RSN: California Spends $62,300 to Keep Inmate in Jail Per Year, $9,200 to Educate Child in K-12 School, Five Reasons We're Joining the People's Climate March

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

*NEW DONORS, WE HAVE TO REACH YOU: It's the first time donors we have to convince. We have easily 500 times the potential donors that we need. Who are you? What will it take to get you to step forward. In peace and solidarity. / Marc Ash - Founder, Reader Supported News*

Okay, I'll make a donation.

---

Steve Weissman | Doesn't Someone Have to Do Something to Stop Islamic State?

Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News
Weissman writes: "Which bothers you more? General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly warning that Obama might have to send in ground troops to defeat Islamic State? Or former president Jimmy Carter supporting Obama's new war?"
READ MORE

Get Ready for the Biggest Climate Protest Ever
Brooke Jarvis, Rolling Stone
Jarvis writes: "On Tuesday, September 23rd, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will meet with world leaders to discuss the global threat of climate change. Two days earlier, he'll be marching in the streets of New York alongside activists hoping to put pressure on the summit's high-powered attendees."
READ MORE

Five Reasons We're Joining the People's Climate March
Wenonah Hauter and Sandra Steingraber, EcoWatch
Excerpt: "People will be marching with a wide range of views and agendas, but as we prepare for this momentous and powerful event, here are five reasons the two of us will hit the streets of New York on Sunday."
READ MORE

Jim Wallis | It's About More Than Football
Jim Wallis, Sojourners
Wallis writes: "Athletes - at the professional and college levels - have been engaging in these violent crimes against women for a long time and regularly get away with it - we all know that. The National Football League, in particular, has taken little or no action against violence against women by its players."
READ MORE

Catholic Nuns Take On Dark Money in Politics With Nationwide Bus Tour
Jack Jenkins, ThinkProgress
Jenkins writes: "A group of Catholic nuns gathered outside the Capitol in Des Moines, Iowa on Wednesday to kick off a nationwide 'We the People. We the Voters' bus tour, seeking to use their moral weight to highlight the evils of 'dark money' in politics and encourage disenfranchised people to register to vote and show up on election day."
READ MORE

NYT Reveals Threats Against Turkish Reporter as Pro-Government Media Turn Her Into Target
Hurriyet Daily News
Excerpt: "The New York Times revealed Sept. 19 that its reporter Ceylan Yeginsu, who wrote a striking story on the recruitment efforts of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) at the heart of the Turkish capital Ankara earlier this week, has been receiving 'messages that threaten her safety.'"
READ MORE

Russell Simmons | California Spends $62,300 to Keep Inmate in Jail Per Year, $9,200 to Educate Child in K-12 School
Russell Simmons, Reader Supported News
Simmons writes: "For far too many children who live just a few miles away from where my daughters are being raised in Los Angeles, going to prison is a norm. And this standard is sadly reinforced by the investment, or lack thereof, of our taxes in their future."
READ MORE

RSN: Elizabeth Warren Leads Progressive Charge, but Has GOP Admirers Too, Hidden-Camera Captured Kentucky Coal Ash Dumping, Tim DeChristopher: The Boomers "Failed" Us, et al

Elizabeth Warren, a newcomer to political office, trashed former Senator Scooter Brown, Koch Sock Puppet,  in a grassroots campaign to represent Massachusetts in the Senate. [That Sock Puppet and carpetbagger is currently running against Senator Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire.] 

Massachusetts deserves to be proud of its choice! 

Senator Warren has stood tall, represented ALL Americans and spoken Truth to Power! 

It's time to take government back from the Kochs, stop believing their fibs, lies, fabrications, falsehoods and propaganda. Make the Koch Sock Puppets irrelevant because they are!

Please support those candidates with the backbone to stand for a Progressive Future by contributing to their campaigns even if you can only afford a modest contribution, donate your time and make a few phone calls, get involved.

Democracy is NOT a Spectator Sport!

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

---

Bernie Sanders Woos Iowa Activists

Ben Jacobs, The Daily Beast
Jacob writes: "Bernie Sanders didn't just play a one night stand when he spoke to Democrats in Clinton County, Iowa on Saturday night. The Daily Beast has learned that Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont contemplating a 2016 presidential bid as a Democrat, spent Sunday and Monday in the Hawkeye State meeting with liberal activists."
READ MORE

Elizabeth Warren Leads Progressive Charge, but Has GOP Admirers Too
Niels Lesniewski and Bridget Bowman, Roll Call
Excerpt: "'What reaction do you usually expect from banks?' Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked a reporter last week. It was classic Warren."
READ MORE

Jim Hightower | 5 Signs That America Has Gone Bonkers - And a Glimmer of Hope
Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Hightower writes: "It might appear that the U-S-of-A has gone bonkers. So let me clear up any confusion that you might have: Yes, it has!"
READ MORE

Unnecessary and Disproportionate: How the NSA Violates International Human Rights Standards
David Greene and Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Excerpt: "We are now able to look at how the NSA's mass surveillance programs, which we have learned about in the past year, fare when compared to the Necessary and Proportionate Principles. As you might expect, the NSA programs do not fare well."
READ MORE

Jim Wallis | This Will Change How You See Immigration
Jim Wallis, Sojourners
Wallis writes: "The Stranger is a new 45-minute documentary created to introduce Christians to the stories and lives of immigrants living in this country. Interviews with pastors, Christian leaders, and policy experts provide a biblically based context for the immigration challenges that face our country today."
READ MORE

Tim DeChristopher: The Boomers "Failed" Us
Sarah van Gelder, YES! Magazine
van Gelder writes: "Tim DeChristopher woke up knowing he would somehow protest an auction of oil and gas leases on federal lands in Utah's red rock country. How he would make his views known, though, was a mystery. When an official at the auction asked him if he was there to bid on land parcels, he agreed. That seemed like a good place to start."
READ MORE

Hidden-Camera Captured Kentucky Coal Ash Dumping
Brandon Baker, EcoWatch
Baker writes: "Two months have passed since hidden-camera images exposed Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E) for dumping toxic coal ash into the Ohio River - a practice the company has engaged in for two decades. The utility has done nothing in response, so two environmental groups figure it's time to pay up."
READ MORE

North Carolina: Moral Mondays

Impressive actions!

Moral Mondays

by Jim Wallis 07-11-2013

I often talk about faith as something that is personal, but never private. Each of us must take responsibility for the beliefs we hold and must personally wrestle with life’s most fundamental questions. But once we have decided to follow Jesus, we cannot help but live out our personal beliefs in public ways. The demands of the gospel refuse us the option of a purely inward spirituality.

Protestors gather for Moral Mondays in North Carolina.

Photo by yashmori / flickr.com

As anyone who has read my writings over the years will know, Matthew 25 is a text at the very core of my faith. It is the scripture that brought me back to Christ. In Jesus’ call to welcome the stranger and care about the least of these, we are challenged as Christians to love those whom the world too often neglects. In a culture driven by self-interest, God call us to care about the common good and about how our public policies affect the most vulnerable. In a world where money and power bring influence, Jesus asks us to give attention to the poor, the weak, and the marginalized.

While there are times when those in power listen to the guidance of moral and religious leaders, far too often we’re asked to be prophets. In the face of opposition, we pick up our crosses and lift up our voices on behalf of the disadvantaged.

In North Carolina, pastors and civil rights leaders, along with thousands of others, have been living out their personal faith in a very public way. Since late April, dozens of faith leaders and hundreds of others have been arrested at the state capitol as part of an ongoing protest called “Moral Mondays.”

What would motivate these leaders to take such a strong stand at such a personal cost?

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory and conservative majorities in both chambers of the state legislature have pushed a rigid budget agenda that has cut benefits to more than 70,000 people without jobs, restricted access to health care for low-income people, and attacked voting rights. The legislature is working on a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations while increasing the burden on struggling families.

Pastors in North Carolina are putting their faith into action because their elected officials are ignoring the views and values of the people they are supposed to be representing. As the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, a pastor in Goldsboro and the president of the NAACP in North Carolina, said, “We had to stand up as a coalition — not liberal vs. conservative (that’s too small, too limited, too tired), or Republican vs. Democrat. We had to [give] a moral challenge because these policies they were passing, in rapid-fire, were constitutionally inconsistent, morally indefensible, and economically insane.”

Across our country, too many pastors from too many churches in too many towns are far too timid when it comes to following the gospel call in Matthew 25. In this passage, Jesus offers a vision of God’s kingdom where caring for vulnerable people is the defining mark:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” (Matthew 25:35-36, 40)

God is far bigger than a single political party. There are many paths and policies for addressing poverty, reforming our broken immigration system, responding to climate change, and healing the racial divides that continue in our society. But what we cannot accept, nor allow, is for our own leaders to willfully exacerbate our problems and directly harm people who are already suffering — to sacrifice the common good to their own ideological agendas. In such moments and times, people of faith must speak out — not for the sake of politics, but because the beauty and simplicity of the gospel demands it.

What is happening in North Carolina is remarkable and inspiring. It is also effective. The media is taking notice, and people are responding from all directions. Sadly, more than one elected leader has resorted to name-calling, with one legislator describing the protests as “Moron Mondays.”

It is clear which side has the moral high ground.

A diversity of issues is at play among protestors in North Carolina. Many, including myself, may not agree with their whole agenda. But a common purpose drives them: that those elected to serve must truly be the servant of all by governing toward the common good. Until North Carolina’s elected officials start listening to the faith community and change their ways, I stand with the pastors and civil rights leaders getting arrested every Monday in Raleigh. And I want to add my voice to theirs.

Sign this petition and join me in showing North Carolina’s elected leaders that the whole country is watching, and we’re praying for those hurt by their actions.

Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners. His book, On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good, is now available. Watch the Story of the Common Good HERE. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.

Image: A Moral Monday gathering in North Carolina, yashmori / flickr.com

http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/07/11/moral-mondays

Remembering the True Spirit of Christmas

Jim Wallis raises troubling questions about the moral failures of the Republicans --


See Sojourners new ad up now in Speaker Boehner's District:

Jim Wallis

Christian leader for social change

Fiscal Cliff: Time to Challenge the 'Mighty on Their Thrones'

Posted: 12/21/2012

We must be very careful about bringing theological judgments to political ones. Most policy decisions are prudential judgments -- compromises between two political parties, neither of which represents the kingdom of God. But sometimes, political ideologies come to a place where they so clearly threaten the well-being of so many and the very foundations of the common good that they must be challenged by theology. This is a moment like that.

 

Yesterday, Speaker John Boehner brought two bills to the House floor - a tax bill that failed and a spending cut bill that passed. Both fail the basic test of protecting the poor and vulnerable. While it does not look like even the spending bill has much of a future, what it portends for the future of the deficit reduction debate is grim. The package taken together would enact harmful cuts in food assistance, health care, and tax credits that help struggling families make ends meet.

 

Cuts to SNAP would take $41 in food assistance away from a family of four each month - a real difference to those living on the edge. The cuts to health insurance subsidies and Medicaid would leave millions uninsured. The cut in tax credits would push 1.5 million Americans -- and 800,000 children -- in working families into poverty. And, the wholesale elimination of the Social Services Block Grant would cut adoption services, child care help to working mothers, and community-based supports to the elderly so they can live in their homes rather than nursing homes.

 

The extreme political ideology that now seem to be controlling the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, as evidenced by their "plans" to solve our fiscal problems are directly contrary to the religious convictions of our many faith traditions and must be challenged as such. The proposals being advanced continue to provide enormous benefits to the wealthiest members of our society while threatening the harsh assaults against our poorest and most vulnerable neighbors. This a moral inversion of the values espoused by Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and all people of conscience regardless of religion.

 

Fiscal conservatism is one thing, and it can be accomplished in ways that protect the poor. But, the current Republican proposals and their hardline commitments show none of those concerns and are decidedly very bad news to the poor. As an evangelical Christian, I believe that the Gospel of Christ is to be "good news to the poor," and that those who say they follow Jesus should be those who bring that good news to the poor.

 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was speaking directly to us when she announced the meaning of our coming Savior, whom she carried in her womb when she said, "He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty." Because the Republican budget proposals fill the rich with good things and send the hungry away, it is time to challenge the mighty on their thrones.

 

Today, I challenge our political leaders to read the Christmas story of God come to earth and born in a manger as a child of working-class parents, and then reexamine their own budget priorities.

 

Especially at Christmas, it is time for Members of the Congress and the Senate, who also express personal religious commitments -- Evangelical, Protestant, Catholic -- to reflect upon their faith and their theology and re-examine their political ideology.

 

And it is time for our elected leaders from both parties to explicitly commit to the principle of protecting the poor and vulnerable in any agreement that is reached to avoid the fiscal cliff.

 

It's time to take out our Bibles and to read the Christmas story over the holiday season.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/fiscal-cliff-time-to-chal_b_2346383.html