I hadn't heard about this incident until now, but seems there were three or four Staten Island losers who were so outraged that (GASP!) a black man won the election that they went on a rampage beating up and insulting black men. [UPDATED at bottom with more info from Staten Island Advance...thanks to Daniel Millstone!]

From Salon.com:

Three white New Yorkers, riled by Barack Obama's victory, spent election night hunting down black people to beat up and yelling insults about the president-elect, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The men beat a Liberian immigrant teen, pushed a black man to the ground and drove their car over a white man they thought was black, according to the indictment unsealed in Brooklyn.

Yes, you heard right. These not too bright individuals hit a white guy thinking he was black. Shows you the intelligence level of your average racist.

A fourth defendant was expected to separately plead guilty to unspecified charges, according to law enforcement officials...

I don’t know if you’ve been following it, but the first signs that the in-coming Obama administration will be center-right in character have – on a policy level – emerged in the new administration’s plans for stimulus or recovery spending. Many people like me quietly (or loudly) worried that the cabinet & White House appointments were Clintonian in character. The appointments of Senator Clinton, Rep. Emmanuel and the rest worried me, but I’ve thought that – if the team were led in a progressive direction, having centrist Democrats on board could be handy.

However, Obama-inspired press leaks about the stimulus package have made clear than on a policy basis, the far right of the Republican party may be accommodated with useless tax cuts while the needs of the nation may be ignored. The New York Times and Washington Post carried the news a couple of days ago and its very bad.

Mr. Obama plans a $750 Billion stimulus, $300 Billion of that will be spent on tax cuts . The reason this is a ghastly idea, from the point of view of softening the nation’s deepening depression is that the $300 Billion is – in essence – money thrown away. The stimulus value of the proposed tax cuts is very, very small, as compared to other ways of spending the money.

This comes from Democracy for NYC:

Did You Get a RoboCall from an Insurance Co. Against Obama Healthcare Reforms?

President-Elect Obama has said that he wants to end the $11 billion corporate welfare subsidy - passed by the Bush Administration - to private companies that provide Medicare through Medicare Advantage. These companies cherry-pick the best patients and have been making record profits. While Medicare Advantage was designed to reduce costs through competition, this has not worked; a Georgetown University study found the cost to taxpayers of treating patients through this program increased in 2007.

Join us at Linkup [tonight] (Wed) to discuss this and other healthcare reforms being proposed in Washington this year...

Robocalls:

“Can’t anybody here play this game?” a legendary manager of a hapless start-up team once asked. It applies here as well. Now I don’t know whether Hiram Monserrate is really Hiram Monster Rat as claimed by the Daily News. I’ve never met the man, never spoken to him on the phone (Although, full disclosure, I once campaigned for his opponent, John Sabini).

Four Updates Newsday's Rocco Parascandola reports NYPD doing forensic tests on the glasses said to have cut Ms. Giraldo and Juan Gonzalez has an excellent review here. Try also this NY Times review which includes new detail about videos and witnesses and this Daily News report with even more.

State Senator-Elect Monserrate, charged with felony-domestic-violence assault on his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo has, by his statements and by those of his "supporters," created over and over again, the image of someone who is guilty, guilty, guilty. I’ve known public relations professionals and many of them could have worked Mr. Monserrate’s side of the story without making the mess Mr. M's team has done so far. In my view, although you should feel free to ask Howard Rubenstein, Mr. M could have been silent or he could have spun one straight story and stuck to it – but no. The story – leaked out by Mr. Monserrate’s “supporters” -- has changed day by day as new facts and “factoids” are uncovered.

Sometimes you meet someone you like and respect and can talk to, but don't always agree with on every issue. The best part about such encounters is it gives you a chance to hone your arguments in a respectful environment.

Argue abortion with Sarah Palin and it is useless because she is an idiot. Argue abortion with an intelligent, respectful opponent and you get the chance to refine your arguments.

Which is what I am doing now.

The fight over abortion comes down to two fundamental, and in this case seemingly (but not necessarily) opposing, values: the value of life and the value of a person's right to have legal jurisdiction over their own body. Both are important values, so in many debates over abortion where people are not respectful of eachother, it appears that one of these two values is being neglected by each side. I believe this does not have to be true.

There have been some posts on this site about Josh Skaller, a truly progressive candidate for City Council with a real shot at winning the seat. Here are details about a fundraiser for his campaign:

Tuesday, January 6 from 7-9pm, meet
Josh Skaller, candidate for the City Council in the 39th District
at O'Lunney's, 145 West 45th St. (btwn. 6th & Broadway)

Host Committee: Lewis Cohen, Tracey Denton, Dana Northcraft, and Jonathan Tasini, and Heather Woodfield

Josh is a recent past President of Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats (CBID), one of the most admired political reform groups in the city, serves as a board member and Field Director of Democracy for NYC, and played a key role in organizing support for President-elect Obama in Brooklyn. Josh is running for one of the few "open seats" in the City Council as the current officeholder is not running for re-election. This gives us a real chance to add a strong, progressive voice to the New York City Council.

More about Josh, and how you can help, after the jump:

Do you know that Langston Hughes poem "Let America Be America Again" with its searing refrain “America never was America to me?”

It was brought forcefully to my mind when reading a Washington Post report of a Muslim family removed from an AirTran flight to Orlando because two other passengers “overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.”

“…(F)ive of the six adults in the party are of South Asian descent, and all six are traditionally Muslim in appearance, with the men wearing beards and the women in headscarves. [One of those removed] Irfan, 34, is an anesthesiologist. His brother, 29, is a lawyer. Both live in Alexandria with their families, and both were born in Detroit. They were traveling with their wives, Kashif Irfan's sister-in-law, a friend and Kashif Irfan's three sons, ages 7, 4 and 2.”

The Airline explained : "At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn't have made on the airplane, and other people heard them," Hutcheson [AirTran spokesman] said. "Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions." (emphasis added by me).

The Center for Worker Education runs a graduate program in Urban Policy and Public Administration, through the Department of Political Science at Brooklyn College. Last semester (Fall 2008), five graduate students from the course “Politics and Public Opinion Formation (#735x)” completed a poll on the term limits extension issue. It was conducted over a one month period and ended on December 13th, 2008.

There were nine questions asked to a total of 364 respondents. Ninety-three percent of the respondents were registered voters in NYC. Eighty-five percent of them were Democrats. The poll was authorized -as part of this course- by Dr. Joe Wilson; the program’s director. Professor Many Ness is his deputy. M. Pam Miller is the administrator of this program and also approved the survey. It just happens that I have been a lecturer here since last year. I also facilitated the students in this endeavor; this effort was primarily theirs; they deserve the credit: not me.

When asked whether or not they were in agreement with the idea or concept of term limits, 78.3% of the respondents said yes they were. The nays were 21.4%. Only 0.3% had no response/opinion. This finding is close to similar findings of other public opinion polls done on the topic. Most New Yorkers favor term-limits by a fairly wide margin. We can safely extrapolate that it is roughly four to one; some polls found it even higher than this.

Back to the poll: when asked how many four-year terms should be allowed to a NYC council-member, 71.1% of those who agreed with the term-limits concept said two terms. Interestingly enough 21.0% said three. This means that one in five New Yorkers may think that two terms are too short. Fewer still (7.2%) said four terms; while 0.7% offered no response to this question.

Having just discussed some law enforcement officers running for City Council, I also want to highlight a couple of teachers running for City Council. These are candidates that WFP seems to be considering supporting. [UPDATE: I left off our own Rock Hackshaw! Added at the end.]

Daniel Dromm: Running for City Council in Queens' Council District 25 aginst Helen Sears

Daniel Dromm is an educator, community organizer, union leader, and political activist. His experience and dedication to the community has led to Dromm being overwhelming elected Democratic District Leader in the 39th Assembly District, Part A (Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Corona and Woodside in Queens) in 2002 and re-elected in 2004 and 2006.

This comes from Maquez Claxton's somewhat disorganized and unweildy (but informative!) website:

4 Veteran City Workers Ready Runs for Council; 2 Each From NYPD, Correction

At a time when Mayor Bloomberg plans to shrink the size of the NYPD through attrition and he and Governor Paterson want to decrease benefits to new uniformed city employees, two former cops, a Correction Captain and a former Correction Department lawyer, have announced plans to run for City Council in 2009.

The three members of 100 Blacks In Law Enforcement Who Care who are running — Carlton Berkley, Marquez Claxton and Jerome Rice — are calling for change on the heels of Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black President in November, though all three said they would have run for the Council regardless.

Jerome Rice, a soon-to-be retired Correction Captain, is running for the 12th Council District in The Bronx, currently held by Larry B. Seabrook...