Ed Vaizey - "Let the Bookworms Gnaw His Entrails..."

For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no sur-cease to his Agony till he sink in Dissolution. Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye. 
— Curse Against Book Stealers 
Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona

The curse is pronounced against one who would steal a book. But what more torments might assail one who steals not just a book, but a whole library, or ONE HUNDRED LIBRARIES?

100 libraries have been closed down since the Con Dem "Culture Minister", Ed Vaizey, took office in 2010. As the Government has wielded its axe on public services across the country, our libraries have not been spared. At best, they might hope to survive in a twilight zone of "Information Points", where it is assumed that everyone now has access to the internet and is happy to download stuff to ipads or Kindles. Books? So last six millennia!

Yet this cultural Armageddon comes at a terrible cost and potential threat to our society. Ever since humans first gathered in the cities of Sumeria back around 2,600 BC, libraries have been a hallmark of civilised life, of access to knowledge and of the fostering of learning and citizenship. It was the loss of the great classical era libraries such as that in Alexandria that marked the decline of learning and reason that led to the superstition and persecution of free thinking during the Dark Ages of Europe. And it was the recovery of knowledge in libraries such as those of Islamic Spain and Renaissance Italy that set us on the path to the Enlightenment and the birth of the modern age. And Karl Marx of course constructed his mighty opus Capital on the tables of the British Library.

Cultural tragedy or real estate opportunity? The great
Library of Alexandria burns, c 30BC

But when times are troubled and resources scarce, the ruling class views knowledge as dispensable at best and dangerous at worst. If people know, they will question; and if they question, they might act. And so Mr Vaizey and his ilk, while decrying poor education standards and the collapse of community in their patronising "Broken Britain" strap line, are content to close libraries down in the name of efficiency savings. Google, it seems, is the way forward, copyright of the elite, monitored by their minions.

And so, as we head back to a world of superstition, half-truths and net-powered rumour, let me be the first to dust down the ancient book of curses and gladly heap them upon the brows of the morons who ascribe to themselves the custodianship of our culture.

May the worms bury deep...

VOICES FOR THE LIBRARY SITE: CLICK HERE

Trayvon Martin and Staff Sgt. Bales: Can't America Even Just Say We Were Wrong?

I was dreaming/thinking the other day that the President spoke out about Trayvon Martin

The right question is "how could this happen, why, who really did what? etc.

The wrong question might be WTF? Can't we do better than this in America in 2012? This is a terrible thing. Can't we even just say that?

confusion

Third Party Longings, Independent Candidates, and Political Reform

Buddy Roemer Eyes Presidency - NPR interview on his main focus - campaign finance and the corrupting power of money in politics. Roemer is seeking the Americans Elect line.

The Atlantic: America has not seen a long-lasting national third-party movement in its history, and it won't be seeing one now. [Hey guys, what about the Republican Party?]

Rapid City MI: She said people she encountered on the campaign trail told her they were “sick of party politics,” leading her to switch to an independent run.

Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher announced today that he is dropping his Republican party preference and running as an independent for Mayor in San Diego.

The Proposition 14 experiment in political engineering is debuting this election season. The constitutional amendment, approved by voters in 2010, transforms June primaries, traditionally partisan affairs of the heart, into brainy contests that tap the top two contestants, regardless of party, to square off in November.

"You MUST Declare a Party! You MUST Delcare a Party!"

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cynthia Dill has launched an online petition aimed at pressuring Independent candidate Angus King to declare whether he would caucus with Democrats or Republicans if elected in November.

From a Letter to the Naples News: Thus, the unwillingness of Independents to register with a political party would seem to result from an indecision regarding the support of socialism for the benefit of some or capitalism for the benefit of the many.

Currently, neither the Oklahoma Democratic Party nor the Oklahoma Republican Party allows Independent voters to participate in primary elections. 

Linda Killian: The Swing Vote and the Rise of Independent Voters

Killian is an intelligent writer who makes her points cogently and concisely. The Swing Vote is recommended reading for anyone interested in politics, and the role of centrists and independents in changing the political dynamic.

Independents are a the largest bloc of voters and they're growing. In her new book, journalist Linda Killian seeks to paint a portrait of this exceedingly important group in four swing states including New Hampshire. She talks about the frustrations these voters have with their elected officials, what they want to see from the political system, and what they can do to fix it.

"I like my independent status. I think voting for just one party is a betrayal of my civic duty." [But NPR doesn't believe in independents...]

New York Redistricting Mess Changes Little

New York will have two different primary dates for state legislative and congressional primaries. A judge has moved the congressional primary to June 26. While the Democrat-controlled Assembly favors moving the legislative primary to June 26 as well, the Republican-controlled Senate prefers to keep the primary on September 11, so as not to disrupt the legislative calendar.

And P.S. - check out the Atlantic's article on Mayor Mike Bloomberg's health agenda...

Hankster First Read: Colorado Open Records Act Goes to Senate

CORA [Colorado Open Records Act] black-out bill goes to senate (Center Post Dispatch) Despite concerns voiced by election activists, a Senate committee passed a bi-partisan bill last Wednesday that will black out Colorado elections, preventing reporters and concerned citizens from viewing voted ballots and election records during the two-month election cycle... Election integrity activists Marilyn Marks of Pitkin County, Harvie Branscomb of Eagle County, Joe Richey and Mary Eberle of Boulder County, Kathleen Curry of Gunnison County and others also testified against the bill.  


INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Make independent voting easier  and Independents don't want partisan candidates:  Independents speak out about the election process in letters to the editor, while American Prospect puts its head in the sand...
• Linda Killian, Independent Rock Star! Maine Festival of the Book: Read on! (By Bob Keyes, Press Herald) With Snowe's announcement, Cecil found herself with a hot topic and a timely talking point for the festival. On Saturday, former U.S. Rep. Tom Allen and Washington political insider Linda Killian will present a panel discussion, "Politics Today: Swing and Independent Voters, Party Divides and Ideological Convictions."

OPEN PRIMARIES
Keep open primaries in S.C. (Post and Courier - SC) The hard-core party faithful might approve of legislation to require party registration in primary elections, since eliminating open primaries could strenghten their influence over the outcome. But it would remove a moderating influence that South Carolina needs as it elects its leaders.


WFP AND ALL THINGS NEW YORK

• Working Families Party raises for Hakeem Jeffries against Towns, citing CAFTA and Issa (By Reid Pillifant, CAPITAL NEW YORK)
• Pension and redistricting dominate the Albany conversation (By STEPHON JOHNSON, Amsterdam News)
• Boro pols slam new district lines - Accuse Gov. Cuomo of retreating on promise to veto (by Anna Gustafson, Senior Editor, Queens Chronicle) Some good government groups, including Citizens Union and the League of Women Voters, have praised the constitutional amendment, though Citizens Union has emphasized it did not support the 2012 lines as drawn. "Given the long standing resistance to enacting redistricting reform, and the high stakes involved, we applaud them in finding common ground on an issue that is at the core of political power in Albany and results in the legislature giving up power in the drawing of lines," Citizens Union said in a prepared statement.
  

PARTY-ISM
Have "outside" interested PR men hijacked the Republican Party? Kevin Baker explores the outsourcing of the body and soul of the Repubs...

EDUCATION
Eva Moskowitz expands Success Charter Schools network into middle-class Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods.


INDEPENDENT CULTURE
Charles E. Rogers, Amsterdam News, sez: Trust me you, your family and friends don’t want to miss the Castillo Theater’s fantastic “Sally and Tom (The American Way).”
   Full disclosure: The Hankster is a very big BIG fan of the Castillo Theatre and I could not agree more with Charles Rogers -- trust us, you do NOT want to miss this show -- and the run has been extended, so you get another chance. Watch for new dates in April/May

you've been framed!

Little Children, Big Guns and Dark Hearts

Miriam Monstango, 8 years old - her face a little apprehensive but full of life as she looks to the camera. How apprehensive it must have looked on Monday morning as she ran for the safety of her schoolroom at a Jewish school in Toulouse in France, only to have her hair caught by the gunman who was firing at her classmates. When he tried to shoot Miriam, his gun jammed. But he gripped onto her while he switched to another weapon and shot her in the head. On the same day, he killed a rabbi and his two little children - the youngest just three years old.

This was apparently done, in the gunman's mind, in revenge for the hundreds of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza and the West Bank. As blogged before here, the IDF routinely blames Hamas and others for the so-called "collateral damage" that occurs when Israeli jets strafe Gaza indiscriminately, or when IDF tanks fire illegal white phosphorus shells into Palestinian hospitals, allegedly having "no choice" because of the presence of enemy fighters in the vicinity. For collateral damage, of course, the decoded words should be civilians and children - especially the more than 1,400 Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military during the last decade, most of them when they were committing such dreadful acts as playing football, going to school or even shopping. No more excusably, though perhaps demonstrating the massive imbalance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during the same period, 125 Israeli children were killed in Palestinian attacks. (The western media tends to ignore this fact, just as, while it has already designated the Toulouse gunman, Mohammed Merah, as a Muslim extremist, it is hard at work mitigating the murderous rampage by US soldier Robert Bales, who killed at least two babies in his slaughter of 17 Afghan civilians last week, as the product of prolonged stress.)

We will never know for certain Merah's state of mind or motives now that the French police have shot him dead. But his apparent claims of revenge and self-justification of his terrible deeds echo the words of all too many political leaders who seek to sanctify their worldview with religious beliefs that place the fate of individuals, no matter how innocent, below the proclaimed, divinely-ordained interests of the respective Faith community.

Yet what minds think like this, on either or all sides? Under what religious law, what political ideology or vaguely humane rationale do children become collateral damage? By what mindset does it become acceptable to kill a child - any child, anyone's child - because of the loss, however appallingly, of a child of your own, or your faith community?

A Gazan childhood: The final, terrifying moments of the life of
Mohammed al Doura, a 12 year old Palestinian boy killed in 2000.
More here.

Well, there is a mindset which contradictorily both condemns such a viewpoint and validates it. It is the mindset at the heart of the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Between them, these three faiths are followed, at least notionally, by the majority of the people on this planet. They are linked inextricably, although most of their followers vehemently deny this fact - but their God/Allah is the same Divinity, their prophets - Abraham/Ibrahim, Moses/Musa, Jesus/Isa were mostly the same people; and the Muslims' final prophet, Muhammed, enjoined his followers to give special protection and respect to Christians and Jews as fellow "People of the Book".

Each faith universally decries killing of humans and prescribes forgiveness and love of neighbours and all humanity. But each of them also hold to the concept of "reciprocal justice" or like for like punishment - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth as the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament set out their bloody tariff of vengeance. In Islam, although the Koran mentions rather than promulgates the principle, the other holy writings, the hadith (laws developed over centuries by Islamic scholars) sanction revenge and some versions of sharia law interpret and implement the rule literally. In all these faiths, although all their prophets advocated generosity of spirit and forgiveness, the concept continues to be held by many believers to be both just and holy.

And so we end up with the dreadful, twisted self-justification for shooting up a school playground in France or shelling schoolrooms in Gaza; or the rarely mentioned rape camps of Bosnia set up by Serb Christians with their avowed aim to breed Muslims out of existence - many of the Bosniac Muslim victims were children, some as young as 12.

In the old days of polytheism, by default, pagans held that there are many ways to the same Truth, while philosophers such as Aristotle identified good and evil acts as the deliberate choices of humans, not the mystical interventions or injunctions of God or Satan. But the logic of revealed monotheist faith and its exclusive nature means that any gospel of love is so very easily twisted into one of hatred by those so-minded to do so. This is all the more likely if, as the Abrahamic faiths do, The Word divides the world into good and evil, into fellow-believers and the unfaithful or Fallen.

Mahatma Gandhi lamented that  - "An eye for an eye simply makes the whole world blind." Those who seek revenge are blind people - blind to the hypocrisy of revenge; blind to the destruction of the justice they seek by acts of injustice; blind to the beauty of the Creation they claim to be the gift of their God.

An eye for an eye - it is not a holy concept at all; it is simply the red mist of the psychopath's pathetic self-regard. Those of any faith or nationality who adopt its tenets do so at the cost of extinguishing the very humanity they claim perversely to supremely epitomise. Whether Anders Breivik, or Ariel Sharon or Mohammed Merah, their empty souls are the antithesis of the lives they sacrifice for their own vanity - the lives of the children of Gaza and Toulouse, or the youths on Utoya; lives now gone, but remembered and valued far beyond the banal egos of the small men with big guns and dark hearts.

In the Name of God: since 2000, 125 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinian attacks; in the same period, the Israeli armed services have killed 1,471 Palestinian children.

REMEMBER THESE CHILDREN WEBSITE: CLICK HERE

The Repugnance of George Osborne

"I regard tax evasion and – indeed – aggressive tax avoidance – as morally repugnant," Mr Osborne said. 

And so, today, in his latest national Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Gideon Osborne (whose personal fortune is valued at around £4 million) handed the very richest in society a huge tax cut - a 10% reduction from 50p in the pound to 45p on earnings above £150,000 per year - on the spurious grounds that because it was allegedly so high, it deterred our wealthy compatriots from paying their tax. So, by creating perhaps the biggest piece of tax avoidance in history, he has legitimised their non-payment - balancing the cost of doing so by freezing age-related tax allowances for pensioners - greedy old sods that they are (in George's universe, not mine dear reader!).

George is worried that the rich may desert us and go elsewhere. You might wonder where, exactly. Tax havens, George warns - except the British Government, more than any other in the world, could act to end the curse of these pirate enclaves where multinationals and the very richest individuals move their money to avoid contributing a fair share to the societies they live in - seven out of the fourteen non-sovereign tax havens  belong to the British Crown, but our neoliberal Government is doing precisely nothing about the exemptions legally enjoyed by these. This although the havens deprive the UK Treasury of somewhere between £2 billions and £12 billions in lost revenue every year. 

Yes, this is the logic of the new moral crusader in 11 Downing Street, hoisting high the flag of fiduciary purity on his crusade against the repugnant and immoral. Time for us all to pay our way. And if the billionaires don't magically cough up more tax on a lower tax bill (????), well, we'll just slash another £10 billion off the beleaguered welfare budget, ignoring the needs of an increasingly larger elderly population.

Yes, this is the logic of the moral crusader who preaches the virtues of contributing to the common purse while quietly "aggressively avoiding" a huge tax bill himself.

This is the George Osborne who has allegedly avoided paying at least £1.6 million in taxes himself  by means of a Trust Fund that will benefit him personally and family members - however aggressively or not he has done this, we will never know. That is a secret between him and his accountant.

Ruy May Rue the Day He Dismissed Independent Voters - And Their Bond With African Americans

INDEPENDENTVOTING.ORG NETWORKS

• Ruy the Day! A Review of Ruy Teixeira's Review of The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents by Linda Killian (by Jacqueline Salit, Huffington Post) Wow! For a man (actually, make that a MAN) who has devoted his political career to resuscitating a Democratic Party governing majority (he co-wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002), you would think he'd be a little more cautious about denouncing independents. Otherwise, his hoped for majority may get another slam, as it did in 2010 when independents expressed their disappointment and frustration with President Obama's inability to conquer the partisanship in Washington, including the partisanship of his own party. Ruy might rue the day he tried to tear down Killian and the volatile movement-in-the-making she writes about.
• LINDA KILLIAN OUTBREAK: The Uses of Polarization (By THOMAS B. EDSALL, NY Times/ The Opinion Pages/ Campaign Stops) At the same time, the percentage of the electorate that can accurately be described as independent — without partisan allegiance — has shrunk to about 7 percent, according to Ruy Teixeira of the Brookings Institution. While the importance of such voters has diminished, in a closely balanced contest these relatively uninvolved men and women have the power to determine the outcome: in the 12 presidential elections from 1964 to 2008, four – 1968, 1976, 2000 and 2004 – have been decided by 2.5 percentage points or less.
• Historic Bond Ties African-Americans and Independents Together (LETTER The Hankster, by Bob Friedman, PHOTOS online) Last week I joined Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network on the march from Selma to Montgomery. I am one of the 40% of Americans who are independent of both of the major parties. Back in the days of Ross Perot, the media called guys like me "angry white men." Along the route, I spoke with many people and brought greetings from Dr. Lenora Fulani, the country’s leading African American independent with whom I’ve worked closely and from IndependentVoting.org, the country’s largest organization of independent voters of which I’m a part.
• YOUR VIEW: Independent voters disfranchised in many states because of parties (Bob Friedman, Letters from our readers By Letters from our readers, Alabama.com) I want to respond to and applaud the Your Views letter "Alabama's closed primary infringes on voters' rights" in the March 10 Birmingham News by sharing the following. I couldn't agree more that since we pay for the primaries, they should be nonpartisan, more like "top two" as they have in California.
• The black vote: 5 states where Obama needs a big African-American turnout (By Perry Bacon Jr.,The Grio) President Obama's campaign will likely need the kind of strong black turnout he received in 2008 to win re-election, particularly if some of the white independent voters who backed him four years ago opt for the Republican candidate because of frustration over the president's tenure.

Independents, Swing Voters, and Open Primaries

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Swing voters: Diverse, misunderstood and crucial in 2012 - Far from a uniform band of centrists, swing voters include anti-corporate pacifists, tea party activists and many shades of political gray in between. (By David Lauter, Washington Bureau, LA Times)
• Kill the American Primary to Save American Politics: Ezra Klein (By Ezra Klein, Bloomberg.com)
• Independents Will Decide the 2012 Election - Here are three ways Obama and Romney can woo them. (Nick Gillespie, reason.com) If independent voters are the key to the presidency, what are the keys to independent voters? In its summary of 2011 attitudes toward government and political parties, Gallup concluded that the surge in independents stems from the “sluggish economy, record levels of distrust in government, and unfavorable views of both parties.” Indeed, a “historic” 81 percent of Americans overall are “dissatisfied with the way the nation is being governed” and 53 percent of us have negative views of the Republican Party and 55 percent of us have negative views of the Democratic Party. NOTE:  LOTS OF LINKS HERE

California Top Two Shaking Up Partisanship

CALIFORNIA TOP TWO

• Primary debuts changes that could give voters fits -  New top-two method gives voters choices. (By John Ellis - The Fresno Bee) Voters "may be a little shocked when they see how many people are running for U.S. Senate," said Gail Pellerin, the Santa Cruz County clerk and president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. "It's definitely new and something different."
• California candidates set to battle in new political landscape - The changed primary system and new legislative and congressional districts will probably yield intraparty fights and a lack of third-party hopefuls on the fall ballot. More contested seats are possible too. (By Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times)
• Viewpoints: 'Top two' primary: What will it really do? (By Peter Schrag, Special to The Bee) The redrawn 26th now has a narrow Democratic registration advantage, which raised the hopes of Democrats that they could capture a seat long held by the GOP. But now three Democrats are in the race against state Sen. Tony Strickland, a Republican, and a county supervisor named Linda Parks, who changed her registration from Republican to independent. If the Democrats, among them Assembly member Julia Brownley, the Democrats' anointed choice, all stay in the race, they could easily divide the Democratic majority's votes and put Parks and Strickland in the November runoff.
• Final Brief Filed in 9th Circuit in Lawsuit on Two Particular Aspects of California Top-Two System (Ballot Access News) This reply brief, filed by opponents of Proposition 14, points out that when backers of Proposition 14 intended to place the idea on the ballot as an initiative in 2009, their draft did permit use of the ballot label “independent.”

Angus King Rides Again! Olympia Snowe's Seat Contended by Independent Run

MAINE SENATE RACE

• Maine GOP out to subvert independent King Ex-governor in Senate bid called closet Democrat (By Sean Lengell, The Washington Times) “I’ve seen some people say [Mr. King‘s] inevitable, and I wouldn’t go that far, because the Republicans have some relatively attractive people” running, University of Maine political science professor Mark Brewer said.
• Snowe’s Resignation Leaves a Vacuum at Senate’s Center (By Albert R. Hunt, Bloomberg.com) She parcels out bipartisan blame. For President Barack Obama, who came into office vowing to end Washington’s toxic partisanship, “everything went awry from the outset.”
• Angus King, Former Maine Independent Governor, Reshapes U.S. Senate Race Angus King Maine Senate (By Ros Krasny, Huffington Post) Snowe's decision in February not to seek re-election set off a scramble among potential candidates and complicated the Republican effort to wrest control of the Senate from Democrats in November's elections.

Courts Step In On Stalled Partisan-Legislative-Driven New York Redistricting Process

NEW YORK REDISTRICTING

• Common Cause reacts to new congressional maps (Chris Morris, Adirondack Daily Enterprise) "The map is a stark departure from the Legislature's gerrymandered version to produce a far better result, demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is in fact no practical impediment to drawing fair maps, only a political one," Lerner said.
• 2016 Frontrunners Diverge on Redistricting (By Joshua Miller, Roll Call) “There will be national electeds who remember that he, at the height of his power, had the ability to step in and get a map done [for Democrats] and didn’t,” one New York Democratic operative said with more than a touch of frustration.
• Court Finalizes New York's Congressional Districts  (By Jill Colvin, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer) The judges' map rejected a proposal for a new majority Latino district in Upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, meaning that State Sen. Adriano Espaillat will be likely pitted against long-time Harlem leader, Rep. Charles Rangel instead of running in a separate contest.
• Congressman Grimm Praises New York's Redistricting Process (By: NY1 News Staten Island) The Brooklyn and Staten Island representative calls the process a home run for his district, saying the new lines make it slightly stronger on the Republican side.
  
• Gov. Cuomo Succumbs (NY Times Editorial) Despite repeated promises that he would veto gerrymandered districts drawn by legislators, the governor broke that vow and quietly signed the law that will allow unfair legislative elections in New York for the next 10 years. By approving the Legislature's districts, he has now made it far more difficult for the courts to revise these defective maps. 
• In 'The New York Times,' Cuomo's redistricting commission loses its independence (By Azi Paybarah, Capital NY) In a video message to New Yorkers that Cuomo posted online yesterday, the governor essentially claimed victory on five different fronts, including pensions, teacher evaluations, casino legalization and the expansion of a DNA database.
• Cuomo on the sequel to the bad old redistricting movie (By Josh Benson, Capital NY) Cuomo: "And ultimately, the legislators drew their own lines once again. And it was all legal, provided for in our constitution. If I had vetoed the lines this year, as some suggested, a court would have passed them. And from past experience, I believe the lines would have been substantially the same."
• Cuomo amendment ends Albany gerrymandering as we know it - Future districts to be drawn by commission, not lawmakers (NEW YORK DAILY NEWS) The same pols who downsized Gov. Cuomo’s pension reforms were even more incorrigible when it came to gerrymandering. Cuomo joined government watchdogs in rightly pushing for an independent panel to set district lines based on the 2010 census — to prevent legislative bosses from shamefully manipulating the mapmaking for partisan gain. But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos turned deaf ears — conspiring behind closed doors to draw the ugliest, most gerrymandered and unequal districts Albany has ever seen, especially for the Senate. The saving grace is that Cuomo leveraged his veto threat to win a permanent, landmark fix for this badly broken process.

NEW YORK SENATE

• Dems & WFP For Gilly; Conservatives For Long (BY Celeste Katz, Daily News/ Daily Politics) Gillibrand will also appear on the WFP line -- Row D -- in the November contest, and previously picked up the endorsement of the Independence Party.
  
  
   

Twisted Cable Whips the Youth of Today

So Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, is at it again. Somehow this man twists logic in on itself in a way that would leave Steven Hawking at a loss to explain. Perhaps reflecting some dark, inner turmoil over serving in the most right wing government in history while continuing to harbour fantastical delusions about being able to press a nuclear button to destroy the evil Cleggeron, Vince has today announced a tiny increase for people on the national minimum wage - just 11p per hour, taking it to the princely sum of £6.19 per hour from 1 October. (The current assessed Living wage, by contrast, is £7.20 per hour outside London, £8.30 in the capital.)

That's if you're old enough to have the "key to the door", as Vince's Mum probably told him would be his 21st birthday present sometime back when young people knew their place. Because Vince reckons that, if you are younger than that, you should work for less, even if you are doing the same job just as competently as older people.

So much less, in fact, that this year, in spite of high inflation and cuts to tax credits, he reckons young minimum wage earners should not have an increase at all. So, if you are aged 16 or 17, your £3.68 per hour rate stays put; and if you are 18 to 20, it remains at £4.98. (Apprentices, who the Government makes much of creating lots more, will see a whopping rise of 5p per hour to as much as £2.50!).

Now, this differential is not entirely Vince's fault. The Nu-Labour regime of Messrs Blair and Brown created the differentials when they introduced the national minimum wage (NMW). They even introduced legal exemptions to the laws against age discrimination to allow lower rates of NMW to be paid to younger people.

This was and remains really counter-intuitive. Employers can discriminate legally against younger people as long as they keep workers on the national minimum wage. As soon as they pay them any more than that, the exemptions no longer apply and they have to pay all ages the same or they can be sued for age discrimination. Quite rightly too, I say - except that this provides unscrupulous employers with a justification for keeping their lowest paid workers on the NMW.

Vince of course could be sweeping this ludicrous arrangement aside. He could be telling employers that if 19 year old is doing the same job as a 21 year old, they should be paid the same rate. Why on earth not? Would we accept such a distinction between a man and woman any more? Or a white person and an Asian? It is rightly illegal to pay older workers less - you can't differentiate between a 40 year old and a 75 year old. So why is it ok to pay young people less to do the same?

And why on earth has Cable made the gap 11p per hour worse? Well, here is the really twisted logic...

He claims it is to prevent young people being uncompetitive in the workplace and stifling job creation. How so? How can the very lowest rate of pay of all be uncompetitive? Who would be able to outbid them? And what employer would not create a real job because it was going to cost another £4 or so per week to pay? Only illegal gangmasters and ruthlessly exploited Chinese cockle-pickers come to mind. Is this really the sort of economy the Coalition is benchmarking its employment policies against?

In the Budget this week, the Lib Dems are hopeful that they will finally gain their nirvana of a £10,000 p.a. tax allowance for workers. Very nice - it will deliver an across-the-board tax reduction to everyone earning above the current tax allowance threshold of £8,105 per annum. So millionaires will be better off by the same amount as someone earning dead on £10,000 p.a.

However, with a pay rate of £3.68 per hour, working say 40 hours per week, a 17 year old on the national minimum wage has an annual pay of just £7,655 p.a., so will not benefit at all - and in real terms their paltry earnings will in fact buy even less as prices rise. Their employers, meantime, with both the rise in tax allowance and likely abolition of the upper tax rate for earnings over £150,000 p.a., look set to be quids in.

The other week in the Guardian, as he prattled on in some sort of mysterious way about some mild disagreement with Nick Clegg, Cable reveled suitably self-effacingly yet still sickeningly smugly in the faux appellation of the Karl Marx of the Lib Dems. What a load of twaddle. This grandee of social-lite liberalism is more Groucho than Karl when it comes to Marxism, his social concern worn as shakily as the bleeding-heart-on-his-sleeve.

Celebrity Come Shelf Stacking - Cable can still see off these
young dudes

Still, at least once he is out of government post-2014, when he picks up a job working the aisles in age-enhanced-friendly B&Q, Vince won't need to worry about being undercut by some young upstart racing up from the glue section.

Historic Bond Ties African-Americans and Independents Together

The Historic Bond that Ties African-Americans and Independents Together
By Bob Friedman

Last week I joined Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network on the march from Selma to Montgomery. I am one of the 40% of Americans who are independent of both of the major parties. Back in the days of Ross Perot, the media called guys like me "angry white men."


Along the route, I spoke with many people and brought greetings from Dr. Lenora Fulani, the country’s leading African American independent with whom I’ve worked closely and from IndependentVoting.org, the country’s largest organization of independent voters of which I’m a part.

I have been an independent activist concerned with voters’ rights for many years. In Birmingham, as chair of the Petitioners Alliance, I helped lead the first citywide Initiative & Referendum movement. With Senator Hank Sanders, one of the sponsors of this historic march, I wrote legislation to open access to the Alabama ballot. And with Rep. Demetrius Newton, I designed legislation for proportional democratic selection of presidential electors. As independents, we fight for reforms that not only protect the right to vote. They increase the power of the vote.

For this march, I was proud to have fellow independents Mark Bodenhausen and Lorna Lindsey join me for the historic bridge crossing in Selma. Lorna had never been to a major demonstration before. We added our voices to the call for an end to voter ID laws that suppress the full participation of all our citizens. Independents have experienced disenfranchisement ourselves. We know that when partisan interests wave a flag about so-called voter fraud in an election year, you can pretty much count on the fact that they’re doing it for partisan reasons, not to protect our democracy.

Partisanship is destroying our democracy and making our government incapable of moving our country forward. I far from alone in this concern. Right now, our Congress has a 97% disapproval rating. Most Americans look at Congress and see how partisan its behavior is and feel angry that our government is not working for them.

We need to broaden participation in our democracy, not narrow it. We need to make sure that no American is turned away from the polls because they don’t have the right ID. And that means photo ID, State ID and political ID. In 26 states, independents are prevented from voting in primaries, not because they don’t have an ID, but because they don’t belong to a party! That’s just wrong.

There is an historic bond that ties African Americans and independents together. That bond is based on our shared belief that our democracy must work for everyone, not just the powerful, not just the parties—but for the people!

Bob Friedman
Birmingham, AL 
205-701-2799

God Spare Us from the Uninformed Lawmakers...

Well, first we had Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg calling for a "new" right for employers to have "off the record conversations" with employees they wanted to leave because of misconduct or bad performance.

Except the right already existed in the form of "without prejudice discussions" to resolve disputes that can not be entered as evidence to Employment Tribunals.

Next, Government adviser Adrian Beecroft thundered that employers should have the right to ask employees if they intend to retire any time soon. Their inability to do so prevented panning ahead and was choking off the flexibility and innovation needed for entrepreneurial-led recovery.

Except, again, this right already exists and is explicitly set out as a right in guidance from the current Government to employers. Check it here.

And now.....

Norman Lamb,MP, Lib Dem, has called for employers to have a right to be able to offer employees a payment in return for which they will waive the right to claim unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal.

This just takes the biscuit. What the hell are we paying these MPs for?

Compromise agreements, where employers pay an agreed sum to employees to terminate employment in return for waiving their right to go to an employment tribunal, has been a feature of employment law since the early 1990s.

If our political masters are really keen to make laws, it would be helpful if, first of all, they could take a small portion of time to check out what is already law. The three statements from these supposedly expert, high-paid men betray a total lack of research and simply a wish to pander to the ignorant or deliberately devious agenda of the right wing press that prints repeated lies about it being impossible to dismiss anyone.

Twenty minutes with an employment lawyer would have put them right about their ingenuous "new" ideas. And maybe saved the public some wasted money paying them for unnecessary work.

Personally, I'd fire the lot of them for gross negligence.

And yes, as long as I followed a fair process, if I was their employer, I could.

Oh, it turns out, I am their employer - and so are you!

Perhaps we should do something about their moves to allow employers to sack anyone with less than two years' service without needing any reason at all; and to remove employment rights for the millions working for small businesses. Smacks of definite breakdown of mutual trust and confidence...

"You fool! Check your facts! You're fired!"

This Is Not Who We Are?

This is not who we are.

The words of US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton today as she reacted to the brutal murders of 16 innocent Afghan villagers - including two year old babies shot in their heads - by a US trooper who set out on a long walk from his base with slaughter his sole aim. Clinton looked suitably shocked as President Obama called Afghan President Karzai to offer apologies and condolences.

Not who we are?

Doubtless, within hours, or days at most, the American soldier will be declared insane, his terrible act of destruction the foaming fury of a madman out of control, a man possessed by crazy delusions. Not one of us at all. Perhaps, deep down, not even responsible for his own awful actions - gripped instead by some sort of traumatic stress disorder, in turn a symptom of the great stress he was under while on his fourth tour of duty in war torn Afghanistan. Indeed, when you look at it that way, perhaps his actions were caused by the Afghans. Maybe, deep down, these unruly people with their civil war and unholy faith were really asking for it. Perhaps, he had become one of them in his red mist blood lust...

Not who we are?

Tell us another Hilary. The soldier's actions were extreme, in some respects, but his only "crime" was to do what he did without being under orders at the time. Because increasingly, the American military has become defined by precisely this sort of arrogant brutality, a death-soaked zeitgeist that lifts so-called western civilisation above the value of troublesome mountain peasants and Muslims. This was evident in spade in Farenheit 9/11, when Michael Moore interviewed American tank crews who revealed that driving into Iraq in 2003, they sat in their tanks with their MP3 players streaming music to kill by as they shot up the ill-equipped Iraqi fighters outside their mobile armoured fortress - "It was like a computer game!" one gunner approvingly revealed."The ultimate rush!"

And so it went on - the horrors of Abu Ghraib, where American troops subjected Iraqi prisoners, many taken there on the slenderest of pretexts, to tortures and "heavy interrogation" that a good number did not survive. Photos that were released were just the tip of the iceberg - showing hooded prisoners menaced by dogs or threatened with electrocution. President Obama decided in the end to suppress hundreds of photographs, including many allegedly showing the rape of many of the women prisoners kept by the US soldiers in the former Saddam prison.

And then there was the case of six US soldiers charged with plotting for some weeks before seizing a 14 year old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, and repeatedly raping her. They then murdered her, her 5 year old sister and her parents and set their bodies on fire. The crime only came to light when one of the soldiers revealed the incident months later to his psychologist.

Abeer - raped and murdered by the US army

The same army later spawned the "Kill Squad" in Afghanistan under one Sargent Morlock, who led his men in killing innocent Afghans for sport. Other instances that have come to light - collecting body parts as trophies, playing football with the decapitated heads of Afghans, firing at random into queues of civilian vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and pissing on the corpses of the dead. There are many, many more, few covered by the mass media and, of course, there will be many others we know nothing about. 

What drives them to these things? The standard excuse is stress and fear - except that nearly all these cases have taken place outside of combat zones, where the perpetrators were in no fear of their lives and where their victims represented no threat at all. The arrogant dehumanizing of their enemies by these men reaches something of a hubristic crescendo in their apparent eagerness to display their exploits, caught on ubiquitous mobile phone cameras, on youtube and Facebook. The immensity of their war crimes seems to slip by these "warriors".

Referring to the Kill Team in an interview following yesterday's atrocities, Mark Boal, screenplay writer of the Hurt Locker, explained a key motive was boredom and frustration with lack of kills of Taliban fighters. He reported a high level of racism endemic among the regiment involved and how this, in turn, affected their attitude and behaviour towards the Afghans. No hearts and minds here - just pure, brute force. Brute force and profit, of course - because alongside the US army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the Blackwater mercenary company has implanted thousands of security contractors into both countries. Even less disciplined that the regulars, Blackwater has been associated with dozens of violent incidents, including killing 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Nisour square in Bagdhad in order to "clear a path" through people shopping at market.

From the My Lai massacre of 500 innocent villagers in Vietnam to the gunning down of ambulances and children by whooping helicopter gunners above Bagdhad in the video below (released by Wikileaks), the brutality of the American army is frankly far beyond doubt. If the Taliban are vicious, the US forces are constrained purely by the light restraint of vaguely possible bad publicity, a factor that clearly has little impact on what happens on the ground.

American soldiers raped and killed over 500 people at My Lai.

But then, it is not just the poor bloody infantry on the front line defending the corrupt Karzai regime, the young western lives being thrown away on a pointless war, that are responsible for the brutality of the American war machine. The massive carnage among non-combatant civilians that goes by virtually unacknowledged, allowing both the alienation of the Afghans and the continuing brutalisation of often young soldiers, is in fact a product of formal American military policy and planning.

In spite of the dreadful deaths and injuries, Afghanistan actually represents one of the safest wars for US and allied troops in history. The casualty rate pales into insignificance beside the tolls of the second world war, and even of the Korean war. This is because, ever since Vietnam, driven by the exposure of sensationalist 24 hour TV news, US policy has been to promote military adventures as being comfortable, even risk free - the safety of their own troops utterly paramount regardless of the impact on innocent civilians - defined now by the sick and sinister sanitised term, collateral damage.

Hence the use of drones, piloted from thousands of miles away, to spy on and increasingly attack ground targets - indiscriminately causing collateral damage. And plans are increasingly concentrating on making the US military capable of massive armed interventions with the use of fewer and fewer soldiers by means of "smart" weapons and robot technology. Popular with western media for its protection of western soldiers, this strategy will simply make armed conflict all the easier for the Pentagon and the collateral damage all the more acceptable, and the bitter harvest of terrorism and war without end all the harsher and more severe for decades to come.

The American soldier's "inexplicable" actions yesterday then become very explicable indeed - the mindset developed to turn ordinary humans into brutal killing machines inevitably dehumanizes their targets, whether combatants or civilian bystanders. With much military training neatly segued from increasingly life-like computer gaming into training programmes into reality, the boundaries are blurred between fact and fiction, like the tank commanders storming into Bagdhad to the sound of drums: and what the rogue soldier did becomes routine, becomes precisely who we are. It may not be what many of the troops put into the front-line start out being, but the cynical exploitation of their commitment - and often their dire economic circumstances when they sign up - means that the strategy and tactics of the Armed Services sooner or later makes it what they become. And, as America seeks to shore up its declining world power, we will see more and more of this in the years ahead as  the USA continues to spend more on its military than every other nation on the planet put together.

So, this is not who you are?

Are you so sure Hilary? As you stand next Commander-in-Chief Obama, you should know better.

.

college of the city of new york

I'm An Independent - Can I Vote in Super Tuesday's Republican Primary?

Alaska - Open Primary: Parties select who may vote in their primaries. To vote in the GOP primary, a voter must be registered as a Republican 30 days before Election Day.

Georgia - Open: No party affiliation required at registration. However, on Election Day, voters must declare an oath of intent to affiliate with the particular party for whom they are voting on Election Day.

Idaho - Closed: Until 2011, all Idaho primaries were open. Independents intervened in a lawsuit brought by a faction of the Republican Party seeking to close their primaries. However, the GOP obtained a declaratory judgment that mandating open primaries violated freedom of association and was thus unconstitutional in Idaho Republican Party v. Ysura. Subsequently, the legislature passed a bill allowing parties to choose which type of primary they use. Democrats have chosen a semi-closed primary; unaffiliated voters may register a party at the polls on election day, but they are bound to that party affiliation at the next election.

Massachusetts - Semi-Closed: Affiliated voters must vote in the primary of their party; however, unaffiliated voters may vote in either primary.

North Dakota - Closed: The only state without voter registration. To vote in the Republican caucus you must have affiliated with the Republican Party in the last general election or intend to do so in the next election.

Ohio - Closed: Voters' right to vote in the primary may be challenged on the basis that they are not affiliated with the party for whom they are voting in the primary.

Oklahoma - Closed: Only voters affiliated with a particular party may vote in its primary.

Tennessee - Open: No party affiliation required at registration. 

Vermont - Open: No registration by party. For presidential primary, voters must declare which ballots they want.

Virginia - Open: No party affiliation required at registration.

source: FairVote

A Twisted Tale of Partisan Politics

A Twisted Tale of Partisan Politics

by Harry Kresky

Huffington Post
Posted: 03/ 2/2012 5:34 pm

A strange case in Tennessee got my attention. Now it's before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, as the judges consider whether a political party has the right to overturn the results of a primary election conducted entirely in accordance with state law.

Here's the background. Rosalind Kurita ran for re-election to the State Senate in 2008 and beat her opponent Tim Barnes by 19 votes in the Democratic Party primary. Candidate Barnes challenged the result on the grounds that Kurita won because many Republicans and independents participated in the election. But Tennessee, along with some 17 other states, does not have partisan registration. There, voters are just voters, and all are allowed to choose the primary they wish to vote in. So, if they're were not registered into a party in the first place and cast their vote legally, on what grounds were those who voted for Candidate Kurita judged to be Republicans and independents? Shouldn't their votes count the same as those who voted for Candidate Barnes?

In Tennessee, disputed primary elections are referred to the political party whose nomination the candidates seek. Here the matter was "adjudicated" by the Executive Committee of the State Democratic Party under rules adopted after the challenge was filed by Barnes. The "rules" articulated no standard by which the issue was to be determined. The Committee made no specific findings, but voided the election on the grounds that the results were "incurably uncertain." The Party then gave the nomination to Barnes.

Kurita claimed that she was denied due process and unconstitutionally deprived of the election she had won. The trial court rejected her claim on the grounds that the Tennessee Democratic Party was a private organization that did not have to accord due process and, further, that she has had no legally protected interest in the results of the primary election she had won. The decision did not address the rights of the persons who voted for her, or their being deprived of their choice of candidates in a state run and state financed primary. (Apparently, the Tennessee Democratic Party was angry at Kurita because she had supported a Republican for election to the State Senate speaker office the year before she ran for re-election.)

Kurita, like Alice in Wonderland, has fallen into the rabbit's hole of partisan American politics. The parties run the government; they write the laws by which the citizens of their states must finance and conduct primary elections. And when the outcome of an election is not to the party's liking, it can overturn it on any grounds, or no grounds whatsoever, under a set of rules that are adopted for just that purpose.

To add to the madness, the Tennessee Democratic Party rested its right to ignore the will of the voters who participated in the primary election to choose its candidates, on the Party's (not the voters') First Amendment right of freedom of association. Is it any wonder that our elected officials place the rights of their party over the rights of the voters and the interests of the State or country? If they do otherwise, they jeopardize their chance for re-election, the wishes of their constituents voters notwithstanding?

This twisted tale sheds light on why so many Americans don't bother to vote and why a plurality of them have become independents.

Harry Kresky, a New York City attorney in private practice, is counsel to IndependentVoting.org - a national association of independents with organization in 40 states. He is one of the country's leading election attorneys and has represented independent voters, candidates and parties for the past 30 years. He currently represents independent voters in a precedent-setting case in U.S. District Court defending open primaries in Idaho. Kresky recently teamed with attorneys from the law firm of Holland and Knight to prevent the destruction of historic St. Brigid’s Church in lower Manhattan. 

Independent Voters: Youth Turn Away From Party Identification (Rolling Stone)

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Percentage of independent voters climbs in Mass. (Boston Globe) The latest figures released by Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin’s office shows the number of voters not enrolled in any party — so-called “independent voters’’ — has topped 52 percent. That’s up from 2004, when slightly less than half of all Massachusetts voters were independent.
• Independent voters see beyond ideology (LETTER Syracuse NY Post Standard) The Independents are not likely to present a third-party candidate, so the decision will be between the Democrats and the Republicans. That is not to say independent voters are immune to right or left tendencies, but that they can see beyond the party ideologies to the rational arguments presented.
• Letter: Non-Partisan System is Open and Fair, and it Works (Scarsdale Press) I write in response to numerous attacks on the Scarsdale Non-Partisan System by Harry Reynolds, an independent candidate for Trustee in the election on March 20… The fact is that, because of the time-tested and proven system of fair, honest, and responsive government under the Non-Partisan System, Scarsdale has been largely free of the partisan sniping and character assassination that is typical of most partisan electoral systems in this country.
• Why Democrats Have a Problem with Young Voters (By Rick Perlstein, Rolling Stone/ Politics) The turn away from party identification has been a long-term American trend: According to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans don't consider themselves members of a political party, compared to 36 percent in 2002 and 33 percent in 1988. But that trend has been all the more accelerated among young people — and even more so among young progressives.

Campaign Finance Reform - Not a Good Picture

Campaign finance reform as conceived by the 2 major parties won't reform American politics. It's partisan through and through and -- how would you take the money out of politics when we live in a capitalist society?

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

The New York Times' Disingenuous Campaign Against Citizens United (By Wendy Kaminer, The Atlantic) Like Fox News, The New York Times has a First Amendment right to spread misinformation about important public issues, and it is exercising that right in its campaign against the Citizens United ruling. In news stories, as well as columns, it has repeatedly mischaracterized Citizens United, explicitly or implicitly blaming it for allowing unlimited "super PAC" contributions from mega-rich individuals. In fact, Citizens United enabled corporations and unions to use general treasury funds for independent political expenditures; it did not expand or address the longstanding, individual rights of the rich to support independent groups. And, as recent reports have made clear, individual donors, not corporations, are the primary funders of super PACs.

Americans Elect Progress in North Carolina and Among Dems

AMERICANS ELECT

• 3rd party nearly on N.C. ballot - Americans Elect will pick its nonpartisan candidate online. (By Jim Morrill, Charlotte Observer) A state elections official says Americans Elect appears to have the required signatures to get on the November ballot alongside President Barack Obama and the Republican and Libertarian nominees. The state could certify them in early March.
• Prominent Democrat Endorses Third-Party Group (By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NY Times/ The Caucus) “The country is going to really be in deep trouble if we don’t act soon,” Mr. Boren, who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, said in an interview with The Caucus. “I think this is really a cry from many of us who are really concerned for the future of the country.”
• Third-Party Group Wants Internet to Pick Presidential Candidate: Americans Elect, backed by $5 million from the head of a private investment firm, wants to shake up the two-party system (Rebekah Metzler U.S. News & World Report in Chicago Tribune) "There's really only been one successful third party, and that was the Republican party that came about in the wake and collapse of the old Whig party over the issue of slavery," Smith says. "Good government is not really the kind of an issue that is going to motivate people to drop long-standing ties to the party of their birth, so to speak, and take up with another party that isn't really a party."

Libertarians Looking for Tactics in 2012

LIBERTARIANS

• Nick Gillespie Talking Election 2012, Independent Voters, with Jon Caldara of Independence Institute (Nick Gillespie, Reason.com) The awesome Independence Institute in Denver, Colorado invited me out west last week to debate Ann Coulter about whether libertarians and conservatives could and should work together to defeat liberals such as Barack Obama.
• Gary Johnson and the possibilities of a third-party candidacy (Jim Galloway, Atlanta Journal Constitution/ Political Insider) Truth be told, the better third-party bet was in Athens this weekend, attending the state Libertarian party convention. Gary Johnson is yet another former governor – this time from New Mexico – who failed to scratch in the Republican contest. But when Libertarians have their national gathering in Las Vegas in May, Johnson is likely to emerge as the party’s candidate – just as Bob Barr did four years ago. Johnson left the GOP contest in December. Again, not that many noticed.

Political Theater: Sally & Tom (The American Way) Reviewed by Black Star News

POLITICAL THEATER
Sally and Tom at the Castillo (By Deardra Shuler, Black Star News) Given Jefferson’s anti-slavery position he would be delighted to see a black man as President and perhaps disappointed to see although President Obama expressed “change,” little has changed, given the unbridled hatred, disrespect, hostility, and disgusting behavior demonstrated by many members of Jefferson’s own race toward the presidency of Barack Obama.