To my readers (if any at all by now)

Last April, I made a sincere attempt to get back to blogging again. I did fairly well (I think) until the end of May. But by now (July 14, 2014) it is obvious that I have flunked. So I am calling it quits with blogging.

Meanwhile, I have just passed ten thousand posts on Twitter (over the last five years.) I tweet pretty constantly when I am reading the news or email regarding social justice, migration and immigration, and church reform. (I do not post stuff like what I had for breakfast, honest!)

If anyone reading this does not use Twitter and is interested in doing so, see below. A lot of words perhaps, but using Twitter is really quite simple. It is free, and you do not have to post tweets yourself 

-- you can just follow the people you choose.

By the way, to see my site, go here:

http://twitter.com/relford

Best to all!

ricardo

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What is Twitter anyway?

Twitter is an information network made up of 140-character messages called Tweets. It's an easy way to discover the latest news related to subjects you care about.

How is it useful?

Twitter contains information you will find valuable. Messages from users you choose to follow will show up on your home page for you to read. It’s like being delivered a newspaper whose headlines you’ll always find interesting – you can discover news as it’s happening, learn more about topics that are important to you, and get the inside scoop in real time.

How to start using Twitter:

If you remember one thing after perusing this page, it should be this: reading Tweets and discovering new information whenever you check in on your Twitter timeline is where you’ll find the most value on Twitter. Some people find it useful to contribute their own Tweets, but the real magic of Twitter lies in absorbing real-time information that matters to you.

1. DISCOVER SOURCES: Find and follow others

It’s best to begin your journey by finding and following other interesting Twitter accounts. Look for businesses you love, public service accounts, people you know, celebrities, or news sources you read. (Click here for help finding interesting accounts.) Tip: One great way to find more interesting accounts is see who those you know or admire are following.

2. CHECK YOUR TIMELINE: See what’s happening

Messages from those you follow will show up in a readable stream on your Twitter homepage, called your “Timeline.” Once you’ve followed a few people, news outlets, organizations, or accounts of your interest, you’ll have a new page of information to read each time you log in. Click links in others’ Tweets to view articles, images or videos they’ve linked to. Click hashtagged keywords (#) to view all Tweets about that topic. 

3. TAKE IT WITH YOU: Connect your mobile

One of the best things about Twitter is that it’s portable. Connect your account to your mobile phone or download a Twitter application to begin reading Tweets on the go. Now you can get updates about traffic problems in the middle of your commute, find out what the players are saying while you’re at the game, or catch up on the buzz about an event you’re about to attend. Tip: Using Twitter via SMS allows you to pick and choose which updates you want from those you follow, so you can get mobile updates from the accounts that matter most to your life on-the-go.

How to start tweeting:

Many users find it fun or exciting to contribute their own content to Twitter (we call this “tweeting”). If you’re one of them, here are some good ways to get started posting your own Tweets. People who are interested in what you have to say may follow you and they’ll see all the Tweets you share with them.

1. BUILD A VOICE: Retweet, reply, react

Use existing information (other people's Tweets) on Twitter to find your own voice and show others what you care about. Retweet messages you've found and love, or @reply with your reaction to a Tweet you find interesting. Tip: If you're a new user, others are more likely to find your messages if they are Retweets or @replies.

2. MENTION: Include others in your content

Once you're ready to begin authoring your own messages, consider mentioning other users by their Twitter username (preceded by the @ sign) in your Tweets. This can help you think of what to write, will draw more eyes to your message, and can even start a new conversation. Try posting a message mentioning a celebrity or person you admire – they often respond to fans. You’ll see their response on your Mentions tab. Tip: Can’t think of anything to write? You don't have to. The real magic lies in reading content from sources you follow on Twitter.

3. GET FANCY: Explore advanced features

As you become more engaged on Twitter, others will begin to find and follow you. Once you're familiar with Twitter basics, consider exploring the site’s more advanced features: lists, direct messages, and favorites. Learn how to include images  or videos in your Tweets, or consider connecting your Twitter account to your your blog, Facebook, or website. Tip: The best way to gain followers on Twitter is to regularly engage and contribute in a meaningful way.

Tips and Tricks:

Need help finding interesting accounts?

Click Discover at the top of your Twitter page. You can find and follow other accounts in these four ways: 1) browse accounts by category, 2) browse accounts that we think might be of interest to you 3) import your address book contacts to find out which friends are already on Twitter, 4) search one-by-one for people or groups of interest.

Need help using Twitter on your mobile phone?

By linking your Twitter account to your mobile phone number, you can receive and write Tweets via text message. Learn how to get started by clicking here. Or, visit our Mobile Help section of articles.

Confused by our lingo?

Check out the Twitter Glossary containing definitions for a ton of Twitter terms used on our website.

  

Defining our national tragedy

....Some excerpts from a Global Post article today by Mac Deford:

"(It) turns out that the middle class in Canada is doing better than the American middle class that, for nearly a century, has been the richest in the world. A recent social progress index of 132 countries ranks the US 16th, just above Slovenia. Worse is that in basic education, we rank 39th.

"So it shouldn't be a surprise that a large majority of Americans believe the country is "on the wrong track." ... Today 14 percent think we are "generally headed in the right direction" and an incredible 78 percent don't...

"The poor showing of Congress is well known; currently it merits only a 9 percent approval rating...

"Nor is it just government institutions in which we've lost faith. Organized religion is below 50 percent. Our medical system, the Supreme Court and the public school system are below 40 percent. The criminal justice system, banks, television news, newspapers, big businesses are below 30 percent with organized labor at 20 percent. Health maintenance organizations are in the teens and then we hit rock bottom with Congress...

"A serious obstacle to any solution is certainly Congress. With 9 percent approval rating, but a 90 re-election rate, the American electorate will continue to be frustrated by its leadership long into the future.

"Meanwhile, true to form, the traditional conservative right wing of the Republican Party, as personified by Washington Post columnist George Will, neglects the economic data and blames our current problems on what he calls the "dependency on government" that Lyndon Johnson's Great Society created...

"(To) blame food stamps and Medicaid for the disappearance of the high-paying, low-education jobs that our steel plants and auto assembly lines created after World War II is to ignore globalization and falling education standards."

Where your money goes

Apparently the CIA has stopped using vaccine programs in its spy operations in the wake of deadly attacks on polio vaccination workers in Pakistan.

An Obama aide says the CIA stopped these operations last August. (One example: they had used a fake vaccine program in their search for Osama Bin Laden.)

Based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we know that for fiscal year 2013, the federal government set aside nearly $53 billion for U.S. intelligence agencies and operations, including $14.7 billion for the CIA, the most requested for any agency. Last August, the Washington Post reported: “Although the government has annually released its overall level of intelligence spending since 2007, it has not divulged how it uses the money or how it performs against the goals set by the president and Congress.”

Fast action for a family in sanctuary

   Tuesday evening we had a beautiful service at Southside Presbyterian Church here in Tucson. Yesterday Arizona Public Media wrote about it.

   "A Mexican immigrant facing deportation took refuge Tuesday at the Tucson church where the 1980s sanctuary movement was born. This is the first time in more than 30 years that Southside Presbyterian has allowed a family to stay for sanctuary, church officials said.

   "About a month ago, Neyoy Ruiz said he received a letter from the immigration agency giving him 30 days to appear at the Tucson immigration office for voluntary deportation.The deadline for turning himself in ended at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.

   "About 50 people cheered for Neyoy Ruiz as he and his family arrived at the church for a press conference and religious ceremony with clergy from about a dozen churches of different denominations.

   "Neyoy Ruiz, a maintenance supervisor at a townhouse complex in Tucson, listened as his father played guitar and sang after readings from the Bible. At the end of the ceremony, people gathered around Neyoy Ruiz, his wife and 13-year-old, U.S.-born son, holding hands or placing their palms on each other's shoulder...

   "Neyoy Ruiz was detained in a 2011 traffic stop when a police officer noticed smoke coming out of the back of his car and contacted the Border Patrol,.. (He) was taken to an immigration detention center where he spent a month in custody...

   "For three years, Neyoy Ruiz has continued to live and work in Tucson waiting to hear about his possible deportation. 'At night I would wonder, what is going to happen to me? … What’s going to happen to my family if I’m deported?' he said. 'I provide for my wife and teenage son.'"

   Then, tonight at El Tiradito shrine, just as we were about to begin our weekly prayer vigil for the thousands of migrants who have died in the desert (many of them simply trying to reunite with their families), we learned that Neyoy Ruiz's order of deportation had been removed. The Arizona Daily Star posted this report:

   "A Mexican man who was ordered to leave the country but has taken sanctuary in a Tucson church won't be deported, immigration officials say.  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accepted an administrative request to close the order against Daniel Neyoy Ruiz, a 36-year-old man who has lived in the states since 2000. (He) was supposed to leave the country by the end of Tuesday after being caught by immigration authorities following a traffic stop. He refused to leave and instead took sanctuary at Southside Presbyterian Church.

   "The decision by ICE on Thursday essentially means Neyoy Ruiz is not a priority for the agency and that it won't actively seek to deport him."

The massacre of migrants

Last Thursday marked exactly 14 years of weekly interfaith prayer vigils we have held at Tucson's downtown El Tiradito ("The Discarded One") shrine to remember the thousands of migrants who have died in the desert over the last two decades. Here is a copy of that evening's vigil (albeit without formatting.) 

IN MEMORIAM

  728th Weekly Vigil -- May 1, 2014

  (We began the vigil 14 years ago today and have never skipped a Thursday)

Remembering our migrant sisters and brothers who have died along the US-Mexico border in search of work. In the year that ended Sept 30, 2012, 179 bodies of migrants were found in the Tucson Sector. The next year,182 more. From last Oct 1 to March 31, 46 more. Since 1999, over 2,300 bodies have been brought to the Medical Examiner's "coolers" in Tucson, Since 1994, over 6,000 bodies have been found along the US side of the whole southern border.

OPENING SONG

Envía tu Espíritu (3) 

Sea renovada la faz de la tierra (2) 

OPENING PRAYER

O God, we pray for all the migrants who have died in the desert...  

Bless them with eternal life and comfort their families who mourn. Turn hearts from violence and xenophobia, so that reconciliation and peace may reign on the border. Amen.

READINGS

From Sojourners

March 26, 2014

by Troy Jackson 

   “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”

   As I reflect on the plight of the undocumented immigrant in the United States today, I wonder if the words of the Psalmist, echoed by Jesus on the cross, don’t hit a little too close to home.

   Despite the courage and passion and tireless work of Dreamers and undocumented workers and family members and faith allies, the U.S. House of Representatives has turned a deaf ear, and the president’s administration continues a pace of deportation rarely seen in the history of humanity.

   Every day of delay means more families torn apart, more undocumented workers suffering sexual abuse and wage theft, and more children crying themselves to sleep because mommy or daddy is gone. With legislation going nowhere fast, hope and anticipation have given over to anger and groaning...

  Still, for people of faith, we are reminded by Psalm 22 that even in the darkest hour, the hope of a new day is just around the corner. God will act. And we are committed to staying in the struggle in anticipation of that great day of rejoicing...

RESPONSE  (from the Book of Proverbs, 31:8)

Levanta la voz... 

por los que no tienen voz; ¡defiende a los indefensos! Levanta la voz, y hazles justicia; ¡Defiende a los pobres y a los humildes!

Speak out...  

for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

REFLECTIONS

LIGHTING OF THE CANDLE

We light this candle... 

so that all our migrant sisters and brothers who have died in the desert may not be forgotten. Amen.      

                  (A period of silence)

CLOSING PRAYER

God of peace...  

We beseech your blessing upon our torn and tortured borderlands. We live in a time of hate, mistrust, fear and violence. Bless us with your Holy Spirit, that we may follow your way and create a world where all may live and work together in peace. Amen.  

CLOSING SONG

Peace is flowing like a river, 

flowing out of you and me, 

flowing out into the desert, 

setting all the captives free.  

Hope is flowing like a river.. 

Are private prisons slipping

On April 24, thinkprogress.org published an article by Annie-Rose Strasser about private prisons. She writes that three investment groups are divesting from the huge private prison corporations CCA and GEO. In all, the divestment comes to $60,000,000. That is not immense, in view of the fact that together the two corporations earn more than three billion dollars each year on their private prisons. But it is very significant.

According to the ACLU, the private prison industry grew about 1,600 percent  between 1990 and 2009. But last year, CCA lost four prison contracts with states.

Writer Strasser quotes Carl Takei, private prison expert of the ACLU's National Prison Project:

"To the extent that investment firms are committing themselves publicly to divestment, that is a very important step. To the extent that investment firms are deciding that private prisons are a bad investment, that’s even more important... We’ve started to turn the corner on mass incarceration and if that’s something that makes private prisons a bad investment, that’s important." Takei added that if investment firms chose to divest for ethical reasons, it is “an important first step,” but that “the financial reasons justification would be huge.”

Strasser ends with these words:

"Studies have found that private prisons spend millions on lobbying to send more people to jail for longer periods of time. The facilities are often rife with abuse and neglect, too; accusations against the companies range from wrongful death to bad sanitation and even forcing a woman to give birth in a toilet. They do no favors for states that support them, either; Idaho was one of the places that ended its contract with CCA after the company handed over a $1 million settlement for falsifying staff hours and leaving mandatory monitoring spots unattended."

Bill Moyers interviews Paul Krugman

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

MOYERS: Welcome....  (It is) still possible for a single book to shake the foundations, rattle clichés, upend dogma, unnerve ideologues, and arm everyday people with the knowledge they need to fight back against the predatory powers that have robbed them of their birthright as citizens. This is such a book: Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by the French economist Thomas Piketty... Here’s one of its extraordinary insights: we are heading into a future dominated by inherited wealth as capital concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, giving the very rich ever greater power over politics, government, and society. “Patrimonial capitalism” is the name for it, and it has potentially terrifying consequences for democracy. For those who work for a living, the level of inequality in the US, writes Piketty, is “probably higher than in any other society, at any time in the past, anywhere in the world.” Over three decades, between 1977 and 2007, 60 percent of our national income went to the richest 1 percent of Americans. No wonder this is the one book the one percent doesn't want the other 99 percent to read... As you know, I'm no economist, but I found this book, as I said in the opening, just very readable and suddenly there would be this moment of epiphany.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, it's a real "eureka" book... The world in fact has moved on a long way in the last 25 years and not in a direction you're going to like because we are seeing not only great disparities in income and wealth, but we're seeing them get entrenched. We're seeing them become inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagine we're nothing like.

MOYERS: Here’s Piketty’s main point: capital tends to produce real returns of 4 to 5 percent, and economic growth is much slower. What's the practical result of that?

KRUGMAN: What that means is that if you have a large fortune, or a family has a large fortune, they can -- the inheritors of that large fortune -- can live very, very well. They can live an extraordinary standard of living and still put a large fraction of the income from that fortune aside and the fortune will grow faster than the economy. So the big dynastic fortunes tend to take an ever-growing share of total, national wealth. So once you-- when you have a situation where the returns on capital are pretty high and the growth rate of the economy is not that high, you have a situation in which not only can people live well off inherited wealth, but they can actually pass on to the next generation even more, an even a higher share... Teddy Roosevelt could’ve told you and did -- that when you have a few people who are so wealthy that they can effectively buy the political system, the political system is going to tend to serve their interests. And that is going to reinforce this shift of income and wealth towards the top.

MOYERS: Do you agree with him that we are drifting toward oligarchy?

KRUGMAN: Oh yeah... I don't see that there's any question of it. If you look at ..what we know already, and we're learning more, but what we know already about the concentration of income, of wealth, you can see that it is growing... So right now, and this is where Piketty has interesting things to say... looking forward, (he's) telling us that the story is already changing. And it's going to change more. So we are going probably, unless something gets better, we're going to look back nostalgically on the early 21st century when you could still at least have the pretense that the wealthy actually earned their wealth. And, you know, by the year 2030, it'll all be inherited. 

MOYERS: And at the same time, we can't even manage to pay workers a minimum wage of $10.10. ... Piketty makes the point, that the very size of inherited fortunes today is so great that it practically makes them invisible. Quote "Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence."

KRUGMAN: Sure. If you have conversations with people...who are not economists, they have no idea what real wealth means in America. They think that having a million dollars makes you wealthy. They think that-- or having a salary of several hundred thousand dollars makes you wealthy. And while it's certainly true...the sheer size of those big fortunes is so far outside our normal experience that it does become invisible. You're never going to meet these people. You're never going to have any sense of what it is that they control. And most people I think have no idea just how far the commanding heights are from you and me...

MOYERS: Well why is, as you said, redistribution such a noxious word in our political system?

KRUGMAN: I think mostly it's just because there's a very effective apparatus of TV and print media and think tanks and so on who hammer against any suggestion of redistribution. It's just, they've managed to convince a lot of people that it is somehow un-American. Which actually, if you look at American history, that's not all true. But...look, we have to admit, race is always lurking under almost everything in American life. And redistribution in the minds of a lot of people means taking money from people like me and giving it to people who don't look like me...

MOYERS: But given the dysfunction of Congress, given the fact that the Supreme Court has in effect decided to enable corporations and their rich to consolidate their hold on our political system, do you have any hope of the kind of change that both Piketty and you would advocate?

KRUGMAN: I think you don't give up hope on these things. We have-- look at the American political tradition. Look...one of the interesting things that Piketty says is that serious progressive taxation of high incomes and great wealth is an American invention... 

MOYERS: You wrote something the other day that's hard to forget. You said, "We live in such an ugliness in America right now."

KRUGMAN: Yeah. This is one of the things that puzzles me actually about my own country, which is it's one thing to have disparities of income and wealth and to have differing views about what we should be doing about it. But there's a level of harshness in our debates mostly coming from the people who are actually doing very well. So, you know, we've had a parade of billionaires whining about being-- you know, the incredible injustice that people are actually criticizing them. And then comparing anyone who criticizes them to the Nazis. You know...this is very strange. And it's kind of scary...

MOYERS: The evidence keeps mounting. Just this past Tuesday...the AFL-CIO reported that last year the chief executive officers of 350 top American corporations were paid 331 times more money than the average US worker. Those executives made an average of $11.7 million compared to the average worker who earned $35,239... (And) economist Robert Reich reminded us that in addition to getting the largest percent of total national income in nearly a century, many in the one percent are paying a lower federal tax rate than a lot of people in the middle-class. You will, no doubt, remember that an obliging Congress, of both parties, allows high rollers of finance the privilege of carried interest, a tax rate below that of their secretaries and clerks. And at state and local levels, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans pay an average tax rate of over 11 percent, the richest one percent of the country pays half that rate. Now, neither nature nor nature’s God drew up our tax codes. That’s the work of legislators, politicians, and it’s one way they have, as Chief Justice John Roberts might put it, of expressing gratitude to their donors. Oh, Mr. Adelson, we so appreciate your generosity that we cut your estate taxes so you can give $8 billion as a tax-free payment to your heirs, even though down the road the public will have to put up $2.8 billion to compensate for the loss in tax revenues. All of which makes truly repugnant the argument, heard so often from courtiers of the rich, that inequality doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. Inequality is what has turned Washington into a protection racket for the one percent. It buys all those goodies from government: tax breaks, tax havens, allowing corporations and the rich to park their money in a no-tax zone, loopholes, favors like carried interest, and on, and on, and on.... Sad, that it’s come to this. The drift toward oligarchy that Thomas Piketty describes in his formidable book has become a mad dash, and it will overrun us, and overwhelm us, unless we stop it.

**********

For the entire interview, go to <BillMoyers.com>