[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Part 4 of a 4 Part Series

By Marilyn Dudley-Flores, Ph.D
CEO
OPS-Alaska

Moon Shot: Piercing the Corporate Academic Veil

Academe has typically been a “black box” for politicians. Its ways and means originate in the Middle Ages and seem esoteric to anyone on the outside. In the United States, that condition worsened after astronauts landed on the Moon. Such a lofty goal won, academic production no longer particularly served the national interests in a Space Race and a Cold War.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Assembly Speaker pro Tem Lieber describes report as blueprint for legislation and action

By Frank D. Russo

The California Alliance to Combat Trafficking and Slavery Task Force released today its Final Report, Human Trafficking in California, with findings and recommendations to the Governor, Attorney General and Legislature. The full report runs to 130 pages.

Among its findings: California is a top destination for human traffickers. Research by the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center identified 57 forced labor operations in almost a dozen cities in California, between 1998 and 2003, involving more than 500 individuals from 18 countries.

The report starts out: "Nearly 150 years ago, the United States abolished slavery. Most Californians would find it hard to believe that slavery still exists, and may occur in their own communities." Indeed.

Human trafficking is a hidden crime, a modern-day form of slavery. It means controlling a person through force, fraud or coercion - physical or psychological - to exploit the person for forced labor, sexual exploitation, or both. It means the deprivation of freedom and the abuse of basic human rights.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to embrace Common Cause's latest attempt at redistricting, the "Voters First" initiative, at a press conference today. The initiative, if it qualifies, will be on the November 2008 ballot.

Schwarzenegger has endorsed every variety of redistricting to come down the pike. Nevermind the details that could likely tilt map-making into the hands of Republicans. Nevermind that there's no similar system anywhere in the United States. Nevermind that it would put the complex of drawing the state's lines into the hands of amateurs. Yet there's no doubt that the editorial boards will praise him to high heaven, given their fantasyland notion that redistricting alone will somehow transform California politics.

This initiative, however, has its own set of problems. It would put the power of redistricting largely in the hands of the State Auditor -- someone with zero experience in redistricting and who is nominated by the Legislature and selected by the Governor. So much for "independence."

And that's just the beginning.

Even progressives find it distasteful. Last month, Bob Bauer, counsel to Obama for America and the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, took a whack at the new Common Cause/VOTERS FIRST redistricting initiative on this "More Soft Money More Hard Law" website.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Part 1 of a 4 Part Series

By Marilyn Dudley-Flores, Ph.D
CEO
OPS-Alaska

In a series of four parts (I-IV), I discuss why America is becoming a second-world nation. The United States’ inevitable slide from first-world status is because of an anti-innovation trend playing out within the state and the nation. This is so despite California being an industry leader and at the leading edge of many kinds of innovation. This anti-innovation trend subtracts from the “big science, great policy” innovation it will take to combat global warming’s direct and indirect effects, worsening natural disasters, and the decline side of oil. These are the big guns pitted against human survival.

And, California is in the crosshairs.

 Fact: If the Central Valley of California is one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world and the largest in the United States, growing approximately one-third of the nation's food, then the decline side of oil and the directs and indirects of global warming will impact that production in enormous ways. The same goes for California’s forestland that is greater than any other state except Alaska, and the wine industry that encompasses Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, and the Santa Barbara and Paso Robles areas.

by Michael Kuykendall [courtesy of Blog for America]

Over the weekend US legal authorities forwarded an argument in a British case that the United States can legally abduct anyone in the world.

In a case in the United Kingdom this weekend the United States officially asserted its right to legally detain and abduct citizens of any nation. From the Times Online (h/t Mefi);

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

[...]

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

read more »

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Peter Schrag

As Ward Connerly prepares initiatives to abolish race-based affirmative action in five more states, New America Foundation fellow Gregory Rodriguez, no fan of Connerly's movement, has published an eye-opening book that nonetheless reinforces deep questions about the nation's racial assumptions and categories.

Connerly is the Sacramento businessman and ex-regent of the University of California who drove the successful campaigns overturning race-based preference policies in public education, employment and contracting in California, Washington and Michigan. He's now planning similar campaigns in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

Connerly's most notable failure was the overwhelming defeat of California's Proposition 54 in 2003, which would have prohibited the use of official racial categories in all instances where they were not required by federal law and not essential to public safety. Those categories, Connerly said, legitimized racial divisions that were long obsolete.