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When candidates have to raise millions of dollars just to run a competitive campaign, they’re going to turn to wealthy donors, and the voice of the everyday American isn’t going to be heard. It’s time we take the “for sale” sign off the Capitol lawn. We can’t afford the price we’re paying for corporate-sponsored government.
Jim, Barb, Dominica and Chuck, featured in the video above, can’t afford to compete with the influence of corporate donations. When Washington makes decisions regarding their lives, they are not the people getting meetings with lawmakers. Instead, corporate lobbyists come to collect on prior donations made. And the end result means working people suffer from legislative decisions that benefit the rich.
As long as politicians are accountable to the corporations and lobbyists who finance their campaigns, they’re never going to be accountable to the people that elected them. It’s time ordinary Americans had their voices heard. Our elected officials should be concerned with solving our problems and concerns, not those of special interests who can afford to pay for special treatment.
The only way to make Congress accountable to working Americans is to have Fair Elections, where a coal miner’s voice can be heard as clearly as the owner of that mine. We need to put elections back in the hands of ordinary Americans.
It’s time we return government to of, by, and for the people, not government bought and paid for by special interests.
Carly Fiorina, the 2010 Republican nominee for the Senate representing California, has launched a strong campaign to lure Latinos under two main premises: 1) She has always been a friend of Latinos; and, 2) she holds the same values as Latinos.
Her campaign has launched a website titled “Amigos de Carly” (Friends of Carly) where she appears in a picture banner surrounded by what appear to be Latino business folks. The conservative group American Principles Project has also summoned millions for her and have launched the campaign titled “Tus Valores” (Your Values) in an attempt to make Fiorina appear as if she has always cared for Latino issues.
The problem is that there is absolutely no way to substantiate this. In fact, as recently as the primaries Firoina was speaking out against many of the issues and “values” that Latinos truly hold dear.
As a response the campaign The Real Carly: “Carly No Es Mi Amiga” (Carly Is Not My Friend) duly points out how Fiorina’s attempt to lure Latinos is yet another charade of California GOP candidates who can’t hide from their recent anti-Latino words and actions.
1. Fiorina pretends to be a friend to Latinos, but her positions on immigration, education and health care put her in direct opposition to the values that Latinos hold dear. DO NOT BE FOOLED, Fiorina is not good for Latinos in California.
2. Carly Fiorina fiercely supports SB 1070 and racial profiling in Arizona. In fact, Fiorina was quoted saying, “This law [SB 1070] is necessary because the Federal Government isn’t doing its job and the people in Arizona are in danger.”
3. Carly Fiorina opposed emergency state aide to help teachers for our schools and Medicaid for our community’s poor. The emergency state aid bill saved the jobs of approximately 13,700-16,500 teachers in California and also funded Medicaid programs serving approximately 7 million Californians.
4. California’s Latinos need a strong economy, and not a job killer CEO Senator with a history of outsourcing jobs and firing thousands of workers. While CEO of HP, Fiorina outsourced jobs and called the move “smartsourcing.” In 2003, she dismissed almost 18,000 people from HP. She had already created job loss in California, and we don’t need her to cause any more.
5. Carly Fiorina wants to repeal President Obama’s health care bill which would help this nation’s uninsured.
Another general is working to undercut the president’s prerogatives on Afghanistan. This time, it’s U.S. Marine Corps General James Conway working to frame the July 2011 deadline to start troop withdrawals as something that can be essentially ignored by him and his subordinates. President Obama must ask swiftly and strongly to rein in this new runaway general and get our troops home.
Conway spent an afternoon at the Pentagon on Tuesday undermining the president’s deadline for significant withdrawals starting in July 2011. He started by relaying the admonition of a lance corporal: “Sir, don’t let our country go wobbly on us now.” Then, he let it be known in no uncertain terms that none of “his” Marines would participate in a July 2011 drawdown:
“Finally, though I certainly believe some American units somewhere in Afghanistan will turn over responsibility to Afghan security forces in 2011, I do not think they will be Marines. …I honestly think it will be few years before conditions on the ground are such that turnover will be possible for us.”
The caveat given by Presidents Bush and Obama ad nauseum–”conditions on the ground”–has been widened so far that it threatens to totally neutralize the drawdown portion of the president’s Afghanistan strategy. The entire general officer corps seems to be comfortable openly deriding or dismissing the idea of a significant drawdown in July 2011. President Obama has no one to blame but himself that this keeps happening.
By allowing a string of major administration officials, from General Petraeus to Secretaries Clinton and Gates, to equivocate about July 2011 on Sunday morning talk shows immediately after the West Point speech, Obama, intentionally or not, telegraphed a lack of enthusiasm for the deadline to every stakeholder paying attention. In so doing, he let a narrative develop that the reason he included a deadline was because he had to speak to “multiple audiences.” Among military officials and Washington, D.C. power-holders, a interpretation took hold that the president was placating restless voters with assurances that we shouldn’t take too seriously.
Now, generals under his command openly deride the deadline as a political move. Conway is only able to show such open contempt for a meaningful deadline because Obama sat back and watched while this process took place. The general went so far as to say that the deadline is giving the insurgents “sustenance,” but that’s okay, because they’ll be shocked and demoralized when he and “his” Marines don’t go anywhere.
Just who is running the show here?
President Obama needs to come out right now and reiterate that there will be a drawdown that begins no later than July 2011 and that it will involve significant numbers of U.S. troops. In fact, he should go further: He should set a hard end-date for the combat mission that occurs no later than December 2011.
Right now, there are at least three generals–Petraeus, Conway, and Caldwell–working hard to frame the president’s July 2011 drawdown as something they can essentially ignore when it comes to extending a brutal, costly war that’s not making us safer. If the president doesn’t take the situation in hand and counter the Pentagon’s in-your-face campaign to neuter the drawdown component of the time-limited escalation plan, he risks getting outmaneuvered in the press just like he did when General McChrystal played hardball on last year’s strategy review.
Worse, he’ll have demonstrated to the generals that they, not he, run the show in Afghanistan. If the president doesn’t want this war to devour his legacy and corrode civilian control of the military further, he needs to act swiftly and decisively to get his generals back in line and get our troops home.
If you’re with the almost 60 percent of Americans who oppose the war in Afghanistan, join the tens of thousands of others fighting to end it at Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook.
Follow Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AfghanistanDocu
On the 5th Anniversary of Katrina Land Of Opportunity a new film asks — Is your city the next New Orleans?
The recent tragedies in Pakistan and Haiti and the unprecedented catastrophe of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast reveal that the lessons of New Orleans have only become more relevant in the past few years. Luisa Dantas, my co-producer on Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices left for New Orleans soon after Hurricane Katina hit to document the impact of the storm on the people of this devastated city.
Five years later, this time as a first-time director, Luisa presents Land of Opportunity, a verité character-driven documentary and multi-platform video project, interweaving the stories of a diverse group of people as they struggle to rebuild their lives in post-Katrina New Orleans. The film is so hot out of the editing room, I haven’t had a chance to see it yet. Here’s a “special sneak peek” that marks Katrina’s 5th Anniversary:
Luisa and her team designed Land of Opportunity as more than a film, it is a multi-platform project that will leverage over one thousand hours of footage into web-based short content for educational and organizing purposes. Land of Opportunity re-frames the 5th anniversary of Katrina into the beginning of a discussion, rather than a conclusion. What happens in New Orleans doesn’t stay there. In fact, Katrinas are happening to every city in the nation. The tagline, “Happening to a city near you” opens dialogue about the future of urban America and provides an opportunity to redefine disaster recovery. From New York to Detroit to New Orleans, cities are experiencing disasters every day, whether they’re defined as economic, natural or man-made.
Luisa put 5 years of thoughtful work, sweat and love into this project. I am a cheerleader for her and Land of Opportunity. Brave New Foundation is proud to introduce Land of Opportunity and encourages you to “share this film” with friends and family to explore the meaning of home and community in an age of displacement and migration. Land of Opportunity and Cuéntame will mark the 5th Anniversary of Katrina with a short video on this Sunday August 29th. Make sure to check out Cuéntame and leave your comments on Sunday when the video is posted!
As communities around the nation combat dramatic challenges, we face an unprecedented need to create effective new systems to support more efficient and sustainable community and economic development efforts. The stories told in Land of Opportunity offer much needed perspectives on the most pressing issues facing our urban areas.
Most of us sat helplessly while our government watched New Orleans and its inhabitants drown. Not Luisa Dantas, she looked for the Land of Opportunity.
Check out HAPPENINGS IN NYC & OAKLAND at www.landofopportunitymovie.com…BRING A HAPPENING TO YOUR CITY!
Aug. 28 is an important day in American history. On that day, 47 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. His message gave voice to the voiceless and his vision promoted a just, equal, diverse and compassionate country.
This Aug. 28, a very different sort of voice will ring out across those famous steps.
Beck is not Martin Luther King Jr., and Brave New Foundation has launched a site for people to speak up and stand with Dr. King’s vision, and to share what his vision means to you today.
This Aug. 28, Beck and Sarah Palin’s presence at the Lincoln Memorial reminds us of how much work still needs to be done. The racist, raging and hate-filled tenor of Beck, Palin and the Tea Party movement is in direct contrast to the noble vision spoken by Dr. King. Their outrageous attempts to divide America and to turn us against each other could not stand in starker contrast to King’s vision of a shared humanity.
The Reverend King once declared that, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
But we will not be silent on this matter. We will not let Beck and Palin hijack history and continue in their attempts to further harm and disrupt our collective future.
During the Civil Rights Movement, the SNCC Freedom Singers adapted an old Labor protest song — “Which Side Are You On?” Forty-seven years ago, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous I Have A Dream speech, he asked the country which side of history they would be on. This Aug. 28, we’re reminded that the question still needs to be answered.
Come join us in standing with Martin Luther King Jr’s vision of this country. Click here to declare your continued commitment to Dr. King’s legacy, and that you will not let Beck trash and tarnish the meaning of King’s dream. Signatures will be delivered to the Celebrate The Dream gathering on the National Mall in D.C. on Aug. 28 so that those who sign are virtually present at the unveiling of a Dr. King art exhibit, to be hosted down the mall from where the Tea Party is to gather.
Come stand by King’s side that day. Uphold and continue to work for his vision, no matter how much Beck aims to stop us all from doing so.
But in case all of that was not clear enough, News Corp, Fox News’ corporate parent, recently gave $1 million dollars to the Republican Governors Association. One million dollars! That would be the Republican Governors Association’s largest corporate donation this election cycle.
As we at Brave New Films have long documented via our Outfoxed documentary and our Fox Attacks Campaign, Fox News exists to highlight fights and a mob wrestling of conservative voices. This only works when Democrats provide the necessary fodder. They need a Democrat to throw to the lion’s den, to cut off and to disagree with. It is the appearance of Democrats that allows for Fox to keep up the entertainment value of shouting and insulting. If Democrats refuse to appear on Fox, Fox loses its entertainment edge. And by losing its edge, it loses its audience. And by losing its audience, it loses its financial gain.
For too long we have played around. Democrats have argued that Fox News was a legitimate enough of an organization to appear on. They are not. And each time a Democrat appears on a Fox News program, they help provide entertainment value and audience draw. Agreeing to appear on Fox equals agreeing to support their financial gain and thus to support Republican candidates – to the tune of $1 million dollars.
With so much at stake in our country today, we can no longer afford to play such games. We can no longer afford to collude with an overtly conservative medium and financial entity that promotes bigotry, hate and inequality.
The word is out and the message is clear: Any Democrat who appears on Fox is supporting a financial structure that allows for Republican gain. And claiming the cover of “fair and balanced” is now as convincing as claiming that money doesn’t matter in politics. It’s time to draw a line. Fox News is a Republican support machine. They should never be treated as anything but that. And all Democrats must declare that they will no longer fund this right wing operation and that they will refuse to appear on any Fox News program.
Fox News isn’t a news organization. It’s not even just a propaganda machine any longer. It is a funding machine for the right wing, with the express financial focus of electing Republicans to office.
Turn off Fox and refuse to appear on their programs, or you might as well just sign a blank check to any Republican candidate of Fox’s choosing.
While a stain of insecurity and violence spreads across Afghanistan, General Petraeus is on a media blitz, disingenuously trying to sell the idea of “oil spots” of “progress” in Afghanistan. Petraeus’ goal is clear: Despite overwhelming public opposition, he wants more time to experiment with counterinsurgency in other people’s homelands, and he’s putting the half-billion-dollar public relations machine of the Pentagon into high gear to hammer his message into our heads. The first journalist on his media blitz, NBC’s David Gregory, utterly failed to sufficiently challenge Petraeus on his easily disproved spin, reminding one of the media’s negligence during the Iraq War debate. CBS’ Katie Couric is next at bat. We need her to do better.
All of the information Couric needs to blow apart Petraeus’ happy talk is already in the public domain, just as it was during the run-up to the Iraq debacle. For example:
* The recent (and Orwellian) Report on Progress toward Security and Stability (.pdf) in Afghanistan from the Pentagon discloses that violence is up 87 percent over the same period last year, and that despite the massive increase in troops over the reporting period, the insurgency continues to grow in size and capability. More alarmingly, the report discloses that the Afghan government is falling further behind in “sympathy” or “support” from populations in the key districts of the country.
* IED attacks roughly doubled over the past year.
* Civilian deaths are rising precipitously, and Afghans blame Petraeus’ forces not only for the deaths they cause directly, but for bringing the conflict with them as they press into new areas and failing to protect civilians from insurgent violence.
* The Afghan NGO Safety Office says that the single biggest threat to aid workers in Afghanistan is the armed gangs backed by the Local Defense Initiative, an ISAF/Afghan government program to create local “security” forces.
Any of these facts would blow a major hole in Petraeus’ spin campaign, and we need journalists on the media tour to confront the general with them. Unfortunately, in the past decade, when it’s come to accountability journalism aimed at military (or militarist) spin, the American media doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation.
We now know that officials in the Bush administration built a case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq that was open to serious challenge. We also know that evidence disputing ongoing official claims about the war was often available to the mainstream press in a timely fashion. Yet the recurrent pattern, even years into the conflict, was for the official government line to trump evidence to the contrary in the news produced by mainstream news outlets reaching the preponderance of the people.
Part of the reason the Iraq story was written much as the Bush administration told it is that nearly every installment was well staged and fed expertly to reporters… [P]lenty of other sources and bodies of evidence outside official Washington power circles could have been elevated to challenge the administration’s stories, but those challenges either did not emerge aggressively or were reported only in passing…
David Gregory’s treatment of Petraeus (“Look! The general is physically fit and press savvy!”) contained alarming echoes of the dynamic described by Bennett, Lawrence and Livingston. All the information Gregory needed to challenge Petraeus was available before the interview, yet he failed to press Petraeus on the patently false claims of “progress,” if “progress” refers to any widespread trend strategically relevant to counterinsurgency doctrine. For all the apologies we heard from the press after their failures on the Iraq War, Gregory’s failure on Meet the Press this past Sunday shows we’re in danger of seeing a repeat. Couric must ask tougher questions during her interview.
The list above includes just the few easily accessible bits of the mosaic of disaster created by the U.S.’s troop-heavy, military-centric policy in Afghanistan. Couric could do us all a real service by bringing just a few of these facts with her when she interviews Petraeus and setting a real example for accountability journalism for her peers rounding out the media tour. In her preview piece on her interview with Petraeus, she mentions the general’s “oil spots” comment. Couric should ask Petraeus about the real “oil spots” spreading across Afghanistan: American blood and treasure seeping into the landscape of a war that’s not making us safer and that’s not worth the cost.
Sign our act.ly petition to Couric to push her to challenge Petraeus on his claims of “progress” and on his attempt to extend the Afghanistan War.
The movement to rethink the Afghanistan War is picking up steam. In response to the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives on a disastrous policy, public opinion has turned decisively against the war. People are making their opposition heard in communities all over the country. We’re proud to see that Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistandocumentary has become an organizing tool for everything from local screenings of the film, to hundreds of Meetups to Rethink the Afghanistan War and other public demonstrations.
The Aug. 8 demonstration in Santa Barbara, California, organized by the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, is just one example of the growing discontent and the creative actions put together by local activists to express it. From the KEYT story:
The recent wave of violence and rising American deaths in Afghanistan are causing many people in Santa Barbara to rethink their attitude toward the Afghan War.
That was the theme of a major demonstration at the beach today.
More than 1,200 crosses were set up on the beach next to Stearns Wharf. And the strong public reaction to the memorial may be an indication that more and more Americans are actually beginning to rethink Afghanistan.
This powerful action and the public response to it shows that people understand that the Afghanistan war isn’t making us safer, and it isn’t worth the costs. We’re extraordinarily proud of the Santa Barbara Veterans for Peace chapter, just as we’re proud of the more than 42,000 people working together and organizing on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page.
It’s going to take all of us working together, online and in our local communities, to end this war. We’ve got a great start already. We hope you’ll join us.
As you read this, BP is already working to create their next disaster. What they are presently creating is even more dangerous and devastating than what they did in the Gulf, and even less regulated.
Since BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, nearly five million barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf. Industries have been destroyed, lives have been lost and wildlife and the environment have been irrevocably harmed. We know that BP cuts safety corners, takes risks, and is unconcerned about anything other than their own profit.
Not happy with the bare offshore drilling regulations we have, BP created a legal loophole for themselves….in the form of an island. This legal loophole means that the present moratorium on offshore drilling does not apply to BP’s Arctic project.
BP’s man-made “Liberty Island” sits three miles off the shore of Alaska. From this island, BP plans to drill two miles under the sea and then six to eight miles horizontally. A New York Times article recently stated that scientists believe this form of drilling to be “more prone to the types of gas kicks that triggered the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.”
Sound like something that you can’t believe would pass inspection? Not if you consider a fact recently reported by Rolling Stone Magazine – It turns out that BP was allowed to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act.
Can you imagine an oil spill worse than the one in the Gulf? Imagine an equally large, or even larger, spill in the Arctic, where there is a lack of technology proven to work in cleaning up oil in icy water. Or, for that matter, a gusher trapped underneath the Arctic ice.
Imagine an oil spill where emergency and relief supports are thousands of miles away. Imagine a blow-out in the fall, and those emergency and relief supports having to wait through the winter, and through the spring, until the Arctic ice melts enough for crews to get to the spill the following summer. Estimates are that, during that time, oil could spread to Russian and Canada, and potential even to Norway and Greenland.
This isn’t some science fiction horror movie. This is a reality that BP is creating right now, even while we still grapple with the harm they caused in the Gulf.
If you can’t believe that such dangerous, irresponsible and risky action has gotten a green light from our government, you can still act before the drilling begins. Share our film with your friends and family and sign our petition to tell Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to stop BP’s dangerous and unregulated drilling in the Arctic!
BP is working hard to create their next disaster. Remember how helpless we all felt watching footage of the tragedy in the Gulf? This time you have the chance to stop BP before they cause even more devastation.
Seems like everyone is singing the praises of Natural Gas, our newest greenest most homegrown and secure source of American Energy. NOT! “Clean Natural” Gas is neither. Gas extraction, made possible by hydraulic fracturing (or fracking for short) has to sit right beside Deep Sea Drilling, Mountain Top Removal, and Dirty Tar Sands Oil in the pantheon of insane ways to get our carbon fix.
Did you know that Halliburton (yes that Halliburton) pantented fracking: a process that mixes millions of gallons of precious fresh water with a proprietary cocktail of toxics, injects it through our drinking water table, and into the ground at a pressure that will fracture rock? Did you know that when Dick Cheney (yes that Dick) was the VP he fracked the EPA to make sure that this insanity would be exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act?
Stand Up, New York!
Fracking has brought the gas rush to New York. Some of the biggest and dirtiest names in Big Oil are coming to frack you. And they will not be gentle with New York’s world class water features.
You can expect the same dirty drilling that has poisoned the water in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Ohio. Who will be at risk? Everyone downstream. Including the drinking water of tens of million in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
If you love NY and NY State as I do (or just love someone who does) then please watch our video, go to http://CleanWaterNotDirtyDrilling.org and DO SOMETHING!!
