Mobilizing The Jobless To Political Action

Frances Fox Piven is a distinguished professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, a legendary progressive activist, writer and hate figure for Fox News host Glenn Beck.

Beck has relentlessly targeted Piven via his television and radio shows as a threat to the American way of life. Beck's heated language has provoked waves of death threats against both Piven and her academic colleagues at the City University of New York.

Piven recently appeared on the Eldridge & Co. TV program (video above left) to talk about the economic and social justice in the American democracy.

Piven has also written an article for The Nation titled, "Mobilizing the Jobless:"

Conventional Wisdom v. The Facts On Voter Photo ID Law

Many freshmen Tea Party Republicans making law in Austin this spring owe their election wins last November to senior voters. Twenty percent of those who voted in the November 2, 2010 election were age 65 or older and they voted heavily for Republican candidates. Furthermore, white senior voters were among those who most wanted to send Republican legislators to Austin to enact a photo ID requirement law.

Conventional wisdom goes that voter photo ID legislation will benefit Republican candidates in future elections because poor voters and minority voters, who are most likely to support Democrats, are the voters who are least likely to have required photo identification.

The voter photo ID legislation about to become Texas law will be the most stringent version among all the states requiring dated and unexpired government issued photo ID to vote. The Texas law lists very few types of state government issued photo IDs that may be accepted by Election Judges. Student IDs and non-photo ID alternatives will not be accepted by Election Judges. The more stringent the legislation, the more anti Democratic candidate the bill becomes - That is the conventional wisdom of many Democrats and Republicans.

Well, except when it comes to senior Texans who vote Republican by a significant margin. Elderly voters are among those who likely lack properly dated and unexpired government issued photo identification. Many voters over age 70 no longer drive and so they are less likely to have a valid unexpired driver's license, the most common form of ID. Texas doesn't make it easy for the elderly to keep driving—the elderly must renew their licenses more frequently and take eye exams. Without a driver's license, many would not think to get another type of photo ID. So, not surprisingly, the original version of the Republican written voter photo ID bill exempted voters age 70 and over from the ID requirement. From a partisan perspective, it made sense to exempt the group without ID that votes for Republican candidates by significant margins.

Rep. Bonnen, a hard line conservative who voted against a similar version of the voter photo ID bill in 2009 because it wasn't restrictive enough, offered an amendment to drop the age 70 and over ID exemption. Many of Bonnen's Republican colleagues signed on to his amendment and because the bill's sponsor, Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, didn't object, there was no vote. So, the version of the bill that passed in the House Wednesday night does not include an age 70 and over ID exemption.

The vote so many senior Republicans cast last November to send so many Republicans to Austin to cut corporate taxes, gut their Medicaid, gut public education for their grandchildren and enact a voter photo ID law may have been the last vote they cast in Texas, ever.

Opposition To Nuclear Power Rises Amid Japanese Crisis

Pew Research Center For The People & The Press: Not surprisingly, public support for the increased use of nuclear power has declined amid the ongoing nuclear emergency in Japan. Currently, 39% say they favor promoting the increased use of nuclear power while 52% are opposed. Last October, 47% favored promoting the increased use of nuclear power and the same percentage (47%) was opposed.

Opinion about expanding the use of nuclear power has fluctuated in recent years. However, the current measure matches a previous low in support for increased nuclear power recorded in September 2005 (39% favor, 53% oppose).

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted March 17-20 among 1,004 adults, finds little recent change in opinions about other energy policies -- with one notable exception. With the recent surge in gas prices, support for increased offshore oil and gas drilling continues to rebound.

Currently, 57% say they favor allowing more offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters while 37% are opposed. Last June amid the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there was more opposition (52%) than support (44%) for allowing more offshore drilling. Support for increased offshore energy drilling is approaching its pre-Gulf spill level; in February 2010, the public backed increased offshore drilling by about two-to-one (63% to 31%).

The survey shows that substantial majorities continue to support increased federal funding for research on wind, solar and hydrogen technology (74%), spending more on subway, rail and bus systems (61%), and providing tax incentives for the purchase of hybrid vehicles (58%). These measures are virtually unchanged from last October, though there is less support for alternative energy research and spending on mass transit than from 2005 to 2009.

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Wall Street Commodity Traders Are Behind Soaring Gas Prices

Unregulated Wall Street commodity traders [speculators] are behind the soaring gas prices.

Here is the straight scoop:

Thank A Teacher For What They Make!

A Tea Party-infused GOP legislature in Austin is calling for $31 billion in cuts to state spending and they claim, as Gov. Perry has stated many times, that Republicans in the legislature are simply doing what the voters sent them there to do. Did the voters really send the GOP to Austin to decimate public education?

On Election Day November, 2, 2010 voters expressed support for GOP Tea Party pledges of yet more rounds of tax cuts and reduced government spending.

Most of the 37% of registered Texas voters who turned out to vote in 2010 expressed support for the GOP Tea Party philosophy that additional rounds of tax cuts and government spending cuts would help rather than hurt the economic environment for job creation in Texas.

Most 2010 voters accepted the GOP Tea Party argument that any tax supported government spending to provide for the common good of the people in areas like health care and public education are socialist big brother government plots of Democrats.

But, did most 2010 voters and the 63% of registered voters who decided not to vote understand that GOP Tea Party candidates want to eliminate government spending for what most believe are basic and critical government services? Did most of the 13,269,233 people registered to vote in Texas truly understand the GOP Tea Party agenda is to eliminate all taxes on business and the wealthy and then eliminate government spending on programs like the public education, public safety, health care for our children and our parents, road construction and maintenance and other such government services? Did the voters understand that the GOP Tea Party call even those most basic government services socialist programs that should be cut ever deeper until they are eliminated altogether?

Up until this month, most voters did not understand the magnitude or the ferocity of the attack the GOP Tea Party has mounted on basic government services, such as public education, that Texans depend on to support our democracy, provide the quality of life our families enjoy and build a better future for our children.

GOP Tea Party rhetoric has hit reality as the Texas House passes a 2011-13 budget that cuts almost $31 billion from spending levels authorized in the 2009-11 budget. "If you want to close this shortfall through cuts alone, you have to either (completely) cut payments to Medicaid providers, cut payments to school districts or lay-off a substantial number of state employees," said state Rep. Jim Pitts, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. "You would have to do these things immediately."

It's Not About the Money!

"It's Not About the Money!" - It's time to make the point that the Republican agenda in Congress and many state legislatures, including the Texas legislature, has little or nothing to do with federal and state level budget deficits. Budget deficits that Republicans helped engineer by eliminating taxes for corporations and billionaires at both the federal and state levels. By eliminating taxes for corporations and billionaires Texas and many other states now face devastating cuts to their publicly funded K-12 and college education systems and other critical services like building and maintaining roads.

Much of the battle between Democrats and Republicans over government spending isn't about the deficit numbers, but about GOP efforts to grind various ideological axes, from defunding EPA and bank regulators and NPR, to crippling reproductive and contraceptive services, to repealing last year's health insurance reform legislation, to ending the rights of people to organize for job security, to privatizing every government service, including tax funded public education.

In effect, alarms about debts and deficits are being used as an excuse to eliminate taxes for business and the rich and to eliminate government services, like public education, that working families depend upon to build a better future for their children - regardless of budget deficits and surpluses.

Now on one level this isn't surprising, but these priorities need to be acknowledged and discussed openly and directly, and not in the disguise of making "painful but necessary cuts." The truth behind the Tea Party phase "We want to take our county back" is that most far-right Republicans would prefer to live in a country with:

• little or no regulation of corporations (environmental or any other sort) or banks,
  
• a fully regressive tax code where taxes on corporations and billionaires are eliminated while taxes on working families are greatly increased,
• a privatized education system with no public schools supported by tax dollars,
  
• workplaces that have no collective bargaining rights or even minimum wages,
  
• a health care system in which private insurers are free to increase premiums and deny health care to anyone at will,
  
• no social safety net provided through Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and
  
• all forms of reproductive contraception made unavailable and illegal.
  

Republicans also prefer to get rid of legal protections against discrimination generally, and government, both federal and state, limited to the kind of functions typical of the eighteenth century - the century when the U.S. Constitution was adopted.

It's the right of Republicans to favor this kind of society, but given the abundant evidence that a large majority of Texans and Americans in every state would be very unhappy with it, it's the responsibility of non-Republicans and of the news media to make this agenda as clear as possible, and not just mindlessly accept that conservatives are only worried about the debt burden on future generations.

The Internet and Campaign 2010

PewInternet: Fully 73% of adult internet users (representing 54% of all U.S. adults) went online to get news or information about the 2010 midterm elections, or to get involved in the campaign in one way or another. We refer to these individuals as "online political users" and our definition includes anyone who did at least one of the following activities in 2010:

• Get political news online - 58% of online adults looked online for news about politics or the 2010 campaigns, and 32% of online adults got most of their 2010 campaign news from online sources.
• Go online to take part in specific political activities, such as watch political videos, share election-related content or "fact check" political claims - 53% of adult internet users did at least one of the eleven online political activities we measured in 2010.
• Use Twitter or social networking sites for political purposes - One in five online adults (22%) used Twitter or a social networking site for political purposes in 2010.¹

Increasing Calls For Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Ramos To Resign

After disparaging remarks were made by Dan Ramos, Chair of Bexar County Democratic Party, and posted on a San Antonio news blog, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Ritchie asked for Ramos' resignation and released the following statement:

Budget Cuts Put School Sports On Chopping Block

NPR: School sports surely mean more in the United States than in any other country. For small-town America, sports teams even become a significant part of a community's identity.

And now that so many American school districts –– even whole states –– are facing reductions in school funding, more and more, it is athletics that are being cut back. Sometimes now, public school sports survive only by the grace of private donations, from parents and fans.

Rainy-Day Money Plus Cuts Cover $4.3 Billion 2009-11 Deficit

Many newspaper headlines this morning heralding "Deal breaks impasse on using state’s rainy-day money" and "Perry, legislators reach limited deal on dipping into rainy day fund" are a bit misleading -- and copy below the headlines does little to clarify. Here's the straight scoop...

Republican Claims About NPR Manufactured

The Republicans on the House Rules Committee will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to consider legislation to permanently prohibit federal funding of National Public Radio (NPR) after conservative activist James O'Keefe released a video smearing the news organization.

Notes From The Campaign

by Lawrence J. Praeger

The elections are over and we have our new elected officials and judges. The Dallas Morning News while critiquing our Commissions, County Judge and other officials opine that partisanship is out of control.

As a citizen of Dallas for the last 25 years I have witnessed a lot of changes, read a lot of editorials, and follow the Dallas Morning News. I am past 50, a lawyer, former prosecutor and run my own law practice. I have a wife and two sons 12 and 15.

I was also a candidate for the 5th District Court of Appeals Place 12 in 2010. I had never before sought elective office. I decided to do this for many reasons. One of which was to show my boys that ours is a government of its citizens. That is the beauty of our republic. Another reason was that – without any false modesty – I thought I was more qualified than my opponent. He had recently been appointed to the office by Governor Perry. I had little money for a multi-county campaign but assumed that people and the media would support a judge based on experience, credentials and independence, not political party or ideology. With apologies to Lemony Snicket, thus began my series of unfortunate assumptions.