Undernews For Feb 27
Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it
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The serious war on teachers unions didn't begin in Wisconsin. It was launched by Michelle Rhee and her aforementioned
backers. . .
Richard D. Kahlenberg, Washington Post - Walker's argument - that greedy teachers are putting their own interests over the interests of the public - resonates
in part because in recent years, many Democrats have made that argument as well.
Exhibit A is former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Under Democratic mayor Adrian Fenty, she repeatedly clashed
with the Washington Teachers' Union, which she said put the interests of adults over those of children. "Cooperation,
collaboration, and consensus-building are way overrated," Rhee said at the Aspen Institute's education summit in 2008.
She told journalist John Merrow it is imperative that teachers-union bargaining rights exclude issues such as devising a
fair teacher-evaluation system.
Since resigning as chancellor last year, Rhee has launched a new organization, Students First, with the express goal of
raising $1 billion to counter teachers unions. Her approach remains confrontational. In a profound sense, Democrats like
Michelle Rhee have paved the way for Scott Walker.
But Rhee couldn't have done it alone. Then-candidate Barack Obama endorsed Rhee in a 2008 debate as a "wonderful new
superintendent" and later applauded the firing of every single unionized teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode
Island. (The teachers were later rehired.) Rhee's agenda also received a big boost from liberal movie director Davis
Guggenheim, whose film, "Waiting for 'Superman,' " implies that teachers unions are to blame for the failures of urban
education and that non-unionized charter schools are the solution. The movie includes no acknowledgment that the things
teachers want for themselves - more resources devoted to education, smaller class sizes, policies that allow them to
keep order in the classroom - are also good for kids.
The NY Times' dismissive handling of jury nullification is typical of the bad journalism on the topic, all the more
ironic since one of the important reasons we have a free press is because in 1735 journalist Peter Zenger, accused of
seditious libel, was acquitted by a jury that ignored the court's instructions on the law. After the NYT clip is an
article that outlines the facts about jury nullification
NY Times - Since 2009, [Julian] Heicklen has stood at courthouse entrances ... and handed out pamphlets encouraging jurors to
ignore the law if they disagree with it, and to render verdicts based on conscience. That concept, called jury
nullification, is highly controversial, and courts are hostile to it. But federal prosecutors have now taken the unusual
step of having Mr. Heicklen indicted on a charge that his distributing of such pamphlets at the courthouse entrance
violates the law against jury tampering. He is to appear in court on Friday for a conference in his case.
Mr. Heicklen insists that he never tries to influence specific jurors or cases, and instead gives his brochures to
passers-by, hoping that jurors are among them.
But he feels his message must be getting out, or the government would not have brought charges against him.
“If I weren’t having any effect, would they do this?” said Mr. Heicklen, whose former colleagues recall him as a
talented and unconventional educator. “You don’t have to be a genius to figure this thing out.”
Prosecutors declined to comment on his case, as did Sabrina Shroff, a lawyer who was assigned to assist Mr. Heicklen.
(He is acting as his own lawyer.)
He said his activism on nullification dated back to just after he retired in the early 1990s, when he openly smoked
marijuana in State College, Pa., to get arrested as a protest against marijuana laws. For this, he was arrested about
five times. Mr. Heicklen has said that he otherwise does not smoke marijuana.
Around the same time, he learned about a group called the Fully Informed Jury Association, which urges jurors to nullify laws with which they disagree. Mr. Heicklen, of Teaneck, N.J., said he distributed the
group’s materials as well as his own.
“I don’t want them to nullify the murder laws,” he said. “I’m a big law-and-order guy when it comes to real crime.”
But, he said, there were other laws he wanted to nullify, like drug and gambling laws. “This is classic political
advocacy,” said Christopher T. Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Unless the
government can show that he’s singling out jurors to influence a specific verdict, it’s squarely protected by the First
Amendment, and they should dismiss the case.”
The truth about jury nullification
Sam Smith, 1990 - William Penn may have thought he had settled the matter. Arrested in 1670 for preaching Quakerism, Penn was brought to
trial. Despite Penn's admitting the charge, four of the 12 jurors voted to acquit. The judge sent the four to jail
"without meat, drink, fire and tobacco" for failing to find Penn guilty. On appeal, however, the jurors' action was
upheld and the right of juries to judge both the law and the facts -- to nullify the law if it chose -- became part of
British constitutional law.
It ultimately became part of American constitutional law as well, but you'd never know it listening to jury instructions
today almost anywhere in the country. With only a few exceptions, juries are explicitly or implicitly told to worry only
about the facts and let the judge decide the law. The right of jury nullification has become one of the legal system's
best kept secrets.
Now a remarkable coalition has sprung up to challenge this secrecy as undemocratic, unconstitutional and dangerous.
Though organized by libertarian activists, the Fully Informed Jury Amendment movement includes liberals and
conservatives, Greens, drug decriminalization advocates, gun owner groups, peace activists, both sides of the abortion
controversy, helmet and seatbelt activists, alternative medicine practitioners, taxpayer rights groups,
environmentalists, criminal trial lawyers and law professors.
Organized by Larry Dodge and Don Doig, both of Helmville, Montana (population: 26; elevation 4300'), FIJA seeks to
require that juries be informed of their nullification rights. Informed jury amendments have been filed as an initiative
in seven states and legislation has been introduced in the Alaska state legislature.
Despite the refusal of courts to inform juries of their right to nullify, American juries have periodically exercised it
anyway. In recent years, some peace protesters have been acquitted despite strong evidence that they violated the law.
In the 19th century northern juries would refuse to convict under the fugitive slave laws. And in 1735 journalist Peter
Zenger, accused of seditious libel, was acquitted by a jury that ignored the court's instructions on the law.
Those who have endorsed the right of a jury to judge both the law and the facts include Chief Justice John Jay, Samuel
Chase, Dean Roscoe Pound, Learned Hand and Oliver Wendell Holmes. According to the Yale Law Journal in 1964, during the
first third of the 19th century judges did inform juries of the right, forcing lawyers to argue "the law -- its
interpretation and validity -- to the jury." By the latter part of the century, however, judges and state law were
increasingly moving against nullification. In 1895 the US Supreme Court upheld the principle but ruled that juries were
not to be informed of it by defense attorneys, nor were judges required to tell them about it. Stephen Barkan, writing
in Social Problems (October 1983), noted that the attacks on nullification stemmed in part from juries acquitting strike
organizers and other labor activists. And in 1892 the American Bar Review warned that jurors had "developed agrarian
tendencies of an alarming character."
Today, the constitutions of only two states -- Maryland and Indiana -- clearly declare the nullification right, although
two others -- Georgia and Oregon -- refer to it obliquely. The informed jury movement would like all states to require
that judges instruct juries on their power to serve, in effect, as the final legislature of the land concerning the law
in a particular case.
As the diverse nature of the movement suggests, many groups in this country feel the government has overstepped its
power in some way and that there must be protection for the natural rights of American citizens. They are defending not
only the right to protest or carry a gun or not wear seatbelts but challenging the right of the government to decide
such matters without the mediating effect of a jury's judgement of fairness in a particular case.
For many liberals and progressives, who tend to be confident of the beneficent nature of government power, such a
challenge may be a bit uncomfortable -- understandable in a case involving a peace protest, less appreciated if invoked
by a member of the National Rifle Association. The libertarians argue that the two are of one cloth. As government
intrusion in individual matters has increased, the libertarian view has gained influence, helping to tilt normal
left-right divisions on their side. Libertarians, for example, have been key to the growing opposition to the barbaric
Reagan-Bush war on drugs, providing some of the best analysis and advocacy available on the issue.
Libertarians are again in the lead on the nullification issue. Many progressives may be uneasy about the thought of a
western jury nullifying a case involving a gun control or seatbelt law, but this unease reminds one of little discussed
principles that were once considered central to being an American -- not the least of which was freedom from some
government official telling you how to live your life. As the design of the modern centralized welfare state frays and
becomes increasingly authoritarian, reacquaintance with some of our individualistic roots has much to recommend it.
In fact, it is unlikely that a jury considering a gun control case would excuse the leader of an underground Nazi
movement or a gang of bank robbers. It is far more likely that it would acquit the respectable rancher who simply
believes that gun control represents further destruction of his paradigm of individual liberty. If so, what have we
lost?
The history of jury nullification suggests there is little to fear. In those states where the concept is respected to
some degree it has had minimal effect on the overall functioning of the law. Nullification has, on the other hand,
played a little noted but significant role in the advance of religious and press freedom, the abolition of slavery and
the building of a labor movement. Even in the face of hostility by contemporary courts, it has cropped up in political
protest trials of the past few decades. And it might have surfaced more frequently absent that hostility. As one of the
jurors said following the conviction of the Berrigan brothers in 1980:
We convicted them on three things, and we really didn't want to convict them on anything. But we had to, because of the
way the judge said the only thing that you can use is what you get under the law... I would have loved to hold up a flag
to show them we approved of what they were doing. It was very difficult for us to bring in that conviction.
The nullification principle involves the power to say no to the excesses of government, and thus serves as a final
defense against tyranny. As Thomas Jefferson put it to Tom Paine in a 1789 letter, "I consider trial by jury as the only
anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."
"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's
natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is
really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law." --
Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone
"For more than six hundred years-- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215--there has been no clearer principle of English
or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what
are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their
primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion,
unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such law." --Lysander
Spooner, The Right of Juries
If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is
contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence. -- 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan,
1969
Every jury in the land is tampered with and falsely instructed by the judge when it is told that it must accept as the
law that which has been given to them, or that they can decide only the facts of the case. -- Lord Denham, O'Connell v
Rex (1884)
The jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts. -- Justice Holmes, Homing v
District of Columbia, 138 (1920)
When a jury acquits a defendant even though he or she clearly appears to be guilty, the acquittal conveys significant
information about community attitudes and provides a guideline for future prosecutorial discretion...Because of the high
acquittal rate in prohibition cases in the 1920s and early 1930s, prohibition laws could not be enforced. The repeal of
these laws is traceable to the refusal of juries to convict those accused of alcohol traffic. -- Sheflin and Van Dyke,
Law and Contemporary Problems, 43, No. 4, 1980
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment
and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court.-- John Adams
In today's coverage we discuss developments concerning jury nullification. Here are some more personal notes on the
topic:
Sam Smith, 1999 - The October issue was late because your editor was tied up in a six-hour voir dire for a double-robbery case. In the
end, I maintained my perfect record of having never sat as a through a full trial. As a Coast Guard officer I was
bounced from two courts martial, and I have been dismissed from three jury panels. In the one case in which I was
seated, the first two witnesses -- both US Park Police officers -- identified the defense counsel as the defendant. The
trial was over in 20 minutes.
In the most recent case, the judge's impressive if tedious effort to obtain a fair jury resulted in a long series of
bench conferences as citizens told of their connections to crime and law enforcement. For my part I mentioned my USCG
background, three house burglaries, one office break-in, one stolen car, being detained at Washington National Airport
as a suspected terrorist due to a defective computer-screening machine, and the fact that one of my brothers in-law had
been killed in a drug store robbery.
Then I explained to Judge Michael Rankin that, while I doubted it was relevant in this case, I had been advised that I
should reveal my long public advocacy of the right of juries to judge both the law and the facts. I noted that this view
had upset some judges. Judge Rankin said it didn't bother him although he didn't mind debating the issue and had done so
with Paul Butler, the black lawyer-scholar who has promoted nullification as a form of protest.
I told the judge that I didn't think Butler's arguments were effective because they were based on ethnicity rather than
history, which offered a much stronger case. I then began a brief spiel the subject citing Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell
Holmes and Thomas Jefferson. While previous US Attorneys had expressed hostility towards my views, this one merely asked
whether there were any legal principles that I would uphold. I asked for an example and Judge Rankin said, well, you
would support the presumption of innocence wouldn't you? I said, of course, and then -- brazenly rapping my hand on the
judge's bench to punctuate the point -- said my concern was that the jury remain our last defense against tyranny, the
final legislature deciding the law as it pertained to the case under consideration. To my amazement, Judge Rankin said,
well, you'll get no argument from me. The judge and both attorneys agreed that the case under consideration did not
raise such issues and that was the end of the matter. I was later dismissed on a peremptory challenge.
The incident reminded me of another pleasant surprise I recently stumbled upon in a DC courthouse. Twenty citizens,
including myself, are suing the President, Senate, House, and federal control board for the lack of DC self-government.
The day before our hearing before a special three-judge panel in US District Court (in the very courtroom of Watergate,
Iran-Contra, and Monica fame) someone called the US Marshals and warned that our group might be planning some
disruption. Sure enough, when I entered the courthouse with co-plaintiff and black minister Graylan Hagler, there seemed
an excess number of surly cops standing outside. A US Marshal approached and asked if he could help us. Rev. Hagler
asked for directions to the cafeteria which the Marshal gave and then he looked at Hagler, and said, "I've been to your
church, Reverend. In fact, one of my men is on your board of trustees. Let's go and bless him." So the marshal and the
reverend left me to find the cafeteria by myself and to recall again something that is easy for activists to forget: not
all your friends are out of power.
Common Dreams - With more than 600,601 stops, 87 percent of which were of black and latino New Yorkers, last year was the worst year for
stop-and-frisks since the city began keeping records. For many children, being stopped by the police on their way home
from school has become a normal afterschool activity, and that is a tragedy.
A February 23 NYPD press release makes the bold claim, “Stops save lives,” yet the department has never been able to
prove that stop-and-frisk even reduces crime. Only 0.13 percent of last year’s stops resulted in the discovery of a
firearm, and only 7 percent of the stops resulted in arrests.
Ten years’ worth of previous data show that NYPD officers use physical force at a far higher rate during stops of blacks
and latinos compared to whites, and that this disparity exists despite corresponding rates of arrest and weapons or
contraband yield across racial lines, which further supports our legal claims that the NYPD is engaged in a pattern of
racial profiling in its stop-and-frisk practices.
The data up until the last quarter of 2010 reveal that “fits relevant description” is the reason for actual stops only
15 percent of the time. Far and away the most often cited reason for a stop by the police is the vague and undefined
“furtive movements” (nearly 50 percent of all stops) and when the police deem someone to appear to be “casing a victim
or location” (nearly 30 percent of all stops). Also listed are “inappropriate attire for season,” “wearing clothes
commonly used in a crime” and “suspicious bulge,” among other boxes an officer can check off on the form. CCR will
release the numbers for the most recent year when we receive the complete raw data.
Police stops-and-frisks without reasonable suspicion violate the Fourth Amendment, and racial profiling is a violation
of fundamental rights and protections of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
AFL-CIO - Walker has long record attacking public employees’ rights to bargain for good jobs¬and having his hand slapped by the
legal system, too.
* In Oct, 2010, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission found that Milwaukee County, under then-County Executive
Walker, failed to bargain in good faith with AFSCME District Council 48. Walker’s own bargaining team reached a
tentative agreement with county workers in late 2009, but within days he announced a budget that ignored the agreement
and assumed major concessions that had not been negotiated. At that point, he threatened major layoffs unless unions
accepted the un-negotiated concessions. Walker’s team had not discussed the budget’s impact with the union.
* Walker’s unilateral decision to replace Milwaukee County Courthouse security staff with private contractors also was
overruled by a WERC arbitrator on Jan. 10. The arbitrator ordered the county to reinstate county security staff with
back pay, a decision that could cost the county $430,000.
* In Dec. 2010, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld an arbitrator’s decision that Walker overstepped his powers by
trying to impose a 35-hour work week on Milwaukee County workers. Walker cited a budget crisis as the need for chopping
five hours off the workweek without talking to the union. The arbitrator and court did not agree.
* In 2006, the union sought and won temporary restraining order to stop layoffs threatened by Walker in an attempt to
force concessions.
AFL-CIO - More than a million private-sector jobs were added to the U.S. economy during the past 12 months, but they were mainly
middle and lower-wage jobs, a new report from the National Employment Law Project finds. The heavy growth in industries
like temporary employment services, restaurants and retail and in nursing and residential care facilities, which pay
median wages below $13 an hour, suggests that not only are there fewer job opportunities overall now than before the
recession, there are fewer well-paying jobs.
Craig Crawford, Huffington Post - Collective bargaining is hardly the problem it seems. Those that ban it are in the hole.
Check out the states that are not running deficits -- and all, in various ways, just so happen to support collective
bargaining with state employees: Arkansas, Alabama, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Further establishing the myth that banning collective bargaining curbs deficits, consider the states that ban it: Four
of the five that make it explicitly illegal face budget shortfalls.
Register,UK - China has rather brilliantly declared that, from next month, Tibetan Buddhist monks must have official permission to
reincarnate, Newsweek reports. The new legislation lays down strict guidelines for making a reappearance and is,
according to a statement from the State Administration for Religious Affairs, "an important move to institutionalize
management of reincarnation". The penalty for illicit reincarnation is not noted (100 consecutive life sentences without
parole?), but there is method in the Chinese authorities' madness. As Newsweek points out, the law will effectively
prevent any Buddhist monk living outside Tibet from seeking reincarnation. Accordingly, it also "effectively gives
Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama". The exiled 72-year-old Dalai Lama is currently in India
pondering his successor. Since he's refused to reincarnate in Tibet while it's under Chinese control, there is the
provocative possibility of a Chinese-sponsored Dalai Lama going head-to-head with a new young chum for Richard Gere.
From Think Progress
- BANK OF AMERICA: In 2009, Bank of America didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes, exploiting the tax code
so as to avoid paying its fair share. “Oh, yeah, this happens all the time,” said Robert Willens, a tax accounting
expert interviewed by McClatchy. “If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay
you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. The same year, the mega-bank’s top executives
received pay “ranging from $6 million to nearly $30 million.”
- BOEING: Despite receiving billions of dollars from the federal government every single year in taxpayer subsidies from
the U.S. government, Boeing didn’t “pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes” between 2008 and 2010.
- CITIGROUP: Citigroup’s deferred income taxes for the third quarter of 2010 amounted to a grand total of $0.00. At the
same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. “John Havens, the head of Citigroup’s investment bank, is
expected to be the bank’s highest paid executive for the second year in a row, with a compensation package worth $9.5
million.”
- EXXON-MOBIL: The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States.
Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This
was the same year that the company overtook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of
Exxon-Mobil’s CEO the same year was over $29,000,000.
- GENERAL ELECTRIC: In 2009, General Electric ¬ the world’s largest corporation ¬ filed more than 7,000 tax returns and
still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for
losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas. That same year GE CEO Jeffery Immelt ¬ who recently scored
a spot on a White House economic advisory board ¬ “earned total compensation of $9.89 million.” In 2002, Immelt
displayed his lack of economic patriotism, saying, “When I am talking to GE managers, I talk China, China, China, China,
China….I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion.”
- WELLS FARGO: Despite being the fourth largest bank in the country, Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes
by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also
saw his compensation “more than double” as he earned “a salary of $5.6 million
Winona Daily News - Gov. Mark Dayton looked to the wealthy to erase about half of a $6.2 billion budget deficit, proposing a new top tax
bracket and an income surtax that together would give Minnesota the nation's highest income tax rate.
The Democratic governor's plan would raise nearly $2.9 billion from the top 5 percent of taxpayers, including a new
property tax on homes valued at more than $1 million.
It would also increase taxes on health care providers and corporations with foreign operations, while cutting almost $1
billion in spending for programs including MinnesotaCare health care and nursing homes.
Top Republican lawmakers gave the new income taxes zero chance of passing the GOP-controlled Legislature.
The Latino population has grown by more than 30 percent since the year 2000 in the first 16 states for which the U.S.
Census Bureau has released data,The Latino population doubled in in South Dakota, Mississippi, Maryland, and Arkansas in
the last decade, growing at 10 times the rate of the non-Latino population in those states. Latinos are also responsible
for the majority of population growth in the states of Texas, Florida, Arizona and Nevada, - New America Media.
•The U.S. Catholic bishops threw their moral weight behind the pro-union protesters in Wisconsin, saying the rights of workers do not abate in
difficult economic times.
•Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was asked to leave a restaurant. As a bartender put it, ""his presence was causing a disturbance to the other customers
and management asked him to leave."
•WTDY, Madison - WTDY can no longer carry the Glenn Beck program. Over the last 12 months, the show has devolved into plugs for Fox News
(the radio version of which is aired by our direct competitor), his books, and other personal endorsements. The lack of
actual content becomes more apparent daily. Monday's program was the final straw; his unabashed deriding of Madison is
unacceptable for broadcast in our community.
Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam - Liberal Zionism is dead and J Street is liberal Zionism personified. It’s like the Sean Penn character in Dead Man
Walking. While it isn’t precisely dead, it is close to being irrelevant. And in politics that’s as good as dead. J
Street abandoned us. It is too timid to represent real change or a hopeful message for the future. It waffles. It
fudges. It performs ideological litmus tests to determine who’s welcomed inside the tent. And anyone who believes it
represents something vital or hopeful in the long-term is deluding him or herself.
While some may think I’m being overly harsh with J Street if they feel about it as I once did–that it represents a
potential for something new in the American Jewish community. But the truth is that J Street will either eventually
embrace ideas it currently labels anathema, or it will rapidly become irrelevant. Given what I’ve seen, I don’t see it
taking the kind of bold positions that are vital to encourage real change on the Israeli political scene.
Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing - Not content to censor a book that combines literary criticism and fiction by including JRR Tolkien as a character, the
Tolkien estate has shut down Adam Rakunas, who makes and gives away buttons that have the word Tolkien on them:
"Back in the late 2009, I got into a Twitter conversation with Madeline Ashby about geek culture, fandom, and a bunch of
stuff like that. Madeline wrote, "While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion." I thought this was an
excellent encapsulation of the divide in SF/F/Whatever fandom, and thus took to Zazzle to make little buttons with her
quote. I bought a bunch, handed them out at a few conventions, then I had a kid and promptly forgot all about it.
"Until today, when Zazzle emailed me to say they were pulling the buttons for intellectual property right infringement.
"And guess who complained about their rights being infringed?
"I've tried to come up with something more to say about this, but I'm too angry and confused and tired to say anything
more than I did in the title of this post. Have fun milking your dad's stuff, Christopher Tolkien! "
If this isn't the greatest proof that extending copyright in scope and duration screws living creators and impedes the
creation of new works, I don't know what is.
USA Today - Madison Police Department spokesman Joel DeSpain said police figure the crowd of protesters Saturday in
downtown Madison, Wis., exceeded last week's Saturday protest, which was estimated at 70,000 people and included a small
counter-demonstration by supporters of Gov. Scott Walker. The crowd could have numbered as high as 100,000, but counting
it was difficult because it was spread over parts of State Street as well as the Capitol Square and in the Capitol
itself. DeSpain said there were no arrests and called the demonstrators "a very civil group."
Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus says retailers who don't support Republican candidates "should be shot; should be
thrown out of their goddamn jobs."
Robert Reich, TPM Cafe - The truth is that while the proximate cause of America's economic plunge was Wall Street's
excesses leading up to the crash of 2008, its underlying cause -- and the reason the economy continues to be lousy for
most Americans -- is so much income and wealth have been going to the very top that the vast majority no longer has the
purchasing power to lift the economy out of its doldrums. American's aren't buying cars (they bought 17 million new cars
in 2005, just 12 million last year). They're not buying homes (7.5 million in 2005, 4.6 million last year). They're not
going to the malls (high-end retailers are booming but Wal-Mart's sales are down).
Only the richest 5 percent of Americans are back in the stores because their stock portfolios have soared. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average has doubled from its crisis low. Wall Street pay is up to record levels. .
The truth is if the super-rich paid their fair share of taxes, government wouldn't be broke. If Governor Scott Walker
hadn't handed out tax breaks to corporations and the well-off, Wisconsin wouldn't be in a budget crisis. If Washington
hadn't extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, eviscerated the estate tax, and created loopholes for private-equity and
hedge-fund managers, the federal budget wouldn't look nearly as bad.
And if America had higher marginal tax rates and more tax brackets at the top - for those raking in $1 million, $5
million, $15 million a year - the budget would look even better. We wouldn't be firing teachers or slashing Medicaid or
hurting the most vulnerable members of our society. We wouldn't be in a tizzy over Social Security. We'd slow the rise
in healthcare costs but we wouldn't cut Medicare. We'd cut defense spending and lop off subsidies to giant
agribusinesses but we wouldn't view the government as our national nemesis.
NY Times - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be
unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a
change of government in that fashion again were slim.
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia
or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates
told an assembly of Army cadets here.
The Hill - Half of the subsidies allotted to phone companies through the Federal Communications Commission's "High-Cost"
Universal Service Fund go to the general operations of phone companies, rather than to paying for phone lines, according
to a study released on Wednesday.
Fifty-nine cents of every dollar paid out through the fund go to general phone company operations, according to Scott
Wallsten, vice president for research at the Technology Policy Institute, a think tank.
LA Times - Spending cuts approved by House Republicans would act as a drag on the U.S. economy, according to a Wall Street analysis that put new pressure on the political
debate in Washington. The report by the investment firm Goldman Sachs said the cuts would reduce the growth in gross domestic product by up to 2 percentage points this year, essentially
cutting in half the nation's projected economic growth for 2011. The analysis, prepared for the firm's clients,
represents the first independent economic assessment of the congressional budget fight, which could lead to a government
shutdown as early as next week.
History News Network - Both Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin are waging battle armed with the weapons of
parliamentary procedure. Fourteen Democratic state senators have fled the state for neighboring Illinois. Their choice
of refuge is eminently appropriate, for Abraham Lincoln himself tried to deny his political opponents quorum through a
very unorthodox method of departure in 1840.
Lincoln, then a young Whig state congressman, was a major backer of Illinois’s State Bank. The bank had been authorized
to suspend its specie payments (payments in coin) until the end of the legislative session in December. Lincoln and his
fellow Whigs, then in the minority, naturally sought to extend the session indefinitely and hence delay the resumption
of specie payments.
So Lincoln jumped out the window.
Here’s how Lincoln biographer David H. Donald described the scene:
The only way the Whigs could keep the legislature in session was by absenting themselves, so that there was no quorum.
They left Lincoln, together with one or two of his trusted lieutenants, to watch the proceedings and to demand roll
calls when the Democrats tried to adjourn. The session dragged on into the evening… Several Democrats rose from their
sickbeds to help form a quorum. Rattled, Lincoln and his aides lost their heads and voted on the next roll call. Then,
still hoping to block adjournment, they unsuccessfully tried to get out of the locked door. When the sergeant at arms
rebuffed them, they jumped out the first-story window.
The Democrats of his day defeated Lincoln's attempts taking a page out of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's book¬by
recording Lincoln as "presenting and voting" even after he had fled.
[Lincoln] became the butt of jokes from his political rivals for a long while after the spectacle. Mocking his height
(Lincoln was tall even by modern standards), Democrats declared he suffered no injuries because “‘his legs reached
nearly from the window to the ground!’”
Politico - Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about a CIA attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear
program obtained a New York Times reporter’s three private credit reports, examined his personal bank records and
obtained information about his phone calls and travel, according to a new court filing. The scope and intrusiveness of
the government’s efforts to uncover reporter James Risen’s sources surfaced Thursday in the criminal case of Jeffrey
Sterling, a former CIA officer facing federal criminal charges for allegedly disclosing classified information. Sterling
is accused of giving Risen details about what Risen describes as the CIA’s plan to give Iran faulty nuclear blueprints,
hoping to temporarily thwart the regime’s ambitions to build an atomic bomb.
NN - Termination notices have been sent to every teacher in the Providence public school system, setting off a wave of
anxiety and anger in the Rhode Island city and prompting a union leader to accuse the mayor of anti-union maneuvering.
The teachers will remain at work as the school year continues, though the notices sent out this week mean any of them
now could lose their jobs at the municipal officials' discretion. During a packed and at-times spirited meeting Thursday
night, the city school committee voted 4-3 to back Mayor Angel Tavares' move to send out the notices. The mayor said in
an online message Wednesday that he authorized the previous day's decision to dismiss almost 2,000 teachers and staff to
allow for greater flexibility as the budget process unfolds.
Act Demand Progress - Skype, BlackBerry, and other Internet communications services are under attack. The Obama
administration and the FBI are pushing legislation that would ban online communications technologies like these unless
their developers make it easy for the government to wiretap them.
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires telecom companies to make it possible for the government
wiretap their networks. Now Obama and law enforcement want to expand CALEA to cover all online communications
technologies, including peer-to-peer and social networking apps. The New York Times says the law would even include
making sure the government could intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
Companies that want to avoid stifling regulations, and those that actually care about our privacy rights, would have to
leave the U.S. That'd reduce our prominence as a technology leader, and encourage the government to devise ever more
heavy-handed ways of blocking Americans from using the offending technologies. Other companies would comply by creating
back-doors that could lead to more privacy violations and make the Internet more vulnerable to attack: experts say
wiretap-ready technologies would be much easier to hack.
And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I
will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United
States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner. - Barack Obama, 2007
Sam Smith
At the last monthly meeting in Brunswick of the Merrymeeting Greens (named after a nearby bay) I was pleased to find the
agenda full of some great projects, ones not only good for our area but ones worth repeating elsewhere.
The first was to get Greens and Libertarians debating or discussing with each other on Maine college campuses, something
I have occasionally urged for more than a decade. Greens and Libertarians are usually the only parties on the ballot
whose intellectual positions haven't been undermined by bribery. Both tend to be smart, thoughtful and interesting and,
besides, the purpose wouldn't be to get Greens to become Libertarians or vice versa but for Democrats and Republicans to
see the error of their ways as well as discovering what honest politics is really about. As the minutes of our meeting
later put it, "The purpose of these forums would be to show how political discussion can be handled with a goal of
finding commonalities rather than differences."
Greens and Libertarians have a lot in common beyond the frustrations of third party status. They tend not to like war,
they support abortion and marijuana rights, gay marriage and a localist approach to things. I can't stand the
Libertarian go-it-alone theory of economics - which I sometimes suspect grows out of an inability to play well with
other children - but it does lead to a healthy view of civil liberties. It's not that I think of Libertarians as self
centered, rather I sense a kind of loneliness and a lack of happy experience with communities coming together for the
common good. Nonetheless, I still find Libertarians among the nicest folks with whom not to agree.
At the meeting our conversation was neither political nor theoretical. It was about getting the discussions going and
there to help us was Jorge Maderal, one of the leaders of the Maine Libertarians. He stayed for the whole meeting and
things are now rolling in the right direction.
The Merrymeeting Greens was a great place to start. No one really knows where the name Merrymeeting comes from but Frank
Burroughs, in Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay, wrote, "It might more plausibly have come from the springtime reunions of
trappers and traders, native Americans and Euro-Americans, which would presumably have been as convivial as cheap rum
and brandy could make them. But my guess is that the name had more to do with the English culture wars than with local
events, and that it was intended to appeal to one kind of English colonist and warn off another. The fact that one cove
down river from the Bay is named Robinhood and another Christmas tends to support this: both names, to a Puritan, would
have smacked of Merry Olde England, which was precisely the anathema they were fleeing." Neither Greens nor Libertarians
have much use for Puritans.
The other two items on the agenda were a flashback to a time before the Internet had untrained activists in the once
valued skill of community organizing, replacing it with clictivisim.
As Micah White put it in the Guardian:
"Gone is faith in the power of ideas, or the poetry of deeds, to enact social change. Instead, subject lines are A/B
tested and messages vetted for widest appeal. Most tragically of all, to inflate participation rates, these
organizations increasingly ask less and less of their members. The end result is the degradation of activism into a
series of petition drives that capitalize on current events. Political engagement becomes a matter of clicking a few
links. In promoting the illusion that surfing the web can change the world, clicktivism is to activism as McDonalds is
to a slow-cooked meal. It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone.
"Exchanging the substance of activism for reformist platitudes that do well in market tests, clicktivists damage every
genuine political movement they touch. In expanding their tactics into formerly untrammelled political scenes and niche
identities, they unfairly compete with legitimate local organizations who represent an authentic voice of their
communities. They are the Wal-Mart of activism: leveraging economies of scale, they colonies emergent political
identities and silence underfunded radical voices."
In place of clicktivism, the Merrymeeting Greens have come up with a League of Brunswick Voters and another group called Vital Connections. Both were created on the principle that communities - of geography or of
empathy - are the rock of successful organizing. In many ways it is the opposite of what the corporate world and its
emulators think of as leadership. Instead of a few taking power, it involves helping people build their own by coming
together. Nelson Mandela knew about it, as he recalled, because he had grown up on a cattle farm. There he learned to
"lead from behind."
The League of Brunswick Voters is the geographical example, "an informal group of citizens for better government. Our
goals are to help ordinary people understand the workings of our government and to build grassroots support for better
public policies." Current topics include a recently closed naval air station, a downtown plan, where to put the new
police station, and how to introduce majority, instead of plurality, voting.
Vital Connections, on the other hand, is a community of empathy. As the minutes put it: "Bruce reminds us that this idea
is intended as a way of ending our isolation from each other, of setting up a new model for communication and
community-building, of encouraging the many issues to collaborate together. Getting to know each other is central to the
growth of the idea.
"The proposal is that quarterly potlucks (with an opportunity for a few of the groups to present their issues and needs
at each gathering) will lead us to cross-fertilize ideas and support each other as we move toward change. What actually
emerges and develops will come as the groups meet and talk, not from a proposed expectation."
Here are some notes from the minutes of first meeting. As you read it, think about how different it sounds from what you
hear on CNN or MSNBC:
|||| After sharing a hearty meal we gathered in Fred's living room for introductions. . .
John Rensenbrink: "You wouldn't know it from the masters of the mass media and surely not from the daily troubling scene
in Washington, D.C. but there is something really thrilling going on in America. Below the radar screen, a revolution is
taking place in America. A quiet revolution. One word for it is the localization revolution. Take food, for example: in
1988 there were 14 certified organic farms in Maine. Twenty years later there were 339. . . .
Bill Bliss reporting on Tedford Housing where he is a board member: They provide shelter, they work to prevent
homelessness and to create supportive housing. . . Reporting on Bath United Church of Christ where he serves as pastor:
They are in the process of re-branding to become "The Neighborhood Faith Community" where healing, generosity, spiritual
growth and authentic relationships will be fostered.
Donna Robinson reporting on Merrymeeting Community Shares which she leads: It is a complementary economy where neighbors
help neighbors using time as the currency and where all kinds of services are considered equal in value.
Andrew Fiori reporting on Friends of Merrymeeting Bay . . . a unique eco-system in need of human care and support.
Carol Huntington reporting on her work as Deacon of the Episcopal Church where she focuses on peace and justice work
toward building a culture of peace. She works with churches listening around issues of conflict between Israel and
Palestine. She educates in Maine around Wabanaki indigenous rights. At home she and her husband provide housing for five
low-income residents.
Alexander Petroff reporting on his non-profit Working Villages International in Congo. Starting a few years ago with
nothing but barren land, the project is now supporting 1000 farmers and their families and is growing many acres of
grains and vegetables.
Jim McCarthy reporting on his 10 years as managing editor and now editorial page editor of the Times Record. He sees the
paper as a forum for discussion by way of daily submissions and feels blessed that so many people send letters to be
published.
John D'Aneiri reporting on his project Maine Farm Enterprise Schools where he wants to break down boundaries between
"school" and "life."
Peter Woodruff reporting on his work at Bath Iron Works where he has been a mechanic and a designer for many years: He
tries to swing the vote to building other things besides war ships. There could be a bright future at BIW in alternative
energy via deep-sea wind turbines. Most BIW workers don't care what it is they build. They could be working on
high-speed rail or woodstoves. He takes photographs of wind towers and posts them around the workplace.
Karen Wainberg is a social worker and spoke about the Oasis Clinic in Brunswick where nurses, social workers and doctors
volunteer their time meeting the needs of a growing community of people without health care coverage. She also spoke of
the Neighborhood Café in Bath that started as a once a week dinner on the day of the Food Bank at the UCC church. It has
become a spectacular experience where there are no servers [or] served.
Mary Heath has been a nurse and social worker in Maine for 30 years. She wants to see the health care system develop
around caring circles that offer care and dignity to all patients.
Liz Brownlee is just transitioning from an Americorps job at Wolfe's Neck Farm to their agriculture program. The Farm is
dedicated to sustainable agriculture, environmental education, and community well being
Jorge Madaral is a retired Naval officer who is on the board of the Hydrogen Energy Center, supporting small alternative
energy projects. No oil, no electricity. He also works with the American Legion trying to find a meeting place for older
veterans. [He's also the Libertarian leader mentioned earlier]
Seth Kroeck runs the Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick. His children are school aged. In 2007 he became seriously ill
with an immune system disorder. He and his family found themselves in an amazing community of care and support that was
an inspiring experience for them and for the community.
Kay Mann has been the marketing manager of Woodex Corporation in Georgetown for a number of years and was on the board
of the Hydrogen Energy Center. When the U.S. invaded Iraq she says "something snapped in me" and I resolved to work on a
transition to clean energy
Rosalie Paul is a retired art teacher, volunteering now as a peace and social justice activist.||||
All this has been taking place in one American town of 15,000. But even in such a small place, many who came to the
first Vital Connections session hadn't met and had never sat down together to discover what they had in common or to
discuss what they could create in common.
According to one count there are about 10,000 cities, 4400 towns and 3700 villages in America. What if each had a league
of voters and a Vital Connections? What if in each people came together and learned that they were not the problem -
they were the answer?
ENDS