February 2012 Archives
No single issue in my memory has been more divisive than Affirmative Action. We usually understand this as the attempt to remediate past discrimination, based on race, and repair present disadvantages that still plague minorities disproportionately. While we can't undo slavery, legal segregation, unequal educational opportunities and de facto segregation by neighborhoods, we can try to make up for these abuses. We can try to repair the wounds and right the wrongs by giving special consideration in hiring, promotion and school admissions based on race.
That this is a virtue is a virtual article of faith in minority communities. That this is a racist outrage and the very opposite of our goal of a "color blind" society is an article of faith in the conservative community. That being the case, the real political and intellectual battle is in the middle.
This issue has greatly troubled many in the Jewish community in particular and sundered the once strong alliance between Jews and African-Americans. Having known discrimination, oppression and violence based on religion/ethnicity--sometimes under cover of law (mostly in Europe) and sometimes only by gentle and gentile "Gentlemen's agreements," many of us have an understandable reluctance to legally define race.
The Jewish community's historical experience is that any program that separates you out for benefits can be turned back on you as persecution.
We fear that if benefits are to accrue to a specific group there must be some kind of definition, and this opens the question of who decides--the government, the institution or the Human Resources person? Are you any race you claim to be? Are you the race that you look like in a photo on an application? Or must we institute blood tests? They would, of course with today's DNA testing, be pretty accurate. But then how much minority blood do you need to qualify?
Do we want to get into the mess that so many Native American tribes are experiencing with blood courts to decide who is Native American enough to get casino dividends? Different tribes are allowed to set their own Blood Quantum definitions--and they run from ½ to 1/16th. Blood tests for race are a frightening can of worms.
There is no question in my mind that as much as I'd like a colorblind society and a meritocracy, we are not there. Race, however we understand it, still matters. People of Color are still disproportionately cut out of equal education and equal promotion; they are disproportionately arrested, convicted and sentenced more harshly than non-minorities.
How do we fix what is so clearly broken without falling into moral and philosophical incoherence? Can we end judging people on their race by, well, judging people on their race? Is this mixed message and method like "killing for peace" or "fornicating for chastity?" My head says Yes. The road of racial preferences is fraught with peril.
The easy answer is to give benefits by socio-economic status. Since minorities are over-represented in the lower quartile, we could give preference without aiding middle class minorities who don't need the bonus points. But isn't giving any kind of preference not based on merit wrong? Well, we give extra points to veterans. Universities give extra points to "legacy applicants." Why not socio-economic status?
And yet, as long as employers assert that they can't find qualified people of color for certain jobs, I must remain suspicious of the good will and good faith of the powerful majority. I remember when Big Bands in the 40s claimed they couldn't find qualified Negro musicians or when a medical doctor I knew was turned down for a lease in a Brentwood apartment in the 60s because he didn't "qualify." They said the reason was financial, but we tested it and as students we applied with no real income or savings and were accepted.
This is a hot button topic for me because it pulls the middle in two directions and is filled with multiple truths and competing values. What is clear, however, is that in the politics of the moment the nuances will be left behind and the talking points will be simplistic and often offensive to both justice and reason.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Race should never be a factor in college admissions because society's downtrodden, many of whom are the reason we need special task forces, don't really need a hand up. After all, they have access to schools and textbooks like the rest of us. They might not be the best schools with the best teachers and the best textbooks but they are a place to learn for anyone wishing to take advantage of the opportunity, which many choose not to do.
They are those who have yielded to the call of the wild instead, to the easy money of drugs by hanging out in the streets, frittering their lives away and causing others harm. Anyone who wants to learn to read and write and think can, even coming from a broken home in a broken neighborhood. It is just harder that way but it can be done because it has been done too many times. Even though a loving and supportive family helps, some things are just a matter of internal motivation and learning to read and write and calculate are among them. Opportunities are created, and the desire to go to school and make something of oneself is among them. Besides, there is the Internet, and there are libraries filled with books for the borrowing and there are opportunities for those who care and are willing to put in long hours and sweat for their goals.
But in our effort to help too many who don't really care and have created excuses for themselves more numerous and repetitive than grains of sand at the beach, the system has bent over backwards to even up the score much to the determent of those who do deserve a seat and ironically, are held back because of their color. To avoid this, they should assign each student a number and pick from that because it rewards the most deserving in the long run and is also less colorblind.
I love rock n roll. I grew up on it. But what induced or seduced the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to undertake rolling a great big rock from the desert to the museum and install it at a cost estimated at between 5 and 10 million dollars. So do the good folks at the LA County Museum of Art have rocks in their heads? It's a real question, and I haven't taken a final stand but it is hard to imagine how, in this economy, spending those bucks to truck and install a 340-ton chunk of granite seemed to be a good idea.
I know that Art is a big, amorphous and relative concept filled with Philistines who say, "I don't know much but I know what I like." I don't know if this large chunk of desert is Art in itself or if the Art is created only when it is moved from its natural habitat and seen in a different and more urban setting. A kind of "fish out of water" thing redone as a "rock out of the desert." Or maybe it's just a pretty awesome rock in itself and would attract us any place it resided. If so, then 10 million dollars would deliver a lot of folks to view it in situ.
There are great philosophical issues about Art, and they were handled and satirized quite nicely in the recent run at Pasadena Playhouse of Yasmina Reza's play, Art. Is Art only opinion? Is taste in Art absolutely relative or only relatively relative?
They say (whoever "they" are) that there is no disputing taste. There is, however, a duty to dispute finances. The next time the Museum solicits me for a contribution, or denies me admission to a special exhibition that they decide isn't included in my basic membership, they should not expect a positive response of either a contribution or the renewal of my membership.
This installation is going to be raised up on invisible rails, and so it will seem to float above the heads of the Art aficionados who will walk underneath. Thus it is to be called, Levitated Mass. Surely they meant Mess. How this idea got floated and funded are the real reason and gravity-defying questions. How did this survive Museum Board meetings? So, I'm no Art expert but I don't take for granted that the museum board knows that there is Art in this granite.
I don't know how they thought this idea would fly, but given our proximity to the San Andreas Fault, we can only hope this rock will not roll.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
The U.S. Supreme Court almost certainly will vote before the November presidential election on whether to scrap race as a factor in college admissions. The conservative majority has time and again tipped their hand that they are chomping to do away with it. The recusal of moderate justice Elena Kagan virtually assures they'll get their way. The justices may not have had thoughts about how affirmative action and the issue of race will play out in the presidential campaign. But it will again present all the thorny, potentially inflammatory, sore spots that race always pricks.
The likely GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum, will have an easy time with the issue. They will simply repeat the stock conservative mantra that discrimination is discrimination and must be opposed. Conservatives have backed that up with decades of lawsuits, ballot initiatives, and administrative rulings that have torpedoed any and every effort to use race to promote diversity. The assault on affirmative action will do more than just give the GOP candidate a chance to pose as the defender of a color blind America. It also potentially revives affirmative action as a campaign wedge issue. The issue largely fell off the nation's radar scope nearly a decade ago when the Supreme Court narrowly upheld the University of Michigan's right to use race as a factor in increasing minority numbers at the school.
The Bush administration at first vigorously backed the challenge to the University's affirmative action program. But mostly due to the strong and very public dissent from then Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Bush waffled and ultimately softened his opposition to it, and pretty much accepted the decision.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, affirmative action was not an issue. GOP presidential candidate John McCain and Obama made only the barest mention of it. And that came only in response to when California anti-affirmative action crusader Ward Connerly plopped his anti-affirmative action measure on ballots in three states, one of which was McCain's home state of Arizona. McCain backed the Connerly measure. He insisted that he backed equal opportunity and opposed discrimination. Obama opposed the initiatives. Connerly quickly jumped on Obama for it, noting that he cut radio ads in 2006 that hammered his Michigan anti-affirmative action initiative. Obama unabashedly said that if the measure passed it would hurt women and minorities in getting jobs and in education. Connerly tried to use Obama's opposition to his initiative as a foil. It didn't diminish voter support for Obama.
But Obama's election changed things. Race now inched back onto the public stage with conservatives watching hawk like for any hint that the president would in word or policy for any tilt toward minorities in word or administration policies. The faintest sign of that from Obama would have brought loud yelps that he was pandering to minorities and that racial favoritism was the hidden agenda of his administration.
Obama didn't give that hint. But the suspicion that race lurked closely under the surface in the Obama administration's policy decisions didn't evaporate, and if the president wouldn't play into conservative's hands on race, then they could always be manufacture a racial issue. The recent spate of musings and articles by talk show hosts web sites, blogs, and news reports that the president has written off white workers in his reelection bid fits neatly into the bogus scenario that minorities are poised to be the prime beneficiaries of a second Obama term.
This makes the Supreme Court's decision to take up affirmative action even more irresistible to the GOP as an issue to back Obama into a corner and hopefully get him to take a strong public position in support of affirmative action. If that happens the GOP will quickly pounce and play it up for all its worth to attempt to prick the racial suspicions and sensitivity of some white voters. But this might not be as cut and dried as the GOP would like all to believe.
Congress has repeatedly backed away from totally dismantling affirmative action programs, beginning a decade ago when lawmakers shelved anti-affirmative action legislation. President Bill Clinton followed suit. He drew much heat for his plan to modify some aspects of affirmative action programs, but eventually dropped his administration's talk about further watering down affirmative action programs.
Neither the Obama administration nor any of the GOP presidential contenders have uttered a word about the Supreme Court's decision to take up the case. It's simply too hot an issue at this early stage of the campaign to weigh in on. But the court's likely anti-affirmative action ruling timed for November or before will almost certainly radically change that. The certainly now is that affirmative action will be shoved back on the presidential plate.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Allo, again....
Yes, there's another post up on wordpress about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune of Internet dating.
Shalom and a Bientot,
Yours Truly,
G.Tz. ; )
The new ploy among ultra-conservatives, right wing talk show jocks, on their websites, and blogs is to claim that President Obama has written off white workers in his re-election bid. This notion has even crept into a few mainstream news outlets that've done a spate of stories on Obama's supposed snub of white workers. Obama, as this line goes, is pandering to Hispanics, Gays, environmentalists, women, and left liberals with his push for comprehensive immigration reform, his inch toward open defense of gay marriage, the scrapping of the Keystone XL Pipe line, his picking a fight with the Catholic Church over contraceptives and abortion, and his relentless drive to tax the rich.
The problem with this silliness is that then Democratic presidential candidate, and after his election, President Obama has been careful to a fault to make sure that he took no stance on issues that did not have either majority or a broad consensus of public support; support that cut across ethnic and gender lines. The even bigger problem is that despite Obama's caution, and care in hewing close to general public sentiment on policy issues, the majority of lower income, white blue collar workers, especially males, have never bought his policies or him. Polls have consistently shown that this racial gap has perennially been big and daunting for Obama.
The gap is especially perplexing given that Obama in endless forays to cities, workplaces, and outposts throughout the country has made it a point to meet and greet, and hold formal and informal discussions with legions of blue collar, and rural whites. He's bent over backward to assure them at appearances at plant closings or openings, or jobs or home foreclosure townhalls that his administration is working in their interest.
Many photo shots show Obama with hands out stretched to blue collar workers on his stops. Yet, his unswerving race neutral, low-keyed, scrupulously non-confrontational, approach to presidential governance has done nothing to change the attitudes of many white voters. This is in part due to the ancient mix of racial suspicions and doubts about black competence, intelligence and ability, pure blind, naked bigotry, and despite his more than three years at the presidential helm, unease with an African-American holding the world's most visible and important political power position.
The first warning sign that Obama's white working class, male support was shaky and tenuous cropped up not in the campaign against GOP Presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 but in the war with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, Clinton drubbed Obama with the white vote. Many white Democratic blue collar voters openly said that they would not vote for Obama not because of any great love for Clinton, but because he was black. It took a near holy crusade turnout by black voters in both states to seal Obama's win in the two key states and ultimately the White House.
McCain played it close to the vest on race during the general election campaign and made it clear that race would not be an issue. He sternly warned that there would be no subtle racial pandering from anyone connected with his staff. But that wasn't enough. Though Obama did better than Democratic presidential contenders Al Gore and John Kerry in 2000 and 2004 respectively with white blue collar voters, McCain got the majority of the white vote. That was enough to keep him relatively competitive. But McCain's blind eye to race didn't mean that race was permanently off the table in national politics or that it would be a non-factor in Obama's 2012 re-election bid. The GOP front runners made light probes into the racial mine field with their quips about welfare and blacks (Rick Santorum), food stamp president (Newt Gingrich), and carping about entitlements (Mitt Romney).
A Quinnipiac Poll in February found that white males by a margin of nearly two to one voiced disapproval over the way Obama is handling the presidency. The continued high disapproval ratings among this group is even more glaring since it comes at the point where more Americans than in the past year say they approve of Obama's performance. This does not include a majority of white males, let alone a majority of white blue collar males.
The GOP has played hard on the anger, frustration, and hatred that many males harbor toward government and their swoon over military toughness. And for four decades before Obama took office. This fury was the ace-in-the-hole for winning GOP presidents, and even in his loss as in it boosted McCain in 2008.
Despite deep doubts among voters about the competence, credibility, conservatism (Romney) and the warfare that the GOP presidential candidates have waged against each other, recent polls still show that either Romney or Santorum would be in a horse race with Obama. To say that Obama has brought this on himself by dissing white workers is ludicrous at best, and at worst a back door play of the race card against him.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
What would happen is the Occupy movement, generally considered to be on the left, and the Tea Party, generally assumed to be on the right met ? Well, they did meet, at least philosophically.
What did they do? Did they argue? Did they fight? Did fisticuffs break out--or worse, a hockey game? No. They had lunch: A feast of turkey and cheese sandwiches, chips and apple juice in Freedom Plaza in Washington DC.
Naturally there was something either to celebrate or protest, and they were protesting the broad over-reach of the government. Now this did not involve the big issues of taxation, abortion, or religious liberty. There was no pitting of the 1% against the 99%. Class warfare never came up.
They were mad as hell that a pre-schooler in North Carolina had had her home-packed, mommy-made lunch confiscated because it didn't pass some moron's interpretation of Federal requirements for school lunches. Apparently, while we cannot educate our children nor protect them from school violence or molestation, the Feds are able to crack down on their idea of bad nutrition. Maybe the turkey was too processed, the cheese dangerously fatty. Maybe the apple juice was not organic. Obviously the potato chips posed a clear and present danger to the health of all. As the kids say, with an appropriate tone of derision, "Whatever."
I suspect that left and right can pretty much agree here. The government looks small and foolish. Well, no, that's not quite right. Let me rephrase: The government looks big and stupid.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Lessons in Futility
Afghan citizens from virtually every political view, region and tribe are rioting the streets. Afghan soldiers whom we trained are turning their American supplied guns on us while on joint operations. Their anger is fueled, at this moment, by our having carelessly burned some Qurans. But there is a long sad history of our not knowing where we are, who they are and what we are doing.
It is far past the time that we can be acting like we have just arrived in Afghanistan. If after more than a decade we still do not understand the most fundamental cultural issues, it is too late to learn.
They may have accepted our apologies for burning and otherwise desecrating Qurans in the beginning. They may have been able to accept that war is messy and we did not mean to bomb a wedding or a school. They may have been able to understand that not knowing the rules of their culture, we went into villages, herded the men outside and thus humiliated them in front of their wives and children and then in searching their homes touched their women as we tried to make sure they were unarmed.
However, even if they tolerated this ten years ago, our apologies have lost credibility. Our cultural ignorance and insensitivity have radically undermined our efforts to do good and to improve their lot. We just are no longer viable as agents of their hopes.
It is far past time that they will accept their families as understandable, if regrettable, collateral damage. It is past time for any American not to know the cultural rules.
But Qurans are just books, we might think. But the Quran is far more like the Torah, not a mere object but something with iconic and totemic value. For many Americans it is like burning the flag--only far more so.
With the Quran you have the central object of their faith--for all Muslims, Sunni and Shiite, friends and enemies. It is to Believers the holy, uncreated and eternal word of God. The nature of the Quran is not simply symbolic but its holiness is intrinsic--like the Torah in Judaism or the consecrated Host in Christianity.
When we are careless, insensitive and ignorant it is just not acceptable after a decade. They simply cannot believe our apologies because they cannot believe that after all this time a nation as smart, as technologically superior and as sophisticated as we are could possibly be this stupid. It must, they believe, be active and intentional disrespect. And frankly, our ignorance seems at times willful.
After ten years of spending our blood and treasure, we have manufactured enemies not allies. From the pictures of Abu Gharib in Iraq, to the pictures of Marines urinating on dead Taliban, to the myriad accounts of desecrated Qurans, they no longer give us any benefit of any doubt.
Now I know that we may get righteous and defensive and understandably question their sensitivity. We may wonder at their brutality towards each other, their persecution and mutilation of their own women, their brutality towards their enemies. We would be justified in our outrage at the misbehavior of the Taliban and their allies. But they are not representing themselves as our friends. They are truthfully representing themselves as our sworn enemies. We, on the other hand, are posing as the friend, protector and the defender of Afghan freedom. We are not doing a good job--and no amount of apologies, investigations and restarts can erase the perception that we are culturally uneducable.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
For anyone who's ever doubted that I have a more sensitive side, read on.
G. Tz. ; )
There is a clear assault on women, their rights, their progress, their reproductive choices and their hard-won place in society. I suppose it is a kind of Marxist thing--a struggle over control of the means of production, which is to say the means of reproduction. Men want back in control.
It was inevitable. Every revolution creates, in the displaced class, the seeds of the counter-revolution. So, after the amazing gains--yet never reaching true equality--the push back is in full aggressive and aggrieved advance.
This is so clear in our contemporary politics with Virginia trying to require every woman who is considering an abortion to be punished by submitting to rape. Rape? Surely I must be exaggerating. No, it is literally and legally true. Without any medical necessity, the men of the legislature want to require submission to a medically unnecessary vaginal probe. Rape is legally defined as the penetration of the vagina against the will of the woman by any body part or object. This is clearly punitive.*
What could these men be thinking? Well, what are they thinking when they want to make women carry unwanted fetuses to term--even if the pregnancies resulted from rape or incest? What are they thinking when they attack not only choice but also even contraception? Do they not understand that abortions do not take place without unwanted pregnancies? What is Rick Santorum thinking when he says that pre-natal sonograms lead to abortions 90% of the time? He's not thinking, and his number is untrue. If genetic abnormalities are found, that number might come into play, but most pre-natal sonograms are normal and the pregnancies are carried to term. In some cases the sonogram finds a treatable problem and lives are actually saved.
What was usually politically adept Darryl Issa thinking when he put together his congressional panel on reproductive services in the Health Care Plan and had only men? There was the platonic picture of being tone deaf. Or doesn't he actually care?
There is something either clouding the judgment of men or some deep and hostile condescension towards women.
This is not just here with the sick sideshow of our current political season. It is happening all over the world in virtually every nation and perpetrated by virtually every faith--well, every orthodox faith. When Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel curse and spit on an 8-year-old Orthodox (but not Ultra enough) girl, what religion are they practicing? When the Taliban stone to death a victim of rape for being unchaste, where is the Mercy and Compassion demanded by their faith?
Strangely, the answer that both these Ultra Jews and Ultra Muslims give is the same. Oh Hallelujah, agreement at last. They want to protect women from the lustful thoughts and acts of easily corruptible men. So, out of love and respect they persecute, imprison and mutilate women to protect themselves from having sexual thoughts. I guess the twisted logic is that if your screaming and beating a female your violence covers up any sexual lust--and violence is to be preferred. Were they more sophisticated they would know of the link between sex and violence. But if they were more sophisticated they wouldn't be the retrograde Neanderthals they clearly are.
It is so strange and ironic to watch priests pontificate about women's health, reproductive services and sexual morality. These are the very church leaders, in their shining silks and silver, who couldn't protect the young boys under their care and covered up the abuse and still protect serial abusers. They have the chutzpah to pose as the moral authorities on women? Well, they mean well because they care about what is good for women and they know that God has a plan for every sperm and ovum. Every life is precious until it is born. Then they can be abused, abandoned, untreated and unloved. What could make a zygote sacred and a life not worthy of the full efforts of our society? Maybe just the passage through a vagina corrupts the baby.
There is a rage here, a deep hostility and resentment. What is this about? I suspect that it does indeed go back to reproduction and the fear of women's sexuality and the concomitant fear that unbridled sexuality will lead women not to be faithful and submissive.
As women have gained status, become professionals, participated in athletics that other times just knew were too difficult for the poor dears--running the mile or a marathon, judo, boxing--and now are serving in combat, men must fear the loss of our unique status. No longer the automatic breadwinner, no longer really required for child-rearing (according to some) no longer fiscally and physically the boss, there is fear leading to anger leading to pushback. All of this is rationalized as caring and protecting. But as in the Taming of the Shrew, it is often killing with kindness.
Let's protect women by putting them on a pedestal and putting the pedestal in the home and then locking the gates. Ah yes, this is what the religious police did in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. A girl's school caught fire and the police drove the terrified girls back into the burning building because they did not have their burqas on. Death by burning was evidently preferable to immodesty.
When many of us saw that story, we breathed a smug and superior sigh of relief knowing that we were immune from such retro-barbarism. But that was before a bunch of guys, having sworn oaths to protect and defend the constitution of Virginia, tried to punish women for considering abortion with medical rape.
Back in the days following 9-11 we used to talk about what we must do or must not to so that the terrorists didn't win. Well, the foreign terrorists have been kept at bay, but too many men have adopted their thinking, feeling, fearing and hostility to women. We said that we went into Afghanistan to protect women from the Taliban. Now we could be giving lessons to the Taliban.
*Virginia Governor Bob McDonnel came to his senses and to keep his prospects alive as a Republican Vice Presidential possibility for Romney, got the vaginal probe dropped from the bill. Still, the bill including rape by government originally passed the Virginia House of Delegates.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
This may be a teachable moment--and the sad, premature death of Whitney Houston may serve as a cautionary tale. Its lessons could save lives--and maybe even the Republican Party.
One of the issues that came up in the ceaseless coverage of her death was the responsibility of her friends and colleagues. For all who knew she was headed over the brink, was there no one who could have pointed out what she had begun to do to herself once again?
Some of the smug critics were all over her family and friends for not stopping her. But truly, it is very hard to stop someone bent on their own destruction and in powerful denial. Intervention does not mean success.
Still, there is a duty to try to stop someone from driving over the cliff. It is in this spirit that I call for an intervention to attempt to stop Mitt Romney from continuing to make that hard right turn that will take him off the road and into the abyss.
The farther right Santorum goes the faster Romney twists the steering wheel and stomps on the gas trying to follow him. As Santorum goes both more socially and religiously conservative, he is making himself unelectable, and Romney seems blithely to be following him.
This is so unnatural for Romney. Every word seems inauthentic and thus further advances the narrative--and not a Democratic or media narrative, but also a Republican one--that Romney is deeply uncomfortable in his skin and has been in so many positions that he no longer knows who he is. All he knows is what he wants--and frankly I'm not convinced he truly wants it. He may be another son bent on the call of duty to redeem his father's failure.
A successful and moderate governor of Massachusetts, a successful businessman and one of the people credited with saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, he has to run away from his core beliefs and his life's accomplishments. He distances himself from his moderate record as governor. Gingrich made him distance himself from the mega-bucks he made at Bain Capital by labeling it, arguably accurately, as Vulture Capitalism. Now Santorum is trying to deny him his Olympic success by claiming he did it on earmarked appropriations as a kind of Federal Bailout. Whoa--RomneyCare plus Bailout. Why he is Obama JR. He just cannot run to Santorum's right. Romney countering by charging Santorum with being a Big Government Insider and Big Spender, even if true, is not credible given his own record.
Ironically, besides his family, the one true and sincere constant in his life is his Mormon faith--and out of reasonable fear of anti-Mormon sentiment, he tries to remain theologically vague. We'll see if Santorum lets him stay vague or if Santorum will play the non-Christian card he keeps flashing at Obama.
Romney's friends, hell, Republican grownups, need to intervene here. If Romney keeps going right, he will not be able to tack back to the center to win the independents, moderates and Reagan Democrats. And if he tries to, he will only prove the charges against him of not being a real conservative. Seduced and abandoned, the Tea Party folks may well be split between apathy and a third party. If Romney gains the nomination, it will be a poisoned prize.
This is the last moment for Friends of Mitt and Friends of the Party to intercede. They must tell Romney that this way madness and defeat lie. They must tell him he cannot credibly pretend to inhabit the same political, theological, economic and foreign policy Zip code as Santorum. They must tell him that now, right now, he needs to have the Republican version of Clinton's Sista Souljah Moment. You'll remember that this is when Clinton drew the line, cutting off the far left and social radicals and establishing his bona fides as a centrist. It is not yet too late, but the cliff approaches. Time ran out for Whitney, but Mitt still lives. Will no one tell him the Truth?
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act must be renewed every twenty five years. In 1981 despite some grumbles and idle threats to oppose its renewal from a few in the Reagan administration, President Reagan dutifully signed the renewal legislation. A quarter century later, again despite the grumbles and idle threats from some in Congress to delay or even block passage, President Bush again dutifully signed the renewal legislation with a big congratulatory celebration at the White House signing. The renewal of the Voting Rights Act by two conservative GOP presidents seemed to assure that any effort to scrub the Voting Rights Act from the federal books was a pipe dream.
However, that may soon change. A federal lawsuit by Shelby County, Alabama has quietly worked its way up through the appeals courts. The county wants much of the Act dumped and has recycled the same old argument that it is outdated, discriminatory, and a blatant federal intrusion into states rights. In times past this claim would have gone nowhere. But during the GOP presidential debates Texas Governor Rick Perry lambasted the Act. That squarely put it back into public focus and political play. State Attorney Generals in three states have endorsed the Alabama county's challenge. The announcement that Attorney General Eric Holder will vigorously enforce provisions of the Voting Rights Act to prevent voter suppression raised an additional howl from conservatives.
Then there's the Supreme Court. There is little to stop the court from taking a fresh look at the Act, and even ruling that the key requirement that Southern states get "preclearance" from the Justice Department before making any changes in its voting rights laws and procedures is unconstitutional. There are a slew of other challenges in addition to Alabama's to the Act that could give the court's five conservative judges more than enough ammunition to scrap the Act.
The crop of Tea Party driven House Republicans could give the court even more cover to question the constitutionality of the Act. GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul would be one of those. He's publicly boasted that he would not have backed the 1964 Civil Rights Act if he had been in Congress then. On the fortieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act signing in 2004 Paul opposed the symbolic congressional resolution lauding it. Though Bush signed the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 2006 a core of House Republicans stalled the legislation for more than a week and demanded that hearings be held. They used the same old argument that it punishes the South for past voting-discrimination sins, and they didn't like the idea of bilingual ballots.
A renewed assault on the Act fits right into the Tea Party's endless attacks on the alleged federal government for over intrusiveness. It would also be set against the backdrop of the hotly contested 2012 battle for the White House and conservatives efforts to maintain or expand their congressional numbers.
The GOP has already pecked at eroding the Act with the rash of photo identifications laws that the GOP governors and GOP controlled state legislatures have enacted. They have one aim, and that's to discourage and damp down the number of minority and poor voters that overwhelmingly vote Democratic.
Despite the solid bipartisan support that the Act got in prior congresses and from GOP presidents, the Act has always been more controversial than many have believed. The popular myth is that congressional leaders were so appalled and enraged at the shocking TV clips of Alabama state troopers battering civil rights marchers in Selma in April 1965 that they promptly passed the landmark law that restored voting rights to Southern blacks. What's forgotten is that the marchers were there in the first place because the bill was badly stalled in the Senate and the House. It took nearly five months to get the bill passed.
Then Senate minority leader, Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen, heaped amendments on the bill that included scrapping the poll tax ban, adding exemptions and escape clauses for Southern counties, and excluding all states outside the South. House Republicans tacked more amendments on the bill to weaken it. The fight over these amendments dragged on for weeks in Congress. The biggest fight, though, was over the poll tax ban. The tax was the most odious and hated symbol of Southern racial exclusion. Civil rights leaders were enraged when the Senate refused to eliminate the poll tax, arguing that it wouldn't pass constitutional muster. House leaders agreed.
There's no real threat that a majority in Congress will switch gears and vote to scrap the Act in the immediate future. However, the action of many state officials, attorney generals and the always looming shadow of the Supreme Court are strong warnings that the Voting Rights Act could again be in the sights of the GOP.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
The headlines dance before me: "Candidates Deny Evolution" "Women's Reproductive Choices Under Attack" "Will Troop Withdrawal Endanger Our Prestige?" "Man's Role in Climate Change Questioned" "New Nuclear Power Plant Authorized"
I must be having a bad trip. Someone must have slipped some acid (LSD) in my granola, and I am actually snoring away in some crash pad in Berkeley, and the year is 1969. It simply is not possible that the year is 2012 and 43 years have passed since I was a grad student at Berkeley in the 60s.
There is no way that I could be reading news stories about candidates for the presidency of the United States denying the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. We knew that was settled long ago. Hell, I was in high school when I took my date to see Inherit the Wind. That this is still a question is beyond the ravings of the Flat Earth Society.
There is a dispute about our impact on the environment? Really? We knew in 1969 that oil was a bad idea, exhaust emissions were poisoning the air, and that we really needed to look for alternate sources of power. Burning coal polluted the air we surface-dwellers breathed and coal dust poisoned the dank air that miners inhaled. Dams desecrated wild rivers and drowned pristine valleys. Nuclear reactors were unlikely to be fool proof. Too many fools and too little proof. We talked about solar power, wind power and generating heat and electricity from composting--as they were already doing in Holland.
Are there really still holdouts who think the sea to too big to be poisoned by our effluents, the forests too vast to be destroyed, and the sky too enormous to be changed by our pollution? They must be the same folks who believed in the infinite herds of buffalo and endless pods of whales.
It is kind of interesting and ironic that the combination of humility and arrogance is so toxic. I mean, there are some so arrogant that they believe that they can do anything and so humble that they don't think that they're actually doing irreparable harm to the planet. We used to say, "Love your trash or it will bury you." It is not possible that 43 years later any of this is controversial.
Somewhere, in my accidentally drug-induced delirium, I think I'm reading that politicians are still debating a woman's right to choose. Some respected politicians (an oxymoron even then, er, I mean, now) want women to carry unwanted children to term even if the pregnancies resulted from rape or incest. Seriously? This was settled. The Supreme Court had spoken. Women no longer had to assert that they were so mentally unbalanced that they couldn't have a baby without going fully insane. People want to roll back the clock on that too? I'd wager that it's probably men. But wagering is a sin. Although in some hallucinations the states seem have gone into the numbers racket. What exactly is Lotto?
Presidential candidates ( by another strange coincidence,all men) are even arguing about a woman's access to birth control? Now my nightmare must be turning into a satire. Surly this is a Smoothers Brothers sketch. Birth control controversial? No way.
The priests with whom I went to the Graduate Theological Union were all pro-birth control. The Church was changing. The Second Vatican Counsel, under Pope John XXIII, recommended that The Pill be approved. Preventing unwanted pregnancies really reduces abortions. The Church got it. No way could they retreat from that sensible and compassionate position. My priest friends must be Bishops and Cardinals by now. They would not have slipped backwards from the future.
By '69 we all got it that fighting land wars was a bad idea. After Vietnam, we'd never commit our boys again to extended ground combat. We also knew that war wasn't so glorious or even good for the economy. Instead of believing that capitalists had to have war to thrive, we learned that there was going to be a peace dividend. When I wake up, I can't wait to spend it. I'm sure that by 2012 we will have built a virtual paradise, wiped out poverty, learned to value education and truly given peace a chance.
Yes, those headlines dance before me, but it is a danse macabre. When I wake up I trust the skies will be blue, the oceans pure, and we'll be at peace with each other and ourselves. If not, please don't wake me. Let me believe it is only a bad trip.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Politicians are like countries; they have neither permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. And that's why Obama, who's no dummy, asked Villaraigosa to host the DNC. He wants to get in good with the Hispanics and keep his job.
After all, who else is he going to use to woo for one of the largest voting blocs in the nation? He can't ask Florida Senator Marco Rubio because he's in the opposing party. So he needs someone who is a.) Hispanic and b.) head of a city or state with one of the largest Hispanic populations in the country. By process of elimination, or desperation, I'm not sure which, that leaves Antonio Villaraigosa. Party boy, glamor puss Antonio Villaraigosa. The same guy who's off jetting around the world while the unemployment rate in his hometown hovered at around 13%. Given their spending habits and such they may have more in common that we think, aside from the fact that one is Mayor Love in Bloom and the other is not.
But this too shall pass. I predict it will all be over when we see pictures of the overpriced inaugural ball of President Gingrich or President Romney or President Santorum or President Whoever because once people look at their bank accounts or at the foreclosed signs on their and their neighbors' lawns, they will vote for president whoever else.
It was really a no-brainer that the Democratic National Committee chose Mayor Villaraigosa to chair this election year's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. True, Villaraigosa has been ripped relentlessly for supposedly every imagined failing and failure in running L.A. But the hard political reality is that Villaraigosa is the perfect fit for the Democrats at the national level. His solid party credentials are impeccable. He has been the consummate Democratic loyalist, as a labor organizer, assemblyman, Assembly speaker, mayor, and one of the co-chairs of the 2004 convention.
Villaraigosa knows his way around Washington D.C. probably better than any other big city mayor, given the prodigious amount of time he's spent their during his tenure lobbying for more funding, more programs, and more political attention from the Obama administration for L.A.. His national profile will be invaluable for the Democrats in a year when they'll need all their weapons to fire up their base and insure that they stampede to the polls for Obama and the Democrats as they did in 2008.
Then there's the Hispanic vote. It will be huge and pivotal for the Democrats in 2012. So pivotal, that a mass outpouring of Hispanic voters could tip the balance scales toward Obama and Democratic congressional and local candidates in a handful of absolute must win swing states.
Despite the heat that Villaraigosa has taken for his stewardship of City Hall, the national elections are a totally different ballgame. What Villaraigosa did or didn't do as mayor of Los Angeles means nothing to a voter in Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas, or Orlando (all cities in the key battleground states with a large number of Hispanic voters). It means everything though to the Democrats. And that's what makes Villaraigosa so important to them in 2012.
Our very own mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is being named the Chairman of the Democratic Convention. This is a recognition of his high visibility as a young, dynamic, Hispanic leader in the Democratic Party. Or is it? Maybe it is the utter failure of the Obama White House to see him as we see him.
Yes, to be sure he has energy. He is indeed dynamic and visible and, yes, Hispanic. But as for what Bush Senior called "the vision thing," not so much. And as for the accomplishment thing? Again he falls short. He falls short of the ideal and even of adequacy.
He came to our mayorship in a blaze of glory. Would he be a skyrocket continuing to soar or a shooting star burning up in a rapid plunge? He fell. He fell to the temptation of nearly every LA mayor. He started thinking too far ahead and forgot the job of actually governing. (Mr. Trutanich, are you paying attention?) Every LA Mayor starts thinking: "I could be governor." Then, thinking another move ahead, "Wow! I could be president!" Many a fair-haired boy has foundered on these rocky shoals of hubris and ambition--the Scylla and Charybdis of politics.
Add to this the Hollywood factor and all the tinsel and starlight. Thinking he was either JFK or Clinton, he took up with two TV news people (Female). This did diminish his family-values value since he was married at the time. But more than either a moral issue or even judgment, was the symbolism, the indication that he had gone Hollywood.
I wish him well with the next step of his career, but I do fear for the Democratic Party and the failure of the White House to dig deep enough beneath his veneer and find out what his own constituents think of him.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Hello. I'm here. I never left. Just had technical difficulties, which I fixed with the help of the wondrous and ever-kind and helpful Steve Rosenberg.
Here's my latest @ wordpress.
Thanks, amen, shalom, a bientot and all that jazz.
Blessings,
G. Tz. ; )
What Germany could not accomplish in the last 150 years through the Franco-Prussian War and two World Wars, it may well achieve through economic power. The corrosive and coercive effect of Germany's economic position of forced austerity has already deposed two governments--all without firing a shot or having a popular vote of the people. Amazing.
Germany's power over Europe and the Euro has deposed Berlusconi (okay, in this case good riddance, but that should have been up to the Italians). Germany has also forced out the prime minister of Greece and will likely play a part in the downfall of Sarkozy of France and the leadership of Spain and Portugal.
The creation of the Euro may have been dreamt of in idealistic terms but in practice it has actually erased national sovereignty far more than the European Community or European Parliament. For all their silly regulations and attacks on local produce, cheeses, labeling and weights and measure, these were just the annoyances of bureaucrats. It is Germany's bankers who rule. Their conditions for bailouts and rescues severely compromise the political and economic freedom of every member of the Eurozone.
They have even attempted to go beyond the formulations of national budgets i.e. demanding reductions in spending, lowering of pensions and firing of public employees. They have also attempted to get into the actual management of the funds donated, becoming not just a banker but the ultimate Big Brother.
Germany once bombed Greece and sent troops to occupy the country. Today the fires in the streets of Athens are every bit as much a result of German aggression as the fires of WWII. But this time the engine of destruction is economic. Both soldiers and bankers are instruments for imposing German power and cultural values. Germany has put the people out into the streets, created unemployment and destabilized Greek society and culture.
But isn't it Greece's fault for spending and borrowing without thought or reason? Well, yes--but only partially. Germany knowingly gave the Greeks crack in the form of liar loans. Knowing that Greece did not meet the criteria for joining the Eurozone, they let them in with a wink and a nod and got them addicted to cheap money. Then when the economy went south and Greece could not pay, Germany tried to call in the loans--loans that were nearly as improvident in the giving as in the taking.
Yes, Greece got itself addicted but now its pusher is prescribing the medicine. Unfortunately the cure may be more lethal than the disease. The cost of the bailout is to bail on promises made to the citizens of Greece and therefore risk the destruction of civil society as earned pensions are cut, jobs lost, salaries reduced and rage and unemployment spill into the streets.
So now Greece stands--or rather burns--as an example of the folly of the Euro and a cautionary tale for Italy, Spain, Portugal and, most likely even, France. Hitler famously inquired "Brennt Paris?" Not yet, but Athens is certainly aflame and that is only the beginning. Paris too may well burn.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
It's official: The protestors who overthrew Mubarak in Egypt lost the war. These educated and westernized, twittering, face-booking and Internet literate middle class young people have been supplanted by a dangerous alliance of the military and the Islamists. They were Egypt's hope. Now they are in despair.
Egypt is playing the same card today that Gamal Abdel Nasser played in the 50s: The twin cards of religion and nationalism. The military is trying to distract the masses from their impatience with the lack of progress towards democracy and their crushing poverty by giving them both an enemy and a false sense of power.
They have grabbed a bunch of foreigners who were working for NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) and charged them with working without permits or proper visas and interfering in domestic politics. Among those not permitted to leave Egypt (and taking refuge in our Embassy) is Sam LaHood, the son of Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood. Ironically Sec. LaHood is our highest-ranking government official of Arab ancestry.
The United States is clearly not happy about what can only be considered a deteriorating situation in Egypt. The Republicans are particularly fierce in their opposition to Egypt's actions. And for once, I think the Right is right. Being the largest single donor of foreign aid to Egypt, (over a billion dollars annually) we have threatened to withhold our funds until all are released. The Muslim Brotherhood, which now holds a dominant position in the elected government, has retaliated by threatening to withdraw from all peace agreements with Israel if we do withhold our gifts. Though I speak Arabic pretty well, I'm not clear on the Arabic word for Chutzpah.
The good news for the United States is that they are far more dependent on our good will than simply for a billion or so dollars. One of the changes that Sadat made, after the death of the afore-mentioned Gamal Abdel Nasser, was to buy Egypt's arms from us instead of the Soviet Union. Thus, they need us to train their pilots, to supply manuals for the repair of their tanks, canons and jets, and, most critically, they need us to continue to sell them parts for all their weapons systems. This is one advantage, other than economic, of being the arms dealer to the world. Leverage.
Obviously we cannot allow ourselves to be held captive and be extorted by Egypt's military and Islamists. The most progressive and educated of the population is being cut off from power and marginalized. While we do have the leverage and will probably ease out of this crisis, the greater danger looms ahead. They will almost certainly try to play this religious/nationalistic card again. But if their bluff gets called, if they abrogate agreements with Israel, prosecute Americans (and Europeans), they will lose.
They are playing a very dangerous game--one they probably can't control. The uniting of Islam, government and the military is not a good or hopeful occurrence--not for us, certainly not for Israel, but also not for Egypt. If the young and educated are frozen out, the Arab Spring in Egypt will end in an eternal winter of widespread discontent.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
The great fear a year ago when President Obama unveiled his budget for 2012 was that he caved to the GOP and Tea Party hardliners and meat axed dozens of vital programs and agencies. They included community service block grants which fund an array of community education, health and social service programs in poor, underserved, largely inner-city neighborhoods, cut programs in science, technology, youth-mentoring programs, and employment and training assistance. The screams were long and loud from liberal Democrats that the budget slashes would tar Obama as the first Democratic president to do what no Democrat or GOP president had dared do and that was to slash and restructure Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The fears have mostly proved groundless. But Obama had to walk a perilous line. He had to downplay the surge in poverty that has dumped nearly fifty million Americans in or near poverty, and who without government subsistence programs most would sink deeply beneath the poverty line. But he was under relentless pressure from the GOP budget hawks and a big chunk of the public to make the cuts in these vital programs or risk sinking the federal government in a deeper pool of debt and deficit spending.
The pressure on him to slash and burn domestic programs is still just as great. But this time Obama moved away from the danger line with three crucial budget moves. He slashed the endless runaway military spending on the two wars that he inherited from Bush. The overall projected defense cuts total a half trillion dollars spread out over a decade. Though military officials grouse and GOP presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum saber rattle Obama with the claim that the cuts will render America military impotent, the cuts are only a small percentage of the over bloated defense budget; a budget that exclusive of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security dwarfs spending on health, education, and social service programs. Despite the mostly public relations posturing from some military brass and the GOP, the projected defense budget cuts are cuts that the military can comfortably live with.
Obama moved further from the danger line by stepping up his campaign to make the corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share. This is an easy call. In polls and surveys, a majority of the public, and that includes a significant number of conservatives, say that the wealthy should be taxed more. Corporate tax rates are obscenely low, and corporate evasions of them are obscenely high. Obama has held firm that the Bush tax cuts that amounted to a budget killing giveaway to the super rich must go. The tax hikes on the rich will not eliminate the still high federal deficit, but it will dent it. This would bring the deficit under $1 trillion and more importantly, reduce the need for the more draconian cuts in other health and education, and infrastructure maintenance programs.
There will be cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. But they will be stretched out over a decade, and there will be no major structural reforms in the program which is what the GOP demands and which is wildly at odds with the majority of Americans, especially those who are dependent for their health coverage on the programs, want.
A year ago, the GOP gave Obama little room to maneuver. Much of the public bought into the GOP's bogus line that Obama's alleged reckless spending was hopelessly drowning the government in a sea of red ink. Nervous foreign investors as well as a slew of financial experts and economists endlessly claimed that the budget deficit--projected to soar to nearly $1.6 trillion in the last fiscal year, a post-World War II record-- would saddle the nation, with higher taxes; deeper cuts in education, health and social services; staggering permanent debt; and possibly even bankruptcy.
That doomsday scenario was part political hyperbole, part financial panic. Even then many economists noted that the claim of financial Armageddon was way overblown. The projected deficit was about 10 percent of gross domestic product. This would be great enough to threaten economic growth if it were sustained for decades. Yet even that supposedly doomsday estimate was proportionally far smaller than the deficits that the United States ran during and immediately after World War II.
In the past year, the Occupy Wall Street protests awakened the nation to the outrageous feed at the taxpayer trough by the rich, the financial industry and corporations. There's been a greater recognition of the crucial role Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and other government funded programs play in bolstering the economy, and American's living standards. There are tenuous signs of an economic recovery, and a modest upswing in the number of Americans who approve of his handling of the economy. This has strengthened the president's budget hand. The budget is far from perfect. There are still proposed cuts in Community Development Block Grants and spending freezes in other areas that hurt the poor. But the 2013 budget that Obama proposes does not slam the poorest and neediest and it preserves programs that have been lifelines for millions for decades. This is a budget that hits the mark despite the GOP.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Well, Obama did indeed walk it back when he put birth control services at half an arm's length from Catholic institutions. The mystery was why the White House committed this unforced error in the first place. The political problem with such a hot button issue was obvious--as was the fix. As I wrote earlier, "good medicine but bad politics."
However, the issue of religious exemptions from paying for programs that run counter to the core beliefs of their faiths is interesting. Should Christian Science churches and reading rooms not be required to provide health insurance for their workers--adherents of the faith or simply employees? Should Jehovah's Witnesses be compelled to provide health insurance that covers transfusions, which are anathema to their religion?
In our complex and heterodox society, could Quakers refuse to pay taxes because some money will go to war and killing? Can I, on a religious basis, demand that none of my tax dollars go to pay for bombs or biochemical weapons? Why, after all, should only Catholics get to opt out of selected medical services? The existence of a religious exemption creates a slippery slope indeed.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
The outcry about the proposed redistricting proposals has been long and loud. The charges are by now well known. The plan will rip whole chunks of neighborhoods out of one district and ill fitted crazy quilt style into wildly disparate districts. The two districts that have been most often cited to prove the point are Councilwoman Jan Perry's 9th District and councilman Bernard Parks' s 8th district. Both are among the poorest, almost exclusively minority, and were the epicenter of the 1992 L.A. riots. Take Perry's first. Under the plan she'll lose downtown to 14th District City Councilman Jose Huizar and she'll be left with a district that if not for the Downtown section would have the city's highest unemployment rate, and the greatest dearth of upscale manufacturing and upscale businesses.
Perry has worked hard to change that and part of that effort has been to leverage the financially booming Downtown as a fulcrum for gaining resources and drawing major business and redevelopment dollars to the impoverished part of her 9th District. Perry protests that losing Downtown will put a severe crimp in her efforts, and she has not shirked from making that known.
Parks has been even more vociferous in opposing much of the current redistricting proposals plan. They would in an odd quirk create an opposite dilemma for him. The plan grafts on part of the more upscale, largely white, Westchester section to his mostly minority 8th District. Parks has held nonstop outspoken hearings where parades of residents have marched to the microphones to denounce the proposed shifts. Nothing of course, has been finalized yet. The proposals are still in the talking, negotiating and shouting stage. And while a litany of city officials and residents, and businesspersons have weighed in on the district's reshuffling, one voice has been strangely mute. That's Mayor Villaraigosa. Redistricting is the hard purview of the city council to approve. A redistricting panel is convened by city officials every 10 years to adjust council district boundaries to reflect changes in population and ethnic makeup.
Part of that process is designed to ensure that Latinos, African Americans and other groups denied representation in the past have adequate opportunity to win office, as required under the federal Voting Rights Act.
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But Villaraigosa ultimately has to sign off on the final proposal. And he has much power over its final shape since he put three of the members on the 21 members Redistricting Commission including the Commission's chair Arturo Vargas who is the Executive Director of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO).
So what does he think about the changes. He hasn't said a word. One answer is that he simply prefers to let the process play out and see what's finally approved. Another answer is that since the mayor has deep ties with those on the Council and the Commission that are charged with redrawing the lines, his hidden hand is at work in making the objected to changes. Either answer is plausible and valid.
The problem for Villaraigosa is that when the lines are finally settled on and they remake districts that are poor, even poorer, and give its residents even less political clout at City Hall, and you have residents in other districts equally ticked off about being shuttled into foreign territory districts, Villaraigosa will get an earful from all sides. He'll be hit with the charge of playing politics, favoritism, cronyism, and again turning a deaf ear to the loud pleas from city residents for fairness.
Villaraigosa will be out of office in another year. His legacy is already being written as a mayor who was either an abject failure or did the best job he could given the crisis problems that he had to deal with. Villaraigosa's stone silence on the redistricting imbroglio won't do much to make residents think that his contributions belong on the plus side of his legacy ledger.
The current hot and heating up controversy over mandating Catholic institutions to provide birth control services as part of the insurance packages they offer students and employees is not going away. It touches many buttons and, though I hate to admit this, both sides have valid concerns.
Women who work for Catholic hospitals, schools or other religious institutions should, in theory, have the same benefits as women who work for secular or non-Roman Catholic institutions. The individual, whether Catholic or not, should be able to choose to use birth control or have access to the "Morning After" pill. Clearly they should not be compelled to use the services.
The question is if the institutions should be compelled to offer products and services directly forbidden by their core teaching and explicit values? There are some technical issues about exempt employees and non-exempt, meaning there is a reasonable demand for ordained and other religious professionals to be exempt from having birth control services provided. But for the Jewish MD, the Episcopalian accountant, the Lutheran nurses not to be covered seems wrong. There should not be a penalty for working in lay positions at religious institutions.
And yet, I am a little uncomfortable with this. Even if Catholics avail themselves of birth control in roughly the same percentage as everyone else, our religious institutions can feel a legitimate duty to exemplify their highest aspirations--if not their actual practices. The idea of compelling a faith to break faith with its traditions is troubling.
Were the Feds to tell my university (American Jewish University) that we must provide pork as a cost for accepting federal aid, scholarships or other benefits, I might march against such an intrusive edict--even if I personally ate pork.
Hard to imagine such circumstances? Well, take another road in. Let's say that there is a Taco Truck across the street from the university that serves carnitas (and there is). Now let's say that we have several employees (exempt, not rabbis or designated "religious") who are handicapped and can't easily get to the street and cross Mulholland on crutches or in a wheelchair. Could someone come up with a theory of being out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act? Could the government demand we either convey them to the pork or bring the truck on campus? I'll bet I could find a lawyer or a bureaucrat who'd pursue this.
Yes, this is a slippery slope in all directions. And it should have been avoided by setting up freestanding reproductive services insurance outside the religious institutions. Obama will almost certainly have to do a partial walk-back on this and find a way to make this work without getting even non-practicing Catholics alienated. They are, after all, the quintessential swing voters.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Obama has done and gone too far and stepped on more than a few religious toes. I don't know whose constitution he's been reading, but in the good, old U S of A it is unconstitutional for the administration to require privately funded religious organization to pay for their female employee's birth control and contraceptives.
Even some Democrats are incensed over this recent turn that Obamacare has taken except Senator Barbara Boxer who said that "it's medicine and women deserve their medicine."
Now, we all know that Senator Boxer is also not a doctor, so maybe she thinks that birth control is in the same category as aspirin, antibiotics and other life-saving medication, but birth control does not constitute a medical emergency, except for the mothers of criminals and the like who should be have been paid to use it. Otherwise, it is in the category all its own.
Besides, our Constitution calls for the separation of church and state and forcing Catholic-run organizations to pay for their female employees violates that clause. Though it always appeared odd to me that the moral majority and religious right, comprised mostly of men and women well past their child-bearing years should tell others to carry, have and raise babies. If they are so hepped up on the idea of peopling the planet, they should try it themselves.
Mitt achieves the trifecta and losses three times in one day
Well Mitt you are doing better than last time. In 2008 you withdrew in mid February having outspent every other candidate and garnered a whopping 12.5% of the delegates to McCain's 72%. They didn't love you or trust you then, and they're still not that into you.
I know it must be frustrating because you are clearly intelligent. You are fairly articulate--most of the time. However, when you do go off message, it is usually, as Cheney used to say, "Big Time!" You look like an American president. Your portrait is ready. In fact you might look more like an American President than Michael Douglas did in the film of the same name.
What do you lack? What can't your money and coaches, your great desire and willingness to go almost laughably negative, buy? In a word it is: Authenticity. If George W beat Gore (for me and my ilk that is actually a real question, but enough bitterness) it was because the people sensed that W was real and that Gore needed focus groups to tell him what to say and even how to dress.
We get that same sense of not knowing you because we're not so sure that you know you. (If you know what I mean. Probably not.) You have been a liberal, pro-choice, pro gay rights guy. Now you're not, or so you say. Sure you can grow and change positions, but too many of your changes seem to be a bit too convenient. You have put yourself in the unenviable position of having betrayed liberals and not convinced conservatives. You've taken more positions than Newt in the back seat with an intern. Your best hope is to be everyone's third choice. Yes, I know it must feel humiliating.
I mean Santorum cleaned your expensive clock in both Minnesota and Missouri, eked out a win in Iowa and beat you convincingly in Colorado. What a disappointment. No, really, what a rebuke to your candidacy. You may still win the nomination. Santorum seems too slight. Ron Paul is not really running but only messaging, and Newt is just too mean. But whether you are playing liberal or conservative, being mister nice guy or the implausible Brylcreem mean machine, there is something genuinely phony in how you come across.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Some days the news is just too big to fit in a single well-focused 800-word article. Today is one of those days. So, let me just set out the menu of the current events that, as Walter Cronkite used to say, alter and illuminate our lives.
Locally, we have L.A. Unified's traditional mishandling of nearly every aspect of the Miramonte Molestation crisis. Without warning, involving or consulting the parents, they carried out an investigation, got two teachers removed and decided to destroy any continuity for the children by disappearing the entire faculty and staff and putting in a new team from principal to janitors. Unless they have evidence of a massive cover up and conspiracy, this is a horror of crisis management and a rejection of transparency, parental involvement and care for the kids. It stinks of lawyer-driven butt covering.
Statewide, we have the 9th Circuit Appellate Court's ruling that the anti-same-sex marriage Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Their finding is based on equal protection and that there is no obvious social purpose in singling out a specific class of citizens for unequal access to the benefits of marriage. They further held that since civil unions were already valid under the law, the selecting out of marriage advanced no useful social purpose. While this will certainly be appealed--either to the whole court meeting en banc, or to the Supreme Court, it does bespeak an evolution in public awareness and acceptance of gay and lesbian people--their rights and sensibilities.
Nationwide the big story is certainly the Susan G. Komen for the Cure and their truly remarkable mishandling of their self-made crisis. Years from now people will be using Komen's crisis mismanagement as a case study for how to ruin your own brand. As a private group, they had every right not to fund Planned Parenthood. They could have quietly chosen not to fund future grants. But by cutting off current funding under the specious argument that they were compelled to by a newly created by-law wrecked their credibility. Their assertion that hiring Karen Handel, an anti-choice Republican and former candidate for Governor of Georgia, played no role in this policy change was further damaging to their already rapidly diminishing credibility. They created the worst of all possible words. Now pro-choice people are suspicious of them for having seemingly thrown women under the bus of conservative politics and conservatives are furious that Komen seemed to admit to having funded an abortion provider--even though the actual moneys went to cancer screening.
Meanwhile, on the world stage, a charade is being played out by nearly everyone regarding Syria. We are shocked, shocked that Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for Assad to step down and have his second in command form a unity government with the Sunni Muslims. Our anger and sense of betrayal is an act. A Security Council resolution, even if passed, would not have changed the inherent facts of the conflict. Yes, the Arab League has handed off the issue because they couldn't do anything. But the Arab League is vastly majority Sunni with no sympathy for the plight of the Alawite Muslims or the Christian minority should Assad and the Alawites fall. They also line up against the Shiites of Iran. Given all this, to mistake a UN resolution for meaningful action is naïve. Assad, as bad as he is--and that is plenty bad--cannot step down or hand off to another Alawite. His fall would mean (will mean, because it is inevitable) the persecution of his people, tribe and all non-Sunnis. There is a civil war and the slaughter will continue. I'm not at all supporting Assad, but we do need to understand that this is another sectarian conflict which will proceed with bloodshed and in which we do not have a useful role. The world could land 50,000 or 500,000 troops and we would not know whom to protect and whom to shoot. However, landing soldiers was not on the UN agenda. It was only about condemning Assad. Condemnation will not move him to commit political suicide or actual suicide and potentially allow the extermination of his people.
Also, in the endless drama of the Middle East, the Palestinian Authority has once again declared unity with Hamas. And once again Israel objects to the PA unifying with a declared terrorist organization. Netanyahu cannot negotiate with the PA because they don't represent all the Palestinians. And Netanyahu cannot negotiate with them when they do represent all the Palestinians. Again, appearances are deceptive. The truce and unity between Hamas and the PA are not real. But even if they were, they could not deliver their radical adherents to be a part of a meaningful peace process. Without stipulating to the existence of Israel as a Jewish State, there are no serious issues to discuss, and both sides know that this is public posturing for political purposes.
Finally, we seem to be admitting that the surge in Afghanistan has failed, and tripling our boots on the ground did nothing to concentrate Karzai's mind, nor did it tame the Taliban. We are leaving, and Afghanistan will break down into warring factions once again. Yes, the Taliban will be back. No one should take any pleasure in our failure, but we should have learned from history--from Alexander to once-Great Britain to the Soviet Union, no one has unified or pacified Afghanistan--except to unify them against foreigners.
Oh yeah, the great reality show of the year, the mash-up of Survivor and American Idol, otherwise known as the Republican primary, is still playing to the amusement of all pundits and comedians, the glee of all Democrats and the horror of the Republican establishment.
All in all a normal day on planet earth.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
President Obama's reversal on his decision to keep hands off the fundraising efforts of his campaign aligned super PACS raised a few eyebrows among campaign finance reform advocates. This seemed like a betrayal of Obama's oft stated position that the relentless chase and dependence on fat cat donors to bankroll campaigns has gone way off the deep-end. In 2008, Obama's said that he'd raise the bulk of his campaign funds from almost literally the nickels and dimes of small donors. That he would not take a penny from lobbyist groups and that he would back an overhaul of the campaign financing rules.
Obama's sharp attack on the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision that virtually gave free license to corporations to dump money directly into partisan campaigns was cheered by campaign reform advocates. This renewed hope and the expectation that Obama would push Democrats to enact proposed legislation to blunt the court's decision and restore checks on corporation's and the financial industry's power to sway elections. So far that legislation has gotten nowhere in Congress. But Obama's reversal on Super PACs is not a betrayal of principle. It a reflection of the brutal reality that to run and keep the White House it will cost a pretty penny. There were two glaring things that again drove that brutal reality home to the White House.
The GOP has rebounded from its anemic fund raising takes in 2008 and has drawn almost dead even with the Democrats in fundraising. A huge chunk of the money is coming from its corporate dominated Super PACS. The other thing is Mitt Romney. He will likely be the GOP presidential nominee and is every bit the cash fundraising cow that Obama is. According to recent reports, nearly 60 corporations and individuals dumped more than $100,000 on a super PAC backing Romney. Typical of the hard money pouring in is Bain Capital, Romney's old outfit. According to the Center for Public Integrity, current and former Bain executives and their relatives have shoved nearly $5 million to organizations that back Romney's presidential bid.
He's also banked tens of thousands of dollars from Walmart's Walton family members, and Koch family members. The heavy duty cash has poured in just to help Romney get the GOP nomination. It takes little imagination to figure that once he bags the nomination the corporate and financial industry donors will radically up the ante for him.
The ideal is to make public financing the rule and the law for federal elections. In a perfect world, that would be the case and big money would not obscenely skew the election process toward those who can essentially pay the most for it. But the Supreme Court decision effectively killed that ideal. This insured that Obama, nor any other presidential candidate, can be competitive in a hard fought primary and even harder fought general election campaign without the tens of millions that lobbyists, PACs, corporations, Wall Street, and labor unions shove into a presidential candidate's campaign coffers. The 2008 presidential primary and general election was the ultimate proof. Hillary Clinton was the near consensus early odds on favorite to bag the Democratic nomination. Her failure had nothing to do with campaign bumbles, policy stumbles, or voter rejection. She simply ran out of money to be competitive with Obama in the smaller state primaries. That enabled Obama to rack up what ultimately proved to be an insurmountable delegate lead. It was the same in the general election. Obama had a bulging campaign chest. Republican presidential foe, John McCain didn't. It was the financial head of stem that Obama had built up coming out of the primary battle with Clinton that made the difference for Obama in being able to saturate the airwaves with his campaign pledges and assaults on McCain. None of this came cheap.
The 2012 campaign will not be a rerun of 2008. Romney with his cash raising prowess from his solid corporate and financial industry ties has an advantage that McCain didn't. But that's not all, Romney will continue to try and turn the tables and pound Obama on his alleged financial and economic failures. He will ask the question Reagan asked Carter during their 1980 presidential debate "are you better off than you were four years ago." The question worked again when Obama asked it about the GOP in 2008. But it costs money and lots of it to message the administration's accomplishments on this pivotal issue, and to ultimately convince voters that the answer is yes. The GOP gave Obama no choice but to directly go after the fat cat donors to effectively get his message across and make the case for a second term. Romney will have just as much money to try and make the opposite case.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst and Monday co-host of the Al Sharpton Show. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
An NAACP notable, that is a local NAACP branch notable in Texas, praised GOP Presidential candidate Ron Paul to the skies after the barrage of attacks on Paul for the racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic digs in his Ron Paul Survival Report newsletter. Herman Cain endorsed Paul rival Newt Gingrich. And despite the slap at Gingrich for racial pandering, Gingrich has never shirked from being in the company of African-American leaders including for a brief moment the Reverend Al Sharpton. His rival Rick Santorum has also gotten support from some black evangelicals including loopy Florida African-American minister O'Neal Dozier. Santorum stopped in at O'Neal's Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, during the Florida primary and got a rousing nod from Dozier. Santorum even got the even more controversial, and far out Michael the Black Man (his self-description nee Maurice Woodside) to endorse him at a Coral Spring, Florida campaign rally.
The question and mystery is if the three most unabashed conservative of the four GOP presidential candidates scrounge up some African-Americans to co-sign their campaigns why can't the fourth candidate, Mitt Romney find even one African-American to endorse him? South Carolina congressman Tim Scott, who declined to endorse anyone in the South Carolina primary didn't endorse him. Florida congressman Allen West chose a Gingrich dinner to shout to "lefties" to get the hell out of America.
Romney's goose egg in getting endorsements from black GOP officials, elected officials, any black Republican to endorse or even a few token black faces to stand behind him for stump photo-ops has been plainly apparent at his campaign rallies, stage appearance and events. They have been a staple in the background at GOP candidates and elected officials staged public functions. GOP presidential candidates for four decades have followed the lead of then GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 with his well orchestrated, and well-placed, photo-ops with assorted moderate black leaders, and even getting occasional endorsements from a black celebrity such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Wilt Chamberlain. Former President George W. Bush went much further and managed to blunt the hard criticism that a GOP White House is almost always a virtually an exclusive white, rich, male, clubby preserve with his arguably breakthrough appointments of Coin Powell, Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General.
So then how to explain the Romney campaign's solid whiteness. The issue of Romney's blind spot on out-reach to African-Americans was glaringly apparent during his stint at Bain Capital. Not one of the dozens of Managing Directors at Bain was African-American. More than half of Bain's directors had BAs or MBA degrees from Harvard.
That's important to note for two reasons. Harvard had made a major effort over the years to ramp up the number of African-Americans and minorities in their business programs. So there was certainly no shortage of black candidates Bain and Romney could have recruited to the company and elevated to Managing Director. Even that failure might have passed under the radar scope, except that Romney boasted during his Massachusetts Senatorial bid in 1994 that public companies should be required to report how many women and minorities they had in order to "breakthrough" the glass ceiling.
Romney boasted even louder during his tenure as Massachusetts governor that he had a sterling record when it came to appointing minorities and women to state posts. But that came after Romney was pushed and prodded by civil rights and women's groups for his near exclusive white male state house. Romney partly in response to the public pounding, and partly with an eye on a presidential run where he knew his state record on diversity would be closely scrutinized made a slew of appointments of minorities and women to the state bench in his last year in office.
Romney's lily white retinue of aides, campaign staffers, advisors, and bankrollers, not to mention endorsers has been so noticeable that even black conservative and former Oklahoma GOP congressman J.C. Watts lambasted Romney for it. Watts challenged Romney for having a virtually lily white campaign staff. A nonplussed Romney shrugged it off and blithely said that he hires the best persons that he could find. Evidently that didn't include Watts, and it wouldn't. Watts has endorsed Gingrich.
The scorecard then reads like this: Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul, all have asked for and gotten endorsements and support from African-Americans. There is no record or evidence that the supposed more moderate Romney has asked for or gotten any black support or even taken a photo-op with some dutiful blacks. The question that will loom even larger as Romney closes in on the GOP nomination is. Where are Romney's blacks?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Some times the good guys or in this case the good gals win! This is a time for both celebration and some caution. The amazing, passionate and overwhelming outrage that greeted Komen for the Cure's ill-considered defunding of Planned Parenthood brought them to their senses. They announced the reversal of their policy a little over 24 hours from when the backlash began.
There are many factors in this quick victory by the forces of public opinion. It certainly helped that Komen's explanation of why they were severing ties with Planned Parenthood was palpably false and fooled no one. For them to hold that the mere announcement of an investigation gave them no choice but to withdraw funding was just silly--particularly since their new policy was clearly, and just recently, crafted for this specific purpose.
Nancy Brinker, the founder's assertion that politics and religion played no role was so patently risible as to diminish what remained of her credibility. The further assertion that the appointment of Karen Handel, a conservative politician and anti-choice activist, to their board had nothing to do with the defunding didn't approach the threshold of credibility and opened them up not just to anger but also to ridicule.
The anger and disappointment expressed in the blogosphere and in on-line petitions, the emails of shock and pain sent directly to Komen all brought home the seriousness of their miscalculation and the counter-productive absurdity of their denials. Brinker looked the fool on MSNBC.
Still, two more factors played decisive roles in this quick reversal. First there was pushback from the Senate and Congress with 22 Senators signing a petition urging them to reverse this policy and holding that Komen was putting women's health and their very lives in peril.
Second, special credit has to go to the brave women who, as a matter of principle, resigned their highly visible positions with Komen. One was Komen's top public health official, Mollie Williams, another was Dr. Kathy Plesser, a member of Komen's medical advisory board, and locally, Deb Anthony, executive director of Komen's Los Angeles County chapter, also resigned. They put it all on the line for women's health.
There is an important lesson here. The voices of the people, along with their wallets, make a difference. Indifference to injustice, and the passive acceptance of blatant prevarications, are irresponsible. People taking their support away and expressing their feelings and passions not simply in words but in actions, can make a difference.
But a word of caution is also required. Corporations often make mistakes and then seem to remedy them in the glaring light of publicity. Then quietly, months later, having learned their lesson but not changed their hearts, they often, quietly and gradually, re-impose the older policy. We'll all have to stay alert. It is good to celebrate the refunding of present grants. But we'll have to see if they fund new grants to Planned Parenthood in the future.
* Up-Date: Komen may in fact be doubling down on its craven betrayal of women by adding further deception. They announced that they will continue already committed funding and "preserve their (Planned Parenthood's) ability to apply for future grants." They have not approved the grant proposals already submitted for next year. More dishonesty. I'll personally continue to withhold any support.
**It gets worse and worse for Komen. They try to dump Planned Parenthood but partner with Smith & Wesson promoting a pink pistol in "honor" of Breast Cancer Awareness. Some of the profits will go to Komen. Nothing says Fight Breast Cancer better than an automatic weapon. This is the foreseeable mess you get when conservative Texas and southern politics pollute a good cause. They have truly shot themselves in the foot!
***Susan G Komen for the Cure denies any connection with the gun promotion. But then they also deny any political influence or the issue of abortion playing any part in their first planned defunding.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
It's not the firestorm that the Susan G. foundation touched off by lopping off funding to Planned Parenthood last year and that it announced the other day. It's not even the foundation's right to lop off the funds. Though they could have done better than put out the weak, silly, half-baked line that it had nothing to do with abortion, or that it buckled to pressure from anti-abortion groups. It did, and everybody knows it. It's not even about sullying Komen's reputation. Since the foundation does good work in raising cancer awareness, and pours much money into women's cancer prevention education programs.
No, Komen's dumb move did exactly what anti-abortionists and presumably at least some of the shot callers at Komen didn't want to happen. And that's turn the funding hit against Planned Parenthood into a walking advertisement for PP. In the space of 24 hours, PP raised nearly a half million dollars in online donations from more than 6000 donors. And that's just online, almost certainly the organization will raise tens of thousands more in the days to come as cash and checks continue to pour in.
Komen's dumb move also gave PP something that spending thousands in ad dollars couldn't do. And that's promote PP's organization and cause. PP has and will continue to do just fine without Komen's cash. But there's a cautionary tale that Komen and anti-abortionists again told the world. That's be careful when you try to bully something into happening, the very opposite usually happens. PP is the latest proof of that.
What a shame, what a stain on the name of Susan G Komenthat the foundation named in her honor and memory has thrown living women under the bus of conservative anti-women politics. The foundation (I won't use its name and further besmirch her memory) has severed ties with Planned Parenthood. Their reason/rationale is completely disingenuous. They claim that a brand new regulation, that they just promulgated themselves, forces them to defund any group under investigation.
Given this congress ginning up an investigation is easy. There is no standard of evidence, probable, or even reasonable, cause. All you need are some guys who want to control women's bodies and their health and reproductive choices. So, some men have begun "investigating" whether Planned Parenthood may have used some federal funds illegally to support abortion. Apparently, just raising the question is now enough to make the foundation abandon poor women.
I have to admit that I am not an objective observer here. I worked as a volunteer counselor for Planned Parenthood and saw first hand the full spectrum of health services this amazing organization delivered to poor and middleclass women and girls. I saw lives changed and even saved by counseling, emotional support, screening and access to reduced cost medical treatment.
For the foundation, otherwise dedicated to the transcendently important issue of breast cancer, to be intimidated into withholding support for the educational and diagnostic services that Planned Parenthood offers is reprehensible. We should all support the search for the cure, but I do not see how we can support this craven and cowardly foundation. My money will go to Planned Parenthood, The Jonsson Cancer Center at UCLA, the Norris Cancer Center at USC and City of Hope.
©2012 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
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