The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 13 No. 52…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…December 27, 2010

Intuit's Vibe

Free America

By Anonymous

A shout of joy is ringing through the land,

And men long bowed and broken rise and stand,

As if uplifted by God's bared right hand--

Our country shall be free!

The great decree enfolds the final deed;

No doubtful future closes round our need;

The blessed fruit hangs ripe within the seed--

Our country now is free!

Our mighty sacrifice has wafted sweet

Prevailing incense to God's judgment-seat;

Our martyrs sitting by the angels' feet

Know their earth-home is free.

God said, "Let Freedom be," as erst "Let Light,"

And burst a new creation on our sight,

Created in our hearts, and named aright

America the Free!

By this we pass from pain to realms of balm,

Striking our lessening tumult through with calm,

Harmonious, holy, happy, with the psalm--

Our native land is free.

O'er life's warm heights within the luminous sky,

Through death's cold vales where endless shadows lie,

Ring forth the psalm to all who live and die--

Our land--our land is free!

Almighty God! we swear by Thy high throne,

Though pain, blood, peril in our path be sown,

This glorious land we now may call our own

Shall be forever free!

DISHing It Up Hot!

Year End Note!

By Dot

Eerily befitting the issue culminating our thirteenth year of publication, we chose to focus on the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. In the course of researching the topic, we learned of the prisoner protest in Georgia. Originally a convict colony and one of the slave states that joined the Confederacy in seceding from the Union over the question of slavery, Georgia, in many respects, still reflects its "southern heritage." The prison protest and demands of the strikers highlight this fact.

Because the prison strike also highlights the confusion over what the Thirteenth Amendment did and did not do, we thought this would be an opportune time to provide some clarity on the controversy and/or spark enlightened dialogue on the topic. When it comes to the accomplishment of this amendment and its immediate successors, clarity is certainly lacking. So, let us be clear! Given a strict interpretation of the Constitution, the sort employed by conservatives, especially judges and Supreme Court justices, the economic slavery codified in Article 1 Section 2 of the US Constitution never ended. There is no language in any amendment that specifically repeals Article 1 Section 2 - the socioeconomic and political slavery clause. We urge you to read the Constitution!

Interestingly, the word "slavery appears for the first time in the US Constitution in the Thirteenth Amendment, which specifies the condition under which one can be held in slavery or involuntary servitude. Article 1 Section 2 makes no mention of slavery or involuntary servitude. The South won! Think about it! The gentlemen's agreement struck by the white men running this country allowed white privilege to stand as the law of the land; black slavery, the opposite of white privilege, was not abolished.

In many respects, the failure to end economic slavery and place all people on an equal playing field and the amalgam of problems not doing so has caused are the reasons potential presidential candidate Haley Barbour, governor of the slave state of Mississippi, is stuck in the untenable position of trying to whitewash the state and his civil rights record based on a faulty recollection or falsehoods about its racist past and present. In his faux pas part deux on the subject, Barbour again declared, "I just don't remember it as being that bad." Of course the turbulent Civil Rights era was not that bad for white boys solely concerned with ogling white girls; they were the scions of a segregated society to whom all the privileges of citizenship accrued. But, ask a black boy who shared the period and the picture painted of Mississippi and the South is decidedly different.

In retrospect, while the Thirteenth Amendment did not abolish economic slavery, the situation could be substantially worse had Congress passed some of the other proposed amendments for ratification to appease southern slave states. For example, the Corwin amendment would have maintained human bondage and allowed the institution to spread throughout the nation.

Electing to address the Thirteenth Amendment ends this publication year on a less than cheerful note. However, in addressing this issue, I am reminded of the quote by Dr. Francis Cress Welsing. "If one doesn't understand racism -- what it is -- how it works -- then everything else you do understand will only confuse you." It is our fond wish that we have cleared up some of the confusion. In thinking about all the things that can be done to improve the situation, we remain hopeful for the New Year. And, with more insight, we hope you will be intellectually energized and ready to actively work with us to abolish economic slavery. Let's begin the dialogue!

High Text Prisoners Slaves in 2010

By John Burl Smith

Thousands of inmates at several Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) facilities are engaged in a human rights protest. They are demonstrating against conditions which are relics of a bygone era. During the 1890s, judicial systems across the South became responsible for generating state revenue and industrial labor. Documented by Pulitzer Prize winning author Douglas A. Blackmon in his book, Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, this recounting of American history reveals the secret behind the South's harsh prison systems.

Southern states built their economies on the free labor of slaves and the Civil War is a testament to their unwillingness to develop another economic base. Depleted of capital following a war to maintain slavery, Southern states chose to re-enslave black people as a means of reviving their economies and creating revenue, rather than change. This arcane system was erected on the words of the 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution, which was supposed to free slaves.

Contrary to what slave descendants have been taught about the 13^th Amendment freeing them, what it actually did was redefine who could be held as a slave by adding a stipulation. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. In other words, anyone "duly convicted" of a crime can be enslaved. Consequently, Southern legislatures transformed their penal systems into conduits of neo-slavery, exclusively designed to entrap black men by passing such laws as vagrancy, changing employers without permission, disturbing females on railroad cars, abusive and obscene language, selling cotton after sunset and the like. State and county officials leased or sold prisoners that could not pay fines to large corporations, small time entrepreneurs and provincial farmers to work off their debt at hundreds of forced labor camps across the South.

Working prisoners for free became the means of resurrecting the South's economy. The basic intent of this system, which is to incarcerate blacks and use them as a source of cheap labor, has not changed. At the height of this system, convicts lived in squalid conditions, received poor medical treatment, were given food low in nutritional value and beaten frequently. Conditions have not changed substantially since the early 1900s, especially in Georgia. The inmate protest over human rights violations also extends to slave descendant not in prisons.

This prison protest, as well as all other pleas for help has fallen on deaf ears in the international community. Whether behind bars or on the street, slavery never ended for blacks in America. Currently, there is a petition before the United Nation which highlights many of the same demands these prisoners are making. The UN petition, filed with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (8-29-10) and the UN Human Rights Council (7-17-10), charges the US with violating the human rights of slave descendants. However, the UN has turned its back on slave descendants in America.

Slave descendants in the US are the only people in the world that are outside of the human rights protection afforded by international bodies; they must depend on white people to present and argue their grievances. The US does not allowed blacks to speak for themselves and present their case as they see it. Just as the inmates involved in this protest, who say the DOC refuses to recognize them as human beings based on the 13^th Amendment, slave descendants remain "second class" citizens because Article I section II of the US Constitution - the 3/5 Compromise -- was not repealed as it is claimed by those who say it was replaced by the 13^th and 14^th Amendment.

Having been kept ignorant throughout slavery, blacks believed what they were told about how and why they were no longer slaves. Even after being "educated," blacks continue to believe what they are told the Constitution says, rather than reading and interpreting it for themselves. It is clear; neither the 13^th nor any other Amendment says anything about "freeing slaves." This process was begun by the Emancipation Proclamation. The 13^th Amendment made it possible to treat white people and anyone else as a slave that is "duly convicted" of a crime.

This high text cell phone coordinated protest by prisoners in Georgia should make it clear that the racial injustices endured by slave descendants in the US is based in the Constitution and efforts to make it appear as if it is the result of individuals is just another lie, like the 13^th Amendment ended slavery. The State of Georgia treats its prisoners like slaves because the US Constitution says "anyone duly convicted" is a slave. The inmates involved in this protest want to change the state of Georgia; what needs to be changed is the US Constitution.

News You Use

Support the Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History!

On Thursday, December 9, 2010, thousands of men held by the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) refused to work. They stopped all activities and locked themselves down in their cells in a peaceful protest for their human rights. The 'December 9 Strike' became the largest prisoner protest in the history of the United States. They say the strike was initiated to tell the world that they are being treated like animals and slaves in 2010. They are demanding that the DOC institute programs that address their basic human rights. They set forth the following demands:

·A living wage for work: In violation of the 13thAmendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, the DOC demands prisoners work for free.

·Educational opportunities: For the great majority of prisoners, the DOC denies all opportunities for education beyond the GED, despite the benefit to both prisoners and society.

·Decent health care: In violation of the 8thAmendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, the DOC denies adequate medical care to prisoners, charges excessive fees for the most minimal care and is responsible for extraordinary pain and suffering.

·An end to cruel and unusual punishment: In further violation of the 8^th Amendment, the DOC is responsible for cruel prisoner punishments for minor infractions of rules.

·Decent living conditions: Georgia prisoners are confined in over-crowded, substandard conditions, with little heat in winter and oppressive heat in summer.

·Nutritional meals: Vegetables and fruit are in short supply in DOC facilities while starches and fatty foods are plentiful.

·Vocational and self-improvement opportunities: The DOC has stripped its facilities of all opportunities for skills training, self-improvement and proper exercise.

·Access to families: The DOC has disconnected thousands of prisoners from their families by imposing excessive telephone charges and innumerable barriers to visitation.

·Just parole decisions: The Parole Board capriciously and regularly denies parole to the majority of prisoners despite evidence of eligibility.

Prisoner leaders have issued the following request: Please call the following prison systems and declare your support for striking inmates! Georgia Department of Corrections (478) 992-5246; Macon State Prison (978) 472-3900; Hays State Prison (706) 857-0400; Telfair State Prison (229) 868-7721; Baldwin State Prison (478) 445-5218; Valdosta State Prison (229) 333-7900 and Smith State Prison (912) 654-5000.

For more information on the 'December 9 Strike' please contact: Elaine Brown, 404-542-1211, sistaelaine@gmail.com; Valerie Porter, 229-931-5348, lashan123@att.net; Faye Sanders, 478-550-7046, reshelias@yahoo.com; or Richmond Industrial Workers of the World • 804.496.1568 • richmondiww@gmail.com or visit www.iww.org/en/node/5293.

Bit of History

Thomas Corwin (1794 - 1865)

Born on July 29, 1794 in Bourbon County, Kentucky, Thomas Corwin's parents, Patience Halleck and Matthias Corwin, moved the family to a farm outside Lebanon, Ohio in 1798. His father, Matthias Corwin, served eleven (11) consecutive terms in the Ohio House of Representatives, two as its speaker. His brother Moses Bledso Corwin and uncle Franklin Corwin served as a US Representative and a Senator, respectively, from Ohio. As a young boy, Thomas Corwin worked on the family farm. During the War of 1812, he served as a wagon boy in General William Henry Harrison's Army; he later read law and was admitted to the Ohio state bar (1817).

In 1818, Corwin was named prosecuting attorney for Warren County, Ohio (1818-1828). On November 13, 1822, he married Sarah Ross; the couple had five children.

Scion of a political family, Corwin was elected to several one-year terms in the Ohio House of Representatives (1822, 1823 and 1829). In 1830, he was elected to the first of five consecutive terms (1831-1840) in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he chaired the Committee on Public Lands in the Twenty-Sixth Congress (1839-1841). First as a National Republican and then as a Whig, he supported protective tariffs, federal financing of internal improvements, and a national bank. A journalist dubbed him "the terror of the House" for his sharp wit in debates.

Corwin resigned from Congress on May 30, 1840 to run as the Whig nominee for governor of Ohio. He defeated Democratic incumbent Wilson Shannon to become Ohio's fifteenth governor. Two years later, Shannon handed Corwin his sole electoral defeat in reclaiming the governorship.

When the Whig Party returned to power in 1844, the Ohio legislature elected Corwin to the US Senate. A leading critic of the War with Mexico (1846-1848), he was encouraged to seek the presidency but refused and campaigned for the Whig nominee, General Zachary Taylor, whose successor, President Millard Fillmore, appointed Corwin Secretary of the Treasury (1850-1853). At the end of the Fillmore administration, he returned to a prosperous law practice in Lebanon, Ohio.

Corwin did not engage in the public debate over the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which opened Western territories to slavery. In 1858, he won election as a Republican to Congress, where he sought to downplay the slavery question and emphasize economic issues. He backed the Fugitive Slave Act, and chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee (1859-1861).

On December 4, 1860, the U.S. House of Representatives created a special Committee of Thirty-Three - one member from each state - to devise a compromise to prevent the secession of Southern slave states from the Union. Chaired by Corwin, the committee proposed a constitutional amendment to protect slavery. Specifically, it stated: "That no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress power to abolish or interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or servitude by the laws of said State." Congress passed the "Corwin Amendment" in early 1861. It was ratified by only two states--Ohio and Maryland-- falling far short of the necessary three-quarters majority of states in order to become part of the U.S. Constitution.

In March 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Corwin US minister to Mexico; he helped maintain friendly relations with Mexico throughout the Civil War, despite Confederate efforts to sway its allegiances. He resigned in May 1864 and resumed practicing law in Washington, DC, where he died on December 18, 1865, the day the abolitionist Thirteenth Amendment officially became part of the Constitution.

Corwin is remembered chiefly as a talented orator and sponsor of the proposed Corwin amendment, which remains to this day technically still pending for ratification before the state legislatures. That amendment would have prohibited any amendments to the Constitution from interfering with slavery in the United States. When it was approved by Congress and sent to the state legislatures for consideration, it was a last-ditch effort to avert the outbreak of the Civil War. Had it achieved ratification, the Corwin Amendment, which protected slavery, would have become the Thirteenth Amendment. (Sources: http://13thamendment.harpweek.com/default.asp, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Corwin and www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=76)

Venue for an Artist

The Amendment

By George William Curtis

It can not be said that the Yankees do not learn. When the war began, General Butler offered his soldiers to repress movements of the slaves. Generals Halleck and M`Clellan made themselves disagreeably notorious in repelling the best sources of information; and from one end of the country to the other it was agreed that it was a war for the Union only. So it was; so it has been; so it will be to the end. But that the Union and Slavery were henceforth incompatible, and that the country must choose the one or the other, was by no means a general popular conviction.

At the opening of the fifth year of the war, the country having thought the matter over, has now seen what some men have always seen, that Slavery in a Union like ours has been, and always must be, the root of civil war. Congress, therefore, recommends the constitutional abolition of Slavery, and the country cries Amen! This result has been so inevitable since the war began that the only surprise now is the agreeable one that the present Congress has done the work.

As for the fifty-six members who voted against the proposition it is difficult to speak with sufficient condemnation or contempt. A system opposed to every divine law and humane instinct obtains, under the conviction that it is rapidly perishing, a foothold in the Union. Suddenly it renews its life; swells into towering importance; debauches and demoralizes the nation; controls legislation by open threats; and finally loses its absolute and universal ascendancy in every department of the Government. Thereupon it organizes a fierce conspiracy, and for four years tries to destroy the nation. At last the nation decides to remove it, and fifty-six representatives resist upon the incredible ground that it is an inopportune time; that the public mind is excited; and that the rebels themselves do not share in the legislation for its extinction. According to this extraordinary theory, when a patient lies in mortal peril from a fever contracted in the fetid air of his chamber, it is better to wait until he is cured before the room is ventilated. The absurdity would be irresistible if the folly were not criminal.

A body of fifty-six Charles Firsts of England, or as many Charles Tenths of France, is the only parallel we can imagine for this ludicrous group of American citizens. Neither the French nor the English Charles would ever believe that the people were in earnest. Neither the Bourbon nor the Stuart could learn any thing from arguments or from blows. And this faction in the free States, which moribund Slavery leads by the nose, is at once the Jacobin and Jacobite element in our politics; Jacobin in its appeals to all that is most dastardly in human nature, and Jacobite in its tenacious clutch upon whatever denies the original rights of men.

For the last twenty years events have been trying the public men of this country until the very dregs at last appear. It is the most terrible record of the century. An honorable man hereafter would a thousandfold rather say that his ancestor voted against separation from Great Britain than that he voted against giving a lawful, peaceful chance of freedom to the slaves in America. The fortunes made in the slave-trade is popularly held to be tainted; but what shall be said of the reputation made by solemnly voting against the legal removal of the inhuman atrocities of Slavery?

About Me: In the February 18, 1865 issue of Harper's Weekly, the poem, "Free America," celebrated passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. On the same page, editor George William Curtis (1824 - 1892) wrote The Amendment. American writer and public speaker, born in Providence, Rhode Island, Curtis became political editor of Harper's Weekly in 1863.

Politics Y2K10

Why Barbour Whitewashes History (Excerpts)

By Steve Kornacki

Haley Barbour ..Who'd have figured that the first major blow to Haley Barbour's 2012 White House hopes would be delivered by ... the Weekly Standard? Bill Kristol's magazine is out today with a profile of the Mississippi governor, written by Andrew Ferguson, in which Barbour downplays the upheaval of the civil rights movement and characterizes the notorious White Citizens Councils of the 1950s and 1960s as a force for good.

Asked about coming of age in Yazoo City, Miss., during the civil rights "revolution," Barbour, who was 16 when three civil rights workers were murdered in the state in the summer of 1964, tells Ferguson, "I just don't remember it as being that bad." He goes on to talk of standing "at the periphery" when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in his hometown (but not really paying attention to what was said because he was too busy looking at girls) and to salute the Citizens Council for (supposedly) ensuring the peaceful integration of Yazoo City's schools -- something that was achieved 15 years after Brown v. Board of Education. Barbour tells Ferguson:

"You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders..." Here's how the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette explained the history of the Councils in 1996:

The Delta was home to the Citizens Councils, a name familiar to Southerners who lived through the turbulent 1950s and '60s. The first Citizens Council was organized by ardent segregationists at Indianola during the summer of 1954. By the next year, there were 60,000 members in Mississippi. The councils claimed to oppose violence, but their goal was to prevent black inroads during those nascent days of the civil rights movement and to protect what members characterized as the "Southern way of life." In Mississippi, the state's most powerful farmers, bankers and businessmen were members.

"It was a coterie that could apply frightful pressure on dissenters, whether white or black, in the enclosed, isolated Mississippi society," [Neil] Peirce wrote in 1974. "... By their very presence and rhetoric, the councils created a climate in which racial murder could be tolerated still longer in Mississippi."

The councils enjoyed the support of Democratic Sen. James Eastland and, to a lesser extent, Democratic Sen. John Stennis. The councils also had friends in the governor's mansion. Democrat Ross Barnett won the governor's race in 1959 using a campaign song that said in part: "He's for segregation 100 percent. He's not a moderate like some other gent."

The controversy that his remarks will surely stir underscores how problematic Barbour's political roots are for him. The simple fact that he was born in a segregated town (and that his family strongly supported staunch segregationists, like Jim Eastland) isn't the issue. Bill Clinton was a product of segregation. The problem is that Barbour has never seemed to come to terms with what segregation meant to African-Americans and what the legacy of segregation continues to mean now.

This is hardly the first time Barbour has tried to whitewash civil rights history. He's previously asserted the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962 -- accomplished only through federal intervention and riots that killed two people -- was "a very pleasant experience."

He's also told of building a friendship as a freshman at Ole Miss in 1965 with one of the school's few black students, a woman he identified to a McClatchy reporter last fall as Verna Lee Bailey. "I still love her," Barbour said in the interview. Of course, the woman's real name is Verna Ann Bailey, and when the reporter contacted her, she didn't even recall meeting Barbour. She also remembered the integration of Ole Miss a little differently: "I thought my life was going to end."

And then there was his claim that the South's wholesale transformation from Democratic to Republican stronghold had nothing to do with race and was accomplished by "my generation. My generation who went to integrated schools. I went to integrated college -- never thought twice about it." That would be news to anyone familiar with the share of the vote that Barry Goldwater received in Mississippi in the 1964 presidential election: 87 percent -- or nearly 50 points better than he did in the national popular vote. The truth, of course, is that the passage of Civil Rights in 1964 kicked off a steady, decades-long shift among white Southerners from the Democratic Party (which they'd been loyal to since northern Republicans had tried to impose the "humiliation" of Reconstruction on them) to the GOP. Barbour, a disciple of Clarke Reed, the father of the modern Mississippi Republican Party, played no small role in bringing that transformation about.

All of this leaves Barbour in a tough spot: The story of his rise in national politics is the story of the rise of the South in the GOP. Race, and the ugly reaction of many white Southerners to integration and civil rights, is at the heart of this story. Barbour can't really run from this past. So instead, he's left to devise an alternate history -- one in which an MLK speech in Yazoo City was a unifying event for the whole community, one in which a white boy named Haley made easy friends with a black girl named "Verna Lee" thanks to the peaceful integration of their school, and one in which Haley Barbour and his generation of white Southerners built the modern Republican Party on a unifying, post-racial philosophy. (Source: www.salon.com. Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him via email at SKornacki@salon.com)

Disgruntled feels: Alarmed! Every year during the holiday season, I am warmed by the outpouring of generosity by Americans from all walks of life who reach deep to help those less fortunate. It is truly amazing to see people helping each other and in general being considerate of their fellow human beings. Unfortunately, I am also chilled by the amazing speed with which this generosity and holiday cheer and giving are retracted or lose steam at the end of the holiday season as though the less fortunate exist on air the rest of the year. This is an annual complaint that I fear is unlikely to be rendered moot by a change in the way we behave after every holiday season. For the coming year, I am truly alarmed by the plight of the poor, especially the elderly and young as the official national unemployment rate hovers near ten percent and millions exist on a few dollars a day in food stamps. Christmas trinkets will not warm the hearth against January's bitter winter chill.

Disgruntled wants to know: If you only listen to US mainstream media about the WikiLeaks cables, you have missed some interesting information. I was certainly surprised to learn from a Guardian news article that McDonald's, the burger giant, "tried to delay the US government's implementation of a free-trade agreement in order to put pressure on El Salvador to appoint neutral judges in a $24 million lawsuit it was fighting in the country. The revelation of McDonald's strategy to ensure a fair hearing for a legal battle against a former franchisee comes from a leaked US embassy cable..." Even more information not covered by US media is contained in Bill Quigley's www.pacificfreepress.com article, "A Holiday Sampler of What Wikileaks Reveals about the US," which provides a smorgasbord of US cover-ups, coups, and civilian casualties from drone strikes. Some semblance of this information was already in the public domain, but obviously the whole story has not been told. So, what do we not know about what the government is doing in our names at home and aboard to cause such conniptions as calls for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange?

Disgruntled says: Having been born and raised in the South, I am very familiar with the southern drawl. We just can't help it y'all. I am also familiar with the exaggerated version, the kind sported by those that appeal for commercial and political purposes to "southern heritage." It is the guttural drawl of Haley Barbour, Bob Corker (R-TN) and some porkers appealing to a base; "we are one of y'all!" We, the gullible public, are to believe a first rate education did not erase, debase or eradicate the southern drawl of potential presidential candidate Haley Barbour, who declared in another interview-- published this time in The Weekly Standard -- "I just don't remember it as being that bad." The "it" Barbour was referring to was the civil rights struggle of the 1960s in his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi. Based on Barbour's recollection and experience, it was like a pleasant day or series of days in the neighborhood park with everybody holding hands and singing Kumbaya! Listening to him weave this tale of racial harmony, he even befriended a black girl, who feared for her life while integrating his alma mater. Deep in the heart of Dixie, people were dying to advance racial equality. A white boy, Barbour was surely insulated by privilege, so he may not recall or missed the horror of it all. But, that is no excuse for a potential presidential candidate who should at least know the history of the region where he learned to drawl, which I think is as phony as his recollection of the South's racist past and present.

Mailbox: E-Mails Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.huffingtonpost.com...Orange County White Supremacists Arrested For Extortion, Conspiracy, Murder...A gang sweep in Orange County has resulted in the arrest of 14 alleged white supremacists on suspicion of extortion, conspiracy and solicitation of aggravated assault and murder. The Orange County district attorney's office said Thursday federal, state and local law enforcement officials conducted an undercover sting to buy guns and drugs. Orange County's district attorney, Tony Rauckaukas, says authorities seized 27 firearms in what they are calling the largest such takedown in the county. He says 20 other people were arrested on parole and probation violations, nonviolent felonies and one attempted murder. The takedown included covert investigations, including one attempting to buy firearms and drugs; one on buying credit profiles and one that collected extensive information about a white supremacist prison gang.

Email http://blogs.alternet.org...GOP Kills Bonds Program: Secret Plan to Bankrupt States, Bust Public Employee Unions?...By Art Levine ...The tax deal that passed Congress doesn't just cost the federal government $850 billion in lost revenues. It also pushes state governments closer to defaulting on loans by failing to extend a federal subsidy program for states that has allowed them to raise billions and avoid bankruptcy. Cash-strapped state such as California and Illinois could indeed default on their loans, which would also cause the vital market in municipal bonds to plummet, a trend already underway. So with states across the country facing a $140 billion shortfall next year, some experts and union advocates also see the GOP opposition to extending the bonds subsidy -despite its support from even some Republican mayors and governors -- as part of a broader scheme to bust public employee unions and wipe out pensions.