Chris Hedges: The Radical Christian Right and the War on Government - Chris Hedges - Truthdig
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
There is a desire felt by tens of millions of Americans, lumped into a diffuse and fractious movement known as the Christian right, to destroy the intellectual and scientific rigor of the Enlightenment, radically diminish the role of government to create a theocratic state based on “biblical law,” and force a recalcitrant world to bend to the will of an imperial and “Christian” America. Its public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This ideology, which is the driving force behind the shutdown of the government, calls for the eradication of social “deviants,” beginning with gay men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once these “deviants” are removed, other “deviants,” including Muslims, liberals, feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor African-Americans and those dismissed as “nominal Christians”—meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be ruthlessly repressed. The “deviant” government bureaucrats, the “deviant” media, the “deviant” schools and the “deviant” churches, all agents of Satan, will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these “deviants” will be annulled. “Christian values” and “family values” will, in the new state, be propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed over to the church. Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless indoctrination.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.
The cult of masculinity, as in all fascist movements, pervades the ideology of the Christian right. The movement uses religion to sanctify military and heroic “virtues,” glorify blind obedience and order over reason and conscience, and pander to the euphoria of collective emotions. Feminism and homosexuality, believers are told, have rendered the American male physically and spiritually impotent. Jesus, for the Christian right, is a man of action, casting out demons, battling the Antichrist, attacking hypocrites and ultimately slaying nonbelievers. This cult of masculinity, with its glorification of violence, is appealing to the powerless. It stokes the anger of many Americans, mostly white and economically disadvantaged, and encourages them to lash back at those who, they are told, seek to destroy them. The paranoia about the outside world is fostered by bizarre conspiracy theories, many of which are prominent in the rhetoric of those leading the government shutdown. Believers, especially now, are called to a perpetual state of war with the “secular humanist” state. The march, they believe, is irreversible. Global war, even nuclear war, is the joyful harbinger of the Second Coming. And leading the avenging armies is an angry, violent Messiah who dooms billions of apostates to death.
Dominionists believe they are engaged in an epic battle against the forces of Satan. They live in a binary world of black and white. They feel they are victims, surrounded by sinister groups bent on their destruction. They have anointed themselves as agents of God who alone know God’s will. They sanctify their rage. This rage lies at the center of the ideology. It leaves them sputtering inanities about Barack Obama, his corporate-sponsored health care reform bill, his alleged mandated suicide counseling or “death panels” for seniors under the bill, his supposed secret alliance with radical Muslims, and “creeping socialism.” They see the government bureaucracy as being controlled by “secular humanists” who want to destroy the family and make war against the purity of their belief system. They seek total cultural and political domination.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Boehner's jam: Caucus loves but won't follow him - Yahoo News
Boehner's jam: Caucus loves but won't follow him - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Congress' debt-and-spending breakthrough crystalized a political contradiction.
House Republicans refuse to let their supposed leader, Speaker John Boehner, steer them toward big policy decisions, leaving him to endure repeated public embarrassments. Yet they rally around Boehner as much as ever, affirming his hold on the speakership Wednesday even as they choked down a Democratic-crafted bill to reopen the government, lift the debt ceiling and give Republicans only a few small concessions.
"He's done a good job keeping us together," said Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C.
"I think his stock has risen tremendously, and certainly he has great security as our leader and our speaker," said Rep. John Fleming, R-La.
Imagine the praise from Republicans who voted in favor of the bill, which Boehner described as the best deal he could get under the constraints his colleagues handed him. Hudson and Fleming were among the 144 House Republicans who voted "no," forcing their leader once again to pass a high-profile measure that most GOP members opposed. Eighty-seven Republicans voted for it, joining all the Democrats in the chamber.
Hudson and Fleming also are among the House's dozens of tea party-backed Republicans, whose disdain of compromise has vastly complicated the speaker's job. Even before Wednesday, House Republicans' habit of praising but not heeding Boehner reflected the tea party's devotion to putting principle above deal-making.
Boehner is a seasoned legislator. He constantly seeks 218 votes needed to pass House bills and scraps for the best bargains he can cut with Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama.
Ho-hum, say many rank-and-file Republicans. While polls show Americans chiefly blame Republicans for the debt-and-shutdown gridlock — and GOP Sen. John McCain declared "we have lost this battle" — many of them seemed satisfied with the stand they made. That philosophy surely would have baffled many predecessors in Congress.
"The dynamics got much better," Fleming said, when Boehner "quit going to the White House to negotiate and he began to listen to us, to what we thought would work." Fleming called the debt and spending outcome an acceptable "stalemate." Democrats weren't able to reduce the "sequester" spending cuts they oppose, he said, and Republicans failed to delay or defund Obama's health care overhaul.
Republicans "lost the battle, but we're going to win the war," Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said of plans to keep attacking "Obamacare." In January, Huelskamp voted to dump Boehner as speaker. But he joined in Wednesday's standing ovation for Boehner in a closed-door caucus gathering.
"This is probably the best example of him following the 200 folks in our caucus who are conservative and are worried about Obamacare," Huelskamp said after the meeting.
Boehner said in a subdued statement, "Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president's health care law will continue."
Boehner lost control of the debt-and-shutdown debate weeks ago, when tea party-backed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas launched a national drive to close much of the government if Democrats didn't agree to "defund Obamacare."
Senior Republicans called the mission hopeless. Boehner urged his colleagues to focus on the debt ceiling instead. The threat of government default, he said, would give them greater leverage to demand spending cuts from Democrats.
It's the same advice Boehner gave in January at a widely praised House GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Va. Republicans, he said then, must decide "where's the ground that we fight on? Where's the ground that we retreat on?"
Whatever progress Boehner made in Virginia was apparently lost this month, when scores of House Republicans joined Cruz's ultimately doomed crusade.
GOP lawmakers would have fared better "had we let the speaker pick the battlefield and the battle," said Republican strategist Mike McKenna. He said Boehner and his team did the best they could "with the mess that Ted Cruz's dead-end strategy left them." He said House Republicans appreciate that Boehner didn't say, "I told you so."
Boehner confirmed his coziness with those why defy him by appointing three high-profile budget conferees who voted against the debt-funding bill. They include former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who will lead House budget talks with the Senate in the coming weeks. A fourth GOP conferee, Boehner ally Tom Cole of Oklahoma, backed the compromise debt-funding bill.
With the government now funded through mid-January, and the debt ceiling lifted a few weeks beyond that, some lawmakers say Congress is headed toward renewed partisan brinksmanship this winter.
"All this does is delay this fight four months," said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said Republicans erred by focusing on the government funding bill instead of the debt. But he doesn't blame Boehner.
"We're a body of independent contractors, each with his own constituency," Kingston said. Boehner, he said, "is going to be OK. You know, it's a pretty tough job."
Previous House speakers found that to be true, even when their caucuses followed their advice
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Congress' debt-and-spending breakthrough crystalized a political contradiction.
House Republicans refuse to let their supposed leader, Speaker John Boehner, steer them toward big policy decisions, leaving him to endure repeated public embarrassments. Yet they rally around Boehner as much as ever, affirming his hold on the speakership Wednesday even as they choked down a Democratic-crafted bill to reopen the government, lift the debt ceiling and give Republicans only a few small concessions.
"He's done a good job keeping us together," said Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C.
"I think his stock has risen tremendously, and certainly he has great security as our leader and our speaker," said Rep. John Fleming, R-La.
Imagine the praise from Republicans who voted in favor of the bill, which Boehner described as the best deal he could get under the constraints his colleagues handed him. Hudson and Fleming were among the 144 House Republicans who voted "no," forcing their leader once again to pass a high-profile measure that most GOP members opposed. Eighty-seven Republicans voted for it, joining all the Democrats in the chamber.
Hudson and Fleming also are among the House's dozens of tea party-backed Republicans, whose disdain of compromise has vastly complicated the speaker's job. Even before Wednesday, House Republicans' habit of praising but not heeding Boehner reflected the tea party's devotion to putting principle above deal-making.
Boehner is a seasoned legislator. He constantly seeks 218 votes needed to pass House bills and scraps for the best bargains he can cut with Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama.
Ho-hum, say many rank-and-file Republicans. While polls show Americans chiefly blame Republicans for the debt-and-shutdown gridlock — and GOP Sen. John McCain declared "we have lost this battle" — many of them seemed satisfied with the stand they made. That philosophy surely would have baffled many predecessors in Congress.
"The dynamics got much better," Fleming said, when Boehner "quit going to the White House to negotiate and he began to listen to us, to what we thought would work." Fleming called the debt and spending outcome an acceptable "stalemate." Democrats weren't able to reduce the "sequester" spending cuts they oppose, he said, and Republicans failed to delay or defund Obama's health care overhaul.
Republicans "lost the battle, but we're going to win the war," Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said of plans to keep attacking "Obamacare." In January, Huelskamp voted to dump Boehner as speaker. But he joined in Wednesday's standing ovation for Boehner in a closed-door caucus gathering.
"This is probably the best example of him following the 200 folks in our caucus who are conservative and are worried about Obamacare," Huelskamp said after the meeting.
Boehner said in a subdued statement, "Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president's health care law will continue."
Boehner lost control of the debt-and-shutdown debate weeks ago, when tea party-backed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas launched a national drive to close much of the government if Democrats didn't agree to "defund Obamacare."
Senior Republicans called the mission hopeless. Boehner urged his colleagues to focus on the debt ceiling instead. The threat of government default, he said, would give them greater leverage to demand spending cuts from Democrats.
It's the same advice Boehner gave in January at a widely praised House GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Va. Republicans, he said then, must decide "where's the ground that we fight on? Where's the ground that we retreat on?"
Whatever progress Boehner made in Virginia was apparently lost this month, when scores of House Republicans joined Cruz's ultimately doomed crusade.
GOP lawmakers would have fared better "had we let the speaker pick the battlefield and the battle," said Republican strategist Mike McKenna. He said Boehner and his team did the best they could "with the mess that Ted Cruz's dead-end strategy left them." He said House Republicans appreciate that Boehner didn't say, "I told you so."
Boehner confirmed his coziness with those why defy him by appointing three high-profile budget conferees who voted against the debt-funding bill. They include former vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who will lead House budget talks with the Senate in the coming weeks. A fourth GOP conferee, Boehner ally Tom Cole of Oklahoma, backed the compromise debt-funding bill.
With the government now funded through mid-January, and the debt ceiling lifted a few weeks beyond that, some lawmakers say Congress is headed toward renewed partisan brinksmanship this winter.
"All this does is delay this fight four months," said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said Republicans erred by focusing on the government funding bill instead of the debt. But he doesn't blame Boehner.
"We're a body of independent contractors, each with his own constituency," Kingston said. Boehner, he said, "is going to be OK. You know, it's a pretty tough job."
Previous House speakers found that to be true, even when their caucuses followed their advice
Friday, October 11, 2013
Money Morning
Money Morning
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
It's the biggest find in 50 years and the media is completely ignoring it...
It is 6 times larger than the Bakken, 17 times the size of the Marcellus formation, and 80 times larger than the Eagle Ford shale.
All told what was recently discovered outside a sleepy Australian town contains more black gold more than in all of Iran, Iraq, Canada, or Venezuela.
With current estimates at 233 billion barrels its just 30 billion shy of the estimated reserves in all of Saudi Arabia.
According to one renowned international expert, this massive discovery could eventually dwarf the oil rich kingdom as the original estimates are revised.
An advisor to six of the top 10 oil producers and active consultant to 20 world governments, Dr. Kent Moors now believes the find, "may land at 300 or 400 billion barrels," making it one of "the greatest unconventional oil discoveries any of us will see in our lifetimes."
"It's represents a bona fide redrawing of the global energy map as we know it," Moors says, "and the mainstream media is completely ignoring it."
It's centered around a place called Coober Pedy, an inhospitable speck on the map in Southern Australia.
Founded in 1915, Coober Pedy had long been the home to a scarce 1700 people who lived in residences literally carved out in its caves.
Now another 20,000 people have suddenly flocked there, making it one of the hottest real estate markets in all of Australia.
Considering the conditions the sudden stampede is remarkable - there's little to no water and temperatures routinely reach above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
While it's obviously still just the beginning, Coober Pedy real estate agent Di Enders says her phone has been ringing off the hook since the news broke.
"I've had so many calls, you wouldn't believe it," she says. "My brain is about to explode."
"People renting don't want to surrender their houses, they know they won't get another one," she says.
The big draw is the riches about to be pulled out of a vast geological structure called the Arckaringa basin.
Encompassing an area in excess of 30,000 square miles, what's buried within the basin is enough black gold to completely change the global oil landscape-not to mention the lives early investors.
Analysts now believe ground zero will be much like is was in Saudi Arabia in the 1950's.
And according to the inner circle briefing below by Dr. Moors, there's one little company that controls the whole thing.
And since Arckaringa footprint will be beyond extensive, hundreds of wells, massive infrastructure networks, gathering systems, pipelines, processing facilities and support services will vital.
The outflows from these areas have been so big they have given way to predictions that the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer as soon as this year.
Even at the lowest estimate, the Coober Pedy fins is set to make Australia a net oil exporter; at the higher estimate, Australia would become one of the world's biggest oil exporters.
"What we're seeing up there is a very, very big deposit," says South Australia's mining minister, Tom Koutsantonis, "If the reserves and the pressure was right over millions of years and the rocks have done the things they think they've done, they think they can extract vast reserves of oil out of South Australia which would have a value of about $20 trillion."
Dependence on OPEC's crude is already slipping as the U.S. and Canada unlock unconventional oil supplies from deep underground shale deposits with new drilling techniques.
Now there's even more completion bubbling up from "Down Under."
Given all of the trouble in the Middle East, the Saudi's have good reason to be alarmed.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
It's the biggest find in 50 years and the media is completely ignoring it...
It is 6 times larger than the Bakken, 17 times the size of the Marcellus formation, and 80 times larger than the Eagle Ford shale.
All told what was recently discovered outside a sleepy Australian town contains more black gold more than in all of Iran, Iraq, Canada, or Venezuela.
With current estimates at 233 billion barrels its just 30 billion shy of the estimated reserves in all of Saudi Arabia.
According to one renowned international expert, this massive discovery could eventually dwarf the oil rich kingdom as the original estimates are revised.
An advisor to six of the top 10 oil producers and active consultant to 20 world governments, Dr. Kent Moors now believes the find, "may land at 300 or 400 billion barrels," making it one of "the greatest unconventional oil discoveries any of us will see in our lifetimes."
"It's represents a bona fide redrawing of the global energy map as we know it," Moors says, "and the mainstream media is completely ignoring it."
Where the Hell is Coober Pedy?
But to people who call this place home, the oncoming oil boom means nothing will ever be the same ($20 trillion worth of oil can do that to a town).It's centered around a place called Coober Pedy, an inhospitable speck on the map in Southern Australia.
Founded in 1915, Coober Pedy had long been the home to a scarce 1700 people who lived in residences literally carved out in its caves.
Now another 20,000 people have suddenly flocked there, making it one of the hottest real estate markets in all of Australia.
Considering the conditions the sudden stampede is remarkable - there's little to no water and temperatures routinely reach above 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
While it's obviously still just the beginning, Coober Pedy real estate agent Di Enders says her phone has been ringing off the hook since the news broke.
"I've had so many calls, you wouldn't believe it," she says. "My brain is about to explode."
"People renting don't want to surrender their houses, they know they won't get another one," she says.
The big draw is the riches about to be pulled out of a vast geological structure called the Arckaringa basin.
Encompassing an area in excess of 30,000 square miles, what's buried within the basin is enough black gold to completely change the global oil landscape-not to mention the lives early investors.
Analysts now believe ground zero will be much like is was in Saudi Arabia in the 1950's.
And according to the inner circle briefing below by Dr. Moors, there's one little company that controls the whole thing.
The Death Knell for OPEC
The massive find has been likened to the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale oil projects in the US, which have created legitimate boom times in Texas and North Dakota.The outflows from these areas have been so big they have given way to predictions that the US could overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer as soon as this year.
Even at the lowest estimate, the Coober Pedy fins is set to make Australia a net oil exporter; at the higher estimate, Australia would become one of the world's biggest oil exporters.
"What we're seeing up there is a very, very big deposit," says South Australia's mining minister, Tom Koutsantonis, "If the reserves and the pressure was right over millions of years and the rocks have done the things they think they've done, they think they can extract vast reserves of oil out of South Australia which would have a value of about $20 trillion."
Dependence on OPEC's crude is already slipping as the U.S. and Canada unlock unconventional oil supplies from deep underground shale deposits with new drilling techniques.
Now there's even more completion bubbling up from "Down Under."
Given all of the trouble in the Middle East, the Saudi's have good reason to be alarmed.
Are the Obama administration’s ‘Promise Zones’ a promising anti-poverty strategy?
Are the Obama administration’s ‘Promise Zones’ a promising anti-poverty strategy?
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
In the years immediately following the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the federal government passed bold civil rights and anti-poverty legislation to address critical issues facing the nation. Among this legislation was the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, which launched the War on Poverty, including programs like Head Start and food stamps, and other efforts to address poverty and its affects. During the administration of former president Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress authorized about $2 billion annually to fight poverty.
Today, 50 years later, the Head Start and food stamp (now Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) programs are being deeply cut. Twenty -six percent of black people live below the poverty level and black unemployment is still twice as high as that of whites, just as it was in 1963. According to University of Michigan economics professor Shelton Danziger, “Americans have allowed poverty to fall off the national agenda.”
Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute at the D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, sees hope for a federal response in the Obama administration’s new Promise Zones initiative. Smedley calls Promise Zones “the biggest, most promising anti-poverty strategy” in decades. The Joint Center is working with the Obama administration to build awareness about the effort.
Promise Zones are intended to coordinate and focus community-based programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Department of Education (DOE), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Agriculture (DOA), on high-poverty communities across the country. Among the programs to be included, for example, are HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods, which helps neighborhoods with distressed public housing implement plans for transformation; DOE’s Promise Neighborhoods inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone and intended to improve educational opportunities and life chances for children in high poverty neighborhoods; and the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Initiative, which works with high crime neighborhoods to control and prevent violent crime, drug abuse and gang activity. The goal of Promise Zones is to accelerate these programs by using the administration’s new “place-based” approach of integrating and aligning the resources of several federal agencies in areas of concentrated poverty. According to HUD, since 2009, the administration has invested more than $350 million in 100 of the nation’s persistent pockets of poverty.
Why is Smedley so hopeful about Promise Zones?
“Promise Zones gets the prescription right,” he says. “Past civil rights efforts such as the War on Poverty focused on helping individuals, but did not address the structural barriers to opportunity in neighborhoods where poor people of color live,” such as segregated and poor quality housing, the lack of capital and economic opportunity, inadequate schools, and transportation.
Previous HUD programs, such as Empowerment Zones, have certainly used the concept of targeting specific places to spur investment and revitalization. However, Smedley believes that the Promise Zones approach of cooperating across agencies to locate a range of federal programs in poor neighborhoods, can better attract business investment and help lessen poverty.
Smedley is also encouraged that the Promise Zones strategy is being implemented as researchers, including the Joint Center, are looking more seriously at the intersection between “place,” health and economic justice.
The Joint Center held its third annual National Health Equity Conference on October 2, in Washington, D.C., which was attended by researchers, community development leaders, policy makers and practitioners from across the country. The purpose of the conference was to discuss and disseminate strategies for addressing the relationship between health and economic inequities. Smedley points to “a large body of research which shows that the places where people live have a direct impact on their health status.” He explains that for many people of color, poor socio-economic status also means poor health. He believes that Promise Zones provide an opportunity to learn more about how stimulating economic activity in targeted neighborhoods can improve resident’s health.
Other policy analysts aren’t so certain about the Promise Zone’s placed-based recipe. Phil Tegeler, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, says programs, such as Promise Neighborhoods, that will make up the Promise Zones are worthy efforts. However, he is concerned that they are too focused on keeping the poor in distressed communities.
Poor families “need to have the choice to move to higher income neighborhoods,” said Tegeler, who believes that HUD should make more funding available for programs that expand housing choice outside of areas of extreme poverty. This is a particularly note worthy critique given research which shows the harmful effects on children of growing up in poverty-stricken neighborhoods
Over the next four years, the Obama administration will designate 20 high poverty communities as Promise Zones. These communities will not receive direct funding, but will benefit from tax incentives (if enacted by Congress) to encourage private business investment, intensive assistance from federal agencies to help them make the best use of existing federal funding, and priority access to federal investments made under the administration’s placed–based approach.
Of course there are no “promises” with the Promise Zones strategy. There are many factors that could get in the way of success. Over the past two decades, private foundations have spent significant resources investing in place-based initiatives and produced plenty of evidence that much can go wrong. For example, any effort to alleviate entrenched poverty requires a long time horizon, and few funders — public, private or philanthropic — have the resources or patience to stick with these initiatives if they don’t show early positive results. Multi-dimensional, place-based projects are expensive and often funders don’t provide adequate resources. Promise Zones will not receive direct funding and the resources for which they can apply appear limited, given what has been spent in these areas so far.The War on Poverty spent billions in 1960’s dollars and was still considered under-funded by some.
In addition, tax incentives, designed to attract private businesses to the zones, still need to be approved by Congress. As things stand now between Congress and the administration, that could be a long shot. Also, many communities that have experienced years of disinvestment do not have the infrastructure to successfully implement and sustain a complex revitalization effort without intense, continuous capacity development — which of course means time and resources. Finally, these projects are getting underway in a very fragile economy and any downturn, national or local, could hamper the best intentions.
Despite the cautions and questions, it’s encouraging to see the Obama administration at least attempting to move the federal government to address poverty and inequality. Is it bold or well funded enough? Of course not, but in this economic and political environment “bold” is highly unlikely. Still, maybe we can learn something from this limited Promise Zones initiative to help move the needle in the fight against inequality. In this case, I’d like to see America prove Professor Danziger wrong.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
In the years immediately following the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the federal government passed bold civil rights and anti-poverty legislation to address critical issues facing the nation. Among this legislation was the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, which launched the War on Poverty, including programs like Head Start and food stamps, and other efforts to address poverty and its affects. During the administration of former president Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress authorized about $2 billion annually to fight poverty.
Today, 50 years later, the Head Start and food stamp (now Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) programs are being deeply cut. Twenty -six percent of black people live below the poverty level and black unemployment is still twice as high as that of whites, just as it was in 1963. According to University of Michigan economics professor Shelton Danziger, “Americans have allowed poverty to fall off the national agenda.”
Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute at the D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, sees hope for a federal response in the Obama administration’s new Promise Zones initiative. Smedley calls Promise Zones “the biggest, most promising anti-poverty strategy” in decades. The Joint Center is working with the Obama administration to build awareness about the effort.
Promise Zones are intended to coordinate and focus community-based programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Department of Education (DOE), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Agriculture (DOA), on high-poverty communities across the country. Among the programs to be included, for example, are HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods, which helps neighborhoods with distressed public housing implement plans for transformation; DOE’s Promise Neighborhoods inspired by the Harlem Children’s Zone and intended to improve educational opportunities and life chances for children in high poverty neighborhoods; and the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Initiative, which works with high crime neighborhoods to control and prevent violent crime, drug abuse and gang activity. The goal of Promise Zones is to accelerate these programs by using the administration’s new “place-based” approach of integrating and aligning the resources of several federal agencies in areas of concentrated poverty. According to HUD, since 2009, the administration has invested more than $350 million in 100 of the nation’s persistent pockets of poverty.
Why is Smedley so hopeful about Promise Zones?
“Promise Zones gets the prescription right,” he says. “Past civil rights efforts such as the War on Poverty focused on helping individuals, but did not address the structural barriers to opportunity in neighborhoods where poor people of color live,” such as segregated and poor quality housing, the lack of capital and economic opportunity, inadequate schools, and transportation.
Previous HUD programs, such as Empowerment Zones, have certainly used the concept of targeting specific places to spur investment and revitalization. However, Smedley believes that the Promise Zones approach of cooperating across agencies to locate a range of federal programs in poor neighborhoods, can better attract business investment and help lessen poverty.
The Joint Center held its third annual National Health Equity Conference on October 2, in Washington, D.C., which was attended by researchers, community development leaders, policy makers and practitioners from across the country. The purpose of the conference was to discuss and disseminate strategies for addressing the relationship between health and economic inequities. Smedley points to “a large body of research which shows that the places where people live have a direct impact on their health status.” He explains that for many people of color, poor socio-economic status also means poor health. He believes that Promise Zones provide an opportunity to learn more about how stimulating economic activity in targeted neighborhoods can improve resident’s health.
Other policy analysts aren’t so certain about the Promise Zone’s placed-based recipe. Phil Tegeler, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, says programs, such as Promise Neighborhoods, that will make up the Promise Zones are worthy efforts. However, he is concerned that they are too focused on keeping the poor in distressed communities.
Poor families “need to have the choice to move to higher income neighborhoods,” said Tegeler, who believes that HUD should make more funding available for programs that expand housing choice outside of areas of extreme poverty. This is a particularly note worthy critique given research which shows the harmful effects on children of growing up in poverty-stricken neighborhoods
Over the next four years, the Obama administration will designate 20 high poverty communities as Promise Zones. These communities will not receive direct funding, but will benefit from tax incentives (if enacted by Congress) to encourage private business investment, intensive assistance from federal agencies to help them make the best use of existing federal funding, and priority access to federal investments made under the administration’s placed–based approach.
Of course there are no “promises” with the Promise Zones strategy. There are many factors that could get in the way of success. Over the past two decades, private foundations have spent significant resources investing in place-based initiatives and produced plenty of evidence that much can go wrong. For example, any effort to alleviate entrenched poverty requires a long time horizon, and few funders — public, private or philanthropic — have the resources or patience to stick with these initiatives if they don’t show early positive results. Multi-dimensional, place-based projects are expensive and often funders don’t provide adequate resources. Promise Zones will not receive direct funding and the resources for which they can apply appear limited, given what has been spent in these areas so far.The War on Poverty spent billions in 1960’s dollars and was still considered under-funded by some.
In addition, tax incentives, designed to attract private businesses to the zones, still need to be approved by Congress. As things stand now between Congress and the administration, that could be a long shot. Also, many communities that have experienced years of disinvestment do not have the infrastructure to successfully implement and sustain a complex revitalization effort without intense, continuous capacity development — which of course means time and resources. Finally, these projects are getting underway in a very fragile economy and any downturn, national or local, could hamper the best intentions.
Despite the cautions and questions, it’s encouraging to see the Obama administration at least attempting to move the federal government to address poverty and inequality. Is it bold or well funded enough? Of course not, but in this economic and political environment “bold” is highly unlikely. Still, maybe we can learn something from this limited Promise Zones initiative to help move the needle in the fight against inequality. In this case, I’d like to see America prove Professor Danziger wrong.
Kenneth Bae's mother visits North Korea to see imprisoned son - CNN.com
Kenneth Bae's mother visits North Korea to see imprisoned son - CNN.com
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The mother of Kenneth Bae, the American imprisoned in North Korea, has arrived in the country to visit her ailing son, according to a friend of the family.
Rodman: Jailed American not my problem 
Imprisoned American's sister speaks out 
Imprisoned American's health failing 
Sister: Kenneth Bae is too weak to work
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The mother of Kenneth Bae, the American imprisoned in North Korea, has arrived in the country to visit her ailing son, according to a friend of the family.
Earlier this year, Bae, a Korean-American, was sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp for what the government called "hostile acts."
His family has not been able to see him for almost a year since his November 3 arrest in North Korea.
"As a mother, I worry endlessly about his health," said his mother, Myunghee Bae in a videotaped statement. "I want to see him, comfort and hold him in person. I miss him so much."
Rodman: Jailed American not my problem Imprisoned American's sister speaks out Imprisoned American's health failing Sister: Kenneth Bae is too weak to work Bae, of Lynwood, Washington, said that she pleaded with the North Korean authorities to let her visit her son, and expressed gratitude for granting permission. She is expected to be in North Korea for five days with the goal of encouraging her son who has become ill, according to a website dedicated to Kenneth Bae's freedom.
In a prison interview released in July, Kenneth Bae had spoken of health problems including diabetes, high blood pressure, fatty liver and a back problem. He looked noticeably thinner and wore a blue prison garment streaked with sweat and dirt.
His family say he has lost more than 50 pounds.
"My heart was broken into pieces when his prison interview was released on July 3," said his mother, in her statement. "His appearance was very shocking, he looked so different, and he lost so much weight. I could not believe that prisoner was my son."
Bae was moved to a hospital for serious health problems, his sister, Terri Chung had told CNN in August.
In previous interviews, Chung has said that her brother suffers from health problems including severe back and leg pain, kidney stones, dizziness, blurred vision and loss of vision. He was already dealing with diabetes.
His family and friends have asked North Korea for mercy and the United States for help in securing his release.
U.S. officials have repeatedly called on North Korea to release Bae. In August, the two countries appeared close, but North Korea rescinded an invitation to a U.S. envoy. Ambassador Robert King, President Barack Obama's special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, had been expected to fly to Pyongyang to try to win his freedom.
Bae was arrested last year after arriving as a tourist in Rason City, a port in the northeastern corner of North Korea. His sister says that Bae is the owner of a tour company and was in North Korea for work.
The North Korean government accuses Bae of setting up bases in China for the purpose of "toppling" the North Korean government, encouraging North Korean citizens to bring down the government and conducting a "malignant smear campaign."
The country's state media also says that Bae had planned what it called a "Jericho operation" to bring down North Korea through religious activities. They have suggested that Bae could have been sentenced to death, but avoided it through "candid confession of his crimes."
On the eve of her trip, his mother looked solemnly into the camera, expressing her anxiety.
"It's hard to describe the agony of the past year since my son has been imprisoned in the DPRK," she said in a released statement. "I spend every day thinking about him and praying for his homecoming."
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Libya PM freed after several hours held by militiamen - Yahoo News
Libya PM freed after several hours held by militiamen - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reoprts:
Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was seized by gunmen Thursday and held for several hours before being freed, in the latest example of the lawlessness prevailing since Moamer Kadhafi's overthrow.
The premier appeared in good health when he arrived at government headquarters after his ordeal at the hands of former rebel militiamen, waving to waiting well-wishers as he climbed out of an armoured car.
"I hope this problem will be resolved with reason and wisdom" and without any "escalation," Zeidan later said in comments broadcast by state television as he left a cabinet meeting.
The pre-dawn seizure of Zeidan came five days after US commandos embarrassed and angered the government by capturing senior Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Anas al-Libi on the streets of Tripoli and whisking him away to a warship in the Mediterranean.
Witnesses said Zeidan was held at a police station south of the capital, and that his captors released him after armed residents surrounded the building and demanded he be let go.
Government spokesman Mohamed Kaabar told state news agency LANA the premier had been "freed, not released," without providing further details.
An employee at the hotel -- where Zeidan had taken up residence for security reasons -- told AFP a "large number of armed men" had entered the building but that the staff did not know what was happening.
A government statement said Zeidan had been taken "to an unknown destination for unknown reasons by a group" of men believed to be former rebels.
Moments before news broke that Zeidan had been freed, Deputy Prime Minister Al-Seddik Abdelkarim vowed that the government would not give into the demands of the perpetrators of a "criminal act."
"The government will not give in to blackmail by anyone," he said.
After being freed, Zeidan met with his ministers and members of the General National Congress (GNC) -- Libya's highest political authority.
Ministers had already met in his absence earlier in the day for an emergency session.
The Operations Cell of Libyan Revolutionaries, former rebels who had roundly denounced Libi's abduction and blamed Zeidan's government for it, said it had "arrested" the premier under orders from the public prosecutor.
But the cabinet said on its Facebook page that ministers were "unaware of immunity being lifted or of any arrest warrant" for him.
Later, the Brigade for the Fight against Crime, a police division made up of former rebels, said it was holding Zeidan, according to the official LANA news agency.
The government said it suspected both groups of being behind the abduction.
The two groups fall under the control of the defence and interior ministries but largely operate autonomously.
A country awash with weapons
Two years after the revolution that toppled Kadhafi, Libya's new authorities are still struggling to rein in tribal militias and groups of former rebels.
Many Libyans blame political rivalries for the problems plaguing a country awash with militias and weaponry left over from the 2011 NATO-backed rebellion.
Zeidan, who was named premier a year ago, had condemned the US capture of Libi and insisted that all Libyans should be tried on home soil.
The GNC has demanded that Washington "immediately" hand Libi back, claiming his capture was a flagrant violation of Libyan sovereignty.
Libi -- whose real name is Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Raghie -- was on the FBI's most wanted list with a $5 million (3.7 million euro) bounty on his head for his alleged role in the 1998 twin bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
US Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Zeidan's abduction as "thuggery," while UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned it "in the strongest possible terms."
Britain, which along with France had led the creation of a NATO no-fly zone in Libya at the start of the uprising, had earlier condemned the kidnapping and called for Zeidan's "immediate release."
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed Zeidan's release but said "the situation in the country is a matter of concern" and that the international community has the "responsibility to help Libyan authorities."
Public anger in Libya is growing as widespread violence -- including political assassinations -- proliferates, particularly in the east of the country.
A number of foreign missions have come under attack in Tripoli and in the eastern city of Benghazi, the cradle of the 2011 revolution.
On September 11, 2012, four Americans, including the ambassador, were killed when militants swarmed into the US consulate in Benghazi.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reoprts:
Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was seized by gunmen Thursday and held for several hours before being freed, in the latest example of the lawlessness prevailing since Moamer Kadhafi's overthrow.
The premier appeared in good health when he arrived at government headquarters after his ordeal at the hands of former rebel militiamen, waving to waiting well-wishers as he climbed out of an armoured car.
"I hope this problem will be resolved with reason and wisdom" and without any "escalation," Zeidan later said in comments broadcast by state television as he left a cabinet meeting.
The pre-dawn seizure of Zeidan came five days after US commandos embarrassed and angered the government by capturing senior Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Anas al-Libi on the streets of Tripoli and whisking him away to a warship in the Mediterranean.
Witnesses said Zeidan was held at a police station south of the capital, and that his captors released him after armed residents surrounded the building and demanded he be let go.
Government spokesman Mohamed Kaabar told state news agency LANA the premier had been "freed, not released," without providing further details.
An employee at the hotel -- where Zeidan had taken up residence for security reasons -- told AFP a "large number of armed men" had entered the building but that the staff did not know what was happening.
A government statement said Zeidan had been taken "to an unknown destination for unknown reasons by a group" of men believed to be former rebels.
Moments before news broke that Zeidan had been freed, Deputy Prime Minister Al-Seddik Abdelkarim vowed that the government would not give into the demands of the perpetrators of a "criminal act."
"The government will not give in to blackmail by anyone," he said.
After being freed, Zeidan met with his ministers and members of the General National Congress (GNC) -- Libya's highest political authority.
Ministers had already met in his absence earlier in the day for an emergency session.
The Operations Cell of Libyan Revolutionaries, former rebels who had roundly denounced Libi's abduction and blamed Zeidan's government for it, said it had "arrested" the premier under orders from the public prosecutor.
But the cabinet said on its Facebook page that ministers were "unaware of immunity being lifted or of any arrest warrant" for him.
Later, the Brigade for the Fight against Crime, a police division made up of former rebels, said it was holding Zeidan, according to the official LANA news agency.
The government said it suspected both groups of being behind the abduction.
The two groups fall under the control of the defence and interior ministries but largely operate autonomously.
A country awash with weapons
Two years after the revolution that toppled Kadhafi, Libya's new authorities are still struggling to rein in tribal militias and groups of former rebels.
Many Libyans blame political rivalries for the problems plaguing a country awash with militias and weaponry left over from the 2011 NATO-backed rebellion.
Zeidan, who was named premier a year ago, had condemned the US capture of Libi and insisted that all Libyans should be tried on home soil.
The GNC has demanded that Washington "immediately" hand Libi back, claiming his capture was a flagrant violation of Libyan sovereignty.
Libi -- whose real name is Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Raghie -- was on the FBI's most wanted list with a $5 million (3.7 million euro) bounty on his head for his alleged role in the 1998 twin bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
US Secretary of State John Kerry denounced Zeidan's abduction as "thuggery," while UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned it "in the strongest possible terms."
Britain, which along with France had led the creation of a NATO no-fly zone in Libya at the start of the uprising, had earlier condemned the kidnapping and called for Zeidan's "immediate release."
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen welcomed Zeidan's release but said "the situation in the country is a matter of concern" and that the international community has the "responsibility to help Libyan authorities."
Public anger in Libya is growing as widespread violence -- including political assassinations -- proliferates, particularly in the east of the country.
A number of foreign missions have come under attack in Tripoli and in the eastern city of Benghazi, the cradle of the 2011 revolution.
On September 11, 2012, four Americans, including the ambassador, were killed when militants swarmed into the US consulate in Benghazi.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Enough is enough, pleads Senate chaplain — MSNBC
Enough is enough, pleads Senate chaplain — MSNBC
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/10/09/enough-is-enough-pleads-senate-chaplain/
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
With lawmakers in Washington no closer to ending a stalemate that’s shuttered food banks, Head Start programs, and death benefits to military families, it’s looking increasingly likely that they’ll need some sort of divine intervention.
Senate Chaplain Barry Black has been using his daily opening prayers since before the shutdown began to admonish lawmakers for their actions, and pray that they soon resolve their differences. His Wednesday rebuke was particularly searing.
“Lord, when our federal shutdown delays payments of death benefits to the families of children dying on faraway battlefields, it’s time for our lawmakers to say enough is enough,” said Black, a Seventh-day Adventist and retired vice admiral, on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Cover our shame with the robe of your righteousness.”
It’s not the first time Black has turned to God on the shutdown. Last week he sharply criticized Congress for its “madness,” and prayed to “deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable.”
One of the gravest consequences to come out of the shutdown has been the abrupt suspension of a $100,000 “death gratuity” given immediately to families of fallen soldiers until survivors benefits can take effect. Families of 26 service members have not received the benefit since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, triggered by a budget impasse over President Obama’s signature health care law.
The call to halt Obamacare has become more muted as the shutdown drags on, replaced instead by a GOP call to rein in overall government spending.
Black said he remains optimistic based on his daily interactions with lawmakers and on the feedback he’s received.
“I believe that my responsibility is to plant seeds and to water them,” he said on MSNBC Wednesday. “I am convinced that my labors, my prayers, my interactions with our lawmakers, my opportunity to serve them will bring a productive harvest.”
“I’m sending you a large bag of Miracle-Gro,” said host Thomas Roberts.http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/10/09/enough-is-enough-pleads-senate-chaplain/
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Government shutdown ends North Carolina WIC benefits | abc11.com
Government shutdown ends North Carolina WIC benefits | abc11.com
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services officials said Tuesday that because of the federal government shutdown, they will have to stop issuing benefits under the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children Program, also known as WIC.
DHHS said federal WIC funds available to the state will be sufficient to cover WIC vouchers already issued for the month of October, but not sufficient to issue additional vouchers.
WIC clients should keep their nutrition appointments and continue redeeming October vouchers and WIC vendors should continue normal operations to accept existing vouchers. The Department will continue to monitor the daily availability of federal funds and will announce changes if they become necessary.
"Some of our most vulnerable citizens, pregnant and breastfeeding women, infants and young children, will be affected by the interruption of WIC services due to the federal shutdown," said DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos in a news release.
DHHS encourages families impacted by this change to apply for North Carolina's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps). Local WIC staff may also refer clients to food banks and pantries in their communities.
The WIC Program has an annual budget of $205 million and is 100 percent federally funded. During September, the program provided supplemental food, health care referrals and nutrition education for almost 264,000 women, infants and young children in North Carolina.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=9279735
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services officials said Tuesday that because of the federal government shutdown, they will have to stop issuing benefits under the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children Program, also known as WIC.
DHHS said federal WIC funds available to the state will be sufficient to cover WIC vouchers already issued for the month of October, but not sufficient to issue additional vouchers.
WIC clients should keep their nutrition appointments and continue redeeming October vouchers and WIC vendors should continue normal operations to accept existing vouchers. The Department will continue to monitor the daily availability of federal funds and will announce changes if they become necessary.
"Some of our most vulnerable citizens, pregnant and breastfeeding women, infants and young children, will be affected by the interruption of WIC services due to the federal shutdown," said DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos in a news release.
DHHS encourages families impacted by this change to apply for North Carolina's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps). Local WIC staff may also refer clients to food banks and pantries in their communities.
The WIC Program has an annual budget of $205 million and is 100 percent federally funded. During September, the program provided supplemental food, health care referrals and nutrition education for almost 264,000 women, infants and young children in North Carolina.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=9279735
Monday, October 7, 2013
VW labour chief backs UAW union bid for US works council - Yahoo Finance
VW labour chief backs UAW union bid for US works council - Yahoo Finance
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Volkswagen's top labour leader lent weight on Monday to efforts by U.S. union UAW to represent workers at the German company's U.S. plant, an issue that has raised hackles among some U.S. politicians and other critics of the UAW.
Volkswagen prefers German-style labour representation at the plant through a works council and has held talks with the UAW about how the union can be involved in setting one up.
Currently the workers at VW's plant producing the Passat car in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are not represented by a union.
But the UAW is eager to boost its membership, which has shrunk to about a quarter of the 1.5 million workers it had in 1979, and get a toehold that could allow it to expand among all foreign-owned auto companies.
However, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker has said it would be a mistake for VW to allow the UAW to organise workers at its Tennessee plant. Last month, Corker called that possibility a "job-destroying idea" and said it would make the German automaker a "laughingstock in the business world."
Bernd Osterloh, head of VW's global works council, said in a statement that forming a council was important if the plant wanted to produce other VW cars and that he would keep talking with the UAW.
VW is considering the idea of building a seven-passenger crossover utility vehicle at the Chattanooga plant rather than at its plant in Puebla, Mexico, where it already assembles the Jetta compact car and the New Beetle, a U.S. executive of VW said last month.
"We know how important that (second) vehicle is for Chattanooga," said Osterloh, who as deputy chairman of VW has a say on production decisions.
"In the interests of our U.S. colleagues, we're open to such an allocation (of an order)." Osterloh, also a member of the IG Metall engineering union, said the UAW was prepared to cede some of its rights to a works council.
Osterloh said he wanted to involve Republicans and Democrats in negotiations about a works council plan once the legal issues are clarified but said the VW principle of involving staff and management in running plants, called co-determination, was not negotiable.
He said he plans to meet politicians and other supporters and opponents of the UAW in the United States in the next few weeks.
The UAW would like VW voluntarily to recognise the U.S. union as the best choice to represent workers in Tennessee.
The UAW says it has support of a majority of Chattanooga VW's 1,567 blue-collar workers, and has collected signatures on cards authorizing that the union represent them.
ANTI-UAW PETITION
However, an anti-UAW petition signed by 563 VW Chattanooga hourly employees was delivered last Friday to plant executives, said Mike Burton, the leader of the petition drive.
Burton said that most of the signatures on the anti-UAW petition were gathered within two weeks. Burton, who works in the plant's paint shop, said he and a few co-workers will continue to collect signed petitions with a goal of attaining a majority of the 1,567 hourly workers.
Some 88 of VW's 104 plants worldwide have works councils, but U.S. labour laws require any such council to be recognised through a U.S. trade union. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and Senator Corker are both opposed to the UAW.
A UAW success at Chattanooga could alter the industrial relations landscape for foreign carmakers in the United States, opening the door to similar efforts at plants owned by Germany's Mercedes in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina, and possibly those owned by Japanese and South Korean automakers, analysts have said.
Corker has come out against any UAW influence over car plants in the South because he blames the union in part for the demise of Detroit as the heart of the U.S. industry.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/vw-labour-chief-backs-uaw-173511963.html
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Volkswagen's top labour leader lent weight on Monday to efforts by U.S. union UAW to represent workers at the German company's U.S. plant, an issue that has raised hackles among some U.S. politicians and other critics of the UAW.
Volkswagen prefers German-style labour representation at the plant through a works council and has held talks with the UAW about how the union can be involved in setting one up.
Currently the workers at VW's plant producing the Passat car in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are not represented by a union.
But the UAW is eager to boost its membership, which has shrunk to about a quarter of the 1.5 million workers it had in 1979, and get a toehold that could allow it to expand among all foreign-owned auto companies.
However, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker has said it would be a mistake for VW to allow the UAW to organise workers at its Tennessee plant. Last month, Corker called that possibility a "job-destroying idea" and said it would make the German automaker a "laughingstock in the business world."
Bernd Osterloh, head of VW's global works council, said in a statement that forming a council was important if the plant wanted to produce other VW cars and that he would keep talking with the UAW.
VW is considering the idea of building a seven-passenger crossover utility vehicle at the Chattanooga plant rather than at its plant in Puebla, Mexico, where it already assembles the Jetta compact car and the New Beetle, a U.S. executive of VW said last month.
"We know how important that (second) vehicle is for Chattanooga," said Osterloh, who as deputy chairman of VW has a say on production decisions.
"In the interests of our U.S. colleagues, we're open to such an allocation (of an order)." Osterloh, also a member of the IG Metall engineering union, said the UAW was prepared to cede some of its rights to a works council.
Osterloh said he wanted to involve Republicans and Democrats in negotiations about a works council plan once the legal issues are clarified but said the VW principle of involving staff and management in running plants, called co-determination, was not negotiable.
He said he plans to meet politicians and other supporters and opponents of the UAW in the United States in the next few weeks.
The UAW would like VW voluntarily to recognise the U.S. union as the best choice to represent workers in Tennessee.
The UAW says it has support of a majority of Chattanooga VW's 1,567 blue-collar workers, and has collected signatures on cards authorizing that the union represent them.
ANTI-UAW PETITION
However, an anti-UAW petition signed by 563 VW Chattanooga hourly employees was delivered last Friday to plant executives, said Mike Burton, the leader of the petition drive.
Burton said that most of the signatures on the anti-UAW petition were gathered within two weeks. Burton, who works in the plant's paint shop, said he and a few co-workers will continue to collect signed petitions with a goal of attaining a majority of the 1,567 hourly workers.
Some 88 of VW's 104 plants worldwide have works councils, but U.S. labour laws require any such council to be recognised through a U.S. trade union. Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and Senator Corker are both opposed to the UAW.
A UAW success at Chattanooga could alter the industrial relations landscape for foreign carmakers in the United States, opening the door to similar efforts at plants owned by Germany's Mercedes in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina, and possibly those owned by Japanese and South Korean automakers, analysts have said.
Corker has come out against any UAW influence over car plants in the South because he blames the union in part for the demise of Detroit as the heart of the U.S. industry.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/vw-labour-chief-backs-uaw-173511963.html
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Racism Still Pushing Some Over the Edge?
Racism Still Pushing Some Over the Edge?
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Do Racial Issues Still Push Some Over the Edge?
Black Woman's Chase, Slaying Renews Interest in Theory
The suspect slain after a chase from the White House to the U.S. Capitol Thursday wasn't identified by race, unlike the Washington Navy Yard killer who left 12 others dead less than three weeks earlier. Miriam Carey wasn't at large, as was Aaron Alexis of Fort Worth, Texas, whose race was broadcast when reporters had little else to go on by way of description.
The public also saw photos of Christopher Jordan Dorner, "a linebacker-sized ex-cop with a multitude of firearms, military training and a seemingly bottomless grudge born when the LAPD fired him in 2009," in the words of the Los Angeles Times, describing him during a manhunt in February. He was believed to have killed three police officers.
All three had mental health issues, and all were African American. Is there a connection?
Amy Alexander, who co-authored the 2000 book "Lay My Burden Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African-Americans" with Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, thinks so.
"Today a woman allegedly attempted to ram her car into gates near the White House, " Alexander wrote Thursday on the Medium website. "She reportedly attempted to flee, and was shot by local law enforcement officials near the U.S. Capitol Building. Two weeks ago, a gunman who was apparently suffering from mental illness that led him to believe that unseen forces were out to get him shot and killed 12 workers at the Navy Yard in the District of Columbia before officers shot him dead.
"The gunman in the Navy Yard tragedy was black, and early reports of today's incident indicate that the driver of the car that seemed to be trying to [breach] security at the White House may have been black. Were their respective mental states affected by race in America? Scoff if you like. I consider this a legitimate area of inquiry.
"The race of these two individuals who caused these violent outbursts is both important and possibly not so important — what matters to me is that violence appeared to be their court of last resort. The motivations of their respective choices are worth examining, once we learn more about their lives.
"What's obvious right now, though, is this: We're trapped in an endless loop of denial when it comes to race and violence in America.
"We are living a weird mash-up of the Dickensian cliche — 'the best of times, the worst of times' — and 'Groundhog Day.' America sits atop the list of developed nations in terms of GDP, military might, and at least several cultural and intellectual sectors.
"We have twice elected a Black American man as President. We do not live — as was the case in my childhood — under the constant fear of a nuclear attack. We haven't had a major race-related urban disturbance since 1992.
"And yet, our Original Sin — racism — continues to haunt America, including blacks and whites. Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working with one of the world's most prominent psychiatrists, Alvin F. Poussaint, of the Harvard Medical School. We wrote a nonfiction book examining people of color in America and mental health. Dr. Poussaint joins other black clinical mental health experts in exploring a theory that gets little coverage in the press: Black people in America are experiencing something known as Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). The syndrome affects whites, too.
"As Dr. P. lays it out, the symptoms are highly detrimental to Blacks, foremost, though they are debilitating for whites too if in less acute forms and at fewer points that are immediately life-shortening. For Blacks, the symptoms and expressions of PTSS include fatalistic outlook, self-destructive behavior, and hopelessness; risky-behaviors including putting oneself in danger of violence, behaving violently toward others; over-eating, smoking, drinking to excess, and drug abuse. For whites, holding racist beliefs and bigoted [ideas] is a form of mental illness that can lead to symptomatic physical health risks such as heart disease. . . ."
After the Alexis rampage, some writers called for more attention to mental illness among African American men. "Misdiagnosing mental illness among black men has long been an acute problem — with consequences that extend beyond the Navy Yard killings to the daily gun violence throughout urban America," Courtland Milloy wrote in the Washington Post. Among Alexis' issues, a friend said, "He felt a lot of discrimination and racism with white people especially," NBC News reported.
The Los Angeles Times wrote about a manifesto that Dorner issued: "Dorner felt isolated growing up as one of the few African American children in the neighborhoods where he lived and was the victim of racism, according to the manifesto. 'My first recollection of racism was in the first grade,' Dorner allegedly wrote, recalling a fellow student at Norwalk Christian School who called him a racial slur. Dorner said he responded 'fast and hard,' punching and kicking the student."
Alexander's thoughts are worthy of follow-up by other journalists. "Main point is that there's a direct through line in our US history that links violence, racism," she told Journal-isms by email. "Add mental health and you've a perfect storm of disaster!"
Freddie Allen, National Newspaper Publishers Association: Black Women Murdered by Men Three Times Rate of White Females
Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: Shut down and shot down in Washington.
Michael Daly, Daily Beast: What Pushed Miriam Carey to a Capitol Hill Tragedy?
Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune: Could Brandajah Smith, 5, have contemplated suicide?
Emma Dumain, Roll Call: For Capitol Hill, Communication Was Fast and Furious
Matthew Kauffman, Dave Altimari and Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant: Woman Killed In Washington, D.C., Was Obsessed With Obama
Anna Merlan, Village Voice: Miriam Carey, Dental Hygienist Who "Made It Out" of East New York, Identified as Capitol Suspect
Jack Mirkinson, Huffington Post: Journalists Caught In The Middle Of Capitol Hill Shooting
Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star: Tragedy is awful, no matter where it occurs
Daniel Tepfer, Stamford (Conn.) Advocate: Fragile mental health cited in Capitol shooting
Richard Weinblatt, CNN: Did D.C. cops have to shoot to kill?
Would Cleveland Indians Fans Dress in Blackface?
"I saw these guys on last night's broadcast," Craig Calcaterra wrote Thursday for NBC Sports. "Hat tip to Ted Berg of USA Today for getting the screen cap:
"We wouldn't accept it if these guys showed up at a party in blackface," Calcaterra continued. "We wouldn't cite 'tradition' or 'enthusiasm' and act as if it wasn't racist for them to do so. If they wore blackface at a ballpark I am pretty confident that security would have them removed, for their safety among other reasons.
"But to pull Indian redface in Cleveland? Hey, no worries. Go Tribe. Quit your complaining, Calcaterra. Indeed, I'm assuming that for even mentioning this I will be accused of being an overly-sensitive P.C. liberal who doesn't understand that no one finds this offensive and, hey, my Native American father-in-law has no problem with it. If they decided not to go the ad hominem route they'd probably offer something like, 'hey, he's on the caps. So obviously it's about team spirit, not racism. It's just a cartoon character, so it's not offensive.' . . ."
Meanwhile, "The Oneida Indian Nation is taking its 'Change the Mascot' campaign a step further," the Indian Country Today Media Network reported on Thursday.
"On Monday, October 7th, the Nation plans to convene in Washington, D.C. to hold a public conference calling on the NFL and its teams to end the use of the slur, Redskins.
"The conference, which will be held in the Ritz Carlton, in the same hotel as the NFL's Fall Meeting, is open to the public and press.
"This conference comes just weeks after the Nation broadcast its 'Change the Mascot' radio advertisements, and months after students at Cooperstown Central School District in Cooperstown, New York, made national news by voting to change their teams' name from 'Redskins' to the 'Hawkeyes.’ . . ."
Phillip Morris, Plain Dealer, Cleveland: Cleveland reach out and touch the dream that is the 2013 Indians
Joanna Schroeder, Good Men Project: Poster Puts the Racism of the Cleveland Indians Iconography Into Embarrassing Context
Five Points the Press Misses in Covering Health Care Act
"I've identified five points that the press, for the most part, failed to adequately cover" in reporting on the debate over President Obama's Affordable Care Act, Trudy Lieberman wrote Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review. "These are threads that would have helped people understand what the law is all about, as well as comprehend the ongoing backlash.
"1. The press did not make clear enough to the public what the law would do. . . .
"2. Reporters did not adequately explain how Obamacare was financed, and why — why the modest wealth redistribution the ACA calls for is necessary to bring health insurance to more Americans. . . .
"3. Another tough topic the press has avoided is the individual mandate and why it is necessary. . . .
"4. The media failed their audiences by passing along the spin from the law's supporters. . . .
"5. Reporters failed to truly explain Obamacare's Republican roots — and the irony of the Republican backlash against the law. . . ."
She also wrote, "Going forward, Obamacare becomes three distinct stories: the consumer story that helps people buy a very complicated product; the business story that comes with myriad questions about how the law will actually work; and, the ongoing political story . . . about wealth redistribution and who will support those who cannot pay for their medical care. But to tell all these stories well, to better explain to the public what Obamacare does and does not do (and why, and how), reporters must to go beyond what the politicians and other stakeholders are talking about. Every time."
Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio: Why blacks will suffer the most from Republicans' Obamacare opposition
Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Minority Rules
Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: 'Immorality' and Obamacare
Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: Obamacare and the Conscience of a Radical
Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts
Peniel E. Joseph, The Root: Obamacare Isn't Big Enough
Roland S. Martin, Creators Syndicate: Obama Can't Bow Down to Pathetic GOP Antics
Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: House Tea Party Caucus like a Ghetto High School Gang
Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: Playing the blame game
Charlene Obernauer, Huffington Post: 'Obamacare' vs. 'Affordable Care Act': Why Words Matter
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: John Boehner's turn to give in
Elinor Tatum, New York Amsterdam News: We know the real reason for the shutdown
Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff, New York Times: Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Do Racial Issues Still Push Some Over the Edge?
Black Woman's Chase, Slaying Renews Interest in Theory
The suspect slain after a chase from the White House to the U.S. Capitol Thursday wasn't identified by race, unlike the Washington Navy Yard killer who left 12 others dead less than three weeks earlier. Miriam Carey wasn't at large, as was Aaron Alexis of Fort Worth, Texas, whose race was broadcast when reporters had little else to go on by way of description.
The public also saw photos of Christopher Jordan Dorner, "a linebacker-sized ex-cop with a multitude of firearms, military training and a seemingly bottomless grudge born when the LAPD fired him in 2009," in the words of the Los Angeles Times, describing him during a manhunt in February. He was believed to have killed three police officers.
All three had mental health issues, and all were African American. Is there a connection?
Amy Alexander, who co-authored the 2000 book "Lay My Burden Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African-Americans" with Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, thinks so.
"Today a woman allegedly attempted to ram her car into gates near the White House, " Alexander wrote Thursday on the Medium website. "She reportedly attempted to flee, and was shot by local law enforcement officials near the U.S. Capitol Building. Two weeks ago, a gunman who was apparently suffering from mental illness that led him to believe that unseen forces were out to get him shot and killed 12 workers at the Navy Yard in the District of Columbia before officers shot him dead.
"The gunman in the Navy Yard tragedy was black, and early reports of today's incident indicate that the driver of the car that seemed to be trying to [breach] security at the White House may have been black. Were their respective mental states affected by race in America? Scoff if you like. I consider this a legitimate area of inquiry.
"The race of these two individuals who caused these violent outbursts is both important and possibly not so important — what matters to me is that violence appeared to be their court of last resort. The motivations of their respective choices are worth examining, once we learn more about their lives.
"What's obvious right now, though, is this: We're trapped in an endless loop of denial when it comes to race and violence in America.
"We are living a weird mash-up of the Dickensian cliche — 'the best of times, the worst of times' — and 'Groundhog Day.' America sits atop the list of developed nations in terms of GDP, military might, and at least several cultural and intellectual sectors.
"We have twice elected a Black American man as President. We do not live — as was the case in my childhood — under the constant fear of a nuclear attack. We haven't had a major race-related urban disturbance since 1992.
"And yet, our Original Sin — racism — continues to haunt America, including blacks and whites. Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working with one of the world's most prominent psychiatrists, Alvin F. Poussaint, of the Harvard Medical School. We wrote a nonfiction book examining people of color in America and mental health. Dr. Poussaint joins other black clinical mental health experts in exploring a theory that gets little coverage in the press: Black people in America are experiencing something known as Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). The syndrome affects whites, too.
"As Dr. P. lays it out, the symptoms are highly detrimental to Blacks, foremost, though they are debilitating for whites too if in less acute forms and at fewer points that are immediately life-shortening. For Blacks, the symptoms and expressions of PTSS include fatalistic outlook, self-destructive behavior, and hopelessness; risky-behaviors including putting oneself in danger of violence, behaving violently toward others; over-eating, smoking, drinking to excess, and drug abuse. For whites, holding racist beliefs and bigoted [ideas] is a form of mental illness that can lead to symptomatic physical health risks such as heart disease. . . ."
After the Alexis rampage, some writers called for more attention to mental illness among African American men. "Misdiagnosing mental illness among black men has long been an acute problem — with consequences that extend beyond the Navy Yard killings to the daily gun violence throughout urban America," Courtland Milloy wrote in the Washington Post. Among Alexis' issues, a friend said, "He felt a lot of discrimination and racism with white people especially," NBC News reported.
The Los Angeles Times wrote about a manifesto that Dorner issued: "Dorner felt isolated growing up as one of the few African American children in the neighborhoods where he lived and was the victim of racism, according to the manifesto. 'My first recollection of racism was in the first grade,' Dorner allegedly wrote, recalling a fellow student at Norwalk Christian School who called him a racial slur. Dorner said he responded 'fast and hard,' punching and kicking the student."
Alexander's thoughts are worthy of follow-up by other journalists. "Main point is that there's a direct through line in our US history that links violence, racism," she told Journal-isms by email. "Add mental health and you've a perfect storm of disaster!"
Freddie Allen, National Newspaper Publishers Association: Black Women Murdered by Men Three Times Rate of White Females
Wayne Bennett, the Field Negro: Shut down and shot down in Washington.
Michael Daly, Daily Beast: What Pushed Miriam Carey to a Capitol Hill Tragedy?
Jarvis DeBerry, NOLA.com | the Times-Picayune: Could Brandajah Smith, 5, have contemplated suicide?
Emma Dumain, Roll Call: For Capitol Hill, Communication Was Fast and Furious
Matthew Kauffman, Dave Altimari and Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant: Woman Killed In Washington, D.C., Was Obsessed With Obama
Anna Merlan, Village Voice: Miriam Carey, Dental Hygienist Who "Made It Out" of East New York, Identified as Capitol Suspect
Jack Mirkinson, Huffington Post: Journalists Caught In The Middle Of Capitol Hill Shooting
Mary Sanchez, Kansas City Star: Tragedy is awful, no matter where it occurs
Daniel Tepfer, Stamford (Conn.) Advocate: Fragile mental health cited in Capitol shooting
Richard Weinblatt, CNN: Did D.C. cops have to shoot to kill?
Would Cleveland Indians Fans Dress in Blackface?
"I saw these guys on last night's broadcast," Craig Calcaterra wrote Thursday for NBC Sports. "Hat tip to Ted Berg of USA Today for getting the screen cap:
"We wouldn't accept it if these guys showed up at a party in blackface," Calcaterra continued. "We wouldn't cite 'tradition' or 'enthusiasm' and act as if it wasn't racist for them to do so. If they wore blackface at a ballpark I am pretty confident that security would have them removed, for their safety among other reasons.
"But to pull Indian redface in Cleveland? Hey, no worries. Go Tribe. Quit your complaining, Calcaterra. Indeed, I'm assuming that for even mentioning this I will be accused of being an overly-sensitive P.C. liberal who doesn't understand that no one finds this offensive and, hey, my Native American father-in-law has no problem with it. If they decided not to go the ad hominem route they'd probably offer something like, 'hey, he's on the caps. So obviously it's about team spirit, not racism. It's just a cartoon character, so it's not offensive.' . . ."
Meanwhile, "The Oneida Indian Nation is taking its 'Change the Mascot' campaign a step further," the Indian Country Today Media Network reported on Thursday.
"On Monday, October 7th, the Nation plans to convene in Washington, D.C. to hold a public conference calling on the NFL and its teams to end the use of the slur, Redskins.
"The conference, which will be held in the Ritz Carlton, in the same hotel as the NFL's Fall Meeting, is open to the public and press.
"This conference comes just weeks after the Nation broadcast its 'Change the Mascot' radio advertisements, and months after students at Cooperstown Central School District in Cooperstown, New York, made national news by voting to change their teams' name from 'Redskins' to the 'Hawkeyes.’ . . ."
Phillip Morris, Plain Dealer, Cleveland: Cleveland reach out and touch the dream that is the 2013 Indians
Joanna Schroeder, Good Men Project: Poster Puts the Racism of the Cleveland Indians Iconography Into Embarrassing Context
Five Points the Press Misses in Covering Health Care Act
"I've identified five points that the press, for the most part, failed to adequately cover" in reporting on the debate over President Obama's Affordable Care Act, Trudy Lieberman wrote Wednesday for Columbia Journalism Review. "These are threads that would have helped people understand what the law is all about, as well as comprehend the ongoing backlash.
"1. The press did not make clear enough to the public what the law would do. . . .
"2. Reporters did not adequately explain how Obamacare was financed, and why — why the modest wealth redistribution the ACA calls for is necessary to bring health insurance to more Americans. . . .
"3. Another tough topic the press has avoided is the individual mandate and why it is necessary. . . .
"4. The media failed their audiences by passing along the spin from the law's supporters. . . .
"5. Reporters failed to truly explain Obamacare's Republican roots — and the irony of the Republican backlash against the law. . . ."
She also wrote, "Going forward, Obamacare becomes three distinct stories: the consumer story that helps people buy a very complicated product; the business story that comes with myriad questions about how the law will actually work; and, the ongoing political story . . . about wealth redistribution and who will support those who cannot pay for their medical care. But to tell all these stories well, to better explain to the public what Obamacare does and does not do (and why, and how), reporters must to go beyond what the politicians and other stakeholders are talking about. Every time."
Perry Bacon Jr., the Grio: Why blacks will suffer the most from Republicans' Obamacare opposition
Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Minority Rules
Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: 'Immorality' and Obamacare
Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: Obamacare and the Conscience of a Radical
Ta-Nehisi Coates blog, the Atlantic: A Rising Tide Lifts All Yachts
Peniel E. Joseph, The Root: Obamacare Isn't Big Enough
Roland S. Martin, Creators Syndicate: Obama Can't Bow Down to Pathetic GOP Antics
Askia Muhammad, Washington Informer: House Tea Party Caucus like a Ghetto High School Gang
Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: Playing the blame game
Charlene Obernauer, Huffington Post: 'Obamacare' vs. 'Affordable Care Act': Why Words Matter
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: John Boehner's turn to give in
Elinor Tatum, New York Amsterdam News: We know the real reason for the shutdown
Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff, New York Times: Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law
Thursday, October 3, 2013
The Daily Dot - GOP congressman blames park ranger for government shutdown
The Daily Dot - GOP congressman blames park ranger for government shutdown
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Like a game of hot potato that costs $300 million a day, Washington politicians are doing everything they can to deflect culpability in the government shutdown and point the finger of blame at someone else.
House Speaker John Boehner blames President Obama. President Obama blames the Tea Party faction of the House Republican caucus. But one Texas congressman is trying to blame a highly unlikely suspect: A rank and file National Park employee.
In a rather baffling piece of video captured by NBC 4 in Washington, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) gets confrontational with an unidentified park ranger at the World War II Memorial on the national mall. The memorial has become the site of a proxy war in the ongoing government shutdown as veterans had to barge past barricades in order to visit the site. The memorial has been closed, along with all other National Park sites, while the president and Congress attempt to reach a deal to fund the government.
"How do you look at them and … deny them access?" Neugebauer asked the ranger.
"It's difficult," the ranger said.
"Well, it should be difficult," replied the congressman.
"It is difficult," the ranger reiterated. "I'm sorry, sir."
Indeed, it has been a difficult situation for parks employees to negotiate. The shutdown technically makes it illegal for the department to allow visitors on the site, but the department has invoked the First Amendment to allow veterans to visit anyway. All this has gone on while park rangers and 800,000 other federal workers have been furloughed without pay during the budget stalemate.
But the reality of the situation didn't seem to have any bearing on the congressman's exchange with the ranger. Neugebauer went on to try and publicly shame the ranger, to no avail.
"The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves," Neugebauer said.
"I'm not ashamed," replied the ranger.
"You should be," said the congressman.
Despite the congressman's efforts to deflect blame for the government shut down onto a group that is among those suffering the most under it, most Americans squarely put the blame on congressional Republicans, particularly the Tea Party faction in the House, which refuses to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government without a defunding of the Affordable Care Act.
A recently released CBS News poll found that 44 percent blame Republicans, while only 35 percent blame Obama and the Democrats.
The poll did not mention how many people blame National Park rangers.
Obama tells congressional leaders he won't negotiate on shutdown, debt - Yahoo News
Obama tells congressional leaders he won't negotiate on shutdown, debt - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
President Barack Obama stressed to congressional leaders on Wednesday that he will not negotiate with Republicans over a government shutdown or raising the U.S. debt limit, the White House said.
After more than an hour of talks at the White House that did not lead to a breakthrough, the White House issued a statement saying that Obama remains hopeful that "common sense will prevail" in the budget standoff.
"The president made clear to the leaders that he is not going to negotiate over the need for Congress to act to reopen the government or to raise the debt limit to pay the bills Congress has already incurred," the White House said.
Obama held talks in the Oval Office with the top U.S. Republican, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the top Democrat in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
It was their first face-to-face talks since a government shutdown began on Tuesday.
House Republicans have been demanding that Obama agree to cut funding or delay implementation of his signature healthcare law in exchange for their agreement to approve spending measures to reopen the government.
In addition to the government shutdown, the United States faces a historic debt default on October 17 unless Congress agrees to raise the U.S. borrowing limit.
"The House could act today to reopen the government and stop the harm this shutdown is causing to the economy and families across the country," the White House said.
"The president remains hopeful that common sense will prevail, and that Congress will not only do its job to reopen the government, but also act to pay the bills it has racked up and spare the nation from a devastating default," it said.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-stressed-congressional-leaders-not-negotiate-over-shutdown-001224369--business.html
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
President Barack Obama stressed to congressional leaders on Wednesday that he will not negotiate with Republicans over a government shutdown or raising the U.S. debt limit, the White House said.
After more than an hour of talks at the White House that did not lead to a breakthrough, the White House issued a statement saying that Obama remains hopeful that "common sense will prevail" in the budget standoff.
"The president made clear to the leaders that he is not going to negotiate over the need for Congress to act to reopen the government or to raise the debt limit to pay the bills Congress has already incurred," the White House said.
Obama held talks in the Oval Office with the top U.S. Republican, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the top Democrat in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
It was their first face-to-face talks since a government shutdown began on Tuesday.
House Republicans have been demanding that Obama agree to cut funding or delay implementation of his signature healthcare law in exchange for their agreement to approve spending measures to reopen the government.
In addition to the government shutdown, the United States faces a historic debt default on October 17 unless Congress agrees to raise the U.S. borrowing limit.
"The House could act today to reopen the government and stop the harm this shutdown is causing to the economy and families across the country," the White House said.
"The president remains hopeful that common sense will prevail, and that Congress will not only do its job to reopen the government, but also act to pay the bills it has racked up and spare the nation from a devastating default," it said.
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-stressed-congressional-leaders-not-negotiate-over-shutdown-001224369--business.html
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
BREAKING: Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson resigns after report finds he received money from Bachmann campaign | Des Moines Register Staff Blogs
BREAKING: Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson resigns after report finds he received money from Bachmann campaign | Des Moines Register Staff Blogs
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Kent Sorenson, the Iowa state senator embattled over accusations that he inappropriately received pay from at least one presidential campaign in the lead up to the 2012 Iowa caucuses, has resigned from office, according to a Senate leader.
The Milo Republican stepped down just hours after an independent investigator delivered a damning report to the Senate Ethics Committee, which has been investigating his conduct for several months.
The report found “probable cause” that Sorenson broke ethics rules by accepting payments from a political action committee associated with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, and that his denials of taking such payment may represent a felony under Iowa law.
See the 566-page report: Volume 1 | Volume 2
The resignation was announced by Senate Republican Leader Bill Dix in a statement released shortly after 5 p.m.
“Today, I called for Senator Sorenson’s resignation, and he agreed to do so effective immediately,” Dix said in the statement.
In an interview after the statement was released, Sorenson told the Des Moines Register he decided to quit fighting the charges for the sake of his family. It has already cost him thousands of dollars, he said. In an earlier interview, he said he never made any false statements and maintained he violated no ethics rule.
In a 566-page report filed with the Iowa Senate on Wednesday, Mark E. Weinhardt, a specially appointed independent counsel to the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee, reports that Sorenson received money from Bachmann-controlled political action committees by filtering the funds through two separate consulting firms.
Sorenson served as the Iowa campaign chairman of Bachman’s presidential campaign until a dramatic defection to the U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign just days before the Jan. 3, 2012, caucuses.
Senate ethics rules prohibit legislators from receiving payment – either directly or indirectly – from political action committees.
The report also finds that Sorenson received a $25,000 check from a senior official in former Paul’s presidential campaign. He also received $73,000 in wire transfers that Weinhardt called “deeply suspicious.”
Sorenson told the Register he spoke to the special investigator for 2 1/2 hours, then could tell from Weinhardt’s line of questioning that he’d already drawn his own conclusions. At that point, Sorenson said he declined to answer further questions.
Taking money from two corporations is much different from taking money directly from a presidential campaign, he argued. “I don’t believe I lied,” he said. “If you’re a subcontractor, who do you work for? I was never an employee of Bachmann for President.”
His lawyer, Theodore Sporer, said the investigator is taking quite a bit of latitude in his interpretation of the Senate rules.
“(Sorenson) didn’t say anything that wasn’t true and if that broad reading is accurate, it will present a host of problems for the Senate – there would be senators from both sides of the aisle that would have violated this rule,” Sporer said. “I’m going to guess the report skirts around that direct versus indirect issue.”
Sporer added that their comments are about the allegations connected to the Bachmann campaign not the Paul campaign money, which is a separate matter.
Sorenson told the Register that one of his fellow senators knew that presidential candidate Rick Perry was renting building space from him because Perry wanted the senator’s endorsement. Another senator who owns a restaurant catered food for campaign workers, he said.
“So cooking a hamburger for a campaign isn’t working but giving advice is?” Sorenson said.
The report says that in Sorenson’s cases, money from the presidential campaigns was received by a company called Grassroots Strategies, Inc., which was wholly owned by Sorenson. In the case of the payments from the Bachmann-associated PACs, Sorenson took money from Grassroots Strategies as income for himself, Wienhardt found.
For his work on Bachmann’s presidential campaign, Sorenson received payment from the Bachmann For President campaign committee and MichelePAC, a leadership PAC set up by Bachmann to raise money for other candidates, Weinhardt found.
“We believe it was a plain violation of Senate Ethics Rule 6 for Senator Sorenson to accept compensation from MichelePAC to work on Representative Bachmann’s behalf,” Weinhardt writes in the report.
Sorenson’s payments from Bachmann for President, meanwhile, present “a question of interpretation” of the Senate rule – and indicate a need for the Senate to rewrite the rule to clarify its intent.
The report also notes two instances in which Sorenson denied being compensated by the Bachmann campaign in written statements to the Senate Ethics Committee. There is probable cause to believe, Weinhardt found, that those statements are false and that Sorenson knew them to be false when he made them.
Such false statements would constitute felonious misconduct in office, which is a class D felony.
The investigation originated with a complaint from Peter Waldron, a political consultant from Florida who worked on Bachmann’s campaign in Iowa throughout 2011.
In a statement to the Register on Wednesday, Waldron said he was “vindicated” by the report but regretful that Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status had been “soiled” by its findings.
“The people of Iowa must now change the ethics rules by which they control the behavior of their senators in both parties,” he said in the statement. “No payments of any kind, directly or indirectly, can flow to senators if Iowa wishes to preserve it unique role in the presidential nominating system in America.”
Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids, said he hoped to call a meeting of the committee for early next week to discuss the matter. In an interview before Sorenson’s resignation was announced, he declined to even guess, however, at how the committee might respond to the report.
With Sorenson’s resignation, the issue may now be moot.
The Ethics Committee is made up of three Democrats and three Republicans. It could do anything from dropping the matter entirely to rendering judgment on Sorenson’s guilt or innocence.
Horn also noted that the committee is anticipating another report from Weinhardt, looking at a second set of allegations against Sorenson relating to whether he took money from the Paul campaign.
As of Wednesday afternoon, most senators had not even seen Weinhardt’s report, which was delivered to the Secretary of the Senate’s office in the Capitol. Lawmakers adjourned in May, and are back in the Statehouse infrequently during the interim period.
Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, called on his fellow senators to withhold judgment on Sorenson, noting that potential sanctions could end up before the whole Senate at some point. But he did say the situation points to the need for tougher ethics rules and laws in Iowa.
“We need to protect the integrity of Iowa’s politics,” he said.
That means writing a clearer prohibition on lawmakers receiving compensation from political campaigns and writing such a ban into state law rather than legislative ethics rules, he said. As chairman of the State Government Committee, Danielson has led campaign finance and ethics reform issues before.
Sen. Jerry Behn, R-Boone and a member of the Ethics Committee, said Wednesday afternoon he’d spent the day out in his soybean fields and was unaware the report had been released.
“My position from the first initial report is that a guy is innocent until proven guilty,” Behn said. “I really want to see the report and find out what’s going on. … I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to say anything yet.”
Sorenson, 41, is a first-term senator representing a district just south of Des Moines. He previously served one term in the House.
In the other major issue Weinhardt reviewed, he found no evidence that Sorenson personally took a list containing the contact information for home-school families from the computer of another Bachmann campaign worker. He find evidence, however, suggesting Sorenson was involved in a conspiracy to obtain the list for use by the campaign.
The list was stored on a computer owned by campaign worker Barb Heki in connection with her work for the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators. Heki sued Sorenson and the Bachmann campaign for obtaining the list and sending emails to the names it contained. The issue also has been the subject of an Urbandale police investigation.
Weinhardt’s report notes that a third campaign worker, Chris Dorr, took responsibility for taking list, although there is evidence of a conspiracy involving Sorenson.
“The objects of the conspiracy were to remove the list from Ms. Heki’s computer without her knowledge and to make use of the list to [Bachmann for President’s] and Senator Sorenson’s own advantage while knowing that the list had been stolen,” Weinhardt writes.
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2013/10/02/senate-investigator-kent-sorenson-received-payment-from-bachmann-campaign-his-denials-may-constitute-a-felony/article
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
Kent Sorenson, the Iowa state senator embattled over accusations that he inappropriately received pay from at least one presidential campaign in the lead up to the 2012 Iowa caucuses, has resigned from office, according to a Senate leader.
The Milo Republican stepped down just hours after an independent investigator delivered a damning report to the Senate Ethics Committee, which has been investigating his conduct for several months.
The report found “probable cause” that Sorenson broke ethics rules by accepting payments from a political action committee associated with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, and that his denials of taking such payment may represent a felony under Iowa law.
See the 566-page report: Volume 1 | Volume 2
The resignation was announced by Senate Republican Leader Bill Dix in a statement released shortly after 5 p.m.
“Today, I called for Senator Sorenson’s resignation, and he agreed to do so effective immediately,” Dix said in the statement.
In an interview after the statement was released, Sorenson told the Des Moines Register he decided to quit fighting the charges for the sake of his family. It has already cost him thousands of dollars, he said. In an earlier interview, he said he never made any false statements and maintained he violated no ethics rule.
In a 566-page report filed with the Iowa Senate on Wednesday, Mark E. Weinhardt, a specially appointed independent counsel to the Iowa Senate Ethics Committee, reports that Sorenson received money from Bachmann-controlled political action committees by filtering the funds through two separate consulting firms.
Sorenson served as the Iowa campaign chairman of Bachman’s presidential campaign until a dramatic defection to the U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign just days before the Jan. 3, 2012, caucuses.
Senate ethics rules prohibit legislators from receiving payment – either directly or indirectly – from political action committees.
The report also finds that Sorenson received a $25,000 check from a senior official in former Paul’s presidential campaign. He also received $73,000 in wire transfers that Weinhardt called “deeply suspicious.”
Sorenson told the Register he spoke to the special investigator for 2 1/2 hours, then could tell from Weinhardt’s line of questioning that he’d already drawn his own conclusions. At that point, Sorenson said he declined to answer further questions.
Taking money from two corporations is much different from taking money directly from a presidential campaign, he argued. “I don’t believe I lied,” he said. “If you’re a subcontractor, who do you work for? I was never an employee of Bachmann for President.”
His lawyer, Theodore Sporer, said the investigator is taking quite a bit of latitude in his interpretation of the Senate rules.
“(Sorenson) didn’t say anything that wasn’t true and if that broad reading is accurate, it will present a host of problems for the Senate – there would be senators from both sides of the aisle that would have violated this rule,” Sporer said. “I’m going to guess the report skirts around that direct versus indirect issue.”
Sporer added that their comments are about the allegations connected to the Bachmann campaign not the Paul campaign money, which is a separate matter.
Sorenson told the Register that one of his fellow senators knew that presidential candidate Rick Perry was renting building space from him because Perry wanted the senator’s endorsement. Another senator who owns a restaurant catered food for campaign workers, he said.
“So cooking a hamburger for a campaign isn’t working but giving advice is?” Sorenson said.
The report says that in Sorenson’s cases, money from the presidential campaigns was received by a company called Grassroots Strategies, Inc., which was wholly owned by Sorenson. In the case of the payments from the Bachmann-associated PACs, Sorenson took money from Grassroots Strategies as income for himself, Wienhardt found.
For his work on Bachmann’s presidential campaign, Sorenson received payment from the Bachmann For President campaign committee and MichelePAC, a leadership PAC set up by Bachmann to raise money for other candidates, Weinhardt found.
“We believe it was a plain violation of Senate Ethics Rule 6 for Senator Sorenson to accept compensation from MichelePAC to work on Representative Bachmann’s behalf,” Weinhardt writes in the report.
Sorenson’s payments from Bachmann for President, meanwhile, present “a question of interpretation” of the Senate rule – and indicate a need for the Senate to rewrite the rule to clarify its intent.
The report also notes two instances in which Sorenson denied being compensated by the Bachmann campaign in written statements to the Senate Ethics Committee. There is probable cause to believe, Weinhardt found, that those statements are false and that Sorenson knew them to be false when he made them.
Such false statements would constitute felonious misconduct in office, which is a class D felony.
The investigation originated with a complaint from Peter Waldron, a political consultant from Florida who worked on Bachmann’s campaign in Iowa throughout 2011.
In a statement to the Register on Wednesday, Waldron said he was “vindicated” by the report but regretful that Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status had been “soiled” by its findings.
“The people of Iowa must now change the ethics rules by which they control the behavior of their senators in both parties,” he said in the statement. “No payments of any kind, directly or indirectly, can flow to senators if Iowa wishes to preserve it unique role in the presidential nominating system in America.”
Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids, said he hoped to call a meeting of the committee for early next week to discuss the matter. In an interview before Sorenson’s resignation was announced, he declined to even guess, however, at how the committee might respond to the report.
With Sorenson’s resignation, the issue may now be moot.
The Ethics Committee is made up of three Democrats and three Republicans. It could do anything from dropping the matter entirely to rendering judgment on Sorenson’s guilt or innocence.
Horn also noted that the committee is anticipating another report from Weinhardt, looking at a second set of allegations against Sorenson relating to whether he took money from the Paul campaign.
As of Wednesday afternoon, most senators had not even seen Weinhardt’s report, which was delivered to the Secretary of the Senate’s office in the Capitol. Lawmakers adjourned in May, and are back in the Statehouse infrequently during the interim period.
Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Cedar Falls, called on his fellow senators to withhold judgment on Sorenson, noting that potential sanctions could end up before the whole Senate at some point. But he did say the situation points to the need for tougher ethics rules and laws in Iowa.
“We need to protect the integrity of Iowa’s politics,” he said.
That means writing a clearer prohibition on lawmakers receiving compensation from political campaigns and writing such a ban into state law rather than legislative ethics rules, he said. As chairman of the State Government Committee, Danielson has led campaign finance and ethics reform issues before.
Sen. Jerry Behn, R-Boone and a member of the Ethics Committee, said Wednesday afternoon he’d spent the day out in his soybean fields and was unaware the report had been released.
“My position from the first initial report is that a guy is innocent until proven guilty,” Behn said. “I really want to see the report and find out what’s going on. … I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to say anything yet.”
Sorenson, 41, is a first-term senator representing a district just south of Des Moines. He previously served one term in the House.
In the other major issue Weinhardt reviewed, he found no evidence that Sorenson personally took a list containing the contact information for home-school families from the computer of another Bachmann campaign worker. He find evidence, however, suggesting Sorenson was involved in a conspiracy to obtain the list for use by the campaign.
The list was stored on a computer owned by campaign worker Barb Heki in connection with her work for the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators. Heki sued Sorenson and the Bachmann campaign for obtaining the list and sending emails to the names it contained. The issue also has been the subject of an Urbandale police investigation.
Weinhardt’s report notes that a third campaign worker, Chris Dorr, took responsibility for taking list, although there is evidence of a conspiracy involving Sorenson.
“The objects of the conspiracy were to remove the list from Ms. Heki’s computer without her knowledge and to make use of the list to [Bachmann for President’s] and Senator Sorenson’s own advantage while knowing that the list had been stolen,” Weinhardt writes.
http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2013/10/02/senate-investigator-kent-sorenson-received-payment-from-bachmann-campaign-his-denials-may-constitute-a-felony/article
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Jail sentence stands for ex-headmaster of Zebulon charter school :: WRAL.com
Jail sentence stands for ex-headmaster of Zebulon charter school :: WRAL.com
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The 120-day jail sentence for the former headmaster of a Zebulon charter school convicted Monday on a sexual battery charge will stand, the judge in the case ruled Tuesday.
Brandon Smith, the top administrator of East Wake Academy, was found guilty of the charge, as well as a charge of assault on a female in connection with allegations by a former teacher who said Smith pulled down her pants when she worked at the school in 2011.
Superior Court Judge Carl Fox initially sentenced Smith to two 60-day sentences to run consecutively, but defense attorneys filed two motions asking the judge to reconsider the punishment because both charges relate to one single act.
One motion asked the court to arrest judgment on the assault charge, and another asked that the two sentences run concurrent to one another.
Fox denied both motions, saying there was no statutory requirement to change the sentence.
In addition to his four-month jail sentence, Smith must also register as a sex offender.
Smith was highly respected in the Zebulon community for his work in making East Wake Academy a school of excellence.
He was fired last year from the position he held for nearly a decade after allegations from two teachers that he inappropriately touched them and made sexual remarks to them.
Smith also faces additional charges of sexual battery and assault stemming from another teacher's allegations that he hugged her while he was sexually aroused.
He also went to trial on those charges, but the jury in the case deadlocked on verdicts.
Wake County Assistant District Attorney Melanie Shekita said Tuesday she is still deciding whether to retry him on those charges.
Attorneys also talked about a possible plea deal with Smith, but he rejected the idea.
He maintains his innocence in both cases.
http://www.wral.com/wake-jury-finds-ex-headmaster-guilty-of-assault-sexual-battery-in-mixed-verdict/12947372/
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
The 120-day jail sentence for the former headmaster of a Zebulon charter school convicted Monday on a sexual battery charge will stand, the judge in the case ruled Tuesday.
Brandon Smith, the top administrator of East Wake Academy, was found guilty of the charge, as well as a charge of assault on a female in connection with allegations by a former teacher who said Smith pulled down her pants when she worked at the school in 2011.
Superior Court Judge Carl Fox initially sentenced Smith to two 60-day sentences to run consecutively, but defense attorneys filed two motions asking the judge to reconsider the punishment because both charges relate to one single act.
One motion asked the court to arrest judgment on the assault charge, and another asked that the two sentences run concurrent to one another.
Fox denied both motions, saying there was no statutory requirement to change the sentence.
In addition to his four-month jail sentence, Smith must also register as a sex offender.
Smith was highly respected in the Zebulon community for his work in making East Wake Academy a school of excellence.
He was fired last year from the position he held for nearly a decade after allegations from two teachers that he inappropriately touched them and made sexual remarks to them.
Smith also faces additional charges of sexual battery and assault stemming from another teacher's allegations that he hugged her while he was sexually aroused.
He also went to trial on those charges, but the jury in the case deadlocked on verdicts.
Wake County Assistant District Attorney Melanie Shekita said Tuesday she is still deciding whether to retry him on those charges.
Attorneys also talked about a possible plea deal with Smith, but he rejected the idea.
He maintains his innocence in both cases.
http://www.wral.com/wake-jury-finds-ex-headmaster-guilty-of-assault-sexual-battery-in-mixed-verdict/12947372/
Federal shutdown effects ripple across NC :: WRAL.com
Federal shutdown effects ripple across NC :: WRAL.com
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
From Fort Bragg to Research Triangle Park, from the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Outer Banks, North Carolina quickly felt the squeeze Tuesday of the federal government's partial shutdown during a budget impasse.
Hundreds of civilian workers on Fort Bragg were told to go home at noon. While military personnel are considered essential for national security and will remain on duty, about half of the post's 14,500 civilian employees were furloughed.
The remaining Fort Bragg civilian workers perform "life, health and safety functions," spokesman Tom McCollum said, citing first responders, physicians and workers directly involved in troop readiness. Defense contractors, he said, won't be affected.
Womack Army Medical Center will remain open, but elective medical procedures will be limited. All Fort Bragg schools will operate as usual. The VA Medical Centers in Fayetteville and Durham will continue to provide inpatient and outpatient care and dental care, but some of the VA's call centers will be closed.
Camp Lejeune also shut down its non-essential operations and sent many of its civilian employees home.
Tiffany Lawson, an employment readiness specialist at Fort Bragg, called the furlough "ridiculous," noting that she had to take six days off without pay in recent months because of automatic federal budget cuts, known as the sequester.
"We still have not recovered from (that), and then to be hit with this," said Lawson, a mother of four. "It's worse because you didn't know it was coming."
Jay Steele, president of the federal employees union at Fort Bragg, said employees had several months notice with the sequester.
"This time around, there was not a 30-day formal notice process or even three months. This was pretty quick," Steele said.
Col. Jeffery Sanborn, garrison commander at Fort Bragg, said most service cutbacks won't be noticed by the general public.
"There is no way around this," Sanborn said in a statement. "Everyone will be affected by this furlough. We will do everything we can to ensure our units, soldiers, their families, our civilian workforce and retirees are supported to the best of our abilities."
Lawson disagrees with the idea that the public won't notice any change.
"When I went to work this morning, you know, people are coming expecting to get services," she said. "They don't care or don't understand that there's a government shutdown. They want what they want when they want it."
In RTP, most of the 2,000 workers and contractors at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency left the complex of research labs and offices – the largest EPA facility outside of Washington, D.C. – at noon and won't return until the budget battle on Capitol Hill is resolved.
The EPA facility handles research in fields ranging from pollution to exposure to chemicals to Department of Homeland Security projects, and officials at area universities expressed concern that the shutdown could ripple through their EPA-related research as well.
RTI International officials were trying to assess the impact of the shutdown on their operations. RTI handles numerous federal grants for research.
Gov. Pat McCrory said his staff also was trying to get a handle on the effects of the shutdown, noting that the state Department of Health and Human Services would get pinched the most because it works on projects that are either fully or partially paid for with federal dollars. The Division of Employment Security also would be affected, he said.
"We have two major goals," McCrory told the Council of State. "We've got to make sure that functions that are critical remain open, and yet, at the same time, we have to make sure we aren't spending money the state doesn't have."
If the shutdown lasts more than a week or two, food assistance to needy families also could be in trouble, officials said.
Some items not affected by the shutdown: The Postal Service, which doesn't rely on government appropriations, will operate on a normal schedule. Postal officials said passport applications also won't be delayed.
In the western part of the state, October is one of the busiest months for the Blue Ridge Parkway, as tourists travel along the scenic roadway to see the fall foliage. But the shutdown has closed visitor centers and other staffed facilities, meaning travelers should consider how they plan to do their viewing.
The parkway remains open – the fall colors will peak in the next two weeks – but Tom Hardy, executive director of the Blue Ridge Parkway Association, is worried that some people will think the roadway is shut down.
"You know how bad news is, and unfortunately, there are going to be some people who think the parkway is closed and gated. That is a negative," he said.
That could hurt businesses that depend on tourism. Many visitors stay in motels and bed-and-breakfast inns and shop in communities near the parkway.
Tuesday was the first day of the popular fall fishing season on the North Carolina coast, but the National Park Service locked all gates that provide anglers a way to drive onto the beach along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
"It is unfortunate," said Cyndy Holda, spokeswoman for the park service's Outer Banks Group. "Our weather has been wonderful this year: Warm and sunny and good. So, the timing is not good for our fall fishermen at all."
The Cape Hatteras and Bodie Island lighthouses are closed, as is the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk.
Holda said all staffers reported to work Tuesday morning to put messages on their phones or emails saying they will be out of the office because of the federal government shutdown. A few employees will remain on the job, but public facilities will remain closed.
"We don't have staff to run them because we can't pay them. ... Beach access will be closed for all the off-road vehicle ramps, and there is no public access to the beaches today," she said.
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
From Fort Bragg to Research Triangle Park, from the Blue Ridge Parkway to the Outer Banks, North Carolina quickly felt the squeeze Tuesday of the federal government's partial shutdown during a budget impasse.
Hundreds of civilian workers on Fort Bragg were told to go home at noon. While military personnel are considered essential for national security and will remain on duty, about half of the post's 14,500 civilian employees were furloughed.
The remaining Fort Bragg civilian workers perform "life, health and safety functions," spokesman Tom McCollum said, citing first responders, physicians and workers directly involved in troop readiness. Defense contractors, he said, won't be affected.
Womack Army Medical Center will remain open, but elective medical procedures will be limited. All Fort Bragg schools will operate as usual. The VA Medical Centers in Fayetteville and Durham will continue to provide inpatient and outpatient care and dental care, but some of the VA's call centers will be closed.
Camp Lejeune also shut down its non-essential operations and sent many of its civilian employees home.
Tiffany Lawson, an employment readiness specialist at Fort Bragg, called the furlough "ridiculous," noting that she had to take six days off without pay in recent months because of automatic federal budget cuts, known as the sequester.
"We still have not recovered from (that), and then to be hit with this," said Lawson, a mother of four. "It's worse because you didn't know it was coming."
Jay Steele, president of the federal employees union at Fort Bragg, said employees had several months notice with the sequester.
"This time around, there was not a 30-day formal notice process or even three months. This was pretty quick," Steele said.
"There is no way around this," Sanborn said in a statement. "Everyone will be affected by this furlough. We will do everything we can to ensure our units, soldiers, their families, our civilian workforce and retirees are supported to the best of our abilities."
Lawson disagrees with the idea that the public won't notice any change.
"When I went to work this morning, you know, people are coming expecting to get services," she said. "They don't care or don't understand that there's a government shutdown. They want what they want when they want it."
In RTP, most of the 2,000 workers and contractors at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency left the complex of research labs and offices – the largest EPA facility outside of Washington, D.C. – at noon and won't return until the budget battle on Capitol Hill is resolved.
The EPA facility handles research in fields ranging from pollution to exposure to chemicals to Department of Homeland Security projects, and officials at area universities expressed concern that the shutdown could ripple through their EPA-related research as well.
RTI International officials were trying to assess the impact of the shutdown on their operations. RTI handles numerous federal grants for research.
"We have two major goals," McCrory told the Council of State. "We've got to make sure that functions that are critical remain open, and yet, at the same time, we have to make sure we aren't spending money the state doesn't have."
If the shutdown lasts more than a week or two, food assistance to needy families also could be in trouble, officials said.
Some items not affected by the shutdown: The Postal Service, which doesn't rely on government appropriations, will operate on a normal schedule. Postal officials said passport applications also won't be delayed.
In the western part of the state, October is one of the busiest months for the Blue Ridge Parkway, as tourists travel along the scenic roadway to see the fall foliage. But the shutdown has closed visitor centers and other staffed facilities, meaning travelers should consider how they plan to do their viewing.
The parkway remains open – the fall colors will peak in the next two weeks – but Tom Hardy, executive director of the Blue Ridge Parkway Association, is worried that some people will think the roadway is shut down.
"You know how bad news is, and unfortunately, there are going to be some people who think the parkway is closed and gated. That is a negative," he said.
That could hurt businesses that depend on tourism. Many visitors stay in motels and bed-and-breakfast inns and shop in communities near the parkway.
Tuesday was the first day of the popular fall fishing season on the North Carolina coast, but the National Park Service locked all gates that provide anglers a way to drive onto the beach along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
"It is unfortunate," said Cyndy Holda, spokeswoman for the park service's Outer Banks Group. "Our weather has been wonderful this year: Warm and sunny and good. So, the timing is not good for our fall fishermen at all."
The Cape Hatteras and Bodie Island lighthouses are closed, as is the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kitty Hawk.
Holda said all staffers reported to work Tuesday morning to put messages on their phones or emails saying they will be out of the office because of the federal government shutdown. A few employees will remain on the job, but public facilities will remain closed.
"We don't have staff to run them because we can't pay them. ... Beach access will be closed for all the off-road vehicle ramps, and there is no public access to the beaches today," she said.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
La. Pastor Shot Dead In Front Of Congregation During Church Service | News One
La. Pastor Shot Dead In Front Of Congregation During Church Service | News One
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A Louisiana pastor was fatally shot as he preached to a crowd of more than 60 during a revival service and a suspect has been arrested, law enforcement officials said Saturday.
The shooting at about 8:20 p.m. Friday was at Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center in Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kim Myers said Saturday. Sixty-five people were inside at the time, including the victim’s wife, said Chief Deputy Stitch Guillory.
Deputies have no information on a motive or on whether the preacher and suspect knew each other, Myers said.
Myers said Pastor Ronald J. Harris Sr., 53, was shot twice by the gunman. The walked into the church while Harris was preaching and shot him, then hit him again when Harris fell to the floor.
The gunman “walked up to him and shot him at close range,” Myers said.
Harris was pronounced dead at the scene.
Woodrow Karey, 53, of Lake Charles is charged with second-degree murder and was held in the parish jail Saturday, Myers said. Karey’s bond has been set at $1 million.
The gunman left the church, but Myers said Karey called the sheriff’s office and surrendered.
Myers said after picking up Karey, deputies found two guns in a wooded area — one was a shotgun, the other a .22-caliber pistol.
Myers said Karey has no known criminal history.
Myers said deputies were “interviewing everybody who was there at the church.”
Family members who answered the telephone Saturday at the Harris home in Lake Charles said there would be no comment. There was no answer at a telephone listing for Karey or at Tabernacle of Praise.
http://newsone.com/2730204/pastor-killed-pastor-ronald-j-harris-sr/
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A Louisiana pastor was fatally shot as he preached to a crowd of more than 60 during a revival service and a suspect has been arrested, law enforcement officials said Saturday.
The shooting at about 8:20 p.m. Friday was at Tabernacle of Praise Worship Center in Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kim Myers said Saturday. Sixty-five people were inside at the time, including the victim’s wife, said Chief Deputy Stitch Guillory.
Deputies have no information on a motive or on whether the preacher and suspect knew each other, Myers said.
Myers said Pastor Ronald J. Harris Sr., 53, was shot twice by the gunman. The walked into the church while Harris was preaching and shot him, then hit him again when Harris fell to the floor.
The gunman “walked up to him and shot him at close range,” Myers said.
Harris was pronounced dead at the scene.
Woodrow Karey, 53, of Lake Charles is charged with second-degree murder and was held in the parish jail Saturday, Myers said. Karey’s bond has been set at $1 million.
The gunman left the church, but Myers said Karey called the sheriff’s office and surrendered.
Myers said after picking up Karey, deputies found two guns in a wooded area — one was a shotgun, the other a .22-caliber pistol.
Myers said Karey has no known criminal history.
Myers said deputies were “interviewing everybody who was there at the church.”
Family members who answered the telephone Saturday at the Harris home in Lake Charles said there would be no comment. There was no answer at a telephone listing for Karey or at Tabernacle of Praise.
http://newsone.com/2730204/pastor-killed-pastor-ronald-j-harris-sr/
Shoe thrown as Rouhani home after historic Obama call - Yahoo News
Shoe thrown as Rouhani home after historic Obama call - Yahoo News
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A shoe was thrown at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's motorcade Saturday as he arrived home to a mixed reception after his historic call with US President Barack Obama.
Iranian newspapers hailed the first contact with a US president in more than three decades as the ending of a long taboo.
The Etemad newspaper carried a front-page photomontage of Rouhani and Obama side by side. "Historic contact on way home," read its banner headline.
But Rouhani's 15-minute conversation with the leader of a country long derided as the "Great Satan" was too much for some hardliners.
Nearly 60 gathered outside Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" as his motorcade passed.
They were outnumbered by 200 to 300 supporters of the president chanting “Thank you Rouhani”, who were separated from the protesters by police.
The shoe was thrown as Rouhani stood up through the sunroof of his car to acknowledge the crowd. It failed to hit its target.
There have been no diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington since radical students took hostages at the US embassy in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.
Dubbed the "nest of spies" by the regime, the old embassy site is the scene of annual commemorations which have been the focal point for hardline anti-US sentiment.
Rouhani told reporters at the airport the call had been Obama's initiative.
“We were going to the airport, when I was informed that the White House had called the cellphone of our ambassador to the UN,” his office quoted him as saying.
“I was informed President Obama wanted to speak to me for a few minutes.”
Iranian media later reported that Rouhani had brought home a 2,700-year-old Persian artefact -- a silver chalice in the shape of a winged Griffin -- given to him as a "special gift" to the Iranian people.
The artefact depicting the mythical eagle-headed lion, worth an estimated one million dollars, was seized by US customs officials from a smuggler in 2003.
'Both sides must be careful'
Iranian newspapers crowed that Rouhani had caught the world's media off guard by taking Obama's call after coverage of his keenly awaited visit to the United Nations in New York had focused on the lack of a face-to-face meeting.
"The world caught unawares," declared reformist daily Arman. "International media in shock over the telephone call."
The call was approved by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's ultimate authority, according to top lawmaker Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, spokesman for the influential foreign policy commission.
'Both sides must be careful'
The pro-reform Etemad paper carried an opinion piece by international relations professor Mohammad Ali Bassiri warning of the challenges of full rapprochement, not least the opposition of Iranian arch-foe Israel.
"These contacts and meetings between Iran and the United States have extremist opponents and both sides must be very careful," he wrote.
"Many countries, notably the Zionist regime, believe their interests will be jeopardised by a normalisation of relations between Iran and the United States and will seek to stop it."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing", is to meet Obama on Monday.
Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, widely seen as Rouhani's mentor, said he had pulled off a diplomatic coup by speaking to -- but not meeting -- Obama.
The commander of the covert operations unit of the elite Revolutionary Guards, the Qods force, said the attention lavished on Rouhani in New York was a vindication of Iran's tough defence policy.
"The respect shown by the world to President Rouhani is the fruit of the nation's resistance," General Ghassem Soleimani was quoted as saying.
The Qods Force lies at the centre of US allegations of Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism, one of a raft of issues, over and above Iran's controversial nuclear programme, that Rouhani will have to tackle in any rapprochement.
Many newspapers carried front-page photographs of a smiling Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry at nuclear talks in New York between Iran and the major powers.
Zarif said he hoped for a deal within a year to allay international concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but his Western counterparts made clear that an agreement will require major concessions from Iran.
These include suspending all enrichment of uranium beyond the level required to fuel nuclear power plants, and closing Iran's underground enrichment facility near the central city of Qom.
Back home after all the international fanfare, Rouhani now has to persuade regime sceptics that such concessions are worth making.
http://news.yahoo.com/shoe-thrown-rouhani-obama-call-102611135.html
JohnButts@JBMedia - Reports:
A shoe was thrown at Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's motorcade Saturday as he arrived home to a mixed reception after his historic call with US President Barack Obama.
Iranian newspapers hailed the first contact with a US president in more than three decades as the ending of a long taboo.
The Etemad newspaper carried a front-page photomontage of Rouhani and Obama side by side. "Historic contact on way home," read its banner headline.
But Rouhani's 15-minute conversation with the leader of a country long derided as the "Great Satan" was too much for some hardliners.
Nearly 60 gathered outside Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" as his motorcade passed.
They were outnumbered by 200 to 300 supporters of the president chanting “Thank you Rouhani”, who were separated from the protesters by police.
The shoe was thrown as Rouhani stood up through the sunroof of his car to acknowledge the crowd. It failed to hit its target.
There have been no diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington since radical students took hostages at the US embassy in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.
Dubbed the "nest of spies" by the regime, the old embassy site is the scene of annual commemorations which have been the focal point for hardline anti-US sentiment.
Rouhani told reporters at the airport the call had been Obama's initiative.
“We were going to the airport, when I was informed that the White House had called the cellphone of our ambassador to the UN,” his office quoted him as saying.
“I was informed President Obama wanted to speak to me for a few minutes.”
Iranian media later reported that Rouhani had brought home a 2,700-year-old Persian artefact -- a silver chalice in the shape of a winged Griffin -- given to him as a "special gift" to the Iranian people.
The artefact depicting the mythical eagle-headed lion, worth an estimated one million dollars, was seized by US customs officials from a smuggler in 2003.
'Both sides must be careful'
Iranian newspapers crowed that Rouhani had caught the world's media off guard by taking Obama's call after coverage of his keenly awaited visit to the United Nations in New York had focused on the lack of a face-to-face meeting.
"The world caught unawares," declared reformist daily Arman. "International media in shock over the telephone call."
The call was approved by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's ultimate authority, according to top lawmaker Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, spokesman for the influential foreign policy commission.
'Both sides must be careful'
The pro-reform Etemad paper carried an opinion piece by international relations professor Mohammad Ali Bassiri warning of the challenges of full rapprochement, not least the opposition of Iranian arch-foe Israel.
"These contacts and meetings between Iran and the United States have extremist opponents and both sides must be very careful," he wrote.
"Many countries, notably the Zionist regime, believe their interests will be jeopardised by a normalisation of relations between Iran and the United States and will seek to stop it."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing", is to meet Obama on Monday.
Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, widely seen as Rouhani's mentor, said he had pulled off a diplomatic coup by speaking to -- but not meeting -- Obama.
The commander of the covert operations unit of the elite Revolutionary Guards, the Qods force, said the attention lavished on Rouhani in New York was a vindication of Iran's tough defence policy.
"The respect shown by the world to President Rouhani is the fruit of the nation's resistance," General Ghassem Soleimani was quoted as saying.
The Qods Force lies at the centre of US allegations of Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism, one of a raft of issues, over and above Iran's controversial nuclear programme, that Rouhani will have to tackle in any rapprochement.
Many newspapers carried front-page photographs of a smiling Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry at nuclear talks in New York between Iran and the major powers.
Zarif said he hoped for a deal within a year to allay international concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but his Western counterparts made clear that an agreement will require major concessions from Iran.
These include suspending all enrichment of uranium beyond the level required to fuel nuclear power plants, and closing Iran's underground enrichment facility near the central city of Qom.
Back home after all the international fanfare, Rouhani now has to persuade regime sceptics that such concessions are worth making.
http://news.yahoo.com/shoe-thrown-rouhani-obama-call-102611135.html
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