Baltimore Activist Alert Jan. 4 – Jan. 10, 2013
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Friends, this list and other email documents which I send out are done under the auspices of the Baltimore Nonviolence Center. Go to www.baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com. If you appreciate this information and would like to make a donation, send contributions to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. Max Obuszewski can be reached at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski [at] verizon.net.
Tune into the Maryland Progressive Blog at http://mdprogblog.org.
1] Books, buttons & stickers
2] Web site for info on federal legislation
3] Join Nonviolent Resistance lists
4] Buy coffee through HoCoFoLa
5] For All the World to see exhibit – through Mar. 10
6] Witness Against Torture – Jan. 2 – Jan. 12
7] White House vigil – Jan. 4
8] WIB Roland Park vigil – Jan. 4
9] Justice for Palestine/Israel vigil – Jan. 4
10] Silent peace vigil – Jan. 4
11] Film JOYEUX NOEL -- Jan. 4
12] Film THE CONSPIRATOR – Jan. 4
13] THE HESCHEL-KING FESTIVAL – Jan. 4 - 5
14] Former Gitmo lawyer will speak – Jan. 4
15] Ballroom dancing – Jan. 4
16] Virginia People’s Assembly – Jan. 5
17] Olney peace vigil – Jan. 5
18] West Chester, PA demo – Jan. 5
19] Drone Death Walk – Jan. 5
20] Silent vigil at Capitol – Jan. 5
21] BES hosts Lisa Simeone – Jan. 6
22] Peace and Pancakes – Jan. 6
22] Bridges for Peace – Jan. 6
23] BES LUNCHEON SOCIAL -- Jan. 6
24] Pentagon Vigil – Jan. 7
25] Fracking Commission meets – Jan. 7
26] Protest REALCO Guns – Jan. 7
27] Marc Steiner on WEAA – Jan. 7 – Jan. 10
28] Death Penalty Vigil – Jan. 7
29] Workers World Forum – Jan. 7
30] Pledge of Resistance/Fund Our Communities meeting – Jan. 7
31] Philadelphia peace vigil – Jan. 8
32] War Is Not the Answer vigil – Jan. 8
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1] – Buttons, bumperstickers and books are available. “God Bless the Whole World, No Exceptions” stickers are in stock. Donate your books to Max. Call him at 410-366-1637.
2] – To obtain information how your federal legislators voted on particular bills, go to http://thomas.loc.gov/. Congressional toll-free numbers are 888-818-6641, 888-355-3588 or 800-426-8073. The White House Comment Email is accessible at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.
3] – THE ORGANIZING LIST will be the primary decision-making mechanism of the National Campaign of Nonviolent Resistance [NCNR]. It will be augmented by conference calls and possibly in-person meetings as needed. It will consist of 1 or 2 representatives from each local, regional, or national organization (not coalitions) that wishes to actively work to carry out the NCNR campaign of facilitating and organizing nonviolent resistance to the war in Iraq.
To join the ORGANIZING List, please send your name, group affiliation, city and email address to donmuller@msn.com. Different local chapters of a national organization are encouraged to subscribe.
THE NOTICES LIST will include only notices of NCNR actions and related information and is open to any interested person to subscribe. It will be moderated to maintain focus & will include periodic notices about getting involved in NCNR national organizing. To join the NOTICES List, send an email message to ncnrnotices-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. You will get a confirmation message once subscribed. If you have problems, please write to the list manager at ncnrnotices-admin@lists.riseup.net.
4] – You can help safeguard human rights and fragile ecosystems through your purchase of HOCOFOLA Café Quetzal. Bags of ground coffee or whole beans can be ordered by mailing in an order form. Also note organic cocoa and sugar are for sale. For more details and to download the order form, go to http://friendsoflatinamerica.typepad.com/hocofola/2010/02/hocofola-cafe-quetzal-order-form-2010.html. The coffee comes in one-pound bags.
Fill out the form and mail it with a check made out to HOCOFOLA on or before the second week of the month. Be sure you indicate ground or beans for each type of coffee ordered. Send it to Adela Hirsch, 5358 Eliots Oak Rd., Columbia, MD 21044. Be sure you indicate ground (G) or bean (B) for each type of coffee ordered. The coffee will arrive some time the following week and you will be notified where to pick it up. Contact Adela at 410-997-5662 or via e-mail at adela4peace@verizon.net.
5] – For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights explores the historic role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for civil rights in the United States. The exhibit includes photographs, television and film, magazines, newspapers, posters, books, and pamphlets. The exhibition will continue through Mar. 10. You can see it Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 AM to 5 PM in the UMBC Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, 1000 Hilltop Circle.
6] – Witness Against Torture members will do a ten-day fast from Wed., Jan. 2 through Sat., Jan. 12. From Sun., Jan. 6 through Sat., Jan. 12, there will be daily events around Washington, D.C. to encourage the president to carry out his promise from four years ago to close Guantanamo. Go to http://witnesstorture.org/.
7] – A peace vigil takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at Lafayette Park facing the White House. Join the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker and friends. Contact Art Laffin: artlaffin@hotmail.com.
8] – There is also a noon Women in Black vigil on Jan. 4 at Roland Park Place, 830 W. 40th St. Call 410-467-9114.
9] – A vigil for Justice in Palestine/Israel takes place every Friday from noon to 1 PM at 19th & JFK Blvd., Philadelphia (across from Israeli Consulate. It is sponsored by Bubbies & Zaydes (Grandparents) for Peace in the Middle East. Email cswartz@pil.net. Go to http://phillyjewishpeace.org/.
10] – There is a silent peace vigil on Fri., Jan. 4 from 5 to 6 PM outside Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St. Placards say: "War Is Not the Answer." The silent vigil is sponsored by Homewood Friends and Stony Run Meetings. Since this is First Friday, there will be a potluck dinner and a film to follow.
11] – The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings and Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility are continuing the FILM & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS DVD SERIES. The DVDs will be shown at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, on the First Friday. After the peace vigil, there will be a potluck dinner. At 7 PM, from January through June, a DVD will be shown with a discussion to follow. There is no charge, and refreshments will be available. Contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
The series theme is WHY CAN’T WE GET ALONG? On Fri., Jan. 4, see JOYEUX NOEL [France, 2005]. In English the film title means Merry Christmas, and the movie is about the Christmas truce in 1914 during World War I as depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. It was written and directed by Christian Carion. Of course the commanding officers are furious that soldiers would dare to “fraternize” with the enemy. Many of those who participated in the truce suffer severe consequences.
12] – On Fri., Jan. 4 at 7 PM, see "THE CONSPIRATOR" as part of the Peace Center of Delaware County First-Friday Large Screen Free Film Series, 1001 Old Sproul Road, Springfield, PA. The doors open at 6:30 PM for light refreshments. Call 610-544-1818 or go to www.delcopeacecenter.org.
The critically acclaimed 2011 dramatic film by Robert Redford tells the little known history of the actual trial before a military tribunal of Mary Surratt, the owner of the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and the other conspirators met to plan the assassination of Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Surratt's young lawyer, a union war hero appointed to represent her, begins to see that his client's constitutional rights are being violated and that another conspiracy is at work in her imprisonment and call for a quick trial and execution.
13] – On Fri., Jan. 4 from 7 to 9 PM and Sat., Jan. 5 from 9 AM to 9:30 PM, get over to THE HESCHEL-KING FESTIVAL at Mishkan Shalom, 4101 Freeland Ave., Phila., PA 19128. Celebrate the lives, visions, and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to bring their prophetic voices to bear on the challenges of the 21st Century. Visit http://mishkan.org/story/heschel-king-festival, as registration is required. There is a host of area co-sponsors, including the Brandywine Peace Community.
14] – On Fri., Jan. 4 at 7:30 PM, join with the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, 503 Rock Creek Church Road NW, WDC 20010, for its monthly clarification of thought process. This month attorney Darrel Vandeveld will discuss “Why I Resigned as a Prosecutor with the Guantanamo Military Commission.” January 11, 2013 marks the 12th anniversary of the first so called "enemy combatants" arriving at Guantanamo. Vandeveld, a lawyer with years of service as a prosecutor, public defender, and officer in the United States Army Reserve, will share his experience at Guantanamo and why he resigned in 2008 from the Guantanamo Military Commission. Vandeveld, a Catholic, is notable for asking to resign for ethical reasons from his appointment as a prosecutor before a Guantanamo Military Commission. Following his resignation, he received military backlash in the form of being denied a promotion. Despite receiving many decorations and commendations for his performance, the promotions board passed him up. This occurred after he wrote his 4 page declaration detailing his experience at Guantanamo witnessing severe illegal activity from the U.S. military and politicians. He has since retired from the military and practices law in Erie, PA. Call 202-882-9649. Visit www.DCcatholicworker.wordpress.com.
15] – There is an opportunity to participate in ballroom dancing, usually every Friday of the month, in the JHU ROTC Bldg. at 8 PM. Turn south on San Martin Dr. from the intersection of Univ. Parkway and 39th St. Drive on campus by taking the third left turn. The next dance will be Jan. 4. Call Dave Greene at 410-599-3725.
16] – The 2013 Virginia People's Assembly takes place to Sat., Jan. 5 from 8:30 AM to 9:30 PM at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, 1720 Mechanicsville Turnpike, Richmond, VA 23223. This is the 5th Annual Assembly, uniting under the theme "Jobs, Peace, Justice!" Union members, community activists, prisoner advocates, immigrants, students, women, antiwar organizers, veterans, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the LBGTQ community from across Virginia will gather on the Saturday before the opening session of the Virginia General Assembly. Network, educate each other, build alliances in the fight for social change in our communities and further the movement to create a society that is truly “of, by and for the people!”
The suggested donation is $5, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Visit the 2013 VPA blog at http://vpa2013.blogspot.com/.
17] – Friends House, 17715 Meeting House Rd., Sandy Spring, MD 20860, hosts a peace vigil every Saturday, 10:30 to 11:30 AM, on the corner of Rt. 108 and Georgia Ave. [Route 97] in Olney, MD. The next vigil is Jan. 5. Call Chuck Harker at 301-570-7167.
18] – Each Saturday, 11 AM – 1 PM, Chester County Peace Movement holds a peace vigil in West Chester in front of the Chester County Courthouse, High & Market Sts. Go to www.ccpeace.org. Email ccpeacemovement@aol.com.
19] – On Sat., Jan. 5 at noon, there is a monthly anti-war protest (1st Saturday of the month)--Philadelphia Silent Drone Death Walk. Gather at 12th & Market Sts., Phila., PA. Note the location change for January 2013. The Univ. of Pennsylvania is closed for winter break. The vigil site in February will be at the UPenn, a major drone researcher. Wear BLACK, and signs and white masks are provided. RSVP Marge Van Cleef at 267-763-1644.
20] – There will be a peace vigil on the West Lawn of the Capitol at noon on Sat., Jan. 5. Look for the blue banner with the message, "Seek Peace and Pursue It.--Psalms 34:14." The vigil lasts one hour and is silent except when one responds to the occasional questions. Go to http://www.quaker.org/langleyhill/seekpeace.htm or email seekpeacevigil@yahoo.com.
21] – Usually, the Baltimore Ethical Society, 306 W. Franklin St., Suite 102, Baltimore 21201-4661, meets on Sundays, and generally there is a speaker and discussion from 10:30 to 11:30 AM. On Sun., Jan. 6, Lisa Simeone will address “Political Activism: A Journalist's Perspective.” She is a radio host, writer, and activist, who has been working in public radio for 30 years. In October 2011, she was blacklisted by National Public Radio for her political activities with the Occupy Movement. She will speak about her career and her political activism. She has hosted Weekend All Things Considered, Weekend Edition Sunday, Performance Today, World of Opera, Soundprint, the Metropolitan Opera, and countless live specials. Her radio career began at WBJC in Baltimore, followed by work at WETA in Washington, D.C. After that – during her ten years at Baltimore's WJHU – she developed a loyal following for her unusual mix of programming, that offered classical, folk, jazz as well as provocative reports, interviews, and call-in shows on a wide variety of subjects, including anthropology, neuroscience, philosophy, and media criticism. Call 410-581-2322 or email ask@bmorethical.org.
22] – Join the Kadampa Meditation Center for Peace and Pancakes on Sundays at 10:30 AM at KMC Maryland, 2937 North Charles St. All are invited to participate in guided meditation and chant praying for world peace. There will be a talk based on Buddhist thought followed by brunch. Call 410- 243-3837. Brunch is $5.
23] – There is a BES LUNCHEON SOCIAL on Sun., Jan. 6 at 1 PM. BES members and friends will dine at a restaurant within walking distance of 306 W. Franklin St. All are encouraged to wear BES shirts or other items of visibility. Contact Paul Furth at pdqblues@aol.com.
24] – There is a weekly Pentagon Peace Vigil from 7 to 8 AM on Mondays, since 1987, outside the Pentagon Metro stop. The next vigil is Mon., Jan. 7, and it is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. Keep Space for Peace signs will be held at this vigil. Email artlaffin@hotmail.com or call 202-882-9649.
25] – The MD Fracking Commission meets in Annapolis on Mon., Jan. 7 from 9:45 AM to 1 PM in the House Environmental Matters Hearing Room, Room 251, House Office Building, Annapolis, MD 21401. Contact Leslie Morrison at leslie@chesapeakeclimate.org. The 2013 session of Maryland’s General Assembly begins on Wed., Jan. 9, and Physicians for Social Responsibility will be pressing legislators to pass a moratorium on fracking at two crucial events in Annapolis that same week, starting on Monday, January 7th. That's when Governor O'Malley's fracking advisory commission -- including legislators and citizens -- will hold a rare meeting in Annapolis to discuss upcoming legislation and studies to address fracking.
The commission meeting is open to the public, come and fill the room. Stay for a press conference about the campaign at 1:30 PM.
26] – On Mon., Jan. 7 from 4 to 5 PM help end gun violence by joining the Washington Chapter of Heeding God’s Call at its weekly vigil at REALCO Guns, 6108 Marlboro Pike, District Heights, MD 20747. This is an effort to convince the gun shop owner to sign the 10-Point Code for responsible gun dealers based on the one signed with Wal-Mart by Mayors against Illegal Guns. According to The Washington Post, Realco Guns in District Heights sold 86 guns linked to homicides within the last twenty years with 300 guns sold there being linked to non-fatal shootings, as of 2010. In that article Major Andy Ellis is quoted as saying, “I can only imagine how much lower our violent-crime rate would be if Realco sold shoes instead of guns.” Go to http://www.heedinggodscall.org/.
27] – The Marc Steiner Show airs Monday through Thursday from 5 to 7 PM on WEAA 88.9 FM, The Voice of the Community, or online at www.weaa.org. The call-in number is 410-319-8888, and comments can also be sent by email to steinershow@gmail.com. All shows are also available as podcasts at www.steinershow.org.
28] – There is usually a vigil to abolish the death penalty every Monday from 5 to 6 PM, outside the prison complex and across the street from Maryland’s Super Max Prison, at the corner of Madison Ave. and Fallsway in Baltimore. Maryland’s death row was moved out of Baltimore, but it was decided to continue the vigil. The next one is scheduled for Mon., Jan. 7. Call 410-366-1637.
29] – There is a Workers World Party Forum and Discussion on Mon., Jan. 7 from 7 to 9 PM at the Solidarity Center, 2011 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218. Commemorate the 54th year anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Hear a special report on the “The Fiscal Hoax: Capitalist politicians push workers over the cliff and call it compromise” – discuss your thoughts and opinions. See a screening of Saul Landau’s film “FIDEL!”
This film provides a unique view of Cuba’s leader. In 1968, Castro took Landau on a week-long jeep ride through the eastern mountains. There, he plays baseball with a group of peasants, visits his pre-school, and trades jokes with a 98 year old man. Fidel also listens to people complaining about food distribution, bad roads and transportation. Landau captures Cuba’s revolutionary chief early in the morning in his tent. The camera zooms in on his dirty fingernails, and delicate fingers holding his trademark cigar while he tells a story of Simon Bolivar and offers tactical advice to guerilla warriors throughout the Third World. The film contains fascinating archive footage of the Bay of Pigs invasion and scenes of Che Guevara- alongside interviews with political prisoners. Spectacular photography and editing with great Cuban music provide the cinematic aesthetics that give this film beautiful form. Indulge in light refreshments. Call 443-221-3775.
30] – The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore usually meets on Mondays at 7:30 PM, and the meetings now take place at Max’s residence. The next meeting takes place on Jan. 7. Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski at verizon.net for directions. The agenda includes the Bradley Manning support activities, an anti-drone protest at the CIA, the anti-drone action at the inauguration, a talk by Plowshares activist Steve Kelly and an April 20 Peace Caravan.
31] – Each Tuesday from 4:30 - 5:30 PM, the Catholic Peace Fellowship-Philadelphia for peace in Afghanistan and Iraq inside, during the winter, the Suburban Station, 16th Street & JFK Blvd., at the entrance to Tracks 3 and 4 on the mezzanine. The next vigil is Jan. 8. Call 215-426-0364.
32] – There is a vigil to say "War Is Not the Answer" each Tuesday since September 11, 2001 at 4806 York Road. Join this ongoing vigil. The next vigil is Jan. 8 from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
To be continued.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
Noam Chomsky: The Gravest Threat to World Peace
Noam Chomsky: The Gravest Threat to World Peace
Friday, 04 January 2013 09:05 By Noam Chomsky, Truthout
Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13700-noam-chomsky-the-gravest-threat-to-world-peace
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a diagram displaying Iran's nuclear weapon as he addresses the United Nations General Assembly, September 27, 2012. (Photo: Chang W. Lee / The New York Times)
Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that "the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region."
The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view.
On Israel, the candidates vied in declaring their devotion to it, but Israeli officials were nevertheless unsatisfied. They had "hoped for more 'aggressive' language from Mr. Romney," according to the reporters. It was not enough that Romney demanded that Iran not be permitted to "reach a point of nuclear capability."
Arabs were dissatisfied too, because Arab fears about Iran were "debated through the lens of Israeli security instead of the region's," while Arab concerns were largely ignored – again the conventional treatment.
The Journal article, like countless others on Iran, leaves critical questions unanswered, among them: Who exactly sees Iran as the gravest security threat? And what do Arabs (and most of the world) think can be done about the threat, whatever they take it to be?
The first question is easily answered. The "Iranian threat" is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations.
As numerous polls have shown, although citizens of Arab countries generally dislike Iran, they do not regard it as a very serious threat. Rather, they perceive the threat to be Israel and the United States; and many, sometimes considerable majorities, regard Iranian nuclear weapons as a counter to these threats.
In high places in the U.S., some concur with the Arab populations' perception, among them Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Command. In 1998 he said, "It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East," one nation, Israel, should have a powerful nuclear weapons arsenal, which "inspires other nations to do so."
Still more dangerous is the nuclear-deterrent strategy of which Butler was a leading designer for many years. Such a strategy, he wrote in 2002, is "a formula for unmitigated catastrophe," and he called on the United States and other nuclear powers to accept their commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to make "good faith" efforts to eliminate the plague of nuclear weapons.
Nations have a legal obligation to pursue such efforts seriously, the World Court ruled in 1996: "There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control." In 2002, George W. Bush's administration declared that the United States is not bound by the obligation.
A large majority of the world appears to share Arab views on the Iranian threat. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has vigorously supported Iran's right to enrich uranium, most recently at its summit meeting in Tehran last August.
India, the most populous member of the NAM, has found ways to evade the onerous U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. Plans are proceeding to link Iran's Chabahar port, refurbished with Indian assistance, to Central Asia through Afghanistan. Trade relations are also reported to be increasing. Were it not for strong U.S. pressures, these natural relations would probably improve substantially.
China, which has observer status at the NAM, is doing much the same. China is expanding development projects westward, including initiatives to reconstitute the old Silk Road from China to Europe. A high-speed rail line connects China to Kazakhstan and beyond. The line will presumably reach Turkmenistan, with its rich energy resources, and will probably link with Iran and extend to Turkey and Europe.
China has also taken over the major Gwadar port in Pakistan, enabling it to obtain oil from the Middle East while avoiding the Hormuz and Malacca straits, which are clogged with traffic and U.S.-controlled. The Pakistani press reports that "Crude oil imports from Iran, the Arab Gulf states and Africa could be transported overland to northwest China through the port."
At its Tehran summit in August, the NAM reiterated the long-standing proposal to mitigate or end the threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East by establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Moves in that direction are clearly the most straightforward and least onerous way to overcome the threats. They are supported by almost the entire world.
A fine opportunity to carry such measures forward arose last month, when an international conference was planned on the matter in Helsinki.
A conference did take place, but not the one that was planned. Only nongovernmental organizations participated in the alternate conference, hosted by the Peace Union of Finland. The planned international conference was canceled by Washington in November, shortly after Iran agreed to attend.
The Obama administration's official reason was "political turmoil in the region and Iran's defiant stance on nonproliferation," the Associated Press reported, along with lack of consensus "on how to approach the conference." That reason is the approved reference to the fact that the region's only nuclear power, Israel, refused to attend, calling the request to do so "coercion."
Apparently, the Obama administration is keeping to its earlier position that "conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate." The United States will not allow measures to place Israel's nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on "the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities."
The Kuwait news agency immediately reported that "the Arab group of states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states agreed to continue lobbying for a conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction."
Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, 174-6. Voting no was the usual contingent: Israel, the United States, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
A few days later, the United States carried out a nuclear weapons test, again banning international inspectors from the test site in Nevada. Iran protested, as did the mayor of Hiroshima and some Japanese peace groups.
Establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone of course requires the cooperation of the nuclear powers: In the Middle East, that would include the United States and Israel, which refuse. The same is true elsewhere. Such zones in Africa and the Pacific await implementation because the U.S. insists on maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons bases on islands it controls.
As the NGO meeting convened in Helsinki, a dinner took place in New York under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israeli lobby.
According to an enthusiastic report on the "gala" in the Israeli press, Dennis Ross, Elliott Abrams and other "former top advisers to Obama and Bush" assured the audience that "the president will strike (Iran) next year if diplomacy doesn't succeed" – a most attractive holiday gift.
Americans can hardly be aware of how diplomacy has once again failed, for a simple reason: Virtually nothing is reported in the United States about the fate of the most obvious way to address "the gravest threat" – Establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
© 2012 Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate
(Noam Chomsky's new book, "Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire", is scheduled to be published in January. Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)
Noam Chomsky's most recent book is ''Occupy.'' Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Friday, 04 January 2013 09:05 By Noam Chomsky, Truthout
Op-Ed
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13700-noam-chomsky-the-gravest-threat-to-world-peace
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a diagram displaying Iran's nuclear weapon as he addresses the United Nations General Assembly, September 27, 2012. (Photo: Chang W. Lee / The New York Times)
Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that "the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region."
The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view.
On Israel, the candidates vied in declaring their devotion to it, but Israeli officials were nevertheless unsatisfied. They had "hoped for more 'aggressive' language from Mr. Romney," according to the reporters. It was not enough that Romney demanded that Iran not be permitted to "reach a point of nuclear capability."
Arabs were dissatisfied too, because Arab fears about Iran were "debated through the lens of Israeli security instead of the region's," while Arab concerns were largely ignored – again the conventional treatment.
The Journal article, like countless others on Iran, leaves critical questions unanswered, among them: Who exactly sees Iran as the gravest security threat? And what do Arabs (and most of the world) think can be done about the threat, whatever they take it to be?
The first question is easily answered. The "Iranian threat" is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations.
As numerous polls have shown, although citizens of Arab countries generally dislike Iran, they do not regard it as a very serious threat. Rather, they perceive the threat to be Israel and the United States; and many, sometimes considerable majorities, regard Iranian nuclear weapons as a counter to these threats.
In high places in the U.S., some concur with the Arab populations' perception, among them Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Command. In 1998 he said, "It is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East," one nation, Israel, should have a powerful nuclear weapons arsenal, which "inspires other nations to do so."
Still more dangerous is the nuclear-deterrent strategy of which Butler was a leading designer for many years. Such a strategy, he wrote in 2002, is "a formula for unmitigated catastrophe," and he called on the United States and other nuclear powers to accept their commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to make "good faith" efforts to eliminate the plague of nuclear weapons.
Nations have a legal obligation to pursue such efforts seriously, the World Court ruled in 1996: "There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control." In 2002, George W. Bush's administration declared that the United States is not bound by the obligation.
A large majority of the world appears to share Arab views on the Iranian threat. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has vigorously supported Iran's right to enrich uranium, most recently at its summit meeting in Tehran last August.
India, the most populous member of the NAM, has found ways to evade the onerous U.S. financial sanctions on Iran. Plans are proceeding to link Iran's Chabahar port, refurbished with Indian assistance, to Central Asia through Afghanistan. Trade relations are also reported to be increasing. Were it not for strong U.S. pressures, these natural relations would probably improve substantially.
China, which has observer status at the NAM, is doing much the same. China is expanding development projects westward, including initiatives to reconstitute the old Silk Road from China to Europe. A high-speed rail line connects China to Kazakhstan and beyond. The line will presumably reach Turkmenistan, with its rich energy resources, and will probably link with Iran and extend to Turkey and Europe.
China has also taken over the major Gwadar port in Pakistan, enabling it to obtain oil from the Middle East while avoiding the Hormuz and Malacca straits, which are clogged with traffic and U.S.-controlled. The Pakistani press reports that "Crude oil imports from Iran, the Arab Gulf states and Africa could be transported overland to northwest China through the port."
At its Tehran summit in August, the NAM reiterated the long-standing proposal to mitigate or end the threat of nuclear weapons in the Middle East by establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. Moves in that direction are clearly the most straightforward and least onerous way to overcome the threats. They are supported by almost the entire world.
A fine opportunity to carry such measures forward arose last month, when an international conference was planned on the matter in Helsinki.
A conference did take place, but not the one that was planned. Only nongovernmental organizations participated in the alternate conference, hosted by the Peace Union of Finland. The planned international conference was canceled by Washington in November, shortly after Iran agreed to attend.
The Obama administration's official reason was "political turmoil in the region and Iran's defiant stance on nonproliferation," the Associated Press reported, along with lack of consensus "on how to approach the conference." That reason is the approved reference to the fact that the region's only nuclear power, Israel, refused to attend, calling the request to do so "coercion."
Apparently, the Obama administration is keeping to its earlier position that "conditions are not right unless all members of the region participate." The United States will not allow measures to place Israel's nuclear facilities under international inspection. Nor will the U.S. release information on "the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities."
The Kuwait news agency immediately reported that "the Arab group of states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) member states agreed to continue lobbying for a conference on establishing a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction."
Last month, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling on Israel to join the NPT, 174-6. Voting no was the usual contingent: Israel, the United States, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
A few days later, the United States carried out a nuclear weapons test, again banning international inspectors from the test site in Nevada. Iran protested, as did the mayor of Hiroshima and some Japanese peace groups.
Establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone of course requires the cooperation of the nuclear powers: In the Middle East, that would include the United States and Israel, which refuse. The same is true elsewhere. Such zones in Africa and the Pacific await implementation because the U.S. insists on maintaining and upgrading nuclear weapons bases on islands it controls.
As the NGO meeting convened in Helsinki, a dinner took place in New York under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of the Israeli lobby.
According to an enthusiastic report on the "gala" in the Israeli press, Dennis Ross, Elliott Abrams and other "former top advisers to Obama and Bush" assured the audience that "the president will strike (Iran) next year if diplomacy doesn't succeed" – a most attractive holiday gift.
Americans can hardly be aware of how diplomacy has once again failed, for a simple reason: Virtually nothing is reported in the United States about the fate of the most obvious way to address "the gravest threat" – Establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
© 2012 Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate
(Noam Chomsky's new book, "Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire", is scheduled to be published in January. Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.)
Noam Chomsky's most recent book is ''Occupy.'' Chomsky is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
See PATHS OF GLORY at 7 PM on January 4/Matt Damon Exposes Fracking in Promised Land
The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings and Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility are continuing the FILM & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS DVD SERIES. The DVDs will be shown at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, on the First Friday. After the peace vigil, there will be a potluck dinner. At 7 PM, from January through June, a DVD will be shown with a discussion to follow. There is no charge, and refreshments will be available. Contact Max at 410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net.
The series theme is WHY CAN’T WE GET ALONG? On Fri., Jan. 4, see "Paths of Glory," a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack. Dax attempts to defend them against a charge of cowardice in a court-martial.
Cobb's novel had no title when it was finished, so the publisher held a contest. The winning entry came from the ninth stanza of the famous Thomas Gray poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Matt Damon Exposes Fracking in Promised Land
By Tina Gerhardt
December 31, 2012
The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/matt-damon-exposes-fracking-in-promised-land
Hydraulic fracturing, known colloquially as fracking, is a
contentious issue, and Hollywood has not overlooked it.
Promised Land, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Matt
Damon, takes on fracking, which involves blasting millions of
gallons of water, sand, and chemicals into rock, often shale,
in order to extract the oil and natural gas within the
formations. Critics argue that the process wastes colossal
amounts of water; contaminates air, soil, and drinking water;
and may be implicated in causing earthquakes.
The screenplay, written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, is
based on a story by Dave Eggers. It's a decidedly mixed bag.
In Promised Land, Steve Butler (Matt Damon) is a salesman, who
-- along with his colleague Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand)
-- travels to rural Pennsylvania. He sees fracking as a chance
to help struggling farmers. Working for Global Crosspower
Solutions, they sign lucrative leases: the farmers earn money
by leasing their farmland, while Global earns by extracting
its resources.
Having grown up in rural Iowa, where his grandfather owned a
farm, Steve knows first-hand the struggle of farmers, so sees
no issues with his mission at first. All the arguments from
"can't survive on federal farm subsidies" to "it will fund the
rising cost of a college education" are included in the sales
pitch and made in quick succession.
As in real life, heated debates among the area residents
ensue. The farmers, who are struggling financially, are
tempted to take the badly needed monies to make ends meet. Yet
Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), a science teacher at the local
high school, expresses concerns at a town meeting about the
long-term effects of hydraulic fracturing on the region, its
soil, water, and air, and consequently on livestock and
residents' health.
And then Dustin Noble (John Krasinski), an environmentalist,
arrives in town, expressing just these and other concerns,
too. Who will pay for the clean up that might be needed, once
the resources are depleted and the company moves on? The
company? The state? The local coffers? Who will pay for any
adverse effects on health that might be incurred? Who will
replace the lost jobs that the boom and bust economic wave
might unleash? A one-man organizer, he goes farm to farm,
talking to the residents and putting up signs in their front
lawns that read "Global Go Home" and are adorned with images
of dead cows.
Promised Land complicates what could be a simplistically
rendered battle between outside salesmen seeking to profit
from struggling local farmers by presenting the fissures
within each group: the differing opinions among the farmers
about the best course of action, and the increasingly
conflicted viewpoint of Steve Butler.
The film portrays the increasingly bleak economic prospects in
the rural U.S., which Steve, increasingly frustrated with the
resident's skepticism, depicts at the local bar, Buddy's
Place: "You think about how much you made on your best day ...
and then you think real hard about much you made on your
worst. Cuz let's be real honest with each other, they're all
starting to look like that more and more, aren't they? These
people? This town? This life? It's dying and damn near dead."
In Promised Land, the decision about whether or not to allow
fracking is ultimately brought to the town for a vote. Debate
exists about whether hydraulic fracturing should be regulated
at the federal, state, or local level. To date, numerous towns
and cities nation-wide have passed local bans. Both New York
and Maryland have suspended fracking, in order to assess its
environmental and health impacts. New York City has stated
that hydraulic fracturing's risks are too great to risk
contaminating the drinking water of its 8.5 million residents.
Unfortunately, the film leaves Steve's moral education up to
local high school teacher Alice (Rosemate DeWitt) and science
teacher Frank, who used to be a scientist. Alice once lived in
Manhattan but moved back to her grandfather's farm because
when it came time to give up the property, she "did not want
to be that person." Now, she brings students to visit the
garden in the backyard, so that they "learn how to take care
of things." It's a line she gives Steve when he first tours
the yard and one he cites during his last speech. The implicit
narrative: Leave it to the women and elderly to be the moral
compass that (may) educate men and have them realize a sense
of ethics. (And teachers are mainly people who have been
successful elsewhere rather than choosing the profession for
its own merits.) Yawn.
Also disconcerting is the fact that the environmentalist comes
from outside the community rather than from within the
community. This distorts the broad base and local roots of the
anti-fracking movement.
The clichéd depictions of non-urban spaces as all alike also
smack of bi-coastal unfamiliarity and may rub audiences the
wrong way. The film quips "two hours outside any city looks
like Kentucky." In fact, as anyone who has ever driven through
Kentucky and Pennsylvania knows, the two are not the same, in
vegetation, in people's demeanor, or in shale deposits.
Promised Land contains superb acting and beautifully shot
landscapes, but unfortunately it offers a rather superficial
take on fracking and clichéd images of rural residents.
The film opened in select cities on Friday, December 28,
making it an Oscar contender, and opens nationwide on January
4, 2013. To find a theater near you:
http://focusfeatures.com/promised_land
Tina Gerhardt is an independent journalist and academic who
covers international climate negotiations, domestic energy
policy and related direct actions. Her work has appeared in
Alternet, Grist, The Nation, The Progressive and the
Washington Monthly, as well as Climate Progress, Tree Hugger
and The Guardian UK.
The series theme is WHY CAN’T WE GET ALONG? On Fri., Jan. 4, see "Paths of Glory," a 1957 American anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same name by Humphrey Cobb. Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refused to continue a suicidal attack. Dax attempts to defend them against a charge of cowardice in a court-martial.
Cobb's novel had no title when it was finished, so the publisher held a contest. The winning entry came from the ninth stanza of the famous Thomas Gray poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Matt Damon Exposes Fracking in Promised Land
By Tina Gerhardt
December 31, 2012
The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/matt-damon-exposes-fracking-in-promised-land
Hydraulic fracturing, known colloquially as fracking, is a
contentious issue, and Hollywood has not overlooked it.
Promised Land, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Matt
Damon, takes on fracking, which involves blasting millions of
gallons of water, sand, and chemicals into rock, often shale,
in order to extract the oil and natural gas within the
formations. Critics argue that the process wastes colossal
amounts of water; contaminates air, soil, and drinking water;
and may be implicated in causing earthquakes.
The screenplay, written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, is
based on a story by Dave Eggers. It's a decidedly mixed bag.
In Promised Land, Steve Butler (Matt Damon) is a salesman, who
-- along with his colleague Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand)
-- travels to rural Pennsylvania. He sees fracking as a chance
to help struggling farmers. Working for Global Crosspower
Solutions, they sign lucrative leases: the farmers earn money
by leasing their farmland, while Global earns by extracting
its resources.
Having grown up in rural Iowa, where his grandfather owned a
farm, Steve knows first-hand the struggle of farmers, so sees
no issues with his mission at first. All the arguments from
"can't survive on federal farm subsidies" to "it will fund the
rising cost of a college education" are included in the sales
pitch and made in quick succession.
As in real life, heated debates among the area residents
ensue. The farmers, who are struggling financially, are
tempted to take the badly needed monies to make ends meet. Yet
Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), a science teacher at the local
high school, expresses concerns at a town meeting about the
long-term effects of hydraulic fracturing on the region, its
soil, water, and air, and consequently on livestock and
residents' health.
And then Dustin Noble (John Krasinski), an environmentalist,
arrives in town, expressing just these and other concerns,
too. Who will pay for the clean up that might be needed, once
the resources are depleted and the company moves on? The
company? The state? The local coffers? Who will pay for any
adverse effects on health that might be incurred? Who will
replace the lost jobs that the boom and bust economic wave
might unleash? A one-man organizer, he goes farm to farm,
talking to the residents and putting up signs in their front
lawns that read "Global Go Home" and are adorned with images
of dead cows.
Promised Land complicates what could be a simplistically
rendered battle between outside salesmen seeking to profit
from struggling local farmers by presenting the fissures
within each group: the differing opinions among the farmers
about the best course of action, and the increasingly
conflicted viewpoint of Steve Butler.
The film portrays the increasingly bleak economic prospects in
the rural U.S., which Steve, increasingly frustrated with the
resident's skepticism, depicts at the local bar, Buddy's
Place: "You think about how much you made on your best day ...
and then you think real hard about much you made on your
worst. Cuz let's be real honest with each other, they're all
starting to look like that more and more, aren't they? These
people? This town? This life? It's dying and damn near dead."
In Promised Land, the decision about whether or not to allow
fracking is ultimately brought to the town for a vote. Debate
exists about whether hydraulic fracturing should be regulated
at the federal, state, or local level. To date, numerous towns
and cities nation-wide have passed local bans. Both New York
and Maryland have suspended fracking, in order to assess its
environmental and health impacts. New York City has stated
that hydraulic fracturing's risks are too great to risk
contaminating the drinking water of its 8.5 million residents.
Unfortunately, the film leaves Steve's moral education up to
local high school teacher Alice (Rosemate DeWitt) and science
teacher Frank, who used to be a scientist. Alice once lived in
Manhattan but moved back to her grandfather's farm because
when it came time to give up the property, she "did not want
to be that person." Now, she brings students to visit the
garden in the backyard, so that they "learn how to take care
of things." It's a line she gives Steve when he first tours
the yard and one he cites during his last speech. The implicit
narrative: Leave it to the women and elderly to be the moral
compass that (may) educate men and have them realize a sense
of ethics. (And teachers are mainly people who have been
successful elsewhere rather than choosing the profession for
its own merits.) Yawn.
Also disconcerting is the fact that the environmentalist comes
from outside the community rather than from within the
community. This distorts the broad base and local roots of the
anti-fracking movement.
The clichéd depictions of non-urban spaces as all alike also
smack of bi-coastal unfamiliarity and may rub audiences the
wrong way. The film quips "two hours outside any city looks
like Kentucky." In fact, as anyone who has ever driven through
Kentucky and Pennsylvania knows, the two are not the same, in
vegetation, in people's demeanor, or in shale deposits.
Promised Land contains superb acting and beautifully shot
landscapes, but unfortunately it offers a rather superficial
take on fracking and clichéd images of rural residents.
The film opened in select cities on Friday, December 28,
making it an Oscar contender, and opens nationwide on January
4, 2013. To find a theater near you:
http://focusfeatures.com/promised_land
Tina Gerhardt is an independent journalist and academic who
covers international climate negotiations, domestic energy
policy and related direct actions. Her work has appeared in
Alternet, Grist, The Nation, The Progressive and the
Washington Monthly, as well as Climate Progress, Tree Hugger
and The Guardian UK.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Join End the Wars demo January 3/Details of Obama 'Kill List' to Remain in the Shadows, Court Rules
The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will host an End the Wars vigil on Thurs., Jan. 3 from 5 to 6:30 PM in Mount Vernon at Centre & Charles Sts. The Pledge gathers in Mount Vernon on the first Thursday of the month to protest U.S. wars. Call Max at 410-366-1637.
Published on Wednesday, January 2, 2013 by Common Dreams
Details of Obama 'Kill List' to Remain in the Shadows, Court Rules
Federal court rejects Freedom Of Information request
- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
Information surrounding the targeted killing of three American citizens by US drones in Yemen will remain secret for now, following a federal court decision to turn down a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
The information, requested from the Department of Justice by the ACLU, includes a legal memorandum which allegedly gives legal and factual justification for the extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in September 2011, and Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in October 2011. Anwar Al-Awlaki was placed on Obama's executive "Kill List."
“This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including U.S. citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”
The ruling, made in the Southern District of New York court, also included the denial of a similar FOIA request made by the New York Times.
The ACLU plans to appeal the decision; however, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is also considering a separate ACLU FOIA lawsuit for other information surrounding the Obama administration's targeted killing program in general, "including its legal basis, scope, and number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes."
On the killings, the Center for Constitutional Rights explains:
On September 30, 2011, U.S. strikes killed Anwar Al-Aulaqi, along with Samir Khan and three others. Two weeks later, the U.S. launched another drone strike at an open-air restaurant in Yemen, killing Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s son, Abdulrahman, and six other civilian bystanders, including another teenager. These killings, undertaken without due process, in circumstances where lethal force was not a last resort to address a specific, concrete and imminent threat, and where the government failed to take required measures to protect bystanders, rises to a violation of the most elementary constitutional right afforded to all U.S. citizens – deprivation of life without due process of law.
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/02-12
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Published on Wednesday, January 2, 2013 by Common Dreams
Details of Obama 'Kill List' to Remain in the Shadows, Court Rules
Federal court rejects Freedom Of Information request
- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer
Information surrounding the targeted killing of three American citizens by US drones in Yemen will remain secret for now, following a federal court decision to turn down a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
The information, requested from the Department of Justice by the ACLU, includes a legal memorandum which allegedly gives legal and factual justification for the extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan in September 2011, and Al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son Abdulrahman in October 2011. Anwar Al-Awlaki was placed on Obama's executive "Kill List."
“This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures,” said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. “As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including U.S. citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”
The ruling, made in the Southern District of New York court, also included the denial of a similar FOIA request made by the New York Times.
The ACLU plans to appeal the decision; however, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is also considering a separate ACLU FOIA lawsuit for other information surrounding the Obama administration's targeted killing program in general, "including its legal basis, scope, and number of civilian casualties caused by drone strikes."
On the killings, the Center for Constitutional Rights explains:
On September 30, 2011, U.S. strikes killed Anwar Al-Aulaqi, along with Samir Khan and three others. Two weeks later, the U.S. launched another drone strike at an open-air restaurant in Yemen, killing Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s son, Abdulrahman, and six other civilian bystanders, including another teenager. These killings, undertaken without due process, in circumstances where lethal force was not a last resort to address a specific, concrete and imminent threat, and where the government failed to take required measures to protect bystanders, rises to a violation of the most elementary constitutional right afforded to all U.S. citizens – deprivation of life without due process of law.
Source URL: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/02-12
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Ten of My Favorite Things about 2012
Ten of My Favorite Things about 2012
By Medea Benjamin
There are many things to be thankful for in 2012, starting with the fact that the world didn’t end on December 21 and that we don’t have to witness the inauguration of Mr. One-Percent Mitt Romney. The global economic crisis continued to hit hard, but people have been taking to the streets around the world, from students in Chile to indigenous activists in Canada to anti-austerity workers in Europe. And while the excitement of the Arab world uprisings has been tempered by divisions and losses, the struggles are far from over.
Here are some US and global issues that experienced newfound gains in 2012.
1. While conservatives launched vicious attacks on women’s rights, it backfired—and fired up the pro-choice base! US voters elected the highest number of women to Congress ever, including the first openly lesbian senator (Tammy Baldwin), the first Asian-American senator (Mazie Hirono) and first senator to make the banks tremble, Elizabeth Warren! Voters also rejected 4 crazy candidates who called for limiting a woman’s right to choose—including the resounding defeat by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill over Mr. Legitimate Rape Todd Akin. Don’t forget that when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced it would no longer fund Planned Parenthood, it got so heartily trounced that it caved in than seventy-two hours later. And stay tuned for the 2013 global women rising—a billion of us demanding an end to violence against women on February 14!
2. Immigrant rights groups, especially young Latinos, mobilized and took great risks to force a change in attitude—and a thaw in policy. They fasted and caravanned and marched and knocked on doors. They pushed the administration and in June, just before the election, President Obama announced a new immigration policy that allows some undocumented students to avoid deportation and receive work authorization when they apply for deferred action. While not nearly enough, especially in light of this administration’s record rate of deportations, a mobilized immigrant community with significant voting power stands poised to make more impactful changes in U.S. immigration policy next year.
3. More money flooded the elections than ever before (some $5.8 billion!), but most of it went down a big, black hole—and unleashed a new movement for money out of politics. Billionaires wasted fortunes trying to sell lousy candidates and lousy ideas. Looking at the candidates supported by the biggest moneybags of all, Sheldon Adelson, NONE were elected to office. Right-wing “pundits” like Karl Rove proved themselves to be idiotic partisan hacks and the Tea Party has been tearing itself apart. But best of all, from Massachusetts to Oregon, Colorado to Illinois and Wisconsin, and Ohio to California, citizens throughout the country voted overwhelmingly for their legislators to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling and declare that only human beings – not corporations – are entitled to constitutional rights and that money is not speech and campaign spending can be regulated.
4. The marijuana genie is now out of the bottle, with people across the country backing referendums seeking an end to the decades of destructive, counterproductive drug wars. Colorado and Washington voters legalized recreational pot, and medical marijuana will be legal in Massachusetts. Voters in California passed Prop 34, which restricts lifetime incarceration via the “three strikes” law to violent or serious third offenses, a change that will help limit the prison sentences of nonviolent drug offenders. Prominent leaders including Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy, former President Bill Clinton and President Obama have hinted that they will reconsider the harsh criminal drug policy that has cost so much money and so many lives while failing to curb drug abuse.
5. This year marked momentous wins for gay rights. Massachusetts, Maine, and Washington legalized marriage equality, and Minnesota defeated a restrictive state constitutional amendment that would have upheld a ban. Now, one-tenth of states in the U.S. uphold marriage equality. Thanks to activist pressure, on May 9 President Obama became the first sitting president to endorse marriage equality for same-sex couples. Several prominent leaders in the Democratic Party followed his lead, and muted conservative responses only served to demonstrate how far public opinion has shifted on the issue.
6. Climate activists have been kickin’ up a storm. Anti-coal activists have helped retire over 100 coal plants, victories that will save lives and clean our air and water, while wind energy hit a historic milestone of 50,000 megawatts. The global anti-fracking movement mounted effective campaigns that has led to local bans in the US and Canada, national moratoriums in France and Bulgaria, and tighter regulation in Australia and the UK. The grassroots campaign to stop the Keystone Pipeline has awakened a new generation of activists (don’t forget the upcoming February 17-18 President’s Day Climate Legacy/Keystone XL rally in Washington, D.C.). And on the national front, in August the Obama administration issued new miles-per-gallon rules on car manufacturers, mandating that Detroit nearly double fuel efficiency standards by 2025.
7. Unions have been hard hit by the economic crisis and political attacks, but worker’s gains made in 2012 show potential muscle. The Chicago teachers’ strike in September, lasting for seven school days, led to an important victory for public education. Walmart workers staged the first-ever strikes against the biggest private sector employer in the United States and heralded a new model of organizing, with workers and community members coming together to support better conditions in the stores and warehouses even before the workers join a union. And in another example of worker/community organizing, student activism allied with union advocacy in San Jose, California led to a ballot initiative that will raise the minimum wage from $8 to $10 per hour for everyone working within the city limits.
8. On the foreign policy front, opposition to drone warfare is on the rise. After years of silence about the use of lethal drones overseas, the public began to learn more and the level of anti-drone activism skyrocketed. Now there are protests all over the country, including army bases where drones are piloted and manufacturing plants, and US activists have hooked up with drone victims overseas. US attitudes, once overwhelmingly pro-drone, are beginning to change, becoming more aligned with the global opposition to drone warfare. And the increased global opposition is leading to a rethinking of US policies.
9. The international movement for Palestinian human rights has gained unprecedented momentum. In November the United Nations endorsed an independent state of Palestine, showing sweeping international support of Palestinian demands for sovereignty over lands Israel has occupied since 1967. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions call by Palestinian civil society gained international traction as well, with economic, cultural and academic victories. Several different Christian denominations and college campuses voted to divest from Israeli occupation, the Technical University of Denmark dropped scientific collaboration projects with an Israeli settlement, the South African ANC endorsed the BDS call, Stevie Wonder cancelled a performance at a “Friends of the IDF” fundraiser, and much more. The grassroots call for Israel to adhere to international law has never been louder.
10. After nearly 15 years of house arrest, Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to Parliament! Suu Kyi’s party, the NLD (National League for Democracy), swept the April by-elections, winning 43 of the 44 seats it contested. After decades of abuse, the military-dominated government released hundreds of political prisoners, enacted laws on forming trade unions and freedom of assembly, eased official media censorship, and allowed the opposition to register and contest elections. President Obama’s November visit, the first by a sitting US president, was an acknowledgement of the reforms. There’s still need for pressure, as hundreds of political prisoners remain, ethnic conflict continues, and Burmese military still holds too much power. But 2012 was a good year for the Burmese people.
There will be no time to rest in 2013, since the wealthy are already pushing to protect their profits to the detriment of the environment, workers’ rights and our democracy. But just as the massacre in Sandy Hook has led to a reinvigorated fight for gun control, so 2013 will surely mark a renewed effort to build stronger coalitions to spread the wealth, reverse global warming and disentangle ourselves from foreign wars. And with the presidential elections behind us, the time is ripe for building a progressive movement that is not tied to any political party but can put pressure on the entire system. Let the organizing begin!!!
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/ten-my-favorite-things-about-2012-1357002278. All rights are reserved.
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE
325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings and Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility are continuing the FILM & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS DVD SERIES. The DVDs will be shown at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, on the First Friday. After the peace vigil, there will be a potluck dinner. At 7 PM, from January through June, a DVD will be shown with a discussion to follow. There is no charge, and refreshments will be available.
The series theme is WHY CAN’T WE GET ALONG?
FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2013
JOYEUX NOEL [France, 2005] In English the film title means Merry Christmas, and the movie is about the Christmas truce in 1914 during World War I as depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. It was written and directed by Christian Carion. Of course the commanding officers are furious that soldiers would dare “fraternize” with the enemy. Many of those who participated in the truce will suffer severe consequences.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2013
CRIME AFTER CRIME (USA, 2011) is a documentary film directed by Yoav Potash about the case of Deborah Peagler, an incarcerated victim of domestic violence whose case was taken up by pro bono attorneys through the California Habeas Project. The documentary tells the dramatic story of the legal battle to free Peagler, an incarcerated survivor of domestic violence. She was wrongly convicted of the murder of her abusive boyfriend, and given 26 years in prison. Her story takes an unexpected turn two decades later when two rookie land-use attorneys step forward to take her case. Through their perseverance, they bring to light long-lost witnesses, new testimonies from the men who committed the murder, and proof of perjured evidence. Their investigation ultimately attracts global attention to victims of wrongful incarceration and abuse, and becomes a matter of life and death once more.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR [USA, 1988] is based on the John Nichols novel of the same name, and the author wrote the screenplay with David S. Ward. Directed by Robert Redford, the film has an ensemble cast including Ruben Blades, Sônia Braga, Melanie Griffith, John Heard, Daniel Stern and Christopher Walken. Filmed on location in Truchas, New Mexico, the film is set in the fictional rural town of Milagro, with a population of 426, a predominantly Hispanic and Catholic town, with a largely interrelated population. The film tells of one man's quixotic struggle as he defends his small beanfield and his community against much larger business and state political interests.
FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013
EIGHT MEN OUT [USA, 1988] is based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 book by the same name. Written and directed by John Sayles, the film is a dramatization of Major League Baseball's Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox allegedly conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series. Much of the movie was filmed at the old Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. See John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and David Straithairn play baseball players before there was a union. A special treat is to see Studs Terkel in the role of a sports reporter.
FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013
RACHEL: AN AMERICAN CONSCIENCE [Palestine, 2005] Yahya Barakat began work on the documentary the instant he learned that Rachel Corrie had been crushed to death by an Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer. This documentary offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population. The film opens with grim images of dinosaur-like Caterpillar bulldozers turning urban Rafah into a garbage pile of destroyed buildings. It continues with interviews of Rachel’s fellow International Solidarity Movement volunteers, and concludes with comments from her parents
FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2013
TRADING PLACES [USA, 1983] is a satire directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. The film tells the story of an upper class commodities broker (Dan Aykroyd) and a homeless street hustler (Eddie Murphy) whose lives cross paths when they are unknowingly made part of an elaborate test of nature vs. nurture by the wealthy Duke brothers, Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer (Don Ameche). The film also stars Denholm Elliott and Jamie Lee Curtis. The storyline is often called a modern take on Mark Twain's classic 19th century novel “The Prince and the Pauper.”
Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski [at] verizon.net for further information.
325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218
The Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee, Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings and Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility are continuing the FILM & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS DVD SERIES. The DVDs will be shown at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles St., Baltimore 21218, on the First Friday. After the peace vigil, there will be a potluck dinner. At 7 PM, from January through June, a DVD will be shown with a discussion to follow. There is no charge, and refreshments will be available.
The series theme is WHY CAN’T WE GET ALONG?
FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 2013
JOYEUX NOEL [France, 2005] In English the film title means Merry Christmas, and the movie is about the Christmas truce in 1914 during World War I as depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers. It was written and directed by Christian Carion. Of course the commanding officers are furious that soldiers would dare “fraternize” with the enemy. Many of those who participated in the truce will suffer severe consequences.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2013
CRIME AFTER CRIME (USA, 2011) is a documentary film directed by Yoav Potash about the case of Deborah Peagler, an incarcerated victim of domestic violence whose case was taken up by pro bono attorneys through the California Habeas Project. The documentary tells the dramatic story of the legal battle to free Peagler, an incarcerated survivor of domestic violence. She was wrongly convicted of the murder of her abusive boyfriend, and given 26 years in prison. Her story takes an unexpected turn two decades later when two rookie land-use attorneys step forward to take her case. Through their perseverance, they bring to light long-lost witnesses, new testimonies from the men who committed the murder, and proof of perjured evidence. Their investigation ultimately attracts global attention to victims of wrongful incarceration and abuse, and becomes a matter of life and death once more.
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR [USA, 1988] is based on the John Nichols novel of the same name, and the author wrote the screenplay with David S. Ward. Directed by Robert Redford, the film has an ensemble cast including Ruben Blades, Sônia Braga, Melanie Griffith, John Heard, Daniel Stern and Christopher Walken. Filmed on location in Truchas, New Mexico, the film is set in the fictional rural town of Milagro, with a population of 426, a predominantly Hispanic and Catholic town, with a largely interrelated population. The film tells of one man's quixotic struggle as he defends his small beanfield and his community against much larger business and state political interests.
FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013
EIGHT MEN OUT [USA, 1988] is based on Eliot Asinof's 1963 book by the same name. Written and directed by John Sayles, the film is a dramatization of Major League Baseball's Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox allegedly conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series. Much of the movie was filmed at the old Bush Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. See John Cusack, Charlie Sheen and David Straithairn play baseball players before there was a union. A special treat is to see Studs Terkel in the role of a sports reporter.
FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2013
RACHEL: AN AMERICAN CONSCIENCE [Palestine, 2005] Yahya Barakat began work on the documentary the instant he learned that Rachel Corrie had been crushed to death by an Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer. This documentary offers rare footage of Rachel talking to a camera and describing Israeli human rights violations against a Palestinian civilian population. The film opens with grim images of dinosaur-like Caterpillar bulldozers turning urban Rafah into a garbage pile of destroyed buildings. It continues with interviews of Rachel’s fellow International Solidarity Movement volunteers, and concludes with comments from her parents
FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2013
TRADING PLACES [USA, 1983] is a satire directed by John Landis and written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. The film tells the story of an upper class commodities broker (Dan Aykroyd) and a homeless street hustler (Eddie Murphy) whose lives cross paths when they are unknowingly made part of an elaborate test of nature vs. nurture by the wealthy Duke brothers, Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer (Don Ameche). The film also stars Denholm Elliott and Jamie Lee Curtis. The storyline is often called a modern take on Mark Twain's classic 19th century novel “The Prince and the Pauper.”
Call 410-366-1637 or email mobuszewski [at] verizon.net for further information.
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE, 325 East 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218 Ph: 410-366-1637 Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net
January 2, 2013 Dear friends and supporters:
Thank you for your support, which allows us to continue our work. For the 28th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee gathered to remember the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than 200,000 people. Other organizations involved in last year’s commemorations were the Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore.
It is our duty to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again and that nuclear abolition becomes reality. On July 28, 2012, the Transform Now Plowshares, Sister Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, entered the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex and actually shut it down. At trial, they face several serious charges.
For the first time in three years, we had Hibakusha join us in Baltimore. On August 6, Mr. Yoshio Sato, 81 years old, bombed just over a half mile from the epicenter in Hiroshima, and Ms. Kuniko Kimura, 72 years old, bombed one mile from the epicenter in Hiroshima, spoke about experiencing the effects of an atomic bomb. They were joined by Ms. Hiromi Abe, who is from Fukushima and knows family members and friends who were there during the nuclear catastrophe. She visited Fukushima in April 2012, and her report back was horrific.
We are very concerned about the continuing tragedy at Fukushima and the need to close down all nuclear reactors. It is beyond cruel that Japan experienced two atomic bombings, and now is victimized by its heavy dependence on nuclear energy. The Crabshell Alliance will commemorate in 2013 the March 11, 2011 disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power facility. In the U.S., we must vigorously move towards a renewable energy future. We did prevent a third reactor from being built at Calvert Cliffs.
On August 10th, we commemorated Nagasaki with music and poetry. It was a wonderful community gathering.
The Social Consciousness DVD Series is continuing at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles Street on First Fridays. See the enclosed flyer for a list of films which will be screened.
Contributions are sent to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. It is not a tax-deductible donation.
Max Obuszewski, on behalf of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: ___________________________Address:______________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Phone:_______________________________E.Mail:___________________________
Donation amount_______________________
January 2, 2013 Dear friends and supporters:
Thank you for your support, which allows us to continue our work. For the 28th year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee gathered to remember the atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than 200,000 people. Other organizations involved in last year’s commemorations were the Baltimore Quaker Peace and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore.
It is our duty to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used again and that nuclear abolition becomes reality. On July 28, 2012, the Transform Now Plowshares, Sister Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli, entered the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex and actually shut it down. At trial, they face several serious charges.
For the first time in three years, we had Hibakusha join us in Baltimore. On August 6, Mr. Yoshio Sato, 81 years old, bombed just over a half mile from the epicenter in Hiroshima, and Ms. Kuniko Kimura, 72 years old, bombed one mile from the epicenter in Hiroshima, spoke about experiencing the effects of an atomic bomb. They were joined by Ms. Hiromi Abe, who is from Fukushima and knows family members and friends who were there during the nuclear catastrophe. She visited Fukushima in April 2012, and her report back was horrific.
We are very concerned about the continuing tragedy at Fukushima and the need to close down all nuclear reactors. It is beyond cruel that Japan experienced two atomic bombings, and now is victimized by its heavy dependence on nuclear energy. The Crabshell Alliance will commemorate in 2013 the March 11, 2011 disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power facility. In the U.S., we must vigorously move towards a renewable energy future. We did prevent a third reactor from being built at Calvert Cliffs.
On August 10th, we commemorated Nagasaki with music and poetry. It was a wonderful community gathering.
The Social Consciousness DVD Series is continuing at Homewood Friends Meetinghouse, 3107 N. Charles Street on First Fridays. See the enclosed flyer for a list of films which will be screened.
Contributions are sent to BNC, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. It is not a tax-deductible donation.
Max Obuszewski, on behalf of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: ___________________________Address:______________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Phone:_______________________________E.Mail:___________________________
Donation amount_______________________
8 Huge Corporate Handouts in the Fiscal Cliff Bill
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Naked Capitalism [1] / By Matt Stoller [2]
8 Huge Corporate Handouts in the Fiscal Cliff Bill
January 1, 2013
Throughout the months of November and December, a steady stream of corporate CEOs flowed in and out of the White House to discuss the impending fiscal cliff. Many of them, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, would then publicly come out and talk about how modest increases of tax rates on the wealthy were reasonable in order to deal with the deficit problem. What wasn’t mentioned is what these leaders wanted, which is what’s known as “tax extenders” [3], or roughly $205B of tax breaks for corporations. With such a banal name, and boring and difficult to read line items in the bill, few political operatives have bothered to pay attention to this part of the bill. But it is critical to understanding what is going on.
The negotiations over the fiscal cliff involve more than the Democrats, Republicans, the middle class and the wealthy. The corporate sector is here in force as well. One of the core shifts in the Reagan era was the convergence of wealthy individuals who wanted to pay less in taxes – many from the growing South – with corporations that wanted tax breaks. Previously, these groups fought over the pie, because the idea of endless deficits did not make sense. Once Reagan figured out how to finance yawning deficits, the GOP was able to wield the corporate sector and the new sun state wealthy into one force, epitomized today by Grover Norquist. What Obama is (sort of) trying to do is split this coalition, and the extenders are the carrot he’s dangling in front of the corporate sector to do it.
Most tax credits drop straight to the bottom line – it’s why companies like Enron considered its tax compliance section a “profit center”. A few hundred billion dollars of tax expenditures is a major carrot to offer. Surely, a modest hike in income taxes for people who make more than $400k in income and stupid enough not to take that money in capital gain would be worth trading off for the few hundred billion dollars in corporate pork. This is what the fiscal cliff is about – who gets the money. And by leaving out the corporate sector, nearly anyone who talks about this debate is leaving out a key negotiating partner.
So without further ado, here are eight corporate subsidies in the fiscal cliff bill that you haven’t heard of.
1) Help out NASCAR - Sec 312 extends the “seven year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complex property”, which is to say it allows anyone who builds a racetrack and associated facilities to get tax breaks on it. This one was projected to cost $43 million over two years.
2) A hundred million or so for Railroads - Sec. 306 provides tax credits to certain railroads for maintaining their tracks. It’s unclear why private businesses should be compensated for their costs of doing business. This is worth roughly $165 million a year [4].
3) Disney’s Gotta Eat - Sec. 317 is “Extension of special expensing rules for certain film and television productions”. It’s a relatively straightforward subsidy to Hollywood studios [5], and according to the Joint Tax Committee, was projected to cost $150m for 2010 and 2011.
4) Help a brother mining company out – Sec. 307 and Sec. 316 offer tax incentives for miners to buy safety equipment and train their employees on mine safety. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to bribe mining companies to not kill their workers.
5) Subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters – Sec. 328 extends “tax exempt financing for York Liberty Zone,” which was a program to provide post-9/11 recovery funds. Rather than going to small businesses affected, however, this was, according to Bloomberg [6], “little more than a subsidy for fancy Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.” Michael Bloomberg himself actually thought the program was excessive, so that’s saying something. According to David Cay Johnston’s The Fine Print, Goldman got $1.6 billion in tax free financing for its new massive headquarters through Liberty Bonds.
6) $9B Off-shore financing loophole for banks – Sec. 322 is an “Extension of the Active Financing Exception to Subpart F.” Very few tax loopholes have a trade association, but this one does. This strangely worded provision basically allows American corporations such as banks and manufactures to engage in certain lending practices and not pay taxes on income earned from it. According to this Washington Post piece [7], supporters of the bill include GE, Caterpillar, and JP Morgan. Steve Elmendorf, super-lobbyist, has been paid $80,000 in 2012 alone to lobby on the “Active Financing Working Group.” [8]
7) Tax credits for foreign subsidiaries – Sec. 323 is an extension of the “Look-through treatment of payments between related CFCs under foreign personal holding company income rules.” This gibberish sounding provision cost $1.5 billion from 2010 and 2011, and the US Chamber loves it. It’s a provision that allows US multinationals to not pay taxes on income earned by companies they own abroad.
8) Bonus Depreciation, R&D Tax Credit – These are well-known corporate boondoggles. The research tax credit was projected to cost $8B for 2010 and 2011, and the depreciation provisions were projected to cost about $110B for those two years, with some of that made up in later years.
Conveniently, the Joint Committee on Taxation in 2010 did an analysis of what many of these extenders cost. You can find that report here [9].
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/8-huge-corporate-handouts-fiscal-cliff-bill
Links:
[1] http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/matt-stoller-0
[3] http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/267565-grassley-senate-waiting-on-fiscal-cliff-talks-to-move-tax-extenders
[4] http://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/tax_cut_bill_is_good_news_for_short_line_railroads/
[5] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/mixed-feelings-tax-plan-sides-aisle/story?id=12394498#.UOOPjInjl7E
[6] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-11/goldman-s-tax-free-building-loan-makes-liberty-bonds-renewal-a-tough-sell.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122204963.html
[8] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000046352&year=2012
[9] https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=3715
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Naked Capitalism [1] / By Matt Stoller [2]
8 Huge Corporate Handouts in the Fiscal Cliff Bill
January 1, 2013
Throughout the months of November and December, a steady stream of corporate CEOs flowed in and out of the White House to discuss the impending fiscal cliff. Many of them, such as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, would then publicly come out and talk about how modest increases of tax rates on the wealthy were reasonable in order to deal with the deficit problem. What wasn’t mentioned is what these leaders wanted, which is what’s known as “tax extenders” [3], or roughly $205B of tax breaks for corporations. With such a banal name, and boring and difficult to read line items in the bill, few political operatives have bothered to pay attention to this part of the bill. But it is critical to understanding what is going on.
The negotiations over the fiscal cliff involve more than the Democrats, Republicans, the middle class and the wealthy. The corporate sector is here in force as well. One of the core shifts in the Reagan era was the convergence of wealthy individuals who wanted to pay less in taxes – many from the growing South – with corporations that wanted tax breaks. Previously, these groups fought over the pie, because the idea of endless deficits did not make sense. Once Reagan figured out how to finance yawning deficits, the GOP was able to wield the corporate sector and the new sun state wealthy into one force, epitomized today by Grover Norquist. What Obama is (sort of) trying to do is split this coalition, and the extenders are the carrot he’s dangling in front of the corporate sector to do it.
Most tax credits drop straight to the bottom line – it’s why companies like Enron considered its tax compliance section a “profit center”. A few hundred billion dollars of tax expenditures is a major carrot to offer. Surely, a modest hike in income taxes for people who make more than $400k in income and stupid enough not to take that money in capital gain would be worth trading off for the few hundred billion dollars in corporate pork. This is what the fiscal cliff is about – who gets the money. And by leaving out the corporate sector, nearly anyone who talks about this debate is leaving out a key negotiating partner.
So without further ado, here are eight corporate subsidies in the fiscal cliff bill that you haven’t heard of.
1) Help out NASCAR - Sec 312 extends the “seven year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complex property”, which is to say it allows anyone who builds a racetrack and associated facilities to get tax breaks on it. This one was projected to cost $43 million over two years.
2) A hundred million or so for Railroads - Sec. 306 provides tax credits to certain railroads for maintaining their tracks. It’s unclear why private businesses should be compensated for their costs of doing business. This is worth roughly $165 million a year [4].
3) Disney’s Gotta Eat - Sec. 317 is “Extension of special expensing rules for certain film and television productions”. It’s a relatively straightforward subsidy to Hollywood studios [5], and according to the Joint Tax Committee, was projected to cost $150m for 2010 and 2011.
4) Help a brother mining company out – Sec. 307 and Sec. 316 offer tax incentives for miners to buy safety equipment and train their employees on mine safety. Taxpayers shouldn’t have to bribe mining companies to not kill their workers.
5) Subsidies for Goldman Sachs Headquarters – Sec. 328 extends “tax exempt financing for York Liberty Zone,” which was a program to provide post-9/11 recovery funds. Rather than going to small businesses affected, however, this was, according to Bloomberg [6], “little more than a subsidy for fancy Manhattan apartments and office towers for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp.” Michael Bloomberg himself actually thought the program was excessive, so that’s saying something. According to David Cay Johnston’s The Fine Print, Goldman got $1.6 billion in tax free financing for its new massive headquarters through Liberty Bonds.
6) $9B Off-shore financing loophole for banks – Sec. 322 is an “Extension of the Active Financing Exception to Subpart F.” Very few tax loopholes have a trade association, but this one does. This strangely worded provision basically allows American corporations such as banks and manufactures to engage in certain lending practices and not pay taxes on income earned from it. According to this Washington Post piece [7], supporters of the bill include GE, Caterpillar, and JP Morgan. Steve Elmendorf, super-lobbyist, has been paid $80,000 in 2012 alone to lobby on the “Active Financing Working Group.” [8]
7) Tax credits for foreign subsidiaries – Sec. 323 is an extension of the “Look-through treatment of payments between related CFCs under foreign personal holding company income rules.” This gibberish sounding provision cost $1.5 billion from 2010 and 2011, and the US Chamber loves it. It’s a provision that allows US multinationals to not pay taxes on income earned by companies they own abroad.
8) Bonus Depreciation, R&D Tax Credit – These are well-known corporate boondoggles. The research tax credit was projected to cost $8B for 2010 and 2011, and the depreciation provisions were projected to cost about $110B for those two years, with some of that made up in later years.
Conveniently, the Joint Committee on Taxation in 2010 did an analysis of what many of these extenders cost. You can find that report here [9].
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/8-huge-corporate-handouts-fiscal-cliff-bill
Links:
[1] http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/matt-stoller-0
[3] http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/267565-grassley-senate-waiting-on-fiscal-cliff-talks-to-move-tax-extenders
[4] http://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/tax_cut_bill_is_good_news_for_short_line_railroads/
[5] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/mixed-feelings-tax-plan-sides-aisle/story?id=12394498#.UOOPjInjl7E
[6] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-11/goldman-s-tax-free-building-loan-makes-liberty-bonds-renewal-a-tough-sell.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122204963.html
[8] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000046352&year=2012
[9] https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=3715
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
Georgia's Hunger Games
Georgia's Hunger Games
Fewer than 4,000 adults in the southern state receive welfare, even as poverty is soaring. How Georgia declared war on its poorest citizens--leaving them to fight for themselves.
by Neil deMause
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/12/georgia_s_w
ar_against_the_poor_the_southern_state_is_emptying_its_welfare.html?wpisrc=o
binsite
When the economy crashed in 2008, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Applications for food stamps soared.
So did attendance at emergency food providers--soup kitchens and food pantries--that help the estimated 50 million people, working and non-working, who can't afford enough groceries to get through the month.
Unlike in past economic downturns, though, the welfare rolls barely budged. Where 15 years ago 68 percent of poor Americans received cash via Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (as welfare was officially renamed in 1996), today only 27 percent of Americans with incomes low enough to qualify for cash benefits receive them.
As the New York Times' Jason DeParle discussed in a front-page article earlier this year, the resulting welfare gap has left at least 4 million families with neither jobs nor cash aid.
The size of the welfare gap, however, varies widely from state to state. In states like California and Maine, which have focused on getting their poor citizens into jobs programs, about two-thirds of those eligible still receive welfare. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Georgia, which over the past decade has set itself up as the poster child for the ongoing war on welfare. Even as unemployment has soared to 9 percent and 300,000 Georgia families now live below the poverty line--50 percent higher than in 2000, for a poverty rate that now ranks sixth in the nation--the number receiving cash benefits has all but evaporated:
Only a little over 19,000 families receiving TANF remain, all but 3,400 of which were cases involving children only. That's less than 7 percent, making Georgia one of the toughest places in the nation to get welfare assistance. Advertisement
What's Georgia's secret? According to government documents, interviews with poor Georgians, and those who work with them, it's a simple one: Combine an all-Republican state government out to make a name for itself as tough on freeloaders; a state welfare commissioner so zealous about slashing the rolls that workers say she handed out Zero candy bars to emphasize her goal of zero welfare; and federal rules that, regardless of who's in the White House, give states the leeway to use the 1996 law's requirement for "work activities"--the same provision that Republicans have charged President Obama wants to unfairly water down--to slam the door in the face of the state's neediest.
What this has created is a land that welfare forgot, where a collection of private charities struggle to fill the resulting holes. For the Atlanta Community Food Bank, that means sending out more than 3 million pounds of canned goods, bread, and other groceries each month to churches in and around Atlanta to help feed the state's growing number of poor and near-poor. The food bank's staff also helps arrange for free tax prep services, and helps the city's poor apply for food stamps and Medicaid. One thing they don't discuss, though, is welfare. "We don't talk about TANF anymore,"
says food bank advocacy and education director Laura Lester. "We don't even send anybody in to apply, because there's just no point."
It's a state of affairs that's left an increasing number of Georgians with nowhere to turn. Teresa, a single mom of a 2-year-old living in a domestic violence shelter, tells of how she broke down and applied for cash benefits after fleeing an abusive relationship--only to be chastised by state welfare officers who asked, "Wouldn't you rather work?"
Eventually, Teresa says, "I was sitting there crying--I just didn't know what else to do. I said, you've gone from letting people sit on their butt and collect money to the very opposite of that."
Ultimately, it didn't matter. In the end, she was rejected for failing to fill out her paperwork correctly.
* * *
One of the common misconceptions about welfare reform is that once Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton had settled their grand bargain back in 1996, a new regime was put in place: If you won't work (or at least look for work), you'll no longer get a government check. In fact, though, welfare reform is less a single law than 50 separate experiments, as Washington provided states with a broad framework under which they are free to set their own rules on time limits, grant levels, and work requirements for those seeking help.
Immediately after the new law was put in place, the welfare rolls plunged by two-thirds--though no one could say for certain whether this was because people were leaving the rolls for jobs or merely sinking deeper into poverty. And though the slide eased a bit nationally after the economy cooled around 2001, the welfare gap--the number of people poor enough to receive benefits who weren't actually getting them--still amounted to nearly two-thirds of those below the poverty line. Beverly Walker, ex-commissioner of Georgia's Department of Human Resources Beverly Walker, ex-commissioner of Georgia's Department of Human Resources
In Georgia, the number of Georgians receiving welfare had leveled off at about 54,000 families--roughly 30 percent of poor Georgians--by 2004. It was in that year that Gov. Sonny Perdue, the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction, hired a new commissioner to head Georgia's Department of Human Services. Beverly "B.J." Walker, a 54-year-old black woman from Chicago, had been an obscure school curriculum consultant best known as the wife of Chicago's airport commissioner when Republicans chose her to run a pilot project in
1995 to streamline state government services. Soon she rose to run Chicago's welfare programs as well.
Walker quickly gained a reputation for a get-tough attitude toward welfare recipients that rivaled other states. "What B.J. emphasized was that everybody who can work, should work," says Joseph Antolin, who was an Illinois state welfare official when Walker arrived on the scene.
What that meant was that those who wouldn't work--or preferred, say, to go back to school to increase their chances of landing a good job--would be quickly pushed off the rolls. One of her first steps, Antolin recalls, was to shoot down plans to expand GED classes and vocational college courses for the poor. Her philosophy, he says, was "you essentially have to throw them in the pool and let them learn how to swim."
Thanks in part to Walker's influence, Illinois' welfare rolls plunged from more than 200,000 in 1996 to 95,000 when she departed for a similar job in Chicago city government three years later.
Once Walker arrived in Georgia, poverty experts there say she set out to overhaul the state's TANF program with a single goal: not just getting people into jobs, but keeping them from getting benefits by any means necessary. New applicants soon found themselves being handed flyers emblazoned with slogans like "TANF is not good enough for any family," "TANF = work now," and "We believe welfare is not the best option for your family."
"Local offices were really taking a lot of steps to dissuade people from applying--or once they had applied, they were doing things to make the process really cumbersome and difficult," recalls Allison Smith of the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, whose office began documenting troubling reports of welfare applicants being discouraged from applying for benefits by any and all means necessary: "Making them go through 60 job searches a week, or come to 8 orientations." One woman in her seventh month of pregnancy was ordered to take a waitressing job that would require her to be on her feet all day. Another was told that if she applied for TANF while living in a shelter her children would be taken away. Smith recalls, "Some of the stuff that was said to individuals was pretty awful--'If you can't find a job, we'll have you shoveling **** at the dog pound.' "
"They were trying to make me feel bad that I was trying to get money," says Teresa of her experience applying for benefits. "They told me that taxpayers are paying for it--I used to pay my taxes, you know?" Kelda O'Neal, a young grandmother currently caring for an extended family of 15 in her DeKalb County home, had a similar experience. "They treat you like you're in a jail facility," she complains of her multiple trips to the DeKalb County welfare center to try to apply for benefits. "You really, really catch it trying to get TANF. I've heard women saying they can go and finally get a job, and before they can get that first pay, they cut 'em off."
O'Neal herself previously received TANF, she says, until her husband--a former truck driver who'd suffered a mental breakdown after his father died and one of his daughters was murdered--applied for disability benefits and was told that according to Georgia state law, he'd need to attend 60 to 90 days of a state work program while waiting for those benefits to arrive. She says that when he missed one of his appointments--among his many mental health issues, he suffers from agoraphobia--the state ended her $133 in monthly benefits.
Missed appointments are one common reason for rejected TANF applications in Georgia. Failure to meet state job search rules--which require 30 days of job search before a first check will be cut--is another. Teresa says she was told she'd have to file a record of 24 job applications a week in order to have her welfare application processed. "That was really hard, because I couldn't find any places that were hiring," she says.
She was approved for benefits, but only so long as she performed 24 hours a week of community service, plus 12 hours of job search, which she struggled to do during the limited computer time available at the domestic violence shelter. Eventually, she had her benefits cut off for failing to properly record the phone numbers of her job contacts.
Teresa later landed a job at a Bi-Lo grocery store, and gave up on applying for government aid altogether. But many domestic violence survivors aren't so lucky, says
Smith: "A lot of folks we know are staying in their abusive relationships longer, or returning. We know from research that financial concerns are probably the No. 1 reason why victims don't leave, or go back.
Usually TANF will be a stepping stone, and now that it's going, people are having to make hard choices."
* * *
The Georgia Department of Human Services has long insisted that it's not making a concerted effort to deny benefits. (Walker departed in 2011, but the policies she instituted still largely remain in place.) Indeed, there's nothing in written state guidelines telling workers to turn applicants away. But many local and national welfare experts say that's not unexpected.
"I could never find anything from the state office--and you won't," says Liz Schott, a senior fellow with the D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who has investigated welfare policies in several states. "I think they got the message, and they did anything, whatever they needed to do to make sure nobody got on."
One of these unwritten measures, says Smith, involved Zero candy bars. Senior state DHS officials handed out the candy bars to staff as a not-so-subtle reminder that the goal was to have no one receiving welfare.
"That was the goal, workers were telling us. The message was 'zero TANF.' " (A DHS spokesperson says the state "has no information" on the distribution of candy bars by the department.)
Georgia's welfare rolls plunged again after Walker's arrival, with more than 60 percent of those remaining dropping off welfare. Much of the drop was the result of people not being able to get through the front door:
A study by Schott found that the share of welfare applications that were approved fell from 40 to 20 percent under Walker's tenure, and two-thirds of all denials were due to either withdrawal of applications or failure to complete application procedures.
As for getting Georgia's poor back to work--the ostensible goal of welfare reform--the numbers are similarly unpromising. Georgia has bragged about its rising "work participation" rate--a key metric set down by Congress to ensure that states followed federal work rules by insisting that at least half of welfare recipients were engaged in "work activities," which can include anything from actual employment to an active search for a job. Yet the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that far fewer Georgians living in poverty were engaged in "work activities" under Walker; rather, the percentage was only up because the denominator--the number of people getting cash aid--had plummeted.
Asked if having barely one in 100 of the state's poor receiving cash is an acceptable result, state TANF policy director Anne Carter replies, "I don't know that that's a yes-or-no question." The state always evaluates whether applicants are eligible under federal guidelines, she says, and "our withdrawal rate dictates whether they want to comply with the program, or they don't." She adds that the state offers job seekers help getting to job interviews, such as a new car battery or transit passes, and now lets them conduct job searches at home--provided, of course, that they have a computer with Internet access.
As for what's happened to the hundreds of thousands who've left welfare or never made it on, no one is quite sure: The state conducted its last "leaver study"
of those departing the rolls in 2006--after that, explains Carter, the contractor retired and was never replaced. DHS figures indicate that 17.5 percent of applicants withdraw after a case is opened, but the agency doesn't compile statewide reports on how many find jobs--or on how many give up during the one-month waiting period before a case is opened. And even then, the findings were decidedly mixed: While about 70 percent of those who left welfare were employed during their first year after leaving TANF, more than 80 percent remained below the federal poverty level. The one thing that was helping Georgia's poor, noted the study, was increased child care assistance that was approved by the state in 2005 to encourage people to leave TANF for employment--a program now imperiled by a lack of state funds.
Cassie, a single mom in the western Atlanta suburb of Austell, is one of those who have been turned away for child care assistance because the state ran out of money. After her partner skipped town when he learned their son had a chronic blood disorder--"He said, 'You're going to have to eventually send me to child support court, and when you do that I never want to see y'all again' "--Cassie found herself juggling shifts as a nursing aide while managing her son's frequent hospital visits. She applied for TANF, only to be forced to drop out of school for her degree as an ultrasound sonographer, she says, in order to have time for the grueling job search process.*
As her 2-year-old son scampers about a vacant office at the Sweetwater Valley Community Action Mission Program where she's come to seek some help, Cassie explains that--like nearly 2 million other Georgians, almost 20 percent of the state--she receives federal food stamp benefits, which help put groceries on the table. But they won't pay for non-food items, which is why she's turned up at this private charity in suburban Cobb County in search of diapers.
Household supplies are a constant struggle for the poor in the absence of cash benefits, notes the charity's program director Carla Pierce, pointing to the stockpiles of detergent and other items lining the mission's storeroom shelves. (No diapers today, though; Cassie and her son go home empty-handed.) "Formula and diapers change a family budget in a second."
Even for those lucky few who do manage to receive TANF, the increasingly meager grant levels--which haven't been raised in Georgia since 1996, leading to a 30 percent drop in spending power relative to inflation--are hardly meeting people's most basic needs."Two hundred and thirty-five dollars, what the hell is that supposed to pay?" wonders Renea Buck, a Savannah grandmother caring for her daughter's two children. Buck recently fought her way onto TANF with the help of a local antipoverty group, Step Up Savannah. "I see these people on TV, and they say people are just living off the welfare system.
There might be a lot of people on food stamps because they need help. And they might have Medicaid so their kids can have medical. But they're crazy if anybody's milking the damn system for that $235 a month."
Private aid groups like the Community Action Mission Program have tried to fill the gap with "emergency aid"--basically a private welfare grant for those below
125 percent of the poverty line--but in a county that features 16 percent unemployment and where 1,600 schoolkids are homeless, they now turn away half of all applicants, says Pierce. The number of people coming to her organization for help has tripled in the last five years, she notes.
"These days, it seems like almost everyone needs financial aid for either rent or other expenses,"
Pierce sighs. "Everyone who walks through that door has a legitimate emergency."
* * *
Despite its dwindling welfare rolls, the state of Georgia is still allotted $330 million a year in federal money via the TANF block grant program. But there are signs that less and less of it actually makes it to the state's poor.
Instead, according to a September 2012 study by the nonprofit Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, the state has found ways to use TANF money to paper over other program budgets, with more than half of Georgia's welfare funds being siphoned off to pay for the state's unrelated child welfare program. This maneuver, which is allowed under federal law, has effectively saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars that it would otherwise have to cover with tax revenues.
"There was all this extra federal money sitting around," explains Clare Richie, a policy analyst at the institute, "so it was easy to use that to fill other holes." (A state DHS spokesperson responded that because TANF is a federal block grant, "this allows state policymakers to use TANF funds in ways that fit both Georgia's program needs and the different needs of other states.")
To ensure that states didn't just cash their federal TANF checks without spending anything on the poor, Congress added another requirement, the so-called "maintenance of effort" requirements that would cut funds to states that didn't devote enough money to anti-poverty programs. Earlier this year, a study by the federal General Accountability Office revealed that Georgia was counting private spending by nonprofit food banks and similar private charities to account for nearly half of the state's own required welfare spending targets--more than double the percentage of almost any other state.
According to poverty experts, the way that the 1996 law changed the mechanics of federal welfare spending is a big reason why many states have been generous with food stamps--Georgia recently began allowing residents to apply for food aid online, with only a telephone verification interview--while cracking down on cash assistance. Food stamps remain a federal entitlement, meaning if more people in your state get food stamps, Washington foots the bill. But if more people get TANF, that comes out of a flat amount of federal cash that your state gets to help those in need--creating a huge incentive to slash the rolls and siphon off the money for other uses.
It's a form of creative bookkeeping, says Democratic state representative and minority leader Stacey Abrams, that's especially alluring to a state like Georgia, which features not just a Republican-controlled state house and governor's office but an exceptionally high number of state leaders who belong to the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative policy group that has recently attracted attention for drafting hundreds of bills on behalf of corporate lobbyists. Georgia, she says, was a perfect match for those looking to eliminate the welfare rolls, along with a Republican-controlled legislature that takes its cues from an interest group like ALEC--"We have become a laboratory for their policies."
More than that, though, she says that conservatives in Georgia have "a genuine mistrust of the social welfare system, and a misunderstanding of how it operates,"
where it's assumed that anyone requesting government aid must be a drug user or otherwise shiftless. This allows state ideologues, she says, to pit the needy against one another in what she calls a "sort of Hunger Games of the poor," where the working poor are encouraged to look upon welfare spending as a drain on their own finances. " 'I'm poor because you took my money'--that's the dynamic that they set up."
Georgia is hardly alone in its attempts to slash the already meager welfare rolls: Wyoming, Texas, and Idaho all boast welfare-to-poverty ratios below Georgia's 7 percent. And the two states that exceed Georgia's 19 percent poverty rate, Louisiana and Mississippi, are barely ahead of it in welfare rates, at 9 and 10 percent of families below the poverty line, respectively. Meanwhile, notes Schott, the national welfare expert, the past year has seen Ohio push people off welfare by imposing strict sanctions for violating any rules, while Washington booted off 6,000 people in one month by removing a time-limits exemption for those in good standing.
There are a handful of states that have bucked the trend. California and Maine both provide welfare benefits to more than 65 percent of their poor residents. Illinois, which saw a similar drop in welfare caseloads to Georgia's during Walker's tenure, recently eased waiting limits and other rules, seeing welfare applications climb as a result. And other states may apply for the Obama administration's offer of waivers to get out of strict work rules. Yet there's little hope of any of these measures taking root in states like Georgia. In fact, the state recently added a new hurdle: Pending a court challenge, welfare applicants will soon be forced to take a drug test within 48 hours of applying--for a $17, non-refundable fee.
It shouldn't be this way, says O'Neal, the young grandmother, as she prepares to file TANF paperwork yet again for her daughter, hopefully this time with a better result. "All of these people coming down here are not people just looking for handouts," she says.
"You got a lot of people who have worked hard pretty much all their lives and have paid taxes. And now they're in need, and they can't get what they need. And it's so sad."
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
Fewer than 4,000 adults in the southern state receive welfare, even as poverty is soaring. How Georgia declared war on its poorest citizens--leaving them to fight for themselves.
by Neil deMause
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/12/georgia_s_w
ar_against_the_poor_the_southern_state_is_emptying_its_welfare.html?wpisrc=o
binsite
When the economy crashed in 2008, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Applications for food stamps soared.
So did attendance at emergency food providers--soup kitchens and food pantries--that help the estimated 50 million people, working and non-working, who can't afford enough groceries to get through the month.
Unlike in past economic downturns, though, the welfare rolls barely budged. Where 15 years ago 68 percent of poor Americans received cash via Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (as welfare was officially renamed in 1996), today only 27 percent of Americans with incomes low enough to qualify for cash benefits receive them.
As the New York Times' Jason DeParle discussed in a front-page article earlier this year, the resulting welfare gap has left at least 4 million families with neither jobs nor cash aid.
The size of the welfare gap, however, varies widely from state to state. In states like California and Maine, which have focused on getting their poor citizens into jobs programs, about two-thirds of those eligible still receive welfare. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Georgia, which over the past decade has set itself up as the poster child for the ongoing war on welfare. Even as unemployment has soared to 9 percent and 300,000 Georgia families now live below the poverty line--50 percent higher than in 2000, for a poverty rate that now ranks sixth in the nation--the number receiving cash benefits has all but evaporated:
Only a little over 19,000 families receiving TANF remain, all but 3,400 of which were cases involving children only. That's less than 7 percent, making Georgia one of the toughest places in the nation to get welfare assistance. Advertisement
What's Georgia's secret? According to government documents, interviews with poor Georgians, and those who work with them, it's a simple one: Combine an all-Republican state government out to make a name for itself as tough on freeloaders; a state welfare commissioner so zealous about slashing the rolls that workers say she handed out Zero candy bars to emphasize her goal of zero welfare; and federal rules that, regardless of who's in the White House, give states the leeway to use the 1996 law's requirement for "work activities"--the same provision that Republicans have charged President Obama wants to unfairly water down--to slam the door in the face of the state's neediest.
What this has created is a land that welfare forgot, where a collection of private charities struggle to fill the resulting holes. For the Atlanta Community Food Bank, that means sending out more than 3 million pounds of canned goods, bread, and other groceries each month to churches in and around Atlanta to help feed the state's growing number of poor and near-poor. The food bank's staff also helps arrange for free tax prep services, and helps the city's poor apply for food stamps and Medicaid. One thing they don't discuss, though, is welfare. "We don't talk about TANF anymore,"
says food bank advocacy and education director Laura Lester. "We don't even send anybody in to apply, because there's just no point."
It's a state of affairs that's left an increasing number of Georgians with nowhere to turn. Teresa, a single mom of a 2-year-old living in a domestic violence shelter, tells of how she broke down and applied for cash benefits after fleeing an abusive relationship--only to be chastised by state welfare officers who asked, "Wouldn't you rather work?"
Eventually, Teresa says, "I was sitting there crying--I just didn't know what else to do. I said, you've gone from letting people sit on their butt and collect money to the very opposite of that."
Ultimately, it didn't matter. In the end, she was rejected for failing to fill out her paperwork correctly.
* * *
One of the common misconceptions about welfare reform is that once Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton had settled their grand bargain back in 1996, a new regime was put in place: If you won't work (or at least look for work), you'll no longer get a government check. In fact, though, welfare reform is less a single law than 50 separate experiments, as Washington provided states with a broad framework under which they are free to set their own rules on time limits, grant levels, and work requirements for those seeking help.
Immediately after the new law was put in place, the welfare rolls plunged by two-thirds--though no one could say for certain whether this was because people were leaving the rolls for jobs or merely sinking deeper into poverty. And though the slide eased a bit nationally after the economy cooled around 2001, the welfare gap--the number of people poor enough to receive benefits who weren't actually getting them--still amounted to nearly two-thirds of those below the poverty line. Beverly Walker, ex-commissioner of Georgia's Department of Human Resources Beverly Walker, ex-commissioner of Georgia's Department of Human Resources
In Georgia, the number of Georgians receiving welfare had leveled off at about 54,000 families--roughly 30 percent of poor Georgians--by 2004. It was in that year that Gov. Sonny Perdue, the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction, hired a new commissioner to head Georgia's Department of Human Services. Beverly "B.J." Walker, a 54-year-old black woman from Chicago, had been an obscure school curriculum consultant best known as the wife of Chicago's airport commissioner when Republicans chose her to run a pilot project in
1995 to streamline state government services. Soon she rose to run Chicago's welfare programs as well.
Walker quickly gained a reputation for a get-tough attitude toward welfare recipients that rivaled other states. "What B.J. emphasized was that everybody who can work, should work," says Joseph Antolin, who was an Illinois state welfare official when Walker arrived on the scene.
What that meant was that those who wouldn't work--or preferred, say, to go back to school to increase their chances of landing a good job--would be quickly pushed off the rolls. One of her first steps, Antolin recalls, was to shoot down plans to expand GED classes and vocational college courses for the poor. Her philosophy, he says, was "you essentially have to throw them in the pool and let them learn how to swim."
Thanks in part to Walker's influence, Illinois' welfare rolls plunged from more than 200,000 in 1996 to 95,000 when she departed for a similar job in Chicago city government three years later.
Once Walker arrived in Georgia, poverty experts there say she set out to overhaul the state's TANF program with a single goal: not just getting people into jobs, but keeping them from getting benefits by any means necessary. New applicants soon found themselves being handed flyers emblazoned with slogans like "TANF is not good enough for any family," "TANF = work now," and "We believe welfare is not the best option for your family."
"Local offices were really taking a lot of steps to dissuade people from applying--or once they had applied, they were doing things to make the process really cumbersome and difficult," recalls Allison Smith of the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, whose office began documenting troubling reports of welfare applicants being discouraged from applying for benefits by any and all means necessary: "Making them go through 60 job searches a week, or come to 8 orientations." One woman in her seventh month of pregnancy was ordered to take a waitressing job that would require her to be on her feet all day. Another was told that if she applied for TANF while living in a shelter her children would be taken away. Smith recalls, "Some of the stuff that was said to individuals was pretty awful--'If you can't find a job, we'll have you shoveling **** at the dog pound.' "
"They were trying to make me feel bad that I was trying to get money," says Teresa of her experience applying for benefits. "They told me that taxpayers are paying for it--I used to pay my taxes, you know?" Kelda O'Neal, a young grandmother currently caring for an extended family of 15 in her DeKalb County home, had a similar experience. "They treat you like you're in a jail facility," she complains of her multiple trips to the DeKalb County welfare center to try to apply for benefits. "You really, really catch it trying to get TANF. I've heard women saying they can go and finally get a job, and before they can get that first pay, they cut 'em off."
O'Neal herself previously received TANF, she says, until her husband--a former truck driver who'd suffered a mental breakdown after his father died and one of his daughters was murdered--applied for disability benefits and was told that according to Georgia state law, he'd need to attend 60 to 90 days of a state work program while waiting for those benefits to arrive. She says that when he missed one of his appointments--among his many mental health issues, he suffers from agoraphobia--the state ended her $133 in monthly benefits.
Missed appointments are one common reason for rejected TANF applications in Georgia. Failure to meet state job search rules--which require 30 days of job search before a first check will be cut--is another. Teresa says she was told she'd have to file a record of 24 job applications a week in order to have her welfare application processed. "That was really hard, because I couldn't find any places that were hiring," she says.
She was approved for benefits, but only so long as she performed 24 hours a week of community service, plus 12 hours of job search, which she struggled to do during the limited computer time available at the domestic violence shelter. Eventually, she had her benefits cut off for failing to properly record the phone numbers of her job contacts.
Teresa later landed a job at a Bi-Lo grocery store, and gave up on applying for government aid altogether. But many domestic violence survivors aren't so lucky, says
Smith: "A lot of folks we know are staying in their abusive relationships longer, or returning. We know from research that financial concerns are probably the No. 1 reason why victims don't leave, or go back.
Usually TANF will be a stepping stone, and now that it's going, people are having to make hard choices."
* * *
The Georgia Department of Human Services has long insisted that it's not making a concerted effort to deny benefits. (Walker departed in 2011, but the policies she instituted still largely remain in place.) Indeed, there's nothing in written state guidelines telling workers to turn applicants away. But many local and national welfare experts say that's not unexpected.
"I could never find anything from the state office--and you won't," says Liz Schott, a senior fellow with the D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who has investigated welfare policies in several states. "I think they got the message, and they did anything, whatever they needed to do to make sure nobody got on."
One of these unwritten measures, says Smith, involved Zero candy bars. Senior state DHS officials handed out the candy bars to staff as a not-so-subtle reminder that the goal was to have no one receiving welfare.
"That was the goal, workers were telling us. The message was 'zero TANF.' " (A DHS spokesperson says the state "has no information" on the distribution of candy bars by the department.)
Georgia's welfare rolls plunged again after Walker's arrival, with more than 60 percent of those remaining dropping off welfare. Much of the drop was the result of people not being able to get through the front door:
A study by Schott found that the share of welfare applications that were approved fell from 40 to 20 percent under Walker's tenure, and two-thirds of all denials were due to either withdrawal of applications or failure to complete application procedures.
As for getting Georgia's poor back to work--the ostensible goal of welfare reform--the numbers are similarly unpromising. Georgia has bragged about its rising "work participation" rate--a key metric set down by Congress to ensure that states followed federal work rules by insisting that at least half of welfare recipients were engaged in "work activities," which can include anything from actual employment to an active search for a job. Yet the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that far fewer Georgians living in poverty were engaged in "work activities" under Walker; rather, the percentage was only up because the denominator--the number of people getting cash aid--had plummeted.
Asked if having barely one in 100 of the state's poor receiving cash is an acceptable result, state TANF policy director Anne Carter replies, "I don't know that that's a yes-or-no question." The state always evaluates whether applicants are eligible under federal guidelines, she says, and "our withdrawal rate dictates whether they want to comply with the program, or they don't." She adds that the state offers job seekers help getting to job interviews, such as a new car battery or transit passes, and now lets them conduct job searches at home--provided, of course, that they have a computer with Internet access.
As for what's happened to the hundreds of thousands who've left welfare or never made it on, no one is quite sure: The state conducted its last "leaver study"
of those departing the rolls in 2006--after that, explains Carter, the contractor retired and was never replaced. DHS figures indicate that 17.5 percent of applicants withdraw after a case is opened, but the agency doesn't compile statewide reports on how many find jobs--or on how many give up during the one-month waiting period before a case is opened. And even then, the findings were decidedly mixed: While about 70 percent of those who left welfare were employed during their first year after leaving TANF, more than 80 percent remained below the federal poverty level. The one thing that was helping Georgia's poor, noted the study, was increased child care assistance that was approved by the state in 2005 to encourage people to leave TANF for employment--a program now imperiled by a lack of state funds.
Cassie, a single mom in the western Atlanta suburb of Austell, is one of those who have been turned away for child care assistance because the state ran out of money. After her partner skipped town when he learned their son had a chronic blood disorder--"He said, 'You're going to have to eventually send me to child support court, and when you do that I never want to see y'all again' "--Cassie found herself juggling shifts as a nursing aide while managing her son's frequent hospital visits. She applied for TANF, only to be forced to drop out of school for her degree as an ultrasound sonographer, she says, in order to have time for the grueling job search process.*
As her 2-year-old son scampers about a vacant office at the Sweetwater Valley Community Action Mission Program where she's come to seek some help, Cassie explains that--like nearly 2 million other Georgians, almost 20 percent of the state--she receives federal food stamp benefits, which help put groceries on the table. But they won't pay for non-food items, which is why she's turned up at this private charity in suburban Cobb County in search of diapers.
Household supplies are a constant struggle for the poor in the absence of cash benefits, notes the charity's program director Carla Pierce, pointing to the stockpiles of detergent and other items lining the mission's storeroom shelves. (No diapers today, though; Cassie and her son go home empty-handed.) "Formula and diapers change a family budget in a second."
Even for those lucky few who do manage to receive TANF, the increasingly meager grant levels--which haven't been raised in Georgia since 1996, leading to a 30 percent drop in spending power relative to inflation--are hardly meeting people's most basic needs."Two hundred and thirty-five dollars, what the hell is that supposed to pay?" wonders Renea Buck, a Savannah grandmother caring for her daughter's two children. Buck recently fought her way onto TANF with the help of a local antipoverty group, Step Up Savannah. "I see these people on TV, and they say people are just living off the welfare system.
There might be a lot of people on food stamps because they need help. And they might have Medicaid so their kids can have medical. But they're crazy if anybody's milking the damn system for that $235 a month."
Private aid groups like the Community Action Mission Program have tried to fill the gap with "emergency aid"--basically a private welfare grant for those below
125 percent of the poverty line--but in a county that features 16 percent unemployment and where 1,600 schoolkids are homeless, they now turn away half of all applicants, says Pierce. The number of people coming to her organization for help has tripled in the last five years, she notes.
"These days, it seems like almost everyone needs financial aid for either rent or other expenses,"
Pierce sighs. "Everyone who walks through that door has a legitimate emergency."
* * *
Despite its dwindling welfare rolls, the state of Georgia is still allotted $330 million a year in federal money via the TANF block grant program. But there are signs that less and less of it actually makes it to the state's poor.
Instead, according to a September 2012 study by the nonprofit Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, the state has found ways to use TANF money to paper over other program budgets, with more than half of Georgia's welfare funds being siphoned off to pay for the state's unrelated child welfare program. This maneuver, which is allowed under federal law, has effectively saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars that it would otherwise have to cover with tax revenues.
"There was all this extra federal money sitting around," explains Clare Richie, a policy analyst at the institute, "so it was easy to use that to fill other holes." (A state DHS spokesperson responded that because TANF is a federal block grant, "this allows state policymakers to use TANF funds in ways that fit both Georgia's program needs and the different needs of other states.")
To ensure that states didn't just cash their federal TANF checks without spending anything on the poor, Congress added another requirement, the so-called "maintenance of effort" requirements that would cut funds to states that didn't devote enough money to anti-poverty programs. Earlier this year, a study by the federal General Accountability Office revealed that Georgia was counting private spending by nonprofit food banks and similar private charities to account for nearly half of the state's own required welfare spending targets--more than double the percentage of almost any other state.
According to poverty experts, the way that the 1996 law changed the mechanics of federal welfare spending is a big reason why many states have been generous with food stamps--Georgia recently began allowing residents to apply for food aid online, with only a telephone verification interview--while cracking down on cash assistance. Food stamps remain a federal entitlement, meaning if more people in your state get food stamps, Washington foots the bill. But if more people get TANF, that comes out of a flat amount of federal cash that your state gets to help those in need--creating a huge incentive to slash the rolls and siphon off the money for other uses.
It's a form of creative bookkeeping, says Democratic state representative and minority leader Stacey Abrams, that's especially alluring to a state like Georgia, which features not just a Republican-controlled state house and governor's office but an exceptionally high number of state leaders who belong to the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative policy group that has recently attracted attention for drafting hundreds of bills on behalf of corporate lobbyists. Georgia, she says, was a perfect match for those looking to eliminate the welfare rolls, along with a Republican-controlled legislature that takes its cues from an interest group like ALEC--"We have become a laboratory for their policies."
More than that, though, she says that conservatives in Georgia have "a genuine mistrust of the social welfare system, and a misunderstanding of how it operates,"
where it's assumed that anyone requesting government aid must be a drug user or otherwise shiftless. This allows state ideologues, she says, to pit the needy against one another in what she calls a "sort of Hunger Games of the poor," where the working poor are encouraged to look upon welfare spending as a drain on their own finances. " 'I'm poor because you took my money'--that's the dynamic that they set up."
Georgia is hardly alone in its attempts to slash the already meager welfare rolls: Wyoming, Texas, and Idaho all boast welfare-to-poverty ratios below Georgia's 7 percent. And the two states that exceed Georgia's 19 percent poverty rate, Louisiana and Mississippi, are barely ahead of it in welfare rates, at 9 and 10 percent of families below the poverty line, respectively. Meanwhile, notes Schott, the national welfare expert, the past year has seen Ohio push people off welfare by imposing strict sanctions for violating any rules, while Washington booted off 6,000 people in one month by removing a time-limits exemption for those in good standing.
There are a handful of states that have bucked the trend. California and Maine both provide welfare benefits to more than 65 percent of their poor residents. Illinois, which saw a similar drop in welfare caseloads to Georgia's during Walker's tenure, recently eased waiting limits and other rules, seeing welfare applications climb as a result. And other states may apply for the Obama administration's offer of waivers to get out of strict work rules. Yet there's little hope of any of these measures taking root in states like Georgia. In fact, the state recently added a new hurdle: Pending a court challenge, welfare applicants will soon be forced to take a drug test within 48 hours of applying--for a $17, non-refundable fee.
It shouldn't be this way, says O'Neal, the young grandmother, as she prepares to file TANF paperwork yet again for her daughter, hopefully this time with a better result. "All of these people coming down here are not people just looking for handouts," she says.
"You got a lot of people who have worked hard pretty much all their lives and have paid taxes. And now they're in need, and they can't get what they need. And it's so sad."
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
Who Pays for the Right to Bear Arms?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/opinion/who-pays-for-the-right-to-bear-arms.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130102&_r=0
January 1, 2013
Who Pays for the Right to Bear Arms?
By DAVID COLE
Washington
IN the days following the Newtown massacre the nation’s newspapers were filled with heart-wrenching pictures of the innocent victims. The slaughter was unimaginably shocking. But the broader tragedy of gun violence is felt mostly not in leafy suburbs, but in America’s inner cities.
The right to bear arms typically invokes the romantic image of a cowboy toting a rifle on the plains. In modern-day America, though, the more realistic picture is that of a young black man gunned down in his prime in a dark alley. When we celebrate gun rights, we all too often ignore their disproportionate racial burdens. Any effort to address gun violence must focus on the inner city.
Last year Chicago had some 500 homicides, 87 percent of them gun-related. In the city’s public schools, 319 students were shot in the 2011-12 school year, 24 of them fatally. African-Americans are 33 percent of the Chicago population, but about 70 percent of the murder victims.
The same is true in other cities. In 2011, 80 percent of the 324 people killed in Philadelphia were killed by guns, and three-quarters of the victims were black.
Racial disparities in gun violence far outstrip those in almost any other area of life. Black unemployment is double that for whites, as is black infant mortality. But young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of young white men. Could it be that the laxity of the nation’s gun laws is tolerated because its deadly costs are borne by the segregated black and Latino populations of North Philadelphia and Chicago’s South Side?
The history of gun regulation is inextricably interwoven with race. Some of the nation’s most stringent gun laws emerged in the South after the Civil War, as Southern whites feared what newly freed slaves might do if armed. At the same time, Northerners saw the freed slaves’ right to bear arms as critical to protecting them from the Ku Klux Klan.
In the 1960s, Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party made the gun a central symbol of black power, claiming that “the gun is the only thing that will free us.” On May 2, 1967, taking advantage of California’s lax gun laws, several Panthers marched through the State Capitol in Sacramento carrying raised and loaded weapons, generating widespread news coverage.
The police could do nothing, as the Panthers broke no laws. But three months later, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law one of the strictest gun control laws in the country.
The urban riots of the late 1960s — combined with rising crime rates and a string of high-profile assassinations — spurred Congress to pass federal gun control laws, banning interstate commerce in guns except for federally licensed dealers and collectors; prohibiting sales to felons, the mentally ill, substance abusers and minors; and expanding licensing requirements.
These laws contain large loopholes, however, and are plainly inadequate to deal with the increased number and lethality of modern weapons. But as long as gun violence largely targets young black men in urban ghettos, the nation seems indifferent. At Newtown, the often all-too-invisible costs of the right to bear arms were made starkly visible — precisely because these weren’t the usual victims. The nation took note, and President Obama has promised reform, though he has not yet made a specific proposal.
Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting that many cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws. But this ignores the ease with which urban residents can evade local laws by obtaining guns from dealers outside their cities or states. Effective gun regulation requires a nationally coordinated response.
A cynic might propose resurrecting the Black Panthers to heighten white anxiety as the swiftest route to breaking the logjam on gun reform. I hope we are better than that. If the nation were to view the everyday tragedies that befall young black and Latino men in the inner cities with the same sympathy that it has shown for the Newtown victims, there would be a groundswell of support not just for gun law reform, but for much broader measures.
If we are to reduce the inequitable costs of gun rights, it’s not enough to tighten licensing requirements, expand background checks to private gun sales or ban assault weapons. In addition to such national measures, meaningful reform must include initiatives directed to where gun violence is worst: the inner cities. Aggressive interventions by police and social workers focused on gang gun violence, coupled with economic investment, better schools and more after-school and job training programs, are all necessary if we are to reduce the violence that gun rights entail.
To tweak the National Rifle Association’s refrain, “guns don’t kill people; indifference to poverty kills people.” We can’t in good conscience keep making young black men pay the cost of our right to bear arms.
David Cole is a professor of constitutional law and criminal justice at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Wilmington 10 Pardoned. Two articles:
Wilmington 10 Pardoned. Two articles:
1. North Carolina governor pardons Wilmington 10 by Jamil Smith
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/12/31/north-carolina-governor-
pardons-wilmington-10/
The Wilmington Ten are truly free, at last. Outgoing North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue issued and signed a "pardon of innocence" for
the group Monday. There are currently six surviving
members. The nine African-American men and one white
woman had been convicted in the 1972 firebombing of a
Wilmington, NC grocery store during civil-rights
protests that arose after police shot an
African-American teenager. Between the ten, they
received combined sentences totaling 282 years in prison.
2. NC governor signs pardons for Wilmington 10
By MARTHA WAGGONER December 31, 2012
Associated Press http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50332695
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Outgoing North Carolina Gov.
Beverly Perdue issued pardons Monday to the Wilmington
10, a group wrongly convicted 40 years ago in a
notorious Civil Rights- era prosecution that led to
accusations that the state was holding political prisoners.
Perdue issued pardons of innocence Monday for the nine
black men and one white woman who were given prison
sentences totaling nearly 300 years for the 1971
firebombing of a Wilmington grocery store after police
shot a black teenager. The pardon means the state no
longer thinks the 10 - four of whom have since died -
committed a crime.
"I have decided to grant these pardons because the more
facts I have learned about the Wilmington Ten, the more
appalled I have become about the manner in which their
convictions were obtained," Perdue said in a news
release Monday.
The three key witnesses in the case later recanted
their testimony. Amnesty International and other groups
took up the issue, portraying the Wilmington 10 as
political prisoners. In 1978, then-Gov. Jim Hunt
commuted their sentences but withheld a pardon. Two
years later, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, Va., threw out the convictions, saying
perjury and prosecutorial misconduct were factors in
the verdicts. "We are tremendously grateful to Gov.
Perdue for her courage," said Benjamin Chavis, the
former national NAACP executive director who was in
jail and prison for about five years before his
release. "This is a historic day for North Carolina and
the United States. People should be innocent until
proven guilty, not persecuted for standing up for equal
rights and justice."
In addition to Chavis, the surviving members of the
Wilmington 10 are Reginald Epps, James McKoy, Wayne
Moor, Marvin Patrick and Willie Earl Vereen. Those who
have died are Jerry Jacobs, Ann Shepard, Connie Tindall
and Joe Wright. Wright was the youngest, arrested when
he was 16 years old. The Wilmington 10 were convicted
in October 1972 on charges of conspiracy to firebomb
Mike's Grocery and conspiracy to assault emergency
personnel who responded to the fire in February 1971.
The trial was held in Burgaw in Pender County after a
judge declared a mistrial the first time. A jury of 10
blacks and two whites had been seated in the first
trial when prosecutor Jay Stroud said he was sick, and
the judge declared the mistrial. At the second trial, a
jury of 10 whites and two blacks was seated.
The three key witnesses who took the stand for the
prosecution recanted their testimony in 1976. And the
prosecutor, Stroud, became a flashpoint for the
Wilmington 10 supporters.
In November, NAACP state leaders said they believe
newly uncovered notes show Stroud tried to keep blacks
off the first jury and seat whites he thought were
sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan.
They showed the notes on a poster board, saying the
handwriting on the legal paper appeared to match notes
from other prosecution records in the case.
At the top of the list of 100 jurors, the notes said,
"stay away from black men." A capital "B'' was beside
the names of black jurors. The notes identify one
potential black juror as an "Uncle Tom type," and
beside the names of several white people, notations
include "KKK?" and "good!!"
Stroud told the StarNews of Wilmington that he wrote
the notes but declined to confirm that to the AP.
"This conduct is disgraceful," Perdue said of the
notes. "It is utterly incompatible with basic notions
of fairness and with every ideal that North Carolina
holds dear. The legitimacy of our criminal justice
system hinges on it operating in a fair and equitable
manner with justice being dispensed based on innocence
or guilt - not based on race or other forms of prejudice."
[Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Raleigh
contributed to this story.]
Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
1. North Carolina governor pardons Wilmington 10 by Jamil Smith
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/12/31/north-carolina-governor-
pardons-wilmington-10/
The Wilmington Ten are truly free, at last. Outgoing North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue issued and signed a "pardon of innocence" for
the group Monday. There are currently six surviving
members. The nine African-American men and one white
woman had been convicted in the 1972 firebombing of a
Wilmington, NC grocery store during civil-rights
protests that arose after police shot an
African-American teenager. Between the ten, they
received combined sentences totaling 282 years in prison.
2. NC governor signs pardons for Wilmington 10
By MARTHA WAGGONER December 31, 2012
Associated Press http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50332695
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Outgoing North Carolina Gov.
Beverly Perdue issued pardons Monday to the Wilmington
10, a group wrongly convicted 40 years ago in a
notorious Civil Rights- era prosecution that led to
accusations that the state was holding political prisoners.
Perdue issued pardons of innocence Monday for the nine
black men and one white woman who were given prison
sentences totaling nearly 300 years for the 1971
firebombing of a Wilmington grocery store after police
shot a black teenager. The pardon means the state no
longer thinks the 10 - four of whom have since died -
committed a crime.
"I have decided to grant these pardons because the more
facts I have learned about the Wilmington Ten, the more
appalled I have become about the manner in which their
convictions were obtained," Perdue said in a news
release Monday.
The three key witnesses in the case later recanted
their testimony. Amnesty International and other groups
took up the issue, portraying the Wilmington 10 as
political prisoners. In 1978, then-Gov. Jim Hunt
commuted their sentences but withheld a pardon. Two
years later, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Richmond, Va., threw out the convictions, saying
perjury and prosecutorial misconduct were factors in
the verdicts. "We are tremendously grateful to Gov.
Perdue for her courage," said Benjamin Chavis, the
former national NAACP executive director who was in
jail and prison for about five years before his
release. "This is a historic day for North Carolina and
the United States. People should be innocent until
proven guilty, not persecuted for standing up for equal
rights and justice."
In addition to Chavis, the surviving members of the
Wilmington 10 are Reginald Epps, James McKoy, Wayne
Moor, Marvin Patrick and Willie Earl Vereen. Those who
have died are Jerry Jacobs, Ann Shepard, Connie Tindall
and Joe Wright. Wright was the youngest, arrested when
he was 16 years old. The Wilmington 10 were convicted
in October 1972 on charges of conspiracy to firebomb
Mike's Grocery and conspiracy to assault emergency
personnel who responded to the fire in February 1971.
The trial was held in Burgaw in Pender County after a
judge declared a mistrial the first time. A jury of 10
blacks and two whites had been seated in the first
trial when prosecutor Jay Stroud said he was sick, and
the judge declared the mistrial. At the second trial, a
jury of 10 whites and two blacks was seated.
The three key witnesses who took the stand for the
prosecution recanted their testimony in 1976. And the
prosecutor, Stroud, became a flashpoint for the
Wilmington 10 supporters.
In November, NAACP state leaders said they believe
newly uncovered notes show Stroud tried to keep blacks
off the first jury and seat whites he thought were
sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan.
They showed the notes on a poster board, saying the
handwriting on the legal paper appeared to match notes
from other prosecution records in the case.
At the top of the list of 100 jurors, the notes said,
"stay away from black men." A capital "B'' was beside
the names of black jurors. The notes identify one
potential black juror as an "Uncle Tom type," and
beside the names of several white people, notations
include "KKK?" and "good!!"
Stroud told the StarNews of Wilmington that he wrote
the notes but declined to confirm that to the AP.
"This conduct is disgraceful," Perdue said of the
notes. "It is utterly incompatible with basic notions
of fairness and with every ideal that North Carolina
holds dear. The legitimacy of our criminal justice
system hinges on it operating in a fair and equitable
manner with justice being dispensed based on innocence
or guilt - not based on race or other forms of prejudice."
[Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Raleigh
contributed to this story.]
Martha Waggoner can be reached at http://twitter.com/mjwaggonernc
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/the-emancipation-of-abe-lincoln.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130101&_r=0
December 31, 2012
The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln
By ERIC FONER
ONE hundred and fifty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln presided over the annual White House New Year’s reception. Late that afternoon, he retired to his study to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. When he took up his pen, his hand was shaking from exhaustion. Briefly, he paused — “I do not want it to appear as if I hesitated,” he remarked. Then Lincoln affixed a firm signature to the document.
Like all great historical transformations, emancipation was a process, not a single event. It arose from many causes and was the work of many individuals. It began at the outset of the Civil War, when slaves sought refuge behind Union lines. It did not end until December 1865, with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which irrevocably abolished slavery throughout the nation.
But the Emancipation Proclamation was the crucial turning point in this story. In a sense, it embodied a double emancipation: for the slaves, since it ensured that if the Union emerged victorious, slavery would perish, and for Lincoln himself, for whom it marked the abandonment of his previous assumptions about how to abolish slavery and the role blacks would play in post-emancipation American life.
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lincoln’s statement in 1864 that he had always believed slavery to be wrong. During the first two years of the Civil War, despite insisting that the conflict’s aim was preservation of the Union, he devoted considerable energy to a plan for ending slavery inherited from prewar years. Emancipation would be undertaken by state governments, with national financing. It would be gradual, owners would receive monetary compensation and emancipated slaves would be encouraged to find a homeland outside the United States — this last idea known as “colonization.”
Lincoln’s plan sought to win the cooperation of slave holders in ending slavery. As early as November 1861, he proposed it to political leaders in Delaware, one of the four border states (along with Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri) that remained in the Union. Delaware had only 1,800 slaves; the institution was peripheral to the state’s economy. But Lincoln found that even there, slave holders did not wish to surrender their human property. Nonetheless, for most of 1862, he avidly promoted his plan to the border states and any Confederates who might be interested.
Lincoln also took his proposal to black Americans. In August 1862, he met with a group of black leaders from Washington. He seemed to blame the presence of blacks in America for the conflict: “but for your race among us there could not be war.” He issued a powerful indictment of slavery — “the greatest wrong inflicted on any people” — but added that, because of racism, blacks would never achieve equality in America. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated,” he said. But most blacks refused to contemplate emigration from the land of their birth.
In the summer of 1862, a combination of events propelled Lincoln in a new direction. Slavery was disintegrating in parts of the South as thousands of slaves ran away to Union lines. With the war a stalemate, more Northerners found themselves agreeing with the abolitionists, who had insisted from the outset that slavery must become a target. Enthusiasm for enlistment was waning in the North. The Army had long refused to accept black volunteers, but the reservoir of black manpower could no longer be ignored. In response, Congress moved ahead of Lincoln, abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, authorizing the president to enroll blacks in the Army and freeing the slaves of pro-Confederate owners in areas under military control. Lincoln signed all these measures that summer.
The hallmark of Lincoln’s greatness was his combination of bedrock principle with open-mindedness and capacity for growth. That summer, with his preferred approach going nowhere, he moved in the direction of immediate emancipation. He first proposed this to his cabinet on July 22, but Secretary of State William H. Seward persuaded him to wait for a military victory, lest it seem an act of desperation.
Soon after the Union victory at Antietam in September, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a warning to the Confederacy that if it did not lay down its arms by Jan. 1, he would declare the slaves “forever free.”
Lincoln did not immediately abandon his earlier plan. His annual message to Congress, released on Dec. 1, 1862, devoted a long passage to gradual, compensated abolition and colonization. But in the same document, without mentioning the impending proclamation, he indicated that a new approach was imperative: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present,” he wrote. “We must disenthrall our selves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln included himself in that “we.” On Jan. 1, he proclaimed the freedom of the vast majority of the nation’s slaves.
The Emancipation Proclamation is perhaps the most misunderstood of the documents that have shaped American history. Contrary to legend, Lincoln did not free the nearly four million slaves with a stroke of his pen. It had no bearing on slaves in the four border states, since they were not in rebellion. It also exempted certain parts of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. All told, it left perhaps 750,000 slaves in bondage. But the remaining 3.1 million, it declared, “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
The proclamation did not end slavery in the United States on the day it was issued. Indeed, it could not even be enforced in most of the areas where it applied, which were under Confederate control. But it ensured the eventual death of slavery — assuming the Union won the war. Were the Confederacy to emerge victorious, slavery, in one form or another, would undoubtedly have lasted a long time.
A military order, whose constitutional legitimacy rested on the president’s war powers, the proclamation often disappoints those who read it. It is dull and legalistic; it contains no soaring language enunciating the rights of man. Only at the last minute, at the urging of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, an abolitionist, did Lincoln add a conclusion declaring the proclamation an “act of justice.”
Nonetheless, the proclamation marked a dramatic transformation in the nature of the Civil War and in Lincoln’s own approach to the problem of slavery. No longer did he seek the consent of slave holders. The proclamation was immediate, not gradual, contained no mention of compensation for owners, and made no reference to colonization.
In it, Lincoln addressed blacks directly, not as property subject to the will of others but as men and women whose loyalty the Union must earn. For the first time, he welcomed black soldiers into the Union Army; over the next two years some 200,000 black men would serve in the Army and Navy, playing a critical role in achieving Union victory. And Lincoln urged freed slaves to go to work for “reasonable wages” — in the United States. He never again mentioned colonization in public.
Having made the decision, Lincoln did not look back. In 1864, with casualties mounting, there was talk of a compromise peace. Some urged Lincoln to rescind the proclamation, in which case, they believed, the South could be persuaded to return to the Union. Lincoln refused. Were he to do so, he told one visitor, “I should be damned in time and eternity.”
Wartime emancipation may have settled the fate of slavery, but it opened another vexing question: the role of former slaves in American life. Colonization had allowed its proponents to talk about abolition without having to confront this issue; after all, the black population would be gone. After Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln for the first time began to think seriously of the United States as a biracial society.
While not burdened with the visceral racism of many of his white contemporaries, Lincoln shared some of their prejudices. He had long seen blacks as an alien people who been unjustly uprooted from their homeland and were entitled to freedom, but were not an intrinsic part of American society. During his Senate campaign in Illinois, in 1858, he had insisted that blacks should enjoy the same natural rights as whites (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), but he opposed granting them legal equality or the right to vote.
By the end of his life, Lincoln’s outlook had changed dramatically. In his last public address, delivered in April 1865, he said that in reconstructing Louisiana, and by implication other Southern states, he would “prefer” that limited black suffrage be implemented. He singled out the “very intelligent” (educated free blacks) and “those who serve our cause as soldiers” as most worthy. Though hardly an unambiguous embrace of equality, this was the first time an American president had endorsed any political rights for blacks.
And then there was his magnificent second inaugural address of March 4, 1865, in which Lincoln ruminated on the deep meaning of the war. He now identified the institution of slavery — not the presence of blacks, as in 1862 — as its fundamental cause. The war, he said, might well be a divine punishment for the evil of slavery. And God might will it to continue until all the wealth the slaves had created had been destroyed, and “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword.” Lincoln was reminding Americans that violence did not begin with the firing on Fort Sumter, S.C., in April 1861. What he called “this terrible war” had been preceded by 250 years of the terrible violence of slavery.
In essence, Lincoln asked the nation to confront unblinkingly the legacy of slavery. What were the requirements of justice in the face of this reality? What would be necessary to enable former slaves and their descendants to enjoy fully the pursuit of happiness? Lincoln did not live to provide an answer. A century and a half later, we have yet to do so.
Eric Foner is a professor of history at Columbia and the author, most recently, of “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
December 31, 2012
The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln
By ERIC FONER
ONE hundred and fifty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln presided over the annual White House New Year’s reception. Late that afternoon, he retired to his study to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. When he took up his pen, his hand was shaking from exhaustion. Briefly, he paused — “I do not want it to appear as if I hesitated,” he remarked. Then Lincoln affixed a firm signature to the document.
Like all great historical transformations, emancipation was a process, not a single event. It arose from many causes and was the work of many individuals. It began at the outset of the Civil War, when slaves sought refuge behind Union lines. It did not end until December 1865, with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which irrevocably abolished slavery throughout the nation.
But the Emancipation Proclamation was the crucial turning point in this story. In a sense, it embodied a double emancipation: for the slaves, since it ensured that if the Union emerged victorious, slavery would perish, and for Lincoln himself, for whom it marked the abandonment of his previous assumptions about how to abolish slavery and the role blacks would play in post-emancipation American life.
There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Lincoln’s statement in 1864 that he had always believed slavery to be wrong. During the first two years of the Civil War, despite insisting that the conflict’s aim was preservation of the Union, he devoted considerable energy to a plan for ending slavery inherited from prewar years. Emancipation would be undertaken by state governments, with national financing. It would be gradual, owners would receive monetary compensation and emancipated slaves would be encouraged to find a homeland outside the United States — this last idea known as “colonization.”
Lincoln’s plan sought to win the cooperation of slave holders in ending slavery. As early as November 1861, he proposed it to political leaders in Delaware, one of the four border states (along with Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri) that remained in the Union. Delaware had only 1,800 slaves; the institution was peripheral to the state’s economy. But Lincoln found that even there, slave holders did not wish to surrender their human property. Nonetheless, for most of 1862, he avidly promoted his plan to the border states and any Confederates who might be interested.
Lincoln also took his proposal to black Americans. In August 1862, he met with a group of black leaders from Washington. He seemed to blame the presence of blacks in America for the conflict: “but for your race among us there could not be war.” He issued a powerful indictment of slavery — “the greatest wrong inflicted on any people” — but added that, because of racism, blacks would never achieve equality in America. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated,” he said. But most blacks refused to contemplate emigration from the land of their birth.
In the summer of 1862, a combination of events propelled Lincoln in a new direction. Slavery was disintegrating in parts of the South as thousands of slaves ran away to Union lines. With the war a stalemate, more Northerners found themselves agreeing with the abolitionists, who had insisted from the outset that slavery must become a target. Enthusiasm for enlistment was waning in the North. The Army had long refused to accept black volunteers, but the reservoir of black manpower could no longer be ignored. In response, Congress moved ahead of Lincoln, abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, authorizing the president to enroll blacks in the Army and freeing the slaves of pro-Confederate owners in areas under military control. Lincoln signed all these measures that summer.
The hallmark of Lincoln’s greatness was his combination of bedrock principle with open-mindedness and capacity for growth. That summer, with his preferred approach going nowhere, he moved in the direction of immediate emancipation. He first proposed this to his cabinet on July 22, but Secretary of State William H. Seward persuaded him to wait for a military victory, lest it seem an act of desperation.
Soon after the Union victory at Antietam in September, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a warning to the Confederacy that if it did not lay down its arms by Jan. 1, he would declare the slaves “forever free.”
Lincoln did not immediately abandon his earlier plan. His annual message to Congress, released on Dec. 1, 1862, devoted a long passage to gradual, compensated abolition and colonization. But in the same document, without mentioning the impending proclamation, he indicated that a new approach was imperative: “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present,” he wrote. “We must disenthrall our selves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln included himself in that “we.” On Jan. 1, he proclaimed the freedom of the vast majority of the nation’s slaves.
The Emancipation Proclamation is perhaps the most misunderstood of the documents that have shaped American history. Contrary to legend, Lincoln did not free the nearly four million slaves with a stroke of his pen. It had no bearing on slaves in the four border states, since they were not in rebellion. It also exempted certain parts of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. All told, it left perhaps 750,000 slaves in bondage. But the remaining 3.1 million, it declared, “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
The proclamation did not end slavery in the United States on the day it was issued. Indeed, it could not even be enforced in most of the areas where it applied, which were under Confederate control. But it ensured the eventual death of slavery — assuming the Union won the war. Were the Confederacy to emerge victorious, slavery, in one form or another, would undoubtedly have lasted a long time.
A military order, whose constitutional legitimacy rested on the president’s war powers, the proclamation often disappoints those who read it. It is dull and legalistic; it contains no soaring language enunciating the rights of man. Only at the last minute, at the urging of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, an abolitionist, did Lincoln add a conclusion declaring the proclamation an “act of justice.”
Nonetheless, the proclamation marked a dramatic transformation in the nature of the Civil War and in Lincoln’s own approach to the problem of slavery. No longer did he seek the consent of slave holders. The proclamation was immediate, not gradual, contained no mention of compensation for owners, and made no reference to colonization.
In it, Lincoln addressed blacks directly, not as property subject to the will of others but as men and women whose loyalty the Union must earn. For the first time, he welcomed black soldiers into the Union Army; over the next two years some 200,000 black men would serve in the Army and Navy, playing a critical role in achieving Union victory. And Lincoln urged freed slaves to go to work for “reasonable wages” — in the United States. He never again mentioned colonization in public.
Having made the decision, Lincoln did not look back. In 1864, with casualties mounting, there was talk of a compromise peace. Some urged Lincoln to rescind the proclamation, in which case, they believed, the South could be persuaded to return to the Union. Lincoln refused. Were he to do so, he told one visitor, “I should be damned in time and eternity.”
Wartime emancipation may have settled the fate of slavery, but it opened another vexing question: the role of former slaves in American life. Colonization had allowed its proponents to talk about abolition without having to confront this issue; after all, the black population would be gone. After Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln for the first time began to think seriously of the United States as a biracial society.
While not burdened with the visceral racism of many of his white contemporaries, Lincoln shared some of their prejudices. He had long seen blacks as an alien people who been unjustly uprooted from their homeland and were entitled to freedom, but were not an intrinsic part of American society. During his Senate campaign in Illinois, in 1858, he had insisted that blacks should enjoy the same natural rights as whites (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), but he opposed granting them legal equality or the right to vote.
By the end of his life, Lincoln’s outlook had changed dramatically. In his last public address, delivered in April 1865, he said that in reconstructing Louisiana, and by implication other Southern states, he would “prefer” that limited black suffrage be implemented. He singled out the “very intelligent” (educated free blacks) and “those who serve our cause as soldiers” as most worthy. Though hardly an unambiguous embrace of equality, this was the first time an American president had endorsed any political rights for blacks.
And then there was his magnificent second inaugural address of March 4, 1865, in which Lincoln ruminated on the deep meaning of the war. He now identified the institution of slavery — not the presence of blacks, as in 1862 — as its fundamental cause. The war, he said, might well be a divine punishment for the evil of slavery. And God might will it to continue until all the wealth the slaves had created had been destroyed, and “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword.” Lincoln was reminding Americans that violence did not begin with the firing on Fort Sumter, S.C., in April 1861. What he called “this terrible war” had been preceded by 250 years of the terrible violence of slavery.
In essence, Lincoln asked the nation to confront unblinkingly the legacy of slavery. What were the requirements of justice in the face of this reality? What would be necessary to enable former slaves and their descendants to enjoy fully the pursuit of happiness? Lincoln did not live to provide an answer. A century and a half later, we have yet to do so.
Eric Foner is a professor of history at Columbia and the author, most recently, of “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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