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Children's Defense FundMonthly Newsletter
www.childrensdefense.org
Bipartisan Bill to Expand Children's Health Coverage Passes Congress
Over the last few months, CDF activists have been contacting their Members of Congress to let them know that they support comprehensive health coverage for all children in America sending over 180,000 emails and making over 1,000 calls. Because of your hard work, we wanted to let you know that last week, the House and Senate passed a negotiated, bipartisan bill to reauthorize and expand funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Although the bill will only provide health coverage to 1/3 of America's uninsured children, it's a step in the right direction. Find out how your Members of Congress voted on this important children’s health legislation.
The bill now goes to President Bush to sign — but he has threatened to veto it, potentially denying health coverage to millions of uninsured children. Stay tuned — we'll continue to keep you updated on the status of this bill and actions you can take. In the meantime, learn more about CDF's campaign to ensure comprehensive health coverage for all of America's children.
CDF Issues Report and Holds Summit on America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Crisis
CDF recently issued a report, America's Cradle to Prison PipelineSM, to spotlight an urgent national crisis at the intersection of poverty and race that means that Black boys have a one in three chance of going to jail during their lifetime, and Latino boys a one in six chance of the same fate. Tens of thousands of children and teens are sucked into the Pipeline each year. The report includes:
The report was released earlier this week at CDF's Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Summit held at Howard University in Washington, D.C. The Summit provided the environment for a highly interactive dialogue to explore the underlying causes of the Pipeline, share promising approaches and develop a plan of action to dismantle it. Learn more about the Summit and view a video of Dr. Bill Cosby, one of the Summit's speakers.
CDF Celebrates Five Extraordinary Individuals
On October 25, CDF President Marian Wright Edelman and others will celebrate five extraordinary young people at the 2007 Beat the Odds® Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. The Beat the Odds program (initiated by CDF in 1990 to celebrate the positive potential of young people) works with local education advocates to select and honor students who have overcome tremendous obstacles in their lives, demonstrated academic excellence and have given back to their communities. Learn more about this moving event and the Beat the Odds program.
Worship Resources to Celebrate Children
Regardless of how the U.S. Congress and the President end their current debate over what level of funding to provide for children's health insurance, we know it is not going to be enough to guarantee a "Safe Harbor of Hope and Health Care for All Children," the theme for this year's National Observance of Children's Sabbaths® Celebration.
To do all we can to ensure all children the opportunity to live up to their God-given potential, CDF developed the interfaith National Observance of Children's Sabbaths Manual. This 16th edition is a valuable resource for any faith community working for peace and justice. It contains worship and educational materials, direct service activities, and social justice initiatives to be used not only for your congregation's Children's Sabbaths celebration on October 19-21 but year-round.
Order your manual today online or by phone at (865) 457-6466.
CDF President Marian Wright Edelman in Your Inbox
Each Friday, CDF President Marian Wright Edelman pens a Child Watch® column reflecting on a timely children's issue — she's recently written about the Jena Six case, children's health legislation, and gun violence.
Sign up today to receive the Child Watch column via email each week.
Children's Defense Fund25 E Street, NW - Washington, DC 20001
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The Clinton "welfare reform" law mandates a five-year cumulative lifetime cap on the benefits. You are off the rolls forever. The "safety net" that Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband worked so hard to get into law has been torn apart by William Jefferson Clinton—to the applause of his wife. "We are sentencing to death children, we are sentencing to death people with mental retardation, we are sentencing to death the mentally ill. The death penalty has become class warfare, being fought top-down against the poorest and most powerless people in our society." I would vote for either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Rudy Giuliani, for the Senate or any office, only under torture. Clinton and the Republicans in Congress, along with loyal Democrats, arranged to give people on death row only one year—with rare exceptions—to find a federal judge to grant their petition for habeas corpus.
America's Cradle to Prison PipelineSM This CDF report documents America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline, an urgent national crisis at the intersection of poverty and race that puts Black boys at a one in three lifetime risk of going to jail, and Latino boys at a one in six lifetime risk of the same fate. Tens of thousands of children and teens are sucked into the Pipeline each yearetcetcetc
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=c2pp_report2007&JServSessionIdr008=ywf26wlxm7.app5b
excuse me i had to post the full article because knowing the clintons they might try to get this site pulled.
Nat HentoffHillary and the Death Penalty ‘Executions Are Class Warfare’ by Nat HentoffMarch 15 - 21, 2000
Hillary, Eleanor Roosevelt would love you. —Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, February 6, Purchase, New York
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ‘official’ declaration of how privileged we will be if she is the next senator from New York had all the trappings of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics—with Moynihan ending his career in the Senate by passing the torch to her.
All that was missing was Janet Reno singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
During that afternoon of beatification, Hillary's acolytes told the throng that as soon as HRC occupied her White House office, she hung a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt on the wall.
Indeed, HRC has revealed that she has been in communication with Eleanor Roosevelt—through a form of "channeling."
She has not revealed whether Eleanor Roosevelt, during those inspirational moments, informed HRC of her fervent, long-lasting opposition to the death penalty.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, like her husband, is an unbending supporter of capital punishment. And no administration in our history has done more to speed executions.
In 1996, the president pushed for and signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. This law gutted the oldest fundamental right in the English-speaking world—habeas corpus, which allows prisoners to try to prove they've been wrongfully convicted. When James Madison was writing a draft of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson urged him to make sure that habeas corpus was clearly in that document, and so it is.
The way habeas corpus works for those on death row is that it allows lawyers—after all their post-conviction appeals have failed in the state courts—to find a federal judge to review the condemned man or woman's court record. Did the prosecution hide exculpatory evidence? Did crucial prosecution witnesses later recant and admit they lied? Is there new evidence to prove the defendant's innocence?
Clinton and the Republicans in Congress, along with loyal Democrats, arranged to give people on death row only one year—with rare exceptions—to find a federal judge to grant their petition for habeas corpus.
Since 1976, when capital punishment resumed in this country, 618 people have been executed—and that number will go up this week. Eighty-five other condemned prisoners—some only hours away from execution—have been released because they were wrongfully convicted and finally got a federal or state judge to hear them. The average time these nearly doomed men spent on death row was seven and a half years.
If they had been put on death row after the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was signed into law by Clinton, many of the 85 prisoners would be dead.
It is sad that Pat Moynihan is ending a truly distinguished career by anointing this "New Democrat," as she proudly proclaims herself. In 1996, Moynihan vehemently opposed Clinton's evisceration of habeas corpus in that law.
Afterward, expressing his disgust that only a handful of senators had voted with him against this violation of so basic a right, Moynihan then denounced the indifference of the press to this reverse landmark in American history.
"Except for you," Moynihan said to me, "where was the press?"
For another example of HRC's and Moynihan's revising the history concerning Eleanor Roosevelt, there is Hillary's strong support of her husband's "welfare reform" law.
As Senator Paul Wellstone has said on the Senate floor: "Over two-thirds of a million low-income persons lost Medicaid coverage and became uninsured due to welfare reform. Sixty-two percent were children. Moreover, the number of people who lose health coverage due to welfare reform is certain to grow rather substantially in the years ahead. In every state there is a drop-dead certain date when families are going to be eliminated from all assistance." (Emphasis added.)
The Clinton "welfare reform" law mandates a five-year cumulative lifetime cap on the benefits. You are off the rolls forever. The "safety net" that Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband worked so hard to get into law has been torn apart by William Jefferson Clinton—to the applause of his wife.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan opposed the Clintons' Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—their "welfare reform" law. When it was passed, Moynihan called it "the most brutal act of social policy since Reconstruction."
With regard to Eleanor Roosevelt and capital punishment, Allida Black, a history professor at George Washington University, is an expert chronicler. (Her book, Casting Her Own Shadow, is published by Columbia University Press.)
Professor Black tells me that starting in the 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt was involved in trying to get the president, her husband, to stop executions. And she powerfully came out against the death penalty in the 1950s.
"Eleanor Roosevelt was convinced," says Professor Black, "that the death penalty was not equally enforced when it came to blacks, and she also had moral objections to capital punishment."
My friend Steve Bright is an active lawyer for people on death row, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and a lecturer at Yale Law School. As he says:
"We are sentencing to death children, we are sentencing to death people with mental retardation, we are sentencing to death the mentally ill. The death penalty has become class warfare, being fought top-down against the poorest and most powerless people in our society."
I would vote for either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Rudy Giuliani, for the Senate or any office, only under torture. So far as the presidency is concerned, thank the Constitution Ralph Nader is running.
YOUTUBE video Link = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edzv_L8j5f0&&
DemocracynowDOTorg transcripts::
Link = http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1412212
A new expose in The Nation magazine finds that while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is publicly trying to win support of unions in her presidential campaign, behind the scenes she is being advised by a team of strategists closely affiliated with unionbusters, GOP operatives and conservative media. We speak with the reporter who broke the story. [includes rush transcript]etcetc etc
Please rate it awesome
I think you will like this information. It will showHillary didn't do well with the children's defense fundand Bill isn't the black president as he removededucation for prisoners (mostly black and Hispanics)and earmarked the funds for more prisons.
bye Danielle Clarke USA Vietnam veteran
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The clintons on Children welfare reform and prisoners
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007Children's Defense Fund's Marian Wright Edelman Callson Congress &BushAdministration to Help the Country's Nine MillionChildren WithoutHealthInsurance
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:Zd1D4pXt-3gJ:www.democracynow.org/article.pl%3Fsid%3D07/07/24/1431211+hillary+clinton+hurt+children&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=26&gl=us
AMY GOODMAN: Marian Wright Edelman, we just heardHillary RodhamClinton.She used to be the head of the board of the Children'sDefense Fund, ofthe organization that you founded. But you wereextremely critical oftheClintons. I mean, when President Clinton signed off onthe, well,so-called welfare reform bill, you said, "Hissignature on thisperniciousbill makes a mockery of his pledge not to hurtchildren." So what areyourhopes right now for these Democrats? And what are yourthoughts aboutHillary Rodham Clinton?
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clintonis an oldfriend,but they are not friends in politics. We have to builda constituency,andyou don't -- and we profoundly disagreed with theforms of the welfarereform bill, and we said so. We were for welfarereform, I am forwelfarereform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate workincentives, weneedminimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, weneed healthcare, weneed transportation, we need to invest preventively inall of ourchildrento prevent them ever having to be on welfare.
And yet, you know, many years after that, when manypeople arepronouncingwelfare reform a great success, you know, we've gotgrowing childpoverty,we have more children in poverty and in extremepoverty over the lastsixyears than we had earlier in the year. When an economyis down, and thereal test of welfare reform is what happens to thepoor when theeconomyis not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gapbetween rich andpoor widening. We have what I consider one of -- agrowing nationalcatastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prisonpipeline. A black boytoday has a one-in-three chance of going to prison inhis lifetime, ablack girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boywho's born in 2001hasa one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are seeingmore and morechildren go into our child welfare systems, godropping out of school,going into juvenile justice detention facilities. Manychildren aresitting up -- 15,000, according to a recentcongressional GAO study --aresitting up in juvenile institutions solely becausetheir parents couldnotget mental health and healthcare in their community.This is anabomination.
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Oh yea thats right Bill Clinton passed the 1994 crimebill that removedpell grants for prisoners
Federal Crime Bill By Paul Wright
On September 13, 1994, Bill Clinton signed the finalversion of thecrimebill into law. The same week congress passed the crimebill it alsopassedthe "Bank Reform Bill." Included in this law is aprovision which willprevent the government from pursuing negligence casesagainst theindividuals who caused the collapse of the savings andloan industry(mainly by looting the institutions they wereentrusted to run or thatthey owned). Thus, it is apparent that "crime" isn'tthe issue, theissueis who steals what from whom. The mood of congress wasaccuratelycapturedby Senator Joe Biden, an admitted plagiarist, who said"If someone cametothe floor and said we should barb wire the ankles ofanyone whojaywalks,I think it would pass."
Officially titled the "Violent Crime Control and LawEnforcement Act of1994," the final version of the bill is 120 pageslong. It containsmanyadministrative amendments to existing laws,clarifications, etc. inaddition to its substantive portions.
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This law abolished Pell grants for prisoners. Thefederal Pell Grantwascreated in 1965 by Senator Claiborne Pell, D-RI, toaid low incomestudents for college. The 1965 bill stated that noqualifying lowincomepersons would be excluded, prisoners were specificallymentioned in thebill and were intended to be included in the grantprogram. Mediahypstersinsinuated that prisoners were taking advantage of theopportunity forPellGrants because of an oversight in the original PellGrant Bill thatfailedto specifically exclude them.
The $6.3 billion program is considered aquasi-entitlement, says theU.S.Department of Education, and receives whatever fundingis necessary forgrants to all income eligible persons. Of that $6.3billion in the mostrecent fiscal year, a total of $35 million wasallotted for prisoners.Most of that amount was in the form of federal aidpaid not directly toindividual prisoners, but in the form of payments tostate programsdesigned to provide educational services to theirprison inmates. The$35million allotted to prisoners represents less than sixtenths of 1percentof the $6.3 billion total. Political rhetoric haspropelled the myththatthe money wasted on prisoner Pell Grants will now beused to provideassistance to more worthy recipients in the community.The truth of thematter is that the $35 million saved won't stay in theeducationbudget.It will be retained by the U.S. Treasury (presumablyto help pay forthe$9.8 billion earmarked for construction of moreprisons).
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c103:H.R.3355.ENR
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