Slavery and the Presidents: Where Is the Public Acknowledgement?

On Feb. 9, a member of Congress took an important step in attempting to educate the nation about an important slice of history relative to the White House. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) sent a letter to President Barack Obama to suggesting that the latter find a way to commemorate those enslaved individuals who helped to build the White House.







The letter stated, in part, "An acknowledgement of the role of slave labor displayed in the White House would be an important swtor credits symbol that the United States does not run from its history, but rather learns from it." The White House, of course, is an important icon of the nation's identity but embodies one of its most long-standing contradiction: a revolution against tyranny that maintain (and expanded) the enslavement of millions.







According to the White House website, in the last two years alone, there were 1.5 million individuals buy swtor credits who visited the White House. None of those visitors would necessarily know that 12 U.S. presidents were slaveholders and seven of them had slaves in the building we now call the White House which opened in 1801. There is no mention of these facts either in White House tourist brochures or any other documents given to visitors.







George Washington is not included in this scenario because he and nine of his slaves spent his presidency swtor gold in Philadelphia. Ironically, a plaque does exist recognizing those nine individuals which is part of the new pavilion in Philadelphia that houses the Liberty Bell. The pavilion is built over the site and specifically the slave quarters where Washington lived as president. It took a decade of protests, lawsuits, and grassroots activism to finally get the National Park Service to include the plaque which it initially refused to do.







Plaques wow gold also exist that acknowledge the slaves who helped to build the U.S. Capitol, many of whom also worked on the White House. In June 2010, Congress dedicated two plaques in "Emancipation Hall" at the Congressional Visitor's Center. The plaques state, "This original exterior wall was constructed between 1793 and 1800 of sandstone quarried by laborers, including enslaved African Americans who were an important part of the work force that built the United States Capitol."







As buy wow gold noted, many of these individuals built the White House between 1790 and 1800. This included unskilled as well as skilled labor. For example, there were at least five black carpenters -- Peter, Ben, Daniel, Harry, and Tom -- who worked on both structures. Slave labor also cut down trees, made bricks, cleared the land, and performed many, many other tasks all without pay, adequate food, or basic health care.







A public plaque or some other display would, in part, complete the circle of owning the history of presidents, Congress, and slavery. While there are hundreds of memorials, plaques, and other means that present a false narrative of American history, there are too few that genuinely tell the more complicated and often harsh reality that many faced as U.S. democracy unfolded.

As Rep. Ackerman notes in his letter, "I urge you to take steps to have an appropriate representation acknowledging the role of slave labor in constructing the White House in an area of public viewing."

Congressional Budget Cuts Could Slash Job Opportunities for Fema

Earlier this week, proposed congressional budget cuts in 2013 spending called for steep reductions in employment related programs, including a 12 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Labor. This significant decrease would adversely impact employment training programs for women veterans and women victims of violence who are struggling to find employment.
According to their 2013 budget request, the Department swtor credits of Labor's allocation for the existing Pathways Back to Work Fund would be significantly reduced. This fund helps current low-income adult workers gain new skills in order to stay in the workforce long-term. Together with the Department of Education, the Department of Labor would support partnerships between community colleges, states, and businesses that would buy swtor credits aid job transition for these vulnerable adults. For women 20 years and over, the latest household data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the unemployment rate decreasing, from 7.9 in January 2011 to 7.7 in January 2012 (seasonally adjusted). Now that the unemployment rate seems to be decreasing for these women, why cut the funds that are helping women find long-term careers?
More swtor gold than ever, the large number of enlisted servicemen and National Guard returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters are finding traditional employment assistance programs leaving record numbers out of work and financially vulnerable. Veterans would also have benefited greatly from the Department of Labor's funding in 2013. Not only does the department intend to support educational opportunities, runescape gold but they also plan to fund employment and additional transitional services to help veterans get a civilian job (Department of Labor 2013 Budget Request). The budget would also have promoted grants for employment services to veterans. As far as female veterans, more than 20 percent of these women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan could not find a job in December 2011, according to the Bureau of buy runescape gold Labor Statistics. Transitional services would have been especially helpful for female veterans, as they seem to have a harder time finding and staying in a civilian job after they leave the military. This is due to a Veterans Affairs system that has much to be desired as far as meeting essential needs of women: health care, child care, and psychological needs.
As the president and founder of Second Chance Employment rs gold Services, I know how important transitional services are to veteran and low-income women. I also know how important job training is, especially now, when an overwhelming number of Americans are competing for employment. Veterans and women victims of violence are extremely disadvantaged in this job market, as many have not been employed in years, and they have not learned unique skills specific to their dream careers. At Second Chance, we help women victims of violence and women veterans find and secure jobs. We help women with job applications, schedule interviews and provide interview training, and we track their progress in their new jobs. The GOP's proposed budget cut will not only slash women veterans' and victims of violence chances of getting a job, but it will also put more pressure on nonprofits like mine to fill in the public job service gaps the government cannot.

Where Is Jamie Dimon When You Need Him?

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is constantly running around railing about financial reform generally and the Volcker Rule in particular, usually in such hyperbolic terms that it should self-discrediting. Here's one example of his over-the-top ridiculous claims about the Volcker Rule: "We are going to have to have a lawyer, compliance officer, doctor to see what [a trader's] testosterone levels are, and a shrink, what is your intent?" Mr. Dimon has said a number of times. He has also often referred to the Dodd-Frank law that was enacted by the Legislative and Executive Branches of the United States government to protect the American people from another multi-trillion dollar financial collapse, most of which was used to bail out the biggest banks in this swtor credits country from their reckless trades and investments, as "Dodd Frankenstein." Such juvenile name-calling should be beneath any responsible executive, but not much more can be expected from a Wall Street that just can't stop whining about how poorly they are being treated, ignoring the no-accountability bailouts and bonuses and the real suffering of the rest of America. Yet, Jamie inexplicably continues to get great coverage in all the top tier media (or at least the almost guaranteed friendly media that his handlers let him talk to). But, his crocodile tears and frequent civilization-will-end complaints are little more than transparent attempts to protect his and his fellow bankers' bonuses and businesses, buy swtor credits even though he would never, ever refer to such an unseemly topic. No. He talks about getting the economy growing again and increasing employment. To listen to him and what he claims his concerns are, you'd think he was the chief growth and employment officer of the US. Very odd how he never mentions his bank profits or revenues or anti-competitive business lines or, God forbid (or should I say "Goldman forbid"?) bonuses and excessive compensation. No. Jamie doesn't care about any of that. He only cares about US growth, employment and competitiveness -- just listen to him. He is so singularly focused on being selflessly pro-American he is the global guard dog against all things anti-American. Well, ok, not all things. swtor gold But certainly all things that might keep him from earning billions in compensation or reigning in his bank's many business lines, which conveniently act as a nice cover for every other Tom, Dick and Harry in the financial industry worldwide, no matter how undeserving they might be. Yet now, when there are some very real and very serious anti-American actions being asked for, he is strangely silent. Could it be because the current anti-American requests coincide with his claims against financial reform? Of course it is and it reveals what Jamie Dimon and all the other bankers from the biggest banks are really concerned about. Here's a hint: it isn't US jobs, businesses, growth, employment or any of that. He and the rest of the too-big-to-fail wow gold banks are only concerned about making sure they are as unregulated as possible and that nothing, nothing, nothing gets in the way of continued excessive compensation. That's why he isn't calling out the UK, Canada and Japan for being anti-American in their attempts to get a big loophole put in the Volcker Rule so that Jamie's bank and the other 4 biggest banks in the US can continue to prop trade in their sovereign debt. Why should foreign countries tell the US how its laws should be written? This is a particularly important question because these particular laws were passed to protect US taxpayers and the US treasury from the trillions in costs of another financial crisis. Yet, Jamie and all his fellow guard dogs against anti-Americanism buy wow gold are silent. Thankfully, some disinterested experts have analyzed these claims and reveal them to be simply entirely baseless. For example, Simon Johnson, former Chief Economist at the IMF and current professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT (among too many other things to list here), has a piece in the New York Times today that methodically takes apart these dangerous and destructive claims. Called "Mr. Volcker vs. the Bank of Canada," he clearly explains what is going on here: Congress rightly decided that excessive risk-taking by very large banks had to be curtailed. Responsible regulators around the world are cheering from the sidelines, and that's why I was shocked to see the recent comment letter from the Bank of Canada that criticized the American cheap wow gold law. Importantly, Mr. Johnson points out that we're not just talking about Canada seeking a huge loophole in US financial regulation: "Canada is not alone in seeking an exemption from the Volcker Rule. The European Union would like an exemption for the debt of its member governments, yet Greece is already effectively in default, and several other countries are likely to follow.... Some Japanese officials have expressed interest in an exemption from the Volcker Rule, yet Japan's net debt is reckoned to be more than 120 percent of gross domestic product. This is a highly indebted country, and it would be foolish to grant any kind of waiver from the Volcker Rule to a country with such a high debt level." His conclusion is unassailable: "...regulators in the United States should ignore such selfish interests of foreign governments...." Frankly, such anti-American requests to put such a huge loophole in the law meant to protect US taxpayers should be rejected summarily unless the foreign countries agree in advance to pay for all US expenses from the next financial crisis if that loophole had anything to do with it. Mr. Johnson has some excellent suggestions for this as well. So, where is Jamie Dimon and his concerns about anti-Americanism? If anyone was genuinely concerned about such things, they wouldn't stand for foreign governments telling the US how it should write laws, protect its own taxpayers and implement financial reform to prevent another financial catastrophe. Jamie's silence tells you more about him than all his words put together.

In the Debate on Immigration, Deportation Must Be Sensible

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in his Roll Call op-ed ("President Is Ignoring Immigration Laws," Feb. 6), argues that a policy of deporting serious criminals instead of parents, military families and students attending college is bad for the country. Once again the Republicans are on the wrong side of the law-and-order approach to immigration.

Like so many Republican accusations swtor credits about this president, the ones surrounding immigration come straight out of a fantasy world. I wish we had the president that Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) says we have. If we did, I could have saved two trips to Park Police headquarters for being arrested in front of the White House protesting the president's deportation policies.

I praise buy swtor credits the president when he does well, and I criticize him when he's wrong. But the fact is that President Barack Obama has deported more people, put more personnel on the ground at the border and reduced illegal entry more than any previous president. He is proud of it and trumpets it frequently. But through the Republican political lens, he appears to be a president swtor gold who is soft on illegal immigration.

The question is not how many people to deport. Unfortunately, given the complete obstructionism of the Republican side to craft a more sensible alternative, we are stuck with a system that forcibly removes about 400,000 people per year, with huge costs to taxpayers, families and communities. A population about the size of Minneapolis is deported runescape gold every year, and we have reached our capacity to deport more.

For this president, the question has not been how many to deport but who to deport first. Republicans say we should deport anyone we find, even if that means reducing the number of criminals we deport and reducing the capacity of both local law enforcement and our criminal courts to go after actual violent criminals -- regardless buy runescape gold of whether they are immigrants. A sophomore in college or a handyman with two U.S. citizen children are simply not threats to public safety. But Republicans want them prioritized equally with someone who has murdered, driven while drunk or trafficked drugs. That is plain crazy, but that is the Republican approach to immigration.

When this Congress is over and the president is re-elected, I rs gold fully expect a debate on how we re-establish law and order in our immigration system, and I fully expect the leading Republicans on the immigration issue to fight every attempt at reform tooth and nail. Too many on that side of the aisle are addicted to scapegoating and denigrating immigrants -- and Democrats -- to have it any other way.

But the rest of us want a legal immigration system that works and a way for those who have been here for years and built lives here -- the vast majority of those who are here illegally in the absence of a functioning legal immigration system -- to get in the system and on the books so that immigration enforcement has teeth and employers play by the rules.

We will have that debate eventually, over the strenuous objections of Republicans who oppose a sensible law-and-order approach to immigration reform.

The Presidential Primaries as Reality TV

As the media frenzy in Iowa fades to the media frenzy in New Hampshire, the selection of an American President has completely descended into a poorly acted reality TV show. If the winner didn't lead the world's most powerful nation this might almost be funny. The Republican debates have proven to be capable of drawing a reasonable TV audience and every news outlet in the country is hard at work magnifying the impact of the small number of unrepresentative voters that control the nomination process in unique states like Iowa and New Hampshire.
Why do they do this? Why do the media focus so much attention on the Presidential campaign? Because people are interested, they will watch and read this stuff, and | swtor credits the demographics of this audience attract advertising. My suspicion is that some of the volatility of the process stems from the media's need for a storyline. A boring march to the nomination by "front-runner Mitt Romney" (I think that is his full name) is not good reality TV. We need drama, pathos, redemption, and deeply textured characters. We need Herman Cain and his mistress, Newt Gingrich and his comeback, Rick Santorum's persistence and Ron Paul's imitation of everyone's weird uncle.
Achieving high TV ratings requires a horse race. In 2008 we had the story of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hillary sheds a tear in New Hampshire and it becomes a | buy swtor credits major media event. This year, Newt cries in Iowa thinking about his mother, and the media tries to compare its potential impact to Hillary's tears in 2008. This is nothing short of amazing. But it is good business.
Whether or not you want to be influenced by this barrage of irrelevant information, you cannot ignore it and it influences policy and politics. We are told that these personal details and moments are needed because we must assess the character of those who seek to lead us. It is true that we need to elect honest, ethical and courageous people, but running this media gauntlet is no test of those virtues.
In fact, it seems more and more that our political | cheap swtor credits process has evolved into a place where a normal, idealistic, civic minded person would be crazy to ever go. The media dissects your history and personal life like an institutional peeping Tom. Your opponents conduct research and learn every word you've uttered and every action you've taken since junior high school. Herman Cain may sell more books as a result of his Presidential campaign, but his reputation has been sullied beyond repair. I hope Rick Santorum is ready for the assault.
And then there is the fundraising. Even minor elected officials now must fundraise constantly to gain and retain office. While the internet opens up possibilities of mass participation in funding political | swtor gold campaigns, I suspect that mass campaigns like Obama's in 2008 will be relatively rare. Although the 2008 Obama campaign raised hundreds of millions of dollars in small contributions from the web, even Obama decided to rely on fat cat fundraising to augment the internet in 2012. The stakes are constantly raised. The 2012 Obama campaign is trying to raise a billion dollars. According to Jeff Zeleny in the New York Times:
The Obama campaign raised about $750 million in the 2008 campaign, setting a record that is expected to be surpassed in the 2012 presidential contest. The race could see the first $1 billion campaign, a figure that Republicans have repeatedly invoked to encourage their donors to raise more runescape gold money for candidates and the national party.
Once the Supreme Court decided that campaign contributions were a form of free speech protected by the constitution, the fundraising rocket left the launching pad. The force of money in politics is obvious and a degree of institutionalized corruption has now become commonplace. The political influence of wealth is sometimes blatant and easy to see, but typically it is relatively invisible and can only be seen in the subtle mechanism of political agenda setting. This is when the political center gets defined and issues are labeled as either legitimate or fringe. The process of defining the legitimacy of an issue is influenced by the media barrage driven by political money. The wealthy wow gold control the terms of the dialogue by defining what is "realistic." The emphasis on the national debt as compared to unemployment and underemployment is an example of that form of influence. It took the drama, visibility and web savvy of the Occupy Wall Street movement to even get another view into the public's consciousness.
This is not a new story. The influence of economic power on our political process is part of the story of this country's success as a nation. Starting with Alexander Hamilton and up to the present day, American business and government have always acted in partnership. So too is the tradition of mass protest, from the original tea party to the Civil War's draft riots to the labor struggles of the early 20th century. More recently we experienced the civil rights, women's and anti-war movements of the 1960's and '70s. Today we see the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Unfortunately, the traditional partnership between government and business has once again become unbalanced. The focus on private, privileged advantage threatens to completely crowd out the public good. Our ability to act as a community has been impaired by three decades of anti-government rhetoric. The Presidential campaign provides a visible example of how this process has come to operate. The full media machine is focused on Iowa and New Hampshire. The first test of a Presidential candidate is to survive the scrutiny of a very select segment of the American people.

75 Years Ago Today, the First Occupy

On this day, December 30th, in 1936 -- 75 years ago today -- hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.
The workers couldn't take the abuse from the corporation any longer. Their working conditions, the slave wages, no vacation, no health care, no overtime -- it was do as you're told or get tossed onto the curb.
So on the day before New Year's Eve, emboldened by the recent re-election of Franklin | swtor credits Roosevelt, they sat down on the job and refused to leave.
They began their Occupation in the dead of winter. GM cut off the heat and water to the buildings. The police tried to raid the factories several times, to no avail. Even the National Guard was called in.
But the workers held their ground, and after 44 days, the corporation gave in and recognized the UAW as the representative of the workers. It was a monumental historical moment as no other major company had | buy swtor credits ever been brought to its knees by their employees. Workers were given a raise to a dollar an hour -- and successful strikes and occupations spread like wildfire across the country. Finally, the working class would be able to do things like own their own homes, send their children to college, have time off and see a doctor without having to worry about paying. In Flint, Michigan, on this day in 1936, the middle class was born.
But 75 years later, the owners and elites have regained all power | cheap swtor credits and control. I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail. You can start your own Occupy group in your neighborhood or school or with just your friends. Speak out against economic injustice at every chance you get. Stop the bank from evicting the family down the block. Move your checking and credit card to a | swtor gold community bank or credit union. Place a sign in your yard -- and get your neighbors to do it also -- that says, "WE ARE THE 99%." (You can download signs here and here.)
Do something, anything, but don't remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won't come again.
75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they'd had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?
My uncle wasn't, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.
Let's each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let's make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do.

Marginalizing Ron Paul

That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul's current campaign -- his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.
Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has | swtor credits made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it "claptrap" for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That's the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.
It is hypocritical | buy swtor credits that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the | cheap swtor credits Fed that led ultra secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of the their exploited customers.
To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed's trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.
As for the Times' complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, | swtor gold it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn't exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, "Watch out for the military-industrial complex -- they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don't need any more [weapons systems.]"
As another recent example of Paul's sanity on the national security issues that have led to a flight from reason on the part of politicians since the 9/11 attacks, I offer the Texan's criticism this week of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The act would allow the president to order indeterminate military imprisonment without trial of those accused of supporting terrorism, a policy that Obama signed into law and Paul opposes, as the congressman did George W. Bush's Patriot Act