Tag Archives: Federal government of the United States

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Champions of Change: STEM Equality for People with Disabilities


The White House honors fourteen individuals as Champions of Change for leading the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math for people with disabilities. These leaders are proving that when the playing field is level, people with disabilities can excel in STEM, develop new products, create scientific inventions, open successful businesses, and contribute equally to the economic and educational future of our country.More
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the state of relations between African Americans and Cherokee Indians …voting for a new Cherokee Principal Chief — a process that began September 24 and will collect votes through October 8.


MacArthur ‘Genius’ Dr. Tiya Miles Talks Cherokee-African American relations

Cherokee Indians disowning black tribe members forces look at slavery

Last week, University of Michigan history professor Dr. Tiya Miles was surprised when she got the call from the MacArthur Foundation that she would be a 2011 recipient of their highly coveted “genius” fellowship grants — a $500,000 no-strings-attached sum that is dispersed to fellows and stretched out over five years. The professor had been excavating many long-buried stories about the relationships between Cherokee Indians, enslaved African-Americans and free blacks over the the past few centuries in America. She is the author of several books, chapters and articles on the subject, including her first book “Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom,” which tells the story of a young African-American woman who was married into a Cherokee tribe, and also about how Cherokee women fought for her and her black children to have rights among the Cherokees. Miles plans to use the grant to further her studies, but delving into new subjects considering northern slave-holding states such as Michigan.

The award also came at an apt time given the citizenship status of black “freedmen” — the descendants of enslaved Afro-Cherokees — has been in question and was only just recently settled. Their citizenship will impact voting for a new Cherokee Principal Chief — a process that began September 24 and will collect votes through October 8.

The Loop 21 had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Miles, about the state of relations between African Americans and Cherokee Indians, the history behind it, and what the future brings.

Loop 21: The expulsion of the freedmen in 2007 — would it be accurate to describe that in terms of pure racism towards the descendants of slaves, or is it more complex than that?

Dr. Tiya Miles: I think that one aspect of this is a latent anti-black prejudice. And I have to say, Cherokees aren’t alone in this. What group in this country has not been affected by the anti-black prejudice that proliferates within our culture and has for our whole history? I think everyone is affected by this. And native people have really been targeted to be drawn into a heightened awareness of racial hierarchy and where they sit in that hierarchy. That’s an aspect people might not want to address directly. I think another issue is also a fear of depleted resources. This is a moment when everyone is concerned about economics and thinking about whether or not we’re going to see a double-dip recession, and how long the downturn will last. In this kind of environment I think people want to tighten their fist. And they want to think about how they can better their own small group. Perhaps to the detriment of minorities in that group — I think that’s going here too. And also the Cherokee Nation has legitimate reason to feel resentful — not to the descendants of freed people; I think they ought to be grateful to them since their ancestors helped build that nation — but resentful to the United States government. I think that the Cherokee’s feelings of resentment is legitimate when it’s directed toward the federal government, and I think it’s illegitimate when turned toward the descendants of slaves who helped the Cherokee nation to survive, who helped them to move across the Trail of Tears, who did the labor to make their journey that was awful, to make their journey less horrific, and who really built their wealth in Indian territory.

Loop 21: What are the moral problems with the Dawes laws that started this separation between Cherokee and black freedmen?

Miles: I think that most people who have looked at the Dawes laws and thought about them would acknowledge that these are really flawed lists of not only the Cherokee nation but also all Native nations. They are flawed in more ways than we can even talk about right now. First of all, Native people, for the most part, didn’t even want to be involved in the process. Of course that was a process started by the United States federal government to divide up tribal lands and individuals. This was a policy on the part of the government to break up native peoplehood, and to get them to feel like private property was all important to them, as opposed to communal property, or betterment of the entire group. From the very beginning this was something that native people protested and didn’t want. So it’s saddening that — and ironic — that right now in 2011 these lists that Native people didn’t even want to be involved in are now being used to legitimize things like taking away citizenship status from descendants of slaves — that’s only one part of the problem.

Loop 21: What other problems are there?

These rolls have no way of making a notation of the deep cultural relations between the freed people and Cherokees. These were black people who connected deeply with their Native American context. They thought of themselves as Cherokee men and women as opposed to thinking of themselves as American blacks. They even referred to black people who were moving in from the Southern states moving into Indian territory as “state Negroes.” They used this term as a way to distinguish between their own cultural context, which was the Native American one, and the cultural context of the Exodusters, people who were coming West, which was really an African-American one, one that connected them to a larger American context, not a Native American one. So these rolls have so many holes in them that it’s really a shame that we rely on them today to decide who should or should not be included in these nations.

Loop 21: Has there ever been a point in your research where you became so discouraged that you wanted to leave the subject altogether?
Miles: Yes, I’ve been discouraged. One time during a graduate seminar on Native American history, a colonial historian named James Merrell came to talk about his book about the Catawba Indians of South Carolina. I asked him about his research about blacks and Catawbas and he told us that he had been asked by the members of Catawba Tribal Council not to publish materials that gave evidence of black-Catawba intermarriage. I have to say, that to me was very disheartening to think that members of Native American nation would ever want to disavow that they had ever allied with or been intimate with African Americans when this was an important part of that history.  To me it was a signal that native people just like all people in this country have been caught up in the racial hierarchy. It was very disheartening, but it was also discouraging because it made me want to keep digging and keep finding the information and perhaps start to rebuild those bridges. But my mother in that moment helped me straighten my back and get back to work, by telling me that that maybe I didn’t choose this topic, maybe it chose me. And I do feel like all of these people who are doing scholarship or creative work and remembering the experiences of our ancestors are helping us to respect them  and bring back for them in their memory the regard that they should have had in their lifetimes but didn’t have in this country.

Loop 21: The U.S. Housing and Urban Development froze $33 million from the Cherokee nation. Did that move undermine Cherokee sovereignty?

Miles: I am no legal scholar, but my own personal opinion about this is that I would have been very disturbed if the U.S. Supreme Court came out and told the Cherokee Nation that you must do x, y and z. Because I think that would have definitely undercut Cherokee sovereignty. That’s not what happened, though. What happened was the U.S. government told the Cherokee government that they might be withholding funds. And that sounded to me like a nation-to-nation discussion, and that’s what sovereign nations do. So if China told the United States they were going to withhold funds from us would we say they are undercutting our sovereignty? Probably not. We’d be very upset, but we would say they have a right as a nation to do that. So while I think even though this whole situation and the way it was played out was ugly, and you have to admit that it was, it could have been much worse, if the United States government did in some direct way said you Cherokee nation must do x, y or z, but that didn’t happen. The Cherokee nation made a decision.

Loop 21: Was winning the MacArthur ever a dream or goal of yours when you were younger?

Miles: When I was much younger — and I have to say that I grew up in an amazing family that was really all about education — but even so I didn’t know that being a professor was a job that somebody could do! I didn’t know that until I went to college and one of my roommates was a child of professors. Let me tell you, I felt pretty intimidated then because I thought this was a whole world that I never knew about or had access to growing up. So even just to have this job being able to read, write and teach, think to me is a great privilege that I am very grateful for. In terms of the MacArthur Fellowship, of course, I knew that the people who had won it in the past, I was aware of it, but frankly I never thought I would be someone who would be considered for this. I was completely shocked when I got the phone call. I am so honored, I feel like the foundation and the anonymous nominators were just so generous to consider me for this.

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do Republicans want to shutdown the Gov’t again ?… repost

1 Comment

 last time it cost Americans 800million & furloughed over a million workers,delayed veterans benefits,shut down federally funded research,suspended certain law enforcement activities,among other things.

 

Right-wing “cannot wait” for gov’t shutdown, “just like in ’95 and ’96”

http://mediamatters.org/research/201008310020

The right-wing media is “giddy” over the possibility of winning a Republican majority in Congress in order to shut down the government. The shutdowns cost the government at least $800 million, furloughed over a million workers, delayed veterans benefits, shut down federally funded research, and suspended certain law enforcement activities, among other things.

The 1995-1996 gov’t shutdowns had massive impact on public and cost the government at least $800 million

Federal government shutdowns occur when Congress cannot agree to pass a federal budget. According to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Federal government shutdowns occur for the following reasons:

Shutdowns of the federal government have occurred in the past due to failures to pass regular appropriations bills by the October 1 deadline; lack of an agreement on stopgap funding for federal government operations through a continuing resolution; and other impasses, for example, in 1995, the lack of an agreement on lifting the federal debt ceiling.

Then-speaker Gingrich was criticized for orchestrating two government shutdowns in FY 1996, which cost the government at least $800 million. Between November 1995 and January 1996, two federal government shutdowns occurred. As Time reported:

As the clocks struck midnight on Nov. 14, 1995, so began the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history. For 21 days — from Nov. 14-19 and again from Dec. 16, 1995-Jan. 6, 1996 — nonessential government employees stayed home while their leaders fought to pass a federal budget. The shutdown was sparked when an agreement between President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress (led by then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich) could not be reached by Sept. 30, the expiration date of the previous year’s budget. In the end, the shutdown, which cost the government $800 million in losses for salaries paid to furloughed employees, was settled when Clinton submitted a budget that proposed to eliminate the federal deficit in seven years.

Delay: Gingrich “told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him…sit at the back of Air Force One.” In his book No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight, Tom Delay, who was the Republican House Whip at the time of the shutdown, wrote:

Negotiations spiraled downward, and after Clinton vetoed a stopgap spending bill, funding for government services ran out, and a shutdown began on November 13, 1995. Not long after, Gingrich made the mistake of his life. He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One and exit from the rear on a flight to the funeral of assassinated Israeli prime minister [sic] Yitzak Rabin. It was pitiful. The New York Daily News carried the headline “Cry Baby” above a drawing of Newt as a screaming baby in diapers. The Democrats even tried to take a blowup of the cover onto the floor of the House.

The Hill also reported that Gingrich orchestrated the shutdown after President Bill Clinton made him and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) sit at the back of Air Force One on a trip:

Gingrich received heavy criticism for helping to engineer the shutdown after it was reported he said that it was partially a result of Clinton’s making former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and him sit at the back of Air Force One.

Over 1 million federal employees were furloughed. According to the CRS report, over 1 million federal employees were furloughed as a result of the 1995-1996 government shutdown:

The most recent shutdowns occurred in FY1996. There were two during the early part of the fiscal year. The first, November 14-19, 1995, resulted in the furlough of an estimated 800,000 federal employees. It was caused by the expiration of a continuing funding resolution (P.L. 104-31) agreed to on September 30, 1995, and by President Clinton’s veto of a second continuing resolution and a debt limit extension bill.

The second FY1996 partial shutdown of the federal government, and the longest in history, began on December 16, 1995, and ended on January 6, 1996, after the White House and Congress agreed on a new resolution (P.L. 104-94) to fund the government through January 26, 1996. On January 2, 1996, the estimate of furloughed federal employees was 284,000.8 Another 475,000 federal employees, rated “essential,” continued to work in a non-pay status. The shutdown was triggered by the expiration of a continuing funding resolution enacted on November 20 (P.L. 104-56), which funded the government through December 15, 1995. There were several short-term continuing resolutions between January 6, 1996, and April 26, 1996, when P.L. 104-134 was enacted to fund any agencies or programs not yet funded through FY1996.

Time: Shutdown “cost the government $800 million in losses for salaries paid to furloughed employees.” Time reported that the “the shutdown was sparked when an agreement between President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress (led by then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich) could not be reached by Sept. 30, the expiration date of the previous year’s budget. In the end, the shutdown, which cost the government $800 million in losses for salaries paid to furloughed employees, was settled when Clinton submitted a budget that proposed to eliminate the federal deficit in seven years.”

American veterans received “major curtailment in services,” including health services. The CRS reported that American veterans received “[m]ajor curtailment in services, ranging from health and welfare to finance and travel.”

Health research, toxic waste clean-up were shut down. The CRS reported that, according to “congressional hearings, press and agency accounts,” new patients were not admitted to NIH:

New patients were not accepted into clinical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ceased disease surveillance (information about the spread of diseases, such as AIDS and flu, were unavailable); hotline calls to NIH concerning diseases were not answered; and toxic waste clean-up work at 609 sites stopped, resulting in 2,400 “Superfund” workers being sent home.

Hiring of 400 border patrol agents was suspended. The CRS report showed that law enforcement services were suspended, including hiring 400 border patrol agents.

Delays occurred in the processing of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives applications by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; work on more than 3,500 bankruptcy cases was suspended; cancellation of the recruitment and testing of federal law-enforcement officials occurred, including the hiring of 400 border patrol agents; and delinquent child-support cases were suspended.

200,000 U.S. visa/passport applications went unprocessed; tourist industries suffered millions of dollars in losses. The CRS reported that:

20,000-30,000 applications by foreigners for visas went unprocessed each day; 200,000 U.S. applications for passports went unprocessed; and U.S. tourist industries and airlines sustained millions of dollars in losses.

Parks/Museums/Monuments closed costing $14.2 million per day in tourism revenue. The CRS reported an estimated loss of $14.2 million per day in local communities near the national parks, museums, and monuments due to the shutdown:

Closure of 368 National Park Service sites (loss of 7 million visitors) occurred, with local communities near national parks losing an estimated $14.2 million per day in tourism revenues; and closure of national museums and monuments (estimated loss of 2 million visitors) occurred.

Nonetheless, right-wing media “giddy” for a similar shutdown

Erickson: “I’m almost giddy thinking about a government shutdown next year. I cannot wait!” Via Twitter, Erick Erickson proclaimed:

Erickson tweet 1

In response to criticism over this statement, Erickson replied:

Erickson tweet 2

Morris: “There’s going to be a government shutdown just like in ’95 and ’96, but we’re going to win it this time.” On August 27, Fox News correspondent Dick Morris gave a speech at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s Defending the Dream Conference, saying: “There’s going to be a government shutdown just like in ’95 and ’96, but we’re going to win it this time.”

So, it’s going to be same time next year, guys and women. Same time next year. We’re going to be back here and we’re going to be pressuring the people who we helped elect to oppose big spending and we will be telling them you do not tread on us. Now, there’s going to be a government shutdown just like in ’95 and ’96, but we’re going to win it this time, and I’ll be fighting on your side.

Gingrich using his old 1995 game plan to shape new GOP strategy: Take back Congress, “refuse to fund,” and force Obama to respond. In April 13 article, The Hill reported on Gingrich’s comments encouraging the GOP to cause a government shutdown over health care reform:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Tuesday that a government shutdown could occur should Republicans attempt to strip funding for the new healthcare law next Congress.

[…]

“A simple majority can refuse to fund. So, if you have Boehner as speaker and Mitch McConnell as majority leader, all you have to do is not write into the appropriations bill the money,” Gingrich said at a breakfast sponsored by The American Spectator and Americans for Tax Reform. “If the president vetoes the appropriations bills, you repass them.

“The president has got to make it into a positive political issue to veto the appropriations bills. Remember, the only person who can close the government is the president. If you’re prepared to pass the appropriations bills, he has to decide to veto a bill you have passed. And so you simply pass a bill.”  

[…]

“You have to consistently communicate key messages because the presidency is such a powerful instrument,” he said. “I think this city has fundamentally misunderstood what happened with the shutdown. To most of the country, it became a signal that we were serious…If we win we have every right to say ‘the American people have spoken.”

Asked if he would encourage the Republicans to push for a shutdown, Gingrich said that the GOP needs to be ready to stand on principle.

“It’s especially important that they keep their word to the American people,” he told The Hill. “[They] can’t be intimidated…you have to believe what you believe in.”

Dave Weigel reported that Gingrich similarly encouraged Republicans to send Obama a budget which refused to fund health care reform, and see if Obama “decide[s]…he’s going to veto the bill” or not. From Wiegel’s April 13 report:

At a luncheon at the Heritage Foundation — his second meeting with conservative journalists and bloggers today — Newt Gingrich expanded a bit on his argument, made most recently at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, that a new Republican Congress could roll back the Democrats’ victory on health-care reform by refusing to fund it. I asked Gingrich how this would work, given the experience of Republicans in the winter of 1995 when a showdown over the budget forced a government shutdown.

“Wait a second,” said Gingrich. “This is the standard, elite, inside-the-Beltway worldview. Tell me in what way we didn’t win. After that, we got to a balanced budget. And what happened to the Republican majority?” The answer, of course, is that Republicans held the majority in 1996, while President Bill Clinton was reelected.

[…]

Gingrich, having argued that the 1995 shutdown was good for Republicans, argued that a potential battle over health care would be even better. “There’s a new poll out this morning,” said Gingrich, referring to a Rasmussen Reports study. “By 58 to 38, people want to repeal the health-care bill. It’ll get worse as people learn more and as the failure of the bill becomes more obvious. So if you take that model, all the Republican Congress needs to say in January is, ‘We won’t fund it.’ What the president needs to decide is: He’s going to veto the bill. He needs to force a crisis on an issue that’s a 58 to 38 issue. And it’s going to get worse. It’ll be 2 to 1 or better by the time we get down to the fight. Because this bill is terrible.”

I followed up with Gingrich after the speech, largely to clarify how Clinton’s reelection figured into this recollection of the shutdown. According to Gingrich, Clinton simply over-matched the Republicans in 1996 and skillfully made the speaker of the House his target. The ability of Republicans to hold onto Congress was impressiveness nonetheless. “I always look back on the budget fight as the moment our base decided we were real, that we weren’t just politicians,” said Gingrich. “I believe — and John Kasich and Bob Livingston agree with me — if we had backed off, we never would have gotten to a balanced budget.”

   
 
 

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sensiblewashington.org -Yes on I1149


UPDATE 7/3: The State deadline for signatures is Friday, July 8th. Please allow sufficient time for your petitions to arrive at our headquarters for processing. Given the July 4th holiday, anything being mailed at this point needs to be sent via overnight delivery.

If you’re holding completed or partially completed I-1149 petitions, it’s time to get them back to Sensible Washington headquarters.  No amount of signatures is too small. By all means, keep collecting signatures for the next two weeks, but it’s critically important to submit those signatures already collected.

To make things easy, there are several ways to get them back to the mothership:

Sensible Washington
PO Box 1184
Seattle, WA 98111-1184

  • Call our campaign number at 206-707-5502 and arrange pickup.
  • In the Seattle area? Drop off your petitions in the lobby of The Joint Cooperative in the U-District (Monday-Friday 11-7).

Don’t wait until July. Send those petitions back to us. And thank you for your continued hard work in the fight for freedom.

About I-1149

Help us make cannabis legal in Washington in 2011.

Many people don’t know this, but there are now dispensary-like businesses and cooperatives in Washington where you can obtain tested medical marijuana safely over the counter with a credit card.

Unfortunately, medical marijuana is only available in these kinds of safe environments for those who know the right people and can afford or find a doctor who will make the recommendation.

Sensible Washington intends to fix that.  We are organizing a team of 10,000+ activists statewide to gather signatures and place Initiative 1149 on the November 2011 ballot.  The initiative is simple:  it removes all criminal penalties for possession, use, manufacture or delivery of cannabis among adults and directs the Legislature to create taxation and regulatory system as appropriate.

It makes medicine safely available to patients without having to go to the black market.

Legal strategy: learn from the repeal of prohibition

Why take this simple approach to the initiative?

History shows that the best way to end prohibition is to simply repeal prohibition language.  In 1932 Washington was one of the states that repealed prohibition on alcohol through a statewide initiative.  The initiative removed all state laws criminalizing alcohol, leaving the Legislature the task of creating regulations, which it did.  Their initiative language gave nothing for the Federal Government to attack since it simply removed state prohibition laws and nothing new was being added that would conflict with Federal law.

This is still the best strategy.  When trying to legalize a federally controlled substance, there is always the problem of conflict with the supreme law of the land.  If we pass code that includes regulation for something that is not allowed federally, the government has the power to trump the law leaving us back at square one, but with our funders and our volunteers demoralized.  It could happen immediately or years down the road when a hostile Federal administration takes power.

Polling and political strategy

Polling this year affirms that we can win in Washington as soon as legalization is put to the popular vote.  Washington is one of the best polling states in the country for legalizing cannabis, with 52% of the public in favor of legalizing marijuana and only 35% opposed statewide.

Looking at the bigger picture, it makes sense nationally as well as locally to repeal prohibition in Washington in 2011.  National legalization organizations are gearing up for a big push in 2012.  Their resources could be used in tougher states if Washington were to legalize in 2011 and no resources were then needed here in 2012. Sensible Washington can get on the ballot with minimal funding because of the breadth of our volunteer base.  Plus, if Washington State does not have an initiative running in 2011, the issue will be quiet for a year at a time when we need to make it louder.  An early victory in Washington would be a powerful precedent in the 2012 elections for other states.

But there is another reason to proceed in 2011.  This issue is just too urgent to wait until it’s a sure thing.  We all know the terrible toll of marijuana prohibition– 15,000 arrests in Washington every year, $100 million-plus of tax dollars wasted, dying medical patients being prosecuted for medical use, organ transplants denied to legitimate medical cannabis patients, people losing their children.  .  .  We lawyers see the dark side of prohibition in our work.

We can’t allow this to go on.  Many of us have been fighting to protect people in the courts, and some of us have even made our livings defending marijuana cases, but the time is right to fix the problem.  We can’t wait any longer to repeal prohibition knowing that every year, 15,000 people will be harmed and that the public supports us now.

Sensible Washington is already on the ground recruiting and mobilizing thousands of grass-roots activists, developing our cutting edge online networking technology, keeping the issue alive in the press, and filling positions in our vast campaign infrastructure.

During the 2010 effort, our I-1068 initiative got 2/3 of the required signatures with a base of 1,500 activists and little money. Next year, we’ll be starting with 10,000 people or more.   We have the early endorsement of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and many others.  We anticipate beginning signature gathering in January or February of 2011.

Give back some of the money you’ve made from pot prohibition.

If you believe in this cause, now is the time to support it.  You know firsthand just how dysfunctional prohibition is.  Dig Deep. This year your dollars will actually make a difference.

Click here to give online or to mail a check or credit card contribution in the address listed there.

Thank you and we look forward to your response!

Jeffrey Steinborn – Initiative Co-sponsor

Douglas Hiatt – Initiative Co-author