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Vol. 13 Issue 10…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…March 7, 2010

Intuit's Vibe

The Revolutionary

By Alvin Aubert

He is bound to make something happen

He is not quite sure what

But he is determined!

He flits from flower to flower

He has more legs than a hive of bees

He takes everything out of them

Leaving them for dead.

It will be a long time before anything happens.

In the meantime he plies his adversary's craft

On whomever is at hand

And is useful to him in that way.

Being bound as he is

To making something happen

Something worthy of himself

Almost anything.....

Politics Y2K10

A Hellish Dichotomy

By John Burl Smith

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States of America (USA) has produced some startling national and international developments in politics, finance and diplomacy. Unmistakably, right-wing Republican talking heads are engaged in a very hostile and vehement rhetorical attack that unjustly seeks to paint the President's policies as socialistic in intent and anti-capitalistic in effect. Unnoticed by most Americans, however, is their subtle effort to tie such bedrock American values as social justice, human rights and charitable giving to the influence of communist ideologues, most notably Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. This hellish dichotomy ties capitalism and consumerism to Christianity and social justice and charity to socialism.

FOX jocks Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, along with Rush Limbaugh and faith-based preachers Wiley Drake and Steven L. Anderson, who prayed for the assassination of President Obama, have developed this hellish juxtaposition to demonize anyone who expresses opposition to the current self-absorbed "greed is good" culture of Wall Street. Their diatribe has become the right's talking points which condemn social concerns such as equalizing economic resources, narrowing the gap between the super-rich and the middle class, guaranteeing access to healthcare for all citizens, regulating predatory interest rates and other obscene financial practices as the prelude to national socialism in America.

Beck's characterization of aid to families with dependent children, homeless assistance and help for the poor and needy as not charity but subversive techniques that will undermine capitalism and American individualism runs counter to Christian teaching. According to these FOX jocks, giving is no longer one's Christian duty and a social responsibility; they are part and parcel of the new left liberal communist "foot in the door" gambit.

A society without charity, such as the one Beck desires, is described by the prophet Amos in Chapter 2 verses 6-7, "...I will not turn away the punishment therefore; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes. That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek...." Amos' warning carried real power because he was neither a prophet nor the son of one. He was a man of humble birth, a herdsman, who God sent to prophesy against the prevalence of luxury, vice and idolatry during the time of Uzziah King of Israel.

Amos prayed, "Let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream." Hypocrites in Israel had forsaken their covenant with God for earthly prosperity. Today, Christians honor a new covenant with Jesus Christ and Paul explained the role of charity as part of this new covenant in I Corinthians Chapter 13. "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity."

Just as there were false prophets during the days of Amos, there are those today who are trying to redefine the teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, to serve their lust for power. Jesus taught that one should "love thy enemy, do good to them that hate you. Bless them that curse you and pray for those that despitefully use you." Yet to the contrary, pretending to be moral compasses, Glenn Beck and preachers who pray for the assassination of Mr. Obama in the name of Jesus Christ, see murder as a sign from God to justify earthly power.

If Americans follow Beck and his ilk, as the way to salvation, they will have them standing on their heads, as they have stood Christianity on its head. Christianity is not a convenient political philosophy one reshapes to fit who is in the White House. Christianity is a way of life that through faith one prays to reshape the person living in the White House. This is indeed a time like those of Amos and one's choices will never be clearer but standing up for Christian value as defined by the life of Jesus Christ will never be harder. Yet, if Christians, like Beck, can pray on Sunday and hate on Monday, what separates them from the ungodly?

Bit of History

William G. Fletcher, Jr.

"Unions, at different times in history, become instruments for much more than narrow collective bargaining purposes. Unions can be instruments for social change and transformation. We should concern ourselves less with what unions are supposed to be by law, and more with what they need to be." (Bill Fletcher, Jr. - Dollars & Sense, 1998)

Born on June 21, 1954, in New York, NY, William "Bill" Fletcher, Jr. is the son of William G. Fletcher, Sr. and Joan Carter Fletcher. Fletcher and his sister grew up in a home filled with political discussion. His parents supported the labor movement, emphasized black liberation and the fight for desegregation within organized labor. At his Mount Vernon, New York high school, Fletcher found a black student organization politically akin to the Panthers and the Young Lords (a Chicago-based organization of young Puerto Ricans). In May 1970, his group shut down the high school to protest the Vietnam War and the murder of Kent State students by the National Guard.

Fletcher's activism continued at Harvard, where he came under the influence of Dr. Ewart Guinier, chair of the African-American studies department and former secretary-treasurer of the United Public Workers, a union that was expelled from the CIO during the late 1940s amid allegations that it was Communist-led. Fletcher graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1976, with a bachelor's degree in government.

After graduation, Fletcher went to work as a welder at the Quincy Shipyards, a division of General Dynamics, in Quincy, Massachusetts. As a rank-and-file member of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, Fletcher battled the bosses and the union's conservative white leadership. In 1980, Fletcher left the shipyards to work as an organizer with the Boston Jobs Coalition; he was also active in the Boston chapter of the Black United Front.

Fletcher joined the Greater Boston Legal Services as a paralegal in 1982, serving as vice president of the staff union. In 1986, Fletcher became a staff organizer with District 65 of the United Auto Workers in Boston. Between 1982 and 1990, Fletcher was an adjunct faculty member in the Labor Studies program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, where he taught the history of black workers and labor studies.

In 1990 Fletcher became organizational secretary and administrative director of the National Postal Mail Handlers' Union in Washington, D.C. Fired a year later following a disagreement with the union president over contract negotiations, Fletcher took a position as assistant education director for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). When John Sweeney became head of the AFL-CIO, Fletcher became the organization's education director. As the AFL-CIO education director, Fletcher was determined to bring issues of class, race, and gender to the forefront of the labor movement. He oversaw the development of an educational program--Common Sense Economics for Working Families--to facilitate worker-based discussions about economic issues and capitalism. He promoted labor movement discussions of race and racism, ethnicity, gender, and sexism and homophobia. Just as he chastised the labor movement for avoiding issues of race, he criticized black studies departments for ignoring the history of the black workers' movement.

In June 1999, Fletcher served as assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. In that position he was in charge of the departments of education, civil and human rights, field mobilization, safety and health, and working women. In May of 2001 Fletcher was named vice president for international trade development programs at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies and its National Labor College. In this position he worked with foreign labor centers on issues of education, organizational change, and building stronger ties among their educational institutions.

In 2001, Fletcher was named president of the TransAfrica Forum, an educational and lobbying organization that works for justice for people of color throughout the world. Fletcher coined the term DARAS, an acronym for TransAfrica's twenty-first-century agenda: debt relief, AIDS, reparations, agricultural subsidies, and sovereignty. TransAfrica Forum supports reparations for American descendent of African slaves and victims of 500 years of colonialism on the African continent and elsewhere.

Fletcher is a charter member and co-chair of the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice. Fletcher is the author of numerous articles, co-author of a number of books and a sought-after speaker. He is a regular contributor to the Monthly Review and other progressive publications, and the recipient of numerous awards. He and his wife, Candice S. Cason, have one daughter. (Sources: www.blackcommentator.com, www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-fletcher, www.answers.com/topic/bill-fletcher)

Venue for an Artist

Requests and Demands - Not the Same (Excerpts)

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Good afternoon and thank you. I am very honored to have been asked to address this conference. I want to begin by giving a very special thanks to the Creator of all things on this, the 21st birthday of my little girl. So, I hope to do her proud.

I am going to be brutally honest with you, so I ask your forgiveness in advance if my remarks unsettle you. The union movement is in a rut. Too many of the leaders of organized labor seem to have forgotten certain historical truths. Let me remind you of one such truth.

In 1857 a great leader in the struggle for justice offered the following observations: "Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all- absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

He went on to say: "This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." [Frederick Douglass]

We, in organized labor, seem to get confused as to the difference between "requests" and "demands". We sometimes think that they are the same. THEY ARE NOT. Let me give you an example of requests: "Pass the jelly, please." OR, "May we meet with you, Mr. President."

How about demands? Let me pick one out of the air: "Mr. PRESIDENT: WE WANT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS NOW! Not tomorrow, not next week!"

A demand is straightforward. It does not equivocate. It may or may not be your end point, but it is something in which you strongly believe and it is your starting position. The demand guides your action. One follows through on demands.

Let us be clear that we in the union movement made a big mistake in how we understood the November 2008 elections. Yes, we were sick of Bush. Yes, we realized how dangerous the McCain/Palin ticket was. After all, had McCain/Palin won, they had not even the semblance of an economic program and as many commentators have noted, we probably would be in a barter economy at this point, not to mention, probably involved in a military conflict with Iran.

But we made a particular mistake. We engaged in magical thinking and wishful thinking. Yes, Obama was the right person to elect, but he was not a miracle maker. He is an outstanding thinker and speaker. He was and is also someone who is very tied into corporate America and he is someone who seems to have an irresistible impulse to approach matters of controversy by jumping to the middle position and believing that a consensus can be built. Rather than staking out a position that he believes in and fighting for it, he moves quickly to a center piece assuming that we are all big boys and girls and can agree midpoint.

Yet in today's political situation, there is no real bi- partisanship, and not because Obama has not tried. The Republicans have made it clear that they want to cut his legs off. Not just cut his legs off, but hang and guillotine him at the same time!! Think about the irrationalist attacks on him carried out by the so- called Birther Movement, a movement claiming that President Obama is not actually a citizen of the USA. 58% of the Republican Party actually believes that he was either not born in the USA or that there is enough evidence to raise doubts, this despite the fact that he has provided proof again and again, and despite the obvious fact that every intelligence agency in every country around the world would have been investigating his background from the minute that he became a candidate for the Presidency of the USA. Consider that some people are using this irrationalism as their organizing approach toward members of the military to incite a coup d'etat against Obama. Think about the allegations that Obama is a socialist despite the fact that he surrounds himself with economic advisers from Wall Street! Added to this, Republicans are being clear that there is NOTHING that Obama says, including and not limited to THEIR own proposals, to which they will agree.

Yet, Obama seems to feel more compelled to respond to that, than to pay attention to the likes of us. And his reluctance to lead the charge on behalf of working people is as much driven by his ties to corporate America as it is to something that will be very uncomfortable for many of you to hear: his fear of being perceived by white Americans as an angry Black man.

Workers have been under attack since the early 1970s, and organized labor in many countries-not just the USA-has been unable to alter its approach as to how to respond. Yet there are examples that are noteworthy of people fighting back.

The little island of Guadeloupe has an unemployment rate of 23%. We complain-justifiably-about a 10% unemployment rate, but Guadeloupe has a rate that is depression level. In addition they have a high cost of living. Yet, in this situation in early 2009, the workers of this island, in response to continued attacks carried out a 44 day general strike against further cuts and against this economic atrocity.

THEY WON!! Not only did they win, but they won and inspired workers in France to resist. In Greece, workers fought back against attacks. They stood up and resisted. Here at home, our response to the economic crisis has been nothing short of anemic, at best. When the financial collapse took place in the fall of 2008, organized labor did almost nothing.

Change does not come from one person. But it also does not come from patiently requesting change. We have to realize that elected leaders are bombarded by various forces, and particularly forces that have far more money and other resources than do we. This, then, goes beyond the matter of good intentions, good speeches, and good looks. It goes to matters of power. Who has it, who wants it, and how it is used.

So, in the face of the fact that the Obama administration has not delivered many of the changes that we have requested, there has been both anger and despair, but what there has been so little of, particularly from unions and pro-worker/pro- community organizations, has been a mobilization to insist upon our demands.

About Me: The above excerpts are from an address made to a gathering of more than 500 leaders from American Federation of Government Employees local unions and councils where policy issues are discussed. The speech was delivered on Sunday, February 21^st. You can read it in its entirety at www.blackcommentator.com/365/365_aw_requests_demands.php

Counting the Undercounted

By John Burl Smith

The United States' Constitution mandates the Census Bureau conducts a population count every ten years. The census determines apportionment of the US House of Representatives and the formula of how over $ 400 million will be shared. This once a decade population count provides critical demographic and housing data that federal and local officials use to determine the distribution of federal money for education, welfare services and economic developments, as well as state and local improvements. Previously, due to the undercounting of certain populations, states have lost revenue. Consequently, states with communities with large populations of students, disabled persons, African Americans, other minorities and immigrants, both legal and illegal, are looking under every rock hoping to avoid an undercount.

Colleges and Universities are aggressively pursuing ways to ensure they get a better tally in the 2010 count. Administrators and students realize counting every student in 2010 will mean more money for tuition, grant and loan programs. For instance, Metropolitan State University in Minnesota passed out knickknacks to students that promised to fill out a census form.

Missouri Technical University students are handing out census-branded screwdriver sets for completed forms. On the University of Texas' Arlington campus, students posted on the Web a parody of the popular "The Real World" TV show using the census. A team of students at Kent State University in Ohio are hitting off-campus bars and stamping the hands of revelers with the address of their Facebook page to push the census. University of California at Berkeley students that turn in completed census forms will be entered in a raffle to win textbooks.

Historically, a variety of hurdles interfered with counting the disabled. Examples are, blind or vision impaired do not always have access to Braille forms, people with learning disabilities cannot always read the form and people with mental disabilities often see it as an intrusion of privacy or safety issue, according Greg Polman of the Chicago Lighthouse, a center for the blind and vision impaired. With an unemployment rate of approximately 60 %, large numbers of people with disabilities live in institutions, have a litany of mobility problems and are more sheltered than the general population, experts say. Better counting in 2010 will bring more revenue to cities for disabled transit users, housing, health services and workforce development.

Motivated by the fact that only 65 % of Cook County residents participated in the census in 2000, the Chicago Disability Complete Count Committee has launched an initiative comprised of public, private and non-profit groups that will track disabled populations to boost the count. They plan to distribute flyers, visit institutions and social centers where people with disabilities routinely congregate. The census form does not ask whether a person is disabled, so there are no special benefits for people with disabilities, but an increased count will benefit everyone.

The disability committee's Access Living grassroots organizers will visit deaf social clubs and other popular gathering places that most non-disabled people are not aware exist. Four assistance centers have been set up throughout the city so that people with disabilities can complete the census in safe and helpful environments.

African Americans are the most severely undercounted population in the United States (US) at 36.4 million. Ironically, Article I Section II of the US Constitution, which covers the census also contains the 3/5 Compromise, which authorized counting slaves as 3/5 of a white man. Article I Section II codified undercounting black people in the US. Therefore, only 22 million were counted for almost a century. It was only in the 1960 that the number of blacks was allowed to slowly inch upward. The truth is, the black undercount was calculated to reduce political representation, social equality and economic advancement. Hence, the effort to decrease the undercount among other populations does not extend to the black community.

The 2000 census list the Hispanics population as 45 million, supplanting blacks as the largest US minority. Their population is expected to increase, while the black population is only expected to change marginally. There are massive efforts to count every Hispanic, legal and illegal, in states such as California, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas. Even New Jersey, where just over a million Hispanics reside (46 % are foreign-born) there is a massive effort to count them. Conversely, states with historically large black populations such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee are doing nothing to make sure every African American is counted. Black leaders complained but Mr. Obama turned a deaf ear.

For slave descendants, the undercount is a 3/5 Compromise constitutional mandate that has not changed since the Founding Fathers agreed to undercount slaves. The Census Bureau has not allocated any special programs or advertising dollars for the black community to increase participation. Rahm Emanuel, "the best brain in the White House," has refused to even think about this disparity. Moving the census count into the White House has not changed the system of counting blacks because the same people and system remain in place.

Hood Notes

Payday Lending

By Charlene Crowell

Before a packed audience of publishers, representatives of the payday lending industry and the Center for Responsible Lending debated whether this small dollar loan was helpful credit or a debt trap. The engaging debate, part of the recent National Newspapers Publishers Association's Mid-Winter Conference held in Charlotte, North Carolina drew candid comments from presenters and publishers alike.

The spirited dialogue drew two distinct positions. On the one hand, the Center for Responsible Lending, a non-partisan, nonprofit research and policy organization strongly contended that payday loans were predatory in nature and targeted minority consumers. By contrast, Advance America, one of the nation's largest corporate payday lenders adamantly maintained that race had nothing to do with store locations; rather in their view, economics alone drove site selection. Advance America also maintains that payday loans are a response to people living paycheck to paycheck, while CRL countered that it is the loan product itself that causes families to live paycheck to paycheck, due to the two-week term that depletes checking accounts.

Willie Green, speaking on behalf of Advance America, noted that annually 19 million people use the services of 22,000 payday stores nationwide, representing a $4 billion enterprise. Maintaining that the average payday customer takes out only eight loans within a 12 to 18 month period, Green claimed a demand for the product because Americans "live paycheck to paycheck."

Most importantly, the former payday store owner alleged that those who criticize the industry "haven't done their homework."

However, in a presentation by Keith Corbett, executive vice-president for the Center for Responsible Lending, stated that the APR for a typical two-week loan spanned 391 to 521 percent, adding that the ability to repay a loan is not a factor in the industry's approval process, borrowers only needed to present personal identification, a checking account, and income from a job or governmental benefits. Agreeing with earlier remarks to publishers by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Corbett characterized payday lenders as "back-door lending" while the industry entered the "front door" of banks to borrow funds, calling for reforms in both industries.

Citing the contrasting percentages between percent of population and percent of loan transactions, Corbett said he saw a strong connection between the industry locating in primarily minority communities while Green maintained that store locations were based on economics and not race. Terming payday loans as a "debt trap" that strips wealth from communities of color, Corbett quoted Dan Feehan, CEO of Cash America as saying, "And, the theory in the business is you've got to get that customer in, work to turn him into a repetitive customer, long-term customer, because that's really where the profitability is."

Corbett additionally cited a recent Advance America Prospectus, published data that documents how 90 percent of payday loans go to borrowers with five or more loans, while only two percent of loans go to borrowers who take out their loan, pay it off in two weeks, and do not need to borrow again.

Quantifying the effects of payday lending in the nation's most populous state, California, Corbett shared how $247 million is annually drained from California's communities of color. Moreover, this loan volume is gained from the patronage of Native Americans, Latinos and African Americans who together represent 65 percent of all loans in California, despite the fact that these three minority communities account for only 35 percent of the adult population.

Similar findings were shared for Texas and Arizona. For example, Latinos and African Americans together represent 39.6 percent of the Lone Star state's adult population; yet they account for 77 percent of all payday loans. In Arizona's Pima County, Native Americans, Latinos and African Americans are 35 percent of the adult population, yet take out 65 percent of loans.

Corbett also noted two other startling trends: (1) Payday borrowers are twice as likely to default on credit cards or file for bankruptcy; (2) 25 to 50 percent of borrowers will default in the first 12 months.

When questioned by Robert Bogle, publisher of the Philadelphia Tribune, as to what the annual percentage rate of a payday loan was, Green responded by citing a $15 fee per $100 over a two-week period. Despite repeated attempts to learn from the industry its average APR, as well as other publishers seeking to learn the cost of rollover fees when loans could not be fully paid, Green continued to cite the two-week fee.

Through the work of CRL and other advocates, consumer protection efforts have led 15 states and the District of Columbia to impose a two-digit percentage rate cap.

In 2002 and reaffirmed in 2005, the NAACP passed a national resolution against predatory loans with triple digit interest rates. At the organization's 100th Annual Convention in 2009, Ben Jealous, NAACP president said, "The top rate in share cropping was 40 percent. The top rate at some of the wildcat payday lenders can go up to 1,000. And at the corporate ones, it's a little over 400. For the military, they're restricted to 36 percent. So it's either as bad as loan sharing or ten times worse than share cropping; but either way, it shall not stand much longer."

Disgruntled says: In 2002, Atlanta Police Officer Raymond Bunn shot 18-year old Corey Ward, who was driving an SUV that had struck the officer. The single shot fired at the 18-year-old's head was fatal. Bunn resigned from Atlanta Police in 2004. He was indicted for murder in 2005. This week Fulton County Judge Henry Newkirk ruled the former police officer fired in self-defense. The judge supposedly based his decision on a 2006 law that allows a judge to rule on a self-defense claim before the case is taken to trial and a jury. Ward's family and friends are upset and have called for the District Attorney to appeal the judge's ruling. In a separate news event, the owner of an abused dog was found guilty of felony animal cruelty and could face years in prison and a fine. Juxtapose these two news stories and it becomes obvious that a white man can kill a black child and receive no punishment, but woe unto you for attempting to kill a dog, which is more valued than a black man in America.

Disgruntled feels: Trapped! The government says there is no inflation, but your dollars buy less at the grocery stores and gas pumps. In fact, nearly everything you purchase has risen in price or shrunk in size at the same price, i.e., smaller quantity, over the past year. It is enough to make you wonder whether or not you exist in some parallel universe. Adding fodder to that idea, few full-time job offers were extended over the last month and nearly forty thousand more workers joined the ranks of the unemployed, but the unemployment rate, according to government number crunchers, remained unchanged at 9.7 percent. Stock prices rose on the better than expected labor market report. It is enough to make you want to throw up; only you cannot afford to lose a meal. To top off this week of "good" news, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in much the same vein as she declared impeaching George W. Bush would never come before the House, said the single payer health insurance option is off the table, GOP Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky ended his unemployment insurance extension blockade and President Obama visited Georgia, where he touted funding for two nuclear power plants, even though technologically we are unable to dispose of the radioactive active waste. I do not know about you, but I feel downright trapped in a madhouse!

Disgruntled wants to know: Up to your eyeballs in debt and living from paycheck to paycheck, you join the ranks of the unemployed, because the company you worked for wanted to improve its bottom line and give more bonuses to those at the top. Or, your job gets outsourced for similar reasons. Whatever the reason, you are without the income that fed the illusion of a middle class existence. The unemployment check you get every week is not enough to met half of your obligations, so you must make some hard choices, i.e., you either eat and pay the rent or pay those credit card bills. Most folks jettison the unsecured credit card debt and other recurring monthly discretionary items, such as multiple cell phones, cable, eating out and other sources of family entertainment that requires money. Now that you have pared down your middle class lifestyle and can still barely survive, even with food stamps and help from family, friends and your church, your credit score takes a nosedive. At this point, you cannot get a payday loan, so you hardly care that no bank would consider extending you credit. Unfortunately, no one will give you a job either, because your credit sucks. Questions over this issue abound. In particular, do credit scores say anything useful about the work habits of a prospective employee and should employers use them to deny job applicants gainful employment?

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.playahata.com...Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers accused of giving children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade have been removed from their classrooms, a school district spokeswoman said Wednesday. Children from other classes at the school displayed photos of more appropriate black role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and President Barack Obama, Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said. The incident occurred at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where the student body is more than 90 percent Latino. District Superintendent Ramon Cortines placed the teachers -- all white men who teach first, second and fourth grades -- on administrative leave on Tuesday while an investigation is conducted.

Email www.ap.com Texas judge says death penalty unconstitutional...By Juana Lozano...A judge in the Texas county that sends more inmates to death row than any other in the nation is answering a torrent of high-profile criticism after he declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Judge Kevin Fine said during a court hearing Friday he is not legislating from the bench and there is no precedent to guide him in resolving the issues raised by defense attorneys in a pre-trial motion in a capital murder case. Fine has been heavily criticized since he ruled in a pre-trial motion in a capital murder case that the death penalty was unconstitutional. The district attorney, as well as the Texas attorney general and Gov. Rick Perry criticized Fine's ruling, calling it judicial activism.

Email dipierro@mindspring.com ...Subject: Re: The DISH Vol. 13 No 9... Thanks for your post dedicated to Latin America. It is interesting and informative. BTW, there are many people from the Quiché here in the US now, and in the Southeast. (I'm in North Carolina, and know some.) Sadly, they are among the "illegal aliens" who are treated as common criminals just for being here, and whom our politicians bash in order to build their careers. One other brief comment: As to the argument that abortion rights is a plot to reduce the African-American population, this is not new. The Right was circulating it some time back, perhaps 15-20 years ago. The fact that it's in the news as being something novel is a testament to our lack of historical memory. Keep up the good work!

Email www.huffingtonpost.com ...Profiting From Recession, Payday Lenders Spend Big To Fight Regulation...By Keith Epstein...Lobbyists are working to exempt companies that make short-term cash loans from proposed new federal regulations and policing. In state capitals around the country, payday companies have been fighting some 100 pieces of legislation aimed at safeguarding borrowers from high interest rates and from falling into excessive debt. Last year, as the U.S. House drew up a financial reform bill, some lawmakers who were courted by the companies and received campaign contributions from them helped crush amendments seeking to restrict payday practices, a review by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found. The failed amendments would have capped payday interest rates - which reach triple digits on an annualized basis -- and would have limited the number of loans a lender could make to a customer. Working largely behind the scenes, the industry ended up dividing the Democratic majority on the 71-member House Financial Services Committee. Over the last decade, lenders specializing in short-term loans, along with company executives and others associated with them, have spent millions of dollars to win influence in Congress. Lobbyists swayed not only conservative, free-market-minded "Blue Dogs" but liberals from poorer, urban districts where payday lenders are often most active. At least one of the liberals threatened to vote with Republicans against the financial reform bill if it restricted payday lenders. 'The payday lenders have done a lot of work,' House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said in an interview. 'They've been very good at cultivating Democrats and minorities.'