Unreported

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Jamie and Allison discuss military propaganda at home and abroad, specifically this highly disturbing photo of a Palestinian child in crosshairs posted by an Israeli soldier, how the cats are acting out while Jamie is away, and how U.S. Special Forces will practice interrogation techniques on immigrants, and how Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA, is using the same ol’ race-baiting techniques to drum up gun sales.

Citizen Radio is a member-supported show. Visit wearecitizenradio.com to sign up and support media that won’t lead you to war!

Listen to the new episode of Citizen Radio and subscribe to the free podcast.

Jamie thanks the Maniacs for coming out to his Austin CD taping, Allison discusses a string of protests breaking out across the country in response to the fiscal slope negotiations/looming budget cuts, updates on the AP Iran “bomb chart” incident, what’s the matter with Arizona, big ups to Stevie Wonder and Gov. Jerry Brown.

Citizen Radio is a member-supported show. Visit wearecitizenradio.com to sign up and support media that won’t lead you to war!

Listen to the new episode of Citizen Radio and subscribe to the free podcast.

Jamie reports from Occupy Melbourne, Allison discusses mini-drones, the record 400,000 deportations this year in the U.S., and the Occupy Wall Street protests against police brutality and Gov. Cuomo that resulted in the arrest of author Naomi Wolf.

Special guest: The guy who’s totally NOT a narc. Oh, and Dominic Dierkes (@dominicdierkes) from Derrick Comedy.

Special announcements: Jamie will be performing in the following places..

Australia: October 20 @ Trade’s Hall in Melbourne, Friday October 21 in Sydney @ The Manning Bar, and October 22 @ Brisbane Power House.

Listen to the new Citizen Radio and subscribe to the free podcast.

Drone ‘growth market’, John McCain AKA Grandpa Simpson blames wildfires on immigrants, a lesbian couple gets kicked out of a baseball game for kissing, Miss USA was one of two contestants to correctly answer a question about evolution, religion is still crazy, eating vegan is totally affordable, and the overuse of SWAT teams.

Jamie will be at the Steve Allen theatre July 18. Get tix here.

Support Erin Red’s kickstarter for her vegan podcast AKA Step 1 of Citizen Radio Productions!

Also, support US Uncut’s fundraising drive so they, along with The Yes Men, can go expose the evil deeds of tax-dodging corporations in the Cayman Islands!

Jamie will be in Pittsburgh at 222 Ornsby July 1st! Come out and say hello!

Citizen Radio is a member-supported show. Visit http://wearecitizenradio.com to sign up and support media that won’t lead you to war!

Listen to the new Citizen Radio and subscribe to the free podcast.

Newt Gringrich’s staff suddenly leaves in mass exodus. What could be brewing on the horizon? Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union policies have inspired the emergence of “Walkerville,” more activists have been arrested in Florida for daring to feed the homeless, the viciously anti-immigrant environments in Alabama and Massachusetts, Wisconsin’s internet is in danger, the state’s GOP’s bizarre and desperate plans to run spoiler candidates, and outgoing CIA chief Leon Panetta says – surprise! – Iraqis really want the U.S. to stay.

Support US Uncut’s fundraising drive so they, along with The Yes Men, can go expose the evil deeds of tax-dodging corporations in the Cayman Islands! Check out Allison’s latest article at The Nation about US Uncut and The Yes Men getting the band back together.

Jamie will be in Pittsburgh at 222 Ornsby July 1st! Come out and say hello!

Citizen Radio is a member-supported show. Visit http://wearecitizenradio.com to sign up and support media that won’t lead you to war!

Oh, hello. I’ve been somewhat MIA the last few days because I’m currently in Seattle for Bumbershoot (Citizen Radio co-host Jamie Kilstein is performing in the festival). I’m not a music reviewer, so my inarticulate summary of my experience thus far translates: Edward Sharpe = AWESOME!

Other than dancing like a dirty hippy to a beautifully insane 10-person band, I, along with 30 million aging hippies, post-post modern hipsters, and drunken douchebag frat boys crammed into an sporting arena that could double as an internment camp to watch Bob Dylan “sing.”

Judging from Twitter, a lot of people were there just so they could say they saw Dylan before he died, which struck me as a really sick and ugly motivation. Of course, that’s why I was there, too, but I had the courtesy to leave after one of the aging hippies started to projectile vomit, which set off a horrific chain reaction of puking and near-stampeding. Most people stayed and maintained the illusion that they were there to experience a genuine cultural moment.

Since I’ve been preoccupied silently resenting most of the people at this festival/trying to score some interviews, I haven’t had time to read the news, though a couple things jumped out at me that I highly recommend reading.

• Glenzilla contrasts NBC’s propaganda-peddling (the combat troops are “out of Iraq”) with the AP’s refusal to parrot the Pentagon’s script.
• Tasers are now being used to sell Direct TV. Hilarious stuff. Also in tasering news, Washington police have killed five civilians in a single week, and two of those deaths involved tasers. (h/t Nicole)
• My friend Jenn Pozner was on the Today Show to talk about women’s roles on television. Jenn is a super savvy author, and she managed to cram a bunch of interesting facts into a typically short morning television segment.
• My favorite little, black storm cloud, Krugs, blows a hole in the recovery myth
• On this Labor Day, let’s give thanks for immigrants who helped (and continue to help) build America.
• The unstoppable, but totally-not-caused-by-global warming, fires that swept across Russia have led to a ban on exported wheat, which may in turn lead to more food riots. Also, Al Gore is still fat.

Jamie and I were on the Best Of The Left podcast the other day. You can hear the interview here. BOTL is a great podcast that exists because of listener donations, so if you value great podcasts, give ‘em a couple bucks.

Police and demonstrators scuffle at a protest of a new immigration law outside the Arizona the state capitol building on April 23, 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife

In 2008, then Gov. Janet Napolitano promised her nervous Democratic constituents that nothing radically horrific would transpire after she had been plucked from the herd by the president to become head of the Department of Homeland Security. Despite assertions that Republican Jan Brewer becoming governor of the state would radically alter the Arizona political landscape, Napolitano pledged a smooth transition as she handed over the reins of power.

Now that Brewer has signed one of the most unconstitutional, anti-immigrant bills in the country’s history, it should be abundantly clear to even the biggest post-partisan dreamers out there that Brewer is exactly the politician her opponents described her to be: a budget-cutting, gun-loving (she signed legislation allowing people to bring guns into bars,) anti-gay, SCHIP-loathing partisan hack, who would rather see children go without healthcare than dare offend the radical elements of her base.

Signing the new anti-immigrant bill simply complements the terribleness of her past “achievements.” Yet, there are those who see this newest piece of legislation as one part in a sinister grand vision that creates a generally hostile environment for Hispanics.

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Child of a migratory farm laborer in the field during the harvest at FSA labor camp, Tex. Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Two Republicans, Senators Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, have requested numerous major changes in the health care reform proposal drafted by Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The changes include things like prohibiting the use of federal money to pay for abortion, but while the tiny coterie bickers over that admitedly major provision, they agree that illegal immigrants should not benefit from the health care overhaul in any way.

Actually, Enzi and Grassley go further by requesting a five-year waiting period for legal immigrants to receive tax credits, or subsidies, to help them buy insurance. While the legal immigrant waiting period may seem excessive to invidiuals who possess souls and beating hearts, similar statements about illegal immigrants have become commonplace. Of course we shouldn’t provide health care for illegal immigrants! They’re illegal! Illegal is bad!

However, once the discussion is permitted to evolve past shallow slogans, it’s obvious that providing health care for all immigrants (illegal and legal) actually benefits everyone. Last week, I attended a town hall meeting in New Jersey during which Rep. Rush Holt (D) explained that if an immigrant, legal or otherwise, arrived at a hospital and was diagnosed with meningitis, he would want that immigrant to stay in the hospital instead of infecting his or her entire community.

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New York Times

The failures of the immigration system are many and severe, but the main problem is not that the country is catching too few undocumented immigrants. It is catching too many. Since the early 1990s, you could write the federal government’s immigration strategy on a cardboard sign: Deport Them All.

A report last week from the Pew Hispanic Center laid bare some striking results of that campaign. It found that Latinos now make up 40 percent of those sentenced in federal courts, even though they are only about 13 percent of the adult population. They accounted for one-third of federal prison inmates in 2007.

The numbers might suggest we are besieged by immigrant criminals. But of all the noncitizen Latinos sentenced last year, the vast majority — 81 percent — were convicted for unlawfully entering or remaining in the country, neither of which is a criminal offense.

The country is filling the federal courts and prisons with nonviolent offenders. It is diverting immense law-enforcement resources from pursuing serious criminals — violent thugs, financial scammers — to an immense, self-defeating campaign to hunt down … workers.

The Pew report follows news this month that even as a federal program to hunt immigrant fugitives saw its budget soar — to $218 million last year from $9 million in 2003 — its mission went astray. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, of the 72,000 people arrested through last February, 73 percent had no criminal record. Border Patrol agents in California and Maryland, meanwhile, tell of pressure to arrest workers at day-labor corners and convenience stores to meet quotas.

The country needs to control its borders. It needs to rebuild an effective immigration system and thwart employers who cheat it. It needs to bring the undocumented forward and make citizen taxpayers of them.

For all the billions spent on fences, raids, patrols and prisons, the number of illegal immigrants has steadily grown to about 12 million last year from four million in 1992. So has the need to overhaul the many parts of a festering, broken system: to clear out backlogs in legal immigration, to rescue families from limbo, to throw sunlight on the shadow economy, to deter unlawful hiring, to replace chaos with lawfulness and order. All those priorities have languished in the deportation era.