Category: politics

From Media Re:public (by Persephone Miel)

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediarepublic/category/cappucino/

Blogging for a cause – global voices!

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Persephone Miel – June 5, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
· CAPPUCINO

You should read Global Voices Online. You should write
for them. You should re-publish Global Voices stories from around the
world in whatever medium you produce. You should give them money.

Why? Because how  will you find out what Bahraini Mahmood Al Yousif thinks about Obama’s choice of Egypt for his speech unless Amira tells you?

I keep asking myself why did Obama choose the most
repressive regimes in the Middle East to honour not only with his
presence, but also to use as a launchpad for his Utopian vision of a
peaceful and democratic Middle East? A vision that will continue to
remain as illusive as a desert mirage for us Middle Easterners.

Then I try to select an alternate of the 22 Arab countries where he
could have used instead, but I fail to find a single one which could be
worthy of such an occasion.

– Bloggers React to Obama’s Address

indiaelectionsOr how would you find out about Mariam Zouaghi,
a Tunisian student sentenced to six years in jail for her online
activities? (search for her Google News turns up 3 articles, none in
English) without Global Voices Advocacy?

Global Voices is important to me not because it brings us “citizen
media” from around the world. As I have opined repeatedly, I don’t care
whether media is “citizen” or “mainstream” and I live for the day when
those words (as Henry Jenkins proposed so eloquently here at Beyond Broadcast) have gone the way of the term “horseless carriage.”

I care about good stories and authentic perspectives. And I care
about the lives of people in countries that mass-market legacy media in
my country ignore except when there’s a war or a US economic or
diplomatic interest at stake.

Full disclosure: I’m friends with many of the people who make Global
Voices what it is and I’m writing this today in response to an
interesting challenge that could help bring some more money to Global
Voices. But I’m not doing it to help my friends, I’m doing it because I
know how hard they work, how many amazing new projects they’d like to
do and how important they are to the project of bulding the
cross-border connections that we all need to become  global citizens.

It is election time in India. Painted walls tells stories of political
loyalty. India is rich with political symbols some more obvious than
others. Congress’ symbol — THE HAND. Photo by Carol Mitchell via Global Voices and Flickr.

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about. Check it out.

Doubling the Peace Corps: an idea whose time has come

When President Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961, he envisioned ramping up the number of volunteers to 100,000 per year.  We would like to see that, but have taken on a more pragmatic goal of doubling the size of the Peace Corps.  Just imagine what the world wold look like today if there were 3 million returned Peace Corps Volunteers (instead of 200K) among the electorate.  Harris Wofford postulated the other day that our foreign policy, our image abroad, and our domestic policy would be much different.  I believe it would be unrecognizably different (and 10 times better and more progressive).

Please take actions recommended below.  Follow and post your efforts using the Twitter hashtag #PCx2

Below is a blog post from http://peacecorpsconnect.typepad.com

A Time to Focus: Next Tuesday’s MorePeaceCorps National Day of Action

from Jonathan Pearson
National Peace Corps Association Advocacy Coordinator

A lot can change in 48 hours in Washington. And I’m not just talking about the fickle weather, where a cold February day can be quickly supplanted by a brilliant feel of spring.

I’m also talking about politics and government and advocacy. It can be discouraging and hard to navigate and sometimes it can be downright nasty! But then, things can turn and renew the feelings of spirit and hope.

We’ve experienced that in the last 48 hours, as the last touches were placed on a delayed budget process for the current fiscal year that has strapped the operation of many government programs, including Peace Corps. Discouraging for sure, with a small increase in funding for Peace Corps, bringing current funding to only $340 Million. Many have responded to this and expressed their disappointment.

And now, new developments in the last two days give me reason for optimism – mind you, measured and cautious optimism – as we turn to the budget for Fiscal Year 2010.

Yesterday, President Obama put down his first true mark on a budget blueprint for America. And the indicators for Peace Corps – though still vague – are very positive. While a President normally has his complete budget to Congress by now, a new President is given some extra time. So, while the exact numbers are not expected until April, consider this: The International Affairs budget has dozens and dozens of individual line items, and Peace Corps was one of the few programs the President chose to single out. Included in the President’s Funding Highlights was this:

“…additional funding for key programs that advance U.S. foreign policy goals, including significantly increasing funding for energy initiatives, programs addressing global climate change, agriculture investments, and the Peace Corps.” (emphasis added).

That was yesterday. Then came today. I looked at the latest list of co-sponsors of the “Peace Corps Expansion Act of 2009”. Not even two weeks in circulation, and nearly 1 out of every 5 Congressman/woman in the House of Representatives has signed on as a co-sponsor, including RPCV sponsor Sam Farr (D-CA) and the bi-partisan members of the House who served in Peace Corps: Mike Honda (D-CA), Tom Petri (R-WI) and Steve Driehaus (D-OH).

These are exciting developments. They are not guarantees and we need to be vigilant.

And that brings me to the first big advocacy action of the MorePeaceCorps Campaign. Next Tuesday’s MorePeaceCorps National Day of Action.

We need to build on the momentum of the Obama budget outline and the Peace Corps Expansion Act. MorePeaceCorps Campaign Coordinator Rajeev Goyal and I ask you to engage your lawmakers next week to positively reinforce these recent developments by urging them to co-sponsor the Farr legislation and sign onto Senate and House “Dear Colleague” letters that will be circulating. And if they do? We urge you to thank them! And if they don’t? We want to find ways to work with you and build momentum to turn that opinion around.

Next Tuesday, when you visit www.morepeacecorps.org, the site will be converted to focus attention solely on the Day of Action with links to your lawmakers and instructions that we hope will allow you to take quick, effective action.

So…what can you do to help right now? The easiest thing is to help us spread the word. Share this message, post on your blog, let’s make it happen.

Tuesday…March 3rd. You are about to bring the voice of the members and friends of the Peace Corps community to our nation’s capital, like it never has been heard before.

Why I no longer work at the Department of Labor

It is far worse than you could possibly imagine. This just scratches the surface:

The New York Times 
July 18, 2008
EDITORIAL

No Friend of the Workers

It should surprise no one, at this point, that an arm of the Bush administration charged with protecting Americans’ rights or safety is not doing its job. Even so, a government report and a Congressional hearing this week painted a disturbing picture of a Labor Department that simply is not standing up for workers.

President Bush has filled top posts across his administration with people who do not agree with the missions of their organizations. His Environmental Protection Agency has failed to protect the environment; his Justice Department has promoted injustice.

To lead the Department of Labor, Mr. Bush appointed Elaine Chao, who took office in 2001 arguing that states should be able to opt out of the federal minimum wage — a terrible idea that would drive down wages for the lowest-paid employees. For more than seven years, Ms. Chao has run a department that has tilted toward employers and failed to properly enforce labor laws.

In a report released this week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office took a close look at a sampling of cases handled — or, rather, mishandled — by the Wage and Hour Division of the Labor Department. It found that the division failed to adequately investigate complaints that workers were not paid the minimum wage, were denied mandatory overtime or were not paid their last paychecks.

In one case, a delivery truck driver complained that he was not being paid for overtime that he had earned. The complaint languished for more than 17 months before an investigator was assigned. Then, the case was soon closed because the statute of limitations was about to run out.

The division dropped another case, in which disabled children were allegedly being paid cash by a trucking company to operate large machinery in violation of child-labor laws, because its investigators could not locate the employer. The G.A.O. had little trouble finding a company that appears to be the one cited in the complaint.

The G.A.O.’s findings suggest that the government is not doing its job of going after employers who “cheat their employees out of their hard-earned wages,” said Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the committee that held this week’s hearing.

The Labor Department responded, as The Times’s Steven Greenhouse reported, that the “Wage and Hour Division is delivering pay for workers, not a payday for trial lawyers.” The department has it exactly backward. By failing to enforce the law, it is creating more work for trial lawyers, who can turn what should be simple administrative procedures into full-blown lawsuits.

Attacking trial lawyers is a classic Republican talking point. Its use in response to complaints from hard-working Americans that they are being cheated is a giveaway that the real problem at the department is not one of competence, but of ideology.

The first step in getting the nation’s laws enforced again will be entrusting enforcement to people who believe in them. We hope the next president will do that.