Posted by Liberadio(!) on January 10, 2008 under Liberate Your Radio from The Right | 
Summary: In this segment we learn that persistence is the key to accountability. Plus, we’re joined by Rob Richie, Executive director of FairVote, an organization with the goal of transforming our elections to include a constitutionally protected right to vote, a national popular vote for president, instant runoff voting for executive elections and proportional voting for legislative elections. After the Iowa Caucus he wrote, “Iowa and the early primaries highlight the need — and real opportunity — for reform of our electoral system.” Boy, he must really hate Mike Huckabee.
Listen to: Rock the FairVote
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Posted by Liberadio(!) on under Uncategorized |
Summary: In this segment we interview the chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, Gray “Don’t Call Me Sassy. Wait, Is That a Good Thing?” Sasser. Learn about presidential caucuses and primaries! Hear what the TNDP will be up to in 2008! See what happens when we try to send him to a corner!
Listen to: Interview with Chairman Gray Sasser
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Posted by Liberadio(!) on under Uncategorized |
Summary: It’s our first show of 2008 and we reveal that the Bush administration takes “taking out the trash day” to a whole new level. And apparently there’s a campaign of some sort going on. Plus we get a call from Liberadio(!)’s littlest listener who wants to know what ol’ Hollywood Fred is up to.
Listen: Happy 378 Days To Go!
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Posted by Mary Mancini on January 8, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Ron Paul is a do-it-yourself, grassroots kind of guy so when he’s been shut out of the mainstream media he did the only thing a do-it-yourself, grassroots kind of guy can do - he wrote and distributed his own newsletters. A lot of them. He might be rethinking that decision now right about now.
…the Texan has been active in politics for decades. And, long before he was the darling of antiwar activists on the left and right, Paul was in the newsletter business…the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Liberate Your Radio from The Right |
“Now don’t jump all over me when I say this,” the seventy year old African-American airport security guard said to me this afternoon, “But I don’t think White America is ready. And I think they’re setting him up because they know it’s the only way for them to win another four years in the White House.”
I’ll take that “White America isn’t Ready” bet and, if necessary, make the sacrifice of another four years for two reasons - one, to see how far we’ve come and two, to get us one step closer.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Liberate Your Radio from The Right |
You know, if Phil Valentine wants to debate immigration policy or even the effect immigration has had or will have on the state, that’s fine. But he discredits every single one of his points when he lists that “Highway signs in English and Spanish” will be a problem for the way Tennessee will look in the future.
They’re probably a decade ahead of us in terms of the illegal immigration problem, but we’re quickly closing that gap. It’s as if we have a crystal ball and can see what Tennessee will look like. Highway signs in English and Spanish, overcrowded hospital ERs, taxpayer-funded health care diverting resources away from needed services, more crime and the added cost of incarceration, more deaths on the highway. In many respects, we’re closer than we think.
Perhaps Phil needs to get out of his house more. Visit any continent and you’re bound to land in a country where the signs are in both the native language and English. Trust me, you’re never confused about where you are. Or is Phil’s point something more? Is it a *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* to his nativist friends who like to couch their xenophobia in fake public policy debate?
According to a report released by the Tennessee Comptroller’s office in August of last year:
Unauthorized aliens are not eligible for most federal, state and local public assistance programs such as TennCare, housing, food stamps and welfare. Federal law requires access to elementary and secondary education, as well as emergency health care.
Many economists nationwide agree the increase in immigrants boosts the national and state economies and that unauthorized aliens are not taking jobs or significantly affecting American workers’ wages. Unauthorized aliens contribute to state and local revenue through sales tax,
property tax included in rents and other consumption taxes.
A majority of Americans want immigration reform. Smart immigration reform. We can also witness first hand the negative effect of bad immigration policy by reading about the current situation in Springfield, TN:
Some estimate that 1,000 Hispanic residents fled the city in fear or went into hiding after a handful of immigration raids.
Those left behind deal with the fallout — empty homes and businesses and anxious waiting for what comes next.
Springfield landlord James Huffine said he’ll lose $5,000 this month in cleaning, hauling and lost rent after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested members of five families last month who lived in his apartment units. Huffine said his tenants showed him work identification and paycheck stubs issued by Electrolux, Robertson County’s largest employer, and he believed they were here legally.
“I don’t think people ought to be here illegally, but these raids, sweeping up people in the dead of night, it just doesn’t seem right or productive,” he said, motioning to the tangled mess at the edge of the road. “I know a lot of people think we need to get all the illegals out of here, but you’ve got to look at stuff like this. Look at what those raids have done to this entire town.”
and
County Mayor Howard Bradley said the change is noticeable. He blames faulty immigration policy for allowing the community to build its economy, at least in part, with illegal labor only to have it yanked away.
And can someone tell me why Valentine chooses to cite immigration “facts” from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as a “hate group” because of its ties to White Supremacy Groups and the anti-latino and anti-catholic attitudes of its founder, John Tanton? Phil writes:
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the net monetary cost of illegal immigration in Texas alone, after figuring in how much they pay in taxes, is somewhere north of $3.7 billion. We have the luxury of being able to see into our own future, and it is not pretty.
Is this hubris? How low will he go to boost his inflammatory rhetoric?
Posted by Mary Mancini on January 6, 2008 under Uncategorized |
Yesterday’s New York Time’s Magazine cover story, Can You Count on Voting Machines?, offers valuable and in depth coverage of electronic voting machines and the threat they pose to the foundation of our democratic process - our right to vote in free and fair elections. This important and non-partisan issue (there are just as many Republican election and elected officials concerned with this issue as there are Democrats) is finally making it’s way into the mainstream.
In Tennessee, 93 out of 95 counties use electronic voting machines with no voter verifiable paper trail. That means there is no way to be completely sure of an accurate tally or recount in the event one is needed.
This Thursday, January 10, the legislature’s Voter Confidence Act Legislative Study Committee will meet to discuss the findings of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) report, “Trust But Verify,” which recommends that to improve election integrity in Tennessee we move away from electronic voting machines and replace them with paper-based optical scan machines. Now is the time for them, and us, to act.
Please contact the members of the Study Committee and urge them to move fast so that we may have optical scan machines in place prior to the November 2008 election. Urge them to support SB 1363 (Senator Haynes), HB 1256 (Representative Moore), legislation that will mandate that all voting equipment in Tennessee use or produce a voter-verified paper ballot and that statewide random post-election manual audits be conducted to verify the vote count. Ask them to make sure this is done prior to the November election. You can find all the information you need to act immediately, including email addresses, phone numbers, and talking points at http://www.votesafetn.org.
A couple of things to remember because the Election Commission and perhaps even some legislators will tell you the opposite - there is time to implement these changes before November and we do have the money. 35 million federal dollars allocated through the Help America Vote Act are available and waiting for this very rainy day. It is estimated that cost of replacing the machines in all 93 counties is 12 million, with another 12 million to be spent to help those voting who special needs.
I mean, really, if Tennessee legislator Jason Mumpower wants the balls back because he doesn’t trust computers to pick our lottery numbers, how can he possibly trust them to accurately count our votes?
Also, One of Nashville’s own, filmmaker David Earnhardt, has produced a marvelous and timely documentary on the subject that tells the story of how the issue of election integrity and electronic voting traveled from the fringes to the mainstream due to the hard work of some local activists as well as the bravery of whistleblowers throughout the country. These are the stories of citizens who recognized the threat to our franchise and chose to do the right thing. David’s film, Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, will be have two screenings at the Belcourt Theatre on the Monday, February 4, 6:30 and 9:30, the night before Super Duper Tuesday.