The Notion

U of Cal Budget Protests Draw Thousands

By Jon Wiener

Thursday was a "Day of Action" against draconian budget cuts at the University of California campuses, and thousands of people rallied in protest at all ten campuses. At UC Berkeley, 5,000 students and workers, along with many faculty members, rallied at noon. At the same hour at UCLA, 700 students and workers and a few faculty members gathered at Bruin Plaza. And 500 rallied at UC Irvine, which Time magazine described as "normally placid."

The normally placid UC Irvine is where I teach.

The best sign I saw at the UCI rally read "If I wanted to go to a private school, I would have been born into a rich family."

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September 25, 2009

Ricky Martin Fights Human Trafficking at Clinton Summit

By Ari Melber

New York, NY – When Ricky Martin took the stage at the Clinton Global Initiative on Thursday, he did not sing, or dance, or even flash his trademark grin. Following the same stage directions as dozens of other celebrities who dropped by Clinton's 5th annual global summit, from Brad Pitt to Bono to Jessica Alba, Martin struck a somber note while discussing the fight against human trafficking.

"I feel that my heart is going to come out of my mouth," he said, recounting his sadness for the "millions of children that didn't make it." Martin was followed by testimony from a woman who, along with her two children, was kidnapped and held for four years of forced labor. Then Luis CdeBaca, a former counsel to Rep. John Conyers who now serves as President Obama's chief diplomat for combating human trafficking, explained that between 12 and 27 million people are enslaved around the world today. In its official materials, The Clinton Global Initiative notes that the higher estimates mean there are more people enslaved "than at any other time in human history," though that's the kind of factoid that says more about population growth than the scope of the problem. But the numbers are daunting by any measure. And the policy experts who huddled on Thursday stressed that many obvious measures to combat trafficking are simply not being applied.

About 90 percent of countries do not have dedicated police units for investigating trafficking, according to Clinton's organization, and many governments simply look the other way. Only one out of three governments around the world provide basics like emergency phone lines for children and families who do not know where to turn when faced with a kidnapping.

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September 24, 2009

Nonprofits Gamble - and Lose

By Eyal Press

Back in March, I wrote a story documenting the financial meltdown's calamitous impact on the nonprofit sector. I neglected to mention one important reason for this: the reckless behavior of nonprofits themselves.

As Stephanie Strom documents in The Times today, many nonprofits spent the past two decades doing their best imitation of hedge funds. Interest-rate arbitrage, auction-rate securities, complex swaps: these were among the practices in which nonprofits engaged, taking advantage of a change in the tax code that allowed charities easy access to credit markets. Strom offers the example of New York Law School, which in 2006 floated $135 million in auction-rate securities and sold its library for roughly the same amount ($136.5 million), using the money not to build a library but to pad its endowment and borrow for construction.

Now, many of the same nonprofits are drowning in debt that will result in museums being shut down, services being slashed, staff being cut. Some will presumably end up bankrupt or foreclosed, an unfortunate fate for which they have only themselves to blame.

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September 24, 2009

Wangari Maathai: A US Resource War?

By Laura Flanders

Wangari Maathai makes the relationship between needs and wars so clear that even the Nobel committee (which awarded her the peace prize in '04) got it. Violent disparities in access to resources, lead to violence. The wars right now destroying people and the planet are wars over the stuff of life: land and water and fuel.

If we can see the link between conflict and resource strain in Kenya and Congo and Brazil, why are we surprised that here at home, anger and tension-in-the-air is rising?

Extreme poverty, bankruptcies, defaults, debt--they're all on the rise for the majority of Americans, even as a tiny minority grow their share of all wealth, and grab more than their fair share of the scarce resource that is the government's care and attention.

The system is stressed and so are the people. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found the average family premium for health insurance rose to $13,375 last year, a jump of 5% even as inflation fell. That makes for an obscene rise of 131% over the past ten years. No wonder, that at the same time the number of Americans without any health coverage rose to 46.3 million.

Healthcare is a scarce resource, and people's fears for themselves and their kids are very real. 

The Census Bureau shows that the child poverty rate rose to 19.0% last year. That translates to 14.1 million children living in poverty in the richest nation in the world. By some estimates, that could be 26.6% by the end of 2009.

Income inequality is at an all time high. Resources are strapped. Are we really surprised that fear -- and gun-sales -- are rising?

Maathai's Green Belt movement believes in better environmental stewardship and better sharing will reduce war. She talks about it on GRITtv this week: "There is no way to have peace without equity."

Her Green Belt movement has planted 40 billion trees since its founding and aims to plant another nine billion trees this year.

What would be the US equivalent of all that tree-planting?

The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GritLaura on Twitter.com.
 

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September 24, 2009

The Goldstone Report on Gaza

By Roane Carey

The recently released UN Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on the December-January Gaza conflict, released on the eve of Barack Obama's attempt to jump-start comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, was but the latest in a series of investigations, most of them by human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Like its predecessors, the so-called Goldstone report, named after chief investigator Richard Goldstone, is devastating in its critique of Israeli actions: indiscriminate use of firepower; deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian structures, including hospitals, schools, mosques, water and sewage plants, and rescue vehicles; use of white phosphorus munitions in built-up areas; use of human shields; abusive treatment of detainees; imposition of a blockade on Gaza before and after the attack itself--the report concludes that Israel violated international humanitarian law, committed "grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons," and war crimes, possibly even crimes against humanity. The courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy summed it up well in Haaretz: it was "an unrestrained assault on a besieged, totally unprotected civilian population which showed almost no signs of resistance during this operation."

Perhaps most damning of all was the testimony of some thirty Israeli veterans of the operation gathered by the organization Breaking the Silence, published in a booklet in July and cited by the Goldstone report. According to the booklet's introduction, "The majority of the soldiers who spoke with us are still serving in their regular military units and turned to us in deep distress at the moral deterioration of the IDF.… The stories of this publication prove that we are not dealing with the failures of individual soldiers, and attest instead to failures in the application of values primarily on a systemic level." The testimony is chilling: "Fire power was insane"; "if you see any signs of movement at all, you shoot. These, essentially, were the rules of engagement. Shoot if you like"; "Houses were demolished everywhere.… We didn't see a single house that was not hit"; "whole neighborhoods were simply razed because four houses in the area served to launch Qassam rockets"; "You know what? You feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants. Really. A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such things to people."

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September 23, 2009

I'm Not a Racist...I'm a Democrat.

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell

For weeks the media have been covering "racism in health care reform opposition." For the most part I've found this political moment to be an interesting opportunity to discuss the meanings of race, the history of racial exclusion and violence, and the ongoing realities of racial inequality in America.

But I have also been a little baffled as to why so many liberal white Americans are shocked about the sometimes explicit, but far more often, simply implied racial bias that has infected some of the opposition to the Obama administration. My scholarship and teaching center on issues of race, blackness, and African American politics, and while I believe "racism" is interesting and important; it is not exactly breaking news. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune laughingly suggested that he was telling his white liberal friends who were aghast at the vitriol aimed at President Obama, "welcome to my world."

My surprise that "racism" has dominated the news cycle for so long turned to tangible anxiety when President Clinton appeared on Larry King Live. Former President Clinton made a compelling case for health care reform and when asked about the racial motivations of the opposition he said:

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September 22, 2009

Capitalism: A Love Story--An Early Review

By Adam Howard

Last night I attended a press screening of Michael Moore's new film Capitalism: A Love Story. As with all of his films it made an immediate, strong impression on me and it also surprised me a little, my thoughts are below and yes, this contains some spoilers so beware...

First off, the film in some ways made me realize how familiar Michael Moore's filmmaking has become--this is arguably a detriment to his message and possibly a slight to his directorial prowess but as fan I have come to enjoy his usual gimmicks and this film is chock full of them:

The moving personal testimonials: Families recount learning that companies had profited from large insurances policies taken out on their tragically deceased loved ones--this sequence literally made me want to call my Congressman to express my outrage.

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September 22, 2009

Bill O'Reilly Raps: NYT Discovers Talk Radio-Hip Hop Nexus

By Ari Melber

Just as hot trends meet their death when discovered by The Times Style Section - see Trucker Hats - emerging cultural themes usually go mainstream after a close-up in the paper's Week in Review. Now, after years of skirmishing below the radar, The Times has taken notice of the nexus between conservative talk radio and hip hop.

In "The Kinship Between Talk Radio and Rap," David Segal celebrates the "uncanny... similarities between talk radio and gangsta rap."

First, pardon his jargon - Segal actually focuses on hip hop at large, not gangsta rap, a subgenre that began in the 80s and is now virtually extinct. The article suggests four shared obsessions of rappers and radio hosts: Ego, haters, intramural feuds and "verbal skills." Surveying America's fractured media culture, Segal argues that these seemingly divergent loudmouths actually serve similar markets. "Rappers and conservative talkers both speak for a demographic that believes its interests and problems have been slighted and both offer stories that have allegedly been ignored."

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September 22, 2009

The NFL (Political) Standings

By Eyal Press

Week two in the National Football League is about to wrap up – a very happy week for yrs truly, with my beloved (and perennially cursed) Buffalo Bills scraping out a victory against the lowly Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday to even their record to 1-1. That's the same record as the defending champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the mighty, Tom Brady-led New England Patriots.

But forget the won-loss standings for now – seasoned fans know everything will be different in two months anyway. The more interesting football news comes from the Center for Responsive Politics, which has produced a chart ranking teams by level of donations to political candidates and committees since 1990. The figure for each team is an aggregate of contributions made by coaches, players, team officials, employees and executives.

Which NFL team has been most active in the political arena over the past two decades? The trophy goes to the San Diego Chargers, who disbursed a total of $2,455,200. Of this sum, all but $40,773 (2 percent) went to Republicans. Only the Houston Texans (second in overall donations) and Cincinnati Bengals are "redder" organizations, skewing 99 percent of their total contributions to the GOP.

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September 21, 2009

Media Blitz Continues As Obama Golfs 18 Holes With Tom Friedman

By Ari Melber

After his big five television interviews on Sunday, President Obama carved out an even larger slice of time for one print journalist, hitting the links for 18 holes of golf with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

The only other players, according to a pool report, were Ray Lahood, the Transportation Secretary, and Marvin Nicholson, a White House aide who previously worked on the Obama and Kerry campaigns.

Friedman joins a small, elite list of opinion journalists from traditional outlets who have been granted private -- and largely off the record -- audiences with The President. Back in January, Obama spent about 75 minutes with Friedman's Times colleagues Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, along with National Journal's Ron Brownstein, Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson. That meeting balanced out a longer dinner for conservative opinion journalists from traditional outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, such as George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan and Paul Gigot.

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September 20, 2009