An Oklahoma legislator lets loose on the evils of homosexuality.
Un. Be. Lievable.
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Political buyer beware
A message for women
By Martha Burk
The media is awash in stories about how women (except for some of us old gals over 50) are flocking to Barack Obama in droves and away from Hillary Clinton. Feminists are pitted against feminists as to which candidate, if elected, would be better for women, and many younger women are arguing with their mothers and aunties. But there’s a much bigger division looming, and it’s not between the Obama and Clinton camps. What everybody ought to be looking closer at is that “if elected” part. Women have suffered incredible setbacks under the Bush administration and it is in their hands whether that path continues after November.
A lot of Bush’s damage to the country as a whole, like the war and the tanking economy, is front and center. But much of the damage to women has been under the radar. Presidential appointees can do tremendous harm, mostly out of the public eye. Take Wade Horn, one of Bush’s Health and Human Services assistant secretaries. Horn founded the National Fatherhood Initiative to promote marriage as the solution to poverty, loudly touting his belief that “the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.” Then he gave the group $12.38 million of the taxpayer’s money to push marriage instead of funding job training and educational programs to get women off welfare. But the marriage money is peanuts compared to the megabucks Horn poured into abstinence-only sex education in the public schools. That tab now comes to $176 million per year, even though the government’s own research shows the programs don’t work and teenage pregnancy is up for the first time in 15 years.
Not to be outdone, the Bush appointees over at the Department of Education have stayed busy dismantling Title IX, the law protecting girls from discrimination in educational programs, including sports. For decades courts have upheld the Education Department’s rigorous criteria for compliance as valid. But no matter. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings issued a Title IX “clarification,” allowing schools to refuse to create additional sports opportunities for women based solely on e-mail interest surveys. Failure of female students to answer e-mail surveys is now routinely counted by colleges as a lack of interest in participating in sports. Neither the standard nor the e-mail survey method of limiting opportunities applies to male students.
Columbia passes historic city ordinances
Council Passes Ordinances Prohibiting Discrimination in Housing and Public Accommodations
Today the Columbia City Council voted unanimously to pass ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in housing and public accommodations. South Carolina Equality proposed these ordinances in January and the ordinances passed with little opposition.
C. Ray Drew, Executive Director of South Carolina Equality Coalition, said, “We have passed one of the most comprehensive bills in the country, in one of the most conservative states in the country. South Carolina, and states like ours, represents the front lines of our battle for LGBT civil rights in this country.”
Columbia is the first municipality in the state to pass comprehensive human rights ordinances in housing and public accommodations including sexual orientation and gender identity. Council Members Daniel Rickenmann and Tameika Isaac Devine introduced the legislation and urged the City Council to support the ordinances. Rickenmann and Isaac Devine stated, “When we work together and respect each other, we can make Columbia an even better place to live.”
Columbia joins two other cities in the “Deep South” that have passed comprehensive anti-discrimination ordinances – New Orleans and Atlanta.
Harriet Hancock, longtime activist and Board member of the SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement, said, “These ordinances represent the single greatest advance in civil rights for the LGBT community in the history of our state.” Hancock was the architect of the 1991 city ordinances prohibiting discrimination in city employment on the basis of sexual orientation.
Drew added, “Working collaboratively with the SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement in passing these historic city ordinances is a perfect example of what our community can accomplish when we work together.”
Ryan Wilson, President of SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement, said, “There’s a whole new energy in our state. We’re focused and working together. There’s no end to what we can accomplish.”
Iraq war by the numbers
5: Number of years the Iraq war has lasted. (March 19, 2008, the 6th year begins.)
3973: U.S. Deaths Confirmed By the DoD (as of March 3, 2008)
May 2, 2003: The day the President arrived on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished.”
64%: Percentage of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Feb. 1-3, 2008)
57%: Percentage of Iraqis who think it is acceptable to attack American soldiers. (Up from 51% in March and 17% back in February 2004.) (August 2007: ABC; BBC; NHK; D3 Systems of Vienna, Va.; and KA Research of Turkey)
81,000 – >600,000: Estimates of number of civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
(Epidemiologists have estimated that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.)
49: Number of countries in the Coalition of the Willing when the invasion began in 2003
25: Current number of countries supplying 11,685 troops — about 7% of the size of the U.S. forces.
4 million: Number of displaced Iraqis: more than 2 million uprooted within Iraq, and as many have fled to neighboring countries.
$600 billion: Approved funds for the war ($499 billion spent as of today). President Bush has requested another $200 billion for 2008, which would bring the cumulative total to close to $800 billion.
$3 trillion: Estimate of true cost of war by Nobel Prize-winning economists (< #1>see below).
$270 million: Number of dollars the U.S. spends each day in Iraq
$390,000: Cost of deploying one U.S. soldier for one year in Iraq
(Congressional Research Service)
$9 billion: Amount lost & unaccounted for in Iraq
$1.4 billion: Amount of Halliburton overcharges classified by the Pentagon as unreasonable and unsupported
$20 billion: Amount paid to KBR, a former Halliburton division, to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items
$3.2 billion: Portion of that $20 billion that Pentagon auditors deem “questionable or supportable”
75: Number of major U.S. bases in Iraq (The Nation/New York Times)
166,895: Troops in Iraq: 157,000 from the U.S., 4,500 from the UK, 2,000 from Georgia, 900 from Poland, 650 from South Korea and 1,845 from all other nations
6,000: Iraqi troops trained and able to function independent of U.S. forces (NBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 20, 2007)
27 to 60%: Iraqi unemployment rate (depending on where curfew is in effect)
28%: Iraqi children suffering from chronic malnutrition (CNN.com, July 30, 2007)
40%: Professionals who have left Iraq since 2003
34,000: Iraqi physicians before 2003 invasion
12,000: Iraqi physicians who have left Iraq since 2005 invasion
2,000: Iraqi physicians murdered since 2003 invasion
10.9: Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity (May 2007)
5.6: Average Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity (May 2007)
16 to 24: Pre-War Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Had Electricity
70%: Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies (CNN.com, July 30, 2007)
22%: Water Treatment Plants Rehabilitated
0: Number of WMDs found in Iraq
0: Number of connections between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of 9/11
0: Number of convincing reasons for starting the war, and continuing the occupation
Democrats shift gears on Iraq
By Mike Soraghan
The Hill
Congressional Democrats searching for a message that will resonate on the Iraq war are preparing an argument that getting troops out of the conflict is the only way to rebuild a spent military.
It’s a less ambitious argument than the “Out-of-Iraq now” proposals put forward last year, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top Democrats believe it will allow the party to criticize the war without being seen as criticizing those fighting it. It could also help Democrats to portray themselves as protecting the military and national security.
The Pentagon’s commanders have repeatedly testified that the Iraq war is straining the military, and Democrats say they can take that foundation and add the extra step of saying the strain is the reason to withdraw troops.
“This is about America’s security,” said Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). “We have an Army that can’t deploy anywhere else in the world.”
Or, as a staffer put it, “You can’t rebuild an engine while you’re driving along at 60 miles per hour.”
Funnies
Does the United States really favor torture?
By Stephen Laurence
Greenville
Some five years ago, in the days leading up to our invasion of Iraq, a local peace advocate carried a sign outside Greenville’s federal building asking “Are we what we say we are?” as a nation. More recently — about a week ago, in fact — a former U.S. House Speaker implored public radio listeners to carefully consider the relationship between our rhetoric and our actions.
An ongoing debate about the acceptability of torture as an interrogation technique has led to passage of the Intelligence Authorization Act, with a provision that bans torture through its reference to the U.S. Army Field Manual. Regrettably, Sen. Lindsey Graham opposed use of this standard for civilian intelligence gathering; Sen. Jim DeMint voted against the final legislation; and President George Bush threatens to veto it.
While we often boast of being the most democratic and most pious of nations, the rest of the world watches our actions and recognizes the frequent hypocrisy between what we say and what we do. Abu Ghraib is one example. The high civilian casualty count in Iraq is another. Guantanamo is yet another. And now we have representatives of the United States, including the “leader of the free world,” condoning torture — albeit couched in more acceptable language — with the ultimate outcome of the issue being uncertain.
Torture is completely indefensible on moral and ethical grounds. Most faith communities specifically condemn inhumane acts toward others. The New Testament of the Christian Bible quotes Jesus calling on us to love our enemies and to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. The United States has been party to the Geneva Conventions since their inception in 1864. And our “greatest generation” punished enemy soldiers and officers found guilty of torture during World War II.
The South behind bars
Let’s do the numbers
Total number of adults incarcerated in America: 2.3 million
Total number of adults incarcerated in China: 1.5 million
Rank of U.S. incarceration rate among all nations: 1
Rank of South’s incarceration rate among all U.S. regions: 1
Percent increase in South’s incarceration rate in 2007 alone: 2.8
Rank of Texas’ incarceration rate among all U.S. states.: 1
Year in which Florida is expected to run out of prison space: 2009
Percent of American adults in prison or jail: 1
Percent of all men age 18 or older: 2
Percent of white men age 18 or older: 0.9
Percent of Hispanic men age 18 or older: 3
Percent of black men age 18 or older: 7
Percent of black men age 20 to 34: 11
Percent of white women age 35 to 39: 0.3
Percent of Hispanic women age 35 to 39: 0.4
Percent of black women age 35 to 39: 1
Amount states spent on corrections in 2007 alone: $49 billion
Percent which that amount has increased over the past 20 years, adjusted to 2007 dollars: 127
Percent increase in adjusted spending on higher education over that same period: 21
Minimum amount Texas is expected to save over the next two years from prison reforms that expand drug treatment and change parole practices: $210 million
************
Statistics taken from “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008” by The Pew Center on the States, available online here.
This is the time to reject nuclear arms
By Glenn Carroll
Coordinator, Nuclear Watch South
Without a word of public debate, nuclear weapons became a seemingly inevitable fact of life and death on our planet. After World War II ended with two single bombs destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Bomb became big business with vast factory complexes on government reservations in several states across the country.
A government agency, now called U.S. Department of Energy, was formed to oversee private contractors who churned out no less than 30,000 nuclear warheads over the next four decades and established the nuclear industry as an economic force in human affairs.
A people’s movement to “Ban the Bomb” formed instantly in response to the wartime bombing of Japan, and to the “test bombings” on the lands of the Western Shoshone Nation in Nevada and Utah and the Pacific islanders of the Moruroa Atoll.
From protests on the street to civil disobedience at weapons sites, the public has been vocal and insistent that our only reasonable option is to abolish nuclear weapons. Indeed, in 1996 the World Court issued a landmark decision defending this basic ethic when it declared the manufacture, possession or use of nuclear weapons to be illegal.
The Cold War bomb factories were built in secret in the 1940s and 1950s. They operated without public oversight until the Cold War ended in 1991, when crumbling Russian and U.S. nuclear bomb factories and reactors were forced to shut down.
Vote for me – I have clean pee!
An appropriately titled “Joint Resolution ” (S 1070), would make candidates for public office and judges pass a test for illegal drugs before they could run for office.
The resolution calls for changing our state’s constitutional requirements for holding public office. Currently all voters who aren’t ex-felons or who haven’t violated election laws can serve. Sen. Harvey Peeler (R-Cherokee) has been pushing the resolution since 2006. He now claims that Tootin’ Tommy Ravenel’s coke bust shows the need for such a constitutional amendment (you surely remember that Tootin’ Tommy, our State Treasurer, was popped in 2007).
In the 2006 election cycle, Eckerd Drug Stores were Peeler’s number one corporate contributor, and pharmaceutical industry contributions were his third-ranked campaign donors at $4,800, behind health professionals and the Republican Party.
“If you can’t pass a drug test, you should not be in public office,” Peeler said in a press release announcing the resolution.
The question, of course, is whose drugs, Sen. Peeler?
What’s next? Are we going to have to pee in a jar before we can vote? If I want to elect someone who takes an occasional toke, versus the opposition who adjusts his or her mood with prescription drugs, it would seem a citizen’s constitutional right to do so.
An IQ test may be more appropriate.
Legislator wants to allow guns in State House
First-term legislator Rep. Keith Kelly (R-Spartanburg) may have the solution to partisan gridlock. Kelly has proposed a bill (H 4243) to allow legislators with concealed weapons permits to pack heat on the floor. Yup. This could really help cut down on the number of uncontested legislative seats (we’re number 1 in incumbents having no opposition).
Again, how ’bout that IQ test?