Republicans Turn Back the Clock

The front-runner merry-go-round for the Republican nomination continues.  I try to pay it no attention but it's hard to do given the non-stop coverage by the news stations.  All you can be sure of is that whoever the eventual candidate is he (or she) will be in favor of the same policies that got us into the ongoing financial crisis.  After the New Hampshire debate, Robert Scheer posted an article on Truthdig and The Nation that notes "It’s as if the sound government regulation of the financial industry implemented in response to the Great Depression—not its polar opposite, the radical deregulation fueled by Republican free market zealots—was the source of our banking meltdown...It was precisely the legislation that their party pushed through Congress, and that Democrat Bill Clinton shamefully endorsed, that launched the era of unregulated credit default swaps and mortgage-based securities that came close to destroying the entire economy." 

Meanwhile Congressional Republicans continue to ignore and oppose the American Jobs Act but rather push for funding cuts to government programs they oppose as the price of avoiding a government shutdown.  Sickening behavior.  We can only hope that they will be defeated in 2012 and that the fear mongering, outright lies, and election rigging and vote-denying proposals (identity cards, registration restrictions, changes to electoral college procedures) don't succeed this time around. 

In the New Hampshire candidates' debate, as the WSJ reported, the candidates all strongly supported "the dismantling of government regulations drawn up over 40 years, using a candidates’ debate here to call for the scaling back or elimination of environmental, labor, financial and health-care rules."  This is what a Republican victory would mean in 2012.  But I think it would turn the clock back even further - maybe to pre-Depression conditions.  In the words of George Santayana:
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The Post I Prayed Not to Have to Write

Tomorrow an innocent man will be executed by the State of Georgia.  The final clemency appeal for Troy Davis was turned down by the Georgia's Board of Pardons and Paroles after listening to testimony Monday.  The testimony included that of one juror who says that had she known at the time of the trial what she knows now (see below - ballistics report), she would never have voted to convict.  The Board has the sole authority in Georgia to approve or deny clemency.

Troy Davis was convicted for the murder of a policeman coming to the aid of a homeless man who was being attacked.  His lawyers maintain and the evidence is overwhelming that it is a case of mistaken identity and that another man fired the shot that killed the officer.

For those unfamiliar with the case:

• There is no physical evidence linking Troy Davis to the crime.  The only piece of physical evidence presented at the trial has been found to be false.  Specifically, the ballistics report, which purported to link the bullet fired at the crime scene with a gun fired earlier at a party, was wrong. 
• No murder weapon has been found.
• The police and prosecution staged a re-enactment of the crime for the eyewitnesses and allowed them to speak among themselves.  Of the nine eyewitnesses that participated in this illegal charade, seven have since retracted their testimony.  One of the remaining two eyewitnesses holding to his story has been accused of bragging about committing the murder.

Appeals for clemency have come from former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Reagan's former FBI director, a Georgia Supreme Court Justice, the European Union and many others.  More than a million people signed petitions asking for clemency.

Neither the facts nor the testimony nor the appeals were enough to sway the Board.  So tomorrow, Wednesday September 20, the State of Georgia will murder an innocent man. 

It is long past time that the United States joined the rest of the civilized world and abolished the death penalty.  In 2010, only China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen executed more people than the United States. 



The death penalty has never been shown to be a deterrent to crime.  Numerous innocent people have been executed.  And in modern society an alternate exists - life without parole.  There is a strong moral dimension to this.  How can one justify the morality of killing someone who is already imprisoned and poses no threat?  The Catholic Church has, for years, taken a strong stand against the death penalty and American bishops are opposing it.  Although sentiment in our country has been steadily growing against the death penalty, a majority of Americans, a supposedly religious nation, still support it.  (Remember the cheers for Rick Perry at the Republican candidates' debate when the number of executions under his regime was noted by the moderator.)  Until they change their attitude, tragedies such as the execution of Troy Davis will continue to happen. 

Jobs, Executions, Gaza's Children

Obama presented a 450 billion dollar job plan in his address to the special session of Congress.  Preliminary estimates are that the American Jobs Act could put as many as 1 million Americans back to work - particularly because of the infrastructure rebuilding.  Robert Reich in a PBS interview noted that this is a "two-fer" - our roads and schools can use the rebuilding and with Treasury notes at 2% there has never been a better time to rebuild.  As expected, Republicans have begun criticizing the parts of it that are not direct tax breaks.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out - it may be too much to ask that Republicans put country ahead of party and ideology.  After all, if nothing happens and the job situation does not improve, Obama will be out of a job after 2012.  And that, as Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader in the Senate, has famously stated, is his primary goal. 

Who would be elected if Obama is thrown out of office?  The Republican front-runner is Rick Perry, another Governor from Texas.  This guy is Bush on steroids - at least Bush talked about "compassionate conservatism" in his first campaign; Perry blames the dismal performance of Texas' public schools on the fact that they share a border with Mexico.  His state has the highest rate of hunger in the country and he wants to dismantle Social Security.  More disturbingly, at the first Republican Presidential candidates' debate, the Republican audience erupted in cheers when the commentator mentioned the 234 executions under the Perry regime - the most of any modern governor.  This is one sick political party.  It's time the United States joined the rest of the civilized world and abolished the death penalty.  Sadly, though, a nation gets the government it deserves.  Let's just hope Texas secedes before 2012 as Perry mentioned as a possibility in a 2009 address to the Tea Party.

Finally, a sad note on freedom of speech...the Oakland Museum of Children's Art decided to cancel its planned exhibition of drawings by Palestinian children documenting their experiences during the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip.  1400 people, the vast majority civilians including 300 children, were slaughtered in the Israeli invasion at the end of the Bush presidency.