More good stuff from AG Mark Herring.

~ Amicus brief argues that recently announced immigration enforcement reforms would create substantial economic and public safety benefits for Virginia while helping to keep families intact ~

RICHMOND(April 6, 2015)–Attorney General Mark R. Herring is joining 14 other states and the District of Columbia today in filing an amicus brief advocating for recently announced federal immigration reforms that “will increase State tax revenue, enhance public safety, and help avoid tragic situations in which parents are deported away from their U.S. citizen children, who are left to rely on state services or extended family.” The package of executive immigration reforms announced by President Obama in November, and currently subject to an injunction preventing its implementation, would improve our nation's broken immigration system by improving border security, making it easier for highly-skilled workers to remain here, demanding accountability from undocumented immigrants who are already here, and prioritizing the deportation of dangerous criminals instead of breaking up families in Virginia and across the nation. It is estimated that the reforms could extend revocable protection from deportation to up to 92,000 undocumented immigrants in Virginia, producing more than $106 million in increased tax revenues over five years.

“Immigration has been a source of economic, cultural, and social benefit for the Commonwealth for more than 400 years,” said Attorney General Herring. “While we're waiting on Congress to enact long overdue comprehensive immigration reform, the President has offered lawful, reasonable steps that will boost our economy, keep families intact, and promote public safety by removing criminals and increasing trust between law enforcement and communities. In Virginia, deferred action for young people has enabled us to offer an affordable college education to the children of immigrants who, in many cases, know no home but Virginia. These reforms would offer additional benefits to our Commonwealth, and they should be allowed to move forward.”

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, April 6.

*Decoding the Iran deal (“It’s tougher than many skeptics anticipated”)

*Rand Paul seems to stray from libertarian roots as he courts GOP base (Not sure why anyone thinks this right-wing extremist ever was, or is, truly “libertarian.”)

*Beneath Crops in California, Groundwater Crisis Grows

*Preliminary Iran Deal Is ‘Our Best Bet,’ Obama Says

*Economics and Elections (“…as Britain prepares to go to the polls, the leaders of the coalition government that has ruled the country since 2010 are posing as the guardians of prosperity, the people who really know how to run the economy. And they are, by and large, getting away with it.”)

*This conservative group is tired of being accused of climate denial – and is fighting back (Wonder what Virginia House Speaker Bill “ALEC” Howell has to say about ALEC’s latest thuggishness…)

*George Will Revives Tired Canard That Reagan Created One Million Jobs In One Month (Does climate-science-denying doofus George Will ever tell the truth about ANYTHING?)

*Rick Santorum quotes ‘God Hates Fags’ slogan on national TV to defend ‘religious freedom’ laws

*Rolling Stone’s investigation: “A failure that was avoidable”

*Report: Rolling Stone rape article ‘journalistic failure’

*The glass house in Richmond (“The only significant difference between Indiana and Virginia, at least on this issue, is that McAuliffe and Pence hold differing views on whether to include sexual orientation in nondiscrimination law.”)

*Virginia’s lack of affordable housing (“…localities should do all they can to reduce or eliminate minimum-lot requirements for new homes. “)

*Obama family visits historic African American church in Northern Virginia

*Our view: Sweet Briar’s cascading problems

*A gorgeous Opening Day for the Nats, but wet and cooler by Wednesday

So no question, Rolling Stone f***ed up big time in its “reporting” on a supposed gang rape at the University of Virginia. In doing so, they did a great deal of damage. For instance, as Attorney General Mark Herring puts it, “Rolling Stone’s failures have put survivors in a more difficult position, shaken a university community, and injected doubt at a moment when we are finally building national momentum around efforts to end campus sexual violence.” Rolling Stone also, of course, damaged itself, which is highly unfortunate given that it’s done some great, progresssive journalism over the years. Yet after this incident, sorry to say, it’s going to be next to impossible to trust anything in that magazine as long as the crew that completely botched the UVA story is still in charge. Time for some heads to roll at Rolling Stone…like, anyone involved in this debacle.

Having said all that, I’ve just got to note that watching the corporate media pile on Rolling Stone, in a holier-than-thou feeding frenzy of sanctimonious, gleeful outrage is just…rich. Take the Washington Post, for instance, which massively failed in its job leading up to the Iraq War.  OK, that was a decade ago, how about today? Well, today we’ve got a paper which features on their editorial page climate science deniers, torture apologists, and people who haven’t been factually or analytically correct in years (decades? ever?). Then there’s the Post’s “both sides” bull**** “journalism.” There’s their political “reporting,” which in the leadup to the last presidential election, called things wrong over and over and over again. Has there been any accountability for any of this? Has anyone been fired for being utterly incompetent at their jobs? And now they’re going to get on their high horses and lecture Rolling Stone?  

By the way, this is the same Washington Post which used to have an Ombudsman, but which eliminated that position, while keeping on board egregious lying liars and utterly unprincipled hacks such as Jennifer Rubin. How much does the Post pay the Jennifer Rubins and George Wills of the world? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was more than what the Ombudsman made.

Of course, the Post – like other corporate media these days – is desperate for eyeballs, clicks, and some sort of business model in the age of free online advertising (Craigslist, etc.), gazillions of media outlets of all types, and a continued decline in the number of people who get home delivery of a physical newspaper (or who read one every day). So basically, they’ll print anything, no matter how laugahbly wrong, absurd, offensive, whatever, if it draws precious “clicks.” Check the Post tomorrow, or any day; I’m confident you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Meanwhile, as budgets atrophy, so does quality control. For instance, if you’ve read the Post in recent years, and you have any knowledge of the English language whatsoever, you’ve no doubt noticed the deterioration in spelling, grammar, you name it. So much for copy editing, apparently, at the Washington Post. Apparently, it’s much more important to shell out whatever they’re paying the climate science deniers, torture apologists and unprincipled right-wing hacks, than to get the basics of publishing a spelling-and-grammar-checked (not to mention FACT-checked!) newspaper nailed down.

In the end, as egregious as Rolling Stone’s screwups in the UVA “gang rape” story fiasco was, the corporate media is in absolutely no position, moral or otherwise, to lecture them. And frankly, as important an issue as rape and sexual violence on campus (or anywhere, for that matter) is, there are even more important issues in the world (e.g., climate change, which threatens humanity and ecosystems/species on the entire planet) which the corporate media gets wrong EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yet I see no uproar or outrage about that. Why not?

Sorry, but until I start seeing at least a few of these “journalists” held accountable for their repeated, ongoing failure – whether from incompetence, willful igorance, corruption, whatever – to connect the dots on climate change, or to get their reporting right on almost any subject, I am not going to be in any mood to listen to their high-horse lectures aimed at Rolling Stone. However badly Rolling Stone screwd up – and again, there’s no question that they did! – the corporate media at this point simply has zero credibility to be lecturing anyone on journalistic standards, ethics, or anything else. In short, about the ONLY thing the Washington Post and other corporate media outlets should be doing right now is looking in the mirror and perhaps repeating to themselves, “there but for the grace of god go I.”

This piece appeared as an op/ed in newspapers in Virginia’s 6th congressional district.

In a previous column, I declared that historians will judge that the most important political battle of our times was not over the issues that most people focus on – immigration, abortion, guns, etc. – but on something far more fundamental. The vital battle now is over whether the American people will be able to preserve the gift our founders gave us, or whether a new kind of Big Money will fully succeed in transforming our nation into a society in which the powerful few dominate the many.

To understand how revolutionary our founders’ vision was, we need to remember the old order in the European civilization from which they came. In Europe, for centuries, the ruling one percent of the population controlled nearly all wealth. Power ran only from the top down. Feudal fiefdoms established by the sword dominated those who worked the land; and eventually all became the “subjects” of kings who claimed “divine right” and were answerable to no one.

The founding of the United States was a cure for this injustice.

No longer, in Jefferson’s words, would it be supposed that the mass of mankind be “born with saddles on their backs” while a “favored few” were “booted and spurred, ready to ride.” America’s fundamental principle would be that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

No longer would the few dominate and exploit the many for, in America, the government would derive its powers from “the consent of the governed.”

This great achievement is being dismantled right before our eyes.  

Big Money, it seems, is no longer content just to take more than its fair share of America’s bounty – though there is still plenty of that. (For example, Dominion Power — alias VEPCO — has just used its “influence” with our legislators to get favors that transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from the pockets of average Virginians into its own corporate coffers.)

A new kind of Big Money power is making fundamental democracy-destroying changes in our system. With the Supreme Court having opened the floodgates for money to pour into our electoral system, Big Money is increasingly able to choose who gets power. By the time the people vote, much has already been decided by billionaires and giant corporations.

With our elected representatives more and more the servants of Big Money, the door is opened for the creation of a shadowy organization like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) to write legislation that bought-and-paid-for legislators around the country pass into law.

This is not something that theoretically might happen. A big part of that undesirable future has already arrived.

A recent reputable study has demonstrated that the will of the people now has little effect on what our government does. “Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” researchers (from Princeton and Northwestern Universities) have found, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

Those researchers found: “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.”

We are not back to the old, oppressive order. (Not yet anyway-despite the widening gap of wealth inequality, and the massive erosions of our rights to privacy.)  But the further we move toward a society where the few can dominate the many, the more we open the way for things to slide ever further into the kind of society from which our founders sought to protect us.

We are witnessing a coup d’état in slow motion. Or rather, because it is happening so slowly, too many of us are failing to see it.

The path into this exploitative system is not through the sword, as it was when a kind of anarchy allowed warlords to hack their way to power.  In America, Big Money is creating its version of this unjust system out of an established democracy. So it is not the sword, but the lie, that is the main weapon the powerful few are using to dismantle our American heritage.

Until the consent of the governed is no longer needed, the “misinformed consent” of the governed will pave the way.

The first step in disabling the power of the lie is to recognize this truth: We the American people are now called upon to stand together and fight to rescue the gift our founders gave us.

Are liberals and conservatives willing to come together with that old feeling, “We’re all Americans” to defend the essence of the America our founders passed on to us?

******************

Andy Schmookler’s forthcoming book is What We’re Up Against: The Destructive Force at Work in Our World– and How We Can Defeat It.

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, April 5.

*Bush as Inevitable Choice?Republicans Say Not So Fast

*Pope Francis: Easter message urges peace in Iraq and Syria

*After Islamist attack, armed guards shield Kenyan churches

*Huckabee blames ‘militant gay community’ for backlash against Indiana’s ‘religious freedom’ law (Yep, Mike Huckabee continues to be his usual, raving, bigoted self.)

*Jacobson: Virginia and the Clean Power Plan (“Through the Clean Power Plan and other forward-looking energy policies, Virginia can lower its carbon footprint; provide residents with a more secure, affordable energy future; and reap significant economic benefits and create jobs at the same time.”)

*Schapiro: Flap over Israel trip feeds voter fears (“It confirms their suspicion that conservative Christians support Israel for what some American Jews consider the wrong reason: that Israel’s overwhelming Jewish majority is a placekeeper until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.”)

*McAuliffe suddenly seems chummy with Virginia’s GOP lawmakers (“Governor’s bipartisan tone worries Democrats hoping to woo voters by painting Republicans as antagonistic.”)

*Gilmore still assessing presidential bid (LOL)

*Gerrymandering: The Challenge (“…those interested in fixing Virginia’s broken redistricting system had better start now. They have a long road ahead of them.”)

*For Virginia’s GOP delegation, it’s safer to upset leadership than voters (“Rep. Dave Brat’s mere presence in the House is a reminder of the power of the state’s conservative base.” Sure, if you define “conservative” as “extreme.”)

*Rolling Stone awaits review of debunked Virginia gang rape story

*UR author sees warm future for Virginia

*Our view: Did Wall Street kill Sweet Briar?

*VCU brand takes a hit with departure of Shaka Smart

*Welcome spring warmth could take a turn toward stormy by midweek

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, April 4. Also, check out President Obama’s weekly address, which discusses “the historic understanding the United States – with our allies and partners – reached with Iran, which, if fully implemented, will prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and will make our country, our allies, and our world safer.”

*Iran pact could alter political order in Mideast (“As Iranian officials celebrated the nuclear agreement, there was cautious hope in Saudi Arabia, internal dissent in Iran and open hostility in Israel.”)

*The Iranian Nuclear Deal: What the Experts Are Saying (“Ignore the right-wing politicians and pundits. Here’s what nonproliferation wonks think about the accord.”)

*Wingnuts’ nagging Iran problem: Why they can’t answer this one simple question (“Republican hopefuls are swaggering about they’d cancel an Iran nuclear deal. What would they do next?”)

*Sarah Brady, longtime advocate for gun control, dies at 73 (A big loss…)

*Sabotaging the president (“Republicans try hard to undermine Obama”)

*A better deal than we expected (Netanyahu “should embrace it and help seal loopholes in final agreement.”)

*Somali extremists Al-Shabab warn of more attacks in Kenya like the assault on Garissa college (Al Shabab needs to be destroyed; same with Boko Haram and ISIL.)

*Democracy In Virginia (“Roughly 13% of Virginia’s General Assembly are giving voters a choice in its primary and only just under 30% of all 140 seats will be competed for on election day in November between a Democrat and a Republican.”)

*Norment won’t discuss lobbyist relationship (Norment is a corrupt slimeball.)

*McAuliffe ‘bans the box’ on state job applications

*These Corporations That Raise Money For Schools Keep 48 Percent For Themselves (Virginia features prominently on this excellent story by Josh Israel of ThinkProgress.)

*Details about FBI agents’ deaths off Va. Beach coast kept secret

*Officers involved in K-9 attack on NSU student no longer on force

*Portsmouth financial woes are expanding

*Natural Bridge Zoo to remain closed, judge says

*Sweet Briar College students, staff protest school’s closure outside president’s house

*Windy and cool today, breezy

and much warmer tomorrow