<p><strong>Program Director, American Friends Service Committee – San Diego</strong></p>
<p> Obama Administration officials this week touted their high record numbers of deportations – nearly 400,000 last fiscal year – as “smart and effective” law enforcement. It is neither.</p>
<p> Rather it reflects a precipitous loss of moral ground by a Washington political elite that has lost touch with the political realities of communities for which it is supposed to be representing.</p>
Commentary
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<p> Alabama is famous for self-deception, lying and stupidity unmatched in American history, except of course, by its neighboring sister state, Mississippi.</p>
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<p> Watching the Republican debate (desperately hoping for some light to shine through) about a third of the debate dealt with Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan.</p>
<p> The Cain 9-9-9 plan consists of the following:</p>
<p> A flat income tax of 9% regardless if you recycle bottles and plastics for a living or if you are Warren Buffet.</p>
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<p> We hear a lot these days about the need for “shovel ready jobs” and the lack of them, as well as the “do nothing Congress”. For those who want answers, not excuses, let’s visit some of the places where job preventers work.</p>
<p> First stop: The home of the President of the United States and his Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. This group steals more jobs and wealth in one week than a corporate jet full of greedy bankers in a lifetime.</p>
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<p> In Tea Party Republican Arizona, teaching Mexican American history is illegal because that history is purportedly “un-American” and foments the “overthrow of the government.”</p>
<p> The shamelessness of people who rally under the Confederate flag—a flag of treason, whose adherents renounced their U.S. citizenship, declared war on our country, and actually tried to overthrow our government!—claiming our history is “un-American” is breathtaking.</p>
National Hispanic Media Coalition is moving forward after canceled meeting with Latino Read more…
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<p> As a Democrat, predictably, I find all of the presidential candidates and the policies they support anathema to everything I believe this country needs right now. Their “solutions” are regurgitated failures that have been tried before and are a big reason President Obama inherited an economy on the brink of another Great Depression.</p>
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<p> The question that is most often posited during human rights struggles is, “Are We Going to Win?” Early on I would answer with certainty, “yes.” However, today I am cautioned by the words of Alice McGrath, one of the main organizers of the “Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee.”</p>