If you're a progressive news junkie, you probably heard about the death of Air America Radio last week. (If not, check out this very sad web page.) The network closed after nearly six years, citing "the laws of economics." They are indeed immutable—unless, of course, you're too big to fail. Unfortunately, Air America wasn't.

The loss of Air America—like In These Times, a member of The Media Consortium—is bad enough, but its demise is affecting our favorite online video news outlet, GRITtv.

It turns out that viewer-supported GRITtv, hosted by Laura Flanders, a former ITT columnist, has broadcast from Air America's New York City studios since its launch in May 2008. Now they need a new home, and it won't be cheap: Sarah Jaffe of GRITtv says the move to a new home will cost nearly $50,000. Here's the call she sent out for donations:

We’re sorry to see our [Air America] friends and officemates go, and wish them the best. We’re also stuck in a tight spot. GRITtv has broadcast from the Air America studios from the start, but now have to find a new home. It’s not going to be cheap! We’re looking at nearly $50,000 in moving expenses, equipment purchases, and cost increases, and we have to raise it fast.

Every donation you make will be matched dollar for dollar by Free Speech TV, and will go to helping us move to new studio and office space to continue bringing you your GRITtv fix with as little interruption as possible. We know we are going to end up with even better space and an even better show for you all. We’ve got other new, exciting features coming soon as well.

Every contribution helps. We appreciate all your support in helping us make GRITtv even better.

You can donate to help GRIT here, and look at Facebook photos of an office in sudden flux here.

From everyone at In These Times, best of luck, GRITtv! Survival ain't so easy in the independent media world... and we would know, unfortunately. Hang in there.
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

In his first State of the Union address, President Barack Obama touched on climate issues only briefly. He called on the Senate to pass a climate bill, but did not give Congress a deadline or promise to veto weak legislation. Nor did he mention the Copenhagen climate conference, where international negotiators struggled to produce an agreement on limiting global carbon emissions.

The Obama administration's attitude towards climate change still represents a remarkable shift from the Bush years, when global warming was treated as little more than a fairy tale. But in the past year, Congressional squabbling has stalled climate legislation, and international negotiators nearly gridlocked in talks over carbon admissions at the multinational Copenhagen conference. Without strong leadership from the president, work to prevent this looming environmental crisis will stall.

Obama did address global warming skeptics, saying that they should support investment in clean energy, “because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.”

“And America must be that nation,” Obama said.

No push for climate bill

Despite his combative language, the president did not challenge Congress to push for real solutions to ballooning carbon emissions and energy consumption. As Forrest Wilder of The Texas Observer notes, Obama “uttered the phrase 'climate change' precisely once.”

The Senate has already wait-listed the climate bill: Health care came first. With health care reform now in line behind work on jobs and bank regulation, climate legislation has little chance of passing the Senate in the coming months, let alone making it to the president's desk.

If Congress lets this work wait until after the midterm elections, the United States will show up at international negotiations in December 2010 as a leader in carbon emissions yet again, but with little in hand to show a way forward.

Clean energy, not renewable energy

When the president did bring up climate issues, he focused on their connection between climate reform and potential job creation. Obama highlighted areas for growth, not in renewable energy fields like wind or solar power, but in nuclear power, natural gas, and clean coal.

Yes, these fuel sources could decrease the country’s carbon emissions. But they are not solutions that will revolutionize energy production. Grist’s David Roberts was floored that the speech omitted renewable energy entirely and kowtowed to a more conservative litany of energy projects. "I suppose it was done to flatter conservative Senators that will have to vote for the bill Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham are working on," he writes. (The three Senators are working on a version of the climate bill designed to appeal to Republicans.)

"But the SOTU is not a policy negotiation," Roberts says. "It’s a bully pulpit, a chance to shape rather than respond to existing narratives."

Roberts argues that progressive supporters would benefit from a stronger message. If activists knew that the White House stands behind a real shift in America’s energy policy, they could use that prompt to drive action on climate change.

What was missing

While touting the virtues of off-shore drilling, Obama overlooked other policies that could broker real change. Although he admonished Congress to pass a climate bill, he did not pressure the legislature on what he’d like that bill to include. He did not mention cap-and-trade, the mechanism the House bill relies on to tamp down emissions and dirty energy use.

President Obama did touch on transportation reforms that could decrease the country’s use of fossil fuels.

“There's no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains,” Obama said. He cited a high-speed rail project that broke ground on Tuesday in Tampa, FL, as evidence that America could best the rest of the world in creating new energy-efficient technology.

But one or two high-profile projects won't be enough to challenge Europe's network of high-speed trains or China's investments in solar power. The White House could put the country at the forefront of sustainable technologies, but it'll take more money than the president has committed. In AlterNet’s ideal state of the union, projects like the railway would merit sustained attention and funding. Funding for the high-speed train came from this year’s stimulus bill, and there’s no guarantee that similar projects will find federal funding in the future.

“Continued support is still needed" for green jobs and clean energy, Alternet’s editorial staff argues. “It's unclear yet how Obama's new proposal for a three-year spending freeze will apply to this sector, but a boost is what is needed, not cuts.”

Green jobs

Michelle Chen argues for In These Times that the president is right to subordinate climate issues to economic policy. “The jobs angle is more than sugar-coating,” she says. A recent Pew Research Center poll put climate change at the end of Americans’ long list of cares, and a Brookings Institution study found that they’re no longer willing to pay as much for greener products.

Jobless workers need green in their pockets most of all, and so far politicians’ promises haven't made up for the slack economy.

“No matter how slick the marketing, confidence in green jobs may wilt even further absent real investments in the beleaguered blue-collar workforce,” Chen writes.

Copenhagen accord losing momentum

The small role that climate change played in the state of the union address only emphasized the downward momentum of the issue since the United Nations conference on global warming in Copenhagen. Grist’s Jonathan Hiskes talked to six leaders in climate change activism, and none of them offered a different strategy than they had last year.

That same stasis is showing up in Europe, as well. Spain, which currently leads the European Union, proposed that the European Union’s negotiating position should remain the same as its position before the Copenhagen conference, according to Inter Press Service.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who’s working on climate change legislation in the Senate, offered advice to climate activists at a clean energy forum in Washington, DC on Wednesday. Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports that Sen. Kerry encouraged his audience to get angrier, louder, and more active, in the mode of the conservative Tea Partiers, who have earned plenty of attention. After his speech, he also recalled the tactics that pushed landmark legislation like the Clean Air Act through Congress.

If climate change is going to play a larger role in the next state of the union, the citizens and groups concerned about this issue need to do something to put it on the agenda. Otherwise, next year, the president may find it just as easy to skim over it again.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger

The conservative videographer who donned a pimp suit to embarrass the anti-poverty group ACORN was arrested in New Orleans, LA for allegedly conspiring to bug the office of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

It's not clear why Landrieu was targeted, but many suspect that she was singled out because she played a pivotal role in advancing health care reform.

Filmmaker James O'Keefe and three other men have been charged with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purpose of committing a felony, according to Justin Elliott of TPM Muckraker. At RH Reality Check, Rachel Larris notes that, if convicted, the four could face up to 10 years in prison.

Like chum in the conservative shark tank

Landrieu, a conservative Democrat, negotiated an extra $100 million in Medicaid funds for Louisiana in exchange for allowing the health care bill to come to the senate floor. Accepting health care for the poor in the interest of health reform was like chum in the conservative shark tank.

Rush Limbaugh called her the most expensive prostitute of all time. "She may be easy, but she's not cheap," crowed Glenn Beck. It got so bad that Democrats call on Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was called upon to denounce the chorus of conservatives attacking his fellow Louisiana senator as a prostitute. (Correction: Vitter did not call Landrieu a prostitute.)

O'Keefe must have realized that an exposé of Mary Landrieu would be a hot commodity.

"This is Watergate meets YouTube," said Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief David Corn said on MSNBC's Hardball last night.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Health care reform in limbo

The arrests could not have come at a better time for the Democrats. Health care reform is in limbo as congressional leaders plan their next move after losing their filibuster-proof majority. The bugging scandal is deflecting attention from tense internal negotiations.

Brian Beutler of TPMDC reports that the House Democrats are converging on a strategy to get reform done: The House will pass the Senate bill and the Senate will fix it through budget reconciliation.

The Republican counter-strategy

While the Democrats agonize over what to do next, that senate Republicans are honing strategies to thwart any Democratic attempt to pass health care reform through budget reconciliation, as Dave Weigel reports in the Washington Independent. The reconciliation process allows both sides to vote on unlimited number of amendments. GOP leadership is hinting that if Dems take the reconciliation route, they will be forced to vote on every politically embarrassing amendment the opposition can dream up.

The stakes are high. In the American Prospect, Paul Starr reminds progressives that there's till a lot worth fighting for, even without a public option. For all its faults, the Senate bill would still cover 30 million uninsured Americans, expand Medicaid, end discrimination based on preexisting conditions, and set up exchanges designed to keep rising insurance premiums in check.

A memo for reform

Finally, our sources tell us that Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly is making quite a stir on Capitol Hill with his memo advising the House Democratic caucus on the need to forge ahead with health care reform. In 1994, conservative commentator William Kristol wrote a health care memo to Republicans that became the backbone of their anti-reform strategy, even up to the present day. Benen hopes his memo will be a useful counterweight for Democrats. Benen warns the Democrats that it's far riskier to fail than to pass reform that doesn't please everyone.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger

Progressives have waited a year for President Barack Obama to roll up his sleeves and fight for serious financial reform. Last week, he finally jumped in the ring, telling weak-kneed Senators to stand up to Wall Street and endorsing a critical ban on risky securities trading.

But while it was good to see Obama start throwing financial punches against the banks, this week he also started throwing them at workers. His recent rhetoric on implementing a spending freeze to reduce the deficit is an economic catastrophe in the making. It indicates that Obama is willing to sacrifice jobs to try and win over Republicans.

A spending freeze would kill jobs

A three-year spending freeze is crazy talk. It's a right-wing ideologue's dream that accomplishes nothing and drives millions of people out of work. John McCain campaigned on it during his 2008 presidential run. Our long-term deficit problems are tied to the rising cost of health care. If you want to fix the deficit, fix health care. In the short-term, there is no deficit problem. In fact, the U.S. fiscal position looks very good compared to many European nations.

As Matthew Rothschild notes for The Progressive, a spending freeze would kill any legislation to create jobs. With unemployment at 10%, the economy desperately needs another round of government spending to put people back to work. While the abrupt policy reversal is clearly a political ploy, voters care much more about results than they care about ideology. If Obama actively sabotages the job market to win over conservative deficit-hawks, he'll be putting his political future in serious jeopardy.

And yet, as Steve Benen notes for The Washington Monthly, Obama's recent, ramped-up rhetoric against banks still marks a significant change in tone. For most of the year, Obama hasn't been involved in the financial reform debate at all, letting Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner capitulate to Wall Street and the politicians it owns. Benen highlights the end of Obama's speech announcing his new banking rules on Jan. 21. Obama says:

So if these folks want a fight, it's a fight I'm ready to have. And my resolve is only strengthened when I see a return to old practices at some of the very firms fighting reform; and when I see soaring profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms claiming that they can't lend more to small business, they can't keep credit card rates low, they can't pay a fee to refund taxpayers for the bailout without passing on the cost to shareholders or customers -- that's the claims they're making. It's exactly this kind of irresponsibility that makes clear reform is necessary.

Saving the CFPA

Katrina vanden Huevel lays out Obama's new financial reform agenda in a column for The Nation, praising a new $117 billion tax on the nation's largest banks, a plan to cap overall bank size, and a proposal to ban high-risk trading by economically essential commercial banks (more on that later).

But vanden Huevel also rightfully denounces recent indications that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) may cave to lobbyist pressure and drop the measure to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) from the Senate's financial reform bill.

The death of the CFPA would be a devastating blow to reform. Existing bank regulatory agencies see their primary job as protecting bank profits, meaning that any time the interests of the U.S. consumer conflict with those of bank balance sheets, the regulators have shafted consumers. Current federal banking regulators not only failed to enforce consumer protection laws, they went so far as to join the bank lobby in suing state regulators who were trying to protect households from predatory lending.

Fortunately, Obama isn't taking Dodd's bank lobby-induced cowardice sitting down. At Talking Points Memo, Rachel Slajda highlights a New York Times report that claims Obama met with Dodd and told him that the CFPA is a "non-negotiable."

Commercial banks are important

There's a lot to like in Obama's plan to bar commercial banks from participating in risky securities trading. As I emphasize in a piece for AlterNet, commercial banks form the backbone of the U.S. economy. They're the institutions that accept your paychecks as deposits and keep businesses moving with loans. They also form the core of the economy's payments system. Without commercial banks, nobody can pay anybody else for goods and services—the economy literally shuts down.

Nevertheless, in the late 1990s, regulators and lawmakers tore down the walls between commercial banking and riskier, complex securities trading, allowing these critical economic utilities to gamble in the capital markets like high-flying hedge funds. That kind of behavior puts the entire economy in jeopardy, and Obama's proposal to end such behavior is very urgently needed.

But, as vanden Huevel and I both note, Obama's cap on bank size is a little too timid. Obama indicated that he wants to prevent big banks from getting bigger going forward. That misses the point.

Bustin' up "too big to fail"

Financial giants like Citigroup and Bank of America are already much too big and pose an economic threat. That's why we refer to them as "too big to fail," and why the government had to devote over $17 trillion to saving them. Obama must cap bank size and break up our behemoth banks into companies that are small enough to fail without wreaking havoc on the economy. A good rule of thumb: 1% of gross domestic product.

Shouting down the bank lobbyists

In Mother Jones, David Corn emphasizes that Obama's credentials as a serious reformer depend more on his policy maneuvering than on his rhetoric. While it has been extremely promising see Obama finally demanding something serious from the financial giants that taxpayers saved, he'll have to shout down the bank lobbyists to secure meaningful economic—or political—gains. Corn writes:

If Obama aims to be widely regarded as a warrior for the middle class, he will have to take some mighty swings that cut through the clutter. Proclaiming 'I am a fighter' will not be enough. He will have to name his foes (financial institutions, insurance companies, Republicans, and perhaps recalcitrant Democrats) and truly exchange blows.

Obama's stance on the CFPA alone should be enough to get the lobbyists into a lather, but he'll have to keep up the fight on multiple fronts if he wants to protect our economy from the Wall Street recklessness that spurred millions of foreclosures and sent the unemployment rate soaring into double digits.

Last week, Obama finally told us he was willing to fight for economic change. Now it looks like he's going to attack anyone who is looking for a job. Let's hope he turns it around before it's too late.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs. FEC that the government has no business regulating the campaign contributions of corporations and unions. Citing First Amendment rights to free speech, the court’s slim majority (5-4) agreed that corporations should be given the same rights as individuals.

That means that corporations (including unions; i.e., any incorporated organization) can now purchase their own campaign ads in support of candidates, so long as they aren't created by the candidates themselves. According to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, these "independent expenditures" are considered "political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate."

Surprise, surprise: The precedent-overturning decision has triggered significant protest within the progressive community. In an attempt to help individuals compete with corporations, MoveOn.org is circulating a petition to pass a bill to allow public financing of elections.

Mother Jones' Nick Baumann argues that Chief Justice Roberts and his conservative colleagues "can no longer avoid the label of "activist" judges. They've turned the political system upside-down." And, as The American Prospect's Heather Gerken explains, previous cases have already restricted the government's campaign finance regulations-- "this was just the final nail in the coffin." Gerken writes:

The truth is that the most important line in the decision was not the one overruling Austin. It was this one: "ingratiation and access . . . are not corruption." For many years, the Court had gradually expanded the corruption rationale to extend beyond quid pro quo corruption (donor dollars for legislative votes). It had licensed Congress to regulate even when the threat was simply that large donors had better access to politicians or that politicians had become "too compliant with the[ir] wishes." Indeed, at times the Court went so far as to say that even the mere appearance of "undue influence" or the public's "cynical assumption that large donors call the tune" was enough to justify regulation. "Ingratiation and access," in other words, were corruption as far as the Court was concerned. Justice Kennedy didn't say that the Court was overruling these cases. But that's just what it did.

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If you have haven't read Scott Horton's brand-new blockbuster article challenging the U.S. government's official version of how three Guantanamo prisoners died in June 2006, you owe it to yourself (and your country) to do so right now. Like every Harper's investigative article worth reading, it's long, deeply reported and shocking.

Harper's actually published the online piece, titled "The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle," a full month before it will appear in print, presumably because a printing schedule shouldn't delay what obviously ought to happen immediately: Congress should launch an official inquiry to examine the events surrounding the deaths of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, none of whom were ever charged with a crime.

If for some reason you're still reading this and not the actual article, perhaps these three paragraphs (which don't even touch on "Camp No" and shocking/shockingly confusing autopsy details) will persuade you to:

According to the [U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service], each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

And:

The fact that at least two of the prisoners also had cloth masks affixed to their faces, presumably to prevent the expulsion of the rags from their mouths, went unremarked by the NCIS, as did the fact that standard operating procedure at Camp Delta required the Navy guards on duty after midnight to “conduct a visual search” of each cell and detainee every ten minutes. The report claimed that the prisoners had hung sheets or blankets to hide their activities and shaped more sheets and pillows to look like bodies sleeping in their beds, but it did not explain where they were able to acquire so much fabric beyond their tightly controlled allotment, or why the Navy guards would allow such an obvious and immediately observable deviation from permitted behavior. Nor did the report explain how the dead men managed to hang undetected for more than two hours or why the Navy guards on duty, having for whatever reason so grievously failed in their duties, were never disciplined.

And:

[Guantánamo guard Christopher] Penvose, from his position at Tower 1, had an unobstructed view of the walkway between Camp 1 and the medical clinic—the path by which any prisoners who died at Camp 1 would be delivered to the clinic. Penvose told Hickman, and later confirmed to me, that he saw no prisoners being moved from Camp 1 to the clinic. In Tower 4..., another Army specialist, David Caroll, was forty-five yards from Alpha Block, the cell block within Camp 1 that had housed the three dead men. He also had an unobstructed view of the alleyway that connected the cell block itself to the clinic. He likewise reported to Hickman, and confirmed to me, that he had seen no prisoners transferred to the clinic that night, dead or alive.

If U.S. government officials tortured the three men to death, it would quite easily equal, if not surpass, the Abu Ghraib prison fiasco in terms of human rights abuses and government power run roughshod over America's foundational moral and legal principles. And if the elaborate, high-level cover-up the article alleges is also true, this story would rank as the most disgusting act of government corruption during the Bush administration. Unless, I suppose, you count misleading the country into Iraq. More »

By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger

Professional pundits and Democratic politicians are in a frenzy over what Martha Coakley's senate seat loss to Republican Scott Brown might mean for American politics.

Immigration reform in jeopardy

As Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect reports, the loss of one seat probably won't derail heath care reform, but it does make the chances of passing immigration reform slimmer. Meyerson writes that immigration reform is "necessary to restore our economic vitality and political equality," and actually passing reform would benefit the Democratic faction. Unfortunately, that means that immigration reform will require 60 votes in order to pass the senate.

The Texas Observer's Melissa del Bosque writes about the slim chances of immigration reform passing in 2010. According to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a 2011 target date is "probably more realistic." del Bosque refuses to lose hope, reminding us that Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has assured the public that "the Obama administration promised to bring up the issue in 2010." Of course, bringing up an issue and actually passing reform are two very different animals.

Holding on to hope for 2010

In her daily roundup of Spanish-language media, Erin Rosa of Campus Progress also urges a positive outlook "despite the reorganization of the Senate." Rosa relays that Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) assured the media during a telephone conference that President Obama "remembers his promise well." While "most latinos" interviewed are impatient, they hold on to hope that 2010 is the year for reform.

TPS for Haitians

Haitian undocumented that are currently within U.S. borders will be given Temporary Protected Status (TPS), as Julianne Hing reports for RaceWire. The decision only applies to Haitian immigrants in the U.S. prior to January 12, 2010. Hing observes that it is unfortunate that it took "a disaster of this magnitude" to inspire the White House to offer TPS to Haitian immigrants, though it is "a great relief."

What will the recently granted TPS status mean for Haitians that are already in deportation proceedings? Such is the case of Haitian immigrant Jean Montrevil, as Aarti Shahani reports for New America Media. Montrevil came to the U.S. on a green card in 1986 to "make it big," but in his efforts, "got stupid," and caught up in selling drugs from his taxi cab. That was 20 years ago, and Montrevil has served 11 years in prison to pay for his errors. Montrevil is now a father of four and a community leader. The Department of Homeland Security considers his prison time proper cause to deport him. Many others feel he has done his time, and is a positively contributing member of our society. Democracy Now! also covered Montrevil's story recently, as noted in the Jan. 7 Diaspora.

Invisible to the first world

Why are countries like Haiti mostly invisible to first world nations like the U.S. until catastrophe strikes? Leonardo Padura asks, before the earthquake, "Who talked about Haiti?" for IPS News. Haiti desperately needs the emergency aid so generously given today, but the country has needed help for a long time. "Let us hope that tomorrow, when the tragedy no longer dominates the headlines, and the dead are buried," writes Padura, "we will not forget Haiti exists...."

Disappointingly, "U.S. corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund" are remembering Haiti in a rather cruel and opportunist fashion, as Benjamin Dangl reports for AlterNet. At a time of crisis and great human need, Washington D.C. is "promoting unpopular economic policies and extending military and economic control over the Haitian people." This is disturbing, as a long history of economic exploitation helped render the country vulnerable to disaster. The recent earthquake has claimed roughly 200,000 lives so far.

Haiti in context

While borders and border cities bear the brunt of blame when migrants move, the cure won't be found in bigger bails of barbed wire, or harsh enforcement tactics that deny escape from economic desperation or dangerous conditions.

Jocelyn Barnes, reporting for The Nation, provides a much needed contextualization of Haiti. There are many related factors that weakened and harmed Haiti's ability to thrive, not the least of which have been storms and earthquakes. But the privatization of Haiti's infrastructure—which was "championed" by current envoy to Haiti in charge of "leading the quake assistance brigade" former president Bill Clinton—have definitely been instrumental in the country's fate.

Marching against Arpaio

Finally, given the recent holiday celebrating the life and efforts of civil rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr., we would be remiss in overlooking the January 16 march in Arizona protesting Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The event was organized by Salvador Reza, a respected Mexican American activist and community organizer in Arizona. Musician Linda Ronstadt, Co-Founder of United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta, and approximately 5,000 people marched from a park to Tent City, the name for the sheriff's makeshift detention center.

Arpaio is reviled by many in the Latino and undocumented community for his methods of racial profiling and humiliating treatment of detainees. Recently, Arpaio was compared to Bull Connor by an ad published in in the Arizona Republic by 60 black leaders and the Center for New Community.

King's vision was large and led to new horizons; it cannot possibly be contained to one era, or one day on a calendar. The struggle continues, every day, everywhere.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger

Last night, Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill Teddy Kennedy's senate seat in Massachusetts. Coakley's loss puts health care reform in jeopardy.

With Coakley's defeat, the Democrats lose their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. However, as Paul Waldman explains in The American Prospect, Coakley's loss is not the end for health care reform.

Remember, the Senate already passed its health care reform bill in December. Now, the House has to pass its version of the bill. The original plan was for House and Senate leaders to blend the two bills together in conference to create a final piece of legislation (AKA a conference report) that both houses would vote on. Once the Democrats are down to 59 votes, the Republicans can filibuster the conference report and kill health care reform.

But if the House passes the same bill the Senate just passed, there's no need to reconcile the two bills. This so-called "ping pong" approach may be the best way to salvage health care reform. Some of the flaws in the Senate bill could still be fixed later through budget reconciliation. It would be an uphill battle, but nothing compared to starting health care reform from scratch.

The second option would be to get the bill done before Scott Brown is sworn in. According to Waldman, there could be a vote within 10 days. The House and Senate have already drafted some compromise legislation, which Waldman thinks is superior to the straight Senate bill. If that language were sent to the Congressional Budget Office immediately, the Senate could vote before Brown is sworn in.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a statement last night that Brown won't be sworn in until the election results are certified, a process that could take two weeks. Historically, the winners of special Senate elections have taken over from their interim predecessors within a couple of days. If the Republicans were in this position, they'd use every procedural means at their disposal to drag out the process. The question is whether the Democrats have the fortitude to make the system work for them.

Remember how the Republicans did everything in their power to hold up the Senate health care vote, including forcing the clerk to read the 767-page bill aloud? They were trying to delay the vote until after the Massachusetts special election. If it's okay for the GOP to stall, the Democrats should be allowed to drag their feet on swearing in Brown.

Also, remember how the Republicans fought to keep Al Franken from being seated after he defeated Norm Coleman? For his part, Franken says he's determined to pass health care reform one way or another, according to Rachel Slajda of Talking Points Memo.

Incongruously, some Democrats are arguing that rushing to a vote would be a violation of some vague democratic principle. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) wasted no time in proclaiming that there should be no vote before Brown was sworn in. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), of all people, averred last night that the Democrats should respect the democratic process and start acting like they have 59 votes while they still have 60.

All this talk of "respecting the process" is hand waving disguised as civics. According to the process, Scott Brown isn't the senator from Massachusetts yet. According to the process, you have the votes until you don't.

Talk about moving the goalposts. It's bad enough that we need 60 votes to pass a bill on any given day. Now, they'd have us believe that we also need 60 votes next week. Webb and Frank are arguing that Brown's victory obliges Democrats to behave as if Brown were already the Senator from Massachusetts. Of course, if Webb won't play ball, it's a moot point. The whole fast-track strategy is predicated on 60 votes. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly thinks that Webb effectively took the fast-track option off the table with his strongly worded statement.

Katrina vanden Huevel of The Nation argues that this historic upset should be a wake up call to President Barack Obama to embrace populism with renewed fervor. I would add that Obama was elected on a platform of hope and change. There is no better way to fulfill a promise of change than to reshape the nation's health care system and provide insurance for millions of Americans.

Ping pong, anyone?

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

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By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger

Rampant poverty can't be written off as the result of historical accident or a worker's incompetence. It is actively cultivated by bad public policies that direct economic resources into the hands of a wealthy few. The resulting inequality creates unnecessary suffering all over the world, from the humanitarian crisis in Haiti to the alarmingly high poverty rate in the United States.

Systemic poverty in Haiti

The tragedy in Haiti is not only the result of a massive earthquake. As Richard Kim explains for The Nation, Haiti has long been one of the world's poorest nations, and that poverty has prevented the country from protecting itself against natural disasters. As Kim explains:

Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor—by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Kim details Haiti's struggles under the weight of colonialist debt that dates back to 1804, the year it won its independence from France. Soon after the revolution, the U.S. and France threatened a trade embargo against Haiti unless the nation of former slaves agreed to pay reparations to its former slave-masters in France. Haiti paid off this extortion with loans from U.S. and European banks. The country was still paying those loans back in the 1940s.

In 2003, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide demanded that France repay Haiti $21 billion of these unjust payments. He was ousted by a military coup for his efforts. Even today, the emergency IMF loans that are ostensibly helping Haiti cope with the disaster are crippled by insane stipulations, such as raising electricity prices for Haiti's poorest citizens.

One-eighth of U.S. population receiving food stamps

The U.S. has been waging a quiet war against its own poor for decades as well. In a blog for Working In These Times, Akito Yoshikane highlights today's record level of poverty: One in four U.S. children are living on food stamps, while one-eighth of the entire nation is receiving them. That's over 38 million people, or more than four times the population of New York City. A poverty epidemic on this scale is a total affront to any concept of economic justice, liberal or conservative.

MLK and economic justice

Just economic policy was a critical concern for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But today's 13.2% U.S. poverty rate is actually higher than when King spoke out against it in 1968, as Rich Benjamin notes for AlterNet. The economic oppression of minorities continues to this day. While the overall U.S. unemployment rate is 10%, among black workers, the rate is an astonishing 16.2%, while Latino and Latina workers face 12.9% unemployment.

10% unemployment vs. multi-million dollar bonuses

It's impossible to tolerate 10% unemployment in any economy. But those high rates are especially cruel considering the multi-million-dollar bonuses being paid to bankers who were bailed out with U.S. citizens' tax dollars. Nomi Prins' fantastic interactive chart at Mother Jones reveals both the obscene executive pay levels and staggering federal bailouts that banks subsequently used to boost profits and banker pay.

Top bank executives scored regal paydays for nearly destroying the economy, and some of them even helped pervert the government into an enabler of banking excess. Need an example? Prins highlights Robert Rubin, who pushed through a host of radical deregulatory laws as Treasury Secretary in the 1990s, then left to take a job at Citigroup, where he reaped over $120 million before his company needed a massive bailout. There's no reason for policymakers to accept a 13.2% poverty rate while subsidizing paychecks for wealthy bankers.

What can be done?

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a panel convened to uncover the causes of the financial crisis, could play a key role in overturning the injustices embedded within the U.S. financial system. As Ruth Coniff notes for The Progressive, it's not simply that the bailouts saved the banks. It's that the banks are piggybacking on taxpayer-granted perks to score record profits.

Economic arguments are routinely deployed to excuse outrageous social injustices—the most common argument for the U.S. bank bailout claims that things would have been much worse for everyone if we hadn't thrown billions at the banks. There are grains of truth in the argument. If all of the banks had actually failed, the result would have been economic mayhem. But that bailout money should have come with major strings attached. There is no reason why bank CEOs, rather than taxpayers, should be reaping the rewards from profits that taxpayer funds generated.

In both global and domestic politics, severe inequality is often accepted as an economic fact, not a problem that must be solved. But the moral outrage prompted by the disaster in Haiti and the U.S. financial bailout is both real and justified. If we want to live in a just society, we cannot continue to subsidize the rich by exploiting the poor.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets. More »

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday is always a good time to take stock of our struggle with racism and discrimination, and with Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson, and Rush Limbaugh slinging arrows of hatred daily at our first African-American president, it would seem we haven’t made much progress. But a closer look reveals the Beast is now parading around so ostentatiously in public that we may have a chance to cut out its heart (nonviolently, of course).

When we left Atlanta thirty years ago, we did so because we were weary of living in an ugly warp where race pervaded every moment of every day. Family gatherings were always erupting in racial disagreement. Friends of different races still couldn’t get served in most downtown restaurants. A staggering 15 percent of white voters would cross over the back alleys of our society and vote for a white candidate who consorted with known Negroes (I know, I found out the hard way). The election of our first black mayor had sent tens of thousands of white homeowners scurrying for the suburbs (my mom and dad among them). Those who stayed behind had ripped the financial and educational stability from our public school system by transferring their kids to elite private institutions and segregation academies.

We moved to Washington, DC, and discovered a city that, while not perfect, not only tolerated, but encouraged equal treatment of its citizens, black and white, gay, lesbian and straight, immigrants and Mayflower descendants alike. And we found in the labor movement a home, again far from perfect, where problems of race, discrimination, and bigotry were at least discussed and even occasionally addressed. We traveled the country, proselytizing not only for union members, but for like-minded souls with whom we could march, demonstrate, and agitate for better schools, a cleaner environment, health care for all, control over corporate excess, and always for equality of opportunity and freedom from discrimination.

Like so many of our comrades and colleagues, we blew the corks off our bottles when Barack and Michelle and their lovely daughters walked in the front door to the White House. But then it seemed the ugly dragons that had stalked them through the election began to slither again from their caves. The “birthers,” who masked their racism in nativist in claims that Obama wasn’t American born; the religious right, steadfast in smearing our new president as a Muslim (and denigrating Muslims in the process); the “teabaggers” who conjured up a facade of patriotism to conceal their bigotry against blacks, women, immigrants, the poor and the disabled.

By the end of last year, only slightly encouraged by Sonia Sotomayer’s ratification, I was flattened out in a funk, plotting out another location transition, maybe to Paris, where I fantasized reliving the days when liberal thinkers, writers, and artists of all races had allegedly been able to live out their lives in the joyful absence of oppression. Okay, Okay, could be Australia. Somewhere else.

Not a religious man, I shouted hallaleulyah when Glenn, Pat and Rush saved me the grief of ripping up my roots again by blowing themselves up like helium balloons. Beck took the gas first by labeling Obama a racist and costing himself viewers, sponsors and buck. Limbaugh, who’d long been pounding the same theme, waited until the earthquake that devastated Haiti this week to puff himself beyond redemption, trumpeting the baseless charge that Obama had exposed his racist bent by taking but a day to address the crisis in Haiti, after taking six days to respond to the Panty Bomber attack. He then launched a campaign to dissuade his Dittoheads from making contributions to Haiti relief charities. Robertson, bless his seedy little heart, conjured up a “true story” about how the Haitians had brought this on themselves by “making a pact with the Devil” many years ago to get rid of their French rulers.

Now the Beast is free and floating over our national values like a dirigible of discrimination, a giant, pungent bag of putrid air in a Macy’s parade. Glenn, Pat and Rush are finally up there for everyone to see and most to condemn. The lust they share is for money and attention, so we should quietly deny them both by tuning out their radio and television shows, and turning our backs to their advertisers. It’s a great opportunity to deliver an object lesson to the race-baiters, gay-bashers, and immigrant haters dwelling in our collective bosom: racism and discrimination are intolerable in a righteous nation; you play, you pay.

This post originally appeared on From the Left Bank of the Potomac, Ray Abernathy's blog. More »