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Vigilante Republicans

San Francisco, CA -- Eric Rudolph killed people. Tom Delay killed bugs.

Eric Rudolph bombed the Atlanta Olympics to attack a federal government he didn’t like. Tom Delay wants to bomb the federal bench, to take out judges whose views he dislikes.

Eric Rudolph bombed gay bars because he hates homosexuals. Delay, George W. Bush and other Republicans want to bomb the Constitution because they fear gay marriage.

Eric Rudolph bombed abortion clinics, killing and maiming people because he believed in life. Tom Delay, Jeb Bush, the president and yes, the Pope’s global pro-life point man, Frank Pavone, egged on the Operation Rescue crowd outside Terri Schaivo’s hospice.

The real soul of the Republican Party is not the president bowing before the papal coffin. It is the outlaw Eric Rudolph, who hated gays, the government and abortion doctors.

Senior Advisor at the United Nations Foundation to address the international state of women

In an ever-changing world, as gender roles are constantly being redefined and refuted, it is paramount that we look at the impact of women in the context of a global society.

Gillian Martin Sorensen, Senior Advisor at the United Nations Foundation, is in a position to do just this. She is a member of the Women’s Foreign Policy Group and a national advocate on matters related to the UN and the UN-U.S. relationship. Her words are a testament to her devotion: “The health, educational rights, and opportunity for women and girls, has been a key component of the work of the UN for sixty years—not only for the free and developed nations of the world, but for the poor and underdeveloped nations as well.”

At her lecture entitled “The International State of Women,” Ms. Sorensen will offer her perspective on how the UN can continue this mission. The event will be held on April 14th from noon to 1:15pm at the Athletic Club of Columbus.

This address is part of the Columbus Council on World Affairs Women’s Series and is hosted in partnership with the United Nations Association Columbus Chapter.

National Conference on Election Reform Opens with Civil Rights Panel

Summary: On the evening of the opening of the National Conference on Election Reform, participants from twenty six states gathered in the sanctuary of the Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee to listen to a civil rights panel, introduced by Bernard Ellis, conference organizer. Those present were former president of the NAACP Nashville, Reverend Sonnye Dixon, Dr Charles Kimbrough, and Michael Grant. Panelists discussed the struggle to obtain the right to vote during the civil rights era, the need to address the human needs of those most disempowered by the powers that be, and the need for election reform to preserve our democracy.

The real consequences of Tax Day

AUSTIN, Texas -- Happy tax day, fellow citizens!

My favorite authority on taxes is David Cay Johnston of The New York Times, who won a Pulitzer for reporting on the terminally unsexy topic of taxes. His book "Perfectly Legal -- The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich -- and Cheat Everyone Else" is the single best work on public policy of recent years, I think.

Johnston reports: "Through explicit policies, as well as tax laws never reported in the news, Congress now literally takes money from those making $30,000 to $500,000 per year and funnels it in subtle ways to the super-rich -- the top one-one hundredth of one percent of Americans.

"People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more."

Message in a bottle

PLACHIMADA -- Whizzing along the road in the little Tata Indica, driven prestissimo by the imperturbable Sudhi, we crossed the state line from Tamil Nadu into Kerala, branched off the main road and ended up in the settlement of Plachimada, mostly inhabited by extremely poor people. There on one side of the street was the Coca-Cola plant, among the company's largest in Asia, and on the other, a shack filled with locals eager to impart the news that they were now, as of April 2, in Day 1,076 of their struggle against the plant.

Coca-Cola came to India in 1993, looking for water and markets in a country where one-third of all villages are without water and shortages are growing every day. The bloom was on neoliberalism back then, with central and state authorities falling over themselves to lease, sell or simply hand over India's assets to multinationals in the name of economic "reform."

We Want Your Stories

You are invited to participate in an ACT story collection project about Campaign 2004 -- the events, large or small, that you consider memorable.

Some of the Columbus (Ohio) volunteers were talking on Election Day morning about the importance of our experiences. We decided then that documenting the stories of the campaign would provide an important legacy for ACT's work here.

We’ve started compiling hundreds of first-personal accounts to create a permanent record of the human side of the 2004 election, as told by the people who were actually out there, walking the precincts, making the phone calls, connecting with the voters. This is going to be a "people's history" of ACT, and, even more significantly, of the most massive volunteer effort in political history. Our hope is that your accounts and insights will also help promote meaningful election reform across the country.

Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney Urges Reform of Voting Process at Historic Conference

Summary: Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney adressed the closing of the National Election Reform Conference Saturday, April 9th in Nashville. Congresswoman McKinney is the first black female elected to Congress from the state of Georgia. Elected in 1992, she served five consecutive terms. In 2002 she was the subject of an intense campaign by the Republicans to run her out of office for questions she asked about Bush Administration knowledge of events surrounding September 11th. After a two year hiatus she returned to the public arena and successfully regained her seat. She addressed the National Conference on Election Reform regarding the historical suppression of the black vote and modern attempts at gerrymandering and voter suppression.

Democrats!  Paper “Trails” Aren’t Good Enough.  Count The Damn Ballots!

After the 2004 election I thought I would barf if I heard one more Democratic pundit or politician lament the lost election and blame it on the party's "message".   As grassroots activists across the country reported thousands of election irregularities and voting machine "glitches" that overwhelmingly benefited Bush, the Democratic leadership seemed unusually willing to look the other way.  John Kerry quickly conceded, former President Carter attended Bush's ignoble inauguration, and Bill Clinton now pals around with Bush the First.  

Rank and file Democrats are tearing their hair out.

Now, in a gesture calculated to win back their base, but gain little else (in terms of voting security), both House and Senate Democrats have offered a flurry of bills (with many state legislatures following in hot pursuit) that require ballot printers for touchscreen voting machines. 

Incredibly, none of these bills call for the ballots to be counted…except in the extremely remote event of a recount. 

Three card monte and the one-party state

How lion-like the Democrats sound as they circle around Social Security, bellowing their defiance! After years of servility, some of them even presume to shake their fists at Alan Greenspan and hurl insults at the man.

When the chairman of the Federal Reserve put in a decorous word for Social Security "reform" last month, House Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called Greenspan a "hack." Paul Krugman, who primly chastised Ralph Nader back in 2000 for disrespecting Greenspan, now pelts the chairman with rotten cabbages on an almost weekly basis in his New York Times column.

Presumably enough Democrats realize that if they can't put up a fight on Social Security, then the last supposed major reason for anyone to support their party will have disappeared. (To anyone claiming choice is as powerful a reason, I will offer the obvious, which is that the Republicans will never formally move to rescind the legality of abortions. They will merely continue in the enterprise, in which countless Democrats have colluded, of making it harder and harder for poor women to get one.)

Technical violations: oh, they're all related

AUSTIN, Texas -- Freshly returned from a week of intellectual sparring at the Conference on World Affairs, the annual gabfest in Boulder, Colo. (the late jazz critic Leonard Feather called it "the leisure of the theory class"), I find making connections between headlines mere child's play.

After a week of contemplating Persian poetry, the possible aphrodisiac effect of black licorice, American foreign policy, what we do in the name of God (an actual panel title), war and medicine, I scarcely blink, much less boggle, at such simple topics as tax policy, international finance, terrorism and offshore money laundering.

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