Upstate progressive throws hat into ring

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Ted Christian has announced he is running against US Rep. Bob Inglis, the congressman who is so low-profile it’s easy to forget he’s even in DC. Christian is one of three candidates vying for the Democratic congressional nomination, along with Paul Corden, a former marketing executive and retired community college teacher from Spartanburg, and Bryan McCanless of Greenville. Inglis faces a primary challenge from Charles Jeter, an environmental engineer and Reagan administration official from Greer.

Here is a clip from Christian’s kick-off press conference on March 31.

Here is a bit about the candidate, taken from his Web site.

Bio:

I grew up in Florida, received a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida in 1983, and then worked in Houston on the space shuttle and space station programs until basically retiring on stock market investments in 1991. I moved to Greenville in 1999, and bought a house off North Main.

Why am I running?

As much as anything, I’d like to raise the bar a bit.

The democratic process in our country has become a money driven circus, with politicians marketed substantially like cereal, in many cases qualified for office by not much more than money and packaging, while the principal fixed goal of either main party has become greater market share and the power it brings.

The consequences of this political retailing are increasingly dire. Our country now as a matter of stated policy wages aggressive war, the greatest of crimes, invading other nations without legitimate cause. The US is increasingly under what amounts to martial law, with American citizens subject to imprisonment without charge and search without warrant. The US now tortures people, sometimes to death, and laws against torture are brushed aside by a President who essentially proclaims himself above the law. A potentially ruinous public debt continues to mount, the current administration having amassed nearly as much debt as all the previous administrations combined. The US military budget is by any rational standard morbidly obese, greater than all the military budgets for the rest of the world combined, fueling a spiraling arms race which threatens to eventually destroy humanity. The US operates a de facto concentration camp in Cuba, to the detriment of our global standing. The US is effectively a client state of Israel, degrading the quality of American political leadership and compromising prospects for peace in the Middle East. Election turnouts are at historic lows, and with the increasing use of unverified computer voting many have lost confidence their votes are even counted. The Constitution has substantially in principle, and in no small measure in fact, passed into history.

These are grave matters, yet it is unlikely most will be discussed in any substantive fashion, if they are broached at all, by most politicians in the coming election. The American political process is plainly dysfunctional, and we need to talk about it.

Remembering the legendary Modjeska Simkins

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If you’re in Columbia Tuesday night, join us for a special screening of ETV’s documentary about Modjeska Simkins, “Making a Way Out of No Way.” The 50-minute film celebrates this icon of South Carolina’s civil rights movement.

The 7pm screening will be followed by a discussion with some of Modjeska’s comrades about her teachings and legacy. We will meet at Modjeska’s house (now a historical site) at 2025 Marion St. in downtown Columbia. Modjeska’s favorite libation, port, will be served, along with other beverages and popcorn. The event is free and open to the public.

Come out for an evening of remembrance and celebration of a life well lived. You will be inspired – maybe enough to get involved yourself in the fight for human rights.

For information, call the SC Progressive Network at 803-808-3384.

10 things you should know about John McCain

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(but probably don’t):

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3

4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”4

5. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.5

6. He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.6

7. Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”7

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”9

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10

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Sources:
1. “The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day,” ABC News, April 3, 2008

“McCain Facts,” ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008

2. “McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq,” Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008

“Buchanan: John McCain ‘Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,'” ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008

3. “McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill,” ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008

4. “McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned,” MSNBC, February 18, 2007

5. “2007 Children’s Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard,” February 2008

“McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion,” CNN, October 3, 2007

6. “Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady,” Associated Press, April 3, 2008

“McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,'” Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008

7. “Will McCain’s Temper Be a Liability?,” Associated Press, February 16, 2008

“Famed McCain temper is tamed,” Boston Globe, January 27, 2008

8. “Black Claims McCain’s Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: ‘I Don’t Know What The Criticism Is,'” ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008

“McCain’s Lobbyist Friends Rally ‘Round Their Man,” ABC News, January 29, 2008

9. “McCain’s Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam,” Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008

“Will McCain Specifically ‘Repudiate’ Hagee’s Anti-Gay Comments?,” ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008

“McCain ‘Very Honored’ By Support Of Pastor Preaching ‘End-Time Confrontation With Iran,'” ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008

10. “John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record,” Sierra Club, February 28, 2008

List compiled by MoveOn.org.

Gas gouging and green jackets

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By Martha Burk

Paid at the pump lately? Who hasn’t, and we’re paying more with each tank. Gas is up a quarter a gallon in the last two weeks alone, but don’t expect big oil to feel your pain. The moguls at ExxonMobil, the fattest of the petroleum cartel cats, will squander several millions of your fuel dollars sponsoring the Masters golf tournament and entertaining their buddies during the April 8 to 12 festivities.

The Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters, is famous for its top notch course, beautiful azaleas, members in green jackets — and sex discrimination. A female may be good enough to take the Oval Office, but no woman is good enough make it through the front gates of Augusta National as an equal. Even after a national argument five years ago that played out from network TV to kitchen tables, the boys in green refused to allow women members into their exclusive club. They’re still standing firm.

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Augusta National lost its TV sponsors for two years over their refusal to admit women, but ExxonMobil came to the rescue, stepping up to the sex-segregation plate with a new multi-year contract to underwrite the Masters broadcast. Female shareowners are outraged, and have filed stockholder resolutions demanding that the company account for the number of dollars spent at Augusta and other venues that discriminate on the basis of gender. The resolutions state the obvious — the company wouldn’t do it if the subject was race. But apparently the boys in the boardroom (there are only two women out of 13) don’t think sex discrimination is such a big deal. Management sent out a letter last month urging stockholders to vote against this simple demand for disclosure.

But don’t think the company isn’t trying to woo women’s dollars while thumbing its nose at the principles of fairness and equality. In a breathtaking act of corporate hypocrisy, last month ExxonMobil also ran a nationwide full page color ad in the New York Times touting its celebration of International Women’s Day, and its support for women rising in the ranks of business — in Africa. The ad cost only a few hundred thousand — several million less than the Augusta sponsorship. Guess they think female newspaper readers are a cheap date.

Women at ExxonMobil are not buying the stonewalling by company management on the Augusta National issue, and women at other firms involved with the club continue to complain of sex discrimination to national women’s rights groups. Attitudes that begin on the golf course naturally spill over to the office, where women say they are passed over for promotion, paid less, and even sexually harassed at many of the companies these guys head. The National Council of Women’s Organizations has been making sure women at the green-jacketed CEO companies get a little payback. The group helped women employees at Morgan Stanley sue that company two years ago for discriminatory employment practices. They recently got a settlement for $46 million. And importantly, they got a change in company policy that expenses and entertainment at discriminatory clubs will no longer be underwritten with company dollars.

Exxon ought to listen to this canary in the coal mine. Women — no doubt including some of its own employees — are fed up. The company’s record-breaking bottom line has been fattened by their work. That bottom line has also been pumped up by female customers who must drive to get to work, school, church, and the grocery store. So whether you’re a woman behind the wheel or a man who cares about the women in your life, the next time you need a fill-up, consider what you’re really paying for when you choose one brand over another.

While ordinary people struggling to balance their checkbooks, the corporate guests of ExxonMobil are struggling to get another drink at the company-sponsored open bars in Augusta, Georgia. And oh yeah, the corporation gets to deduct every penny. Hold that thought. It just might cause you to drive to the next pump a little further down the block.

Burk is author of “Your Money and Your Life: The High Stakes for Women Voters in ‘08 and Beyond”

Mad science

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Deconstructing Bunk Reporting in Five Easy Steps
By Beth Skwarecki
Bitch Magazine

British scientists have uncovered the truth behind one of modern culture’s greatest mysteries: why little girls play with pink toys. Is it because toy companies flood whole store aisles with the color? Or because well-meaning relatives shower girl babies with pink blankets and clothing? Nope. According to the men in lab coats, it’s purely biological.

Apparently, women are hardwired to like pink because our cavewoman foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries amongst the trees while their husbands were out hunting. Later, women needed to notice red-faced babies and blushing boyfriends. And why do men like blue? Because it’s the color of the sky.

This evolutionary just-so story takes up three pages of a 2007 issue of Current Biology. To back up the assertion that pink is a universal girly preference worth examining, the authors refer to a 1985 study finding that little girls use more pink and red crayons in their drawings than little boys do.

Dig further, however, and the story completely falls apart. British women do prefer pink, but the author’s claim of a “robust, cross-cultural sex difference” turns out to be neither. The scientists compared British natives with Chinese immigrants to Britain, and glossed over the differences. For example: The girliest color in the British results, a purplish-pink, was in fact the Chinese men’s favorite.

Nowhere do scientific findings get more mangled than when they’re about the differences between men and women. According to the science pages, women aren’t just biologically hardwired to prefer pink to blue. We’re also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace, cry in the boardroom, and have both lower iqs and less of a sense of humor than men.

Some misleading stories come from bad science, where the study authors’ conclusions aren’t supported by their own data. Others are well-conducted studies whose conclusions mutate upon contact with the mainstream media. Newspapers and websites are prone to playing fast and loose with their reports on studies, often neglecting to reveal salient facts about a study’s sample group or methodology.

The fact is that science articles aren’t designed to be read by non-scientists. College and grad students in the sciences are trained in how to do it: They review papers and discuss them in journal clubs; learn how to question methodologies (Is that sample really big enough? Was that the right test to use?); and learn how to be critical of authors’ interpretations (Do the results really mean what they say they mean?). Students also know to look at context for each study, looking up previous papers on the subject, reviewing the authors’ previous work, and searching out any evidence of bias that might color a study’s findings.

Journalists looking for a quick story, however, do little such research. And in an age where news sites, wire services, and blogs pick up stories with lightning-fast speed, bad research gets around. When London’s Sunday Times reported on a 2007 study claiming that men get dumber in the presence of blond women, the paper got the name of the journal wrong, citing the Journal of Experimental Psychology rather than the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Nearly every subsequent news article repeated the error because they were content to simply reword the Times’ version of the story rather than finding and discussing the study itself.

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Born-again Americans and that old-time (civil) religion

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By Sara Robinson
The Campaign for America’s Future

Can we progressives – who won’t be caught dead these days calling ourselves liberals – can we stop serving as a punching bag for the right? And speak with depth and conviction about the things that really matter to us? Once and for all, can we break through the false and humiliating charade that they and they alone are the arbiters of family values, morality, patriotism, the flag, the life of the spirit, God-talk? And that they alone have the credibility to speak to these subjects and concerns? The search for meaning that defines us as humans is the greatest conversation going, and I want IN.

“Born-Again American” Norman Lear at the Take Back America conference last week.

Ever since the overlong election season first kicked off last summer, I’ve been feeling deep gratitude for the happy fact that, for the first time since 1988, we’re finally having a presidential election that does not involve re-fighting the Vietnam War. To everyone’s profound relief, there’s nary a draft dodger, National Guardsman, Bronze Star recipient, or Swiftboater in sight. Nobody’s service records are under investigation. Not a single public conversation has devolved into an ugly he said/he said over who did what in some swamp somewhere in 1969. I think I speak for an entire grateful nation when I say: It’s been nice.

I must confess, however, that I’m just about ready to take it all back. Because this time, instead of military exploits two-thirds of the country is too young to remember, this election is being fought over religion – which is, apparently, the new battlefield on which candidates must try themselves and not be found wanting. Obama’s pastor of 20 years is being trotted out to whip up white voters’ latent terror of Angry Scary Black Men (and, as a twofer, also undercut the resonance of his strong moral voice). McCain is proudly advertising his bizarre affiliations with John Hagee, Richard Land, and Rod Parsley – religious ideologues so extremist and creepy that most straight-thinking Evangelicals won’t have anything to nd actually find myself longing wistfully for the good old days when we were merely obsessed with re-hashing the details of a 40-year-old war.

How on earth did we get here? Why are Americans suddenly so engrossed with religion (and some pretty excessive religion at that)? Are there deeper reasons that the 2008 election is turning into a referendum on whose God will prevail?

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And the survey says…

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The 2008 Health Care for America Survey results are in, and the findings expose a health care system that costs too much, covers too little, leaves too many behind and is getting worse. The results deliver a mandate for health care reform to everyone who wants the support of working families in this year’s elections.

* One-third of respondents to the online survey, sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Working America, report skipping medical care because of cost, and a quarter had serious problems paying for the care they needed.

* 95 percent say they are somewhat or very concerned about being able to afford health insurance in the coming years.

* Almost half overall (48 percent) and 60 percent of Latinos say they or a family member has stayed in a job to keep health care benefits when they would have preferred changing jobs.

* 95 percent of respondents say America’s health care system needs fundamental change or to be completely rebuilt.

* 79 percent say health care is a very important voting issue, and 97 percent say they plan to vote in the November elections.

Please take a moment to read the full survey results and health care stories. Learn how working families can win secure, high-quality health care for all in 2009 if we make the 2008 elections a mandate for health care reform.

Over a period of seven weeks, more than 26,000 people took the online 2008 Health Care for America Survey sponsored by the AFL-CIO and Working America. Most are insured and employed. Most are college graduates. More than half are union members.

These are the people, it would seem, most likely to have positive experiences with America’s health care system. Instead, their responses tell a sobering story about the breadth of the problems with health care in America. They say our system has fundamental problems that must be fixed.

And they’re ready to vote about it.

Talking down to America

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By Michael Winship
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

I haven’t worked in the realm of children’s television in more than a decade, but lessons learned in that world are lessons learned for life.

First and foremost: never condescend. When writing for kids, think of them as slightly shorter grown-ups with fewer bad habits and better credit.

Would that the Bush administration followed the non-condescension rule for adults. Instead, they’ve taken a page from the playbook of the late Uncle Don, host of a kiddy show during the glory days of radio.

It’s apocryphal, one of those hoary urban legends, but the story goes that after finishing the broadcast of his usual half-hour of moonbeams and treacle, Uncle Don turned to a colleague – not knowing the microphone was still hot – and said, “Well, that ought to hold the little bastards.”

Similarly, the White House seems to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that dispersing the same old, Uncle Don-style effluvium to the American public will continue to placate and hold us close. But more and more of us know it’s nothing more than a bad smell.

A comparison of two noteworthy speeches last week – Barack Obama on race, George Bush on Iraq – shows the difference between a candidate who talks to us like grown-ups and an incumbent who seems to think he’s still reading “My Pet Goat” to second graders in Sarasota.

Regardless of how you feel about Obama’s candidacy or the continuing issue of his past affiliation with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, last Tuesday’s speech in Philadelphia was formidable, candid, sophisticated rhetoric.

As Republican Peggy Noonan, a virtuoso of speechwriting for Ronald Reagan, observed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, “He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.”

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Gay business guild to hold awards gala May 16

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Make plans now to attend the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Business Guild 2008 Annual Awards Gala on Friday, May 16, at the Embassy Suites Hotel on Greystone Boulevard in Columbia. (SC GLBG is the SC Progressive Network‘s newest member, and we welcome the group on board!)

* 6-7pm – A networking/reception hour will be held in the hotel atrium
* 7pm – The awards dinner with ANT as featured entertainer
* After Party – A DJ will help you dance the night away right after the program until midnight.

A cash bar will be provided throughout the evening’s festivities.

Awards include:
The Freddie Mullis Corporate Member of the Year – 2007 award recipient was Sheila Morris
The Dan Burch Volunteer of the Year – 2007 award recipient was Rebecca Majeski
The Community Partner of the Year – 2007 award recipient was Harriet Hancock

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, you should immediately contact us at sclgbg1@aol.com or call (803) 771-0411 and someone will contact you. Sponsorships start at $250.

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Our featured entertainer for this year’s event will be acclaimed comedian ANT. ANT first appeared on The Last Comic Standing and quickly made his name known with frequent appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Tyra Banks Show. Recently The LOGO Channel’s “US of ANT” series and VH1’s “Celebrity Fit Club” helped propel ANT into a name that many recognize as a comedic sensation.

Gala Sponsors for this year’s event include:
American Airlines / American Eagle
Asset Realty, Inc.
Cap’n Al’s Hawaiian Sunglass Hut
Embassy Suites Hotel
FASTCO Threaded Products
QNotes
Robin Ridgell & Marla Wood

Tickets prices: $60 for members / $75 for non-members / Table of 8 for $500, includes a table tent with your personal or company name. Ticket order form and more information is available on the web site at www.scglbg.org.