Stars, Stripes & Hypocrites, Democracy Disappears in Front of Us + Florida Really Sucks

NYTimes Editorial May 30, 2006:

"

In a country that spends so much time extolling the glories of democracy, it's amazing how many elected officials go out of their way to discourage voting. States are adopting rules that make it hard, and financially perilous, for nonpartisan groups to register new voters. They have adopted new rules for maintaining voter rolls that are likely to throw off many eligible voters, and they are imposing unnecessarily tough ID requirements.

Florida recently reached a new low when it actually bullied the League of Women Voters into stopping its voter registration efforts in the state. The Legislature did this by adopting a law that seems intended to scare away anyone who wants to run a voter registration drive. Since registration drives are particularly important for bringing poor people, minority groups and less educated voters into the process, the law appears to be designed to keep such people from voting.

It imposes fines of $250 for every voter registration form that a group files more than 10 days after it is collected, and $5,000 for every form that is not submitted -- even if it is because of events beyond anyone's control, like a hurricane. The Florida League of Women Voters, which is suing to block the new rules, has decided it cannot afford to keep registering new voters in the state as it has done for 67 years. If a volunteer lost just 16 forms in a flood, or handed in a stack of forms a day late, the group's entire annual budget could be put at risk.

In Washington, a new law prevents people from voting if the secretary of state fails to match the information on their registration form with government databases. There are many reasons that names, Social Security numbers and other data may not match, including typing mistakes. The state is supposed to contact people whose data does not match, but the process is too tilted against voters.

Congress is considering a terrible voter ID requirement as part of the immigration reform bill. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, introduced an amendment to require all voters to present a federally mandated photo ID. Even people who have been voting for years would need to get a new ID to vote in 2008. Millions of people without drivers' licenses, including many elderly people and city residents, might fail to do so, and be ineligible to vote. The amendment has been blocked so far, but voting-rights advocates worry that it could reappear.

These three techniques -- discouraging registration drives, purging eligible voters and imposing unreasonable ID requirements -- keep showing up. Colorado recently imposed criminal penalties on volunteers who slip up in registration drives. Georgia, one of several states to adopt harsh new voter ID laws, had its law struck down by a federal court.

Protecting the integrity of voting is important, but many of these rules seem motivated by a partisan desire to suppress the vote, and particular kinds of voters, rather than to make sure that those who are entitled to vote -- and only those who are entitled -- do so. The right to vote is fundamental, and Congress and state legislatures should not pass laws that put an unnecessary burden on it. If they do, courts should strike them down.

"

Keep an eye on your state, local and congressional legislators and tell them NO! Notice how prevalent the South shows up in this centuries-old same-old-goal with slightly new language to describe it. They only want people who agree with them, who look like them, who believe like them to have the right to vote.

There's no dearth of irony in the imperial halls of DC while congress asserts its superior privileges for fourth amendment (and all the Bill of) Rights while gleefully, thoroughly abdicating them for average citizens joined in complete acquiescense and abandon by the executive branch and vice versa.

Use it or lose it, America. And WAKE UP!!!!

Original online piece here.

Maureen Dowd on the Marine Slaughters in Haditha

Dowd: Don't Become Them

Haditha Killings
by Maureen Dowd

When I started in newspapers, I shied away from police brutality stories, letting other reporters cover them.

I knew there were cops who had no right to be cops. But I also knew, because my dad was a detective, the sort of blistering pressure men and women in uniform were under as they made snap life-and-death decisions. I'd cringed at the 60's refrain that the military and the police were "pigs."

After my dad killed a robber in self-defense -- the man had tried to shoot him point-blank in the face, but that chamber of the gun was empty -- he told a police psychologist that he could not swallow or eat because he felt as though he had fish bones in his throat.

So I felt sickened to hear about the marines who allegedly snapped in Haditha, Iraq, and wantonly killed two dozen civilians -- including two families full of women and children, among them a 3-year-old girl. Nine-year-old Eman Waleed told Time that she'd watched the marines go in to execute her father as he read the Koran, and then shoot her grandfather and grandmother, still in their nightclothes. Other members of her family, including her mother, were shot dead; she said that she and her younger brother had been wounded but survived because they were shielded by adults who died.

It's a My Lai acid flashback. The force that sacked Saddam to stop him from killing innocents is now accused of killing innocents. Under pressure from the president to restore law, but making little progress, marines from Camp Pendleton, many deployed in Iraq for the third time, reportedly resorted to lawlessness themselves.

The investigation indicates that members of the Third Battalion, First Marines, lost it after one of their men was killed by a roadside bomb, going on a vengeful killing spree over about five hours, shooting five men who had been riding in a taxi and mowing down the residents of two nearby houses.

They blew off the Geneva Conventions, following the lead of the president's lawyer.

It was inevitable. Marines are trained to take the hill and destroy the enemy. It is not their forte to be policemen while battling a ghostly foe, suicide bombers, ever more ingenious explosive devices, insurgents embedded among civilians, and rifle blasts fired from behind closed doors and minarets. They don't know who the enemy is. Is it a pregnant woman? A child? An Iraqi policeman? They don't know how to win, or what a win would entail.

Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, who has flown to Iraq to talk to his troops about "core values" in the wake of Haditha and a second incident being investigated, noted that the effect of this combat "can be numbing."

A new A&E documentary chronicles the searing story of the marines of Lima Company, 184 Ohio reservists who won 59 Purple Hearts, 23 posthumously. Sgt. Guy Zierk recounts kicking in a door after an insurgent attack. Enraged over the death of his pals, he says he nearly killed two women and a 16-year-old boy. "I am so close, so close to shooting, but I don't." he says. "It would make me no better than the people we're trying to fight."

Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste, one of those who called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, told Chris Matthews that blame for Haditha and Abu Ghraib lay with "the incredible strain bad decisions and bad judgment is putting on our incredible military."

While it was nice to hear President Bush admit he had made mistakes, he was talking mostly about mistakes of tone. Saying he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" would have been O.K. if he had acted on it, rather than letting Osama go at Tora Bora and diverting the Army to Iraq. At his news conference with a tired-looking Tony Blair, Mr. Bush seemed chastened by Iraq, at least. But he continued to have the same hallucination about how to get out: turning things over to the Iraqi security forces after achieving total victory over insurgents and terrorists.

Stories in The Times this week show that Iraqi security forces are so infiltrated by Shiite militias, Sunni militias, death squads and officers with ties to insurgents that the idea of entrusting anything to them is ludicrous.

By ignoring predictions of an insurgency and refusing to do homework before charging into Iraq on trumped-up pretenses, W. left our troops undermanned, inadequately armored and psychologically unprepared.

It was maddening to see the prime minister of Britain -- of all places -- express surprise at the difficulty of imposing a democracy on a country that has had a complex and ferocious tribal culture since the Gardens of Babylon were still hanging.

From the NYT.

Support Your Local Political (& Global) Dixie Chicks

Natalie Maines is from Lubbock, Texas (birthplace of that rock-n-roll genius, Buddy Holly) and it is pretty much the same neck of the woods in West Texas as Midland, TX (the adopted oil-field home of Shrub, aka G.W. Bush), although the region around Lubbock used to be more of a farming/ ranching/ chemical industrial community plus Texas Tech University (and a couple of small religious colleges).

Lubbock is also one of the many places where right-wing christian fanatics continue to thrive, where teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rates have soared and where one of its former high school students was the subject of a recent, excellent PBS P.O.V. documentary entitled The Education of Shelby Knox.

I spent part of my own youth very nearby, made many excursions into Lubbock as it was the closest 'city' with first-run films, bookstores, shopping malls, restaurants and like Midland-Odessa, had an airport which could be used to visit other parts of the country as often as possible. As rightwing as it was then, it has become exponentially more so: more intolerant, hypocritical, anti-intellectual and much like Kansas (and all the other red state voters) -- voting the interests of the wealthy and corporate elite in lieu of their own economic and educational interests because they'd just about rather kill the queers, the feminists, Hillary Clinton and the abortion doctors than do anything else (except maybe re-enslave Blacks and Mexicans, although they use different pejorative terms than those) while forcing everyone to attend their right-wing, mostly Baptist and evangelical churches, worship their version of God and their interpretations of the Bible, while making sure libraries carry only approved-by-them christian missives.

While on the other side of the state from Houston, people in West Texas definitely cheer and revere other people like the notoriously arrogant, unrepentant, corrupt Ken Lay (who "loves the Lord" and until the Enron scandal was a 'best friend' of Bush, Rove, Cheney et al and contributed millions, raised millions for, and helped get Shrub elected) -- again to their own detriment as well as others.

Time's Dixie Chicks story here; Shelby Knox PBS trailer here and the film's NY production site here. You can read about what folks in Lubbock think about Natalie and the Dixie Chicks here, here (use bugmenot.com for sign-ins and password info otherwise you can register at LubbockOnline.com for free).

Lubbock, Love It or Leave It

Dust bowl, Bible belt,

Got more churches than trees

Raise me, praise me, couldn't save me

Couldn't keep me on my knees

Oh Boy

Rave on down loop 289

That'll be the day you see me back

In this fool's paradise


Temptation's strong

(Salvation's gone)

I'm on my way

To hell's half acre

How will I ever

How will I ever

Get to heaven now


Throwin' stones from the top of your rock

Thinkin' no one can see

The secrets you hide behind

Your southern hospitality

On the strip, the kids get lit

So they can have a real good time

Come Sunday they can just take their pick

From the crucifix skyline


Temptation's strong

(Salvation's gone)

I'm on my way

To hell's half acre

How will I ever

How will I ever

Get to heaven now


International airport

A quarter after nine

Paris Texas, Athens Georgia

Not what I had in mind

As I'm gettin' out I laugh to myself

'Cause this is the only place

Where as you're gettin' on the plane

You see Buddy Holly's face


I hear they hate me now

Just like they hated you

Maybe when I'm dead and gone

I'm gonna get a statue too.


Temptation's strong

(Salvation's gone)

I'm on my way

To hell's half acre

How will I ever

How will I ever


Get to heaven now


Words and music by Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines and Mike Campbell. (c) Woolly Puddin' Music (BMI) - Wild Gator Music (ASCAP)

NYPD Detective Fred the Cat Sleuth Update

We covered Fred when he first leapt onto the scene earlier this year and are happy to see an update on this courageous (and totally cute and adorable) kitty.







Hat Tip to Gothamist:

Detective Fred the Cat Goes to School
On this despicably dreary day, Gothamist is happy to discuss matters involving cats with badges. Yes, we're talking about Fred the cat, aka Detective Fred who helped the Brooklyn DA's office crack down on a phony vet. By helped, we mean looked totally cute! Fred's owner, ADA Carol Moran says that Fred is working on his getting his papers to be a "therapy animal". He'll go to schools to "show cats are nice, trusting, kind animals, and that we as people have an obligation to be responsible and caring." And there is even talk of him doing commercials!

Politicians Meeting Their End: art and hope spring eternal!

Somewhere Far Beyond Dante's Inferno. That's my hope for the upcoming political corruption trials, sentences and election results (primaries, run-offs, general in November 06 and beyond). And thus I offer one appealing version of just-desserts expressed visually by artist Julian Beever of the UK:


This guy's pavement art is the more informed genre in his body of work -- the concept of "Politicians Meeting Their End" (not necessarily the execution/content) is what's most attractive to me in the photo of the image as seen above -- although, is that Shrub below former P.M. John Major?

However, there are other pavement images by JB that are actually quite beautiful and IMHO do qualify as both technically proficient and artistically impressive. Hat tip to David Pogue.

Let's fervently hope Trompe L´oeil in politics is soon defeated (as if!) and that triomphe de l'esprit and the (informed) will of the people prevail.

Meanwhile, check out his stunning pavement version of this U.S. icon of yore:



And finally, having recently seen Helen Mirren's appealing interpretation and humanizing rendering of Elizabeth I on film, this is my hands-down (pavement-down?) fave of his body of work that I've seen thus far.


Reminds me of the dedication, determination and delicate sensibilities of the mandala sand paintings by Tibetan Monks that I so love and admire. Enjoy.

Things that make the USA a second-rate third world nation

Another well-documented example of the USA being arrogant, ignorant, just another blustery blowhard of hypocrisy when it comes to "Motherhood and apple pie" in the department of Reality Meets Hype.

In an era when the mythology of motherhood is slowly yielding to the realities, it seems only appropriate to disabuse ourselves of some of the myths surrounding our government's treatment of mothers.

Perhaps the most obvious yardstick of governmental respect for mothers is maternity leave policy. Of 168 countries on which I collected data -- for Harvard University's Project on Global Working Families and at McGill University -- 164 have found a way to guarantee paid maternity leave. The only ones that haven't are Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, Lesotho and the United States. In most high-income countries, moms can receive help from dads who have paid parental leave. Indeed, in 27 countries fathers have a right to at least three months of paid leave at the birth of a child. Not in America.

Breast-feeding is crucial because it lowers infant morbidity and mortality three- to five-fold. But in America, there is no guarantee that mothers will be able to safeguard their infants in this way. While 76 countries ensure that mothers can take time from work to breast-feed their infants, America does not.

When children get sick, parents in 37 countries are guaranteed at least a minimum amount of paid leave to care for them. This is affordable because children get out of the hospital faster and recover from both chronic and acute illnesses more rapidly when parents are involved in their care. But the United States does not provide leave to parents of sick children or guarantee paid sick leave to any Americans for their own health problems -- despite the fact that personal sick leave is a basic right of citizens in more than 150 countries around the world.

While a low-income mother in the United States is twice as likely as a middle-class one to have a child with asthma or another chronic condition and twice as likely to be providing 30 hours or more of care a month for an elderly or sick parent, she is less likely to have the work flexibility she needs to provide that care. Half of middle-class Americans can rely on getting a job with sick leave; three quarters of low-income Americans cannot.

The conventional wisdom that the United States cannot afford to adopt more progressive and humane policies toward its own mothers and remain competitive in the global economy is upheld by certain myths.

Let's dispel at least three of them:

Myth 1: The United States can't compete while offering policies that would markedly improve the lives of most American parents and children. The World Economic Forum rated the four most competitive nations as Finland, the United States, Sweden and Denmark. All but the United States provide at least a month of paid annual leave, six months of paid parental leave and paid sick leave.

Myth 2: Decent working conditions will lead to high unemployment. Iceland enjoys among the world's lowest unemployment rates, at 3.4 percent, yet ensures that all its working citizens enjoy a month of paid annual leave and extensive paid sick leave.

Myth 3: Decent working conditions will inhibit economic growth. Ireland got the nickname "Celtic tiger" because its growth rate is among the world's highest -- 6.4 percent per year throughout the 1990s and in the early years of this decade. It achieved this growth rate while ensuring six months of paid parental leave, four weeks of paid annual leave, short- and long-term paid sick leave and unpaid leave to meet children's health needs.

If politicians of either mainstream persuasion in the United States really valued mothers and families on Mother's Day or any other day, they would commit to finally ensuring rights for American mothers and fathers that most parents around the world already enjoy. They would ensure that American mothers receive paid maternity leave, as mothers in 164 other nations do. They would ensure that moms have breast-feeding breaks and sick leave. They would support early childhood education and after-school programs. Then the United States could be truly competitive in the most meaningful sense, and "Happy Mother's Day" would be more than just another myth.

From Jody Heymann's excellent piece in WaPo. Jody Heymann is the director of the McGill University Institute for Health and Social Policy, founder of the Project on Global Working Families at Harvard and author of "Forgotten Families: Ending the Growing Crisis Confronting Children and Working Parents in a Global Economy."

One Sick Child or In-Need-of-a-Regular-Life-Thing Away from Job Loss

In honor of Mother's Day: Thanks Mom, we all love you!

Ruth Marcus at WaPo discusses "a report by the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California at Hastings: "One Sick Child Away From Being Fired: When Opting Out is Not an Option." With that stark title, the report punctures the entitled, self-referential perspective from which journalists tend to write about working mothers."

"As the author, law professor Joan C. Williams, writes, "The media tend to cover work/family conflict as the story of professional mothers 'opting out' of fast-track careers" -- an "overly autobiographical approach" that, however unintentionally, misrepresents the full nature of the problem and skews the discussion of potential solutions."

Hmmph. I'll say.

She goes on to write:

Williams studied almost 100 union arbitrations that, she writes, "provide a unique window into how work and family responsibilities clash in the lives of bus drivers, telephone workers, construction linemen, nurse's aides, carpenters, welders, janitors and others." Many are mothers, but this is not just a female problem. Divorced fathers, and families that patch together tag-team care, with parents working different shifts, are similarly vulnerable. Indeed, nearly everyone is a potential victim of child-care plans gone awry: Among working-class couples, only 16 percent have families in which one parent is the breadwinner and the other stays home.

The stories Williams relates are foreign to those of us lucky enough to have flexible jobs and understanding bosses -- for whom it's no big deal to step out in the middle of the day to go to the school play. A bus driver is fired when she arrives three minutes late because of her son's asthma attack; a packer loses her job for leaving work because her daughter is in the emergency room with a head injury. A police officer is suspended for failing to report for unscheduled duty; she had arranged baby-sitting for her three children for her regular 4 p.m. shift, but couldn't -- without notice -- find baby-sitting for the noon-to-4 slot she'd been ordered to work.

You read these accounts and you think: These stories can't possibly be true. If true, they can't possibly be typical. Leave aside human decency and just consider economic rationality: Surely the cost of finding a new worker has to be bigger than the inconvenience of accommodating the existing one.

But, Williams says when I call to ask about this, "We hear these kinds of things all the time." She attributes the phenomenon in part to rigid, no-fault disciplinary policies under which amassing a certain number of demerits requires dismissal, and in part to employers' lag time in adjusting to the reality of a new, two-earner workforce -- not just in the upper echelons of professional workers but among hourly employees as well.

Even if these examples are extreme, it's clear that corporate willingness to design flexible workplaces has been far greater in the executive offices than on the factory floor. According to studies cited in the report, flexible schedules are available for nearly two-thirds of workers who earn more than $71,000 annually -- but for less than a third of those with incomes under $28,000. Over half of working-class employees are not permitted to take time off to care for sick children.

At the end she becomes self-referential once again. I only wish she and others "for whom a call from the school nurse is just an annoying intrusion, not a financial disaster in the making" would do more than write self-referential articles, stories and columns or simply shake their heads and say "tsk, tsk, too bad for them" and actually use their privileges and entitlements to advocate change and extend those benefits to others while shining a light on these and other similar realities experienced by poor and working worker on a regular, ongoing basis. (Most of whom are not on a factory floor nor in a union, unfortunately.)

Marcus' WaPo column is here.

TV viewing recommendation: My son's union is going to be featured on 60 Minutes tonight, btw. Go SEIU! And thanks, son, for being my reason to celebrate mother's day! SWAK xoxoxoxo

The Behinder I Get

I'm behind on posting, not cuz stuff's not on my mind -- certainly lots happening out there, but I'm learning CSS (slowly, slowly, on my own), not to mention major allergy/pollen attacks -- sometimes the cure IS worse than the ailment.

Cheers & TTFN!