Money & democracy update from @Public_Citizen

an e-newsletter about the movement to curb corporate influence in politics and restore our democracy Issue #77 • September 9, 2011 “Money and Democracy Update” is Public Citizen’s weekly e-newsletter about the intersection of money and politics. It is part of our ongoing campaign to track the results of — and ultimately overturn — the U.S. Supreme Court’s reckless decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allows for-profit corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to support or attack political candidates. We’ll update you regularly with select news stories and blog posts, legislative developments and ways to get involved. Stunning Statistics of the Week: One: The number of references in President Barack Obama’s speech to special-interest influence on our country’s budget crisis Companies that disclose political spending are more valuable Publicly held companies that disclose their electoral spending have a higher share price than politically active companies that fail to disclose their donors, according to a report released this week by Public Citizen and a Harvard Law School professor. The new finding provides added evidence that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should require corporations to disclose their political activities, the report said. Super PACs to change scope of elections Make Us Great Again, a Super PAC that is throwing its weight in support of presidential candidate Rick Perry, plans to spend $55 million to help secure the Republican nomination for the Texas governor. This may be even more than the Perry campaign raises itself. “It’s a game changer,” said Paul S. Ryan, the Federal Election Commission director for the campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center, of the Super PAC’s goal. “Super PACs will make the 2012 presidential election unlike any election we've seen before.” Boosting fundraising game plans With 14 months to go until the 2012 presidential elections, the political action committee and nonprofit created by Republican strategist Karl Rove are raising the stakes in their fundraising plans. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have more than doubled their original goal of raising $120 million to influence elections next year. Transparency would mitigate industry influence on supercommittee Nearly 100 former aides to lawmakers serving on the bipartisan “supercommittee” now lobby on K Street for industries(think energy, financial, defense, agricultural, etc.) that have a stake in the budget deal. Additionally, seven former lobbyists currently work for the lawmakers. Luckily, a bill was introduced this week that calls for transparency in the supercommittee’s dealings to ensure that its recommendations aren’t unduly influenced by lobbyists representing wealthy corporate interests. It’s all about convenience, right? Some of the top political fundraisers for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign got together to watch the commander in chief’s speech on jobs this week. But immediately after the speech, many of the guests were invited to another event: a reception hosted by two former Obama aides who formed a Super PAC to raise money for the re-election efforts. Meet the financial base of the Koch political agenda Just who helps finance the political agenda of the Koch Brothers, the billionaire industrialists who love to throw their money into political causes? Thanks to materials obtained by Mother Jones, ThinkProgress and Alternet, we now can have a better sense. Check out this analysis of the guest lists of some of the Koch Brothers’ “seminars.” Reaping benefits of legislation When Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) intervened and stopped federal regulators from shutting down a struggling kidney transplant program in her district, she was lauded for standing up for Nevada families. But her constituents weren’t the only ones reaping benefits. Berkley’s husband, a physician whose nephrology practice directs medical services at the hospital’s kidney care department, got a $738,000-a-year contract with the hospital after the regulators backed off. In fact, the kidney care industry stood to benefit from at least five House bills that his spouse co-sponsored. Visit DemocracyIsForPeople.org to learn more!

To get regular e-alerts about opportunities for activism and other ways to help with Public Citizen’s work, sign up for the Public Citizen Action Network.

Startups by millennials as a solution to the economic crisis? I think not.

I recently came across an article which suggested that startups by millennials might be a solution to our economic woes.

I don't think so.

While I don't have statistical evidence, I have had contact with "startups" by "millennials", and my distinct impression is that their hiring practices consist of the following:

disproportionately high numbers of:

-people from privileged backgrounds
-young people
-people who've grown up with a computer in their home
-highly educated people from the 'best schools'
-caucasian people, and to a lesser extent asian people
-healthy people

disproportionately low numbers of:

-people from disadvantaged backgrounds
-older people
-people whose only access to a computer has been to wait in line at the public library for minutes of access at a time
-people who have not received good educations
-black people, latino people, and native american people
-disabled people

We need to share the wealth; not concentrate it still further.

It's time for some "trickle-up economics", time to start lending a helping hand to the downtrodden, the passed-over, the people on dead-end streets, the homeless, those without the training needed to survive in the 21st century world. Time to provide childcare to poor and working class mothers who need to work. Time to provide training to the long term unemployed. Time to make sure that every child in this country gets a quality education, and that every person who wants to work can be put to work, beginning to repair the damage which has been inflicted on this society by the advocates of trickle down theory... more aptly described as "voodoo economics".

Let us start helping those who need help, and stop piling on aid to those who already have everything.

Jim Hoffa: "Let's take these son-of-a-bitches out"

The President's speech showed a welcome change in substance and in tone

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The President delivered his major economic address yesterday evening (out of prime time):

Text

Video

Proposed Bill (Text & PDF versions)

It was the best speech I've heard from President Obama.

It delivered a major shift in both content and in tone.

It was the first time Mr. Obama made the case for the importance of government to the American people.

And it was the first time he showed some fight, and some willingness to go over Congress's head... to the people.

And it was the first time he sounded to me like he was on the side of the people.

Of course it contained the obligatory Reaganesque slams at "regulation" (i.e. "the rule of law"), and threats against the completely powerless people who rely on Medicaid and against the necessary social safety net of Medicare.

But on balance it was a good thing.

Would it be ungrateful of me to ask "Where was this guy the past 2 1/2 years?"

Well, he sounded like a man last night. I hope he can stay on track.

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The significance of today's recall election #wirecall

To me the significance of today's election for the recall of 6 miscreants in Wisconsin is whether we begin taking back our country now, or whether we will have to wait until a complete breakdown of our society, including massive civil disorder.

In case you haven't guessed it, I'm hoping we begin taking it back now.

A fascistic conspiracy between massive aggregates of wealth and two all too cooperative political parties has been eroding, and stealing from, the middle class in this country for 30 years. The discredited economic thinking which pervaded prior to, and which brought about, the Great Depression, is trumpeted as though still valid.

And it has been used to ensure a financial meltdown the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression.

Enough idiot votes have been combined with enough stolen votes to make it possible for the trend to continue.

It has to end.

I hope that it will end before, rather than after, the widespread misery of the 1930's revisits us.

Wisconsinites are showing us the way.

I'm sure they will turn out in sufficient numbers to get rid of the parasite Republican senate majority in Wisconsin. Whether the votes will be counted honestly is not free from doubt, however.

I'm hoping for the best.

In my opinion, a lot is riding on this.

Dissenting opinion in Citizens United v. FEC

For those of you who may be wondering how the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is wrong legally, here's the dissenting opinion, which lays it out in great detail, and which -- unlike the majority opinion -- accurately describes the law:

http://beckermanlegal.com/100122citizensunitedJusticeStevensDissent.pdf

The majority opinion is not law, it is a coup d'etat similar to the coup engineered by rightwing Justices in 2000, in Bush v. Gore.

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Talk tonight at 7PM in #NYC: Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America

Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America

by Joe Burns

First Tuesday Political Series, hosted by Mark Crispin Miller
McNally Jackson Bookstore
52 Prince St. (b/t Lafayette & Mulberry), NYC
June 7, 2011 — 7:00 p.m.

Danny Schechter hosts Joe Burns, author of Reviving the Strike: How Working People Can Regain Power and Transform America. Joe Burns is a veteran union negotiator, labor lawyer, and a former local union president. For the past decade, he has negotiated labor contracts in the airline and health care industries. He has a law degree from the New York University of Law.

Complete article

"Let them eat salmon" ... the January 2011 state of the union message

The President's State of the Union address was a well crafted speech.

Politically he scored points with it, and the dumbfounded Republicans were unable to mount any kind of attack against it.

That's because the speech could just as well have been delivered by a Republican as by a Democrat.

Basically what I heard was our President:

-mocking the agencies that protect fresh water fish, salt water fish, and the food we eat, from the corporations that would poison them,

-suggesting that the answer to our problems is to magically create more teachers, scientists, and mathematicians to assist those, and other, corporations make even more money,

-giving credence to the long-ago-discredited school of trickledown economics,

-giving credence to the voodoo economics theory that cutting federal expenditures during a financial crisis would somehow be stimulative, when there isn't a single economist in the country who believes that, and

-repeating the oft-mentioned theory that America is the "best" country in the world, because of the ideals upon which our nation was founded, regardless of how far we stray from those ideals in practice.

Ronald Reagan would have been proud, and Bill Clinton no doubt was proud.

Nothing was said about how to keep a roof over the head of the budding little mathematicians, or to feed the young people who would become our future teachers, or to see that they stay out of jail and get medical attention so that they even survive to adulthood, let alone get a "college" education.

Nothing was said about how the federal government -- which last I heard was the place where the President works -- was going to help create jobs.

Nothing was said about the mortgage foreclosure crisis, or homelessness, or unchecked mental illness.

Nothing was said about the fact that it costs money to educate children, and it costs money to keep them safe and healthy.

Nothing was even said about the fact that no amount of money will be able to make up for the loss of the salmon, and the other species which we are poisoning, genetically destroying, and killing.

Was there skill and craftiness in drafting this document? Certainly.

But as for logic, there was about as much as Marie Antoinette's apocryphal response to the problem of the French people not having bread to eat.... "Let them eat cake".

#p2012 -- Twitter hashtag for progressive candidates only. BlueDogs & "centrists" need not apply.

I'm going to use the hashtag #p2012 for progressive candidates running in the 2012 election or upcoming recall and special elections.

I.e., those candidates who deserve our ENTHUSIASTIC support -- financial contributions, knocking on doors, get-out-the-vote efforts, phone banks, rallies, etc.

I am not going to use it indiscriminately for Democrats running for office, just because they happen to be Democrats. If they are Democrats in name only, they will have to find their own hashtag.

And I'm not going to use it for general progressive issues unrelated to candidates running for office. For those tweets I will continue to use #progressive and/or #p2.

It's not always easy to distinguish progressives from the others. E.g., IMHO, Candidate Barack Obama was a progressive, while President Barack Obama is not. Mario Cuomo is a progressive; while the son he raised, Andrew Cuomo, is not.

If you see me use the hashtag for a candidate, and you have evidence that the candidate is not a progressive, please let me know.

Thanks.

(A shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/k71iQM)

Ecuadoran indigenous plaintiffs appeal from ruling staying judgment against Chevron

The indigenous Ecuadoran plaintiffs have filed an appeal from the Court's order temporarily staying enforcement of their judgment against Chevron.

Notice of appeal

Judge temporarily enjoins enforcement of Ecuador judgment #indigenous

In Chevron v. Donziger, in a 131 page decision, the judge has granted Chevron a preliminary injunction against the enforcement, by the Ecuadorean indigenous plaintiffs, of the $17 billion money judgment they have obtained against Chevron for its pollution of the Amazon.

The judge conditioned his grant of an injunction upon Chevron's filing a bond in the amount of $21 million.

Full decision:

March 7, 2011, decision (PDF)

(Shortened URL for this post: http://is.gd/8O70Zn)

List of people live tweeting from inside capitol building #wiunion

In view of Walker's apparent takedown of the live UStream feed, I'm going to collect a list of people live tweeting from inside the capitol building:


@AndrewKroll
@ddayen
@evale72
@MelissaRyan
@brandzel
@dane101
@searchcommittee
@PatSimmsWSJ
@brandzel [also livestreaming video]


If you have any additions, send them as a comment or a tweet addressed to me. I'm at raybeckerman

Live coverage: http://is.gd/jilYsm

(A short URL for this post: http://is.gd/jilYsm)

Live stream of protestors threatened with arrest in Wisconsin capitol building #wiunion

Apparently this is working live coverage:

http://qik.com/Brandzel



I found some live, or recently recorded, coverage here:

http://qik.com/madison1rally

It appears that Governor Walker let Fox News keep its live stream going:

http://interactive.foxnews.com/livestream/live.html?chanId=6

while UStream's mysteriously disappeared:


Video chat rooms at Ustream

Documentary "Phil Ochs: There but for fortune" @philochsfilm showing all across country #film #philochs

I was thrilled to learn that the new documentary about the life of Phil Ochs, "Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune" directed by Kenneth Bowser, is now showing all across the country, and has extended play dates.

The younger generations need to know about the true "heroes", the ones left out of our history books... on purpose. And Phil Ochs was truly an American hero.

Trailer:

Screenings across the country and in Canada

Cast and credits


Synopsis:

As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars and pins its hopes on a new leader's promise for change, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune is a timely and relevant tribute to an unlikely American hero. Over the course of a meteoric music career that spanned two turbulent decades, Phil Ochs sought the bright lights of fame and social justice in equal measure - a contradiction that eventually tore him apart. From youthful idealism to rage to pessimism, the arch of Ochs' life paralleled that of the times, and the anger, satire and righteous indignation that drove his music also drove him to dark despair. In this brilliantly constructed film, interview and performance footage of Ochs is illuminated by the ruminations of Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Pete Seeger, Sean Penn, Peter Yarrow, Christopher Hitchens, Ed Sanders, and others.

The @ShortyAwards tampering with its own election!

I cannot believe what I just saw when I went over to the "politics" category at the Shorty Awards web site:



At the top of the voting category it has avatars of eight (8) twitter accounts which are not faring well in the voting, and says: "Undecied? [sic] Check out these popular politics accounts you can nominate."

Then it provides a "more" link which leads you to other accounts that aren't faring too well in the election, either.

Don't they realize how corrupt this is???

It would be like the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences suggesting to its members who it should nominate, and who it should vote for.

This really taints the award process, as it suggests something really wrong with the company administering the Shorty Awards.

The Palestine/Israel problem is not an indigenous rights issue

The problem of bringing peace to the Holy Land is a complex one, and it is not one that can be resolved by resort to the issue of "indigeneity" -- i.e. who is more "indigenous".

The solution will require thinking, compassion, and intellectual integrity. Simplistic sloganeering will not do it, and ignoring history would be fatal to the process.

There are those who seem to think, or at least say, that the Palestinian Arabs are more "indigenous", because there was a relatively large migration of Jews in the 20th Century.

And there are those who argue that the Jews are more "indigenous" because their presence extends back more than 1500 years prior to the conquest by the Arabs.

Both of these arguments are wrong, and neither is constructive.

The presence of the Jews in the Holy Land goes back more than 3000 years. In addition to the continuous residence of the Jews in the Holy Land throughout recorded history, the repeated genocides, enslavements, expulsions, and exiles to which they have been subjected prior to, and even after, the formation of the State of Israel, which thinned their numbers time and again, have never caused exiled or escaped diasporan Jews to forget their history, or to stop considering the Holy Land -- where the remains of their forefathers are buried -- as their sacred land. The land of Israel (Eretz Y'Isroel) and the city of Jerusalem (Y'Rushaloyim) are central to Jewish culture and religion in the Diaspora, and always have been. Almost every part of Jewish liturgy contains references to the Holy Land and to the Jews' being there and returning there. There are holidays which were celebrated in the middle ages in the cold steppes of Russia which were centered around fruits and growing seasons that existed only in The Holy Land. Synagogues in the Diaspora are constructed so that worshippers facing the ark, or cabinet, in which the Torah is kept, are facing in the direction of Jerusalem.

Some argue that the Palestinians are non-indigenous because there was no such thing as an "Arab" in the Holy Land until after the conquest by the Arabs in the 7th Century A.D. This is propaganda, not serious history, since (a) it is highly unlikely that the Palestinian Arabs of today are all purebred descendants of the Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, (b) it is highly unlikely that all of the non-Jewish indigenous residents of the area in the 7th Century disappeared, moved, or became Jews; (c) there was no doubt intermarriage between the indigenous residents of that time and the Arabs from Arabia; and (d) many of those who identify themselves in that region today as Arabs, to the extent they are not relatively recent immigrants themselves, are no doubt the product of such intermarriage. And it would not be surprising to learn that many of them are in fact descended from Jews who opted to convert to Islam rather than be martyred by their Islamic conquerors.

It is likewise a myth that only the Jewish population's ranks have been swelled by immigration, while the "Arab" population has not. In fact, both the Jewish population and Arab population include vast numbers of relatively recent immigrants, who arrived during the past 100 to 150 years, and their descendants.

It is also a myth that all of the Jewish immigrants are from Europe, overlooking, e.g., the 3.5 million Jews in Israel who hail from the middle east. See, e.g., around a million who were forced out of other places in the Middle East by Islamic oppressors in the latter half of the 20th century alone. See, e.g. "Final Exodus of the Libyan Jews".

Another myth created recently has it that the Israelis who came from Europe aren't really "Jews" but are "converts" because of likely intermarriage in central Asia and in Europe. While a "racial purity" test is not an appropriate measure of who the Jewish people are, since they are not a race, but a people, the underlying factual premise is simply false. As the medical world and geneticists have known for decades -- the Jewish people have an unusually high level of genetic material in common with each other, despite their huge geographic dispersal.

To try to sort out who among the "Arab" population are indigenous and who are not, and who among the Jewish population are indigenous and who are not, or to try to determine which population is more indigenous than the other, is ludicrous, not constructive, and inhumane. It is a fact that both populations have long standing ties to the area, and that both populations have also been swelled by immigration.

More mythology is heaped upon us in suggesting that Israel "invaded" the occupied territories, ignoring the fact that each of the three major wars against Israel were initiated by the Arab world. On Israel's part, the 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars were purely defensive wars, not wars of "conquest". In 1948 the UN assigned Israel a tiny sliver of land, amidst a giant sea of Arab land, and gave it the right to share Jerusalem with its Arab neighbors. Unwilling to allow the Jews any right to even that small homeland in their ancestral home, the Arabs commenced a genocidal war intended to exterminate the Jews in the State of Israel. They immediately expelled the Jews from their ancestral home of Jerusalem -- which housed their most sacred site, and in which the Jews had resided for more than 3000 years, starting 1500 years before Islam was even invented (the Arabs who committed this "conquest" never termed their occupation of Jerusalem, which lasted from 1948 to 1967, an "occupation", or termed their mistreatment of Jews as "apartheid").

It is also propaganda to label Israel's Jewish nature as "apartheid", while ignoring Israeli law which bears no resemblance to apartheid, and ignoring the actual genocide, cultural genocide, pogroms, and other abuse of Jews by Arabs almost everywhere Jews have lived in the Arab world. If you want to see apartheid, study how Jews have been treated everywhere in the middle east except their home of Israel. (see note 1 below)

The Arabs lost their initial, 1948, war, and commenced several additional wars, which they lost as well. In each and every case the Arabs were the aggressor. With the first war, they gained territory, and with the second and third, they lost territory.

It is a fact that both peoples are "indigenous" and have longstanding ties to the land.

It is also plain that had the Arabs respected the right of the Jews to live in their ancestral homeland in peace there would have been no "occupation".

That is history. Now we have to look to the future.

If we are to move forward, each and every one of the living, breathing human beings who are born, live, and die in the region needs to be treated with dignity, respect, and compassion. Abuse of noncombatants, warring against civilians, abuse of prisoners, using civilians as human shields, war crimes, inhumanity to fellow man.... can have no place in the peace process.

Callous, politically motivated, warlike leadership is the last thing either side needs.

Inhumane behavior by the warring parties must stop, if peace is to be achieved.

1. Israel has a right to exist.

2. The Palestinian Arabs have a right to a state of their own.

3. War crimes, misconduct towards noncombatants, and other inhumanity must stop, and should be punished, or at least exposed through a 'truth and reconciliation" process.

4. Sloganeering, name calling, and rewriting history -- of the type that has been making the rounds on Twitter lately -- make the prospects for peace harder, not easier.

So I call upon all concerned to adopt a fair, balanced, honest, and humane approach to the problem of bringing peace to the Holy Land.

Note 1. Saudi Arabia's airline refuses to allow Jews to fly. This is apartheid.)


(Shortened link for this blog post: http://goo.gl/M8SKaJ)

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NY's problem isn't snow removal, it's parasite removal

In case you haven't noticed, the real reason for New York City's "snow removal" effort is that there isn't any snow removal equipment.

When it snows in New York they strap snow plow blades on the front of garbage trucks, and call that "snow removal".

Of course all the garbage trucks can do is push the snow around, from one end of the block to the other, burying and often denting and scratching cars parked on the side of the street.

Under the administration of Giuliani-Bloomberg Inc., the City has been busy

-"cooking its books" to pretend its budget is balanced, by omitting to include appropriate reserves for purchases and infrastructure maintenance

-encouraging developers to build more and more large buildings to house the wealthiest people and corporations in the world;

-making war on the public school system in hopes of privatizing it and turning it over to their wealthy friends;

-destroying neighborhoods;

-conducting "pretend" antiterrorist games, such as assigning a large number of police officers to perform random bag checks at a single subway station, thereby greatly deterring terrorists since a suicide bomber wouldn't walk, drive, or ride 3 or 4 blocks away to enter the subway system at a different stop;

-encouraging chainstores to drive out neighborhood stores;

-increasing gentrification;

-swelling the ranks of (a) Arab sheikhs (b) billionaires (c) yuppies (d) poor people (e) mentally ill people receiving no treatment (f) homeless people, and on and on.

So it's plain to see why there's no time or money for the parasites who run New York to sit down for two minutes and arrange to actually remove some of the snow.

And of course Bloomberg is the first to get on the news and accuse the poor sanitation workers of not pushing the snow onto people's parked cars fast enough. He would not think of his own lack of planning -- despite having had 3 terms of office -- as a possible cause.

The sociopathic parasites who are destroying our city are what need to be removed.

Very important action memo from Sen. Bernie Sanders @senatorsanders #p2 #progressive

Ray -

As you know, enormously crucial decisions are being made in Washington now which will impact the future of our country for decades. Please join me for an interactive discussion on issues ranging from how we protect Social Security for our kids and grandchildren, to how we create the millions of new jobs we desperately need to how we address the deficit crisis in a fair and progressive way.

Sign up to join me for DFA Live on Tuesday, December 7th, at 8:00 PM Eastern Time.

In terms of Social Security, let's be very clear. Social Security has not added one dime to either the federal deficit or the national debt. In fact, Social Security is running a $2.6 trillion surplus that is projected to grow to over $4 trillion by the year 2023. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that even if no changes are made, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits to every eligible American until the year 2039. In other words, Social Security is not in crisis.

Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress, who claim to be so concerned about our large deficit want to extend Bush's massive tax breaks to the wealthiest 2% of Americans -- which will add, over a ten year period, $700 billion to our national debt. Given the fact that we already have the most unequal distribution of income of any major country, this is a totally absurd and irresponsible proposal.

That's why I organized a working group in Congress to provide a real, progressive alternative to the Deficit Commission's recommendations. We can move this country forward in reducing our national debt, but we don't have to do it on the backs of the already suffering middle class and working families of this country.

All and all, there's a lot to talk about and I look forward to a lively discussion with my friends at Democracy for America. Thank you very much for your grassroots activism. Together, we will move this country forward.

Please join me and my friends at Democracy for America next Tuesday, December 7th at 8:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time) for DFA Live -- a conversation on some of the important issues facing our country including Social Security, reducing the deficit in a fair and progressive way and job creation.

Thank you,

-Bernie

P.S. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter to stay up to date on the work I'm doing on Social Security, the deficit, job creation and more.

Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter. Please Contribute Today and support our mission.

Landmark speech by Senator Bernie Sanders @senatorsanders

(Originally posted 12/4/10)

A landmark speech by Senator Bernie Sanders (@senatorsanders on twitter).

Every American citizen should take 13 minutes and watch it.

It makes me wish Bernie Sanders were our President.

There is nothing I can say that will do it justice, so just watch it:

http://youtu.be/H5OtB298fHY

Today the great silent majority raised its head. #rally4sanity

Today the great silent majority raised its head.
Teachers and students of history, not book burners.
The carriers of true family values.
Defenders of the poor, and of children,
The workers for peace and for community,
Fighters for equality and for justice.
The sharers, not the takers.
The givers of love, not the exploiters of hate.
The real America, holding her torch high,
reminded us today of her abiding presence,
and her quiet, but insurmountable, strength.