Wendy Ramirez said she was first inspired to pursue a medical degree when her father was paralyzed after a drunken driver hit him when she was a child. But before graduating from high school, she was initially discouraged by a counselor for a reason most students don't deal with, but eventually gained admission to the University of Houston-Downtown as a biology major. Ramirez came out to dozens of people on Thursday by announcing she was no longer afraid of her past, the fact that was keeping her back: She is an illegal immigrant. Attendees at the rally greeted her disclosure with cheers. She said she did not want "to be judged by a document, but by the qualities I possess."
 

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley is sending lawmakers back to the drawing board to rework proposed revisions to the state’s immigration law – considered the toughest in the nation. Bentley, a Republican, said he wants the legislature to remove a provision in Alabama's immigration law that requires school officials to ask students about the legal status of their parents. Bentley signed a proclamation calling for a special session of the Alabama legislature starting May 17. The special session is to cover measures dealing with the state budget, redistricting as well as immigration.

President Obama's embrace of gay marriage, as we noted in a recent post, has the potential to reinforce his support among well-educated white voters while deepening his difficulties among blue-collar whites. Divergent attitudes about the economy seem likely to harden that division as well. On Wednesday, Gallup released new national results showing that while a plurality of Americans remains negative on their immediate financial situation, a strong majority expects to be better off one year from now. The variation in those attitudes follows tracks familiar from the gay rights debate. As we noted, polls show much more support for gay marriage among college-educated white voters (especially women) than those without advanced degrees. Those upscale whites, Gallup found, are also somewhat more satisfied with their immediate economic situation and more optimistic about their trajectory over the next year.

A new Mason-Dixon poll shows Mitt Romney (R) leading President Obama by three points in the presidential race nationally, 47% to 44%. Meanwhile, a new Investors Business Daily/TIPP poll shows Obama ahead by three points, 43% to 40%.
 

For the first time in U.S. history, whites of European ancestry account for less than half of newborn children, marking a demographic tipping point that is already changing the nation's politics, economy and workforce.  Among the roughly four million children born in the U.S. between July 2010 and July 2011, 50.4% belonged to a racial or ethnic group that in previous generations would have classified them as minorities, up from 48.6% in the same period two years earlier, the Census Bureau said Thursday. That was the first 12-month stretch in which non-Hispanic white children accounted for less than half the country's births.
 

Mony Ruiz-Velasco, director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, has been representing immigrant victims of domestic violence for 15 years. In all of the hundreds of cases she has worked on, she says, “I’ve never had a case where the abuser did not use his immigration status as a tool.” Often an abusive American citizen or permanent resident with an immigrant wife will threaten her with deportation, which could separate her from her American children. Or he’ll begin the paperwork to sponsor his spouse for a green card but threaten to withdraw it. “You have no rights in this country,” an abuser will tell his victim, says Ruiz-Velasco.

"In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.""Here's another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent." "One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year's deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent."

The House late Wednesday approved a bill reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), setting up a possible conference with the Senate in which Democrats will push hard for Senate-passed language that they say offers better protection for women.
As expected, members approved the bill mostly along party lines. The reauthorization was approved 222-205 with six Democrats voting with Republicans. The vote was relatively close because 22 Republicans voted against it.
 

President Barack Obama and other members of the administration may be giving warm advice to freshly minted graduates at commencements across the country, but the reality is the job market is now much colder.More than a million new bachelor degree holders are about to begin to break into an economy that doesn’t have enough jobs to support the people who already were in it, and will struggle to absorb them. They’re already facing the prospect of huge student loans — with interest rates for those being the subject of most of the political conversation about new graduates. Things don’t look much better for their hopes of earning incomes so they can start making the payments on those loans, or much else.

It's not rocket science. The chief goal of our economic policy is to increase per capita economic output -- measured by per capita Gross Domestic Product. That's what allows people to live better next year than they did the year before. That's what allows our children to live a better life than we do. That is the basis of the American Dream.Increased per capital economic output is made possible by increases in productivity. When productivity increases, the same number of hours of work generate more goods and services. But it should be obvious to anyone that if all of the income that results from increases in economic output flow to the top one percent of the population, then the rest of us won't have that income to buy the increasing number of products and services that result from the increased productivity.

Speaker John Boehner said in a speech Tuesday that House Republicans would try to attach a timeline to fast-track a broad tax overhaul to a vote extending the George W. Bush-era tax rates before the November elections. The effort is part of a bid by the Speaker to get started early — and out in front of Democrats — on a raft of year-end tax and spending provisions that could await congressional action in a lame-duck session.

Four protesters were arrested on Tuesday when about 100 people opposed to immigration policy, war and economic injustice marched on a Chicago courthouse and then through downtown, police said. In a week of expected protests leading to the start of a NATO summit, a Chicago priest from Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Mission and a woman were arrested after refusing to leave a federal courthouse that hears immigration cases.
 

The reports are startlingly familiar. Late Thursday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon announced a surprise $2 billion trading loss and stocks swooned. Dimon insisted, though, that there was no need for a Volcker Rule that would ban big banks from risky trading. Last week, a Reuters investigation revealed that HSBC, the world's fifth-largest bank, failed to review thousands of internal anti-money-laundering alerts. The bank did not file legally required "suspicious activity reports" to U.S. law enforcement officials. It hired "gullible, poorly trained, and otherwise incompetent personnel" to run its anti-money-laundering effort. Each year, hundreds of billions of dollars flowed through the bank without being properly monitored.

Opponents to Secure Communities protested in New York City on Monday.  Opponents of a mandatory federal immigration program called “Secure Communities” began rallying in cities that were the last holdouts in implementing the controversial program. The protesters included immigrants, civil rights activists and elected officials.

Secure Communities is a controversial program that requires local police to share fingerprints with immigration officials. The federal government has been implementing it in phases, planning eventually to have it in place nationwide. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, sees the program as a tool for finding and deporting undocumented criminals. Opponents say it can easily lead to profiling and that it actually makes communities less secure by damaging relations between immigrants and police.
 

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds Americans "are increasingly optimistic that things are about to get better for the nation and themselves." "Though an overwhelming 71% rate economic conditions as poor, a 58% majority predict they will be good a year from now. While those surveyed are inclined to say they are worse off financially than a year ago, nearly two-thirds say they think they'll be better off this time next year."

In a move designed to shield the identities of anonymous donors and possibly set the stage for a court fight over disclosure, one of the deepest-pocketed Republican outside groups is unveiling eight proposed ads attacking President Barack Obama and defending Mitt Romney — including an ad that touts “Romneycare.” American Future Fund — which has already spent $7.5 million on hard-hitting anti-Obama ads in the 2012 cycle — revealed details of the ads in a request for a ruling released Tuesday by the Federal Election Commission.

An anonymous retailer has created gun targets resembling the hoodie Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was tragically gunned down. This disgusting act is purely motivated by greed, and is intended to make money off of a senseless crime against a young, black man. Sign our petition and call on the NRA to publicly condemn this product and its anonymous creator.
 

President Obama "is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new, multi-pronged effort that seeks to undermine the central rationale for his Republican rival's candidacy: his business credentials," the AP reports. "The ad, at the unusual length of 2 minutes, will run in five battleground states: Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado. The campaign declined to describe the size of the ad buy though it's in the middle of running a $25 million, month-long ad campaign in nine states. A longer version of the ad was being posted online Monday."
 

Facing the possibility of labor shortages due to Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigration, some of the state's farmers are planting less. Keith Dickie said he and other growers in the heart of Alabama's tomato country didn't have any choice but to reduce acreage amid fears there won't be enough workers to pick the delicate fruit.
 

 

 

A day after President Obama became the first holder of the Oval Office to endorse same-sex marriage, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney is being accused of bullying a student believed to be gay as a teenager in the 1960s.  The Washington Post -- citing five of Romney’s fellow students at the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. -- reported Thursday that Romney led a posse that pinned down another boy while Romney, himself, cut the boy’s bleached-blond hair, which usually draped over one eye.
 

More than 230,000 jobless Americans will lose their unemployment insurance by this weekend as reductions in the federal program that provides extended benefits to the long-term unemployed take broader effect. The new round of reductions is hitting eight states this month, meaning that about 400,000 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states will have been cut off of the federal government’s extended unemployment benefits program this year, according to an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for the unemployed. The cuts stem from a congressional agreement this year that will reduce the maximum duration of unemployment benefits from 99 weeks to 79 weeks as the nation’s jobless rate declines. Most states provide 26 weeks of benefits, and the federal government provides the rest, partially through a complicated formula that requires jobless rates to be both high and increasing to reach the benefit limit.
 

House Republicans had said they would have a healthcare bill ready to go by the time of the ruling to present a clear alternative to the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act.  But now, with the high court’s ruling just weeks away, some conservatives are urging the party to abandon that strategy, fearing voters will recoil from another sweeping revamp of the healthcare system.

 

"(Sheriff Joe) Arpaio has shown a total willingness to use his power for all the wrong reasons: to punish hardworking people who come to this country to make better lives for themselves and their families. I hope the Supreme Court follows the Justice Department's lead and strikes down Arizona's anti-immigration law." -- Petra Falcon, executive director of Promise Arizona, a member of the national Fair Immigration Reform Movement.