An Eye For Us Janet Siders was Soundly Defeated by Nelson Brown for City Council Voters Rejected another Eloise Paschal The voters overwhelmingly rejected the little-known Janet Siders' bid for a seat on the City Council in the November Election. The voters elected former Police Commander Nelson Brown to fill the seat vacated by Eloise Paschal. Siders was Paschal's choice to replace her on the city council. Voters were outraged when Paschal voted with the three White councilpersons to lay Nelson Brown off and to eliminate his assistant chief position. Voters' outrage over Paschal's vote played a major role in her decision not to seek reelection. Paschal's vote so angered Black voters that they decided to find a candidate to unseat her in the November Election. Full Story........... Newts War on Poor Children Newt Gingrich has reached a new low, and that is hard for him to do. Nearly two weeks after claiming that child labor laws are “truly stupid” and implying that poor children should be put to work as janitors in their schools, he now claims that poor children don’t understand work unless they’re doing something illegal. On Thursday, at a campaign stop in Iowa, the former House speaker said, “Start with the following two facts: Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.” (His second “fact” was that every first generational person he knew started work early.) Full Story............. A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses A Commentary by Marc Pitzke Speigel Online The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The the entire country’s reputation. Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed -- well, they shouldn't make such a big deal about it. Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. Full Story.............. Why We Must Occupy Democracy You've been seeing this across the country … Americans assaulted, clubbed, dragged, peppersprayed … Why? For exercising their right to free speech and assembly - protesting the increasing concentration of income, wealth, and political power at the top. And what's Washington's response? Nothing. In fact, Congress's so-called "supercommittee" just disbanded because Republicans refuse to raise a penny of taxes on the rich. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are people. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision last year ended all limits on political spending. Millions of dollars are being funneled to politicians without a trace Full Story.............. The Poor, the Near Poor and You What is it like to be poor? Thankfully, most Americans do not know, at least not firsthand. And times are tough for the middle class. But everyone needs to recognize a chilling reality: One in three Americans — 100 million people — is either poor or perilously close to it. The Times’s Jason DeParle, Robert Gebeloff and Sabrina Tavernise reported recently on Census data showing that 49.1 million Americans are below the poverty line — in general, $24,343 for a family of four. An additional 51 million are in the next category, which they termed “near poor” — with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. As for all of that inspirational, up-by-their-bootstrap talk you hear on the Republican campaign trail, over half of the near poor in the new tally actually fell into that group from higher income levels as their resources were sapped by medical expenses, taxes, work-related costs and other unavoidable outlays. Full Story............ Editorials