Keep college affordable

For millions of middle and working class families, a college education is the key to success and opportunity.
But it can be an expensive key. Many students are forced to take out thousands of dollars in loans to pursue their degree -- and if we don’t do something Congress is about to make that even harder.

Back in 2007, I helped to pass the College Cost Reduction and Access Act -- a bill that lowered the interest rate of Federal Direct Stafford Loans to 3.4% and made it that much easier for millions of students to take advantage of the opportunity America’s colleges and universities offer.

But now that opportunity is in jeopardy. Unless we extend this provision immediately, these rates will double to 6.8% -- and make keys to success for potential students across the country too expensive to afford.

No one should be denied the opportunity to succeed because of financial constraints. That’s why I’m joining with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar to keep student loan rates right where they are -- and I’m asking you to join us.

State of Fear

This was the headline: “Zimmerman, Martin’s parents to face off in court.”

The words, of course, merely summed up a moment in the news cycle last week. We, the news-consuming public, were primed – by CBS, but it could have been any mainstream outlet – for a tidbit of potential drama the next day in the hottest murder trial around right now. But in the process, we were also silently reminded, yet again, that everything is spectacle. At the level at which we call ourselves a nation, nothing is serious, not even matters of life and death.

There’s something so painful about all this – painful beyond the horror of the crime itself, or the national murder rate. The 24-7 media trivialize the stakes and gleefully report the “courtroom drama” as a sporting event; but even more distressingly, the legal bureaucracy swings into motion without the least awareness of any value beyond its own procedures. It all happens with a certainty of purpose that generates the illusion that things are under control and social order prevails.

25 Ohio Super Max prisoners start a hunger strike

On Monday, April 30, at least twenty five prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) began a hunger strike. They are demanding that the Warden meet and negotiate with them for improved conditions in Ohio's super-max prison. These hunger strikers say they intend to continue to refuse food until their demands are met. Another, larger group of prisoners will show symbolic solidarity with the hunger strikers, and workers outside of prison by also refusing food on a one-day fast tomorrow, for May Day, the international day of worker solidarity and resistance.

Information about the hunger strike is limited at this time, because super-max prisoners have very constrained access to communication with the outside world. The hunger strikers are asking supporters of their cause to participate by calling Warden David Bobby (330 743-0700) and ODRC director Gary Mohr (614-752-1164). The hunger strikers are asking people to encourage Warden Bobby to meet with the prisoners and take their demands seriously.

Thaksin wants to avoid assassination and prison in Thailand

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra hopes assassins will stop hunting him, and a deal can be arranged allowing him to dodge imprisonment and return home a free man.

Mr. Thaksin also hopes his enemies will stop accusing him of presiding over a regime which allegedly included 2,600 extrajudicial executions during his failed "war on drugs" in 2003, plus personal corruption and other wrongdoing.

Ultimately, he wants this predominantly Buddhist society to twist the constitution or the judicial system -- or create other loopholes -- to cancel his two-year prison sentence imposed for a conflict-of-interest deal which enabled his wealthy, politically savvy wife to purchase government-owned real estate in Bangkok during 2003.

Mr. Thaksin, now divorced, dwells in self-exile amid five-star splendor in Dubai.

"He has already told the media that he is willing to return, to go through the judicial process," said Defense Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat in April.

Ohioans rally against "War on Women!"

Chants of “Women’s rights, Human rights,” & “Our bodies belong to us, not you,” echoed off the walls of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus this Saturday, as hundreds of women (and men) rallied, demanding an end the GOP dominated legislature’s “War on Women!” The rally had been organized by a new group, WomenUnite, which was called together, according director Cathy Kaelin, to “combat the growing attacks on women’s rights in Ohio.”

“You are standing on historic ground,” stated Brian Rothenburg, Director of Progress Ohio. “96 years ago today thousands of women stood right here, without the right to vote, with no health care, no voice and no rights, they came to this building and stated that ‘they are Americans, too!’ Because they fought, we have a voice today. But the heirs of those who barred women from voting then are again trying to take our votes away, take our rights to health care away. We stand here united to say again; We Are Americans, too, & We Won’t Go Back!”

While reminiscent of the rallies for women’s rights in the 1960s, the large numbers of young women, children at the rally was striking.

As we ruin our kids' planet, they take us to court

Here in the land of the free lunch and the home of the instant gratification, most people make a huge deal out of children's rights or fetuses' rights, or occasionally both. Which is extremely bizarre -- crazier perhaps than bombing houses in Afghanistan to protect the rights of the women inside them. Because we're engaged in the deliberate and knowing process of slowly and irreversibly rendering the whole damn planet uninhabitable. If not our children, then their children will be forced to live in a desert or move to the North Pole if we don't quickly change our ways -- and possibly even if we do. And if we don't change our ways, the approach we take to the coming crisis will make fascism look like summer camp.

Via campesina and allies call for global solidarity in fight against land grabs

As the World Bank promoted its Seven Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) at its annual conference in Washington D.C. from April 23-26, food sovereignty activists with Via Campesina, National Family Farm Coalition, and other groups called attention to the bank’s role in land grabs.

On April 24, protesters with Occupy Wall Street joined New York’s Ethiopian community and others to target a major farmland investment conference the bank had at the Waldorf Astoria. Bank officials met with large money managers like the Canadian Pension Fund, TIAA-CREF and PensionDanmark [sic].

The World Bank’s policies for land privatization and concentration have paved the way for corporations from Wall Street to Singapore to take upwards of 80 million hectares of land from rural communities across the world in the past few years, according to a press release from National Family Farm Coalition.

Complaint against Interrogation techniques at Gitmo

I am a psychologist in Toledo, Ohio, and one of the people who was involved in 2009-2010 regarding filing an ethics complaint against Dr. Larry James, Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University. The complaint was based on information regarding Dr. James’s role as Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in early 2003, when some of the worst abuses were occurring.

The Ohio Board of Psychology rejected our 50-page complaint with one sentence: “It has been determined that we are unable to proceed to formal action in this matter.” We then filed suit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on April 13, 2011, in an attempt to force the Board to investigate. The judge has yet to rule on any motions in the case.

I’m taking this opportunity to bring you up to date as I am again asking for your help. A group of psychologists from around the country, the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, are continuing to attempt to hold the American Psychological Association (APA) responsible for the official document that APA produced which condoned the role of psychologists in national security interrogations.

Resident opposes gas industry secrecy, Not necessarily fracking itself

100_4663 Eric Boardman came to Columbus from Mansfield on April 18 to call for better fracking regulations. Acknowledging our country's need for energy, he said he is not necessarily against fracking. But he said the public can’t make an informed decision about the safety of fracking because of the industry’s lack of disclosure. He supports the idea of using non-toxic tracer dyes to track chemicals gas companies might be putting into the water.

Could GE have prevented the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe? Stockholder proposal on the agenda April 25 at GE Annual Meeting in Detroit Urges GE to Withdraw from Nuclear Energy

The GE Stockholders’ Alliance (GESA) believes the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdowns, explosions and continuing dispersal of radioactive waste could have been prevented if design deficiencies of the GE Mark I reactors, recognized in the early 1970s, would have been acted upon, instead of ignored.

A stockholder proposal submitted by the GE Stockholders’ Alliance (GESA) is on the agenda for the General Electric annual meeting, to be held 10 am EDT April 25, 2012 at the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, in Detroit, MI. The GESA is particularly alarmed that 23 of the same aging GE Mark I reactors are currently operating in the U.S. All but one has received a 20-year license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The only exception, the Fermi 2 atomic reactor located 35 miles south of Detroit in Frenchtown Township near Monroe, is expected to apply for an extension in 2014. Almost all the Mark Is have also been granted “power uprates,” meaning they are being run harder and hotter than originally designed, despite their age-related degradation.

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