How can a party that has such blatant and justified mistrust for government intervention; a party that believes (or claims to believe) that the government fails at most things; a party that believes the government isn't even good at helping the poor; actually believe that this same government is perfect enough, is infallible enough, to take the life of another human being? Isn't that a blatant contradiction?
The Department of Corrections in Georgia said Wednesday that Troy Anthony Davis will be executed at 7 p.m. on September 21, 2011 for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. If the execution goes along as scheduled, advocates say it will be a devastating end to a troubled case.
There is no physical evidence that Davis shot the officer. The gun was never recovered, and 6 of the 9 eyewitnesses who testified against Davis have since recanted their stories.
TORONTO, Aug. 30, 2011 /CNW/ - Following a month that saw Tim Hudak stumble on his sneaky plan to raise property taxes, fumble on his previous commitment to defund abortion and flip flop again on the HST, the PC campaign team has quietly dropped all of the scenes involving Hudak from their television advertising.
Gone from their advertising are pictures of Hudak meeting voters and posing with his family. Also cut from the ad is Tim Hudak's appearance at the end promoting his reckless campaign promises.
Leaving Hudak on the cutting room floor was not done to make the ad shorter or add new attacks. The PCs simply cut the scenes involving Hudak and slowed the rest of the commercial to fill the time.
The fact Tim Hudak would rather perform juvenile stunts than tackle the provinces most pressing issues, together with the fact his platform has a $14 billion hole and is built on poorly disguised Harris-type wedge issues is simply icing on the cake for most voters who are increasingly saying Tim Hudak just isn't worth the risk.
The ouster of MPP Norm Sterling by the Progressive Conservative Party in Carleton-Mississippi Mills was disgraceful, said former Ontario premier Ernie Eves.
“I don't care who hears this," said Eves. "The treatment that Norm got from his own party was not very polite, was not fair, it was not loyal, it was not compassionate, it was not even and it was not honest,” he said during an appreciation dinner for Sterling at the Canadian Golf and Country Club on Aug. 25.
On Wednesday, Eves repeated his critique, saying his tribute dinner remarks were “directed at those few individuals who decided that the Tea Party version of Ontario politics would be good in that particular riding.”
“And I don’t happen to agree with that, quite frankly,” he told a talk radio show in the provincial capital. “I don’t think it was fair and I don’t think it was loyal and I don’t think it was compassionate and I don’t think it’s honest.”
The first to defund Planned Parenthood, Indiana passed a law that cuts state and Medicaid funding to the organization’s 28 clinics in the state (only four of which provide abortion services). In effect since May 10, the law not only eliminates the clinics’ $1.3 million a year in Medicaid funds but also strips them of “roughly $150,000 in funding for prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.” While a record number of donations allowed clinics to continue services, that help ran out yesterday. Now, Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics are shutting down operations and leaving thousands of Hoosiers without access to health care:
– According to Indiana Planned Parenthood president Betty Cockrum, the clinics will stop treating Medicaid patients today. “Our 9,300 Medicaid patients, including those who had appointments Tuesday, are going to see their care disrupted.”
– Without the STD prevention funding, Planned Parenthood has to lay off two of their three intervention specialists, or “health workers who track down the partners of someone who tests positive for an STD and ensure they are tested and treated.” Planned Parenthood is now left with a single specialist to address STD testing and treatment for the entire state.
– To reduce costs, all 28 clinics will close tomorrow and employees will be sent home without pay. Only one clinic in Indianapolis will stay open Wednesday but will close Thursday.
– Should the law remain in place, Planned Parenthood stated that “it must close eight” of its clinics: “two Indianapolis locations and clinics in Bedford, Hammond, Michigan City, New Albany, Terre Haute and Muncie.” The shuttered clinics would significantly restrict help for the 85,000 Hoosiers the states’ clinics currently serve.
Hoosiers are not the only Americans feeling the full weight of the GOP’s anti-choice attack. Planned Parenthood in Minnesota announced yesterday that it will close six clinics of its 24 clinics because of budget cuts to Title X funding for low-income women and families. None of the six clinics perform abortions, “but provided services ranging from contraception to cervical cancer screenings to testing for sexually-transmitted diseases.”
The war against women conducted by Republicans in Congress gives rise to many questions but the most puzzling are: Where is the outrage? Where are the demonstrations and protests? Where is a March for Women’s Lives? If we could get half of the women to show up for a protest in front of Congress that show up to buy new iPods, iPads, or even tickets for Lady Gaga, we could make a difference. For that matter, why aren’t the famously rebellious Madonna and Lady Gaga out there demanding that abortion be kept legal and safe? Why aren’t the mailboxes of the Members of Congress clogged with letters from women and those who care about them? Why aren’t they emailing, texting, or Tweeting their displeasure? Are they asleep? Unless they act soon, they’re going to wake up one day and find that they have little more freedom than women in other parts of the world who must keep all but their eyes covered. The time for distraction is past. Women must act now to save their hard-won civil liberties.
In a sign that--perhaps, maybe--the extreme right's extremist attacks on the rights and health of women and children may have some limits, the Oklahoma legislature today allowed a bill to die in committee which, if passed, would have denied food vouchers and nutrition services to prenatal and pediatric clients served by Planned Parenthood of Tulsa County.
Here's the crux of the matter: In kicking Planned Parenthood out of the WIC program, lawmakers won't be punishing Planned Parenthood. They'll be punishing poor women who chose to have their babies and are trying to take care of them. What kind of sense does that make?
If Planned Parenthood is banned from providing WIC services, then the 9,300 clients of that program currently served by Planned Parenthood will have to try to obtain the nutrition services elsewhere. For a mother of limited means, that could prove an extreme hardship and could mean some will have to drop out of the program.
In Tulsa, Planned Parenthood last year also provided about 5,600 pediatric care appointments and about 3,000 prenatal visits, among other primary health services it provides. Some of those contacts were with the same women and children currently receiving WIC through Planned Parenthood. Why not make their lives a little easier by letting them continue to receive all those services in one place?
Here's why: Because the foes of Planned Parenthood can win political points by saying, "We kicked Planned Parenthood out of WIC." The fact poor mothers and babies would be made to suffer as a result is an inconsequential by-product that doesn't matter to them.
Millions of Americans were out in the streets this past Saturday, participating in the largest flare-up of labor protests the nation has seen in decades -- yet images like these were conspicuously missing from the major television news networks.
At the rallies' epicenter was Madison, Wisconsin, where over 100,000 gathered in below-freezing temperatures to show solidarity with American workers' right to organize.
The state's newly elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, has proposed legislation that would effectively destroy the public sector unions.
The photos below come from places like Green Bay, Wisconsin; New York, New York; Washington, DC; Springfield, Illinois; Boston, Massachusetts; Tallahassee, Florida; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah and many more.
That Iraq Feeling
I don’t watch cable news, or actually any kind of TV news. But I gather that there’s a virtual blackout on the huge demonstrations in Wisconsin, except on Fox, which portrays them as thuggish and violent.
What that makes me think of is January-February 2003, when anyone watching cable news would have believed that only a few kooks were opposed to the imminent invasion of Iraq. It was quite spooky, realizing that hundreds of thousands of people could march through New York, and by tacit agreement be ignored by news networks whose headquarters were just a few blocks away.
And it’s even more spooky to see it happening all over again.
That's why people everywhere need to support Thompson. As Niki Ashton - the MP who represents Thompson and the second-youngest woman ever elected to the Canadian Parliament - says: "It Was Flint Yesterday, It's Us and Wisconsin Today, and Tomorrow It's Going to Be Everyone."
Why Isn't CBC Covering Wisconsin?
What's going on there is a war on democracy and the middle class. The US media is virtually ignoring the largest protests since the Viet Nam war. I expected Canadian media to have more balls. Especially our 'state' media.
AND there is a Canadian connection. See Michael Moore (link included). CUPE sent a delegation too.
Go to Twitter and see for yourself.
Tons of video! Great signs! Singing! People power! Energy! Firefighters! Bagpipes! Pizza donated from bloody Egypt!! Great television, in short. And Madison is not far away.
Get some reporters down there. Don't rely on US news wires.
Do I sound pissed off? I am.
What's happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of this year, the state was on course to end 2011 with a budget surplus of $120 million. As Ezra Klein explained, newly elected GOP Governor Scott Walker then "signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit."
Walker then used the deficit he'd created as the justification for assaulting his state's public employees. He used a law cooked up by a right-wing advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but I described the organization in a 2005 article as "the connective tissue that links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax activists and corporate money." Similar laws are on the table in Ohio and Indiana.
Walker's bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions are clear -- before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify the state's employees' unions (until he discovered that the governor doesn't have that power).
Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association, which has been a high-profile participant in the demonstrations, surveyed the crowd while recounting Walker’s boast about the 19,000 e-mails.
“I think I have 19,000 people behind me,” said Mitchell.
Pointing to one edge of the massive audience arrayed before him, he said: “And 20,000 there.”
He pointed to the other edge of the crowd: “And 20,000 there.”
Finally, he pointed down State Street, the thoroughfare that stretches from the Capitol to the University of Wisconsin campus, which was packed with students who have backed the unions: “And 20,000 there.”
As previously indicated, the goal of law enforcement has been to provide a safe environment for democracy to take place. That goal has been realized for yet another day.
