In a move that dramatizes the political differences between Los Angeles and New York, several members of the LA City Council today declared their support for Occupy LA and introduced a resolution that will put the city officially on record as endorsing the demostrators camped at City Hall. City Council president Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor, visited the encampment yesterday and said, “Stay as long as you need, we’re here to support you.” And Council member Bill Rosendahl said Occupy LA demonstrators were "making democracy work."

Seven of fifteen Council members signed the resolution, which declares, among other things, that “today corporations hold undue power and influence in our country,” and notes that the LA County Federation of Labor has officially endorsed its “sisters and brothers” in Occupy LA.

While New York Mayor Bloomberg has been describing the demonstrations there as a problem, the LA city council is appealing to voters by endorsing the protesters’ critique of big banks and big money. And while the NYPD has arrested Wall Street marchers by the hundreds, and maced and pepper sprayed many, the LAPD has been complimented by Occupy LA for acting fairly and appropriately.

The full LA city council won’t vote on the resolution of support until next Tuesday, but one reporter at today’s council meeting, Simone Wilson of the L.A. Weekly, wrote that, “judging by their dramatic, heart-wrenched personal responses to occupiers during the meeting’s public comment period, no black-sheep councilmember is going to make the dick move of voting ‘No’ on such a popular cause.”

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is officially backing the protests, handing out rain ponchos to the protesters:

The five-day old campout demonstration outside Los Angeles City Hall to protest Wall Street greed is getting official thumbs up from the city.

City News Service says the office of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa distributed 100 rain ponchos to the demonstrators on Wednesday while seven of the 15 councilmembers voted in favor of a resolution in support of the Occupy LA protest.

The resolution, which is slated for a final vote next week, called the protest "a peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights."

This is the difference between a city beholden to the vampires in the financial sector, and a city that isn't. It's the difference between a mayor with a community organizing and civic activism background, and a mayor beloved of the corrupt Third Way crowd who "earned" his chops playing games with other people's money. It's the difference between real progressivism, and authoritarian conservatism with a happy, socially liberal smile on its face.

In a shock development Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered a rarely-used procedural option informally called the “nuclear option” to change the Senate rules.


The Democratic leader had become fed up by Republican demands for votes on motions to suspend the rules after the Senate had voted to end a filibuster.


Reid said these motions, which do not need unanimous consent, amount to a second-round filibuster after the Senate has voted to move to final passage of a measure.


The surprise move stunned Republicans, who did not expect Reid to bring heavy artillery to what had been a hum-drum knife fight over amendments to China currency legislation.

Racist Republicans in Tennessee have their first success with the new “Voter ID” requirement: A 96-year-old black lady who has voted in all but one election (in 1960) that she was legally eligible to vote in has been denied the right to take part in democracy. Why? Oh, just some piece of missing paperwork. That’s the point of “Voter ID,” to stop people you don’t want voting — the poor, minorities, take your pick! — on a technicality. This is how so many black Americans were denied the vote in the South for a hundred years after being “emancipated.”

Dorothy Cooper, who worked her whole life as a housemaid, went down to see the authorities because she’d heard Tennessee’s racist new law would require a pile of documents for those who tried to vote in the future. And she was denied a Voter ID by a clerk at the counter, just as planned by the evil legislators who approved the law:

That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.

“But I didn’t have my marriage certificate,” Cooper said Tuesday afternoon, and that was the reason the clerk said she was denied a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.

“I don’t know what difference it makes,” Cooper said.

We know what difference it makes. Dorothy Cooper is African-American. Occupy Chattanooga. Take everything from the rich whites and give it to the poor blacks.

Keep in mind, Dorothy Cooper has been voting for seven decades, but that was before Republicans decided that an imaginary problem required new restrictions to make it harder for voters to participate.

Indeed, in this specific case, Dorothy Cooper, an African-American woman living in the South, found it easier to vote during the Jim Crow era than under the new Republican rules. She’s found it easier to register before the Voting Rights Act than in 2011.

One of the main GOP proponents of the restrictions in Tennessee, apparently embarrassed, suggested this week senior citizens perhaps should be allowed to vote by absentee ballot without a photo ID.

But Cooper wants to go to the polls and cast her vote. It apparently brings her a sense of pride.

And next year, she’ll likely be one of 5 million Americans that an offensive Republican scheme will keep from the polls.

emocrats are pivoting off a new report showing five million of their voters could be disenfranchised next year with a new multi-level attack aimed at new voter restriction laws across the country.

Starting Wednesday, the DSCC is going up with a online plan called the 2012 Election Protection Project, designed to “raise awareness and fight back against partisan attacks on voting rights.”

The program includes online tools and advertisements across several online platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and Google. The ads direct visitors to online petitions.

Here’s what the sponsored tweets pushing the program look like:

Nearly 20 percent of the more than 2 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from mental health conditions, according to a new report.


They amount to more than half of the 712,000 veterans from both wars who have sought medical treatment since leaving military service. Nearly a third of those veterans may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, one of the signature injuries of the conflicts.


Veterans for Common Sense, a nonprofit, nonpartisan activist group for veterans' interests, and health care issues in particular, compiled the statistics from a raft of government reports.


In whittling them down to just the bare data, the group created a grim shorthand for the toll the wars have taken on a generation of young men and women.


"A large number of people serving overseas have mental health impacts, and more and more are coming home," said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. "I am deeply concerned that we are not ready."

In order for change to take place, good Democrats do need to be in power. But only an angry and motivated populace angry with both Parties and strongly intent on holding Democrats accountable will scare and motivate Democrats enough to do what they were elected to do.

LBJ wouldn't have been pushed to do the right thing for civil rights without MLK. But neither would MLK have brought his dream to fruition without a president in power with the courage to enforce desegregation.

Ultimately, the institutionalists need to allow the Occupy Wall Street protests to develop organically without attempting to convert them into electoral activism in any form. Supporting the protests is perhaps the most important thing progressives can be doing right now. As Robert Cruickshank tweeted:

We need to focus on generating the waves, not recruiting people to surf them.

But on the other hand, it would behoove movement progressives not to dismiss the arena of electoral politics and those who engage in it. If Mitt Romney becomes president or John Boehner remains the House Speaker, it won't matter how big or successful the protests become. For things to really work, Democrats will have to be in power and a powerful progressive protest movement with a healthy distrust of institutional Democrats will need to be in place to hold them accountable.

You might think Obama’s re-election would solve this, offering as it would stark repudiation of the politics of panic, paranoia and reactionary extremism this ideology represents. The problem is, these folks thrive on repudiation, on a free-floating conviction that they have been done wrong, cheated and mistreated by the tides of history and progress, change and demography. So there is every reason to believe, particularly given the weakness of the economy, that being repudiated in next year’s election would only make them redouble their intensity, confirming them as it would in their own victimhood.

And ask yourself: what form could that redoubling take? How do you up the ante from this? What is the logical next step after two years of screaming, rocks through windows, threats against legislators and rhetoric that could start a fire?

An awful, obvious answer suggests itself. You reject it instinctively. This is, after all, America, not some unstable fledgling democracy.

Then you realize it was not so long ago that a man blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City out of anti-government sentiment not so different from that espoused by the tea party. And you remember how that tragedy exposed an entire network of armed anti-government zealots gathering in the woods.

And you read where the Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of radical anti-government groups spiked to 824 in 2010, a 61 percent increase over just the previous year.

And you wonder.

The Occupy Lexington Kentucky movement, modeled after Occupy Wall Street, started on Thursday, and Monday night saw a group still occupying the area outside Chase Tower on Main Street.

"We're here 'til the grievances are addressed," said Mike Davis, who was among about 30 people gathered in downtown Monday night.

Among their main concerns are what they describe as corporate greed and a disproportionate concentration of wealth.

"We are individuals gathered with voices in unison to make a stand for our right to the opportunity to live our best life," Davis said. "We want to shift the power back to the people."

SNIP

He said that at least 100 people have participated in the gathering each day; at least three people have camped out nightly downtown.

Stephen Shepard said he's been encouraged by the support the community has shown by honking horns, giving the thumbs-up sign and even dropping off pizzas and coffee as they pass by.

While on a worldwide investigation of dirty drinking water -- with stops in Bangladesh, Uruguay and Namibia -- a United Nations investigator visited the Tulare County community of Seville in March. After seeing conditions, the investigator urged state and federal authorities to consider healthy drinking water a human right and clean up the mess.

In a state with the world's seventh-largest economy, it wouldn't take a lot of money to clean up the Valley's small-town water problems -- $150 million total for projects on record. San Francisco last year committed the same amount of money to help homeowners and businesses finance solar panels and water efficiency.

But small-town residents face an uphill fight for the healthy drinking water that most Californians take for granted. Townfolk feel they have nowhere to turn. State public health authorities make a habit of inviting them to apply for cleanup funding, then turning them down for technicalities.

Residents, activists, engineers and local officials say the Valley's small drinking water systems are barely a blip on the state's radar.

They are not alone in shouldering an extra cost for water. Last year, 95% of the people in a survey of small water systems in Tulare County said they drink bottled water or purified water sold from a machine. The Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based nonprofit group, did the survey as a part of a report on the human cost of nitrates in the drinking water.

The survey results showed some people spend more than 10% of their income to buy water for their families, though the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the 1990s said 1.5% would be a better guideline.

Nobody Ever Went Broke Overestimating the Racism of Today's GOP

The statement: “Beshear supports Obama’s EPA plans that will drive out our coal jobs by driving up our energy costs.”

— Restoring America, a group supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate David Williams, in a television ad this week attacking Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear.

The ruling: False

The facts: Throughout this fall’s campaign for governor, Republican nominee David Williams has tried to tie Gov. Steve Beshear with Democratic President Obama, who is unpopular in the state.

Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has extended his lead to 31 points over Republican Senate President David Williams, with just five weeks left before the Nov. 8 election, according to the latest Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll.

The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA, found that Beshear leads Williams 57 percent to 26 percent among likely Kentucky voters. The third candidate in the governor’s race, independent Gatewood Galbraith, had 8 percent, and 9 percent were undecided.

The poll questioned 569 likely voters Sept. 22-27 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Beshear led Williams by 24 points in the last Bluegrass Poll, conducted in late July, and the fact that his lead continues to grow has some political observers convinced that his coattails will be long enough to carry most, if not all, of the state’s other Democratic candidates for constitutional offices to victory.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said on Saturday that as president, he would consider sending American troops into Mexico to help defeat drug cartels and improve border security. He indicated that any such action would be done “in concert” with the Mexican government.

“It may require our military in Mexico working in concert with them to kill these drug cartels and to keep them off of our border and to destroy their network,” Mr. Perry said during a campaign appearance here.

“I don’t know all the different scenarios that would be out there,” he said. “But I think it is very important for us to work with them to keep that country from failing.”

What is the "Foundation for a Better Life"?

Who are these people and what do they want?

The first I heard of them was last night at the movies. The Foundation bought up half the pre-movie ad time to show uplifting TV spots about "Including Others" and "Helping Others."

The FFBL describes itself as follows:

The Foundation for a Better Life is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization started in 2000. The programs and projects of the Foundation are non-commercial and are solely humanitarian endeavors; the Foundation does not seek nor accept contributions or donations of any kind and is privately funded. The Foundation supports the belief that each individual is entitled to personal dignity and self-respect and that most individuals are willing, when given the opportunity, to take personal responsibility for their actions and well-being. The Foundation also believes that capable people may also benefit from encouragement and reminders from time to time. Generally people who have the opportunity and the ability will make appropriate common sense decisions which will have a positive and uplifting effect on themselves, their community, and their country.

The Foundation claims to be non-religious and non-political. Perhaps I need more moral uplift to combat the cynicism rampant in this day and age, but I suspect there's a catch. The FFLB spots remind me of those free Book of Mormon TV ads from the 1980s.

If anyone knows who's behind this outfit, please leave a comment. If anyone has already written on the subject, please send a link and I'll post it. I'm very curious.

Update: Thanks to readers Wayne and Paperwight of Fairshot.

Paperwight writes:

It's a guy named Phil Anschutz, a conservative Denver oil, internet and media guy. See here. Cursory Google searching and internic domain name registration checks seem to confirm.

See also actsofkindness.org.

Wayne unearthed another hint of a Mormon connection: Gary Dixon is the President of the FFBL and an Honored Brigham Young University alumnus.

Here are some excerpts from the San Diego Indymedia item described in the Portland Alliance article cited by Paperwight (above) Colorado billionaire supporting nationwide propaganda campaign:

Philip Anschutz, who the BBC described as having "a reputation as one of the hungriest of US corporate vultures", is currently using his wealth and power to support a slick ad campaign appearing on 10,000 billboards, in hundreds of movie theaters, and on nearly a thousand TV stations across the country. The Foundation for a Better Life (FBL)—the non-profit entity that officially produces and distributes the ads—has no contact information on its website, forbetterlife.org, but a series of posts and comments to the portland indymedia open publishing newswire uncovered the connection between Anschutz and FBL.[...]

[Anschutz'] corporate empire includes a majority holding in Qwest Communications and ownership of several sports teams and arenas. Significantly, he also owns the United Artists, Regal and Edwards movie theater chains, where the FBL commercials are being shown. Whether or not FBL is paying for these slots is unknown. According to Outdoor Advertising Association of America, $10,000,000 worth of the cost of the billboard campaign is being donated by OAAA member companies. In other words, it is possible that this advertising blitz is costing FBL and Philip Anschutz very little money out-of-pocket. [...]

Even when Fox is reporting on a completely innocuous story, they can't help themselves from lying. Fox & Friends ran a segment hosting one of their most prominent advertisers, the Foundation for a Better Life, and purporting to report "who's behind" the group, they hosted an unobjectionable, heroic woman who is featured in one of their ads. But, she's not "who's behind" the group; indeed, it doesn't even seem that she works for them. In fact, the actual people behind the group are right-wing, religious, anti-gay conservatives.

A group of House Democrats alleging that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas violated ethics rules by failing to report his wife’s income called for a federal investigation into the matter today.


The group of 20 House Democrats led by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to the U.S. Judicial Conference, the governing body for federal courts, saying that Thomas has failed to report the income of his wife, Virginia, who earned $700,000 from 2003 to 2007 while working at the Heritage Foundation, according to news reports.


The letter came just days before the Supreme Court returns for the new session, during which it is expected to consider a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s sweeping health care law. With such high-profile issues on the horizon for the court, the lawmakers wrote, “it is vital that the Judicial Conference actively pursue any suspicious actions by Supreme Court Justices.”

Three times in the last six weeks, families have abandoned elderly relatives at the Community Inn, a night shelter on Winchester Road, co-director Ginny Ramsey said.

"It is the same kind of abandonment that one would think of with a child because these were people who were unable to take care of themselves," Ramsey said.

Sometimes elderly people come into Lexington homeless shelters on their own, Ramsey said, but "we've never seen" families abandon elderly relatives.

When shelter officials tracked down two of the three families, Ramsey said, the family members said "they just couldn't deal with them anymore. That was it. They were done."