I think the simplest way to go about this is to force the House of Representatives, a body that I’ve described on several occassions as a den of moronity, to stop pretending that minorities don’t face barriers to voting and getting to the polls, and to stop burying their heads in the sand to the fact that many states are enacting laws that are throwing up even more barriers between the poor and minorities and their local polls, whether those barriers are expensive ID cards that can only be obtained in certain locations (naturally far from poor and majority-minority communities) by showing documentation that is either costly or a significant hassle to obtain, or by invalidating the legitimacy of absentee and provisional ballots, or by simply enacting modified poll taxes in other areas. (As an example, see Georgia’s “Voter ID” proposal, which a federal judge recently ruled was illegal and discriminatory: [ Federal Judge Rules Voter ID Card Law in Georgia Is Illegal ])Many state governments are actively looking for ways to slip under the legal fence and keep minorities and the pool from voting, and yet the House still sits on the fence over the Voting Rights Act.

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, has a lot to say on the issue, Henderson points out the smoke and mirror campaign that the opponents of the Act are trying to throw in front of renewal, trying to absorb the contentous issue of illegal immigration into the issue of voting rights, and trying to complain that the Act unfairly targets southern states (even though those states have documented histories of discrimination against minorities and the poor) even though once jurisdictions prove that they do not discriminate in terms of voting, they can be removed from federal oversight. (and, according to Henderson, every jurisdiction that has done so and applied has been removed from oversight without issue)

Henderson’s piece is timely and necessary. Consider signing onto the petition to support the voting rights act below, and contacting your Congressional representatives and let them know how important it is:
[ http://savethevotingrightsact.org/ ]
[ Color of Change: Demand the Senate Protect Voting Rights ]

[ Voting Rights: Still Lacking ]
Source: TomPaine.com

Perhaps the most important part of this story to me, albeit not so much to the Washington Post, is not that Senator Lindsey Graham took a hard line against Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II because of his support and help drafting the kinds of policies that we should all be ashamed of, like the ability of the President to sign bills into law but attach little signing statements that say “by the way, I’m signing this into law, but I don’t have to obey it,” and like the now-infamous “torture memos” that stated that the President as Commander-In-Chief has no obligation to observe the Geneva Convention Accords in deciding how to treat enemy combatants. Haynes was a long time supporter of those policies, and now that he’s up for senate approval to be a judge on a Federal Appeals Court, likely nominated by the President to the position as a reward for faithful service and unquestioning loyalty. But as I said, the most important part of this story isn’t so much Graham’s stance against Haynes, but Haynes’ response to Graham’s assertive questions about his involvement with drafting those policies.

Haynes repeatedly said that he was acting in his capacity as a lawyer, that he didn’t draft the policies personally, and that he was just observing whether or not the policies conformed with the law, and whether they could stand up to legal scrutiny. He claimed that he was not responsible for the policies and that he shouldn’t be held accountable for them.

What a joke.

Seriously-the more people who stand in front of Congress and are grilled on these documents, memos, plans, and policies, the more entertaining it gets-every congressional testimony is like shining a light on cockroaches-they all want a piece of the pie and they all faithfully show up for their rewards, but when someone asks them about their role in getting that pie, they all scatter away, denying responsibility and using the old “I was just doing my job” defense.

I thought we were past the “I was just following orders”/”I was just doing my job” defense at Nuremberg.

[ GOP Senator Criticizes Appeals Court Nominee ]
Source: The Washington Post

Well here’s a shocker. The Pentagon sent a memo to all US forces stating that all detainees held by US forces in all parts of the world will be treated in accordance with the Geneva accords. I know, sounds as if that should have been the procedure all along, but the Pentagon and the Bush Administration had been fighting for a long time to be able to treat detainees any way they saw fit, deprive them of legal protections that would allow even the innocent among them to prove their innocence or force the government to assert their guilt in front of an impartial body, or even to deprive them of their very human right to be treated like human beings, regardless of their crime and whether or not they truly deserve it in the eyes of the people of America.

This is what makes America special, this is what makes America different and great, and this is what makes America such a threat to the world that looks on us with hatred and scorn. We take the moral high ground, and we fight for it-we demand that even our leaders be subject to the rule of law and that they serve at the discretion of the people to whom they have taken an oath, and we demand that even in the most brutal and bloody wars and conflicts that when America takes a prisoner, she grants that prisoner the justice that America beleives is fit for all human beings. We hold trials, we have impartial judges wiegh evidence, we believe in due process and the rule of law, not infinite jail terms for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or torture, even for the most outrageous and deranged ciminal. We refuse to sink to their level, we show them a different way, even if it’s better than they would have recieved, or have given us. We see past anger to justice. That’s America-or at the very least the America that those of us on this side of the debate believe in.

And that vision has won the day, at least for the time being; in the form of both a Supreme Court ruling that the Bush Administration exceeded its power in holding detainees indefinitely without due process and creating secret military tribunals that allowed everything from heresy evidence to evidence obtained under torture to be admissable (a ruling which demanded that Congress assert its oversight power of the executive branch and mandate how detainees will be treated) as well as this cave-in by Pentagon brass that states that detainees will be treated in accordance with Common Article Three of the Geneva Accords.

Let this stand as an example, America can show the world that even in the depth of our anger, those who harm us and violate our laws and threaten our communities will see no mercy, but even so we are at the very least fair and just in exercising that force.

[ U.S. Will Give Detainees Geneva Rights ]
Source: Associated Press (courtesy of Yahoo! News)

I’ve happened to come across a lovely series of articles outlining and describing modern conservatism and how ineffective a mindset it is and how it translates even worse to a method of governance than it does in the minds of the people. John Dean, White House legal counsel to President Nixon (among some of his accomplishments) and author of the book Conservatives without Conscience, tells his story of his encounter with modern conservatism and its thuggery, the aggressive attack-dog-like need for conservative media outlets, talk show hosts, and journalists to distort the facts and tear into anyone who might remotely not sit well with them, and the still resonating anger in the conservative base over Watergate; where they’re not so much angry at the crime as they are at having been caught red handed abusing executive power and breaking the law in the process. Heaven forbid the conservative right be subject to the rule of law.

Dean explains his perspective on what’s happened to the air in Washington:

Contemporary conservatives have become extremely contentious, confrontational, and aggressive in nearly every area of politics and governing. Today they have a tough-guy (and, in a few instances, a tough-gal) attitude, an arrogant and antagonistic style, along with a narrow outlook intolerant of those who challenge their extreme thinking. Incivility is now their norm. “During the Father Bush period, there was a presumption of civility,” Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute observes, but “we lost it under Clinton,” when conservatives relentlessly attacked his presidency, and “then the present President Bush deliberately chose a strategy of being a divider, rather than a uniter.”

Even more troubling, the right-wing presidency of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney has taken positions that are in open defiance of international treaties or blatant violations of domestic laws, while pushing the limits of presidential power beyond the parameters of the Constitution. It is aided and abetted in these actions by a conservative Republican Congress that refuses to check or balance the president. These patterns were apparent long before the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, but the right wing’s bellicose response to the events of that day has escalated into a false claim of legitimacy. Many authors (and journalists) have described the extreme hubris now present in Washington, along with the striking abuses of power. While some of this activity has ostensibly been undertaken in the name of fighting terrorists, much of it is just good old-fashioned power corruption.

But perhaps more interestingly, he explains near the end of his incredible ordeal (that I have no idea how I would deal with if I were in his position) of being turned on even by those who share his own political thinking simply because he didn’t walk the line, that modern day conservatism has become authoritarian, apologetic for even the worst abuses of humanity and lapses of judgement and justice, and so completely uncivil as to lead to the breakdown of any kind of meaningful debate over policy:

Conservatism is not inherently moralistic, negative, arrogant, condescending, and self-righteous. Nor is it authoritarian. Yet all of these are adjectives that best describe the political outlook of contemporary conservatism. I make these observations not as an outsider, but as a conservative who is deeply troubled by what has become of a treasured philosophy. Conservatism has been co-opted by authoritarians, a most dangerous type of political animal.

How do people-particularly those who have never put their life on the line for their country-engage in, or condone, attacks on Senator John McCain’s life-defining experiences as a Vietnam POW or question Senator Max Cleland’s courage in building a new life after his loss of three limbs in Vietnam? What causes them to dispute Senator John Kerry’s valor during voluntary combat duty in Vietnam or to contest Representative Jack Murtha’s war record in Vietnam? Do they believe that by belittling the competence of White House counsel Harriet Miers, by forcing her to withdraw as a nominee for the Supreme Court, they are engaged in legitimate political debate? Why do they remain silent, or even defend, a president who has shamed the nation forever by endorsing an unprecedented and unnecessary use of torture against our enemies? These questions have clear answers. My aim is to explain how and why these conservatives operate as they do, with the thought that others may realize that this current breed of authoritarian conservatism, the behavior of both authoritarian leaders and their credulous followers, constitute a hazardous way for politics and governing. In fact, these people cannot be trusted to exercise the powers of government responsibly.

And with that, Dean’s book has made it onto my summer reading list. I would advise that it make it onto yours as well.

[ How Conservatives Have Become Authoritarians and What it Means ]
Source: OpEd News

I normally try to keep my distance from a lot of the stories that you can read about anywhere on the front pages of most newspapers and things, but I had to reach out to the people of Mumbai, India (formerly Bombay), who have suffered the loss of nearly 150 of their friends, loved ones, and neighbors from a horrific act of terrorism. On Tueday the 11th during the rush hour in India’s financial capital, a series of bombs exploded on commuter trains, killing nearly 150 and injuring hundreds more.

Now, as the people of India pick up the pieces and move on despite the terror plot, we’re left with the ashes to sift through to see why this had to happen and who is responsible. Many people have noted that Mumbai may have been targeted Mumbai is the financial capital of India, others point out the heartlessness of attacking innocent civilians who were simply trying to get home from work on the commuter trains, and right now all evidence points to our usual foes when it comes to attacks like this, muslim extremists, in this case potentially supported by Pakistan, one of our greatest “allies” in the “War on Terror.”

Perhaps what’s most dismaying about this is the fact that with all of the focus and effort and money being spent on “protecting” the people of the world from terror and terrorists, altogether we’ve had limited success. It’s only a matter of time before another attack happens somewhere in the world, and even here in the United States, and perhaps, just perhaps, our current take on tackling terror around the world are just a bit flawed. Don’t get me wrong, America and the rest of the free world (since India is the world’s largest democracy) needs to take a tough stand against terrorism and those who would commit these kinds of crimes against humanity-they should be treated as criminals and brought to justice. However, as necessary as it is, a hard line on one end does not necessarily indicate a hard line on everything. Perhaps we, as the United States, should take this opportunity to find out why these hostile elements are willing to strap bombs to themselves and kill themselves along with our wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, children, friends. This needs to stop, and taking an all spearhead approach won’t do the trick-it won’t work here, and it won’t work anywhere else in the world. And our lack of foresight in this regard makes me sad, and makes me worried.

This is a two pronged “war,” and we need to pay attention to both sides. In the meantime, all we can do is mourn the deaths of the 150 people lost in this attack, and hope and pray for the over 400 others who were injured.

[ Explosions on Trains in India Kill Scores ]
Source: The New York Times

Alan Wolfe has an amazing piece in the Washington Monthly which is essentially a treastise on why conservatives in government, with an overwhelming majority standing in both the executive and the legislative branches, and with some measure of dominance in the judiciary, simply can’t manage to get anything done (and here’s a hint: it’s not the Democrats’ fault) and that even beyond their en-masse impotence, why they fail in general at obtaining the “vision” they have for America. It’s perhaps one of the best breakdowns of conservative thinking and why it runs afoul of America’s cherished and long-held values, ethics, and morals.

Wolfe takes the same tack that I do, that while we have every right and responsibility as Americans to criticize the Bush administration and its actions and failings, that we would collectively as a people do well to remember that the problem isn’t in one man, the problem isn’t one person and his leadership, the problem is with the endemic disease of conservatism that has infected the halls of government and in the minds of Americans who have either fallen victim to the culture of corruption and hate that has been spread by the conservative base, or have signed on wholeheartedly with that same crew.

The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush’s incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president’s principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character flaws are certainly real enough). And the orgy of bribery and special-interest dispensation in Congress is not the result of Tom DeLay’s ruthlessness, as impressive a bully as he was. This conservative presidency and Congress imploded, not despite their conservatism, but because of it.

Contemporary conservatism is first and foremost about shrinking the size and reach of the federal government. This mission, let us be clear, is an ideological one. It does not emerge out of an attempt to solve real-world problems, such as managing increasing deficits or finding revenue to pay for entitlements built into the structure of federal legislation. It stems, rather, from the libertarian conviction, repeated endlessly by George W. Bush, that the money government collects in order to carry out its business properly belongs to the people themselves. One thought, and one thought only, guided Bush and his Republican allies since they assumed power in the wake of Bush vs. Gore: taxes must be cut, and the more they are cut–especially in ways benefiting the rich–the better.

Bingo, got it in one. It’s about time progressives win back the cause by reminding people that its not the money or the wealth of the American people that is at stake here, it’s not the hard earned money of the average person that they percieve as going to waste in the toilet of of government beuracratic madness, these are merely side issues that are percieved as being left/right in nature and in reality are nothing of the sort. What’s at stake is nothing short of the American way of life, the morals and ethics that guide us, the belief in justice, equality, and personal freedom from oppression both institutional and conditional. Wolfe continues:

But like all politicians, conservatives, once in office, find themselves under constant pressure from constituents to use government to improve their lives. This puts conservatives in the awkward position of managing government agencies whose missions–indeed, whose very existence–they believe to be illegitimate. Contemporary conservatism is a walking contradiction. Unable to shrink government but unwilling to improve it, conservatives attempt to split the difference, expanding government for political gain, but always in ways that validate their disregard for the very thing they are expanding. The end result is not just bigger government, but more incompetent government.

A walking contradiction. That’s probably the best description I could find of it anywhere if I tried. Wolfe goes on into an excellent and enlightening political discussion of America’s truly liberal roots, fighting against conservative repression in Europe in the 1700s, and the desire of the American people for a truly democratic and self-directed way of life, free from the power and pressure of entitites like kings, queens, and religious leaders with power. (thus the separation of church and state) With that discussion, Wolfe brings us into the recent past and explains modern day conservatism better than I could ever attempt to, and I agree with him wholeheartedly:

European conservatism had defended authority against liberty and social standing against equality. American conservatives used the language of liberty to justify inequality and promoted democracy to stand against change.

A conservative in America, in short, is someone who advocates ends that cannot be realized through means that can never be justified, at least not on the terrain of conservatism itself.

Wolfe wraps up his history lesson and brings us back to today, with a scathing and incredibly accurate portrayal of the workings of modern American conservatism since the 2000 elections, and the large scale failings of American conservative theory; the notion that big government is bad and must be abolished in order to improve the quality of life for all Americans, but at the same time realizing that those government organizations and agencies actually do improve the quality of life for all Americans, so the end result must be to neuter them by cutting taxes and funding, while meanwhile giving money to the rich and proclaiming political gains because of those tax cuts-efforts which in the end leave behind an incompetent and ineffective government incapable of responding to national crises like Hurricane Katrina, helpless to take care of its people as we saw with the changes made to Medicare, and stubbornly unable to be agile and responsive while simultaneously displaying a wholescale lack of foresight as we see in Iraq.

Behind the surge in right-wing criticism of the Bush presidency is the hope that après le deluge, Americans will give conservatism another chance. But even if Americans were inclined to do so, what kind of conservatism could be offered to them? If it somehow defied all laws of political gravity and carried through on its promise to shrink government, conservatism would add considerably to the level of misery at home and abroad–and lose whatever majorities it may have had in the process. If it managed to return to its roots in a South that no longer exists or a New England losing population to the rest of the country, conservatism would return to the marginalization that characterized its history. If it retreated behind its borders, it would lack the means to protect itself against threats emanating from overseas. The conservative dilemma, omnipresent in the past, looms over conservatism’s future. It can reveal its true face and consign itself to oblivion or it can govern without conviction and produce unending incompetence.

With that, I’ll stop blockquoting poor Wolfe, and leave you with his dissertation to read. It’s quite eye opening, from both a historical and an ideological standpoint.

[ Why Conservatives Can't Govern ]
Source: The Washington Monthly

Okay, not seriously-the two of them probably hate each other, but it wouldn’t be horribly surprising if the two of them had a lot in common. Osama Bin Laden’s attacks on September 11, 2001 drove President Bush to national stature from sagging approval ratings and a still divided American populace, and has delivered into Osama’s hands a scared American population willing to give up the rights
and freedoms that he hates them for in exchange for a vauge and phantom belief that he will be captured, and into President Bush’s hands an American populace scared and willing to give up its rights and freedoms to make him one of the most powerful executives in history, with a congress willing to actively abdicate its oversight and balance authority to him. It’s sad.

And as I and many progressives like me mentioned before the 2004 elections, that while the right-wingers and conservatives were touting Osama Bin Laden’s threats before the elections took place as a ringing “endorsement” of John Kerry, and the notion that he would be happier if Kerry were president, the real aim of Osama’s message was to get Bush elected to a second term, to continue plotting attacks against the United States, and to rally fundamentalists on both sides of the line (the Islamic fundamentalists who believe that America has no concience and desire to change course and change policies in the middle east that have incensed them so, and the christian fundamentalists and neoconservatives on the American side that can’t see beyond their own hatred for all things Islamic) into thinking that Bush was the only person who could keep the American people safe and effectively wage the “war on terror,” two things at which he has largely been a failure.

Allow me the excerpt from the article in question, which derives its information from the new book The One Percent Doctrine, available now:

On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters quickly spun the diatribe as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” But behind the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was trying to help Bush gain a second term.

This stunning CIA disclosure is tucked away in a brief passage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders. Suskind wrote that the CIA analysts based their troubling assessment on classified information, but the analysts still puzzled over exactly why bin-Laden wanted Bush to stay in office.

According to Suskind’s book, CIA analysts had spent years “parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. …

“Their [the CIA's] assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public [was] not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis. Today’s conclusion: bin-Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.

“At the five o’clock meeting, [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: ‘Bin-Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.’”

Again, score one for progressives, albeit an incredibly sad score. It’s horrifying to know, and have known, that the 2004 election played into the terrorists’ hands.

[ CIA: Osama Helped Bush in '04 ]
Source: Consortium News

Meanwhile, at the same time, National Public Radio reported that the CIA has quietly closed its task force dedicated to finding and bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice. Why? Who knows. The unit, known as Alec Station, was created long before Osama Bin Laden was a household name, and had grown in both staff and funding after Sept. 11, but as some officials crow that this means that Osama and Al Queda isn’t nearly as important or prominent as they once were, others have pointed out that this means that other terror organizations have grown to similar stature as Al Queda, even if we don’t know them by name. The CIA states that this has had no impact on their drive to find and capture Bin Laden, and that very well may be true, so who knows? Still, it looks odd, doesn’t it?

[ C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden ]
Source: The New York Times

It’s important to note that when TruthOut posted this article here: [ House Votes to End Offshore Drilling Ban ] they included an editor’s note that I think is equally worthwhile to read:

House Republicans, led by Rep. Richard Pombo, are intent on cramming offshore oil drilling down our throats. The bill that they passed on Thursday to lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling contains some unusually coercive measures, including an unprecedented grant of power to the Secretary of Interior over federal aid to states.

In typical fashion for this Republican Congress, the full text of the bill was not made available in time for lawmakers to read it and analyze it. Even some Republicans are crying foul. See the statement below from Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) about the way changes were made in the bill after midnight on Wednesday for a vote on Thursday. This is almost as bad as the outrageous trick Tom DeLay pulled last summer, adding a $1.5 billion subsidy for offshore oil drilling into the omnibus Energy Policy Act of 2005 in the middle of the night, after the bill had already passed out of the conference committee.

That sounds about right for House Republicans. The entire “people’s house” has descended into a den of conservative madness, corporate interests scratching the backs of republican leadership and paying their way to retreats and outings and only deepening the culture of corruption in the Republican party. But to the issue of offshore drilling; if the energy industry has fooled the republicans with money into believing that drilling for oil off of America’s coasts really will help find more oil and relieve our dependance on foriegn oil, then that’s even more reason why we need to vote them out in November.

Still, apparently 25 years is all it takes for the American people, and indeed the American government-including several people who were there, in congress, when it happened, to forget the incredibly high monetary and environmental cost of offshore drilling, as we saw very plainly in 1969, when offshore drilling platforms off of Santa Barbara leaked. More information: [ Santa Barbara's 1969 Oil Spill ]

And here we are, headed down the same path, giving oil companies permission to cut corners and use whatever cost-cutting dirty trick they can think of to bring in more oil and keep prices down, even as they refuse to reinvest their own massive profits into alternative energies, more efficient fuels, or well, anything but their own pockets. Here we go again. The question this time is whether it’ll take a massive oil spill off of another populated American coast to convince the House that offshore drilling is a bad idea.

[ House Votes to End Offshore Drilling Ban ]
Source: MSNBC

Now there’s a question that deserves an answer. If we’re ever going to stop rape altogether, we as a society need to not just limit our efforts to self-defense classes for women and greater police presence and more well-lit areas, but we also need to get serious about teaching men from the get-go as boys that forcing sex on a woman is wrong, that women and men should be equal partners in the sexual arena, and that we need to revisit the issue of sex and sexuality from a perspective of mutual respect, not from a position of obligation or objectification. It is apalling that in this day and age anyone could possibly suggest that a woman enjoyed being raped, and it’s equally appalling that every day in courtrooms around the country, ridiculously medeival defenses are used by rapists and their lawyers like “she wasn’t wearing underwear” and “she didn’t fight me off” to try and convince a jury that a rape victim “wanted” or “enjoyed” being violated. It’s apalling that in this day and age, a woman’s occupation or sexual history plays a role at all in a rape trial, for example.

But somehow, the calvacade of moronity continues. Allow me the opening paragraphs of the article I’m about to link, which hone in on the issue with incredible accuracy:

If there was ever any question about why women’s voices should be mandatory at the top levels of decision making in any field, last week’s episode of the F/X drama “Rescue Me” provides an answer that is as unambiguous as it is revolutionary.

In an episode that aired early last week, the show’s main character, Tommy Gavin (played by series co-creator Denis Leary), rewards his estranged wife’s perceived insubordination (that is, talking back) with what, in the eyes of these writers and producers, is understood to be a reasonable male response to acts of female insubordination: He rapes her.

And, they would have you believe, she enjoyed it.

That we should still be debating, at this place in history, the idea that women either deserve or enjoy being physically attacked and sexually subjugated beggars the imagination. But it is indeed where we are, as events like this — and others, such as the decision of the dean of students at the University of Nairobi to open a recent talk with a joke about rape — make clear.

So let us be clear in return: Rape is not a joke, nor is it mere fodder for the entertainment media’s use. Rape is, in every case, a violation of law, international and domestic; the forceful sexual assault of other human beings without their consent carries criminal penalties because we as a society believe that the right to bodily integrity is more than just a catch phrase. Moreover, as our decades of work on behalf of women have taught us us, women do not, by any measure, “enjoy” being sexually assaulted. Sexual assault crimes are motivated by the need to control, humiliate and harm — and those are precisely the effects these crimes visit upon their victims when they are enacted.

I knew I didn’t watch that show for a reason, this just pins it down. My question, where are the conservative religious groups who usually leap at any kind of sexual innuendo on television? Are they complaining to the FCC about this? I doubt it, but they should be. It shouldn’t just be women’s groups who are incensed by this kind of social message-it should be all of us.

[ Why Are Men Still Joking About Rape? ]
Source: AlterNet

This is the kind of story that makes me proud to stand on the left, to know that if there are any politicians in Congress that I can identify with it’s the Democrats, the kind of story that lays out bare the real differences between Democrats and Republicans. While the Republicans claim that raising the national Minimum Wage rate will cost the economy billions and force small business owners to lay off workers and cost jobs, they somehow rationalize this logic with draining billions of dollars from the treasury in big business tax breaks and by waiving taxes for the wealthiest Americans among us. They lie to the American people and say that business owners will have to lay off every worker for every two that get a pay raise, which is categorically false, and gloss over the massive benefits that were seen when the minimum wage was raised last in 1996. (that have been subseqently been eroded by inflation)

The Democrats know better. They remember the positive effect on the economy from the last minimum wage increase, they see the increased cost of living in America that’s only going up. They see the incredibly high gasoline prices, energy prices, and cost to buy a home increasing. So who needs a break, the family with two parents working two jobs on minimum wage who can barely scrape enough money together to put food on the table and clothe their children, or, well, their own congressional colleagues?

That’s right-Democrats have vowed to stave off any pay raises for Congress until the national minimum wage is increased to keep up with inflation and the cost of living. The Republicans, of course, oppose this, and would love to take their pay raise and “cut and run” so to speak, from a debate that’s actually affecting real people and real lives and scurry back to their list of divisive non-issues like flag burning and gay marriage. But I stand with the Democrats on this one. It’s an often made joke that Congress gives itself a pay raise every year while the average working American gets little to nothing but an increase in taxes, and it’s fitting that it’s the Democratic party whose ear these concerns have reached.

And yet, here’s a story that you won’t find on the front page of any newpaper, or any politics section, or even broadcast on some of the national media networks-and yet somehow there’s supposed to be some kind of liberal bias in the media? Interesting.

[ Democrats Vow to Block Congressional Pay Raises Until Minimum Wage Increased ]
Source: CNN