Barack Obama

Oh boy, Bob Robb is explaining race relations again

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

Bob Robb Raw This is not an actual picture of AZ Republic columnist Bob Robb but I found it when I was searching his name and it’s hilarious.

I meant to weight in on AZ Republic’s Bob Robb’s vomit-inducing column from last Wednesday but I see that Cynthia Zwick has responded beautifully to Robb’s outrageously offensive claim that poor black people shouldn’t be politically active and should instead quietly get jobs and stop having so many welfare babies and abusing drugs and alcohol.

Robb’s conclusion is truly disturbing. “Obviously children living in poverty aren’t there because they failed to check the right boxes,” he wrote. “But what serves their interests best: Telling them that poverty is a political issue to be addressed through activism? Or that poverty is a condition that can be escaped or avoided through education, hard work and not engaging in destructive behavior?”

Those questions are subtle directives towards those who are poor and, by association, those who are of color. His message is: go to school, work hard, and keep your head down and don’t bother wasting your time protesting and engaging in politics, protests and activism.

In truth, the exact opposite is needed.

Poor communities and communities of color must engage in activism. They must vote, hold their leaders accountable and demand systemic change through peaceful protest.

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Obama Opposes Food Stamp Cuts, Threatens Veto of Farm Bill

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by Pamela Powers Hannley

President Barack Obama has issued an official statement saying that he opposes the current form of HR1947, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013 (AKA the Farm Bill).

Specifically, he opposes the deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP– food stamps) and the spending increases in the form of subsidies. Cutting food subsidies (in the form of food stamps) to the poor while increasing subsidies to agribusiness is immoral. (You’ll remember that, in public, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is all “we gotta tighten out belts and reduce spending”, but in reality, they love spending money on pet projects– like war and corporate welfare. They passed the $640 Billion Pentagon Pork Bill last week. )

Will Obama’s statement and threatened veto give weak-kneed Blue Dog Democratsthe back-up to stand up for what’s right? I hope so. (The House of Representatives is still working on this bill; there is still time to call your representative and urge him/her topreserve funding for food stamps.) Read the President's full statement after the jump.

Federal Gov’t Spying on Citizens: Big Brother Really Is Watching

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Keyboard-578-adj-crop-sig-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

Several weeks ago, after the US intelligence agencies found the Boston Marathon bombers in a matter of days, I posted this story: Who Is Homeland Security Watching? Off-the-grid Fertilizer Plant vs On-the-Grid Citizenry.

When I said that the federal government was watching “real people, not corporate people,” I had no idea how prophetic that statement was. In the few short weeks since that story, there has been one revelation about government spying on American citizens and news organizations after another.

Gov’t Obtains Wide AP Phone Records in Probe
First we learned that the feds obtained months worth of telephone records from Associated Press (AP) reporters. AP called this “a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.”

US gov’t collecting huge number of phone records
Although there was a huge media uproar over the AP story when it broke, it pales in comparison to what we learned this week. Senator Diane Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, confirmed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting cell phone records for millions of Americans on a regular basis for years. This ongoing surveillance of American citizens began during the warrantless wiretapping program initiated under President George Bush’s reign. Verizon, Sprint, and At&T have complied with court orders to provide customer data. Verizon alone has 121 million customers. More details and links after the jump.

John Nichols: Don’t Let the ‘Crooks’ Roll Back Years of Progress (video)

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JN-close106-sm72-sigby Pamela Powers Hannley

Author and historian John Nichols warned a packed house of Tucson progressives and unionists that now is not the time for complacency. Now is the time to rise up and fight against the forces of greed who are trying to rob the American people of their rights and their earned benefits.

Nichols, writer for The Nation and frequent commentator on MSNBC, held the audience in wrapped attention for 90 minutes as he carefully explained what the current Washington DC budget and debt reduction talks could mean for the American people if right wing conservatives like Congressman Paul Ryan and the Fix the Debt Coalition get their way.

The Fix the Debt Coalition is a group of 127 billionaires, "lesser millionaires", and corporate CEOs who are rolling out a $60 million advertising campaign to promote the new Simpson-Bowles Plan for debt reduction, according to Nichols. The original Simpson-Bowles Commission– dubbed the Cat Food Commission because of its cuts to senior citizen benefits– was infamously unpopular when it was proposed originally. The Simpson-Bowles redux may be even worse.  

How would the billionaires' club "fix the debt"? By reducing Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled, by raising the eligibility age for Medicare, by dramatically cutting Medicaid support for the poor, by eliminating the Affordable Care Act and changing Medicare to a voucher program for future recipients, by imposing austerity on 99%, and by [wait for it] lowering taxes on billionaires and corporations. 

"They are proposing to take from our vulnerable seniors, from our disabled– and let's be honest they're probably going to take the lunch money from the poor kids. They're going to take all that, so they can give the rich guys a tax cut," Nichols warned. More details and a video clip of Nichols' talk after the jump.