Barrio Defense: Beyond the Supreme Court - Organizing from Grass Roots

Barrio Defense: Beyond the Supreme Court:

Barrio Defense: Beyond the Supreme Court

By B. Loewe, YES! Magazine

30 June 12

hortly after the 2010 passage of SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration bill, 20,000 people gathered in Phoenix for a May Day march to protest the new law. Instead of ending with speakers or a formal program, as political marches often do, organizers broke the crowd into small groups and asked them two questions:

How will the new law impact you and your neighbors? What can you do about it?

And with that, a new phase of the migrant rights movement, based on an age-old model of community organizing, was born.

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide very soon whether to strike down SB 1070, but few observers expect that it will choose to do so based on the Department of Justice arguments. That’s one reason local capacity development methods, such as Barrio Defense Committees, are crucial, organizers say. “We went to Congress for reform and were treated like a political football,” says Carlos Garcia, an organizer with the grassroots group Puente Arizona. “We asked the president for relief and instead got record deportations. Now even the courts may give SB 1070 the green light. It's time we realize we have only each other and start organizing deeper in our own community."

In the weeks and months after those small group discussions, communities across Arizona formed Barrio Defense Committees, neighborhood-based groups focused on resolving local problems, building resilience in the face of attack, and building organic leadership for broader social movements.

The committees are based on neighbor-to-neighbor relations where people commit to support each other to mitigate the negative impacts of deportations. Families sign power of attorney so that someone is prepared to take care of kids, pay bills, and communicate with an employer in the case of being taken away and placed in detention. They develop neighbor watch efforts to watch for abusive police behavior, warn of check-points, and report abuse. Health projects, English classes, and supportive businesses weave together for self-sufficiency. In addition to survival aspects, committees grow to remedy local issues like landlords refusing to make repairs or discrimination within schools. These daily building blocks lay a foundation for dealing with big problems like the anti-immigrant laws.

“Coming Out Was Our Only Option.”

That 2010 march represented a fundamental change from the way advocacy groups had been approaching immigration reform: hammering out compromises in an effort to pass an omnibus piece of Congressional legislation. After that effort failed, many concluded that the compromise effort had conceded too much ground, ushering in new anti-immigrant measures, more border militarization, and a harder road to legalization.

Diana Perez Ramirez of Puente Arizona, explains, “SB1070 was a symbol of how far to the right the needle on immigration had moved. It was a wake up call that we needed to do something big to haul it back toward something sensible.”

Francisco Pacheco, an organizer for the National Day Laborer Organizing network and a former participant in Salvadoran social movements who migrated to the US after that country’s civil war, is a driving force behind the Barrio Defense model.  He explains, “The committees are built off the model of movements in Latin America where people come together to resolve their local problems and join peaceful resistance efforts. By focusing on local problems, local leadership is created. The protagonist shifts from an elected official to the mother or worker next door.”

Though under great duress—SB 1070’s authors called the law a declaration of a “war of attrition” on immigrants—migrant families in Phoenix and across the state refused to run. Instead, they responded to the new law with a groundswell of public participation in civic life and a celebration of the cultures the state was set on banning.

“For a long time we would only go take the kids to school, to work, and run errands,” said Leticia Ramirez, an undocumented mother of three. “Other than that we had become prisoners hidden in our own homes. But with the laws they were passing, even that wasn’t safe anymore. We realized the only safe community is an organized one. Coming out was our only option.”

The Power Within

Since 2010, the harsh model of SB 1070 has spread to other states—but so has the barrio defense method of responding to it. After Georgia passed HB87, a copycat of Arizona’s law, the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) responded with a series of actions to empower immigrant communities. The group partnered with day laborer networks for a “human rights summer” that included mass mobilization and the establishment of local comités populares of mutual support. They also organized businesses and institutions to publicly declare themselves “Sanctuary Zones” that would not allow law enforcement to enter to check migrants’ papers without a warrant.

How young immigrant activists are learning from the the civil rights campaigners who came before them.

In January of this year, committee members from ten Georgia towns gathered for a state-wide assembly. Together they decided that the pathway to immigration reform should be through challenging local officials who take advantage of its absence. Adelina Nicholls of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights explains that, “We don’t have to wait for Congress to stop police from mistreating our community and real reform is unlikely as long as we allow that mistreatment to continue.” In Fayetteville, outside of Atlanta, a hundred people marched to the police department to demand that daily checkpoints, erected under the guise of fighting crime and drugs but frequently used to check papers, be taken down.

As in Arizona, the committee model has turned people from a strategy of hiding in their homes to taking to the streets with clipboards and cameras to monitor and turn back abuses. The idea is to transition from challenging the powers that be, and instead cultivate the power within.

Because the process charges those affected by the laws with combating them, a new form of leadership tends to develop, says Pacheco. “Instead of asking people to attend a march, members of committees are asked to assess the moment, decide when a march is necessary, and plan accordingly. Through that process people’s political development is sharpened. They become more critical, more lucid. It makes strategists out of all of us.”

In the Puente office in Phoenix, where committees meet on a weekly basis, hangs a sign with a quote by the legendary organizer, Cesar Chavez: “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.”

---

B. Loewe wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. B. works with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network on a campaign to turn the tide on migration issues from hate to human rights; he has volunteered with Arizona efforts since 2009. Follow B. on twitter at @bstandsforb and find more information at ndlon.org.

Interested?

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  Despite the hype, states are finding lots of reasons not to follow in Arizona's footsteps.
• 10 Everyday Acts of Resistance That Changed the World
  Václav Havel called it “the power of the powerless.” How regular people, from Denmark to Liberia, have stood up to power—and won.

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Why Obamacare Is Worth Fighting For - Sandra Fluke

Why Obamacare Is Worth Fighting For:

Why Obamacare Is Worth Fighting For

By Sandra Fluke, Guardian UK

30 June 12

ow that the supreme court has declared, once and for all, the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, much of the debate has turned to the politics of the ruling and what it means for the coming election. It's events like Thursday's that shine a light on the stark contrasts between our two presidential candidates.

In the hours after yesterday's ruling, Governor Romney wasted no time reminding us that repealing Obamacare will be a top priority if he's elected, egged on by congressional Republicans who had already scheduled a vote to dismantle the law. Meanwhile, President Obama continued to focus on the real-world benefits this law will bring to millions of Americans.

I agree with the president that we cannot lose sight of the human impact this law will have on young women and men just graduating from college; on mothers, fathers, and children alike. And while the supreme court's decision was a decisive victory for the American people, it does also underscore just how much is at stake in this election.

Let's consider just what Romney and Republican lawmakers would be repealing. As the Affordable Care Act continues to take effect, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to engage in "gender rating" – the discriminatory practice of charging women higher premiums for the same coverage as men. This alone could put $1bn per year back in women's pocketbooks.

Insurance companies will be required to use your premium dollars for your healthcare. Nearly 13 million Americans can expect a rebate soon, because their insurance company spent too much on administrative costs last year.

Pregnant women will be guaranteed maternity coverage to ensure their health and to give their children a healthy start in life. Forty-five million women will have no co-pays for preventative care, such as pap smears, mammograms, birth control, STI testing, well-woman check-ups, and immunizations. Insurance companies will be banned from requiring women to get pre-authorization or referrals in order to access routine gynaecological care.

Americans earning low and modest incomes – between $14,404 to $43,320 for individuals, and between $29,326 to $88,200 for a family of four – will have the choice of getting a subsidy to help pay for insurance.

Governor Romney's objection to this law is hypocrisy at its worst – especially since he enacted a very similar health reform measure in Massachusetts. But for Romney, that's not really the point. For him, this is about politics. And that's where he and our president couldn't be farther apart.

In addressing our country following this historic ruling, President Obama reminded us that this law and his decision to fight to enact it was never about politics. Popular or not, it was about a belief that "here in America – in the wealthiest nation on Earth – no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin."

Here in America, in 2010 – the same year the law was enacted – 26,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 died prematurely because they didn't have health insurance. That's tens of thousands of American lives that might have been saved if a law like the Affordable Care Act had been in place earlier.

As President Obama has acknowledged, this law isn't perfect and we should work to improve it where needed. But repealing it would take our country, our economy, and the financial security of millions of Americans in a dangerous direction. It would quite literally put lives on the line.

That is why we must all fight, in the voting booth, to protect this law and protect each other's access to the quality, affordable healthcare we need and deserve.

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Rachel Maddow: Republicans see the enemy in their own candidate

Rachel Maddow: Republicans see the enemy in their own candidate:
(Post SCTUS )
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FOCUS: Scalia Attacks Obama on Deportation

FOCUS: Scalia Attacks Obama on Deportation:

Scalia Attacks Obama on Deportation

By Liz Goodwin, The Ticket/Y!News

26 June 12

n a stinging, 22-page dissent to Monday's decision striking down most of Arizona's tough anti-illegal immigration law, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized President Barack Obama's announcement earlier this month that he would stay the deportation of young illegal immigrants and suggested that the federal government does not want to enforce its immigration laws.

"The president said at a news conference that the new program is 'the right thing to do' in light of Congress's failure to pass the administra tion's proposed revision of the Immigration Act," Scalia, a Reagan appointee, wrote in his dissent. "Perhaps it is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforc ing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind."

Scalia went on to write:

Arizona bears the brunt of the country's illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem,and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so. Thousands of Arizona's estimated 400,000 illegal immigrants - including not just children but men and women under 30 - are now assured immunity from en forcement, and will be able to compete openly with Ari zona citizens for employment.

Scalia also repeatedly referenced Obama's policy of prosecutorial discretion, which directs Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to prioritize deporting the illegal immigrants who are frequent border crossers, have committed crimes, or recently entered the country illegally. The Obama administration has deported a record number of illegal immigrants, but its prosecutorial discretion policy still draws the ire of illegal immigration hawks.

Scalia directly referred to Obama's immigration enforcement policy as "lax" at one point.

"Must Arizona's ability to protect its borders yield to the reality that Congress has provided inadequate funding for federal enforcement - or, even worse, to the executive's unwise targeting of that funding?" Scalia asked. Later, he added: "What I do fear - and what Arizona and the States that support it fear - is that 'federal policies' of nonen forcement will leave the States helpless before those evil effects of illegal immigration."

The federal government "does not want to enforce the immigration laws as written, and leaves the States' borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws would exclude," Scalia alleged.

Arizona's entire immigration law should be upheld, Scalia wrote, because it is "entitled" to make its own immigration policy. At one point, he cites the fact that before the Civil War, Southern states could exclude free blacks from their borders to support the idea that states should be able to set their own immigration policies.

The majority of the justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled that most of Arizona's law is unconstitutional, save for the provision that allows police officers to ask about immigration status during stops.

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The Lawless Supreme Court Justice:

The Lawless Supreme Court Justice

By Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast

27 June 12

t has been widely assumed - including by yours truly - that calling Supreme Court justices "politicians in robes," as I did just last week counts as an insult. But as of Monday - almost surely before, but without any question as of Monday - Nino Scalia wants precisely to be thought of as a politician in a robe. No other reasonable conclusion can be drawn from his churlish and self-aggrandizing and probably unethical tirade against President Obama's recently announced immigration policy. And while the court majority's ruling (from which Scalia of course dissented) represents a pretty solid victory for the Justice Department, the narrow win for the state of Arizona on the controversial "where are your papers" part of the law makes it quite possible that these very issues will come to the court again, after Scalia has taken his political position. Just as Zola famously said "J'Accuse!," I hope the liberal legal groups are already practicing saying "Recuse!"

The ruling itself wasn't half bad, for this court; it was one of those cases where Justice Kennedy woke up mostly on the right (that is, left) side of the bed. Justice Kennedy challenged the four key elements of the law: the one mentioned above, which requires that police officers seek to ascertain the status of people stopped under suspicion of commission of other crimes, even misdemeanors, if there's a "reasonable suspicion" the person may be an alien; one that forbids the "willful" failure to carry documents; one that makes it a misdemeanor for an unauthorized alien to seek work; and one that allows police to arrest a person without a warrant if the officer believes the person has committed a crime that makes him liable to deportation.

The last three were tossed: superseded by federal law, said the majority. The first one, the most controversial, was upheld, but only because the provision isn't being enforced yet. The majority said that state courts will have to determine how the provision works in practice, and then we can see whether it works or doesn't. Until then, it doesn't conflict with federal law, but challenges to this provision can be brought after it goes into effect. They undoubtedly will, and one imagines it will circle back to the court eventually.

Scalia wrote the main dissent, which you can read at the above link. Why shouldn't Arizona enforce whatever immigration laws it wants, he asked, when the federal government won't enforce federal laws? This would be news to the roughly 1.2 million illegal aliens the Obama administration has deported, but that of course wasn't the number Scalia had in mind. He meant the group - he said it was up to 1.4 million, using a previously cited number much larger than the administration's 800,000 - that was the target of Obama's directive from two weeks ago. And so the dissent includes some fairly caustic language about that program.

It's one thing to throw that into a written dissent. It's another to stand up in public and say it, knowing as he must have how that was going to be taken. As a rule, Supreme Court justices don't comment much on current events (and if they do, they usually do so elliptically). As a rule, Supreme Court justices never comment on matters that they have reason to think might come before them.

But the rules aren't for Scalia. He refused to recuse himself back in 2004 in the case involving the secrecy of Dick Cheney's energy task force. He had, you'll recall, gone hunting with Cheney (emerging, as far as we know, unscarred). I'm not naive enough to think for a second that Scalia's personal loyalty to Cheney was purchased with a few rounds of duck ammo. After all, the case was the one in which Cheney asserted that he was in essence beyond the law's reach, which is fine with Scalia if you're a conservative, ducks or no ducks. And of course he and Clarence Thomas are somehow allowed to attend highly political gatherings put together by the Koch brothers too, without any consequences. Did they appear between 2008 and 2010, when the court was hearing Citizens United, a time period during which the Kochs had pretty clear interests before the court? We'll never know. At the time this was in the papers, in early 2011, the Koch organization and the Supreme Court simply refused to answer journalists' questions, and that was that.

And what if, someday, the Obama immigration directive comes before the court? Even conservative blogger Ed Morrissey flagged this as problematic. Some GOP members of Congress have threatened to sue the administration over this directive. If Obama is reelected, they almost surely will, and the case may well get to the Supremes. Imagine, Morrissey wrote, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg inserted support for Obama's directive into an opinion: "You can bet that conservatives would be screaming for a recusal if/when a challenge to it came before the Supreme Court, and we'd be right to do so."

Morrissey's hypothetical, while heuristically instructive, is irrelevant, because Ginsburg would not do such a thing. The Court's liberals are nicely old-fashioned that way. They believe in the small-r republican virtues (even, at times, when it's naive to do so). But for the conservatives, and for Scalia most of all, legal propriety is absurdly quaint. He doesn't answer to a nation. He answers to a cadre, a vanguard, of which he is a cherished member, which is about as likely to say no to him as the College of Cardinals is to the Pope, and to which all outside criticism is the chirping of crickets. The crickets will be chirping awfully loudly in the coming days, and I hope at least that this self-satisfied martinet gets an ear-splitting headache.

 
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The Progressive President Speaks: About Damn Time:

The Progressive President Speaks: About Damn Time

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

28 June 12

o hang your fortune on chance.

The president finally has found the six-word answer on why health-care reform - any health-care reform - couldn't wait until the second term, or on a jobs package, or on a Wall Street bailout, or something else that tickled Rahm Emanuel in his funny places. People were getting sick because they couldn't afford to stay well. People were dying because they couldn't afford to get well. This is a moral imperative with which every industrialized nation on the planet, except this one, had grappled successfully. And today, in reaction tothe Supreme Court's decision largely upholding his own admittedly flawed attempt to come to grips with it, the president was more eloquent, and more convincing, than he's been at any point during the prolonged - and occasionally ridiculous - fight over the law itself. He talked about all those American citizens who had to worry "not just about the cost of getting sick, but the cost of getting well." Those people, he said, shouldn't be forced to "hang their fortunes on chance."

Contrast that with the Romneybot 2.0, meeping away on a balcony in Washington, forgetting that the Supreme Court also handed Governor Romney a considerable vindication of the (immensely popular) program he put in place here in Massachusetts - the one in which he called the individual mandate "a personal responsibility issue" - and talking in bloodless banalities about what he would keep and what he would throw out, and tossing out all kinds of meretricious figures about what's going to happen, and never really coming to grips with the millions of people who, at the moment, at least, do not have to hang their fortunes on chance.

The popular opinion among the pundits is that the president should now walk softly on this issue, or that the issue will fade as the campaign rolls on. I think that would be as big a mistake as his pulling back in the face of the manufactured outrage of 2010 was. The president should talk about this every day. He should pin the Massachusetts program to Romney's forehead. He should force the issue out of economics and into an argument about the general welfare (And he should, for the love of god, stop talking about our need to pay down The Deficit.) He got a win today. So did the people who no longer have to hang their fortunes on chance. To hell with repeal-and-replace. The president should run on maintain-and-improve. His defenders back when the law passed kept saying that the ACA was worth passing because it was the first step toward the progressive goal of universal coverage. If he really meant what he said today, that should be the president's position now and forever. We'll see how many fortunes the system will force to hang there on chance.

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FOCUS: The American People Are Angry

FOCUS: The American People Are Angry: "

The American People Are Angry

By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News

28 June 12

he American people are angry. They are angry that they are being forced to live through the worst recession in our lifetimes -- with sky-high unemployment, with millions of people losing their homes and their life savings. They are angry that they will not have a decent retirement, that they can't afford to send their children to college, that they can't afford health insurance and that, in some cases, they can't even buy the food they need to adequately feed their families.

They are angry because they know that this recession was not caused by the middle class and working families of this country. It was not caused by the teachers, firefighters and police officers and their unions who are under attack all over the country. It was not caused by construction workers, factory workers, nurses or childcare workers.

This recession was caused by the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And, what makes people furious is that Wall Street still has not learned its lessons. Instead of investing in the job-creating productive economy providing affordable loans to small and medium-size businesses, the CEOs of the largest financial institutions in this country have created the largest gambling casino in the history of the world.

Four years ago, after spending billions of dollars to successfully fight for the deregulation of Wall Street, the CEOs of the big banks -- JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and the others -- went on a losing streak. The enormous bets they made on worthless, complex, and exotic financial instruments went bad, and they stuck the American people with the bill.

Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. But it was not just the $700 billion that Congress approved through the TARP program. As a result of an independent audit that I requested in the Dodd-Frank bill by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided a jaw-dropping $16 trillion in virtually zero-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, large corporations, foreign central banks throughout the world, and some of the wealthiest people in this country.

And, instead of using this money to provide affordable loans to small businesses, instead of putting this money back into the job-creating productive economy, what have they done? They have gone back to their days of running the largest gambling casino in the world. In other words, they have learned nothing.

The American people are angry because they see the great middle class of this country collapsing, poverty increasing and the gap between the very rich and everyone else grow wider. They are angry because they see this great country, which so many of our veterans fought for and died for, becoming an oligarchy -- a nation where our economic and political life are controlled by a handful of billionaire families.

In the United States today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income since the 1920s. Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of America -- 150 million people.

Today, the six heirs to the Walmart fortune own as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent.

Today, the top 1 percent own 40 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns 2 percent.

Incredibly, the bottom 40 percent of all Americans own just 0.3 percent of the wealth of the country.

According to a new study from the Federal Reserve, median net worth for middle class familiesdropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007 to 2010. That's the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle class family.

The distribution of income is even worse. If you can believe it, the last study on this subject showedthat in 2010, 93 percent of all new income created from the previous year went to the top one percent, while the bottom 99 percent of people had the privilege of enjoying the remaining 7 percent. In other words, the rich are getting much richer while almost everyone else is falling behind.

Not only is this inequality of wealth and income morally grotesque, it is bad economic policy. If working families are deeply in debt, and have little or no income to spend on goods and services, how can we expand the economy and create the millions of jobs we desperately need? There is a limit as to how many yachts, mansions, limos and fancy jewelry the super-rich can buy. We need to put income into the hands of working families.

A lot of my friends in the Senate talk a whole lot about our $15.8 trillion national debt and our $1.3 trillion deficit. In fact, deficit reduction is a very serious issue and will be one of the major issues of this campaign. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues forget to discuss how we got into this deficit situation in the first place, and how we went from a healthy surplus under President Clinton to record-breaking deficits under Bush.

When we talk about the national debt and the deficit, let us never forget that the current deficit was primarily caused by Bush's unpaid-for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine that! President Bush and his deficit hawks forgot to pay for two wars which will end up costing us trillions of dollars. It just plain slipped their minds. On top of that, for the first time in American history Bush and his Republican friends decided, during a war, to give out huge tax breaks -- including massive benefits for millionaires and billionaires. Even more importantly, the deficit is the result of a major decline in federal tax revenue because of the high unemployment and business losses that we are experiencing as a result of this recession -- caused by the greed and recklessness of Wall Street. Revenue as a percentage of GDP, at 15.2 percent, is the lowest in more than 60 years.

Despite the causes of the deficit, our Republican (and some Democratic) friends have decided that the best way forward toward deficit reduction is to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, food stamps and virtually every other programs of importance to low and moderate income families. We must not allow that to happen.

If we are serious about dealing with the deficit and creating jobs in America, the wealthy are going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes. We also have to end the massive tax loopholes and subsidies that exist for major corporations. (In that regard, Rep. Keith Ellison from Minnesota and I recently introduced legislation that would end all tax breaks and subsidies for the fossil fuel industry). At a time when the United States now spends more money on defense than the rest of the world combined, we also have to cut back on military spending.

Yes, we should deal with the deficit. But not on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor!

Most importantly, when we talk about what's happening in America, we have to address the unemployment crisis in this country which now finds 23 million Americans without jobs or who are under-employed. And we know how to do that.

We know that the fastest way to create decent-paying jobs is rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail, airports, water systems, wastewater plants, deteriorating schools, etc.) We also know that we can create a great deal of employment by transforming our energy system away from foreign oil and coal and into energy efficiency and such sustainable energies as wind, solar, geo-thermal, bio-mass and other clean technologies. We also know that, as our country fights fierce global competition, it is absurd to be laying-off educators and making college unaffordable.

While we continue to do everything we can during the next six months to defeat Republican right-wing extremism, it is also important that we never lose sight of the progressive vision that we are fighting for. If we don't know where we want to go, it will be impossible to get there. Some of the issues that I intend to raise are the following:

Not only must we resist cuts in Social Security, we must lift the cap on taxing higher incomes so that Social Security will be strong for the next 75 years.

Not only must we oppose cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, we must see health care as a right of all and continue the fight for a Medicare for All Single Payer health care system.

Not only must we oppose placing the burden of deficit reduction on the backs of working families, we must demand a progressive tax system in which the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

Not only must we oppose cuts in unemployment compensation, we must fight for a jobs program that creates the many millions of jobs our country desperately needs.

Not only must we fight to end disastrous unfettered free trade agreements with China, Mexico, and other low wage countries, we must fight to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements so that American products, not jobs, are our number one export.

And, not only must we vigorously oppose the war against women, we must fight to end all forms of discrimination and prejudice in this country.

The struggle we are engaged in right now is of pivotal importance for this country. Whether we win or lose will determine the future of America. That struggle is not just for our lives but, more importantly, it is for our children and our grandchildren.

Despair is not an option. I know people get angry, I know they get frustrated, I know they get disgusted. But we don't have the right to give up and turn our backs on our children and grandchildren.

Our job is to simply bring to fruition what the overwhelming majority of the American people want. They want an economy that works for the middle class and working families and not just for the rich. They want everybody in this country to have health care as a right. They want to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They want to move away from these gross inequalities in income and wealth. We have the people behind us. They have the money. And at the end of the day, the people will be stronger than the money.

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Rachel Maddow: Romneys energy advisor takes advantage of Citizens United

Rachel Maddow: Romneys energy advisor takes advantage of Citizens United:

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FOCUS | Pelosi: I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove

FOCUS | Pelosi: I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove:

Pelosi: I Could Have Arrested Karl Rove

By Jennifer Bendery, Common Dreams

21 June 12

ouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is playing politics with its vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, an action she said that even she didn't seek as House Speaker when she thought someone was legitimately deserving of it.

"I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day," Pelosi said to laughter, during a sit-down with reporters. "I'm not kidding. There's a prison here in the Capitol ... If we had spotted him in the Capitol, we could have arrested him."

Rove was senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2007.

Asked on what grounds she could have arrested Rove, Pelosi replied, "Oh, any number. But there were some specific ones for his being in contempt of Congress. But we didn't."

The House committee on Wednesday voted to hold the U.S. attorney general in contempt of Congress for not handing over certain documents sought by the committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). The contempt vote comes after months of complaining by Issa that Holder is refusing to comply with subpoenas for materials relating to the Justice Department's botched Operation Fast and Furious. Holder, who has already given the committee 7,600 documents, maintains he can only provide so many materials without breaching confidentiality rules.

Pelosi sounded off on the ordeal ahead of the committee vote.

"This is just strictly political," she said. "It's just the irresponsibility of the Republicans. We want jobs. Why are they spending this time doing this?"

The Democratic leader also took a shot at Issa for abusing the process of holding an official in contempt.

"'Loose cannon' would sort of be like such a compliment to Darrell Issa. 'Loose cannon' would be a moderate phrase. This is an explosive device," she said. "It doesn't serve our country, and it undermines the true purpose of contempt of Congress."

"That's why I didn't arrest Karl Rove when I had the chance."

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FOCUS: Bill Moyers | The Vast, Corrupting Power of Money in Politics

FOCUS: Bill Moyers | The Vast, Corrupting Power of Money in Politics:

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Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal:

Actor, filmmaker and environmental advocate Robert Redford, 06/15/09. (photo: Contour/Getty Images)

Stop Public Handouts to Oil, Gas and Coal

Robert Redford, Reader Supported News

18 June 12

very year, around the world, almost one trillion dollars of subsidies is handed out to help the fossil fuel industry. Who came up with the crazy idea that the fossil fuel industry deserves our hard-earned money, no less in economic times of such harsh human consequence? We fire teachers, police and firemen in drastic budget cuts and yet, the fossil fuel industry can laugh all the way to the bank on our dime? Something doesn't add up here.

We should not be subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Fossil fuels are literally cooking our planet, polluting our air and draining our wallets. Why should we continue to reward companies to do that?

As they go after more expensive and harder to access fossil fuels, it is like drilling a hole in our pocketbooks. We pay more at the pump. We pay in taxpayer subsidies to a highly profitable industry. And we pay in the rising costs of climate change in the form of floods, storms and droughts that hurt our homes and communities.

Our world leaders are gathering in Rio over the coming days for a historic meeting twenty years after the first Earth Summit. We are looking to our governments to show leadership and commit to real timetables and actions for fighting climate change, including ending fossil fuel subsidies. Sure, they've made commitments to stop these unnecessary payouts. But commitments need to become action to have any meaning. And despite strong words, we are not yet seeing action on the ground.

In the United States, President Obama has repeatedly proposed cutting $4 billion in annual federal subsidies to the oil and gas industry and several bills to cut fossil fuel subsidies are stalled in Congress.

Think about what else we could do with one trillion dollars. We could create clean energy jobs, limit greenhouse gas emissions that create climate change and help make a healthier and more secure life for our children. Instead, we give 12 times as much in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry as we give to clean energy industries like wind and solar.

If you have a dollar to invest - investing that dollar in clean energy creates three times the jobs of the same dollar invested in the fossil fuel industry. In fact, studies show that fossil fuel subsidies slow economic growth. Clean energy is a great example of building a green economy. Ending fossil fuel subsidies is good for our pocketbooks, economic growth and for our health and environment.

In poll after poll after poll, the public says they want more renewable energy and less fossil fuels.

So why aren't our world leaders doing more to deliver what the public wants instead of what oil, gas and coal companies want? We need to hold our leaders accountable for the choices they make on our behalf.

People around the world are waking up to the absurdity of subsidizing Big Oil and Coal. Over a million people have already signed onto a petition to end fossil fuel subsidies. And on June 18, people from all over the world will be sending world leaders message on Twitter and Facebook to #endfossilfuelsubsidies.

Just last March, President Obama said,

Instead of taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's never been more profitable, we should be using that money to double-down on investments in clean energy technologies that have never been more promising.

These proposals have so far failed in the face of strong industry opposition and the fossil fuel industry is equally obstructive elsewhere in the world.

In a time of economic hardship, progressing climate change and a growing demand for reliable and clean sources of energy, using taxpayer money to help oil, gas and mining companies represent a reckless and irrational use of taxpayer money and government investment. We can do better. We need the fossil fuel industry to stop asking us to pay the price for their greed. We need our world leaders to turn their words into actions. And we can start by reminding them to #endfossilfuelsubsidies.

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Murdoch 'Pushed Blair Into Iraq':

Murdoch 'Pushed Blair Into Iraq'

By Nicholas Watt, Guardian UK

17 June 12

Murdoch joined an 'over-crude' attempt by US Republicans to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war, Campbell says.

upert Murdoch joined in an "over-crude" attempt by US Republicans to force Tony Blair to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war a week before a crucial House of Commons vote in 2003, according to the final volumes of Alastair Campbell's government diaries.

In another blow to the media mogul, who told the Leveson inquiry that he had never tried to influence any prime minister, Campbell's diary says Murdoch warned Blair in a phone call of the dangers of a delay in Iraq. The disclosure by Campbell, whose diaries are serialised in the Guardian, will pile the pressure on Murdoch in light of his evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

The Cabinet Office released information on Friday that raised doubts about Murdoch's claim that Gordon Brown pledged to "declare war" on News Corporation after the Sun abandoned its support for Labour in September 2009. It supported Brown's claim that he never made such a threat by saying that the only phone call between the two men during the period took place on 10 November 2009 and focused on Afghanistan.

Murdoch tweeted in response: "I stand by every word is aid [sic] at Leveson." But there will be fresh questions about one of Murdoch's most memorable declarations from his appearance before the inquiry in April. The founder of News Corporation said: "I've never asked a prime minister for anything."

Campbell wrote that on 11 March 2003, a week before the Commons vote in which MPs voted to deploy British troops to Iraq, Murdoch intervened to try to persuade Blair to move more quickly towards war. "[Tony Blair] took a call from Murdoch who was pressing on timings, saying how News International would support us, etc," Campbell wrote. "Both TB and I felt it was prompted by Washington, and another example of their over-crude diplomacy. Murdoch was pushing all the Republican buttons, how the longer we waited the harder it got." The following day, 12 March, he wrote: "TB felt the Murdoch call was odd, not very clever."

Campbell's description of Murdoch's intervention is one of a series of disclosures in his diaries, The Burden of Power, Countdown to Iraq, which are serialised in the Guardian on Saturday and Monday. The diaries show:

Blair believed that the Prince of Wales had been "captured by a few very rightwing people", according to Campbell, after the Daily Mail published leaked letters from the prince about a US-style compensation culture in 2002. Blair "liked, rated and respected" the Queen but thought her heir tried to have a "dig" at the Labour government in a speech during her golden jubilee in 2002. 

Gordon Brown agitated so aggressively against Tony Blair - demanding a departure date soon after the 9/11 attacks - that Downing Street concluded in 2002 that the then chancellor was "hell-bent on TB's destruction".

The diaries will raise questions about Brown's claim at Leveson that he and his staff never briefed against Blair. Campbell provides specific examples of when Brown and his chief aide, Ed Balls, were suspected of doing just that. In one example, the former health secretary Alan Milburn told Blair that Brown encouraged MPs to defy a government three-line whip to vote against foundation hospitals in 2003.

Blair was "thwarted" from joining the euro by Brown and Balls in 2003. On 11 June 2003, two days after Brown concluded that Britain had not yet met his five tests on euro membership, Campbell wrote: "Things just hadn't worked on the euro and TB was pretty fed up...The judgment was settling that GB had basically thwarted him. TB feared we were making the wrong decision for the wrong reasons."

Campbell said he had mixed views about Brown. He told the Guardian: "I do have very conflicted views about Gordon. On the one hand he could be extraordinarily difficult to deal with. But on the other hand he could be absolutely brilliant. Often we were sitting there longing for the brilliant to be in charge and for the impossible to fade away and it never quite happened. During this period it is the first time that Tony does at least articulate the possibility of actually sacking him. And at various points [he] says I am going to do it. Of course he never did. I completely understand why he decided to stick with Gordon because, as Tony keeps saying throughout the diaries: 'Look, when it comes to ability, he and I are head and shoulders above the rest.' That may sound a bit arrogant but most people will accept that."

Campbell's disclosure of Murdoch's intervention on the eve of the Iraq war is the second substantive example to raise questions over the News Corp chairman's claim that he never tried to influence any prime minister. John Major told Leveson on Tuesday that Murdoch told him in February 1997, three months before the general election, that he would withdraw support for the Tories unless the then prime minister changed his policies on Europe.

Major told the inquiry: "If we couldn't change our European policies, his papers could not and would not support the Conservative government."

Campbell told the Guardian that Murdoch's intervention on Iraq was a "very rightwing voice" that came "out of the blue" adding: "On one level [Murdoch] was trying to be supportive, saying I know this is a very difficult place, my papers are going to support you on this. Fine.

"But I think Tony did feel that there was something a bit crude about it. It was another very rightwing voice saying to him: look isn't it about time you got on with this? I think, as I recall Tony saying, he didn't think it was terribly clever."

Campbell also mentioned the Murdoch phone calls in a second witness statement to the Leveson inquiry last month. News Corp believes there was nothing improper about the phone call, one of three, because the support of the Sun and News of the World for the war was well known.

Lord Justice Leveson, whose lead counsel, Robert Jay, asked Murdoch about the calls, also indicated that it was "reasonable" for him to have views on such international matters.

Leveson told Murdoch: "You've mentioned that you talked about Afghanistan, and it would be perfectly reasonable for you to have a view on that. Lots of people will. And your view may be informed by your worldwide contacts through the businesses that you operate. That's merely your view."

Murdoch addressed the phone calls in his witness statement to the Leveson inquiry. He said: "As for the three telephone calls with the then prime minister, Tony Blair, in 2003, I cannot recall what I discussed with him now, nine years later, or indeed even if I spoke with him at all. I understand that published reports indicate that calls were placed by him to me. What I am sure about is that I would not in any telephone call have conveyed a secret message of support for the war; the NI titles' position on Iraq was a matter of public record before 11 March 2003."

He then cited four articles from the Sun and the News of the World which illustrated their "pro-war stance" before 11 March 2003 when the main phone call took place.

In his testimony to the inquiry said he did not remember the calls but added that the Sun's support for the Iraq war was well known. "I don't remember the calls. The [call on] 11th might even have been calling me for my birthday, but no, our position on the war had been declared very strongly in all our newspapers and the Sun well before that date."

The company said tonight: "It is complete rubbish to suggest that Rupert Murdoch lobbied Mr Blair over the Iraq war on behalf of the US Republicans. Furthermore, there isn't even any evidence in Alastair Campbell's diaries to support such a ridiculous claim."

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Rachel Maddow: McConnell says billionaire donors should remain anonymous

Rachel Maddow: McConnell says billionaire donors should remain anonymous:
Ed show
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