Tag Archives: massachusetts

Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless

by USAUnitedCashLoans123 Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

More Coverage of Homelessness


The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness


Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless


How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along to Find Out


This Massive Project Is Great News for Homeless Vets in Los Angeles


Here’s What It’s Like to Be a Homeless Techie in Silicon Valley


Hanging Out With the Tech Have-Nots at a Silicon Valley Shantytown

Jeff rarely smiles. After 10 years sleeping on sidewalks in San Francisco, stealing to survive and score his next heroin fix, an infection robbed him of most of his teeth. “If you have a big nose, well, no one can blame you,” he says. “It’s just the way you were born. But if you have no teeth, it’s proof that you’ve fucked up real bad—that you must be nothing but a fuckup.”

He wasn’t always this way, but his life was hard from the beginning. Jeff spent his early years fearing his mother would kill him. She suffered from delusions and was shuffled in and out of mental health facilities. Sometimes she was violent, hurling insults and threatening her family with knives.

Jeff’s father, though, was his hero. He was a garbage collector—”the best in the city”—and Jeff followed in his footsteps: “I became a garbage collector too. I worked and paid taxes for 12 years. But one day I was caught with a tiny bit of pot in my urine and was fired on the spot.”

It was devastating. Jeff fell into a deep depression. He started using crack, and later heroin. Soon, he had burned through his money, lost his apartment, and was abandoned by his fiancé. “Being a garbage man was everything to me. When I lost that, I lost everything.”

A social worker helped Jeff get off drugs and into stable housing: “Maybe I’ll live ’til 50.”

Jeff’s is one of the many stories of homelessness chronicled in Robert Okin‘s new book Silent Voices. As a psychiatrist who has served as the Commissioner at the Department of Mental Health in both Massachusetts and Vermont, a professor emeritus at the University of California-San Francisco School of Medicine, and former Chief of Service in the San Francisco General Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry, Okin has worked with homeless patients throughout his career.

Still, as he passed them daily on the streets of the city where he lived and worked, he began to wonder about who they really were. How did they cope with their stresses, what did they think about, and how did they make it through the cold, foggy San Francisco nights? “I understood their lives from a clinical point of view. I didn’t really get it from a humanistic point of view,” Okin told me. “I wanted to know about the details.”

So, he started asking. He would broach conversations on street corners, inquiring about street people’s pasts, survival strategies, and inner lives. “Behind the rags and the carts and the strange behaviors—behind the stigma of poverty and mental illness—are human beings with a lot of the same hopes and feelings, joys, frustrations that the rest of us have,” he says. “I wanted to help readers see that, when they pass someone on the street who is sleeping, they should try to remember: That person has a story.”

Daniel, in the financial district, panhandles by day and sleeps in doorways at night.

Daniel’s feet.

In the book, Okin pairs photographic portraits with extended quotes from his subjects, offering context only when needed. He’d rather let his readers experience the stories as he did. Not surprisingly, they are full of hardship, grief, and regret. “Many believed that they were at fault for their own predicaments,” Okin says. “Even when you heard the stories that these people had—abused, neglected. Many of them just never had a chance.”

Some people wouldn’t engage with Okin: “I sat beside him for over an hour. He seemed completely unaware of my presence, so intently was he examining his sock.”

Drug addiction is a common theme. People started using for a variety of reasons, especially those who experienced neglect or abuse. Once they landed on the streets, they were caught in a perpetual cycle. Addictions are particularly hard to break when you don’t have a roof over your head, Okin says. As one subject puts it, “Living on the street is so bad, you have to be either stoned or crazy to bear it.”

In his 20s, David became convinced extraterrestrial creatures were shooting particles into his brain: “The angels of suffering are screeching at me!”

David’s room in one of the city’s “transient hotels.”

Linda says he named himself after his mother, whom he doesn’t remember. He was put in foster care at age five and raised in group homes: “When I get too lonely, which is all the time, I listen to music. Can’t live without it.”

Mental illness was also common, but there was often an associated history of childhood trauma, abandonment, and mistreatment. Many of the mentally ill women he encountered had been sexually abused or exploited as children.

Just hearing the stories took a toll on Okin. “I would come home the end of the day, sometimes feeling connected and exhilarated, but often feeling sad, with a lump in my throat,” he says. “It really touched me deeply. There were many times when I just felt I couldn’t go out the next day. It was too sad, too demoralizing.”

What kept him going, he says, is the thought that sharing the stories might inspire others to take on the issue of homelessness. Given the right programs, he knew that many of his subject could pull themselves out of the abyss. “You need to get people into housing first, and then they are much more likely to get off drugs, get a job, or in other ways pull themselves together. They are able to function much more constructively if they don’t have to fight for survival.”

Barbara became homeless after her husband OD’d. “My son could see me from the window while I was out in the street. To this day I see his face looking out the window at me, wanting me to come in.” She was later diagnosed with cancer, and died before Okin’s book was published.

Indeed, “housing first” programs are being implemented across the country. They pair chronically homeless people with subsidized long-term housing and in-house social services. The strategy has proved successful, not just in getting thousands of homeless off the streets, but in helping them rebuild their lives. It sounds expensive, but in fact it’s cheaper than band-aid approaches, which are laced with costs for hospital stays and incarceration.

Michael told Okin he speaks to God. “He began talking softly to himself and then more loudly to the bell that clanged in the tower of the Ferry Building.”

Utah’s highly successful program, the subject of the cover story in our March/April print edition, is close to ending chronic homelessness in that state. “This problem can be solved in San Francisco just like it can be solved in Utah,” Okin told me. “The fact that there are now some successes will remove the argument that this is unsolvable. It will give states and the people in charge of budgets the comfort that they need—but ultimately the people in this city must demand the political will from their elected officials.” (Also read: “Just How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along To Find Out.“)

Jeff is one of the lucky ones. After being homeless for a decade he landed in a drug treatment program, and it may have saved his life. While living on the streets he suffered an infection that left abscesses all over his body: “They wouldn’t heal while I was on the street, even with antibiotics. Too much stress, too much exposure to bad weather, too many heroin injections.”

But, with the help of the program, he was placed in housing and assigned a social worker, who he says saw him every day for a year. Now he’s been clean for more than a year and landed a paid, part-time job with the program that assisted him. He also volunteers at an animal shelter, and has even adopted a kitten. “She’s my best friend. I’ve also started to think about what else I want to do with my life. Maybe I’ll live ’til 50.”

Continue at source:

Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, Oster, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless

Scientists: No, We Can’t Fight Climate Change by Burning Trees

by AdrianneFkb Posted on February 14, 2015

Mother Jones

This article originally appeared at the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A group of 78 scientists is criticizing an Environmental Protection Agency memo they say may dramatically undermine President Barack Obama’s directive to cut planet-warming emissions.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, a group that includes climate scientists, engineers, and ecologists criticizes a November 2014 EPA policy memo that discounts emissions generated by burning biomass, including plants, trees, and other wood products known as sources of biogenic carbon dioxide. Critics said they fear the memo shows how biomass might be treated under the EPA’s forthcoming Clean Power Plan, which will set the first regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The EPA is expected to finalize those regulations by summer.

The EPA memo states that using biomass as a source of power is “likely to have minimal or no net atmospheric contributions of biogenic carbon dioxide emissions” as long as the biomass is produced with “sustainable forest or agricultural practices.” It also suggests that states will be able to increase the use of biomass in power plants in order to meet the limits set in the Clean Power Plan. The biogenic energy framework was the subject of a recent article in Politico magazine, which found that the interpretation “could promote the rapid destruction of America’s carbon-storing forests.”

The group of scientists argues that not all types of biomass have the same impact on carbon emissions, and that using more biomass derived from trees will actually increase overall emissions. Treating all biomass the same could lead to cutting down older-growth trees for fuel, and older trees store more carbon. The group cites a statistic from the US Energy Information Agency estimating if woody biomass is treated as carbon-free, an additional 4 percent of electricity in the US could be generated from wood over the next 20 years. The scientists estimate that may boost the US timber harvest by 70 percent.

This would likely lead to cutting even more trees, not only in the US, but around the world, the scientists argue. Even if new trees are grown to replace them, it would take many years for the trees to store as much carbon. Further, they say, burning biomass makes power plants less efficient and increases emissions.

“Including such exemptions for broad categories of biomass fuels in a final rule would not only encourage large-scale harvesting of wood to replace coal and other fossil fuels but also place no limits on the diversion of the world’s agricultural land to energy use, requiring conversions of forests and grasslands to meet food needs,” the group’s letter says.

“They’re going to declare biomass carbon-neutral with the wave of a magic wand,” William Moomaw, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Tufts University, told The Huffington Post. “It’s not carbon-neutral. It’s a rather appalling failure to actually do the math.”

Most states except Massachusetts consider biomass to be carbon-free, said Moomaw, as does the European Union.

William Schlesinger, dean emeritus at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and one of the scientists involved in writing the letter, said the EPA memo was “disturbing” because it designates all sustainable biomass as having low carbon emissions, and does not adequately define “sustainable.”

“The EPA made a promise several years ago that it would make its decisions based on science, and the best science,” said Schlesinger. “Here, we’ve got a chance to sit down and look at what the science really says.”

A group of Massachusetts environmental groups issued a statement this week expressing concern about biomass under the Clean Power Plan.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Purchia said in an email to the Huffington Post that the Clean Power Plan isn’t final, and that the framework on biogenic carbon dioxide was designed as a “policy-neutral framework for assessing biogenic CO2 emissions from stationary sources—it was not developed as technical guidance.”

“What we have said repeatedly is that the memo is a snapshot of the issues that have been raised in regards to the role of biomass in how states put together their plans to reduce their carbon pollution,” said Purchia. “But we have made no definitive statements on what the role of biomass will be. We expect certain waste products and forest derived waste products might be ok, but that doesn’t mean all forest products…To reiterate, we don’t assume cutting down forests to power power plants is carbon neutral. This would really be a case by case basis that states would need to show detailed analysis that we’d review. We’d issue additional guidance if needed.”

Visit site: 

Scientists: No, We Can’t Fight Climate Change by Burning Trees

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Scientists: No, We Can’t Fight Climate Change by Burning Trees

There Is No Higher Ed Bubble. Yet.

by MabelBugnion Posted on December 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Is there a higher-education bubble? Will technology produce cheaper, better alternatives in the near future? Are kids and parents finally figuring out that if Bill Gates can drop out of Harvard and become the richest man in the world, maybe an Ivy League degree isn’t actually worth 50 grand a year? Dan Drezner thinks the whole idea is ridiculous, and he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is:

If, in fact, there really is a higher ed bubble, it should pop before 2020. And if it does pop, then tuition prices for college should plummet as demand slackens. After all, that’s how a bubble works — when it deflates, the price of the asset should plummet in value, like housing in 2008. So who wants to bet me that an average of the 2020 tuition rates at Stanford University, Williams College, Texas A&M and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell will be lower than today?

I’m open to changing the particular schools, but those four are a nice distribution of private and public schools, elite and not-quite-as-elite colleges, with some geographic spread. Surely, true believers in a higher ed bubble would expect tuition rates at those schools to fall.

I really don’t think that will be the case. So anyone who believes in a higher ed bubble should be happy to take the other side of that bet.

Not me. I’d be willing to bet that eventually artificial intelligence will basically wipe out the demand for higher education completely. But “eventually” means something like 30 years minimum, probably more like 40 or 50. Maybe even more if AI continues to be as intractable as some people think it will be.

In the meantime, Drezner is right: the vast, vast majority of college students don’t want to strike out on their own and try to become millionaire entrepreneurs. They just want ordinary jobs. And that’s a good thing, since if everyone wanted to run their own companies, entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to find anyone to do all the non-CEO scutwork for their brilliant new social media startups.

So if something like 98 percent of college grads are aiming for traditional jobs in which they work for somebody else, guess what? All those somebody elses—which probably includes most of the people who think there’s a higher-ed bubble—are going to want to hire college grads. They sure don’t want to hire a bunch of losers who were too dim to drop out and become millionaires and couldn’t even manage the gumption to accrue 120 units at State U, do they?

Look: the rising cost of higher education has multiple causes, but it’s mostly driven by two simple things. At public schools, it’s driven by declining state funding, which transfers an increasing share of the cost of higher ed onto students. Unfortunately, I see no reason to think this trend won’t continue. At private schools, it’s driven by the perception of how much a private degree is worth—and right now, all the evidence suggests that even with fairly astronomical tuitions at elite and semi-elite universities, the lifetime value of a degree is still worth more than students pay for it. Universities understand this, and since these days they mostly think of themselves not as public trusts, but as businesses who simply charge whatever the traffic will bear, they know they still have plenty of headroom to increase tuition. So this trend is likely to continue as well.

If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s a class of 2nd or 3rd tier liberal arts colleges that might be in trouble. They have high tuitions, but the value of their degree isn’t really superior to that of a state university. They might be in trouble, and if Drezner added one of these places to his list it might make his bet more interesting.

But he’d still win. He might lose by 2040, but he’s safe as long as he sticks to 2020.

Jump to original:

There Is No Higher Ed Bubble. Yet.

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There Is No Higher Ed Bubble. Yet.

Walmart Is Seeing Its Biggest Black Friday Protests Ever Today

by LandonOlmstead Posted on November 28, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Black Friday is best known as the day when big-box retailers rake in money, but it has also become a time for some of their employees to demand a share of the proceeds. At Walmart, this year’s Black Friday protests will be the widest-reaching ever, organizers say, with pickets and strikes planned at 1600 stores in 49 states to remind shoppers that the people serving them often can’t afford to feed themselves.

“I have to depend on the government mostly,” says Fatmata Jabbie, a 21-year-old single mother of two who earns $8.40 an hour working at a Walmart in Alexandria, Virginia. She makes ends meet with food stamps, subsidized housing, and Medicaid. “Walmart should pay us $15 an hour and let us work full-time hours,” she says. “That would change our lives. That would change our whole path. I wouldn’t be dependent on government too much. I could buy clothes for my kids to wear.”

The nation’s largest employer, Walmart employs 1.4 million people, or 10 percent of all retail workers, and pulls in $16 billion in annual profits. Its largest stockholders—Christy, Jim, Alice, and S. Robson Walton—are the nation’s wealthiest family, collectively worth $145 billion. Yet the company is notorious for paying poverty wages and using part-time schedules to avoid offering workers benefits. Last year, a report commissioned by Congressional Democrats found that each Walmart store costs taxpayers between 900,000 and $1.75 million per year because so many employees are forced to turn to government aid.

The group behind the Black Friday protests, the union-backed Organization for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) was founded in 2011 to pursue a new approach to improving labor conditions at the retail giant. Rather than try to overcome Walmart’s union-busting tactics, OUR Walmart has focused on publicly shaming the company through a relentless PR campaign and mass demonstrations. Organizers say the approach is working: Since 2012, Walmart has instituted a new pregnancy policy and a scheduling policy that helps workers get more shifts.

Like the holiday retail season, this year’s Walmart protests actually started before Black Friday. On Wednesday, Jabbie walked off her shift along with other workers who are demanding a $15 wage and full-time hours. Other Walmart workers walked off the job in California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C. Here’s what the strike looked like:

A strike this week at the Walmart in Alexandria, Virginia Jamie Way, OUR Walmart

“It felt great,” she Jabbie me. “I feel like doing it over and over again until they get the message.”

On Thanksgiving Day, 12 striking Walmart workers and community members began a 24-hour fast to protest wages so low they leave employees hungry.

Today thousands more workers will be at it again—and tweeting under the hashtag #WalmartStrikers. I’ll be posting updates below.

UPDATE 3:06 a.m. EST: A protest is already underway at the Walmart store in Long Beach, California.

UPDATE 11:03 a.m. EST: Walmart pickets are in full-swing around the country.

UPDATE 11:07 a.m. EST: On a press call with OUR Walmart, Shomari Lewis, a worker for a Walmart store in Dallas, said 100 picketing employees attempted to enter the store but were denied access. “I’m 32 and I am nowhere near where my parents were at this time in their lives,” he said. “I thought getting a job a the nation’s largest employer would be a great way to start a career, but boy, was I wrong.” He makes around $9 an hour and can’t afford a car. “I can’t just go out and buy food during the pay period because I don’t even know how much I’ll have money for… I don’t know how we are supposed to have families or raise them when Walmart is keeping us in poverty.”

“We know that the Waltons can afford to pay us better,” says Ronee Hinton, a Walmart employee who participated in a sit-down strike in Washington, DC, this morning. She gets paid $8.40 an hour for 20 to 30 hours a week, and her schedule arbitrarily shifts “all the time.” This forces her to choose “between going to a doctor’s appointment and missing a shift at work,” she says. “It’s not a choice that I want to make especially now that I am expecting a baby… I don’t know how I will raise a child on Walmart’s pay.”

At a Walmart in Los Angeles, community members and Walmart workers are continuing a 24-hour strike to protest the company’s hunger wages. “The hunger I’m experiencing right now is all too familiar,” says Richard Reynoso, a stocker at the store who hasn’t eaten since yesterday. “Many Walmart workers experience it every day… but nobody who works for the richest company in America should ever experience that kind of thing.”

Many of today’s protests have a festive feel. There’s a live band in DC, and a Santa Claus in Denver who will deliver coal to managers.

In Chicago, seven Walmart workers were arrested while blocking traffic on the road on front of the store.

In Washington State, there are protests at 64 stores—every store in the state.

Here are more protest scenes from around the country:

UPDATE 3:02 p.m. EST: Fast Food and Walmart workers block a street and risk arrest in Sacramento.

And Santa is hauled off to jail:

UPDATE 5:45 p.m. EST: Walmart workers are breaking bread together as they end their 24-hour Thanksgiving fast

Photos of the arrests in Chicago from earlier today:

Continue reading – 

Walmart Is Seeing Its Biggest Black Friday Protests Ever Today

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Walmart Is Seeing Its Biggest Black Friday Protests Ever Today

These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

by Trista3686 Posted on November 24, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In recent years, more and more big-box retailers have begun forcing their employees to work on Thanksgiving Day. Now, some Ohio state legislators have had enough. They’re introducing bills that would give workers the right to refuse to punch in on Thanksgiving, and, if they do agree to show up on the holiday, to receive substantial overtime pay.

“Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be a day when we retreat from consumerism,” says Cleveland’s Democratic State Rep. Mike Foley, the author of one such bill. “It’s a day when you hang out with your family, go play touch football, have a big turkey dinner, and complain about your crazy uncle or cousin—but you don’t think about super blockbuster sales at Target.”

Foley’s House Bill 360 would allow stores to open on Turkey Day but ban them from retaliating against workers who opt to stay home with their families. Workers who do show up would be guaranteed triple wages—which would also apply on Black Friday if stores open earlier than normal (12:01 a.m. and earlier openings have become common).

Foley says he was inspired to write the bill last year while leafing through newspaper circulars advertising Thanksgiving Day sales. “My wife said, ‘You’re a legislator, do something about this,'” he recalls. “And I thought, ‘Well, I am.'”

If employers want to treat Thanksgiving as “an opportunity to make money or get above the black line, so be it,” say Democratic Rep. Robert Hagan, the bill’s cosponsor. “But the fact still remains that they have that responsibility to take care of their workers.”

Out in Middletown, Connecticut, Democratic State Rep. Matt Lesser has pledged to introduce a similar bill next year. “The idea is to discourage retailers” from opening on Thanksgiving, he told the Hartford Courant. “And if they do require their workers to come in on Thanksgiving, that they would at least be paid overtime to compensate.”

Laws restricting Thanksgiving Day commerce aren’t without precedent. For decades, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island have completely banned most retailers from opening their doors on Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rules date back to Colonial-era “blue laws” that restricted commercial activity on Sundays. More recently, some labor advocates have called for a federal blue law to protect Christmas and Thanksgiving. (Don’t hold your breath).

Although the GOP likes to think of itself as the party of family values, Foley and Hagan say that the Republicans who control the Ohio legislature want nothing to do with their Thanksgiving law. Their bill, first introduced last year, was quickly tabled. It’s not expected to come up for a vote this year either. “They are on the side of the retailers, the restaurant owners, the people making the money, as opposed to working families,” Hagan says. “That’s the bottom line.”

Still, the backlash against Turkey Day retail has gained some steam. The Boycott Black Thursday Facebook page has more than 100,000 likes. And more than two-dozen retail chains plan to stay dark on Thanksgiving this year, including Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dillards, Nordstrom, GameStop, and Costco. “We don’t believe that we will lose ground to competitors,” GameStop president Tony Bartel told the New York Times. “Even if we lose ground to competitors, we are making it corporate principle—we have committed to associates that we will not open on Thanksgiving.”

See more here: 

These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Holiday shopping, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These State Lawmakers Want To Save Thanksgiving From Greedy Retailers

Why Scott Walker Might Be Our Next President

by QuinnHeavener Posted on November 19, 2014

Mother Jones

In 2012, I basically considered Mitt Romney a shoo-in for the Republican nomination. I figured that he’d hoover up most of the moderate votes—and despite all the breathless press accounts, moderates still account for at least half of GOP voters—plus a share of the tea partiers, and that was that. The rest of the field would destroy each other as they fought over their own sliver of the tea party vote, eventually leaving Romney battered and unloved, but triumphant.

Sure enough, that’s what happened. But I don’t see a strong moderate in the field right now. I suppose Jeb Bush and Chris Christie come the closest, but even if they run, they strike me as having some pretty serious problems. Romney was willing to adopt tea party positions across the board, even as he projected a moderate, adult persona, but neither Christie nor Bush will kowtow in quite that way. That’s going to cause them problems, and Christie’s fondness for showy confrontations is going to be an additional millstone around his neck. Either one might win, but neither seems like an especially likely nominee to me.

All this is a long way of explaining why I think Scott Walker is the frontrunner. He has a record of governance. His persona is relatively adult. He doesn’t say crazy stuff. Relatively speaking, he’s attractive to moderates. But at the same time, the tea partiers love him too. The big strike against him, of course, is that he’s lousy on TV. He’s a terrible public speaker. And he’s just boring as hell. However, Ed Kilgore perfectly explains why this doesn’t make him another Tim Pawlenty or John Kasich:

This is why Walker is so very commonly compared to Tim Pawlenty in 2012; the Minnesotan was perfectly positioned to become the most-conservative-electable-candidate nominee in a large but shaky field. And he wound up being the first candidate to drop out, before a single vote (other than in the completely non-official Ames Straw Poll) was cast. His sin was congenital blandness, and the defining moment of his campaign was when he all but repudiated his one great zinger: referring to the Affordable Care Act as “Obamneycare.”

But TPaw’s demise does point up one big difference between these two avatars of the Republican revival in the Upper Midwest: nobody suspects Scott Walker may be too nice for his party. He may be bland, and a bad orator, but his bad intent towards conservatism’s enemies is unmistakable. He’s sorta Death by Vanilla, or a great white shark; boring until he rips you apart. I think Republican elites get that, and it excites them. But how about voters?

Mitt Romney managed to base nearly his entire campaign on hating Barack Obama more than anyone else. It worked. Whenever someone started to score some points against his sometimes liberalish record in Massachusetts, he’d just launch into an over-the-top denunciation of Obama and the crowd would go wild. Walker can do the same thing, but without the artifice. Unlike Romney, he really has been fighting liberals tooth and nail for the past four years, and he has the scars to prove it. This will go a long, long way to make up for a bit of blandness.

Besides, it’s worth remembering that people can improve on the basics of campaigning. Maybe Walker will turn out to be hopeless. You never know until the campaign really gets going. But if he’s serious, he’ll get some media training and start working on developing a better stump speech. A few months of this can do wonders.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. But if he runs, I rate Walker a favorite right now. If his only real drawback is midwestern blandness—well, Mitt Romney wasn’t Mr. Excitement either. Walker can get better if he’s puts in the work. And if he does, he’ll have most of Romney’s upside with very little of the downside. He could be formidable.

Read More: 

Why Scott Walker Might Be Our Next President

Posted in ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Scott Walker Might Be Our Next President

Being a Terrible Candidate Isn’t What Doomed Martha Coakley

by Natisha18R Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Four years after losing a Senate special election to Scott Brown, Massachusetts Democratic attorney general Martha Coakley is on the brink of defeat in another race that was hers to lose. Both Fox News and ABC have called the governor’s race for Republican Charlie Baker, but Coakley has pledged to fight on—at least until Wednesday morning.

The result, if it holds, is a gut-punch for Democrats in the Bay State, where Coakley once led by 29 points. As the race tightened in the campaign’s final month, heavyweight surrogates came to Massachusetts to stump for the nominee. But in the end, not even Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton could save Coakley from another electoral defeat.

The easy takeaway here is that Coakley is a spectacularly bad candidate, woefully out of touch with Massachusetts voters. “You could call her the Bill Buckner of politics, if she even knew who the Red Sox were,” as Politico Magazine‘s Ben Schreckinger put it in October. But if you really know who the Red Sox are, you’d know that Buckner’s famous gaffe came only after the rest of the team had already blown the game. And that’s sort what happened here—the loss stemmed from a confluence of factors, not a singularly flawed candidate.

Continue Reading »

This article: 

Being a Terrible Candidate Isn’t What Doomed Martha Coakley

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Being a Terrible Candidate Isn’t What Doomed Martha Coakley

Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Comment About Running For President Is the Most Cryptic Yet

by FrankieReeder Posted on October 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

With 106 weeks until the next presidential election, speculating about a potential Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) candidacy is like going on a long car ride with a six-year-old. “Are you running?” No. “How about now?” No. “Now?” No. “Now?” No. “What about now?” No. “Are you running?” No. “Are you running?” exasperated sigh “Aha!”

But Warren does continue to do the things people who are considering a run for president tend to do—flying to Iowa to rally the troops on behalf of Rep. Bruce Braley, for instance, and going on tour to promote a campaign-style book. Her latest venture, a sit-down interview in the next issue of People magazine, isn’t going to do much to quiet the speculation, even as she once more downplayed the prospect of a run:

Supporters are already lining up to back an “Elizabeth Warren for President” campaign in 2016. But is the freshman senator from Massachusetts herself on board with a run for the White House? Warren wrinkles her nose.

“I don’t think so,” she tells PEOPLE in an interview conducted at Warren’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for this week’s issue. “If there’s any lesson I’ve learned in the last five years, it’s don’t be so sure about what lies ahead. There are amazing doors that could open.”

She just doesn’t see the door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue being one of them. Not yet, anyway. “Right now,” Warren says, “I’m focused on figuring out what else I can do from this spot” in the U.S. Senate.

“Amazing doors”; “I don’t think”; “right now”—what does it all mean? Warren’s not really saying anything we haven’t heard from her before. But after then-Sen. Barack Obama’s furious denials about running for president eight years ago, no one’s ready to take “no” for an answer. At least not yet, anyway.

View post: 

Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Comment About Running For President Is the Most Cryptic Yet

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Comment About Running For President Is the Most Cryptic Yet

SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes

by VirgieBenjafiel Posted on October 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Today, 85 percent of SWAT operations target private residences. When heavily-armed policemen conduct raids at peoples’ homes, they often go in expecting a fight from hardened criminals—but sometimes they’re wrong. Here are a few cases where botched SWAT raids ended in tragedy:

Bounkham Phonesavanh

Curtis Compton/ZUMA Press

One night last May, 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh (“Bou Bou”) was sleeping in the Atlanta home of relatives. Around 2 a.m., a SWAT team arrived to arrest Bou Bou’s 30-year-old cousin, an alleged drug dealer. Officers threw a flash-bang grenade into the room where Bou Bou was sleeping. It landed in his crib and exploded under his pillow, giving him third-degree burns and injuries so severe he was put in a medically-induced coma. While Bou Bou’s injuries remain severe, he’s expected to survive. The Habersham County Sheriff expressed deep regret but insisted his men were simply following procedure. Earlier this month, a jury cleared them of wrongdoing.

Jose Guerena

On the morning of May 5, 2011, in Tuscon, Arizona, a SWAT team assembled outside the home of 26-year-old Jose Guerena. A former Marine who served in Iraq; Guerena had just come home from working the night shift at the copper mine. Local law enforcement believed Guerena was involved in a drug distribution operation with his brothers. Woken up by his wife, who thought she heard burglars, Guerena went outside with an AR-15 rifle to investigate. He was shot 60 times and died before the SWAT team allowed paramedics to help. After his widow sued, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department agreed to a $3.4 million settlement in 2013.

Eurie Stamps

On the night of January 4, 2011, Eurie Stamps, a 68-year-old grandfather of 12, was watching a basketball game in his Framingham, Massachusetts, home. A SWAT unit was staking out his home and had already arrested his 20-year-old stepson outside. Despite having booked their suspect, the SWAT team raided the house. Officer Paul Duncan forced Stamps to lie face down on the ground. While Stamp was complying, Duncan allegedly tripped, causing his gun to go off and kill Stamps. Duncan was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Tarika Wilson

On January 4, 2008, a SWAT team arrived in the Lima, Ohio, home of 26-year-old Tarika Wilson. The team was looking for her boyfriend, who was suspected of dealing drugs. They broke through the front door and soon opened fire, killing Wilson and injuring her 14-month-old son, whom she was holding. Sgt. Joe Chavalia, who shot and killed her, was placed on paid leave and later cleared of wrongdoing.

Aiyana Stanley-Jones

Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press

On May 16, 2010, a Detroit SWAT crew arrived at the home of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, with a TV crew from the A&E network trailing them to film a show. They were looking for Chauncey Owens, who allegedly shot a teenager two days before. He was upstairs, but Aiyana was sleeping on the living room couch. The front door was unlocked, but the team busted open the door. Soon after, Officer Joseph Weekly’s gun went off, sending a bullet through Aiyana’s head. She died shortly afterward. Weekly is currently being tried for felony involuntary manslaughter; he claims it was an accident.

Dogs

In the past few years, SWAT teams have shot and killed dogs in Minnesota, North Carolina, Missouri, and California. In almost every case, officers have insisted that they felt threatened by the dogs. Pet owners have responded that their dogs were simply startled when SWAT teams broke in—often unannounced—to their homes, and denied that the dogs attacked officers. Take the case of Cheye Calvo, mayor of Berwyn Heights, a quiet D.C. suburb. On the evening of July 29, 2008, a Prince George’s County SWAT team burst into Calvo’s home, responding to a report of a package of marijuana on the doorstep. Upon entering, the officers shot and killed the family’s two Lab retrievers, handcuffed Calvo, his wife, and his mother-in-law, and then forced them to the ground. Police later found that Calvo had been targeted in a scheme in which drug dealers used the homes of unsuspecting people as pickup points for drugs.

View original post here: 

SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes

Posted in Anchor, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on SWAT Teams Keep Killing Innocent People in Their Homes

Social Conservatives Are Freaking Out Because the GOP Let 2 Gay People Into the Party

by DorthySilver Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

The Republican Party is slowly beginning to accept the existence of gay people among its ranks. As I wrote last month, there are two openly gay GOP candidates running for the US House this year—both with the support and financial backing of the national party (a third prominent openly gay candidate lost in a primary). But the social-conservative groups that have long held sway over the party aren’t taking the change lightly.

Late last week, three anti-gay-rights groups—the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the Family Research Council (FRC), and CitizenLink—sent a letter to national Republican leaders declaring their intention to actively oppose openly gay Republican House candidates Carl DeMaio and Richard Tisei, as well as Oregon Senate candidate Monica Wehby, who has endorsed gay marriage. “This decision was reached,” the groups wrote, “only after having exhausted all attempts to convince the Republican leadership of the grave error it was making in advancing candidates who do not hold core Republican beliefs and, in fact, are working to actively alienate the Republican base.”

The groups sent the letter to John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the leaders of the Senate and House election committees, claiming DeMaio, Tisei, and Wehby are “terrible role models for young people.” The organizations not only criticized the official Republican apparatus from supporting such candidates, but also vowed to launch a “concerted effort” to encourage people to vote against them.

Tisei is firing back. “I think that the majority of people at this point look at organizations like that as going backwards rather than forwards,” he said in an interview with Mother Jones. “I think DeMaio and myself represent the threat that we’re people who will be able to move the debate forward and help change the Republican Party. That scares a lot of those groups that are in existence primarily to hold people back.”

Tisei says that he hasn’t heard anything from the national groups regarding the letter from NOM and FRC, but isn’t concerned that the party would retract its support just because social-conservative groups are in a tizzy. “I think most party leaders recognize that the majority of younger Republicans have a different opinion and eventually the party needs to move in the right direction,” he says.

The Republican Party is still walking a narrow line when it comes to LGBT issues. The leaders of the party recognize that opposition to same-sex marriage is often a nonstarter among the young voters they need to win back, but the party still needs the religiously conservative voters that haven’t come around on marriage equality. Party leaders seem perfectly willing to accept a few gay candidates. But they won’t allow any meaningful consideration of ways the law could change to improve life for LGBT folks.

For a Republican running in a blue state like Tisei in Massachusetts, critiques from the far-right may prove more useful than detrimental; it gives him an opportunity to present himself as a middle-of-the-road, moderate candidate, attacked from all sides. “As a gay Republican, you’re under siege from both the left and the right, cause you’re a threat to both,” he says. “The left wants to keep things exactly the way they are for political reasons—they want their voting bloc to not be dissipating, they don’t want to have two parties who are good on the issue. Those on the far right don’t want to see the Republican Party change at all.”

Follow this link:  

Social Conservatives Are Freaking Out Because the GOP Let 2 Gay People Into the Party

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Social Conservatives Are Freaking Out Because the GOP Let 2 Gay People Into the Party