Palin mocks community organziers; defends the status quo!

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin ridiculed Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and community organizers in her speech Wednesday evening.

Reacting to legitimate questions that her political experience as the part-time Mayor in a town of only 5700 people had not equipped her to be a heart-beat away from the Presidency, she said: " I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."

The response, which brought down the Republican house, is instructive.

First, contrary to McCain's repeated assertions last night that he would "end partisan rancor," Palin's response was a highly personal and partisan attack on Barack Obama and his experience as a community organizer.

It doesn't take a great memory to recall that George W. Bush also ran as a "uniter, not a divider. But once elected he became one of the most divisive and partisan Presidents in U.S. history.

The country is more polarized politically today than at any time in recent memory. Economic inequality, the divide between the very richest and the bottom 95 or even 99% is greater, wider, than at any time since immediately before the Great Depression.

The Republican Party and its current candidates may talk bipartisanship, but they do not walk the walk!

Sarah "Barracuda" Palin ridiculed community organizers.

Has she forgotten the contributions of Tom Paine, the Knights of Labor, the abolitionists and suffragettes, the Congress for Industrial Organization (CIO) labor organizers, the the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the United Farm Workers and more?

These organizations and the social movements they gave leadership to were not led by small town mayors, who more often than not opposed them, but by organizers like Tom Paine, Daniel Shay, A. Phillip Randolph, Nathaniel Bacon, Martin Luther King Jr. (the "non-partisan" John McCain opposed making his birthday a national holiday), Cesar Chavez, Saul Alinsky, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Paul Robeson, Father Groppi, Mother Jones, Sojourner Truth, David Walker, Jane Adams, Big Bill Haywood, and John L. Lewis.

Organizers and the social movements they led are responsible for expanding the democratic rights of citizenship from a small, elite group of wealthy white male property owners to almost all of Americans. They are responsible for winning the right to vote, regardless of race or gender, the elimination of slavery and child labor, Social Security and Medicare (opposed by the Republican Party of McCain and Palin), the Occupational Health and Safety Act, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, environmental protection, unions, and much, much more.

These social movements not only created this country, but have ensured that it live up to its promise that "all men (and women) are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

McCain and Palin, whose party has been in power for the last eight years and most of the last forty, have tried to position themselves as agents of change. But in attacking the real agents of change and progress, they have tipped their hand. They will do anything to protect the power of the status quo.

McCain, Palin and their party have adopted the rhetoric of change and reform because they know the American people are dissatisfied with the state of the country after eight years of Republican Party leadership.

Don't be fooled by their rhetoric. Change is nothing more than a marketing tool to McCain and Palin.

If you liked the last eight years, you will love a McCain, Palin administration!

Climate change, drought and civil war

In a column entitled "Extended Forecast: Bloodshed", Nicholas Kristof discusses how the failure to confront global warming and climate change results in internal violence and civil war in effected countries and regions of the world.

He sites research that suggests a drought in one year will increase by an amazing 50% the chance of an African country slipping into civil war the next!

He writes:

As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars...

The point is that climate change will have consequences that will be difficult to foresee but will go far beyond weather or economics. There is abundant evidence that economic stress and crop failures — as climate scientists anticipate in poor countries — can lead to violence and upheavals.

In the United States, for example, some historians have found correlations between recessions or declines in farm values and increased lynchings of blacks.

Paul Collier, an Oxford University expert on global poverty, found that economic stagnation in poor countries leads to a rising risk of civil war. Professor Collier warns that climate change is likely to reduce rainfall in southern Africa enough that corn will no longer be a viable crop there. Since corn is a major form of sustenance in that region, the result may be catastrophic food shortages — and civil conflict.

The area that may be hardest hit of all — aside from islands that disappear beneath the waves — is the fragile Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert in West Africa. The Sahel is already impoverished and torn by religious and ethnic tensions, and reduced rainfall could push the region into warfare.

"The poorest people on Earth are in the Sahel, barely eking out an existence, and climate change pushes them over the edge,” Professor Miguel said. “It’s totally unfair.”

His research suggests that a drought one year increases by 50 percent the risk that an African country will slip into civil war the next year.

Ethnic conflict in Darfur was exacerbated by drought and competition for water, and some experts see it as the first war caused by climate change. That’s too simplistic, for the crucial factor was simply the ruthlessness of the Sudanese government, but climate change may well have been a contributing factor.

In a forthcoming book, “Economic Gangsters,” Mr. Miguel calls for a new system of emergency aid for countries suffering unusual drought or similar economic shocks. Such temporary aid would aim to reduce the risk of warfare that, once it has begun, is enormously costly to stop and often damages neighboring countries as well.

The greenhouse gases that imperil Africa’s future are spewing from the United States, China and Europe. The people in Bangladesh and Africa emit almost no carbon, yet they are the ones who will bear the greatest risks of climate change. Some experts believe that the damage that the West does to poor countries from carbon emissions exceeds the benefit from aid programs.
All this makes the United States’ reluctance to confront climate change in a serious way — like a carbon tax to replace the payroll tax, coupled with global leadership on the issue — as unjust as it is unfortunate.