Alternet: "The Culture of Life" Top Ten

[rainbow4321]

http://www.alternet.org/story/21660/

1. Withdraw the Troops
More than 1,500 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians (some estimates are as high as 100,000.) Meanwhile, we're hunkering down building long-term military bases and sending more troops. How many more soldiers have to die before we set a timetable for bringing them home?

2. Stop the Death Penalty
Fifty-nine prisoners were executed last year, 23 of them in Texas alone. Yet study after study has shown the death penalty to be unequally applied by race, and hundreds of inmates have been found innocent at the eleventh hour. If we are all created in God's image, then it is up to God, not us, to deal the ultimate in punishment.

3. Pass Effective Gun Control Laws
More than 80 Americans are killed by firearms each day. Yet Congress has made it easier for criminals to get their hands on weapons -- most recently with the repeal of the assault weapons ban -- instead of following the lead of states like Massachusetts and New York, which have passed tougher laws and decreased handgun deaths.

4. Fund Social Services
Hundreds of homeless people, many of them war veterans, die on the streets each year because they can't gain access to basic services such as housing and health care. A truly compassionate person would fight against Bush's mean-spirited budget that cuts Medicaid benefits, veterans‚ health care, community services block grants, and other life-saving programs in favor of tax cuts for the rich.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. It's about damn time we got on this.

Use the words against them. Say it every five fucking seconds and co-opt their own propaganda.

[rainbow4321]

16. Chimp's multiple choice test....

[BlueEyedSon]

2. kick, recommended

[davidinalameda]

3. amen to that!

[davidinalameda]

4. whoops

double post

[Totally Committed]

5. Keep this thread up...

it is important!

TC

[politicaholic]

6. Take it with a grain of salt, but here's something about Bush & homeless..

http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr05-007.cfm

BUSH ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES RECORD $1.4 BILLION TO HELP HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF HOMELESS INDIVIDUALS AND FAMILIES
HUD funds will support unprecedented number of local programs



WASHINGTON - More than 4,400 local homeless programs across America will receive $1.4 billion in grants announced today by the Department of Housing and Urban Development-the largest single commitment of federal funds designed to provide shelter and care for those without a home of their own. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said the funding announced today represents the largest level of support for an unprecedented number of local projects on the front lines of caring for people who might otherwise be living on the streets.

----------------------------------------
When or if those funds will be received I don't know. No child left behind was supposed to get a windfall and all they got was a fart so...

[rainbow4321]

8. Another spin on it: "Bush to Cities: Drop Dead!"

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1187


So here's a headline from the Washington Post, January 14, 2005: "Bush Plans Sharp Cuts in HUD Community Efforts." It makes your eyes glaze over, doesn't it? It's one of those stories that is easier to skip. After all, what's it got to do with you? But read on: "The White House will seek to drastically shrink the Department of Housing and Urban Development's $8 billion community branch, purging dozens of economic development projects, scrapping a rural housing program, and folding high-profile antipoverty efforts into the Labor and Commerce departments, administration officials said yesterday."


"You've got a deficit to address, and your constituency base is not cities," says Chandra Western, director of the National Community Development Association, summarizing why the president's budget request might eliminate programs that serve so many people. North Carolina-based architect Bryan Bell, known for devising innovative housing for migrant farmworkers, has a different take: "I just think it's guns or butter. And we're losing butter."

<snip>

But maybe the idea that the federal government has a bad attitude toward America's cities is too sweeping a generalization, too unwieldy an abstraction. Maybe you care about sewers and sidewalks in roughly the same way you care about Social Security--you don't really want to think about it too much but would surely notice if it wasn't there. In that case, there's a smaller, more accessible story buried in all the bureaucratic chatter. It's about how we've begun to learn in the last decade that innovative and affordable housing are not mutually exclusive categories. The bottom-up approach that HUD began to emphasize during the Clinton years--making funds available for community development with a minimum of red tape--helped nurture a new generation of architects, who, inspired by the successes of Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio in Alabama and similar programs at universities around the country, began to try and recapture the Modernist mission of good design for everyone

<snip>

So next time you read a headline about cuts to HUD, don't imagine a bland, faceless bureaucracy and skip to a juicier story. Don't choke on the alphabet soup. Instead imagine architects, like Bell or KRDB, who are gradually developing new ways to make good architecture accessible to everyone who needs it. Think of the HUD cuts the way the scientific community might think of the abandonment of the Hubble telescope, a debilitating blow to a mission of exploration that's allowing us to see farther and more clearly than we have ever seen before

[AuntiBush]

11. Rural housing programs?

:banghead: And, "not based in cities..."

They hate Americans. Wake-up other side!

:banghead: again, and again. before going totally :crazy:

[rkc3]

9. Are all of these programs funded directly through HUD?

I wonder how much money goes to faith-based orgs in order to drum up political support for the repubs.

[rainbow4321]

10. He's shifting the funds to his people in the rural areas..

and stiffing the cities since he gets no urbanite votes...there is also a disbursement list at the link


http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr03-091.cfm

BUSH ADMINISTRATION AWARDS $24.6 MILLION TO HELP RURAL COMMUNITIES STIMULATE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CREATE JOBS
Funds will help produce affordable housing in 32 States and Puerto Rico
WASHINGTON - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez today announced $24.6 million in grants to help rural communities in 32 states and Puerto Rico produce affordable housing and stimulate economic development. The funding announced today is provided through HUD's Rural Housing and Economic Development Program.

Rural non-profit organizations, federally recognized Native American tribes, Community Development Corporations and state agencies will administer these grants. The funding will help 87 rural communities to build and improve affordable housing, create jobs and generate community and economic development.


"This funding demonstrates the Bush Administration's continued investment in rural communities across our country," said Martinez. "These grants will not only help fund critically needed housing and economic development projects but will help generate even more funding from other public and private sources."

Rural communities will use this funding as seed money to pay the start-up costs for activities undertaken by new organizations or for specific housing or economic development projects undertaken by new or existing groups. These grants will also help organizations to hire and train their staffs, develop strategic plans and acquire office space and other needed facilities. It's expected HUD's funding will leverage an additional $44 million from other public and private sources.





edited for spelling...

[rkc3]

13. Thanks for the reply.

There's too many numbers, relaying this information to repubs would be too much for them. They won't understand why it's such a big deal for money to be going away from cities.

[flamin lib]

23. I'm a Realtor in Texas and the funds have already been cut.

[camitche]

7. Stats on #2 (Stop the Death Penalty)

Abolitionist = countries of no death penalty
Retentionist = countries that use death penalty

Abolitionist for all crimes: 84
Abolitionist for ordinary crimes only: 12
Abolitionist in practice: 24

Total abolitionist in law or practice: 120
Retentionist: 76


Check out the good company that the United States keeps. We are the only "industrialized" country outside of Japan to have the death penalty.

AFGHANISTAN, ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELIZE, BOTSWANA, BURUNDI, CAMEROON, CHAD, CHINA, COMOROS, CONGO (Democratic Republic), CUBA, DOMINICA, EGYPT, EQUATORIAL GUINEA, ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, GABON, GHANA, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, GUYANA, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KAZAKSTAN, KOREA (North), KOREA (South), KUWAIT, KYRGYZSTAN, LAOS, LEBANON, LESOTHO, LIBERIA, LIBYA, MALAWI, MALAYSIA, MONGOLIA, NIGERIA, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, PHILIPPINES, QATAR, RWANDA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER & NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT & GRENADINES, SAUDI ARABIA, SIERRA LEONE, SINGAPORE, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SWAZILAND, SYRIA, TAIWAN, TAJIKISTAN, TANZANIA, THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, UGANDA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, UZBEKISTAN, VIET NAM, YEMEN, ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE


Info from Amnesty International
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-countries-eng

[fishwax]

12. Amen!

I'm nominating this for the greatest page.

[realFedUp]

14. Culture of Life comic from Ann Telnaes

[OzarkDem]

15. Not enough

As Dems we need to dump the silly incremental approach to health care reform - everyone deserves access to affordable health care, not just children.

[Pool Hall Ace]

17. Sing it !

:kick:

[Poor Richard Lex]

18. insure the children first

incremental approach worked for Dean in Vermont

[etherealtruth]

21. You got it! n/t

[Don_1967]

30. health care

I agree as Dems we should all be calling for universal health care & accept nothing else!

[cosmicdot]

34. agree - the situation is pushing 'critical' ...

it's passed the incremental approach stage

I'd say the same w/the Energy item ... to "Research Alternative Energy" sounds 1970s vs. having a 'Race to the Moon' Development and Implementation-level mission.

[Orrex]

19. Just for clarification...

Does anyone have hard numbers on the Maryland and New York data mentioned in #3? I talk frequently with "gun rights" proponents who invariably insist that the only way to control gun violence is to throw more non-regulated guns into the system. I'd value some specific stats.

Also, regarding #6. How is global warming "held responsible for the increasing severity of natural disasters like the Southeast Asian tsunami," which I recall to have been caused by massive a tectonic event.

I don't dispute that global warming is a disaster no longer just waiting to happen, but I don't think that the cause is served by blaming it for unrelated disasters.

What am I missing?

[AzDar]

20. kick!

[inchhigh]

22. Thank you for this post.

[Nothing Without Hope]

24. The AlterNet article is an excellent candidate for The Paper Chase Project

In clase you haven't heard of it, this is a low-tech strategy to get paper copies of key articles seen by people who would ordiinarily only get their news from propaganda sources like Fox. It's a terrific idea and this article is a NATURAL for it. Here's the DU thread on The Paper Chase Project:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3379870

Recommended!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

28. Is there a new Paper Chase thread?

this one is archived :-(

[Nothing Without Hope]

29. Yes, but they are not very visible. A fresh PC thread is needed

Here's one in the Activism & Events forum
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=106&topic_id=15497

Also in 2004 Election Results and Discussion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=350311#353099

Both threads were started on March 29 and dropped like stones without making it to the Greatest page. We need to do this again - I will discuss with paineinthearse and see about reposting and keeping visible. I'll post again here when I know more.

[ktowntennesseedem]

25. Try adding "Thou Shalt..." in front of all ten,

Now there's Ten Commandments I can really get behind! (I'm sure Judge Moore will gladly help carve us up a big ol' monument for that one!)

[Initech]

26. Great article.

I lurk here a LOT and I read most of the articles posted, and this has to be one of the better ones I've read. Really, the stupidity that came out of the entire Terri Schiavo case still just completely amazes me.

[JDPriestly]

27. No guest worker law

The liberal guest worker laws in Europe have created tremendous problems. It just does not work to create a subclass of second class residents who stay in the country only for a short term -- or who are supposed to stay only a short term.

Imagine the problems regarding education of the children of such workers. What language should the children use at school? English or their mother tongue. It would not be good to have thousands of children in our country for only a few years in English schools return to their own countries and find themselves behind in many subjects especially their mother tongue. Would the children of the guest workers be excluded? Then you would have divided families. It just doesn't work.


Present immigration laws need enforcement. Jobless Americans should be the first to get jobs, then think about guest worker laws.

[chomskysright]

31. YES!!! Set the agenda instead of being dragged around by it

[solinvictus]

32. Alternet, leave my damn guns alone!!

Good grief, are there STILL Dems who insist on dredging up that losing issue? We need better enforcement of existing laws, not knee-jerk "assault weapons" legislation that targets law abiding owners and cosmetic features on firearms.

[cosmicdot]

33. a Living Wage would be nice

but, the list is a good starting point for the discussion and debate

the Democratic Platform of 1936
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showplatforms.php?platindex=D1936

[Nothing Without Hope]

35. kick - this could be expanded into an article or a video to good effect NT