Conservative Republicans Are The Shame of The Nation: House 'Violence Against Women Act' Bill Ratchets Up Attacks on Domestic Violence Survivors

Conservative Republicans Are The Shame of The Nation: House 'Violence Against Women Act' Bill Ratchets Up Attacks on Domestic Violence Survivors

Women have been under economic assault in Washington for months. Deficit hawks have taken aim at social programs and civil rights protections that help keep women safe, healthy and able to participate in work and community life. To some lawmakers, none of that is more important than “saving” taxpayer dollars—which is often shorthand for robbing working women of both their earnings and their safety net.

The hostility toward women crested this week as conservative lawmakers pushed legislation that would gut the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). House Bill 4970 isn't just oppressive to survivors; it attacks the civil and social rights of all women. By raising barriers to economic assistance and legal recourse, the legislation sends the message to countless women living in violent households that their place is still in the home.

Even with protective laws on the books, a woman struggling to support a family and avoid foreclosure faces a devastating choice when the alternative to an abusive home is homelessness. The decision to break away is even harder when local service programs and battered women’s shelters are themselves struggling for survival amid budget cuts.

Adding insult to injury, many states have failed to protect survivors’ access to unemployment insurance, which aggravates the economic instability that often keeps vulnerable women tied to abusive partners.

"The brutalization of women doesn’t go on just behind closed doors. On the House floor, the nation’s shame is now on full display."

The House version of VAWA would deal a blow to immigrants trapped in abusive relationships, making it harder to petition for legal status as abuse victims, and easier for abusers to terrorize partners who fear immigration authorities. Lisalyn Jacobs of the advocacy group Legal Momentum told In These Times that “immigrant women are particularly economically vulnerable and may either be relying on their abusive partner's income, or in a marginal position themselves that prevents them from being economically stable enough to leave their violent partners.” The bill also erodes mandates for public housing authorities to develop policies to help abused residents relocate to safer places.

The legislation also excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people from key protections—an exclusion compounded by poverty, homelessness and employment discrimination afflicting many LGBTQ populations. Similarly, the bill would undermine anti-domestic violence protections in Native American communities, where both poverty and gender-related violence are rampant.

The House bill comes at a time when the country’s economic crisis has taken an especially cruel toll on abuse victims. Although economic troubles don’t directly cause domestic violence, combined with anger and self-blame, can unemployment, poverty and other social stressors can definitely excerbate family conflicts and make escape prohibitively expensive.

The economics of intimate partner violence shape the impacts of abuse as well. According to a 2007 analysis by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

        The cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $5.8 billion each year, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
        Victims of intimate partner violence lost almost 8 million days of paid work because of the violence perpetrated against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends and dates. This loss is the equivalent of more than 32,000 full-time jobs and almost 5.6 million days of household productivity as a result of violence.
        There are 16,800 homicides and $2.2 million (medically treated) injuries due to intimate partner violence annually, which costs $37 billion.

A 2009 study published by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence noted that compared with other women, "women who report [domestic violence] victimization also report more days arriving late to work, more absenteeism from work, more psychological and physical health problems that may reduce their productivity, and greater difficulty maintaining employment over time.” In the perverse cycle of economic oppression and violence, some abusers capitalize on women's financial dependency by harassing their partners to interfere with their jobs, or simply stealing money from them.

Efforts to claw back protections for survivors are the tip of a widening spectrum of policies promoting gender inequality, including welfare regulations that punish single mothers, budgetary attacks on reproductive health care for the working poor, and now, abandonment of the state’s basic responsibility to protect women from physical and economic abuse.

Advocates have supported the Senate version of the VAWA bill, which contains the progressive provisions absent in the House legislation. But overall, funding for related programs and services has been precarious year to year. Jacobs said, “neither bill contains the strong response to the economic needs of survivors of violence that would be appropriate given the fragile state of the economy.”

The brutalization of women doesn’t go on just behind closed doors. On the House floor, the nation’s shame is now on full display.

How can this be, conservatives claim they have not declared war on women. Would the party of "values" be once again lying to the public. Could the party of values once again be acting like some authoritarian thugs who do not have the capacity for empathy that normal human being and good Americans should have.

Scott Brown(R-MA) Scared Of Elizabeth Warren 

Why Have Conservative Republicans Declared War on Women - America’s Women Can’t Be Trusted

Mitt Romney Debt Speech Ignores Key Facts - His plan, the conservative Republican plan would increase the deficit by $5 trillion over ten years.

Why Did Scott Brown(R) Vote Against Children and Pander to Polluters

Why Did Scott Brown(R) Vote Against Children and Pander to Polluters

Why Does Scott Brown (R) Hate American Values and Common Decency

Why Does Scott Brown (R-MA) Hate American Values and Common Decency

WASHINGTON — Continuing his quest to hide his record from Bay Staters, Sen. Scott Brown used a recent Watertown appearance to lie to constituents about supporting tax loopholes for oil companies and powerful corporations.

At a September 28 event at the Watertown Chamber of Commerce, Sen. Scott Brown responded to a question from a concerned constituent by making a series of false statements and misleading claims to perpetuate the myth that he is fighting for working Massachusetts families.

“Despite his campaign promise to be a ‘Scott Brown Republican’ and put Massachusetts ahead of party politics, Scott Brown has time and time again shown he’s more interested in toeing the Republican Party line,” said Rodell Mollineau, president of American Bridge 21st Century.

“By jumping at the chance to defend oil companies at the expense of middle class families and willfully deceiving constituents, Scott Brown has once again revealed that a ‘Scott Brown Republican’ is just like every other Republican — except they lie about it afterwards,” Mollineau added.

BACKGROUND:
At Chamber of Commerce Event, Sen. Scott Brown Misled Constituent On Support For Tax Loopholes

QUESTIONER: “I want to know how you can support cutting Medicare and Social Security and you keep voting to protect tax breaks for billionaire and oil companies, there’s so many subsidies out there, they don’t provide anything to us- they do profit and they profit and they don’t help our local communities like our community banks do.”

SEN. SCOTT BROWN: “With regards to closing loopholes, listen the only loophole that’s been put up before us is the ethanol subsidy and I voted to close that because it’s used its useful life. Are there others that are out there yes, we’ve talked about it but none of them have been proposed at this point . . . it’s difficult to get into hypotheticals about some of the things you’re talking about because they haven’t been brought forward yet. So we’ll chip away at it and we’ll do our very best.”
But Brown Has Routinely Opposed Eliminating Tax Loopholes For Oil Companies & Wall Street

Brown Opposed Closing Tax Loopholes for Oil Companies. In response to a question from MoveOn.org organizer Nina Allen, who pressed Brown to support closing tax loopholes, “Brown said he had voted to close some loopholes, such as a tax subsidy for ethanol. But he said he was not inclined to support any more taxes.” “We’re in a 2 ½- to 3-year recession right now, and raising taxes is an absolute job killer,” Brown said. [Boston Globe, 8/8/11]

Brown Voted to Kill Bill to End Tax Breaks For Large Oil Companies. Brown voted against invoking cloture on a motion to proceed to legislation that would repeal tax breaks for the largest oil companies. The legislation would eliminate five different tax breaks, saving $21 billion over 10 years. The New York Times reported, “The Senate on Tuesday blocked a Democratic proposal to strip the five leading oil companies of tax breaks that backers of the measure said were unfairly padding industry profits while consumers were struggling with high gas prices.” [Vote #72,5/17/11; New York Times, 5/17/11]

Brown Wrote to Senate Finance Committee to Preserve Venture Capital Fund Managers’ Tax Break. In May 2010, Brown wrote to the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee “asking to have the tax break preserved for venture capital fund managers who ‘contribute to the viability of our start-up community.’” The tax break Brown referred to allowed venture capitalists and other financial managers to pay the lower 15 percent capital gains tax rate on the money they earn from successful investments, as opposed to the up to 35 percent tax rate wage earners pay. Eliminating the tax break would have yielded “$24 billion in taxes over the next 10 years” according to the administration. [Boston Globe, 12/29/10]

Brown Voted Against Amendment to Eliminate Oil and Gas Company Tax Loopholes. Brown voted against a Sanders Amendment to the tax extenders bill. Tulsa World reported, “The Senate rejected an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act (H.R. 4213) that would have eliminated tax credits for oil and natural gas production and would have used the proceeds to reduce the deficit and fund programs to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. The vote Tuesday was 35 yeas to 61 nays.” [Vote #187, 6/15/10; Tulsa World, 6/20/10]

Brown Voted Against Closing Corporate Tax Loopholes. Brown voted against the Senate conference committee report on legislation that would close several corporate tax loopholes. The Boston Globe wrote, “The corporate tax bill… would close several so-called loopholes that companies have used to lower their payments to the state. The biggest money-raiser is a provision known as combined reporting, which is designed to prevent companies from shifting profits to other states with lower tax rates. The measure would require companies to combine income from all their operations, then apportion a profit for tax purposes based on the amount of business activity they have in Massachusetts.” [H4904, Vote 261,7/1/08; Boston Globe, 7/1/08]

pay no attention to brown's record of voting like a little puppet for special interests who pull Brown's strings. pay attention to all the noise about Elizabeth Warren and whether she is part Native America ( which no one has proved she is not). Let's all vote to return the corrupt, lying, sleazy Scott Brown to the Senate because that is what conservatives want. The more lying two faced morons like Brown we have in the Senate the easier it is for conservatives to make America into Pottersville. Brown and conservative are counting on voters to act like small minded morons and focus on things that do not matter.

This Week's Biggest Conservative Enemy of the Working Poor and Middle-Class - Paul Ryan (R-WI)

This Week's Biggest Conservative Enemy of the Working Poor and Middle-Class - Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Our new report shows that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s tax plan would provide $265,000-a-year tax cuts to the nation’s highest-income households.  Here’s an excerpt:

Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale.  New analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC) finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts. . . .

Millionaires Would Receive More Than One-Third of New Ryan Tax Cuts

Underscoring how tilted the proposal is toward the top, the TPC figures show that people making more than $1 million a year would receive 37 percent of the new Ryan tax cuts even though they constitute less than one-half of one percent of U.S. households (see graph).

Let's say you are a janitor, a teacher's aid, a sales clerk, a seasonal farm worker or a taxi driver - someone who works hard and lives a very modest lifestyle. For some reason, Ryan like most conservatives has nothing but contempt for the fact that you do work for every penny. Like most conservatives Ryan thinks the people made rich via your labor and your purchases of their products deserve even more money that didn't earn. Ryan believes in redistributing money upwards to the lazy plutocratic elite. You know the people that if they all got up and left the country tomorrow we wouldn't miss them. 

Welcome to Conservative America Where Wealth is Rewarded and Work is Punished

Welcome to Conservative America Where Wealth is Rewarded and Work is Punished

The Wall Street Journal noted this week that CEO pay lagged behind profits and productivity last year, mirroring a trend that has been occurring with workers’ wages for decades. But even that slight modicum of moderation regarding executive compensation evidently didn’t extend to Bank of America, which gave CEO Brian Moynihan a $7.5 million pay package — six times as much as he made in 2010 — following a year in which the company’s stock plummeted:

    Bank of America gave its CEO a pay package worth $7.5 million last year, six times as large as the year before. It happened while the company’s stock lost more than half its value and the bank lost its claim as the biggest in the country.

    The package for CEO Brian Moynihan included a salary of $950,000, a $6.1 million stock award and about $420,000 worth of use of company aircraft and tax and financial advice.

For those keeping score, Bank of America’s stock dropped 58 percent in 2011 and the bank surrendered its title as the nation’s largest to JP Morgan Chase. A good chunk of the stock award was actually given to Moynihan for the bank’s 2010 performance, when it lost money.

In addition to seeing its stock tank, Bank of America has also been, according to a whistleblower suit, intentionally blocking troubled homeowners from receiving mortgage aid. The whistleblower alleges that BofA misled borrowers about their eligibility for federal mortgage aid programs and that “the bank and its agents routinely pretended to have lost homeowners’ documents.” (But remember, Bank of America will modify your mortgage as long as you erase all the mean things you’ve been saying about it on Twitter.)

BofA has also been tied up in the foreclosure fraud scandal, and just a few months ago paid $335 million to settle charges that its subsidiary discriminated against minorities in its lending. If this is how much Moynihan gets after that sort of year, what will he receive if the bank actually has a good one?

While financial reform passed by Democrats and President Obama does not micro-manage businesses to the point where reform can limit CEO pay, it does address regulation of some of Wall Street's worse abuses like defrauding regular working Americans. This would be the financial reform that conservatives have pulled every obstructionist trick to stop from being implemented. Why? Because they see CEOs like Brian Moynihan as their base of support. Conservatives figure if they protect the financial elite the financial elite will look out for them.

CEOs like Moynihan are the people that Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) considers his best friends.

Conservative Puppet of the Week Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) - Has Strings Pulled by Anti-American Publisher Rupert Murdoch

Conservative Puppet of the Week Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) - Has Strings Pulled by Anti-American Publisher Rupert Murdoch

News Corp. subsidiary Fox News -- which actively aided the Massachusetts Republican during his 2010 campaign -- is playing host to Brown as he promotes his new book, published by News Corp. subsidiary HarperCollins.

Brown appeared on Fox's Hannity last night and Fox & Friends this morning to discuss the book, which Fox's Brian Kilmeade said "is going to be rockin' up the charts."

The Associated Press noted that "highlights" of Brown's book tour include "the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., and The Villages retirement community in Florida, where Sarah Palin promoted 'Going Rogue.'" Palin's Going Rogue was also published by News Corp. subsidiary HarperCollins.

According to the FEC, Brown's campaign committee proposed to "use the book to influence Senator Brown's election, such as by distributing books as 'thank you' gifts to campaign contributors and political supporters."

On February 17, the FEC issued an advisory opinion that concluded Brown's campaign committee's proposal to "use campaign funds to purchase copies of the book from the book's publisher at the fair market price, and to have the publisher donate to charity Senator Brown's royalties from sales of the book to the Committee, is permissible." However, the FEC "could not approve a response on whether Senator Brown may host fundraising events in cities where the publisher pays his travel costs to promote the book."

As Media Matters documented in 2010, Fox News repeatedly hosted Brown in the days leading up to his 2010 special election, and Fox News political analyst Dick Morris urged viewers to "go to DickMorris.com ... to help elect Brown," because if "we win this fight, then there will never be another victory for Obama."

Fox also repeatedly misrepresented remarks made by Brown's Democratic opponent -- Martha Coakley -- to portray her as incompetent.

Shortly after Brown won the 2010 special election, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich acknowledged that Fox News helped make Brown's "insurgency possible."

Ever hear Sen brown offer up any real solutions for real problems. No, and that is because Brown basically recycles all the worthless sound bites of conservative great thinkers like George Bush. Brown thinks America has a debt problem when we have the lowest revenue in decades. We're over regulated, brown repeats like a little puppet, just like every conservative robot. Except we have much the same regulation we had during the Clinton boom years. Brown wants smaller government? That sound bite is meaningless code speak from conservatives. What they mean is they want government to let corporate crooks and polluters to get away with anything they want. That worked out real well on Wall Street, right?


20 Experts Who Say Drilling Won't Lower Gas Prices

Wingnut Conspiracy Theory of the Day: Trayvon Photo Was Lightened to Make Him Look ‘Innocent’

Hold The Broccoli: What Limbaugh And Fox Get Wrong About The Constitution And The Affordable Care Act

Anti-American Conservative Group Crossroads GPS  Launches $650,000 False Ad Campaign On Gas Prices

This is What Conservatives Think Capitalism is: The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of 99% of American Workers

This is What Conservatives Think Capitalism is: The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of 99% of American Workers

As Occupy Wall Street protestors continue to demonstrate across the country, congress’ fiscal super committee failed to craft a deficit reduction package due to Republican refusal to consider tax increases on the super wealthy. In fact, the only package that the GOP officially submitted to the committee included lowering the top tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, even as new research shows that the optimal top tax rate is closer to 70 percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

    The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

“The super committee failed to grapple with the extraordinarily costly Bush tax cuts for the richest—tax policies that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, cost more in added federal debt than they add in additional economic activity,” explained Jo Comerford, NPP’s Executive Director. Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, added in a statement yesterday, “the high-end Bush tax cuts are a big part of the problem – not the solution…It’s obscene to keep slashing infrastructure and services for everybody on Main Street to keep up tax giveaways for millionaires and multinational corporations.”

The Bush tax cuts have done nothing but blow up the federal debt and hand billions in tax breaks to the Americans who needed them least.

Conservatives want America to believe the top 1% work the hardest so they should reap obscene levels of reward. It that out real world experience. In the real world those who make millions a year work the least. They are not scientists or even brain surgeons or great teachers. So we're not paying them for their "intellectual" contributions. Every one of these millionaires got their money riding on the backs of people who provide the work and services that millionaires takes gigantic profits from.Let's have a day without labor. America would soon shut down. We need a fair and just capitalism not crony conservative capitalism.

Wall Street Banks Earned Billions In Profits Off $7.7 Trillion In Secret Fed Loans

There was originally a post here about PERF - a police related organization. I have been unable to confirm some of the assertions in the story-link that was in the post, thus the deletion. Facts matter. The photo above speaks for itself - some police are acting more like thugs than law enforcement officials. That is simply a fact, not a general comment on law enforcement- an honorable profession.

Wall Street Banks Earned Billions In Profits Off $7.7 Trillion In Secret Fed Loans

In the lead-up to the financial crisis (2006-2008) that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in undisclosed loans to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Six of the country’s largest banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.

The total cost of the Fed loans amounted to $7.77 trillion, and unlike the funds made available by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the loans came with virtually no strings attached for the banks...

Democracy and Freedom Get a Boot in The Face - Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

Democracy and Freedom Get a Boot in The Face - Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

They came from all over, tens of thousands of demonstrators from around the world, protesting the economic and moral pitfalls of globalization. Our mission as members of the Seattle Police Department? To safeguard people and property—in that order. Things went well the first day. We were praised for our friendliness and restraint—though some politicians were apoplectic at our refusal to make mass arrests for the actions of a few.

Then came day two. Early in the morning, large contingents of demonstrators began to converge at a key downtown intersection. They sat down and refused to budge. Their numbers grew. A labor march would soon add additional thousands to the mix.

“We have to clear the intersection,” said the field commander. “We have to clear the intersection,” the operations commander agreed, from his bunker in the Public Safety Building. Standing alone on the edge of the crowd, I, the chief of police, said to myself, “We have to clear the intersection.”

Why?

Because of all the what-ifs. What if a fire breaks out in the Sheraton across the street? What if a woman goes into labor on the seventeenth floor of the hotel? What if a heart patient goes into cardiac arrest in the high-rise on the corner? What if there’s a stabbing, a shooting, a serious-injury traffic accident? How would an aid car, fire engine or police cruiser get through that sea of people? The cop in me supported the decision to clear the intersection. But the chief in me should have vetoed it. And he certainly should have forbidden the indiscriminate use of tear gas to accomplish it, no matter how many warnings we barked through the bullhorn.

My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose. Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went flying. Windows were smashed, stores were looted, fires lighted; and more gas filled the streets, with some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict. The “Battle in Seattle,” as the WTO protests and their aftermath came to be known, was a huge setback—for the protesters, my cops, the community.

More than a decade later, the police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland—where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police projectile—brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law enforcement. Seattle might have served as a cautionary tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly militarized, and it’s showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD “white shirt” coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for “trespassing.”

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.
Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of “discipline,” too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.

External political factors are also to blame, such as the continuing madness of the drug war. Last year police arrested 1.6 million nonviolent drug offenders. In New York City alone almost 50,000 people (overwhelmingly black, Latino or poor) were busted for possession of small amounts of marijuana—some of it, we have recently learned, planted by narcotics officers. The counterproductive response to 9/11, in which the federal government began providing military equipment and training even to some of the smallest rural departments, has fueled the militarization of police forces. Everyday policing is characterized by a SWAT mentality, every other 911 call a military mission. What emerges is a picture of a vital public-safety institution perpetually at war with its own people. The tragic results—raids gone bad, wrong houses hit, innocent people and family pets shot and killed by police—are chronicled in Radley Balko’s excellent 2006 report Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America.

It is ironic that those police officers who are busting up the Occupy protesters are themselves victims of the same social ills the demonstrators are combating: corporate greed; the slackening of essential regulatory systems; and the abject failure of all three branches of government to safeguard civil liberties and to protect, if not provide, basic human needs like health, housing, education and more. With cities and states struggling to balance the budget while continuing to deliver public safety, many cops are finding themselves out of work. And, as many Occupy protesters have pointed out, even as police officers help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police officers are part of the 99 percent.

There will always be situations—an armed and barricaded suspect, a man with a knife to his wife’s throat, a school-shooting rampage—that require disciplined, military-like operations. But most of what police are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires patience, diplomacy and interpersonal skills. I’m convinced it is possible to create a smart organizational alternative to the paramilitary bureaucracy that is American policing. But that will not happen unless, even as we cull “bad apples” from our police forces, we recognize that the barrel itself is rotten.

Assuming the necessity of radical structural reform, how do we proceed? By building a progressive police organization, created by rank-and-file officers, “civilian” employees and community representatives. Such an effort would include plans to flatten hierarchies; create a true citizen review board with investigative and subpoena powers; and ensure community participation in all operations, including policy-making, program development, priority-setting and crisis management. In short, cops and citizens would forge an authentic partnership in policing the city. And because partners do not act unilaterally, they would be compelled to keep each other informed, and to build trust and mutual respect—qualities sorely missing from the current equation.

It will not be easy. In fact, failure is assured if we lack the political will to win the support of police chiefs and their elected bosses, if we are unable to influence or neutralize police unions, if we don’t have the courage to move beyond the endless justifications for maintaining the status quo. But imagine the community and its cops united in the effort to responsibly “police” the Occupy movement. Picture thousands of people gathered to press grievances against their government and the corporations, under the watchful, sympathetic protection of their partners in blue.

It might be in the best interests of OWS to move on to periodic protests, virtual protests on the net, but that does not make what police across the nation - and the mayors who directed them, right in taking a military response to citizens exercising their 1st Amendment rights.

Recall of right-wing nut-job Scott Walker recall, Day 1, by the numbers

Wisconsin residents can get a recall petition here. Be cautious of signing the fake recall petitions passed around by anti-American conservatives.

Scott Olsen, marine wounded by Oakland police at OWS protest, is in ‘critical condition’

Scott Olsen, marine wounded by Oakland police at OWS protest, is in ‘critical condition’

In a video published early Thursday morning, ex-Marine Scott Olsen, the 24-year-old who suffered a fractured skull in Oakland on Tuesday night and is currently in “critical condition,” is seen standing peacefully in front of a police barricade next to a uniformed sailor just moments before officers deployed chemical agents to disperse the crowd.

While the video does not show what hit Olsen, it suggests that he was shot in the head by a tear gas canister at near point-blank range.  Olsen did not appear to be provoking officers, who’d repeatedly announced their intent to disperse what they’d declared an “unlawful assembly.” Others speculated that he was hit by a beanbag round fired from a shotgun.

Either way, the aftermath of the blow he sustained was severe. Photos of the scene are grisly and not for the squeamish.

He’s now sedated and suffering from brain swelling. Doctors say Olsen is in “critical condition” and could die of his injury.

The incident has sparked a wave of outrage among 99 Percent protesters, and even among other Marines, and on Wednesday night Current TV news host Keith Olbermann called for Oakland’s mayor to fire the police chief or resign. Vigils in solidarity with Oakland were held in numerous cities last night, with another wave planned in even more cities for later tonight.

Protesters were marching in response to a police action early Tuesday morning to clear out a camp demonstrators had been occupying for weeks, in solidarity with the protest that’s occupied a park near Wall Street for more than a month. Police claimed that some people threw paint and bottles at them, so they spent most of the night trying to disperse them at multiple spots around downtown. More than 100 people were arrested in the melee.

An update on Olsen’s condition is expected later this morning.

Video at the link. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan should fire the city’s acting police chief after officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse “Occupy Oakland” protesters. This is America not Egypt or Libya.

Five Reasons Patriots Should Move Their Money From Bank Of America

Five Reasons Patriots Should Move Their Money From Bank Of America

As hundreds of people remain encamped on Wall Street in New York City, and thousands of people across the country are taking part in a 99 Percent Movement aimed at battling economic inequality spurred on by enormous income gains by the richest one percent of Americans.

One of the financial institutions being targeted by protesters is foreclosure mill and government bailout recipient Bank of America (BOA). In Boston, thousands of people marched against BOA’s greed and in Los Angeles, numerous people were arrested while staging a sit-in at a local branch.

While many Americans may feel powerless against this banking behemoth, the truth is that Americans have a simple way to protest its greed and corporate malfeasance: simply move your money out of the bank to one of its competitors, such as a local credit union. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) recently encouraged Americans to do just that.

ThinkProgress has assembled five reasons why American consumers could consider moving their money and striking a blow to this abusive banking giant:

    1. Bank of America Just Unveiled A Shocking New Debit Card Fee: Late last month, BOA announced that it would start charging a $5-a-month fee simply for consumers to use their debit cards for purchases. Although a few of its competitors have started using similar fees in recent times, BOA’s presence as America’s largest banking chain means that if it successfully enacts such a fee, it may be able to set a trend in the industry to make such charges the norm. More than 137,000 Americans have signed an online change.org petition protesting the fee. Most credit unions do not charge for using one’s debit card, and one credit unions, Delta Credit Union based in Atlanta, is even holding a “Switch Day” to encourage BOA’s customers to switch over to its services instead.

    2. Bank of America Has Spent Millions Lobbying To Gut Reforms With Your Tax Dollars: Despite being bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars by the federal government, Bank of America has still had the gumption to spend millions of dollars in Washington battling new reforms meant re-regulate the financial sector. It spent nearly $4 million hiring a double-digit number of lobbyists in 2010, mostly aimed at gutting legislation related to banking regulations. Meanwhile, it spent a million dollars on campaign contributions in the 2010 electoral cycle.

    3. Bank of America’s Practices Are At The Nexus Of The Foreclosure Crisis: Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan raised eyebrows recently when he excitedly cheered for faster foreclosures of Americans’ homes. Despite being found to be a major user of error-ridden “robo-signing” foreclosure practices last year, the mega-bank only briefly halted its foreclosure proceedings nationwide. It is also facing lawsuits by multiple states over its mortgage practices.

    4. Bank of America Just Announced That It Was Laying Off 30,000 People: The “firm’s 30,000 job cuts are more than double what any other U.S.-based employer has announced so far this year, according to a employment tracking group.” The layoffs come after a decision by Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Citigroup earlier this year to “outsource IT and back office projects worth nearly $5 billion this year to India, as they seek to lower costs.”

    5. Despite The Poor Economy, Bank Of America Continues To Reward Its Executives With Multi-Million Dollar Salaries: Despite blaming economic woes for layoffs of employees and its new debit card fee, the mega-bank continues to deliver huge paydays to its executives. The bank just announced that two of its former executives, Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price, will receive a salary of $850,000 and a payment of $5.15 million and a salary of $850,000 and a payment of $4.15 million respectively. Meanwhile, BOA maintained its CEO’s salary of $950,000 plus $9.05 million in performance-based stock awards this year.

Americans do not have to stand by and allow a mega-bank to continue to rip off its consumers, to develop and foster abusive mortgage practices, reward its executives lavishly, and shortchange own workforce. They can strike a blow against this institution by simply moving their money away from it, either to its major competitors or into the country’s large network of community banks and credit unions.

In order to facilitate this process, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) — shortly after meeting with Occupy Raleigh protesters in Bank of America’s hub city — has introduced the “Freedom and Mobility in Consumer Banking Act,” which would ensure that Americans “have the right to immediately close any account at any insured depository institutions on demand, without cost to the consumer, that consumers receive any balance in their account immediately, and for other purposes.” The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has launched a petition drive in support of Miller’s bill.

Americans who are afraid of the too big to fail merry-go-round should put their money into community banks and credit unions. It is one way not to have too big to fail financial institutions and another great recession in ten or twenty years..

Republicans Panic, Desperately Seeking Dirt on Massachusetts Next Senator Elizabeth Warren

Republicans Panic, Desperately Seeking Dirt on Massachusetts Next Senator Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren's surprise lead in Massachusetts polls only days after she got into the Senate race to oust Republican Scott Brown has thrown GOP operatives off balance.

Their first storyline was that Warren was either a creature of the Beltway or a pointy-headed Harvard professor. Neither seems to be sticking.

On Tuesday, when the Democratic-affiliated polling firm, Public Policy Polling, reported Warren narrowly leading Brown, 46 to 44 among likely voters, Brown spokesman Colin Reed put out a statement contending that "we have always known that Scott would be the underdog against whichever candidate wins the Democratic primary next September."

But this past summer, before Warren enjoyed decent name recognition, Republicans were touting early polls showing Brown leading Warren 53-28, and declaring him a winner.

Now Republicans are putting out the word that there was something duplicitous or corrupt about Warren's leadership of the Congressional Oversight Panel that monitored the Treasury's Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

Politico ran a piece this morning headlined, "Warren's TARP Panel under Scrutiny." It quotes a Republican congressman alleging that the panel failed to disclose its own budget, including Warren's own salary; and the authors of the piece rely on undisclosed sources to contend that Warren was cavalier in what she paid her staff.

According to Politico's story,

    "For an entity whose purpose was to disclose where government funds went through the bailout, it is very disturbing that they [the oversight panel] did not disclose how they spent the money..." said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a member of the Financial Services Committee who pressed Warren on this issue repeatedly. "It showed more incompetence than anything else. But it raises concerns about how she led that government agency, especially one in terms of getting [the public] disclosure on TARP."

But in fact, the panel's budget and expenditures were disclosed to Congress in several reports that are public record, and its staff salaries were capped at the level of congressional staff. Its total outlays in its more-than-two-year life, as Politico reports, were a paltry $10.5 million. All of the records of the panel, which went out of existence earlier this year, are now on file with the Senate Rules Committee and available for public inspection.

Back before Warren was a political candidate, and she was critical of a TARP bailout program that was extremely unpopular among both Republicans and liberal Democrats, leading GOP figures lavished praise on her. Spencer Bacchus of Alabama, the arch conservative who now chairs the House Financial Services Committee, told Warren when she testified in July of 2009, "This is a panel [COP] that actually is going to end up making the taxpayer some money. Often the consumer, the taxpayer, is not at the table, and I think they were through this panel."

If a sifting of the entrails of Warren's widely acclaimed service as head of the Oversight Panel is the best that Republican spin-meisters can come up with to raise questions about her integrity or competence, they will have pretty slender pickings.

Conservatives have a few problems with Warren. Instead of getting up everyday of her life and finding ways to make government not work for the people ( the mission of conservatism) she tries to make government a force for good. Warren cannot be bought, unlike your average conservative who is a puppet with strings pulled by special interests. Warren acknowledges that we're all in this together, workers and employers, b oth sides deserve credit. Where as conservatives think corporate CEOs are like holy members of some religious order who should never be questioned.

Conservatives Destroying Democracy One Step At a Time - How The Right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council is Gutting Democracy

Conservatives Destroying Democracy One Step At a Time - How The Right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council is Gutting Democracy

In the world according to ALEC (the extreme facist lite American Legislative Exchange Council), competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

This view of the world dominated the legislative sessions that began in January. GOP leaders, fresh from their blowout victory in November, pushed a consistent message—“We’re broke”; “Public sector workers are to blame”; “If we tax the rich we’ll face economic extinction”—and deployed legislative tools inspired by ALEC to enact their vision. They faced pushback, but they also made great progress—and will be back again soon.

Let’s examine what happened in three critical economic areas:

Revenue

ALEC has long sought to limit the ability of states to raise or collect taxes or fees. Before this spring, it had already succeeded in getting more than thirty to adopt such limits, often hard-wired into their constitutions or requiring supermajorities to change. Its varied model legislation to this end includes the Capital Gains Tax Elimination Act, Use Tax Elimination Act, Super Majority Act, Taxpayer Protection Act and Automatic Income Tax Rate Adjustment Act. Its model resolutions oppose such things as mandatory unitary combined reporting (the chief way states get corporations to pay any taxes at all) while supporting such things as the federal flat tax and efforts to extend the Bush tax cuts permanently. The Automatic Income Tax Rate Adjustment Act, for example, “provides for a biennial reduction in the state adjusted gross income tax rate on residents, nonresidents, and corporations if year-over-year revenue…exceeds certain amounts,” in effect ensuring no increase in state revenue, even during periods of growth, while keeping tax cuts on the table. The Taxpayer Protection Act “prohibits the revenue department of a state from basing any employee’s compensation, promotion or evaluation on collections or assessments,” otherwise known as doing their job.

This past session, ALEC members, drawing heavily from the list above, introduced 500 bills to “starve the beast.” But their greatest victory was the most obvious one. Faced with shortfalls in state revenues from the economic crisis, states almost universally and overwhelmingly chose cuts to public employment or services over progressive tax increases as a solution.

Privatization

Privatization is so central to ALEC’s agenda that it has built a fake board game, Publicopoly, on its website, where the curious can find model legislation and other resources on privatizing basically everything, from transportation (Competitive Contracting of the Department of Motor Vehicles Act) to the environment (Environmental Services Public-Private Partnership Act). Critical to ALEC’s agenda are the foundational bills that set up the rationale for privatizing government services: the Public-Private Fair Competition Act creates a committee to review “whether state agencies unfairly compete with the private sector,” and the Competitive Contracting of Public Services Act requires “make or buy” decisions to encourage privatization. The hallmark of ALEC’s model privatization legislation, the Council on Efficient Government Act, creates “a council on efficient government to leverage resources and contract with private sector vendors if those vendors can more effectively and efficiently provide goods and services and reduce the cost of government.” These councils typically include representatives from the private sector, who then decide to let their business colleagues bid for public sector work.

In the past few years, with at least three additions this session alone, legislation establishing a state Council on Efficient Government has been introduced in Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Illinois and South Carolina. In each case, the concepts in the bill mirror the ALEC proposal. In some cases—South Carolina, Arizona and Illinois—the state bills read as copies of ALEC’s model legislation. Virginia’s, Oregon’s, Maryland’s and Kansas’ bills, to varying degrees, contain language directly from ALEC’s model.

Unions

The fiercest attacks this session were reserved for public sector unions, especially in the once labor-friendly Midwest states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that went deep red in November. ALEC has a sweeping range of model antiunion laws, the broad aim of which is to make it harder to be a union and easier for workers not to pay the costs of collective bargaining or union political activity. The Right to Work Act eliminates employee obligation to pay the costs of collective bargaining; the Public Employee Freedom Act bars almost any action to induce it; the Public Employer Payroll Deduction Act bars automatic dues collection; the Voluntary Contribution Act bars the use of dues for political activity.

This spring, GOP governors or legislatures introduced at least 500 of these and other ALEC-inspired antilabor laws, including laws to restrict the scope of collective bargaining; to limit or eliminate “project labor agreements” and state “prevailing wage” requirements; and to pre-empt local living wage or other labor standards. Just keeping track of all the antiunion legislation was often daunting. In Michigan, the AFL-CIO was dealing with more than fifty laws aimed at its demise.

In some states, the results have been lethal. In Wisconsin, the first state to legalize public sector union bargaining, public sector unions (excluding police and firefighters) were reduced to near irrelevance. The law limits collective bargaining to wages only (no bargaining over benefits, safety or work conditions) and forbids those to be increased faster than inflation. To continue to exist, unions must annually win recertification elections with more than 50 percent of the vote of all workers in their bargaining unit—a threshold requirement that is unheard of. Ohio also passed a law limiting public sector bargaining rights (including for police and firefighters) and permitting members to opt out of paying dues.

There were limits to this stampede. “Paycheck protection,” introduced in fifteen states, passed only in Alabama and Arizona. “Right to work,” introduced in eighteen states, hasn’t advanced significantly anywhere. (Tennessee reaffirmed a pre-existing right to work, and in New Hampshire the governor’s veto is holding it back.) But damage has been done. It may be that unions and other progressive organizations, moved by the carnage, will work together and with the public to build a mass movement to reverse it. Certainly, many people are trying to do that now. Whatever their success, we can be sure that ALEC will fight them fiercely in the states, while pressing forward with its own project: the complete business domination of American public life.

There are several articles in the ALEC series. One of them is ALEC Exposed: Rigging Elections. It is not that raises or lowering taxes is always wrong. It is not that privatizing some service usually dome by public employees is always right or always wrong. ALEC believes in absolutes. Such as all services should be privatized and taxes should never be raised no matter the economic circumstances. They are one size fits all ideologues. One of the greatest Founders warned us of people like ALEC. Thomas Jefferson knew that corporations (ALEC is just a mouth piece for coporate interests) would, if left to their own devices put profits ahead of democracy,

Jefferson might not have wanted a lot of government, but he wanted enough government to assert the sovereignty of citizens over corporations. To his view, nothing was more important to the health of the republic.

In the early years of the 19th century, as banks and corporations began to flex their political muscles, he announced that: “I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."