Republicans Terrified As Texas Demand For Bernie Sanders Forces Rally To A Bigger Venue

By Jason Easley

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has a message that is so popular that he was forced to move a rally in Texas to a larger venue to accommodate the growing crowd.

The Sanders campaign announced the change in venue for the Democratic candidate’s Houston, TX rally on July 19, “With turnout projections mounting, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign has shifted the location of Sunday’s town meeting in Houston, Texas, to the Hofheinz Pavilion.”

These events were intended to be town hall meetings, but demand is so high that format has been getting changed to a campaign rally. I anticipate that the Houston event will also be more of a rally than a town hall.

Demand has also forced the campaign to move a Saturday rally in Phoenix to a larger venue, as the big crowds are showing no signs of diminishing for Bernie Sanders.

Republicans should be terrified of Bernie Sanders’ popularity because Texas is the heart of the Republican Party. The state is demographically changing, but the reason Republicans should be worried about Sanders is that he is demonstrating the power of a liberal populist economic message in red states.

Bernie Sanders, the candidate, isn’t what Republicans should be concerned about. The message that Sanders is bringing is what should strike fear into the GOP. Sanders talks about creating jobs, repealing Citizens United, raising wages for working people, equal pay for women. The Sanders message is that it is time to stand up to the billionaires and corporations and return the government back to the people.

If this message can find support in red states like Arizona and Texas, it can be successful all across the country.

Bernie Sanders is demonstrating that there is and huge demand among red state liberals for their candidates. Democrats and liberals in red states are often unfairly forgotten and lumped in with Republicans. Sen. Sanders is making an effort to campaign in front of these voters and ask for their support.

Be afraid Republicans, because Bernie Sanders is showing the country the potential power of liberal populist ideas in red states.

How Many Lies Can Scott Walker Cram Into One Ad?

By Heather



The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur, Ben Mankiewicz and Ana Kasparian take a look at Scott Walker's campaign kickoff ad, which is riddled with lies and a recent article from The Hill where they did a bit of fact checking on his record as governor in Wisconsin.

I've got my issues with the publication, one being that even though so much of their content is non-partisan, they look like they refuse to monitor or clean up their comments section on the site, which regularly reads like some of the what we'd see on sites like Free Republic or some of the worst of the right wing blogs on the net. I don't know if they're too cheap to pay for site monitors or if they just don't care and welcome the hateful dialog you see over there, but the results are the same either way, so that doesn't matter much.

That said, I'll give them credit, as Cenk and his crew did as well, for allowing this editorial to be run, which took an honest look at Walker's record in Wisconsin and what the voters can expect if heaven forbid somehow this man manages to wind up being elected president.

A closer look at Wisconsin’s economy under Gov. Scott Walker:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is looking for a new job but, unfortunately, so are too many of his constituents.

After running on the promise to create 250,000 new private sector jobs by the end of his first term, Walker didn’t just fail to meet this goal, he failed miserably, creating barely half of his promised amount.Walker has implemented a failed economic strategy, based on basic and failed Republican economic principals, that has left Wisconsin lagging behind peer states.

Even just a glance at economic metrics in Wisconsin tells a story of stifled job growth, ballooning deficits, and a shrinking middle class.

When looking for reasons why Walker may have failed so miserably at creating jobs in Wisconsin, the obvious place to look would be his flagship job creation agency: The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). WEDC, which Walker chaired, gave out taxpayer-funded loans to hundreds of companies in the hopes of spurring growth. But the jobs Walker promised never materialized. Instead, in an epic display of mismanagement, WEDC lost track of millions of dollars in loans, gave awards to ineligible businesses, and has generally been a poor steward of taxpayers’ money.

In terms of job growth, Wisconsin has consistently trailed the national average. In fact, Wisconsin only saw 1.5 percent private-sector job growth in 2014. Unfortunately for Wisconsinites, while this is the best job creation number Walker has seen throughout his entire time in office, it lags far behind the national growth rate of 2.6 percent.

But none of this should come as a surprise. Instead of fulfilling his promise to create jobs, Walker has chosen to prioritize attacking public workers and teachers. All this did was create a culture of polarization that has divided his state to the core.

How big a failure have Walkernomics been? Just look next door at Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton’s Minnesota, which leads Wisconsin in almost every economic indicator.

In Minnesota, Dayton turned a $5 billion budget deficit into an over $1 billion budget surplus in just one term. By requiring the wealthiest earners to pay their fair share, Minnesota is now in a position to invest more resources into the state’s schools and infrastructure.

In Wisconsin, Walker was unable to take his state out of the red and faced a $2 billion budget deficit. Walker made the decision to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, while slashing education funding and refusing to make investments that would benefit middle class families and Wisconsin’s financial wellbeing.

In Minnesota, Dayton has moved forward Democratic policies like increasing the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid, and investing in the middle class, and now we are seen as one of the most business friendly states in the country. Just this year, Forbes ranked Minnesota as the 9th best state for business and careers, 7th in economic climate and 2nd in quality of life. On top of all that, CNBC just ranked Minnesota the country’s top state for business in 2015.

In Wisconsin, Walker refuses to raise the minimum wage and equal pay legislation, rejected federal funds to expand Medicaid, and attacked Wisconsin workers with right to work legislation and anti-collective bargaining policies. As a result, the cost of doing business in Wisconsin is higher than the national average, and median household income in Wisconsin is thousands of dollars less than it is in Minnesota.

Read on...

5 Places Black People Can Move To When They've Had Enough of America

There are plenty of options all over the globe that go beyond the traditional spots in Europe.

By Tomika Anderson

Top row: Costa Rica; Thailand. Bottom row: Hong Kong; Dubai. Thinkstock

Chris Rock summed up the black experience in the United States kind of perfectly during his HBO special Never Scared more than a decade ago: “If you’re black, you got to look at America a little bit different,” he joked, stone-faced. “You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college but who molested you.”

Since then, that “generous” uncle has moved from molesting to killing, with the list of victims growing by the day: the Charleston 9. Freddie Gray. Michael Brown. Rekia Boyd. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. John Crawford III. Yuvette Henderson. Trayvon Martin.

Now, with only seconds left on the clock for that one person inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to consistently fight for some critical black issues—from universal health care and clemency for nonviolent drug offenders to the overall improvement of black male lives—pre-election jitters might be setting in, and some African Americans may want out.

But where do you move outside the good ol’ U.S. of A. to fulfill the type of vision you have for yourself and your family, where you can be as black as you want to be without fearing for your safety? Where, literally on earth, can you go and maintain—or even enhance—the kind of lifestyle you’re accustomed to, from robust career opportunities to world-class health care?

Turns out that the options—give or take a potential visa drama or two—have expanded far beyond traditional European go-to spots, like London and Paris. We hollered at our friends over at the Nomadness Travel Tribe (their Facebook page has become a hub for black expats) to come up with a list of five destinations black people can escape to if America doesn’t work out.

Please note, however: No country is an across-the-board utopia, particularly as it pertains to race, and each expat experience is ultimately an individual one. The following is a roundup of places beyond the U.S. and the rest of the world’s 17 largest African Diaspora locations (e.g., Brazil, Cuba and most of the Caribbean) that generally score high points among our melanin-enhanced brothers and sisters, in no particular order.

1. Thailand

Sitting Buddha statue in Thailand Thinkstock

It’s not hard to feel right at home in Thailand. From its beautiful, tropical weather; low cost of living (in Chiang Mai, a rented two-bedroom home goes for about $500 a month); and access to high-quality medical care (in Ko Samui, it’s just $20 for a basic doctor’s visit), it’s altogether possible for the investment-minded among us to maintain residences in the heart of Southeast Asia as well as back at home.

Plus, the Thai come by their reputation for being among the world’s kindest people honestly; as a majority-Buddhist country, their literal attitude is to be kind always. This means that outside of the occasional, innocent staring (depending on how far beyond touristy areas like Bangkok or Phuket you travel), African Americans generally report receiving the red-carpet treatment (although plenty of African immigrants, who tend to work in large numbers there, report otherwise).

2. Costa Rica

Drake Bay in Costa Rica

Thinkstock

Your stateside relatives can visit often (which may or may not be a good thing) if you adopt this Central American nation—just a three-hour plane ride from Florida—as your new home. With its perfect tropical weather, universal health care and consistently high marks among Latin American countries on the Human Development Index (pdf), Costa Rica has jumped in popularity for American expats overall within the past 10 years. Other pluses: its stable economy, low cost of living, strong middle class and robust diplomatic relations with the U.S. Add to this few reported natural disasters, low rates of violent crime (theft and credit card fraud are traditionally its biggest crime problems), a great mix of urban and rural areas, and the much-raved-about jungle and beach life, and you’ve got a virtual paradise.

This is particularly the case for telecommuting entrepreneurs and English teachers. “I love the vibe and I love speaking Spanish,” reports one Tribe member of the country’s primary language. “The cost of living is low, and I could afford to live in a house on the beach and just chill.”

3. New Zealand

Maori man performing haka powhiri chant and dance on a beach in New Zealand

Thinkstock

An African-American couple currently raising their 2-year-old outside Wellington, the capital city of Australia’s gorgeous southeastern neighbor, reports, “We chose not to raise him in the USA for a myriad of reasons—the safety of our African-American child, the inconsistent quality of education there and other factors. New Zealand was a perfect place for us. The country was rated the fourth safest in the world, the public schools consistently rank in the top 10 in the world, violent crime is low—like, there was one murder in our town in the last eight years. Also, we have not experienced anything significant as far as racism. We feel welcome, supported and like true members of the community.”

4. Hong Kong

A sampan on the water in Hong Kong

Thinkstock

If you’ve ever given serious thought to chucking the deuces to your 9-to-5 and moving abroad to work in high-impact industries like finance or lower-impact industries like teaching (English), you already know we roll deep in the Pearl of the Orient. There are roughly 60,000 Americans living in Hong Kong, an estimated 10,000 of them black, according to an African-American expat who lives and works there. If you’re like most black people and don’t know Cantonese, you’re in luck—English is also an official language. One long-term black expat couple were so smitten by H.K.—and eager to educate curious natives about African-American culture and achievements—that they launched International Black History Month there earlier this year.

5. Dubai

Dubai Marina

Thinkstock

If you follow tourism trends, you know that Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is literally and figuratively hot right now, especially among people of color. With foreigners making up 71 percent of the city’s population, it’s nice to live somewhere “that is not ruled by white men,” exclaims one black expat. This has a huge impact on how black folks are treated. “You’ll find people of all races here to be quite humble,” she says of the most liberal of the Arab emirates, although American women should still expect to cover up inside the UAE, a majority-Muslim country. Plus, because it is by all accounts a young country, there is an unending list of services, goods and expertise needed there, opening itself up nicely to African-American professionals and entrepreneurs alike.

Tomika Anderson is a freelance writer, editor, producer and military brat who has traveled to 36 countries and counting. Follow her on Twitter.

The truth about Donald Trump

http://tunein.com/radio/Ring-Of-Fire-p45437/#

David Letterman Returns From Retirement To Deliver Scathing Top 10 List On Donald Trump

July 10, 2015 Majestic Theater in San Antonio, TX

PSM+ is now publicly available

By Wololo

PSM+ is now available for all registered members on our /talk forum. you can access psmplus here.

What is PSM+

PSM+ allows you to access PSM and PSM Unity (coming soon) without a license from Sony. This means you can develop and test with the PSM SDK and PSM for Unity without a publisher license–even after Sony shuts down developer access. Additionally, it allows for hacks such as Rejuvenate to work on any device with PSM DevAssistant installed for unrestricted native homebrew.

You must be running firmware 3.51 or lower and have PSM DevAssistant installed on your PS Vita.

PSM+ is compatible with the PSM Unity Assistant app, but the rejuvenate hack has not been ported to this yet. You should be able to try PSM+ if you have the PSM App for unity, though, in order to confirm you can run PSM apps with it.

How to use PSM+

PSM+ works in two steps.

In the first step, you receive a special license by email that needs to be installed on your Vita , + matching files for your computer.

The second step is something you need to do on a daily basis: you need to update your license to prevent it from expiring. This is also done through an email sent by our servers.

PSM Plus pages

You can access PSM+ here. Remember that you need to be signed in to your /talk account in order to access the tool.

El Salvador Farmers Successfully Defy Monsanto

For small-scale farmers who scored major victory against the biotech giant, it's all about planting local, GMO-free seeds.

By Dahr Jamail / Truthout

 

The perils of ingesting food that has any contact with a Monsanto-produced product are in the news on nearly a weekly basis.

As Dr. Jeff Ritterman has documented, Monstanto's herbicide, Roundup, has been linked to a fatal kidney disease epidemic, and has also been repeatedly linked to cancer.

Recently, a senior research scientist at MIT predicted that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, will cause half of all children to have autism by 2025.

Farmers in El Salvador are acutely aware of the importance of producing their own seeds, and avoiding those from the bioengineering giant. The farmers, who have already been consistently outperforming Monsanto with their seed, as the local seed is far healthier and more productive, have just managed to bring about a giant defeat of Monsanto by preventing it from supplying El Salvador with its seeds. Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture released a new round of contracts to provide seed to subsistence farmers across the country.

RELATED: How Monsanto Could Get Even Bigger and More Powerful

"Remember that Monsanto is together with DuPont, Pioneer, all the large businesses that control the world's seed market," said Juan Luna Vides, the director of diversified production for the Mangrove Association, a nongovernmental organization that was created to support a grassroots social movement for environmental conservation in El Salvador. "Unfortunately, many of the governments in Latin America, or perhaps the world, have beneficiary relationships with these companies."

Vides said that his group is working to "minimize this dependency" — and the dire situation in El Salvador demonstrates the importance of doing so.

"The efforts of transnational companies are masked by other companies within small countries," he explained. "In the case of El Salvador, this example is very obvious ... the company of ex-president [Alfredo] Cristiani Burkard manages the business within the [national] market ... Although you don't see the Monsanto brand, it's Monsanto."

Thus, companies like Pioneer generate commercials for various media in El Salvador that market their agrochemical products, exerting great influence over the local farmer population of the country.

The Importance of Keeping It Local

"We are losing the traditions of local seed, so we are trying to maintain it here," small-scale seed producer Santos Cayetan told Truthout. "Native seeds don't have what these other seeds have that come with the chemicals, based in chemicals."

Cayetan, who is a recipient of corn seed from the government program that uses local, GMO-free seeds and also works to grow native corn, said that the difference between using local seed versus Monsanto's is stark.

"[Native seeds are] always the same, they always produce, and they're always there," he said. "[Native seeds] are drought resistant."

Vides said that native seeds are also far better adapted to local conditions like droughts and floods in his country, as well as the climate and soil.

"[Native seeds] don't need a great injection of agrochemicals in comparison to other seeds.... Seeds coming from different places, we don't know if those seeds are GMO or modified in some way," he said. "You can reuse native seeds and create a full cycle; you can use your own seeds for the next planting. That's not the case with hybrid seeds."

RELATED: Why Did Gov't Give Big Thumbs Up to Notorious Monsanto Pesticide We Now Believe Causes Cancer?

Oscar Cruz scatters fertilizer on a cornfield in Tecomatepe, El Salvador, 23 miles north of the capital. (image: U.S. State Department)

One of Monsanto's insidious goals is to force farmers to purchase the company's seeds every year, at very expensive prices.

What's more, it is well known that Monsanto's hybrid seeds are dependent upon a high level of toxic fertilizers, and without those the yields of the hybrids would be far, far lower.

"[Using only local seed] would be much better [for Salvadoran farmers]; they wouldn't have to buy seeds every year," Vides added. "It has to do with generating the conditions to promote food security ... you can produce what you consume ... produce and consume the same product."

Cayetan said that many farmers in El Salvador simply cannot afford Monsanto seeds — and that is by design.

"If all the producers produced [imported] seed, [local producers] would lose their businesses ... this is what [Monsanto] wants."

RELATED: How Seed Laws Make Farmers’ Seeds Illegal

Jesus Reyes Fuente, also a local seed producer in El Salvador's Ciudad Romero, told Truthout that native seeds also taste better than hybrid seeds.

"They're less contaminated by fertilizers," he said. "And you can use them year after year ... with hybrids, after the second year, you can't use them."

Like the others with whom Truthout spoke, Fuente was aware of the health dangers of Monsanto products, and stressed the importance of stopping Monsanto from forcing local farmers to use its products.

"It's an imposition ... they [Monsanto] are trying to force people to use transgenic seeds," he said.
"There's pressure, to make us produce in a way we don't want to."

Evelyn Martinez is a political analyst for Salvadoran Foundation for Reconstruction and Development (REDES). REDES works to strengthen organizational capacity and advocacy among vulnerable populations who are looking to improve their quality of life.

"Before, there was a monopoly in the seed market. It was controlled by Cristiani Burkard, which today is Monsanto, and other large agribusinesses," Martinez told Truthout. "Today, we have opened the possibility for local production. We have opened the market."

The local seed program has also generated jobs, increased investment in equipment and infrastructure by local producers, and has had positive social impacts by preventing youths from joining gangs, as well as enabling producers to improve their production techniques and business skills.
"In economic terms, the country is less dependent on importers and has increased its autonomy," Martinez added. "The [local] seeds are better adapted for climate change and to the soils of El Salvador and have high yield potential."

Martinez was very clear about why any dealings with Monsanto would be harmful for El Salvador.

"At the global level, Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta have control of 67 percent of the seed and agrochemical market. Monsanto controls 23 percent of the corn market and 80 percent of the world's GMO market," she said. "What Monsanto wants is to take more market share ... in order to increase their profits. Monsanto wants to increase the use of their seed in the country, not to benefit the small-scale producers. If you control the seed, you control the whole production process."

RELATED: Monsanto GMOs Defeated by Oregon Organic Farmers as Federal Judge Upholds Seed Ban

Martinez also stressed the importance of food sovereignty and was blunt about what would happen politically if local farmers had to rely on Monsanto seed.

"The nutrition of the country will depend on transnational companies ... We will lose our autonomy," Martinez concluded. "In terms of democracy, this isn't democratic; [Salvadorans] can't decide what we eat. It's a dictatorship."

Local Government Support

In 2014, the U.S. government threatened to deny all foreign aid to El Salvador unless it opened up its seed contracts to foreign businesses (i.e. Monsanto). Now, however, the United States claims that it supports the country's contract on seed, through which domestic seed producers offer both a better and more financially competitive product.

This is not a new battle — farmers in El Salvador have also successfully opposed the use of Monsanto seeds in the past — but it is one that Salvadorans find themselves perpetually fighting.

To make protections more permanent, El Salvador Congresswoman Estela Hernandez stressed the importance of farmers continuing to have the freedom to make their own decisions.

Interestingly, she also said that the pressure to use Monsanto seeds came more from the United States than from Monsanto itself.

"Monsanto didn't express its opinions here.... the pressure really came from the politicians from the United States, in this case the ambassador," she said. "We don't know if it was for the quality of seed, more likely for the businesses."

Elias Figueroa, a technical agronomist in the Ministry of Agriculture, also strongly supports the movement to keep seed local, and to disallow companies like Monsanto from introducing their seed into the country.

"This year the government purchased corn and bean seed in accordance to CAFTA's [Central American Free Trade Agreement] tender requirements ... demonstrating that what the [U.S.] embassy suggested, that the process was not transparent, was not true," Figueroa told Truthout. "Under this [bidding] process, everyone can participate, as long as they meet the legal and technical requirements of the Ministry of Agriculture."

Figueroa explained how El Salvador has a center for the investigation of El Salvador's National Center for Agricultural and Forestry Technology, called CENTA, which since 2011 has participated in increasing the domestic production of seed.

El Salvador used to import more than 70 percent of seed used nationally, but since 2000, CENTA has worked with the Center of Investigation for Corn and Wheat in Mexico to produce a parent seed.

CENTA generated the parent seed for H-59, the hybrid variety produced domestically. The plant is created for the tropical climate: It is drought resistant, produces high yields under local conditions, and is resistant to plagues and fungi.

In contrast, GMO seeds from Monsanto, which are more susceptible to plagues and aren't drought resistant, are clearly not designed for the tropical climate. The verdict from producers?

RELATED: Monsanto Herbicide Faces Global Fallout After World Health Organization Labels It a Probable Carcinogen

"According to the latest census, 84 percent of producers in the country prefer using H-59," Figueroa said. "The most important [thing] is that it has generated employment, nearly 240,000 direct jobs."
Still, Figueroa said, the public relations fight continues: He explained that Monsanto is "running an aggressive marketing campaign," portraying its seed as better and spreading false claims that local seed is mediocre and not certified.

"But this doesn't worry us," Figueroa said. "The national seed law, approved by Congress, and CAFTA lay out the parameters for quality, and we are complying with all of these. We have the best product, the best product in all of Central America. We can outcompete them in export markets as well. We have the studies that demonstrate the quality of our seed."

Figueroa added that 100 percent of the seed required for the country's food security program is now provided by national producers, and that one of the ministry's objectives is to promote native seed varieties by establishing local seed banks.

Nathan Weller, the program and policy director for EcoViva, an NGO that supports environmental sustainability, social justice and peace for communities in Central America, has been working with local farmers in El Salvador for years, supporting their efforts to produce and control their own seeds.

"El Salvador is ensuring that its national seed lineage doesn't need to be outsourced to foreign interests, and can be developed by its own farmers," Weller told Truthout. "It's better for the farmers who earn access to the best product, better for the government that can stretch limited public budgets to outreach to the most farmers, and better for El Salvador's struggling rural economy which drives many families to migrate away from their communities."

Weller explained that the Salvadoran producers' success came as a result of their flexibility and responsiveness to the people using the seed.

"They innovated to meet government standards, learned how to navigate administrative hurdles to earn contracts and employed hundreds of people in traditionally underserved rural areas where opportunity is scarce," he said. "Transnational agribusiness like Monsanto treat farmers in the developing world as consumers, not partners. They have yet to demonstrate an ability to provide such sweeping benefits to El Salvador's rural economy."

While the recent victory for local farmers and organic seed is important, and even the U.S. Embassy has endorsed the outcome, Vides is aware that there is still work to do.

"There doesn't exist a [national] agriculture policy supporting alternative farming, producing organically and ecologically," he said. "But regional efforts exist, such as La Coordinadora and the Mangrove Association, that are [supporting] local producers [in working] with alternative production techniques, such as using organic inputs and producing in an ecological manner."

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Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009, and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from Iraq for more than a year, as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.

Bernie Sanders, Health Clinics and GOP Hypocrisy

By Lee Fang

The conventional wisdom on Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is that he’s a charming if impractical dreamer, a pie-in-the-sky socialist who’s good at inspiring young people and aging hippies, but hopeless at the knife fighting that real-life politics requires.

Despite the inherent limitations of a self-described democratic socialist who eschews the norms of Beltway fundraising, the Democratic presidential candidate from Vermont has won legislative victory after victory on an issue that has been dear to him since his days as Burlington’s mayor.

That issue is the simultaneously benign and revolutionary expansion of federally qualified community health clinics.

Over the years, Sanders has tucked away funding for health centers in appropriation bills signed by George W. Bush, into Barack Obama’s stimulus program, and through the earmarking process. But his biggest achievement came in 2010 through the Affordable Care Act. In a series of high-stakes legislative maneuvers, Sanders struck a deal to include $11 billion for health clinics in the law.

The result has made an indelible mark on American health care, extending the number of people served by clinics from 18 million before the ACA to an expected 28 million next year.

As one would expect, the program was largely met with plaudits from patients and public health experts, but it has also won praise from even the biggest Obamacare critics on Capitol Hill. In letters I obtained through multiple record requests, dozens of Republican lawmakers, including members of the House and Senate leadership, have privately praised the ACA clinic funding, calling health centers a vital provider in both rural and urban communities.

To Sanders, the clinics have served as an alternative to his preferred single-payer system. Community health centers accept anyone regardless of health, insurance status or ability to pay. They are founded and managed by a board composed of patients and local residents, so each center is customized to fit the needs of a community. No two health centers are alike.

In rural North Carolina, ACA-backed health centers now provide dental and nutrition services, while in San Francisco, the clinics provide translation services and outreach for immigrant families. In other areas, they provide mental health counseling, low-cost prescription drugs, and serve as the primary care doctors for entire counties. They have also served as a platform for innovation, introducing electronic medical record systems and paving the way with new methods for tracking those most susceptible for heart disease and diabetes.

Author John Dittmer, in The Good Doctors, traces the history of the modern health center to the civil rights activists who ventured into the South during the early 1960s. The activists were seen as outside agitators, and local doctors refused to treat them. As a solution, volunteer bands of physicians were organized by a group called the Medical Committee for Human Rights.

Beyond treating the civil rights workers, the MCHR physicians were struck by the stark disparity in health services, encountering many African-Americans who had never seen a doctor before in their lives. The activist physicians returned to the South after the “Freedom Rides” to found a small clinic in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, and by doing so, began a movement to launch health clinics across the country in underserved areas. Winning support from President Lyndon Johnson’s Office of Economic Opportunity, the clinics became part of Johnson’s “War on Poverty.”

Over the years, health centers have gained support on a bipartisan basis. Health centers secured critical funding from the efforts of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and both George W. Bush and John McCain campaigned on pledges to expand them.

Sanders’s place in health clinic history will be remembered for his forceful role in the winter of the health reform debate. In December 2009, tensions ran high as Congress inched closer to a final health reform deal. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., tapped Sanders to help win support from liberals who thought the bill was too weak as well as from Democrats from rural states who were facing mounting pressure. More funding for community health centers, Sanders argued, was a win-win solution for both camps, since the program would ensure access to health care for even the most remote areas of the country while also helping those without insurance. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., among others, held out to the very last moment.

Two days before the Senate voted to break a Republican filibuster of the bill, Reid called on Sanders to make his case on the Senate floor. Sanders, in typical fashion, said the legislation was far from perfect, but thundered about the common-sense need for health centers, citing the acute demand for more primary care doctors, the cost-savings from patients who would otherwise use the emergency room for the common cold, the patient-centered model of clinics, and so on. Senate Democrats rallied and overcame the Republican filibuster.

Bernie Sanders on community health centers in the ACA from The Intercept on Vimeo.

Another turning point came several weeks later, when Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a special election in an upset victory, ending the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority. Brown’s election brought Democrats close to despair, because lawmakers could only use a procedure called reconciliation to pass the law. Such a move would keep chances for passage alive while foreclosing any chance of enacting the much stronger legislation that originated in the House of Representatives through a conference committee. For progressives, it was a painful blow that not only sealed the defeat of the Public Option insurance program but also removed many robust provisions they had worked hard to include. Again called upon to work out a solution with House liberals, with whom Sanders enjoys a strong working relationship, the Vermont senator forged a deal to build support for the bill by focusing on health clinics.

Daniel Hawkins, vice president of the National Association of Community Health Centers, recalls that in the end Sanders was able to negotiate with Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., to increase health clinic funding through a special technical amendment that could modify the reconciliation Senate bill through a simple majority vote. The technical amendment passed, with $9.5 billion targeted for health center operations and $1.5 billion for construction and renovation projects. The House passed the final Senate bill, and President Obama signed the legislation with $11 billion in health clinic funding into law on March 23, 2010.

“There was no one who played a more important role than Senator Sanders,” Hawkins says, remembering Sanders’s constant lobbying of other lawmakers to support the funding.

Although the health reform has transformed the funding of local health clinics, few patients even realize that the changes have occurred as a result of the law, because few aspects of the health reform are explicitly branded as being part of the ACA.

That relative invisibility has shielded health clinic funding from the hyper-partisan attacks faced by other provisions of the law. But it has also allowed Republican opponents of Obamacare to play a two-faced game. Every single congressional Republican has voted to repeal the entire bill, health center funding included. But many have taken credit for popular local health clinic programs funded by the ACA, without disclosing the source of the funds. Others have written letters expressing their support for the money.

As I reported previously for The Nation, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., among other Republicans, authored letters to the Obama administration to recommend ACA funding for local health clinics. Now, a new batch of letters, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows other requests by GOP leaders.

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House Republican whip, for instance, signed onto a letter with other members of the Louisiana congressional delegation to ask the Obama administration for health center funding in New Orleans. The proposed clinic, the letter noted, would build a graduate medical training program, a proposal that “will attract not only more citizens back to our community but provide critical training opportunities for our region’s future healthcare workforce.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the number two leader in the Senate, wrote at least 17 letters to the administration asking for funding, in cities such as Lubbock and Houston, for a wide range of programs, including clinics devoted to low-income rural residents and Asian-Americans in Texas. Senators Mark Kirk, R-Ill., Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., David Vitter, R-La., Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., made similar requests.

It’s no wonder that politicians from rural states such as Texas would seek community health centers to better serve their constituents. A recent report from the Texas A&M School of Public Health found that only 9 percent of physicians practice in rural areas. Many rural Texans live in areas that are more than 30 minutes from the nearest hospital, which dramatically raises mortality rates in cases of medical emergencies.

Still, press releases from GOP officials have lashed out at the Affordable Care Act’s health center funding as some sort of “slush fund.”

Regardless of the politics, the success of health centers has been particularly satisfying for Sanders, who can simply point to his own state as a reminder of its impact. One in four Vermonters are now served by more than 50 health centers throughout the state, according to the senator’s office. Just last month, a new federally qualified health clinic opened in Shoreham, Vermont, to provide dental care, physicals and medication for common diseases.

Though his own role in securing the funds for the ACA is barely mentioned on his Senate website, the image gallery is adorned with pictures of Sanders beaming a smile as he breaks ground and cuts ribbons for various health clinic openings in Vermont.

Photo: Bernie Sanders, during a news conference on June 25, 2015. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP)

Why does the GOP hate poor people?

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

As you might imagine, being poor means a life of sacrifices, frustrations, depression, and constant struggle. So what is it about Republican office holders that cause them to go out of their way to make poor people's lives even harder?

GOP governors, congress critters, and other officials perniciously insist that access to food stamps and other public assistance must be as burdensome and humiliating as possible. The latest example comes from the two Republican members of the Federal Communications Commission, which intends to expand a public subsidy called "Lifeline," extending broadband internet service to all poor households.

Universal access to the web is touted as essential to America's educational advancement and global competitiveness. Also, some 70 percent of teachers now assign homework requiring every student to do online searches. So our national interest and simple fairness say everyone should be able to connect. Yet – even though Lifeline was started in 1985 by the Republican saint, Ronald Reagan – the two FCC Republicans voted "no" on extending his sensible idea.

Luckily, they were outvoted, but they then demanded a requirement that poor families must publicly reveal that they are poor. The two Scrooges are subjecting these families to a daunting and humiliating bureaucratic process, which will prevent many kids from getting the internet access that everyone needs for education success.

Come on – the "subsidy" they're wailing about is a mere $9.25 a month. Compare that to the billions of dollars of fraud in the Pentagon budget, which Republicans approve without questioning! What is this sour, dark smudge on the souls of GOP officials that leads them to demean poor people, preventing them and our society from reaching our fullest potential? It's stupid... and it's shameful.

"F.C.C. Votes to Move Forward With a Plan to Subsidize Broadband for the Poor," The New York Times, June 19, 2015.

Why Bernie Sanders Won’t Attack Hillary Clinton

By Taegan Goddard

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) talked to The Nation: “Now, I’ve known Hillary Clinton for many years. Let me confess: I like Hillary. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on many issues. My job is to differentiate myself from her on the issues—not by personal attacks. I’ve never run a negative ad in my life. Why not? First of all, in Vermont, they don’t work—and, frankly, I think increasingly around this country they don’t work. I really do believe that people want a candidate to come up with solutions to America’s problems rather than just attacking his or her opponent.”

He added: “If you look at politics as a baseball game or a football game, then I’m supposed to be telling the people that my opponents are the worst people in the world and I’m great. That’s crap; I don’t believe that for a second…. I don’t need to spend my life attacking Hillary Clinton or anybody else. I want to talk about my ideas on the issues.”

Bill O’Reilly's Stupidest Statement Ever

By Janet Allon

1. Bill O’Reilly and colossal jackass colleague humiliate homeless people to score political points. 

Bill O’Reilly does not like “ultra-liberal” New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, and this week he demonstrated that there is no low to which he will not go to make up bad shit about the mayor.

In a despicable segment, O’Reilly sent smarmy young reporter Jesse Watters to stroll around Penn Station, shove microphones into homeless people's faces and ask them where they slept and whether they had drinking problems. This was not about humanizing a population that needs help and kindness; it was about exposing them as the supposed con artists O’Reilly and Fox demand the public see them as.

After about five minutes of barraging various down-on-their-luck people with rude questions, Watters got some mostly white commuters to say how scary the homeless people are. He had to ask one little girl repeatedly, because at first she expressed some compassion for the homeless.

Watters returned to the studio to discuss his findings and how this is all de Blasio’s fault. Homeless people knew their place under Giuliani and Bloomberg, O'Reilly and Watters agreed.

“In Penn Station, you’re not allowed to loiter, sleep on the floor, or panhandle,” Watters said. “These violations should get you either kicked out, fined, or thrown in jail.”

O’Reilly agreed that criminalizing homeless people was an excellent use of cops’ time. People should not sleep in Penn Station, he reasoned, “because there are homeless shelters where people can go in New York City.”

Eager young disciple Watters agreed. “Why can’t they get these guys in really plush homeless shelters?” he asked.

He really said that. Plush. Homeless. Shelters.

Where do you find people who put words like that together in one sentence?

2. Geraldo Rivera finds yet another creative way to blame black people for racism.

Everyone on the Fox News program, "The Five," totally agreed that Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the BET Awards was not their cup of tea. Kimberly Guilfoyle was “not feeling it,” a criticism sure to make Lamar wail and rend his hair. “Personally, it doesn’t excite me, it doesn’t turn me on,” Guilfoyle continued, as if anyone in the entire world gives a crap about her views on hip hop.

Lamar had conjured up the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, by dancing atop a police cruiser and rapping, “We hate the po-po, wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho.”

Tsk tsk, Geraldo Rivera said, “not helpful, to say the least.” Then he seized the opportunity to advance his familiar and absurd theory that black people’s clothing styles and art forms are to blame for racism and police violence against unarmed African Americans. “This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years,” Rivera said. “This is exactly the wrong message.”

That’s a hell of a statement. Exactly how many unarmed African Americans have been killed by hip-hop, Geraldo? Got some stats on that?

Remember, kids, hoodies kill and so do sagging pants.

3. Megyn Kelly, “the sane, smart one at Fox,” cites Ann Coulter in support of Trump’s anti-immigrant racism.

So Donald Trump said a totally crazy, deeply offensive thing that is even hurting his own business success, and he immediately apologized and realized the error of his ways.

Oh. Hahahahahahahahaha.

Equally haha. Fox News repudiated the vulgar billlionaire’s racism. At least that reasonable, pretty, smart one, Megyn Kelly, did. Right?

Oh, you poor poor naive thing.

No, Trump continues to dig in, maniacally defending the indefensible. And Fox and various GOP candidates like Ted Cruz keep willfully misunderstanding Trump’s actual comments. Some of them even defend him.

Enter Megyn Kelly, who had the following dialogue with Howard Kurtz and Geraldo Rivera:

KURTZ: What a lot of people hear — even when Trump goes over the top— they like the fact that he doesn't apologize. They like the fact that he doesn't parse his words like most politicians. The average politician would have backed off and clarified many times by now. But Trump gets away with it because he strikes a chord.

KELLY: Well, I mean, Ann Coulter has got a whole book out right now that makes this point. Now granted, she's not running for president. But she —

RIVERA: Nor would she ever be elected with that point of view—

KELLY:  But she cites data that does support the fact that some, obvious, immigrants who come across the borders do turn out to be criminals, and that's —

RIVERA: I researched it tonight —

KELLY: None? No immigrants turn out to be criminals?

RIVERA: I never said that. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than the citizen population of the United States.

You know you are in uncharted a-hole territory when Geraldo Rivera sounds way more reasonable than you do. (See above item.)

4. Fox Newsian argues — with a straight face— that overtime pay actually hurts workers. 

Despite the obvious fairness and decency of the Obama administration's proposal to extend overtime protections to five million workers this week, not everyone was celebrating.

As it stands now, only workers who make less than $23,660 are eligible for overtime pay. The new rules would extend those protections to workers making as much as $50,440 a year.

About time.

But Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt said this is a bad idea, because, personally she loved being exploited and not paid overtime. Or she did when she was younger.

“I was making 20-some-odd-thousand dollars with my first job as a reporter, and I always said yes to everything that they asked me to do,” she recalled on a trip down memory lane that no one invited her to take. She especially loved working until 2 A.M.. It’s what enabled her to climb the ladder of success!

Co-host Sandra Smith chimed in that former McDonald CEO Ed Rensi had told Fox News that “these jobs are not careers.”

And why would the McDonalds CEO have any interest in distorting the reality of his workforce, and the fact that many of them support families on their meager wages? Giving people raises will “encourage them to stay as an hourly employee flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s.” No one wants that. High turnover is what everyone wants.

Fox Business Network stocks editor Elisabeth MacDonald worried that paying overtime would create a “permanent minimum wage club” in America.

Bet you did not know it is a club. With really fun, really cheap outings and everything.

5. GOP rep. has quite possibly the most bizarre objection to SCOTUS same-sex marriage decision ever.

As we all know, a huge number of completely insane things have been said about the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage across the land. But one very creative GOP-er came up with another spin on that hysteria this week, that managed to stand out from the crowd.

Wisconsin Representative Glenn Grothman told a local radio host that the decision was an offense to those killed in the Civil War. How did he manage to connect those two things, you ask? One word: Christianity.

Turns out that contrary to what any historian has ever said, and contrary to history itself, the Civil War in this hose-bag’s mind was a religious war. “A strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery.”

Huh?

So, by that token, the Court’s reasoning, based as it was on the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, was an affront to the war dead.

We can’t, we just can’t.

How Andrew Jackson Made A Killing In Real Estate

We all know the warrior president kicked Indians off their land. What's less known is why.

By STEVE INSKEEP

 July 4th comes at a moment of introspection about our history. South Carolina’s leaders are calling to rid their statehouse grounds of the Confederate flag—the Civil War symbol brandished by Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine black people last month in Charleston.

Then there’s the debate over Andrew Jackson, whose portrait decorates the $20 bill. This spring a campaign calling to replace Jackson with a woman gained national attention, and social media erupted with outrage when the Treasury Department chose instead to nudge aside Alexander Hamilton on the $10.

Those two symbols—Jackson’s face and the Confederate flag—have much to do with one another.

It’s not merely that both were products of the South. It’s that Jackson built the heart of the South, literally clearing the way for the settlement of part or all of seven Southern states: Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. Although he was no Confederate (to the contrary, he was a pre-Civil War leader who used all his power to hold the Union together), Jackson was a central figure in shaping the region that finally rebelled in 1861, and that has remained vital to American culture and politics ever since.

Most Americans don’t think of Jackson that way. In popular culture, he’s remembered as the warrior president with the wild hair; the victor of the Battle of New Orleans, where his army repelled British invaders in the War of 1812; and the first common man (not born into wealth and status) to rise to the presidency, which he did in in 1828.

It’s also well known that Jackson was involved in expelling American Indians from their homelands, which is how he made room to create so much of the modern South. But it’s not well understood why Jackson made Indian removal a central theme of his career. Jackson was making space for the spread of white settlers, including those who practiced slavery. And he was enabling real estate development, in which he participated and profited.

One titanic land grab shows how Jackson operated. It was the seizure of the Tennessee River Valley, where the great river bends in what is present-day Alabama. While serving as a U.S. Army general, Jackson wrested control of the valley from Cherokees, and turned it into an explosive real estate opportunity. Jackson and several friends made off with a breathtaking 45,000 acres, colonized the area and even founded a new city. They then established multiple cotton plantations run by enslaved laborers just as cotton prices were reaching record highs. All told, Jackson both created and scored in the greatest real estate bubble in the history of the United States up to that time.

The story of that land grab helps us to see Jackson clearly. He’s sometimes portrayed as an Indian hater, a description that misses his complexity. He could treat Indians and white men equally. During the War of 1812 his army included a regiment of Cherokees, and Jackson promised them pay and benefits equal to white soldiers, “in every respect on the same footing,” as he wrote. After the war, Jackson discovered that the widows of his Cherokee soldiers had never received proper death benefits. He wrote his superiors in Washington insisting that Cherokees “must be placed in the same situation of the wives & children of our soldiers who have fell in battle.”

What motivated him to treat natives unfairly at times was less racism than real estate. He would stop at nothing when he saw an opportunity to advance his financial interest or that of his friends. Land was the way to wealth on the frontier, and that drove Jackson’s elaborate scheme to capture immense Indian lands south and north of the Tennessee River.

He’d started life in modest circumstances, the son of Scots-Irish immigrants to the Carolinas. His father died shortly before he was born in 1767. After the American Revolution young Jackson moved to west to seek his fortune on the frontier, which in those days was barely west of the Appalachians.

Once settled in Nashville, he became a politician, a land speculator, a land owner, a slave owner and eventually a state militia general. But he fell in disrepute after killing a man in a duel; and like many in the frontier elite he was land-rich but cash-poor. A letter from 1814, when he was 47 years old, shows he was uncertain if he had even $300 in the bank.

The War of 1812 changed everything. Early in the conflict he was promoted to command federal troops. His 1815 victory at the Battle of New Orleans made him a national hero, propelling him into a government position that gave him the chance to transform the South.

During the war, in 1814, Jackson had crushed a rebellion in the Creek Nation, compelling Creeks to surrender 23 million acres. It was a land area the size of Scotland, seized from an independent Indian nation and added to the public land of the United States. By taking it, Jackson cleared the way for the creation of a new federal territory called Alabama. The modern cities of Montgomery and Birmingham sprawl across the land Jackson seized.

Vast as it was, this conquest didn’t include the real estate Jackson really wanted. He had his eye on land just a bit farther north, on the banks of the Tennessee. Speculators had been trying for years to obtain the fertile land around Muscle Shoals, with its easy river connections to New Orleans.

Jackson, a longtime speculator himself, knew its potential. But it was in possession of Cherokees, and claimed by Chickasaws and Creeks as well. In 1816, Jackson moved to change this.

Having been placed in charge of postwar military affairs throughout the region, General Jackson proceeded as if the Tennessee Valley were part of the land he’d won from the Creeks during the war and had his best friend, John Coffee, appointed to survey the “captured” land. Jackson assured the Coffee in an 1816 letter, “your own Judg[men]t is your guide” as to where to lay down the stakes in identifying the territory’s borders. But the same letter also very clearly suggested which parts of the land Coffee should tag as U.S. property—and that included the parcels Jackson personally had his eye on.

Coffee took the hint. Exceeding his instructions from Washington, the surveyor went to work expanding the land cession. When local Indians protested, Jackson threatened “immediate punishment,” authorized the surveyor to hire bodyguards and promised that the gunmen would be paid, “even though I am not Legally authorized to call for such a force.” Jackson also turned a blind eye to white settlers who were illegally moving into the Indian land. They were swiftly altering the facts on the ground. Jackson was taking two million acres—more than 3,000 square miles—a land area somewhat greater than one-third of the size of New Jersey.

To Jackson’s outrage, he was stopped. A delegation from the Cherokee Nation happened to be in Washington at the time of the attempted land grab. John Ross, a young English-speaking Cherokee who was a veteran of Andrew Jackson’s own army, complained to Jackson’s civilian superiors at the War Department. He argued that Cherokees had proven their “attachment” to the United States in war, so their rights must be respected. Jackson’s superiors agreed, and ordered Coffee to stop his illegal activity.

Jackson raged against the decision, writing to President James Madison that the government had “wantonly surrendered” territory of “incalculable Value to the U. States.” He then set about undermining his civilian superiors. As the commanding general in the area, it was his duty to evict the white settlers squatting on the Indian land. Jackson dragged his feet, arguing the settlers were poor families without the means to relocate. And the national hero could not long be denied. Having been thwarted in his effort to steal the land, he was given permission by Madison’s administration to try to buy it. He conducted tough, coercive negotiations with Cherokees in late 1816, telling them that they had a choice: sell him the land he wanted, or run the risk that their nation would be destroyed by encroaching white settlers anyway.

Cherokee negotiators kept some of their real estate, but agreed to sell the areas Jackson wanted most. The federal government paid the Cherokees $65,000 for the south bank of the Tennessee, a tiny fraction of the amount for which it would soon be subdivided and sold. In a different treaty that he negotiated on behalf of the U.S. government, Jackson obtained a strategic chunk of the north bank.

What followed was the colonization of the Tennessee River Valley. The federal government put land up for auction in 1818, and crowds of prospective settlers mobbed the auction site in the tiny settlement of Huntsville, Alabama. Land prices soared from $2 per acre to as high as $78. Millions of dollars changed hands. Jackson took part: An 1818 document shows he went into business with other speculators from as far away as Philadelphia to buy key plots. Jackson’s purchases included several town lots and a full square mile of farmland. Many of his plots were ideally situated, since they would be alongside a newly built road leading toward New Orleans. It should come as no surprise that the road’s route was chosen by men who happened to be working under Jackson’s direction.

Jackson’s friends even founded a city: Florence, Alabama. They paid $85,000 for the land in 1818, subdivided it and resold it for nearly triple the price—with some strategic plots going to Jackson and his friends. Today Florence remains a vibrant city, and the area is still graced with the Romanesque ruins of the Forks of Cypress, a plantation house built by one of the general’s business associates.

Not only did the Tennessee Valley acquisition help Jackson’s finances; it helped his politics. His real estate coup sharply increased white settlement in Alabama, which soon became a state. His friends who had colonized the Tennessee Valley were among the new state’s leading citizens. A few years later, as Jackson began seeking the presidency, there could be no question who would receive Alabama’s electoral votes.

Was Jackson’s land acquisition corrupt? This depends on how you weigh his motives. He had more than one. In his letters, he insisted that putting the region under formal United States control was vital to national security. And he believed that filling the region with new settlers would also populate it with men who could be summoned into an army for its defense in an emergency. But in thinking about national security problems, Jackson also arrived at solutions that perfectly matched his business interests.

His solutions also matched the needs of the slave-based economy. Each of the seven states that owed its growth to Jackson was a slave state. The chained offspring of East Coast slaves were shipped westward to hack new plantations out of former Indian land. Jackson himself owned slaves throughout his adult life, and put many to work in northern Alabama.

Land deals like Jackson’s are what made the Confederacy and its flag. White men grew addicted to a constantly expanding market for land and slaves. Northern manufacturers and financiers benefited along with Southern slave owners. Progressive Southerners had once spoken of slavery as an unfortunate passing phase, but as the slave economy grew, some of the same Southerners defended the institution ever more stridently, constantly refining an ideology of white supremacy.

His land deals also made Andrew Jackson. Up until 1819, Jackson and his wife Rachel were living in a two-story log cabin outside Nashville. Soon after the Alabama land bubble, the Jacksons were wealthy enough to move to new house on the same property. It was the mansion that, with changes and additions, still stands today as a tourist attraction—the Hermitage. Their old log cabin became slave quarters.

Steve Inskeep is co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition.” His recently released book is entitled Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab.

The True Charleston Killer Remains At Large

Racism, poverty and violence are the real killers in America.

By Rev. Dr. William Barber

In Luke 23:34, Jesus says, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

A deeper meaning of forgiveness in the Christian nonviolent tradition reveals a critique that knows: The Charleston perpetrator has been caught, but the killer is still at large.

There is a scripture that says we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers and rulers of the darkness. Within the nonviolent faith tradition it has always been clear that hate cannot drive out hate and evil cannot drive out evil. And so the Christians who were able to forgive the murder 48 hours after losing their loved ones are consistent with their faith in Jesus, who said, as he was being murdered by the state, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."

But this forgiveness should not be misinterpreted as a dismissing of the greater evil.

Their forgiveness is also an act of resistance to the attempts to lay the blame for this horror at the feet of one man. If America is serious about this moment, we cannot just cry ceremonial tears while at the same time refusing to support the martyred Reverend and his parishioners' stalwart fight against the racism that gave birth to the crime.

The perpetrator has been caught, but the killers are still at large: the deep wells of American racism and white supremacy from which Dylann Roof drank.

These families of the murdered are challenging the schizophrenia of American morality that allows political leaders to condemn the crime yet embrace the policies that are its genesis. Many of the South Carolina politicians and others in the nation are examples of a common theme — decrying the killings but steadfastly refusing to support efforts to quell their divisive race-implying rhetoric and cease their push for policies that promote race based voter suppression, adversity toward fixing the Voting Rights Act, cutting public education in ways that foster resegregation, denying workers living wages, refusing Medicaid expansion, the proliferation of guns and supporting the Confederate flag flying at the state capitol — a symbol of slavery, racism and terrorism against African Americans.

They are even using racial code words to criticize the president, all in the name of taking their country back and preventing its destruction. And they refuse to own that there is a history of racialized political rhetoric and policies spawning the pathology of terroristic murder and violent resistance.

When they were murdered, Reverend Pinckney and his parishioners were advocating for a better life for people of all races. They were standing with fast food workers demanding a living wage. They were calling for the Confederate flag to come down. They were fighting against voter suppression and for funding public education, expanding Medicaid to allow the poor and near poor — of all races — to have health care. They were mobilizing for police accountability and marching for justice in the police killing of Walter Scott, an unarmed African American shot in the back by a police officer.

These brave family members are telling America that you cannot focus only on this one man and absolve America of its historic sickness. In a profound way, they are saying that giving the killer the death penalty is not going to fix what ails us. Arresting one disturbed young man, and dumping on him the sins of slavery, Jim Crow, and the new racialized extremism that has captured almost every southern legislature and county courthouse, will not bring "closure" or "healing" to a society that is still sick with the sin of racism and inequality. A society where too many perpetuate in word and deed the slow violence of undermining the promise of equal protection under the law that preachers from Denmark Vesey to Martin Luther King Jr. to Rev. Pinckney fought for.

They are asking us to forgive the sinner but hate the sin. They are issuing a clarion call borne of their pain and loss to create a society that truly embraces justice and equality, that ends the policies of racism and poverty that only guarantee there will be more Dylann Roofs and more acts of terror. Because only then will we apprehend the real killers.

I believe, in light of this, that real healing would be writing an omnibus bill in the name of the nine Emanuel martyrs. This bill would implement Medicaid expansion, raise public education funding, pass a living wage requirement, pass new gun control laws, and remove the Confederate flag from the state house. And this omnibus bill would be supported and passed by Republicans and Democrats.

Further, the very seat Rev. Pinckney held is in jeopardy as long as Section 5 of the Voting Right Act has been gutted. The current bill in the U.S. House, even if passed, would leave out Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee from coverage. If we want closure, let us name a Voting Rights Act restoration bill after the Emanuel Nine.

We have no choice. We must see transformative action not temporary ceremonial displays. Until we deal with the issues of race, poverty and violence that threaten to tear our nation asunder, it is not just America's soul that is at stake, but America itself.

 

The Rev. Dr. William Barber II is president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and pastor of Greenleaf Christian (Disciples of Christ) Church of Goldsboro, N.C. He is the architect of the Moral Monday-Forward Together Movement.

After 14 years of watching Christie, a warning: He lies

By Tom Moran

Most Americans don't know Chris Christie like I do, so it's only natural to wonder what testimony I might offer after covering his every move for the last 14 years.

Is it his raw political talent? No, they can see that.

Is it his measurable failure to fix the economy, solve the budget crisis or even repair the crumbling bridges? No, his opponents will cover that if he ever gets traction.

My testimony amounts to a warning: Don't believe a word the man says.

If you have the stomach for it, this column offers some greatest hits in Christie's catalog of lies.

Don't misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that. But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.

He's been lying on steroids lately, on core issues like Bridgegate, guns and that cozy personal friendship with his buddy, the King of Jordan. I'll get to all that.

But let's start with my personal favorite. It dates back to the 2009 campaign, when the public workers unions asked him if he intended to cut their benefits.

He told them their pensions were "sacred" to him.

"The notion that I would eliminate, change, or alter your pension is not only a lie, but cannot be further from the truth," he wrote them. "Your pension and benefits will be protected when I am elected governor."

He then proceeded to make cutting those benefits the centerpiece of his first year in office.

This, we know now, was vintage Christie. Other lying politicians tend to waffle, to leave themselves some escape hatch. You can almost smell it.

But Christie lies with conviction. His hands don't shake, and his eyes don't wander. I can hardly blame the union leaders who met with him for believing him.

"He seemed very sincere," says Bill Lavin, head of the firefighters union. "Why doubt someone who tells you this is sacred to them?"

Here are some more recent examples:

• In May, Christie told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that the Bridgegate scandal was basically over:
"The U.S. Attorney said in his press conference a few weeks ago there will be no further charges in the bridge matter. He said it affirmatively three or four times."

Not even close. U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said the investigation continues, and that the two indicted Christie aides could wind up pleading guilty, which would yield a new trove of evidence.

"It's like the end of Downton Abbey," Fishman said. "You have to wait for a whole 'nother season."

• In March, Christie told a conservative gathering in Washington that he cut money to Planned Parenthood because he was "unapologetically" pro-life.

That was probably true. The lies came earlier, when he fended off criticism in pro-choice New Jersey by repeatedly saying the state's financial pinch forced him to cut "worthy" programs like this one.

• In June in South Carolina, Christie danced for the gun rights crowd by saying this:

"I know there's a lot of perception about my view on gun rights because I'm from New Jersey and because the laws are the way they are. But these laws were being made long before I was governor and no new ones have been made since I've been governor."

Again, not close. Christie signed one law increasing penalties for unlawful possession of guns, another to ban those on the terrorism watch list from buying guns, and a third that required the state to cooperate with the federal criminal background check system.

• In February, Christie claimed that he was a personal friend of the King of Jordan, which would allow him to accept gifts without limit, like a sumptuous weekend with his extended family in a desert resort enjoyed at the king's expense.

The friendship exemption to the gift ban was meant to allow real friends to offer things like birthday presents without getting into a legal tangle.

Christie and his clan ran up a hotel bill of $30,000. He had met the king once, at a political dinner.

It's enough to make his "friendship" with Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, seem almost intimate.

• Two weeks ago, Christie bragged to a national TV audience about his success with pension reform.

"We just won a major court decision supporting the pension reforms that we put into place in 2011," he told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

Supporting the pension reform? The court found those reforms to be unconstitutional. Christie had to know that, because it was an argument put forward by his own lawyers so that he could escape the law's provision requiring big payments into the pension fund.

These are painful moments for New Jersey reporters who cover Christie. Stephanopoulos and Kelly are facing a crowded Republican field with more than a dozen contenders. They can't be expected to know this stuff. Which is why Christie prefers to sit down with the national press. It's easier to get away with these lies. For now.

Is it fair to use the word "lies" to describe these moments? After all, an honest mistake is not a lie. And sometimes politicians make promises they intend to keep, but circumstances prevent them. So what qualifies as an actual lie?

Here is one that doesn't make the cut: Christie broke his promise to make pension payments, which some consider a lie. But I don't. The economy slowed down and he didn't have the expected revenue. Democrats were surprised as well.

But the examples in the list above, which is only a sampling, are deliberate and serve Christie's political purposes. None are course corrections based on fresh information.

Webster's defines lie this way: "To make an untrue statement with intent to deceive." That fits neatly.

And that's my warning to America. When Christie picks up the microphone, he speaks so clearly and forcefully that you assume genuine conviction is behind it.

Be careful, though. It's a kind of spell.

He is a remarkable talent with a silver tongue. But if you look closely, you can see that it is forked like a serpent's.

Rand Paul meets with Cliven Bundy

GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul pals around with outlaw rancher Cliven Bundy during a campaign stop in Nevada. Ed Schultz and Michael Eric Dyson discuss the implications.

Christie kicks off presidential campaign

Governor Chris Christie jumps into the GOP presidential race as his approval rating in New Jersey falls to an all-time low. Ed Schultz, Jonathan Alter and Jim Keady rate his chances.

Could You Pass A Citizenship Test?

In order to become a citizen of the United States, an applicant must prove to US Citizenship and Immigration Services that he or she knows enough about the country’s government, history and geography. There are 100 questions listed on the study guide. Applicants are typically asked to orally answer a handful from memory.

We picked 30 questions from the test and provided multiple-choice answers. If you had to earn your citizenship by proving how much you know about the USA, would you pass the test?