A metaphor of potential

Sometimes when we want to talk about the worst aspects of humanity, we refer to our "animal nature." Its true that Mother Nature can be as harsh as she is beautiful, but I'm not sure its fair to suggest that our connection to animals represents the worst in us.

As an example, I believe there's much that we can aspire to from this kind of interaction.













This event was captured on film by wildlife photographer Norbert Rosing. You can hear Stuart Brown's description of it in this video.

Animals at Play from On Being on Vimeo.

Peruvian Presidential Election This Sunday

I have often found it interesting that we here in the U.S. pay so little attention to the politics of our neighbors to the south. Other than talk about the drug war or scare tactics about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, we don't seem to care much.

I must admit that my interest is at least partly fueled by the fact that the first seven years of my life were spent in Peru. But even that didn't affect me much until a few years ago when I got curious about the sea change that was happening there politically.

While Chavez gets all the attention, the people of South America are standing up all over the continent to elect their own leaders after years of colonization, repression, and dictatorships - often supported by our own government in DC. Leaders like Evo Morales in Bolivia, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and Rafael Correa in Ecuador are each doing things their own way. But overall democracy is spreading in South America in ways that the "Arab Spring" is only beginning to see.

Its in that context that the election Sunday in Peru is important. The candidates represent a clear return to the past and a somewhat uncertain potential to join the movement of the future. They are Keiko Fujimori and Ollanta Humala respectively.



Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori who fled the country during his term due to evidence related to serious corruption. Two years ago he was convicted of human rights abuses and is now in prison. Fujimori was president during the bloodiest conflict in the history of Peru. He is also responsible for things like the mass sterilization of over 200,000 people in rural Peru. To get an idea of what his administration meant to the people of Peru, watch the trailer of this movie "State of Fear."



Keiko Fujimori has surrounded herself with people involved in her father's administration. Many believe that she is just a proxy for him and that he will actually be calling the shots from his jail cell.

As for her opponent Ollanta Humala, I find it hard to read the reports about him. That's mostly because much of the South and North American media tend to demonize Chavez and tie anyone who they oppose to him. Humala actually ran for President and lost in 2006 and seemed to embrace Chavez.

In his failed 2006 bid for Peru’s presidency, Ollanta Humala donned red T-shirts, boasted of plans to assert state control over energy resources and blasted opponents for warming to the United States, using elements from the playbook that was then helping propel leftist political allies of Venezuela to electoral victories in Latin America.

But now, he's singing a different tune.

But in a transformation this year that points to the eclipse of Venezuela by Brazil, Mr. Humala has swapped the red shirts for dark suits, explicitly rejected talk of seizing private companies and celebrated Brazil’s market-oriented economic model, while distancing himself from Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez.

Humala once served in the military and has a confusing history there are well. He both led an insurgency against President Fujimora and has been accused of human rights abuses on behalf of the military against civilians.

It sounds as though the people of Peru are facing something that we in the U.S. often have to grapple with - having to choose between the lesser of evils.

Fearing a return to the authoritarianism and generalized corruption of the government of Ms. Fujimori’s father...the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa said he preferred Mr. Humala, “unhappily and with fear.”

Peace

Its been a short but pretty intense week at work for me. So I think I'll take a little advice from Norah tonight. If you'd like, feel free to join me for some peace.

Shoot and Score!

From President Obama's meeting with the House Republican Conference.

Cantor also criticized Democrats’ “Medi-scare” attacks, saying that the charges that the GOP is taking medicine from grandma to pad the pockets of the rich isn’t helpful...

The president added that he is all for a reduction of demagoguery, an issue he understands since he is the ‘job killing, death panel, probably-wasn't-born-here president.’

Nothing for me to add...that is a take-down of unadulterated beauty.

I don't know about you, but I sure want "that one" on my team!

:-)

Georgia's immigration law leads to agricultural worker shortages

I noted last month that Carlos Santana spoke out at a Braves game against Georgia's newly passed immigration law that was partly patterned after the one passed not too long ago in Arizona.

But Santana isn't the only one complaining about it.

The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association has estimated the labor shortages afflicting South Georgia counties could put as much as $300 million in crops at risk. But the full extent of the damage won’t be known until after July, when farmers have finished harvesting their summer crops, including blueberries, watermelons and sweet corn, said Charles Hall, the association’s executive director. When that damage is tabulated, Hall said, it will help farmers decide whether they should plant less for future harvests.

Farmers say the Hispanic migrant workers they depend on to pick their fruits and vegetables are bypassing Georgia to work in other states. The workers are concerned they will be harassed or jailed here following the passage of HB 87, the farmers said.

Its been clear for awhile now that Republicans tend to not think through the affects of their ideologically-driven policies. For example, they say they want to create jobs but promote a budget that is projected to eliminate them due to spending cuts.

And now we see that the results of a law passed by Georgia Republicans is likely to be that farmers will plant less crops to adjust to fewer workers available for the harvest. I'm sure that will be good for food prices and Georgia's economy. < snark off >

Fair Sentencing Act

When people list the accomplishments of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress of the last two years, you almost never hear about the passage of the Fair Sentencing Act. It reduced the 100:1 disparity in mandatory minimums for people convicted of offenses related to crack vs power cocaine. One has to wonder whether the lack of attention to this bill is because the disparities primarily affected young black men.

Today, in testimony before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric Holder took it one step further.

Saying that the Fair Sentencing Act that narrowed the disparity between penalties for crack and power cocaine offenses has been "a historic step forward," Attorney Gen. Eric Holder pushed today for retroactively applying the lighter crack penalties to some offenders now serving time.

"We have more to do," Holder said in a statement prepared for a hearing held this morning by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. "Although the Fair Sentencing Act is being successfully implemented nationwide, achieving its central goals of promoting public safety and public trust — and ensuring a fair and effective criminal justice system – requires the retroactive application of its guideline amendment."

Of course conservatives don't like this idea one bit.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas.), who opposed the bill before it became law in 2010, said commissioners would be overstepping their role if they approve retroactivity.

"Nothing in the act nor in the congressional record implies that Congress ever intended that the new crack-cocaine guidelines should be applied retroactively," he said in a written statement. Mr. Smith said the administration's position "sends a dangerous message to criminals and would-be drug offenders that Congress doesn't take drug crimes seriously."

And some liberals are so busy criticizing Obama for not doing enough to deal with these issues that they seem to have missed the progress that is actually being made.

Seeing all of that makes me want to respond with a statement to President Obama and AG Holder...Way to go! I've got your back.

In shift, DOJ's Civil Rights Division is hiring lawyers with civil rights backgrounds

I made a slight alteration in that headline from a story in the New York Times in order to demonstrate a "duh" moment. Its title is: In Shift, Justice Department is Hiring Lawyers With Civil Rights Backgrounds. Its important to note that the article is actually all about the Civil Rights Division.

Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has reversed a pattern of systematically hiring conservative lawyers with little experience in civil rights, the practice that caused a scandal over politicization during the Bush administration...

The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the Bush administration — which changed hiring rules to give its political appointees at the Civil Rights Division greater control over civil service hiring starting in 2003 — had violated hiring rules by screening out liberals and by actively seeking to fill civil service vacancies with conservatives, referred to privately by one Bush official as “real Americans” and “right-thinking Americans.”...

President Obama’s appointee to supervise the division, Thomas E. Perez, went further in a 2009 policy giving career professionals sweeping authority to choose whom to recommend to fill openings for experienced lawyers, a much larger group. Under the policy, if an assistant attorney general for civil rights wants to overrule a recommendation, he must do so in writing. Mr. Perez has not overruled any recommendations.

The article points out that today, the House Judiciary Committee will hold its first oversight hearing on the Civil Rights Division since the Republicans took over the House. My headline summarizes the beef the Republicans are likely to have with the new guidelines established for hiring by the Obama administration...hiring lawyers with civil rights backgrounds to work in the Civil Rights Division.

You see, the right doesn't have many (any?) organizations where a civil rights lawyer can gain the necessary experience to do this work. Why is that? Could it be that they don't have a commitment to the enforcement of civil rights? Just ask Sen. Rand Paul. So most of the new hires have backgrounds with organizations like the NAACP or ACLU, who Republicans consider "leftist."

So, as the saying goes...the problems the Republicans have with all of this are "a feature, not a bug."