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Ohio Republicans pass new Jim Crow law disenfranchising 900,000 voters
By Bob Fitrakis
While Ohio public employees’ rights to bargain collectively are under siege, the Ohio Republican Party executed a perfect sleight of hand by disenfranchising nearly 900,000 Ohio voters. In the most vicious and direct attack on voting rights since Bull Connor ran amok in the deep South, Ohio House Republicans passed HB 159 that requires Ohio voters to produce one of four state photo IDs at the polls.
The only IDs that will be accepted in Ohio if this bill passes the overwhelming Republican State Senate are a U.S. passport, a U.S. military ID, an Ohio driver’s license, or an Ohio state ID. This is the most restrictive standard in the nation.
The Republican Party’s target is obvious. Studies indicate that 25% of African Americans nationwide do not have a government-issued photo ID, 18% of voters over age 65 do not have a photo ID, and 15% of voters with incomes under $35,000 lack the ID as well. Besides going after blacks, the elderly and the poor, the bill also sets its sights on college students. What do these people have in common? They tend to vote Democratic.
The Republicans refuse to discuss an amendment that would have accepted a college student ID with a photo from their own state-funded university, including The Ohio State University, one of the nation’s largest institutions of higher education.
Continue: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Ohio-Republicans-pass-new-by-Bob-Fitrakis-110324-483.html
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Joe Miller’s Alaska Militia Friend Jailed For Trying To Murder Judges
Scruffy-cheeked Ivy League teabagger Joe Miller lost his crazed bid to become a senator last year, but the sore loser still thinks he’s got a place in politics. But will his ambitions survive his friendship with a 26-year-old white trash militia kid arrested for trying to kill a bunch of judges and cops? Who knows, this is Alaska! Anyway, this child militiaman — apparently the leader of the “Alaska Peacemakers Militia” — allegedly came up with a super-great way to deal with the f’in cops always breathin’ down his neck. It involved a whole lot of shooting and kidnapping and murder and then burning down a house full of other cops, or something. Alaska, everybody!
Continue: http://wonkette.com/440782/joe-millers-alaska-militia-friend-jailed-for-trying-to-murder-judges
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Tax Time? Not for Giant Corporations
By Bernie Sanders
While hard working Americans fill out their income tax returns this tax season, General Electric and other giant profitable corporations are avoiding U.S. taxes altogether.With Congress returning to Capitol Hill on Monday to debate steep spending cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations must do their share to help bring down our record-breaking deficit.
Sanders renewed his call for shared sacrifice after it was reported that General Electric and other major corporations paid no U.S. taxes after posting huge profits. Sanders said it is grossly unfair for congressional Republicans to propose major cuts to Head Start, Pell Grants, the Social Security Administration, nutrition grants for pregnant low-income women and the Environmental Protection Agency while ignoring the reality that some of the most profitable corporations pay nothing or almost nothing in federal income taxes.
Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.
1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.
2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.
3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.
4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.
5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.
6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.
7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.
8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.
9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.
10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.
Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes and eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas companies. He also introduced legislation to impose a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion a year. The senator has said that spending cuts must be paired with new revenue so the federal budget is not balanced solely on the backs of working families.
Continue: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tax-Time-Not-for-Giant-Co-by-Bernie-Sanders-110327-946.html
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Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH’s newest appointment
By Glenn Greenwald, Mar 25, 2011
One of the most intense scandals the field of psychology has faced over the last decade is the involvement of several of its members in enabling Bush’s worldwide torture regime. Numerous health professionals worked for the U.S. government to help understand how best to mentally degrade and break down detainees. At the center of that controversy was — and is — Dr. Larry James. James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.Today, Dr. James circulated an excited email announcing, “with great pride,” that he has now been selected to serve on the “White House Task Force entitled Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family.” In his new position, he will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials on Tuesday.
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“We the corporations”
http://MoveToAmend.org/
On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions.
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:
* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our vote and participation count.
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments.
The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule. We Move to Amend.
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What’s really driving the GOP’s abortion war
By Amanda Marcotte, Mar 27, 2011
When Republicans profited from the miserable economy to sweep up huge wins in last fall’s election, most political watchers figured they knew what was coming: budget cuts, privatization of more government functions, and tax cuts for the wealthy. The push to dismantle public sector unions has been a bit of a surprise, but not a jarring one.
But what seems to have thrown everyone — save for a handful of embittered and neglected pro-choice activists — for a loop is the way Republican lawmakers at both the national and state levels have focused so intently on the uteruses of America. Republicans appear to believe that the women of America have wildly mismanaged these uteruses in the four decades since the Supreme Court gave them control over them — and now that Republicans have even a little bit of power, they’re going to bring this reign of female tyranny over uteruses to an end.
After all, the Republican House speaker, John Boehner, has identified limiting women’s access to abortion and contraception as a “top priority” — this with the economy is in tatters and the world in turmoil. Boehner’s and the GOP’s abortion fixation raises an obvious question: Why now, when there are so many other pressing issues at stake?
Continue: http://www.salon.com/news/abortion/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/27/marcotte_abortion_republicans
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Pastor fired for not believing in hell
The pastor of a rural United Methodist church was fired from his job after voicing his doubts that sinners live an eternity of torment.
Reverend Chad Holtz was dismissed from Marrow’s Chapel in Henderson, North Carolina, when he posted a note on his Facebook page supporting a book written by prominent young evangelical pastor Rob Bell.
Continue: http://www.religionnewsblog.com/25851/pastor-fired-for-not-believing-in-hell
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Welcome to the “Christian Nation”
The “Christian Nation” folks, led by David Barton and Phyllis Schlafley among others, are once again in full stride with the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives plus a number of State Houses and state governorships. You know the drill. They claim that the “Founding Fathers” were really “Christians” who wanted to set up a “Christian Nation,” that the intent to do so can be found in the Declaration of Independence and, if you read it really, really carefully, the Constitution, and anyway, it would be a really good idea.
Our side usually responds by, for example, pointing out one or more of the following. Most of the Founding Fathers were deists if not outright atheists. The word “god” does appear once in the Declaration, but the key word in the central “endowment” clause is “creator,” not “God.” As a humanist, I interpret “creator” to mean the natural laws of physics, chemistry, and biology which have created all that is in the total universe. Of course even the word “god” does not specify the Christian one. It could be the Jewish one, the Muslim one (and both of those religions claim to worship the “one true god”), or Zeus or Ra for all we know.
Continue: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Welcome-to-the-Christian-by-Steven-Jonas-110324-949.html
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The Dark Side of “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness”
By Roy Eidelson, Marc Pilisuk, and Stephen Soldz Posted by Stephen Soldz
Why is the world’s largest organization of psychologists so aggressively promoting a new, massive, and untested military program? The APA’s enthusiasm for mandatory “resilience training” for all U.S. soldiers is troubling on many counts.
The January 2011 issue of the American Psychologist, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) flagship journal, is devoted entirely to 13 articles that detail and celebrate the virtues of a new U.S. Army-APA collaboration. Built around positive psychology and with key contributions from former APA president Martin Seligman and his colleagues, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million resilience training initiative designed to reduce and prevent the adverse psychological consequences of combat for our soldiers and veterans. While these are undoubtedly worthy aspirations, the special issue is nevertheless troubling in several important respects: the authors of the articles, all of whom are involved in the CSF program, offer very little discussion of conceptual and ethical considerations; the special issue does not provide a forum for any independent critical or cautionary voices whatsoever; and through this format, the APA itself has adopted a jingoistic cheerleading stance toward a research project about which many crucial questions should be posed. We discuss these and related concerns below.
Continue: http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Dark-Side-of-Comprehe-by-Roy-Eidelson-Marc-110326-492.html
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National debate continues over Bible education in public schools
“Many of us who object to this class would have no problem if the district had implemented a religious studies class instead of a class solely on the Bible,” Greathouse said.
“Aside from that fact that a class on the Bible in public school treads dangerously close to violating the separation of church and state, I would argue that on a practical level, the college level is more appropriate for the kind of critical thinking needed when studying religion.”
Continue: http://www.dailybulletin.com/ci_17707065
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The Global Elite: Who are they?
Prior to the founding of the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was the most significant body of global-minded elitists in the United States. As far back as 1959, the CFR was explicit about a need for world government:
“The U.S. must strive to build a new international order… including states labeling themselves as ‘socialist’… to maintain and gradually increase the authority of the United Nations.”
Continue: http://www.augustreview.com/issues/globalization/the_global_elite:_who_are_they?_200511146/
Related:
What is Globalization?
“It is the collective effect of purposeful and amoral manipulation that seeks to centralize economic, political, technological and societal forces in order to accrue maximum profit and political power to global banks, global corporations and the elitists who run them.”
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