Prometheus 6

Well, we've seen the explanation of why the CBC Institute is teaming up with FOX.

According to a Roll Call story from April 2004, 17 members of the CBC, along with many members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, signed a letter to Nielsen's CEO suggesting its new system would be racially biased against minority-oriented shows -- many of them carried by News Corp.

They hired the Glover Park Group, and other lobbying and PR firms, to assemble the "coalition," something that later became grist for Nielsen's (successful) counter-attack.

The GOP plan also states that anyone seeking jobs in the U.S., including citizens, probably will have to present secure identification in the future.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who was heavily involved in the GOP planning, called the presentation "a temperature taking." He added: "It's still very early, there will certainly be controversy."

GOP immigration plan favors workers over relatives
The Senate proposal comes with strict stipulations that some advocacy groups say aren't feasible.
By Nicole Gaouette
Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2007

WASHINGTON — A White House proposal for overhauling immigration laws would abandon the long-standing practice of admitting immigrants seeking to reunite with their families, instead giving preference to applicants based on the nation's employment needs.

The wide-ranging proposals to stem illegal immigration also include enforcement requirements that must be met before other changes can go forward. Those include posting 18,300 Border Patrol agents on the frontier with Mexico — about a 53% increase — and erecting more than four times the current amount of border fencing.

The GOP plan also states that anyone seeking jobs in the U.S., including citizens, probably will have to present secure identification in the future. And it outlines a special visa system for those already in the country without proper documents.

This was on Washington Journal this week...meant to post it a couple of days ago.

Rationally, I could see small businesses having the same tax rate as big businesses. Being progressive I think a progressive tax scale is better, of course. But how could it come about that small businesses would have higher tax rates than big businesses? I smell bullshit...

...though they thought they were just leaving a comment. As they say, read the whole thing.

Temple3 - Howard Witt - Chicago Tribune Reporter

who wrote the original piece wrote a follow up article...I don't have the link sorry...but a couple of things.

1) The D.A. misrepresented the Cotton family by stating that Shaquanda Cotton's mother declined to abide by the rules of probation, thereby leaving Judge Superville with no recourse but to pass a sentence of 1-7 years. The Chicago Tribune's review of the COURT TRANSCRIPT revealed this to be false...that the family agreed to the probation rules and still a sentence of probation was not imposed.

We will never make these simple changes in our political system or in our energy and tax systems if we don't tell the truth about our national circumstances. Political leaders should not arrogate to themselves, based on a desire to hold onto political power, the right to hide the truth from the people. If we tell people the truth we can trust them to do the right thing. Sounds like a radical notion, but it's really just common sense.

Once we face the truth about our abysmal voter turnout, our oil addiction, our health-care and education crises, and our inadequate national savings, there is good news. There are answers to all our current problems. It's not rocket science. What's required is the political will to enact policies that can allow us to thrive in the 21st century. An administration bold enough to tell the truth will find an audience ready for bold solutions.

We Can Get Out of These Ruts
By Bill Bradley
Sunday, April 1, 2007; B03

Every time I talk to people who have no health care, or to families without the means to find a good education for their children, or to pensioners who have lost their pensions, I am reminded that we have lost our capacity to imagine something better for our country. But we don't have to keep doing things that aren't working.

In the same spirit, we don't have to accept our continued dependence on oil as an immutable fact of life. Nor do we have to live with our counterproductive tax code. There are good alternatives, if we can overcome the paucity of imagination that has afflicted us for too long. But we can break out of the ruts we are in only by improving our politics.

via The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum

BREAKING NEWS: Cotton to be released
Staff reports
The Paris News
Published March 30, 2007

Shaquanda Cotton is to be released Saturday from the Texas Youth Commission facility in Brownwood, according to a report from the Associated Press.

“We are glad she is getting out and are happy for her family but we have concerns about the way it is happening,” Lamar County District Attorney spokesman Allan Hubbard said.

Rep. Harold Dutton, the Houston Democrat who chairs the House juvenile justice committee, said the newly appointed conservator of the Texas Youth Commission told him Cotton was being freed, according to the AP report.

“This is one of those cases that is the poster child of everything wrong with the criminal justice system,” Dutton told the AP.

Terrance at Republic of T on

Blogging While Brown, Part III

...Of the 71.1 million blogs tracked by Technorati alone that would be about 7,821,000. And that’s probably too large. Narrowing it down to just the number of blogs in Technorati’s directory of political blogs yields a more reasonable 42,895 political blogs.

If those 42, 895 poltiical blogs, follow general updating patterns, then only about 10.2% of them are updated at least once a week. That’s 4,375 political blogs that are updated often enough to sustain regular readerships. If only those blogs follow the same pattern of diversity of blogs in general then only 11% of them, or about 481, are written by African American bloggers. That number is probably too big also. Only about 303 blogs come up in a directory search of black politics, and only 130 under African American politics. If you want to break it down to just those of us who are specifically electorally-focused, well you might be able to count us on your fingers. Maybe take one shoe off just for insurance.

Last October, Dubya said

“I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

Now he's hooked on using a Blackberry.

Keep that in mind as you read this, which I steal from The Progress Report because I know they won't care if I do.

E-mail Evasion

President Bush has consistently attempted to weaken the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which was intended to open presidential documents to the public after a period of no more than 12 years. It was passed in 1978, after Watergate, "to underscore the fact that presidential records belong to the American people, not to the president," notes Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). But after 2001, Bush issued a decree that now allows "former presidents and their heirs to bar the release of documents for almost any reason." He has promised to veto any attempt to return to the bill's original intent. Recent revelations in the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys shed new light on another way the White House has been deliberately evading the PRA -- by using political, non-government e-mail addresses to correspond with one another. Since the White House system automatically keeps records of all e-mails, Bush administration officials -- including Karl Rove -- are using accounts provided by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign to dodge public oversight. Unfortunately, after Waxman notified these groups to begin preserving all e-mails by and from White House officials, administration staffers started looking for new ways to hide presidential records from public scrutiny.

AVOIDING_OVRESIGHT@GWB43.COM: The easiest way to reach a White House official may not be through a White House e-mail address. Rove does "about 95 percent" of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account. Many other aides in the Political Affairs Office "use the RNC account as an alternative to their official government e-mail addresses to help keep their official and political duties separate." Susan Ralston, Rove's former assistant, used not only an RNC account, but also accounts at georgebush.com and aol.com to communicate White House information with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. At one point, an Abramoff aide noted that Ralston told him to e-mail her at her political account because "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] ... email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc." E-mails show that Rove's deputy, J. Scott Jennings, used a political e-mail address -- SJennings@gwb43.com -- to help orchestrate the prosecutor purge. Even former President George H.W. Bush said his son, the current president, spurns e-mailing because the records could be subpoenaed. But the White House e-mail system has been crafted to comply with the PRA. It "automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving." By avoiding the White House e-mail system, the Bush administration has raised serious questions about "whether it is taking all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities" during Bush's tenure.

I'm leading with the last paragraph because, in a nation where +90% of liability settlements lead with a line about how the payment isn't an admission of guilt, this

The district attorney's office in this case wants nothing more than to see this juvenile re-enter society and never cause another problem for herself by following the rules that society puts in place through its various organizations and formats (school, public laws, etc.). It is our position that she's spent more than enough time in TYC - in fact, never had to go there - and that if TYC feels she has learned her lesson, then let her out.

...may be the best it gets.

That's from Regarding the Shaquanda Cotton case, published on the Lamar County & District Attorney website, which I quote no further from because it's a restatement of Judge Superville's self-defense.

I personally think it insufficient. I'd like the child to get some legit therapy, both for her reported ADHD and for the shit she went through for the last year. And I'd like any record sealed. And maybe some help move to Dallas or something.

Bloomberg Details City’s Antipoverty Experiment
By DIANE CARDWELL

Seeking new solutions to New York’s vexingly high poverty rates, the city is moving ahead with a bold antipoverty experiment that will pay poor families up to $5,000 a year to meet targets like exemplary school attendance, going for medical checkups or holding down a full-time job, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said today.

Under the program, which is based on a similar effort in Mexico but is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, families would receive payments every two months for meeting any of 20 or so criteria per individual. The payments would range from perhaps $25 for an elementary school student’s attendance to $300 for greatly improved performance on a standardized test, officials said.

Besides, do you really want your coworkers to be armed? Look at them...be honest. Can't you think of a time or two when YOU might have capped a mutha fugga?

Workers’ Safety and the Gun Lobby

The aura of invincibility that has legislatures bowing before the gun lobby is running into a commendable challenge from corporate America. Two conservative powerhouses — gun fanciers and business leaders — are facing off in statehouses over the gun lobby’s attempt to stop employers from exercising their property rights and barring workers from carrying firearms to work.

Bills to deny this common-sense right to workplace safety were initially approved in three states. But they failed last year in such gun-friendly states as Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Virginia after business interests rose up in active opposition. The National Rifle Association is back at work harder than ever in a dozen states. But so are Chambers of Commerce and corporate executives, warning of the danger — and business liability — of forcing companies to allow workers to carry guns.

I want to point out this post is NOT tagged "Race and Identity," and that's a problem.

Jack and Jill Politics asks Why Lord. Why?

Fox News, Black Caucus team for debates
March 29, 2007

WASHINGTON --Fox News, rebounding from a presidential debate squabble with Democrats, has a new deal with an old debate partner. The cable news network will co-sponsor primary debates for each party's presidential field this fall in association with the Congressional Black Caucus Political Education and Leadership Institute.

This is how you do it.

A Step for Voting Rights

The Maryland Legislature struck a blow for democracy when it voted to overturn a law that barred more than 50,000 ex-offenders from the polls in the last presidential election. By signing the measure into law, Gov. Martin O’Malley would make Maryland part of a growing movement for electoral fairness. He also would simplify one of the most complicated and confusing voting bans in the nation.

Under the current law, most offenders get their rights back simply by completing their sentences. But a second group of offenders gets to vote only after waiting an additional three years. Yet another group is barred from the polls for life. Made worse by faulty record keeping, this system leads to mass confusion at election time, when even state officials are unsure of who is eligible to vote or why.

The new law would simplify matters by making eligible all ex-offenders who have completed their sentences and finished parole and probation, with the exception of people convicted of election fraud. It would bring Maryland in line with dozens of other states that have similar policies.

This is not.

I repeat: If you EVER shopped at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Winners, or HomeSense, keep an eye on ALL your credit and debit card statements

TJX Data Breach Called "Biggest Ever"
46 Million Customers' Data Exposed to Identity Thieves
By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.Com
March 29, 2007

Nearly 46 million TJX customers had their credit and debit card data exposed in an ongoing breach that lasted over 18 months, the company said today. The company the theft included personal data it had stored on 455,000 individuals, including drivers' license numbers and military identification numbers.

The new revelations led Gartner research analyst Avivah Litan to say that the TJX breach had "set a record" for the amount of personal information exposed, and was already being calling the "biggest ever."

The previous recordholder was CardSystems , the payment processor that had stored data on 40 million Visa and MasterCard users, and was hit by an outside hack in 2005. CardSystems, later sold to biometric payments processor PayByTouch, settled Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that it had failed to adequately protect the data.

TJX, the parent company of the TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Winners, and HomeSense shopping chains, reported that computer hackers had broken into its systems on Dec. 18, 2006, and had accessed customer card information from their payment processing systems. The company first hired specialists from IBM and General Dynamics to investigate the incident, then contacted local and federal law enforcement. The public was finally made aware of the breach on Jan. 13, 2007.

It was later determined that the first breach had occured in July 2005 , and that TJX's networks had suffered similar, albeit smaller, breaches in 2003 and 2004.

The hackers had gained access to the TJX network and were siphoning data even before it was encrypted for storage, and were apparently taking extra efforts to ensure their actions would not be detected by regular security sweeps. The hackers apparently had traps set up to pick up data during the card issuer's approval process, as well as access to the decryption key TJX used to read its data.

While the cost of producing power also has risen, especially with natural gas, consumer watchdogs and legislators charge that electric utilities are raking in windfall profits at consumers' expense, and sometimes illegally.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on March 15 called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate whether 15 electricity producers colluded to inflate prices at a September 2006 power auction. Madigan alleges that the electricity prices from that sale were 40 percent higher than wholesale rates and cost Illinois consumers an extra $4.3 billion.

Power prices put utilities in the hot seat
By Eric Kelderman, Stateline.org Staff Writer

I guess I got my answer...

Senate Bypassed on Many Key Justice Jobs
by David Welna

Morning Edition, March 29, 2007 · The Bush administration has taken full advantage of a Patriot Act provision that permits interim appointments of United States attorneys without Senate confirmation. Of federal prosecutors now on the job, 21 of 93 did not face Senate confirmation.

Both houses of Congress have voted to strip the Patriot Act of the provision that allows the administration to bypass the Senate when appointing U.S. attorneys.

As I watch more and more folks comment on the failure of equal protection under the law in Paris TX, it occurs to me the most significant repercussions of this case will not involve the case.

The mainstream political blog network, left-and-rightwing began as pure rantage. Some time around when they started taking donations for political candidates sort of jelled (I think it had something to having what is seen to be a real world impact). It has become the semantic equivalent of a chimpanzee grooming session...

[by request: Primate grooming sessions aren't just about killing and eating bugs. Who grooms and is groomed by whom acknowledges and reinforces the social hierarchy. Primates can gain status by being allowed to groom higher status members as surely as by winning a fight. Being sematic apes, we groom and mark territory with words.]

This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure.

Schlozman, for instance, was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts.

Schlozman continued to influence elections as an interim U.S. attorney. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent.

Bush's long history of tilting Justice
The administration began skewing federal law enforcement before the current U.S. attorney scandal, says a former Department of Justice lawyer.
By Joseph D. Rich
JOSEPH D. RICH was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. He now works for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
March 29, 2007

THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.

Watch this video starring an off-duty cop in Chicago (no, the cop is NOT the 115 lb woman). Then read this at Reason Magazine.

I'll include the obligatory "only a small percentage of cops are bad" disclaimer here. But when the entire department—right up to the chief of police—continues to cover up for the bad seeds, you really can't blame the public for starting to believe that they're all crooked.

14TH ANNUAL NEW YORK AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL
Celebrating 50 Years of Independence and Cinema:
April 4th – April 12th; April 20th - 21st; May 25th -28th
MANHATTAN * THE BRONX * BROOKLYN

As the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of Ghana— the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain Independence from colonial rule — 2007 marks an important milestone in Africa’s history. Co-presented with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the 14th New York African Film Festival, will reflect this momentous anniversary by paying attention to cinema which engages the struggles for liberation; seeks to undo the cultural legacy of colonialism; and contributes to shaping the political, historical and cultural identities of relatively newly independent nations and cinemas in the intervening years. In addition to commemorating this milestone celebration with a selection of rare archival footage of early post independence nations, new works by talented directors who represent the future of African cinema will also be screened.

The festival runs at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, April 4 through April 12. The second presentation of the NYAFF will be held at the Bronx Museum of the Arts , April 20 and 21. The festival concludes with screenings at BAMCinematek (Brooklyn Academy of Music) from May 25 through May 28.

It's one thing to say that slavery, so long ago, was wrong; quite another to discuss our complicity in its lingering effects. That's why Delegate Michael L. Vaughn, who sponsored the Maryland House measure, says the apology isn't about reparations but opening a dialogue to bridge the racial divide. "Slavery has had a negative effect on relationships between people of color and non-color to this day," Vaughn, who is black, told me. "When we talk about matters of race, people are uncomfortable. I don't think this resolution is the be-all, end-all, but it gets people talking."

Legislators in a handful of states including Missouri and Georgia are considering their own expressions of regret for slavery, and Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, a white Tennessean, just introduced a resolution for a national apology in the U.S. House that reads, in part, "African-Americans continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow — long after both systems were formally abolished — through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity and liberty, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity."

Should States Apologize for Slavery?
By Jeninne Lee-St. John

On Monday Maryland became only the second state after Virginia to officially seek atonement for slavery. The state's House of Delegates approved a measure, already passed by the senate and not requiring the governor's signature, expressing "profound regret for the role that Maryland played in instituting and maintaining slavery and for the discrimination that was slavery's legacy."

While the apology for slavery has been grabbing all the headlines, it's the regret for the legacy of slavery that really matters.

Many non-blacks assert that they shouldn't apologize for something they didn't do. There is logic to that thinking [P6: No, there's not]: if you didn't own slaves or enable others to own slaves, you aren't culpable. But the U.S. didn't do a very good job of converting its former slaves to full-fledged citizens. Slavery gave way to Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, redlining and educational and job discrimination. Although illegal now, these tools perpetuated a racial hierarchy that affects every American today, no matter how subtly. Just compare any rates of achievement, poverty, imprisonment by race; blacks are nowhere closing to catching up.

Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 27 March 2007
01:18 pm ET

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole.

Why did you misuse the provisions of the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which allowed the Attorney General to make emergency replacements without submitting them for Senate confirmation? Given the length of time spent planning the dismissals, what was the obstacle to submitting them for Senate confirmation?

And a question for Patrick Leahy: why are you questioning anything else? Every side issue you discuss dilutes the central issue of abuse of power.