Housing cuts for the poor, tax cuts for the rich

President Bush’s 2007 budget that was released last month includes significant cuts in housing assistance. The new budget for the Housing Choice Voucher Program underfunds 70 percent of the state and municipal housing agencies that oversee the program, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Although the Republican Congress has debated the cuts affecting the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), it appears unlikely that Mr. Bush’s cuts will be opposed. Ironically, Congress is also considering yet another tax cut for the wealthy.

The voucher program is the country’s largest low-income housing program. It provides poor households with vouchers they can use to rent housing in the private sector. Since 2004 voucher assistance for over 100,000 families have been cut because HUD doesn’t allocate the vouchers based on current needs. Mr. Bush’s 2007 budget relies on the same funding formula that has caused the shortages in the past few years.

Blaming the media for bad war news

Top officials in the Bush administration have often complained that news coverage of Iraq focuses on negative events too much and fails to devote enough attention to positive developments. Yet the White House has rarely picked direct fights with U.S. media outlets during this war. For the most part, President Bush leaves it to others to scapegoat the media.

Karl Rove’s spin strategy is heavily reliant on surrogates. They’re likely to escalate blame-the-media efforts as this year goes on.

A revealing moment -- dramatizing the pro-war division of labor -- came on March 22, during Bush’s nationally televised appearance in Wheeling, West Virginia. On the surface, the format resembled a town hall, but the orchestration was closer to war rally. (According to White House spokesperson Scott McClellan, the local Chamber of Commerce had distributed 2,000 tickets while a newspaper in the community gave out 100.) It fell to a woman who identified herself as being from Columbus, Ohio, to give the Wheeling event an anti-media jolt.

Her husband -- who was an Army officer in Iraq, where “his job while

Bush makes Iraq the vital reason for his impeachment and removal

George W. Bush has clarified the most vital reason why he must be impeached and removed from office as soon as possible: the slaughter in Iraq, and his clear statement that it will not end while he is in the White House.

Bush has made his departure the light at the end of the tunnel.

If he stays, more killing is inevitable. If he goes, a quicker end to the war is not certain, but it is more likely. Nobody expects Dick Cheney to pull out of Iraq if he succeeds Bush. But a successful impeachment and removal will reshape all American politics, and open up the possibilities.

Bush's escalating unpopularity has moved impeachment talk out of the margins, toward the mainstream. Increasingly worried GOP hacks portray it as an attack on Bush's ability to protect the country, and on our soldiers.

But polls now show a majority of US troops in Iraq say the war should end in 2006, not 2009. More than 80% of the Iraqi people want the US out now.

By pledging to prolong the slaughter, Bush endangers both our troops and our national security.

Justice -- not war -- in the Philippines protests Iraq war at military recruitment center

New York City--New York-based Filipinos, students and youth flooded Bronx streets on Sunday, March 19th to denounce the US war on Iraq, a war that has killed approximately 150,000 Iraqis and nearly 2,300 US soldiers. In a march and rally organized by the ANSWER Coalition, a large contingent of Filipino youth, workers and solidarity friends bore placards and banners calling for "Money for Youth and Education, Not for War and Occupation" and "No to HR 4437, Yes to Pro-Immigrant Comprehensive Immigration Program."

Sensenbrenner-King House Resolution 4437 is the bill currently in Congress that, if passed, will criminalize  almost 14 million undocumented immigrants, their families and any who assist them. "Anti-immigrant bills like HR 4437 are meant to scare and silence us," said Leah Obias, member of local Filipino youth organization Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan. "Meanwhile, military recruitment takes place in poor and immigrant neighborhoods where incentives like college tuition and faster immigration processes are dangled in front of us."

Tell your Senators to Defend the Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act is one of America’s most important and effective environmental laws. Large-scale developers and other powerful industry players are using their money and influence to try to undermine the act. Last September, the House of Representatives passed a destructive bill (H.R. 3824) that would severely weaken protections for imperiled wildlife. Now, the fight over the fate of this law is moving to the Senate. Urge your senators to vote NO on any legislation that would weaken the Endangered Species Act.

March 24, 2006

Your U.S. senators

I strongly support the Endangered Species Act and urge you to vote NO on any legislation that would weaken this landmark law.

The Endangered Species Act has provided a crucial safety net for wildlife, fish and plants on the brink of extinction for more than three decades. The act has helped prevent the extinction of almost every listed species, including the bald eagle, the gray wolf, the grizzly bear and the Pacific salmon. Ninety-eight percent of the species protected under the act still exist today, and many are stable or improving.

Blackwell

V For Vendetta: An anti-authoritarian action film

"V For Vendetta"
Directed by James McTeigue
Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski
Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore
Running Time, 132 mins

Just a Thought

Hey Folks,

Just a thought bubbling around in the Uke Man’s head.

A few days ago Bryan Flannery, a little-known candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, came out with unsubstantiated charges about the front-runner, Ted Strickland, supposedly having once hired a pedophile to work in his office. Flannery also wanted to know why Strickland had “gone to Rome with that man.”

The charges were quickly rebutted by Strickland who claimed that similar charges had been made long ago by an opponent in a very heated campaign, that the aide had denied any such orientation, and that no one had brought any evidence forward.

After Flannery’s big, one day splash, those charges are not being heard – I can’t even find them on the net.

OK, but what happens next?

Hot on the heels of this mud, Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough, and other national, right-wing, talking-point flunkies “discover” the evil Judge Conner and call for his impeachment because he is soft on . . .

Yep!! PEDOPHILES!!!!!!!

OK, but what happens next?

Please help Clint Curtis

Does the name Clint Curtis ring a bell? It should. He’s the computer programmer from Florida who passed a polygraph test a year ago, strengthening the case that Rep. Tom Feeney had committed election fraud in 2000.

In October 2000, Clint was working for an Oveido software firm, Yang Enterprises. At a company meeting attended by Feeney (who was then a Florida state legislator and Yang’s attorney and lobbyist), Feeney asked Curtis to devise a vote-rigging prototype to “control Democratic fraud in South Florida.” Curtis obliged, not realizing at the time that Feeney was engaging in projection…his true motive was to rig the election for the Republicans.

House leader not home when peace knocks

Washington D.C. — By a vote of 348-71, the U.S. House of Representatives voted March 16 to spend 67,000,000,000 dollars more for open-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that a growing majority of the people they represent believe the war is wrong.

In an eleventh hour effort on March 15 to appeal to the conscience of the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, six peace activists took their case to his office on Capitol Hill where they read the names of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed in the war, and negotiated with Hastert’s staff for a meeting with the Illinois congressman.

The six were part of a 34 day campaign named “The Winter of Our Discontent” organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence (Voices). The campaign includes 34 days of fasting, civil disobedience, Capitol Hill vigils and lobbying, to demand the U.S. end the occpuation and its economic and military warfare against the Iraqi people.

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