Source: Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity
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From Washington Post:

“The good news is, the world doesn’t end March 2. The bad news is, the world doesn’t end March 2,” said Emily Holubowich, a Washington health-care lobbyist who leads a coalition of 3,000 nonprofit groups fighting the cuts. “The worst-case scenario for us is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens. And Republicans say: See, that wasn’t so bad.”

In the long partisan conflict over government spending, the sequester is where the rubber meets the road. Obama is betting Americans will be outraged by the abrupt and substantial cuts to a wide range of government services, from law enforcement to food safety to public schools. And he is hoping they will rise up to demand what he calls a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction that replaces some cuts with higher taxes.

But if voters react with a shrug, congressional Republicans will have won a major victory in their campaign to shrink the size of government. Instead of cancelling the sequester, the GOP will likely push for more.

“It would be a big problem for the White House if the sequester came and went and nobody really noticed anything. Then people will start saying, ‘Well, maybe we can cut spending,” said John H. Makin, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who penned a recent Wall Street Journal piece titled “Learning to Love the Sequester.”

Adding to the liberal angst is concern that the scale of the cuts may be overstated, at least in the short term. While the sequester orders the White House to withdraw $85 billion in spending authority from affected agencies in the fiscal year that ends in September, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that agencies will reduce actual spending by only about $44 billion, with the remaining cuts carried over into future years. Compared with total 2013 discretionary spending, that’s a cut of less than 4 percent.

From CAP:

. This time a refusal to compromise by conservative leaders in Congress would lead to massive, damaging across-the-board spending cuts on March 1, potentially dragging the economy back into recession and hurting American families by slashing critical investments in job training, public health, and public safety.

The spending cuts, also known as the “sequester,” are a direct result of a long push by conservatives to take the nation’s economy hostage in order to secure massive, harmful spending cuts. In the summer of 2011, in exchange for agreeing to pay America’s bills, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) negotiated the deal that wrote the sequester into law, stating that he had gotten 98 percent of what he wanted. Though there is a concerted effort to blame the president for the sequester, no amount of whitewashing can erase the fact that many conservative members of Congress voted for this plan.

Under the terms of the sequester, federal spending would be cut by $1.2 trillion from March 2013 to March 2021. States stand to lose billions of dollars in critical grants needed to fund everything from schools to new police officers to parks. In fiscal year 2013 alone, states stand to lose an estimated $6.4 billion in federal funding. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many as 750,000 jobs could be lost because of the sequester. Taking a meat cleaver to spending in such a blunt, unfocused manner would send a shockwave through our economy and would hurt countless American families.

The Impact of the Sequester on Communities Across America by Anna Chu

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Standing Up to “Stand Your Ground”
by nancy a heitzeg

A mere 9 months after Trayvon Martin, and here we are, mourning Jordan Davis, another 17 year old Florida teen shot down. This time “loud music” not “hoodies” was the proximate trigger, but the real reason, of course, irrational archtypical threat of The Criminal-Black-Man.

As Melissa Harris-Perry puts it, “No Country for Black Boys”.

Her Open Letter this week addresses the details and the larger concerns:
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SPIRIT AND ELECTION 2012
Commentary by Kay Whitlock

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
Siddhartha Gautama, founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

This is an unusual Critical Mass Progress post, written because almost everyone I know is feeling psychically worn and battered by this election season. I certainly am, although I know the tide has turned and we will see any number of necessary and heartening victories – including the presidency. I hope you know that, too.

Even so, we can’t ignore what’s been happening, or its meaning as we come through the election and work to give even deeper strength to the many interdependent struggles for freedom, human rights, social and economic justice, and environmental integrity.

Constellations of psychic energy are in motion, and the most difficult ones to deal with are embedded in the onslaught of Republican/Right messages and tactics that emphasize fear, rage, resentment, enmity, racism, misogyny, heterosexism, xenophobia, brutal disdain for poor and working class people, and callous disregard for the climate and our natural environment.

Unleashed in these frenzied storms of fear and rage are mythic images and archetypes that touch us all in unconscious ways, even if we reject them: white supremacy; violent and patriarchal authoritarianism; bully boys; religious inquisitors; tricksters and confidence men (yes, men) who offer only lies, deception, and greed. And this is what’s coming cloaked in the language of faith and values. It’s clear that politicized religion either works for liberation or against it.

The Right’s messages, mythic images, and violent, emotion-soaked archetypes call out the worst in all of us – whether we reject them or, out of a desire for vicarious power over others, embrace them. They often keep us reactive to and bound within the great whorls and whirlpools and quicksand created by those who prefer an ethic of dominance and subordination.

I’m not having it. I want leaders and neighbors and colleagues to be calling out the best in us, not the worst, the smallest, the meanest. And I don’t mean just speaking out on issues. I mean calling us all to something much larger than ourselves – and to engaged, community-based organizing that goes on before, during, and after elections.

I’m no spiritual leader (hear that roar of raucous laughter from my pals and partner in the background?), but I am a person whose spirituality (Buddhism) is central to who I am. So I decided to post something here and send it out into the Great Noise because I believe that everything we say and do matters, for good or ill. I’m not doing it because I believe everyone must or should be religious or spiritual. We’re all so different, and there has to be room for us all. I’m doing it because I have to.

Many (too many) years ago, I was a member of the NGLTF’s National Religious Leadership Roundtable, representing an organization I worked for at the time. I wrote something for the NRLR for a particular event, and it’s never been used again. I’ve tweaked it somewhat and offer it here as my personal prior-to-the-election and after-the-election reflection.

ON LOVE, JUSTICE & SPIRIT

The presence of Spirit, or God, is the life-giving presence of love and justice for all people and for the earth itself. The presence of Spirit, or God, is the realization, here on earth, of just and beloved community in which we celebrate the dignity and sacred worth of every person and all peoples.

The spiritual call to love and justice is a joyous call to resistance and transformation. We are called to resist the unjust beliefs, structures and practices in ourselves, in our communities, and in society that declare some categories of people superior or subordinate to others. We are called to transform by example the corrupt ethic of domination and supremacy, which justifies the social, economic, environmental, and spiritual evils of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, heterosexism, and ecological devastation.

The call to love and justice is a call to radical generosity and open-heartedness in a time of spiritual and social stinginess, greed, insularity, and indifference to the suffering of our neighbors. We reject the fearful message of scarcity and enmity preached by some who claim there are not enough civil and human rights to go around, not enough social and economic goods to meet everyone’s basic needs. Only by taking up others’ burdens of injustice and suffering along with our own will we transform the curse of fear, hatred, and human brokenness that afflicts our society in so many painful ways into the blessing of just, generous, and compassionate community.

The call to love and justice is a call to radical nonviolence in the midst of great storms of psychic, structural, physical, and economic violence. It lifts up a vision in which all of us, not only the most privileged of us, can live freely and exercise our rights and responsibilities without fear of exclusion, threat, intimidation, or violence.

The call to love and justice is a call to spiritual wholeness within our churches, synagogues, mosques, sanghas, ashrams and other sacred gathering places. Where stifling boundaries constrain our ability to claim wholeness, the call to love and justice gives us the strength to shatter them.

The call to love and justice gives us the strength necessary to lift up a bold, audacious vision of spiritual community in which all are welcome and invited to participate equally in worship, sacred ceremonies and blessings, and in which the gifts of spiritual leadership are recognized and honored in people of all races, cultures, genders, gender identities, and sexual orientations.

A commitment to love and justice is one that demands everything of us – and in return, it offers us infinite possibility. It calls us to nurture – in ourselves as well as others – the courage, integrity, kindness, and generosity necessary to create just and beloved community, in which none of us is cast aside and all of us are kin.

See you on the far side of the election.

UAW Charges Romney With Profiteering From Auto Bailout

EXCLUSIVE: GREG PALAST FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT:

Toledo, Ohio – Wednesday Evening October 31, 2012

For Mitt Romney, it’s one scary Halloween. The Presidential candidate has just learned that tomorrow afternoon (November 1) he will be charged by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and other public interest groups with violating the federal ethics in government law by improperly concealing his multi-million dollar windfall from the auto industry bailout.

At a press conference in Toledo, Bob King, President of the United Automobile Workers, will announce that his union and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a formal complaint with the US Office of Government Ethics in Washington stating that Gov. Romney improperly hid a profit of $15.3 million to $115.0 million in Ann Romney’s so-called “blind” trust.

The union chief says, “The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue. It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.”

“While Romney was opposing the rescue of one of the nation’s most important manufacturing sectors, he was building his fortunes with his Delphi investor group, making his fortunes off the misfortunes of others,” King added.

The Romneys’ gigantic windfall was hidden inside an offshore corporation inside a limited partnership inside a trust which both concealed the gain and reduces taxes on it…..

In 2009, Ann Romney partnered with her husband’s key donor, billionaire Paul Singer, who secretly bought a controlling interest in Delphi Auto, the former GM auto parts division. Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, threatened to cut off GM’s supply of steering columns unless GM and the government’s TARP auto bailout fund provided Delphi with huge payments. While the US treasury complained this was “extortion,” the hedge funds received, ultimately, $12.9 billion in taxpayer subsidies.

As a result, the shares Singer and Romney bought for just 67 cents are today worth over $30, a 4,000% gain. Singer’s hedge fund made a profit of $1.27 billion and the Romney’s tens of millions.

The UAW complaint calls for Romney to reveal exactly how much he made off Delphi — and continues to make. The Singer syndicate, once in control of Delphi, eliminated every single UAW job –25,000– and moved almost all auto parts production to Mexico and China where Delphi now employs 25,000 auto parts workers.

See Truthout for the back story

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

CI: PRISONERS IN THE EYE OF THE STORMS
by Kay Whitlock

Two storms are making their way through wide swaths of this country.

The devastation being wrought by Hurricane Sandy staggers the imagination. It is almost incomprehensible in its scope, and it resurrects nightmares of Katrina.

The second storm, instigated by the Republican/corporate Right – and its current head cheerleaders, Romney/Ryan – has been building for a long time. It also wreaks havoc and devastates with its frenzies of racism, misogyny, anti-LGBTQ venom, xenophobia, and economic savagery fueled by blatant lies.

Its impacts stagger the moral and spiritual imagination.

It is axiomatic that those who suffered the worst economically before the disaster are sure to bear the heaviest brunt of the devastation in its wake.

Here are a couple of snapshots of the impacts of these storms on one of this country’s designated “most expendable” population: prisoners and former prisoners, who are disproportionately people of color and poor.
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Atlantic Wire: A $5,000 Shopping Run to Walmart Turned Romney’s Campaign Stop into a ‘Relief Event’

Mitt Romney was really concerned that his “Storm Relief Event” in Kettering, Ohio yesterday would look like a dud, so he and his team stocked their donation tables with $5,000 worth of supplies at Walmart. The props, according to Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins, were things like granola bars, canned food, and diapers which were strategically placed to make sure that the photographs taken at Romney’s “Storm Relief” campaign didn’t a show very un-busy, un-stocked relief table (what else do you expect when you give people short notice to donate their canned goods?)

Heckuva Job Brownie!!!

Yesterday, ahead of the storm’s pummeling of the eastern seaboard, Brown gave an interview to the local alternative paper, the Denver Westword, on how he believed the Obama administration was responding to Sandy too quickly and that Obama had spoken to the press about Sandy’s potential effect too early.

Romney Releases Another False Ad, Revives Claim That Obama ‘Gutted’ Welfare Reform:

As reporters, fact-checkers, and the directive Obama signed made abundantly clear, the welfare work requirements will remain in place even if states are granted waivers. The major change is that states will be granted more leeway in how they transition welfare recipients into jobs. That is a change sought and supported by many Republican governors, like Romney endorser Rick Snyder (MI), who said of the program, “More flexibility to governors is a good thing.”

From ThinkProgress:

As part of their bill to void the military spending cuts included in the Budget Control Act — which was passed as a result of 2011′s GOP inspired debt ceiling standoff — House Republicans proposed eliminating a program that helps states and localities respond to disasters like hurricanes.

The House Republicans’ Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012, which was passed without a single Democratic vote, called for zeroing out funding for the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), a program that provides funding to state and local governments to aid needy children, adults, and the disabled. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted, the SSBG also offers assistance for disaster relief:

The SSBG has served as a conduit for emergency appropriations to help residents and communities respond to the additional social service and health needs resulting from natural disasters, such as floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.

For example, in response to the 2005 Gulf Coast Hurricanes — including Hurricane Katrina —Congress provided an additional $550 million in emergency funding to states via SSBG for use by public, non-profit, and private entities to repair, renovate, or construct health care facilities, among other purposes. The funds were disbursed promptly — within two monthsa — and SSBG’s flexibility allowed states to streamline eligibility for services funded by the emergency appropriations. Eliminating SSBG could make it harder to provide this sort of flexible human services funding in the face of emergencies.

President Obama’s budget proposed maintaining the SSBG’s annual funding of $1.7 billion; it has had that funding level since 2001. As CBPP noted, “Although the SSBG has received bipartisan support from governors and members of Congress, it has lost 77 percent of its value since 1981, due to inflation, funding freezes, and budget cuts.” This chart shows the drop: