothing to benefit the American people on the scale that President Obama has – I think more of us would do well to remember this.

[ Without Obama, We Lose So Much More Than an Election ]
Source: TruthDig

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

The blood has barely dried on the pavement, and we’re already seeing how the right is planning to respond to the hate and vitrol that they’ve been spewing for the past several years – going all the way back to “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” in the Bush years and by deeming anyone who dared question their motives “unpatriotic” all the way up to burning effigies and hurling homophobic and racist slurs at Congresspeople as they walked from office to office, and all the way up to this weekend’s tragic shooting in Arizona.

They’re approaching this from one main angle: the “yeah well you guys can be vitrolic too!” perspective. The goal is to generate a false sense of duality between the left and the right and somehow absolve their own hatred and anger of the responsibility they should feel towards the actions of the shooter in Arizona, Jared Lee Loughner.

Usually the arguments break down like this:
“The venomous rhetoric comes from both sides!” – A popular one, one that almost always breaks down when asked for examples. Why? Because it’s simply not true. No left-wing politician or public figure in the mainstream media have resorted to the same level of anger, hatred, and calls for open violence as the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, and all of their respective cronies. There’s no doubt there’s extremism on both sides of the line, but only extremists on the right are proud to stand up in front of cheering masses and egg them on, then shake their hands.

“Democrats used a similar map in 2004!” – This one’s a smoke-and-mirrors tactic. By pointing to some similar map at some point in time when the political rhetoric was lower, there was no violent talk surrounding it, and no open calls for violence, the right feels they can somehow justify the existence of the “Take Back the 20″ map Palin had on her site, until her people guiltily started trying to scrub it from the Internet yesterday.

“The shooter was liberal/considered liberal by his friends!” and/or “He had books that implied he was more Libertarian/Anti-Government than anything!” – Another smoke tactic, avoiding the core issue – that regardless of the shooter’s personal political perspective (see the incredible piece at Chasing Evil: White Terrorism,) whether he was a registered voter of either party or what he may have said to his friends in high school, his violent behavior was very much part of an overall culture where polticial discourse in America is so far off the rails that it’s impossible for people who disagree with one another to do so civilly, and where people who feel they’re under-represented are so often told by the opposing party that there’s a coming “war.” To point – the fact that right-wingers almost immediately when President Obama took office started buying guns and ammunition, went back to the 90s-style back-woods militia training we saw under President Clinton, and started talking about how there were another “Civil War” coming. You don’t see that nonsense on the left.

“There’s no proof he was politically motivated!” – I beg to differ. The venerable Adele Stan posted a great piece at AlterNet called “How the Right’s Rhetoric Fueled the Actions of Arizona’s Mass Murderer,” and Paul Krugman’s Op-Ed in the New York Times called “Climate of Hate” point directly to the shooter’s political motivations.

“He’s just a nutjob/schizo/mentally ill person, there’s no proof this was political!” – This is another “shift the blame away from my validation of violence” attempt – another example of “I’m going to pretend everything I said yesterday doesn’t affect anyone and say he did this on his own in some kind of vacuum” reasoning that’s common on the right when confronted with the responsibility of their hatred becoming real. The right-wing blogosphere is aflame attacking all of the figures who survived the incident, claiming that the left somehow “planned to blame this on the right” from the get-go, or that the Sheriff or other public officials in Arizona are somehow to blame. Again, nothing could be further from the truth, and they all sum to being attempts at distracting us from the real issue here: the hatred and climate of violence that the right wing has fostered, many thanks to the Tea Party, over recent years.

To me, the creation of a false duality in an attempt to whitewash this hatred and violence, or worse to allow themselves to continue calling for open hatred and violence, is tantamount to being an accessory to these crimes. It is, to me, no different than placing the call for more Loughners to appear and take up arms against anyone the right is displeased with.

Here’s what Krugman had to say:

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

And yet – this is exactly what the right wing would love us to do – to quickly forget, move on, claim he’s just a nut working on his own and that no one really thinks that way. Sadly, it’s simply not the case, and there has been mounting evidence for the past several years to prove it. Here’s what really struck me in his piece, though:

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line.

…
And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

There goes that false duality between the left and the right on this. Sure, conservatives can and will come up with isolated incidents of venomous outrage on the left that could potentially be classified in the same arena as what Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh say on the air every single day, but what they’ll never be able to do is come up with examples of progressives arming themselves in preparation for some kind of comiing war. They’ll never be able to turn up progressives burning effigies of congresspeople outside of their offices because of a bill they don’t like. They’ll never be able to turn up incendiary packages at post offices addressed to senators they dislike.

They’ll never be able to come up with the volume and type of vitrol that hits television screens, newspapers, and the airwaves every day from right wing pundits and politicians, and they’ll never be able to come up with it from mainstream figures that are generally accepted as representatives of that political faction. Why? Because it simply doesn’t exist.

Stan had this to say in her piece, which I think is incredibly well written and quoted:

So to those who would like to attribute Loughner’s actions to the Tea Party, I say, hold up; take a breath. But to those on the far right, and to the more mainstream right-wingers who fail to condemn the poisonous claims of the far right, I say, you’re hardly off the hook.

Had the vitriolic rhetoric that today shapes Arizona’s political landscape (and, indeed, our national landscape) never come to call, Loughner may have found a different reason to go on a killing spree. But that vitriol does exist as a powerful prompt to the paranoid, and those who publicly deem war on the federal government a patriot’s duty should today be doing some soul-searching.

On April 19, 2010 — the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred Murrah federal office building in Oklahoma City — Bill Clinton, who was president at the time of the attack, published an op-ed in the New York Times, both commemorating the dead and speaking to his fears of another such attack in the future. Note that the Oklahoma City attack came as right-wing leaders expressed outrage at the actions of federal law enforcement at Waco and Ruby Ridge, but also demonized federal workers as a class.

“As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters,” Clinton wrote, “we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged.”

She then goes on to point out that at the same time President Clinton and others were mourning the loss of life in Oklahoma City, gun nuts and enraged Republicans and conservatives alike were massing in Washington DC to ready themselves for a “civil war” they said had already started. A fictional conflict they believed they needed to arm themselves and be ready to kill anyone who disagreed with them over.

So while we take stock and analyze this, and while we hope and urge our politicians to behave like adults and drop the hateful and vitriolic rhetoric (and leave it to the blogosphere, we do it the best without hurting anyone,) let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that there’s some kind of equality here, some kind of “there’s enough hate to go around.” It’s simply a lie, and an attempt by the right to fool themselves into not taking responsibility for this fog of anger they’ve used to their benefit – not only to get Tea Party representatives elected, but also to infect political discourse.

We, as a nation, would be better served if we took responsibility – how much is appropriate and where’s appropriate – for the nature of political discourse in America today, and that means not shoving your head in the sane or hiding from the nature of your own language, conservatives. And it means not letting it slide when you hear it and calling it out immediately as such, progressives.

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

Thank goodness for the Consumer Protection Agency, and the work that Elizabeth Warren is making the new group do – which I might add, is another one of President Obama’s achievements, one that was created as a byproduct of the financial regulation that he and Congressional Democrats fought long and hard to get passed last year. Among the things that the new CPA is tasked with is sniffing out and investigating the rapidly growing number of home foreclosure scams, both from private companies that are preying on homeowners who are in trouble and want to stay in their homes as well as the actual reputable banks that hold these mortgages and are trying to kick people out of their homes without following due process.

In terms of the former however, Warren has all but said that the fact these scams even exist is proof that the CPA needs to exist, since prior to the foreclosure crisis there was no government agency, at the State or Federal level, tasked with making sure that these groups don’t take advantage of homeowners the way they do. Prior to the financial regulation law, a mishmash of government agencies were responsible for looking into the matter, and effectiveness could vary greatly depending on the one you approached with your concern.

Warren pointed out the need for the CPA and how critical this work really is in an op-ed in the Miami Herald just before the New Year:

No one has missed the headlines: Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation.

The latest disclosures are deeply troubling, but they should not come as a big surprise. For years, both individual homeowners and consumer advocates sounded alarms that foreclosure processes were riddled with problems.

While federal and state investigators are still examining exactly what has gone wrong and why, two things are clear.

First, several financial services companies have already admitted that they used “robo-signers,” false declarations, and other workarounds to cut corners, creating a legal nightmare that will waste time and money that could have been better spent to help this economy recover. Mortgage lenders will spend millions of dollars retracing their steps, often with the same result that families who cannot pay will lose their homes.

Second, this mess might well have been avoided if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had been in place just a few years ago.

The new consumer agency is one of the signature accomplishments of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Obama this summer.

While the latter is definitely a “what if” kind of statement, there’s a lot of merit to the point. After all, if there were a government agency responsible for, you know, protecting consumers of products and services – including and especially financial services, the whole foreclosure mess could have been avoided.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that the CPA could have stopped banks from coming up with new and inventive ways to charm the pants off of home buyers with the smooth talk that homes are somehow great investments and simultaneously endless ATMs from which homeowners can draw cash – all available to them for a low low price of a sub-prime home loan. I do, however, think that the CPA could have been there earlier in the game when progressives were pushing against Congressional Republicans to allow judges to modify loan terms to let people stay in their homes.

Instead – and this is commonly forgotten – Republicans sided with their friends in the financial services industry and claimed that allowing judges to re-write mortgages would circumvent the negotiation process between homeowner and their lender, and in turn put undue pressure on lenders to lose money on home investments. Their usual rallying cry, that it would make home loans “more expensive and harder for average Americans to get,” which is tantamount to the whole “if you force us to be responsible we’ll make you suffer for it” line businesses usually lay down whenever someone tells them to clean up their act, was effective enough that a few flimsy federal programs to encourage negotiation and reward banks that helped homeowners stay in their homes were put in place and we all tried to move on.

An organization like the CPA could have been that group making the hard case for loan renegotiation, and if congressional Republicans didn’t want judges to do it, they could have gone for mediation or re-negotiation with the help of the CPA. Still, the whole thing is a case of “what if,” but it’s a “what if” I wish weren’t necessary to ask – as do the millions of homeowners who may be out of their homes sooner rather than later because there was no one to help them.

[ Elizabeth Warren: Foreclosure Scams Show Need for New Consumer Agency ]
Source: AlterNet

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

This is a showdown I simply can’t wait for. For all of the fanfare that the Tea Party thugs and their peanut gallery shared after the 2010 midterm elections, as soon as they get into office I’m eager to see how many of them settle into the political realities of office and how quickly they do it. How many of them turn on their campaign promises – the same way they’ve accused the people they’ve ousted – and how many of them take money from special interests, how many of them make sad excuses for their own misconduct, and how many of them are caught up in scandals because of their inexperience and ignorance. It’s just a matter of time.

One of those showdowns that I’m waiting to see is this one – a vote coming up on raising the Federal Debt Limit, a process that’s all but required for the government to continue functioning at this level. One that doesn’t imply that the government is borrowing more money or needs to borrow more money, but one that authorizes Congress to exercise their own borrowing power if necessary – something that won’t go over well at all with the Joe Six-Packs whose idea of news is the Drudge Report and what their friends forward to them via email without fact checking it.

From The Daily Beast, which has a great rundown on the scenario:

Rep. John Boehner owes no small part of his imminent promotion to the speaker’s office to the Tea Party, whose support he courted early and often en route to a landslide takeover of the House. But he may lose that support before he’s even begun to wield his new power.

The movement scored one of its first major substantive victories this week, rallying Republican lawmakers against a $1.3 trillion stimulus over its inclusion of $8 billion worth of earmarks—many of which they had proposed themselves.

…

The coming vote on the debt limit promises to be even more contentious. The federal government will run out of money early next year unless more borrowing is authorized, and even the most extreme budget slashing proposals out there will still means deficits for at least the medium term. A failure to pass the bill could spark a financial crisis, shut down the government, and turn big business against the GOP, making it a must-pass measure. But it’s also a bill that’s easy to demagogue, as the many Republicans who attacked incumbent Democrats for their votes on increasing the debt limit on the campaign trail discovered this year. The Republican caucus voted unanimously against the last increase in the debt ceiling, and a number have already signaled they won’t authorize another once they’re in the majority. After two years of heated rhetoric on the issue, Boehner is already warning conservatives to cool it.

We’ll just have to wait and see whether Speaker Oompah-Loompah will be able to control the dogs in his own yard, but I’m less worried about that – I think it’s inevitable – than I’m curious to hear whether the far-right conservatives who burned effigies, threw racial slurs at black Congressmen and homophobic slurs at others, will be able to hold back their rage when they realize that Washington isn’t at all like their own back-woods, and when they realize that the realities of the political process requires a thought process that’s nothing like the kind of across-the-fence “this is what I would do if I were in Congress” nonsense that most Americans love to ignorantly gab disparagingly about the federal government.

The real test will come again in 2012, when this influx of Tea Partiers will be put under the microscope for their achievements – or rather more likely – their lack thereof.

[ John Boehner's Tea Party Nightmare ]
Source: The Daily Beast

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

This piece hit home in a way that few rarely do – partially because I can see myself in the author for more than one reason, and by proxy I see myself in the logic behind the way President Obama argues and negotiates with people on his side and across the table from him.

It’s remarkable how much progressives – with whom I stand, especially – want someone who rides into Washington, guns blazing, shooting down conservative ideals and missteps with glory, taking us all the way to a progressive American utopia and ultimate victory for the truth and justice that we all know is on our side. The problem is it just doesn’t work that way, ever, and regardless of the fervor around President Obama, he’s not that guy – he can’t be that guy and expect to get anything done. And this – this piece explains why.

I couldn’t possibly cut it, so I’ll present the whole thing here, with all credit due to Ishmael Reed, writing for the New York Times:

Not all of my white teachers viewed me as a discipline problem. To the annoyance of my fellow students, one teacher selected me regularly to lead assembly programs. A high school teacher insisted that I learn about the theater. She was an America-firster who supplied me with right-wing pamphlets and magazines that I’d read at breakfast and she didn’t seem bothered by my returning them with some of the pages stuck together with syrup.

But most of them did see me as an annoyance, and gave me the grades to prove it.

I’ve been thinking recently of all those D’s for deportment on my report cards. I thought of them, for instance, when I read a response to an essay I had written about Mark Twain that appeared in “A New Literary History of America.” One of the country’s leading critics, who writes for a prominent progressive blog, called the essay “rowdy,” which I interpreted to mean “lack of deportment.” Perhaps this was because I cited “Huckleberry Finn” to show that some white women managed household slaves, a departure from the revisionist theory that sees Scarlett O’Hara as some kind of feminist martyr.

I thought of them when I pointed out to a leading progressive that the Tea Party included neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers — and he called me a “bully.” He believes that the Tea Party is a grass-roots uprising against Wall Street, a curious reading since the movement gained its impetus from a rant against the president delivered by a television personality on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

And I’ve thought about them as I’ve listened in the last week to progressives criticize President Obama for keeping his cool.

Progressives have been urging the president to “man up” in the face of the Republicans. Some want him to be like John Wayne. On horseback. Slapping people left and right.

One progressive commentator played an excerpt from a Harry Truman speech during which Truman screamed about the Republican Party to great applause. He recommended this style to Mr. Obama. If President Obama behaved that way, he’d be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people. His grade would go from a B- to a D.

What the progressives forget is that black intellectuals have been called “paranoid,” “bitter,” “rowdy,” “angry,” “bullies,” and accused of tirades and diatribes for more than 100 years. Very few of them would have been given a grade above D from most of my teachers.

When these progressives refer to themselves as Mr. Obama’s base, all they see is themselves. They ignore polls showing steadfast support for the president among blacks and Latinos. And now they are whispering about a primary challenge against the president. Brilliant! The kind of suicidal gesture that destroyed Jimmy Carter — and a way to lose the black vote forever.

Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all. They know how it feels to be unemployed and unable to buy your children Christmas presents. They know when not to shout. The president, the coolest man in the room, who worked among the unemployed in Chicago, knows too.

Reed isn’t just right here, he’s so right on the dot that you’d be able to verify his accuracy with an electron microscope. If Obama were as aggressive and militant as a lot of progressives – especially some who have served in government long enough to know this is the truth (I’m looking at you, Robert Reich,) he’d fail instantly as everyone – include people in his own party and on his side, dug in against him or simply failed to support him.

He’s doing this the right way – and while it’s not as fast as progressives would like and it’s not as winner-take-all leave-no-prisoners as many of us would like it to be, we need to remember that each step forward is a positive one, and one we would never have gotten had the other guy been elected.

[ What Progressives Don't Understand About Obama ]
Source: The New York Times

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

In the wake of the midterm elections, now that Republicans have control of the House of Representatives and will summarily go forward crushing any initiatives towards keeping the air and water clean in America, reducing our country’s global impact on climate change overall, and squashing any potential for renewable energy, smart grid technology, and domestic energy production – all in favor of lining the pockets of their friends in the oil and gas industries by forcing us to import more oil from abroad and bomb the hell out of anyone who opposes us – environmental activism groups are ever eager to win the ground war for the minds and sensibilities of voters.

The new strategy involves taking the truth to the streets, and making sure that the American public, which seems to be woefully undereducated and ignorant of climate, science, and environmental issues, gets an opportunity to hear the truth instead of the political talking points from industry that is all too ready to whine that any improvement in the condition of our planet will come at the cost of jobs or taxes.

Following the defeat, and faced with an immediate deadline for averting global catastrophe, greens big and small are going more local and becoming more confrontational. But there is wide variation in what that means.

Greenpeace, which had lobbied to improve the proposed bills but did not support them, is refocusing on local actions and alliance building, particularly against coal mining and burning. The fight against coal is one recent bright spot in the environmental struggle. For several years the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, numerous local outfits and, more recently, Greenpeace have waged a grassroots campaign using mass protest and direct action like mountaintop occupations, as well as financial and political pressure, and so far have prevented the construction of 130 proposed new coal plants [see "Cracking Big Coal," Robert S. Eshelman, May 3]. Direct action against coal directly cuts emissions, and in so doing it supports the various regional cap-and-trade structures like RGGI in the Northeast and the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), Davies points out. “Those mechanisms only work if there are some real emissions reductions,” he explains.

The Sierra Club, under the leadership of its new director, Michael Brune (who had headed the more radical Rainforest Action Network), is also redoubling its efforts against coal. The Club, which had supported Waxman-Markey and its EPA gutting before Brune took over, now considers protecting the EPA one of the “bright lines” that must not be crossed. Brune says, “Our top priority is our Beyond Coal campaign, to clean up and close down coal plants and replace them with clean energy.” Other priorities include building a movement by connecting with local activists, linking these antipollution and antimining fights to global climate issues, and working with the nascent clean-energy industry to help it become more organized and vocal.

This is important because when it comes to politics the clean-energy industry is bizarrely passive. While coal and oil buy influence, manipulate the public discourse (routinely lying in the process) and demand massive government subsidies, the wind and solar companies sit by politely.

The truth of the matter is that the environmental movement and green energy industry will need to take a much bigger stand and speak with a much louder – and hopefully collective – voice in the halls of government. The old fossil fuel industry has no intention of quieting down and giving them a room at the table, and in the absence of their voice, none of us win.

[ Green Strategy Now ]
Source: The Nation

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

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Literally moments after taking the seat of power, the Tea Party thugs who essentially elbowed and mud-slung their way into political office did exactly the thing they promised all of their so-called friends on the campaign trail they wouldn’t do: start hungrily collecting money for pork projects and personal pet projects in their home districts by taking over a billion dollars in earmarks.

Frankly, it’s not surprising – even people as ignorant as the Tea Party fanatics have to understand that the only way to stay in office is to make sure you bring home the pork -I mean bacon- for your home district, and the way to do that is to make sure you get as many pet projects approved in spending bills as possible, and that of course means earmarks. After all, the so-called “have it out on the house or senate floor” method of approving local spending would take time and then put their projects in the public light and subject them to scrutiny, something that the Tea Party simply can’t stand up to.

Members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus may tout their commitment to cutting government spending now, but they used the 111th Congress to request hundreds of earmarks that, taken cumulatively, added more than $1 billion to the federal budget.

According to a Hotline review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, the 52 members of the caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010, the last year for which records are available.

“It’s disturbing to see the Tea Party Caucus requested that much in earmarks. This is their time to put up or shut up, to be blunt,” said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. “There’s going to be a huge backlash if they continue to request earmarks.”

In founding the caucus in July, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she was giving voice to Americans who were sick of government over-spending.

Oh Bachmann – your ability to talk out of both sides of your mouth never ceases to amaze me. Let’s get to the proof though, shall we? Shine the light on the cockroaches, as it were:

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), for one, attached his name to 69 earmarks in the last fiscal year, for a total of $78,263,000. The 41 earmarks Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.) requested were worth $65,395,000. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) wanted $63,400,000 for 39 special projects, and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) wanted $93,980,000 set aside for 47 projects.

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) takes the prize as the Tea Partier with his name on the most earmarks. Rehberg’s office requested funding for 88 projects, either solely or by co-signing earmarks requests with Sens. Max Baucus (D) and Jon Tester (D), at a cost of $100,514,200. On his own, Rehberg requested 20 earmarks valued at more than $9.6 million.

More than one member can sign onto an earmark. Still, there are 29 caucus members who requested on their own or joined requests for more than $10 million in earmark funding, and seven who wanted more than $50 million in funding.

Most offices did not respond right away to a request for comment. Those that did said they supported Republicans’ new efforts to ban earmarks.

Walk the walk, but never talk the talk, eh, GOP?

So what does the Tea Party do when confronted with the reality of politics that they claimed was so broken and horrible? Break one of their first and primary campaign promises before they’re even really in power. I wonder how the torch-and-pitchfork mobs that elected them will respond to the news? Will they hang them too and claim they’re “spending too much” and that this is more “dirty tricks by big government,” or will they look the other way because after all, they’re more like them than that brown fella in the White House?

We’ll see.

[ Tea Party Caucus Takes $1 Billion in Earmarks ]
Source: The Atlantic

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

So Motor Trend Magazine voted the 2011 Chevy Volt as car of the year. That’s not a huge surprise, considering the innovative technology that’s gone into the vehicle and has helped bring it to fruition over it’s long long development cycle. The car is, in many ways, another hybrid on the market, which Chevy won’t shy away from, but the fact of the matter is that this hybrid is electric first and gas second; charges really quickly for an electric vehicle, and lays the groundwork for more and better hybrid technologies in the coming years. All that and it gets amazing mileage, doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases as long as you’re driving all-electric, is low-emissions when you use gas, and it great for the environment.

Who wouldn’t like that?

Oh wait, Republicans and conservatives. If it doesn’t destroy the planet, dirty our air and water, and leave behind a barren wasteland for our children to deal with while they line their pockets with our money, they’re not interested.

And who speaks for them? Of course – Rush Limbaugh – regardless of whether conservatives like to think he speaks for them, he does, and he called out the Chevy Volt with a shotgun barrage of half-truths and outright falsehoods that to any half-trained or skeptical ear would prove that he’s never even SEEN the vehicle, much less driven one or bothered to educate himself on its operation, design, and build process. But hey – the far right has never let a little thing like education get in the way of their pontificating.

So what does Motor Trend do? Respond in glorious fashion, making sure that Rush knows exactly where he stands, and that the public knows what the truth about the Volt really is. They pick Limbaugh apart piece by piece in a glorious open letter to him that includes this gem:

Just remember: driving and Oxycontin don’t mix.

I really hope they don’t make him apologize for that – that’s absolutely brilliant.

Here’s some of the meat of the article’s opener, for good measure:

You said, “Folks, of all the cars, no offense, General Motors, please, but of all the cars in the world, the Chevrolet Volt is the Car of the Year? Motor Trend magazine, that’s the end of them. How in the world do they have any credibility? Not one has been sold. The Volt is the Car of the Year.”

So, Mr. Limbaugh; you didn’t enjoy your drive of our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt? Assuming you’ve been anywhere near the biggest automotive technological breakthrough since … I don’t know, maybe the self-starter, could you even find your way to the front seat? Or are you happy attacking a car that you’ve never even seen in person?

Last time you ranted about the Volt, you got confused about the “range,” and said on the air that the car could be driven no more than 40 miles at a time, period. At least you stayed away from that issue this time, but you continue to attack it as the car only a tree hugging, Obama-supporting Government Motors customer would want. As radio loudmouths like you would note, none of those potential customers were to be found after November 2.

Back to us for a moment, our credibility, Mr. Limbaugh, comes from actually driving and testing the car, and understanding its advanced technology. It comes from driving and testing virtually every new car sold, and from doing this once a year with all the all-new or significantly improved models all at the same time. We test, make judgments and write about things we understand.

Absolutely glorious.

[ Rush to Judgement ]
Source: Motor Week Blog

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

Seriously, read that headline and think hard about it – now you know who the GOP represents in Congress. Not the angry, disillusioned, ignorant Tea Partiers who voted them in, and not you or I or anyone else in the reality-based community: they represent the millionaires who line their pockets, wine and dine them on the backs of the American people, and who shovel money into their campaign funds in return for the earmarks and pet projects and contracts that the GOP says they’re so opposed to but will likely flinch over.

So this is what it’s come to – if you’ve ever wondered if there’s really a class war in America, this is it, and sadly, there are a number of wealthy Americans who see this for what it is and are begging Congress to raise their taxes.

But no – the GOP claims that they’re doing us all a favor by hand-feeding more caviar to the rich while the middle class can’t afford to stay in their homes and small businesses can’t afford to hire even if they want to, so this is the result:

The Republican rich-people bias isn’t exactly a shocker, but finally someone’s had the gall to spell it out. In a speech to the pro-business Tax Council, House Rep. David Camp said that the Dem’s middle-class tax extensions–permanent breaks for those earning $200,000 or less, with temporary extensions on the wealthy–would be blocked during the lame-duck session unless the rich get the same permanent extensions. Wait–he’s demanding the rich get equal treatment as the middle class?

Sad, isn’t it?

[ GOP Rep Promises to Hold Middle Class Tax Cuts Hostage–Unless the Rich Get a Permanent Break ]
Source: AlterNet

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!