What the BLEEP happened to Hip Hop?

“They mine metals for the phones killing trees for the loose leaf
I write raps on both to tell you what it do, g”

-- Mike Wird, Soul Pros, Regenerative Lifestyles and Hip Hop Congress

Do you know what the 1996 Telecommunications Act and how has it influenced culture in the United States?

Have you ever heard of Lyric Committees, and the story of how record labels try to control artists money?

Why haven't artists truly been successful in organizing as a labor force when so many of them are working in our schools, youth centers, prisons and organizations?

And most importantly, what the (bleep) happened to Hip Hop?

Hip Hop Congress and Move to Amend and are partnering to present “What the Bleep Happened to Hip Hop?”, a public education campaign seeking to raise awareness of the dangerous power corporations currently wield over the hip hop industry specifically, and over our society in general.

We invite you to join us on March 14 and 15, 2015 when this unique collaboration arrives in Houston. On Saturday, we will have educational panels and participatory conversations, with an artists showcase that evening. We will close with a People's Movement Assembly on Sunday afternoon that connects to the United States Social Forum.

The cultural terrain of society is a crucial battlefront in the struggle for social justice. Culture retains its dynamism by reflecting and creating consciousness. Exploitation and oppression have always been synonymous with popular culture, from D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation to the struggle of the media justice movement in the late 90's. The United States of America, long heralded as a melting pot, has also been acknowledged as virtual factory for the commodification of culture and the production of a facsimile of culture that greatly resembles the McDonald's of thought, art, music, and humanity.

Hip Hop Congress is an international grassroots organization dedicated to evolving hip hop culture by inspiring social action and creativity within the community. Move to Amend is a national campaign to amend the US Constitution to abolish the court-created legal doctrines of corporate constitutional rights and the legal premise that money equals speech. Both organizations are explicitly committed to anti-racist and feminist organizing principles, and challenge us to organize, create and assert our humanity.

For more information on the agenda, locations, times, or to RSVP for the Educational Forum or the PMA, go to the Facebook event page and register via e-mail contacts there.

Musical artists include Don Claude, Mic Crenshaw, Shamako Noble, Faithful Five, and others.  Open Mic and Cypher.

#WhatTheBleep Happened to Hip Hop? is brought to you by Hip Hop Congress, Move to Amend, Global Fam.org, Houston Peace & Justice Center, Healthy Habitz, S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, Multi-Media Center, Harris County Green Party, For Our House at Project Row Houses, Civil Rights Law Society, Thurgood Marshall School of Law and The US Social Forum.

TMF blames losing SD-26 on GOP, TLR

And shows -- or at least tells -- his math.  QR, full graphic effect.

As Menendez is sworn in, TMF argues the new Democratic senator was elected by Republicans

“It seems Republicans were really worried about Democrats sending the strongest voice to the State Senate…”

In what may be a sign of things to come in Alamo City politics over the next 18 months, Rep. Trey Martinez Fisher, D-San Antonio, called the victory of his opponent in the recent special election runoff “bizarre” and said it was driven by Republicans. He noted big GOP turnout in the race won by Sen. Jose Menedez in the heavily Democratic district formerly represented by Leticia Van de Putte.

Menendez, also a Democrat, was sworn in as Senator on Wednesday.

Prior to that, Rep. Martinez Fisher took to his campaign website to say that "while most folks know I lost the runoff election for state senate by 4,253 votes, many didn’t know that 6,307 consistent Republican primary voters voted in the runoff." A "consistent voter is someone who voted in 2, if not all 3, Republican primaries in 2014, 2012 and 2010,” Martinez Fisher explained.

“What is even more bizarre than 6,307 consistent Republican primary voters getting involved in a race between two Democrats, is that there were 2,000 more votes cast by Republicans in the February runoff than in the January special election when there were actually 2 Republican candidates in the race,” he said.

Charles has already spent a good bit of effort teasing out these numbers -- and knocking down this premise fairly quickly -- so since he's the expert in these things, I'll defer to his wisdom and simply guess that when he weighs in tomorrow Friday morning we can put this deal back to bed.

Should TMF have a case for winning fair and square, it's in a Democratic primary and not a jungle one.  He can probably beat Menendez that way, and win a fall election when the seat comes up again (in 2016, it appears).  It does sound a little sour-grapey for him to be complaining on the day of Menendez's swearing-in, so I would expect to see that grudge match happen again in two years.

A Tea Partier rolls up a 'legalize' bill

I'm still as skeptical as I was two weeks ago, but perhaps the tide is turning faster than I think.

State. Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, filed a bill Tuesday that he says “represents a comprehensive repeal of marijuana prohibition in Texas.”

The bill would remove all references to marijuana offenses in the law, Simpson said in an interview with the Statesman.

“I am proposing that this plant be regulated like tomatoes, jalapeños or coffee,” Simpson said. “Current marijuana policies are not based on science or sound evidence.”

Did a conservative Republican just say 'science'?  Lawd jesus.  And he called out the Guvnah, too.

Simpson, who said he has never touched marijuana, said passage of his proposal doesn’t amount to a pipe dream.

“The governor said he wanted to expand liberty,” Simpson said. I wanted to give him an opportunity to do that. It’s not just about guns.”

Even CPAC and Ted Cruz have suddenly been enlightened.

You had to look waaaay down in the coverage of the weekend CPAC hoedown, but there it was — support for libertarian or states-rights approaches to marijuana laws. From Politico’s coverage:

The majority of respondents supported some level of marijuana legalization, while only 27 percent said pot should remain illegal, an indicator that the conference retains its libertarian streak.

The recent Texas Tribune/UT poll also showed strong support for pot-law reform among conservatives.

The only people they listen to have spoken, and they -- well, Simpson -- has responded. But here come the doubters.

But do these numbers move the needle in the Capitol, where lawmakers will hear bills to OK pot for medicinal use and/or take it out of the criminal code? That’s still a hard vote for Republicans to make, and they rule in Austin.

Consider the bedrock of the state GOP: the suburban lawmaker. I did a roundup of their responses to a DMN voters guide questionnaire last year. With the exception of Rep. Tan Parker of Flower Mound, incumbent Republicans were decidedly status quo on Texas drug laws. I expect those views to prevail in this year’s lawmaking session. [...] Actually, I know the answer to that question: It’ll take more time and a bunch more older people (my demographic) dying off. Support for marijuana reform skews younger, and the Texas GOP will have to get on board or risk losing a chunk of this demographic.

Was a play for the younger vote behind Ted Cruz’s response to a pot question that Sean Hannity asked him at CPAC? Like a well-rehearsed states-rights guy, Cruz said Colorado’s laws should be up to Coloradans. That, according to various reports (including this from The Washington Post) was a position switch for the Texas senator.

Flip-flopper!

I doubt that Cruz’s new position was driven by a youth play — though CPAC skews young — as much as it was an anti-Washington statement. I think Cruz was angling to occupy some of the ground on pot where you would have already found Rand Paul and Rick Perry.

Paul has been a change agent on drug laws. That gives him an anti-status quo dynamism that Cruz covets.

Last week Cruz was widely quoted that he fancied himself a “disruptive app to politics.” He couldn’t really be that and defend Nixon’s tired old war on drugs at the same time.

Don't forget the "God don't make no junk" part as an appeal to the last bastion of opposition to the devil weed: the Texas Talibaptists.

"All that God created is good, including marijuana. God did not make a mistake when he made marijuana that the government needs to fix," he said. "Let's allow the plant to be utilized for good -- helping people with seizures, treating warriors with PTSD, producing fiber and other products -- or simply for beauty and enjoyment. Government prohibition should be for violent actions that harm your neighbor -- not of the possession, cultivation, and responsible use of plants."

Let's watch and see if it moves as fast as the gun bills.

Kuff has more.

The Hillary e-mail matter smells bad

As several have already noted.  First, Mediaite:

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tonight covered the big news that Hillary Clinton solely used her personal email account while she was Secretary of State, and he honestly found this news both troubling and baffling, noting how personal emails are “only supposed to be used for government business in an emergency.”

New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters said this is definitely “unusual,” but only adds to the idea that Clinton is not very “forthcoming” and “not all business is being conducted in the open like it should be.” MSNBC senior editor Beth Fouhy also wondered, “Where were the State Department lawyers who allowed this to go forward?”

Fouhy said, “She understands rules and protocol, and for her to just willingly violate it just to preserve some semblance of privacy just really makes no sense.”

O’Donnell, meanwhile, was just baffled at how the Secretary of State could be “using a not-secure, commercial email system” the entire time. He called it a “stunning breach of security and said, “If it’s true that she never used a State Department email address, we have something that, at first read, has no conceivable rational explanation to it that is legitimate.”

Vox makes it seem a little fouler yet.

But this story looks even worse if you transport yourself back to early 2009, when Clinton first became of Secretary of State and, according to this story, initially refused to use a governmental account. The Bush administration had just left office weeks earlier under the shadow of, among other things, a major ongoing scandal concerning officials who used personal email addresses to conduct business, and thus avoid scrutiny.

The scandal began in June 2007, as part of a Congressional oversight committee investigation into allegations that the White House had fired US Attorneys for political reasons. The oversight committee asked for Bush administration officials to turn over relevant emails, but it turned out the administration had conducted millions of emails' worth of business on private email addresses, the archives of which had been deleted.

[...]

That scandal unfolded well into the final year of Bush's presidency, then overlapped with another email secrecy scandal, over official emails that got improperly logged and then deleted, which itself dragged well into Obama's first year in office. There is simply no way that, when Clinton decided to use her personal email address as Secretary of State, she was unaware of the national scandal that Bush officials had created by doing the same.

That she decided to use her personal address anyway showed a stunning disregard for governmental transparency requirements. Indeed, Clinton did not even bother with the empty gesture of using her official address for more formal business, as Bush officials did.

[...]

Perhaps even more stunning is that the Obama White House, whose top officials were presumably exchanging frequent emails with Clinton, apparently did not insist she adopt an official email account. At some point during Obama's first year, there must have been at least one senior official who dealt with the political fallout of Karl Rove using a personal address, then turned around and fired off an email to the personal address that Hillary Clinton used exclusively. That this continued for four years is baffling.

On its best day -- which will be many days from today, if such a day ever comes -- this is a serious PIA for more than the reasons made obvious so far.  Here comes Zombie Benghazi, the IRS e-mails, and God only knows what other chum the sharks in the water will be gnashing their teeth on.  It will completely drown out this day's more significant development, Netanyahu's speech before Congress on the coming war with Iran.  And it reinforces the narrative that the Clintons always have something to hide, a notion that goes all the way back to Whitewater.

I don't support Hillary Clinton for president.  Didn't eight years ago, don't today.  This changes nothing about how I intend to go forward with my political activism for 2016.  But it is a serious blow, a self-inflicted wound, to her and to Democrats, which is why the Republicans won't stop screaming about it for the next 20 months.

Update (3/4): Just like clockwork, Trey Gowdy of the House Benghazi committee breaks off a subpoena.  And Socratic Gadfly collects the efforts to push back, which --in a truly sad development -- were led by Media Matters.