Time to kick out the War Party.

If neither major party candidates in races for Senate, House or Prez in 2014 and 2016 will commit clearly and unequivocally to slashing military spending, vote for a third party or independent who will. If there isn't one in a particular race, don't vote; your abstention in protest will mean more than your endorsement of Business As Usual. The only way to force radical change is the behave radically.

Want to know more about why the F-35 is a bad deal for America? Check out Brave New Films new video here.

IP

It has always been common for retailers of a stripe to cluster together (think music instrument vendors and diamond merchants in midtown). There are several mega-projects in the development stage around the city. Why not hold one condition of project approval to be the inclusion of a street with, say, half the retail space reserved at affordable rents for booksellers? Rent control for bookstores.

What would the world be like if Native Americans had invaded Europe instead of the other way around?

Disservice animals

Service dogs transform the lives of many thousands of people with disabilities.

Why would you undermine that essential service by ordering fake collars and harnesses from mail-order companies just so your little shit-su doesn't have to wait outside for five minutes while you get your grande double-shot soy green tea latte with no sweetener?

Unintended Consequence, type 3: Perverse result

The State Department needs to be careful in its reaction to the Crimean situation. We don't want to box ourselves into having to oppose the secession of Texas on principle.

What's at stake

"The torture was widespread, vicious and conducted in secret 'black sites' around the globe. This is what is being lost in the Beltway power struggle between Sen Feinstein and the CIA. Lives have been ruined; some in US detention died violent deaths at the hands of their captors. In the grim American gulag at Guantanamo Bay, hunger-striking prisoners charged with no crime, some of whom have been cleared for release for more than a decade, are subjected to vicious force-feeding and torture techniques that date back to the Spanish Inquisition.

"Let's hope Feinstein's indignation is not quickly salved, and that the Intelligence Committee's oversight of the sprawling US intelligence agencies is invigorated, with real teeth. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden weighed in from political asylum in Russia, saying, 'We're seeing another "Merkel Effect", where an elected official does not care at all that the rights of millions of ordinary citizens are violated by our spies, but suddenly it's a scandal when a politician finds out the same thing happens to them." -- Amy Goodman in The Guardian (UK) March 13, 2014

Barbarism in Louisiana

Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana in 1984, a man who has spent the last 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit following a trial filled with constitutional violations, is on the verge of being set free. Once that happens (and it could happen as soon as tomorrow after a hearing in the case) he will become one of the longest-serving death row inmates in modern American history to be exonerated and released.

Ford’s dogged lawyers and enlightened parish prosecutors in Shreveport both filed motions late last week informing a state trial judge that the time has come now to vacate Ford’s murder conviction and death sentence. Why? Because prosecutors now say that they learned, late last year, of “credible evidence” that Ford “was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder” of the victim in his case, a man named Isadore Rozeman. -- Andrew Cohen (The Atlantic)

“After 30 years, Louisiana’s longest-serving death row prisoner will get his freedom soon. Glenn Ford is living proof of just how flawed our justice system truly is. We are moved that Mr. Ford, an African American man convicted by an all-white jury, will be able to leave death row a survivor. We are more determined than ever to put an end to the death penalty, once and for all.” -- Thenjiwe Tameika McHarris, Amnesty International USA Senior Campaigner

The rest of the story:
✓ Death Penalty (Amnesty International)
✓ A case involving a black man convicted by an all-white jury in Louisiana decades ago may be reopened: Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row by Andrew Cohen (The Atlantic)

How does holding religious property exempt from property taxes not amount to "an establishment of religion."

Third Parties Can Win

"When the major parties agree, as they often do in supporting, say, corporate-style education reform, a third party can promote ideas and issues that would be otherwise neglected. In Oregon, for example, the [Working Families Party] worked with local student groups to put forward a plan for rethinking college funding. They found a WFP-backed Democrat to sponsor it, and the measure wound up passing unanimously in the state legislature. The party is now working on a bill that would

The Working Families Party's Sauda Baraka 

create a state bank to invest Oregon’s public money at home instead of with Wall Street and provide cheaper loans to state residents. Such proposals are unlikely to come from the major parties, which each receive massive campaign contributions from big banks, even at the state level.

"Around the country, the party also backs familiar proposals like paid sick leave and an increase in the minimum wage. Though these initiatives didn’t originate with the WFP, the party’s 15 years of clout has given it enough leverage in the states where it works to demand politicians take a position. Elected officials who have had or want the WFP’s backing— which means on-the-ground support come election time as well as a stamp of progressive approval—have an incentive to back its policies.

"'Power has both an ideological element and a straight political muscle element,' says [WFP co-founder Dan] Cantor. 'Can you actually deliver the energy, ideas, troops, money, tactics, morale, volunteers that are needed in any given fight? The fight might be an issue campaign or an electoral campaign. What I think is quite delightful about Working Families is we do both.'”

The rest of the story:
With new strategies, the Working Families Party is shaking up the two-party system: The Third Party That’s Winning by Sarah Jaffe (In These Times)

Bernie Sanders for President!

I'm taken to task as impractical, unfairly I think, for suggesting Bernie Sanders and Bill Moyers should be president and vice-president.

But I was being practical.

If I was being idealistic, I'd have suggested Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader for those jobs.