Media Advisory
For more information on the press event,
please contact Olga Lopez-Hill, EITC Coordinator
at 508-754-1176 Ext/.155

Earned Income Tax Credit Coalition Volunteer Recognition

Worcester, MA—On Wednesday, April 30, 2008, the Worcester Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Coalition will celebrate its achievements and recognize 52 volunteers who provided free tax preparation and E-filing to income-eligible Worcester residents.

The City of Worcester and Worcester Community Action Council along with the listed Coaliton partners have been working for five years to ensure that eligible Worcester residents receive all tax credit for which they entitled and to maximize their tax refund. This year, the Coalition prepared over 900 tax returns, returning close to a million dollars to Worcester low to moderate income working families.

Approximately 10 to 15% of families who are eligible for EITC do not receive it. The goals of the Worcester Earned Income Tax Credit Coalition are to (1) ensure eligible households receive all tax credits for which they are entitled and to maximize their tax refund; and (2) through the assistance of trained volunteers, provide free tax preparation.

The event will be held at Plumley Village
16 Laurel Street, Worcester
4:30 to 5:30 P.M..

Fighting the Shiite Militias (At Last)
by Doug Grindle
April 12, 2008

Years of sweeping one of Iraq's biggest problems under the rug has finally come home to roost.

Since Sunday, reports indicate 19 Americans have died in Iraq. That’s the worst week in Iraq this year. It is up significantly from the average of casualties over the past few months, which have been running at just under 40 per month.

Conventional wisdom holds that violence in Iraq is bad. But in this case, perhaps that's not as true as usual.

Much of the fighting is centered on delivering a major blow to the Shia militia known as the Mahdi Army, run by renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. This is no rag-tag militia of no account.

Estimates have held steady for years that the militia has between 70,000 and 80,000 members. Al Sadr is supported by Iran politically and almost certainly financially. And Iran almost certainly gives the Mahdi Army and other militias the worst type of roadside bombs, called "explosively formed projectiles", or EFPs, which are highly effective in killing Americans.

The Mahdi Army is bad. It is out of control. Last year, for several months in mid-year, half of the American casualties in Baghdad were caused by Shia militias; of them, the Mahdi Army is the biggest and most dangerous one.

In this context, a reckoning is long overdue. Reports indicate that reckoning was originally scheduled for June by American and Iraqi forces, but was precipitously brought forward by the Maliki government more than two weeks ago, when Iraqi soldiers launched an assault on Shia militias in Basra.

That rush was not without cost. Any assault in Basra was almost bound to fail without meticulous and extensive preparation, given that the British moved out of the center of Basra last year and retreated to the city's airport, allowing Shia militias and organized criminals to assume creeping control of the place.

In Iraq there have only ever been two main opponents. The biggest, most urgent security threat came from the Sunni insurgents and their al Qaeda allies. That threat has fallen away as tens of thousands of Sunnis switched to the side of the government, which has put their erstwhile al Qaeda allies in a real bind, as they have been pushed farther from Baghdad into Diyala Province and Mosul in the north.

The other main opposition was always going to be the Shia militias, of which al Sadr is by far the most notorious and violence-prone leader. America and its Iraqi allies either would not or could not address this problem - until now - the thinking being that it was too difficult to fight both Shiites and Sunnis at the same time, and the Sunnis took precedence.

Instead the Shia problem was put on hold. Policy makers seemed to assume either the Shiite militias would fade away, as the legitimate Shia government co-opted them into the political process, or would eventually require a military solution when spare troops became available.

It appears that with the Sunni insurgency on the wane, the Maliki government feels those extra forces are now available.

As the casualty figures flow in, one hopes the cost of the recent fighting will not be too high. But one hopes even more fervently that this spasm of violence will bring about the true denouement of the al Sadr problem, and that his ultimate reckoning will not just fizzle out. The problem cannot be allowed to fester, to appear again another day. If it is not solved now, when will it be?

I received this indirectly from Ellen Dunlap , President of the American Antiquarian Society, sent us an interesting article she found in CNNMoney.com

According to CNNMoney.com. Worcester ranks as 38th in the Top 100 best places to live and launch, according to CNN Money.

link

Congratulations to ALL those who helped make this possible. Everything Worcester has to offer, from the smallest and most invisible voice, our many institutions and organizations, our schools, our services, our diversity, to the highest level of leadership, is what makes Worcester as good as it is. We are all proud to be a part of it and to call it home.

This just in from Doug:
"Hello All:Heres this week's NewsNote from the war zoneI am cheating as I left
Iraq 3 weeks ago and am in Afghanistan, but there you go.As ever, return an
unsubscribe in the subject line if you like.All the bestDougPS - Also attached
for your ease of reading. --------------- The Bush Administration is busy
snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq.Violence is down 60-percent
over the last year. The usual reasons given are the surge of 30,000 extra troops,
the slowdown of Shia militia attacks after a ceasfire from Muqtada al Sadr, and
the Sunni switch, of Sunni tribes moving away from al Qaeda and toward the
central government.Of these factors, the switch of Sunnis against al Qaeda has
made the biggest difference on the ground.In a humvee of the 10th Mountain
Division in the Triangle of Death, driving the roads near Muhmuidiyah, the change
is striking. This was at one time one of the worst areas of Iraq, on par with
Ramadi and Fallujah.Comprising the whole swathe of land west and south of Baghdad
International Airport, the Triangle of Death was a black hole of casualties and
smart insurgents. Driving the roads was an exercise in expecting the worst.Last
summer those roads actually felt different. Previously, you knew something was
going to happen somewhere. You just hoped you missed it. But by last summer,
after the Sunnis had switched, many days were clear of any insurgent activity. It
felt like a load lifting from one’s shoulders.In some areas, attacks dropped
95-percent. That’s because there were physically fewer fighters on the other side
- the Sunnis had stopped setting bombs, and then kicked al Qaeda out to boot.But
now those same Sunnis are getting the short end of the stick. The coalition isn’t
taking them seriously enough, and their cooperation is in danger of withering.On
Saturday (March 22) an army Apache attack helicopter killed six of them who were
manning a checkpoint. Local US officers knew about the checkpoint, according to
published reports. Blue-on-blue incidents are common, and the Sunnis are killed
by Americans surprisingly frequently, even as they do security jobs for low pay,
saving Amercian lives.That is, when they are paid. The Sunnis, who have a
rapidly-changing array of officials names (the latest one is Sons of Iraq), are
often not paid. Manning a checkpoint and patroling the neighborhood brings in $10
a day for these fighters. There are about 80,000 of them across the country. It
is probably the bargain of the century, given the price of a single deployed
soldier, whose weekly meal tab alone is about $500, paid under food contracts
negotiated with Kellogg Brown and Root. By now many of the 'Awakening Councils'
that manage the Sunni fighters have had enough and are threatening to strike,
because theirt men have not been paid. Several councils are already are on stike,
pushing thousands of armed and potentially dangerous men back on the street
without a job or a sense of obligation toward the Iraqi government.Worse yet,
beyond the issues of pay and fratricide, the United States has not proven itself
a staunch advocate for the Sunni groups, in the face of the Iraqi government's
reluctance to embrace them. The Sunnis want to become a legitimate part of the
security forces. But the Shia ministry of the Interior, which runs the police,
wants nothing to do with them, and routinley rejects Sunnis applying for jobs.
The Ministry of Defense is also dragging its feet, reluctant to train and arm
potential rivals. These Sunnis are getting very short shrift from the Iraqi
government and meanwhile the US does... nothing.US Army soldiers visit sheikhs
west of Baghdad regularly. These sheikhs manage the fighters and decide if this
is a good idea. They hate al Qaeda. They have nowhere to go but into this
alliance with the Americans and the Iraqi government.But desperate men take
desperate measures. Over 30 Awakening Councils are threatening to strike over the
pay issue. Given the Sunnis' role in bringing a semblance of peace to much of
Iraq, it is madness to throw these people out in the cold. It is even more mad to
give them incentives to take up arms against the central government, by killing
them recklessly and rejecting their legitimate claims to security jobs. In 2003
the Sunnis used the rationale of protecting their community and interests when
they started this whole mess of an insurgency. In 2008 history must not be
allowed to repeat itself." D.G.

Blog/NewsNote March 16
re: Political Strategy

As the war in Afghanistan grinds on, the US Army continues to try to figure out how best to win it.
It’s been seven and a half years since the Americans went in and the Taliban was thrown out.
Since then, America has changed its strategy several times to deal with the ongoing insurgency.
Officers say in the early years, the army simply tried to win by fighting - essentially, win by killing enough Taliban and other insurgents that the problem would go away. They report that strategy was unsuccessful.
The strategy for 2007 centered on economic development. Essentially, build enough roads, schools and water points and the villagers most at risk will love the Americans and the central government enough to turn against "strangers" (insurgents) when they appear in the far-flung villages and throw them out or inform on them. That takes time to work, since roads can take 2, 3 or even 4 years to build in this mountainous country.
For 2008 the buzz-phrase is "political development".
Almost all villagers, the thinking goes, reject the Taliban and their authoritarian, regressive, oppressive and extremist rule. By something like a 94% to 6% margin, according to polls.
In practice, "political development" means that the magic ingredient will now be the government itself.
The thinking goes, inject the elected (or appointed) officials who represent President Hamid Karzai in Kabul into far-flung districts, and show the rural villagers the government "cares" about their plight and is interested in their participation in government (and in their economic development).
This will cause the villagers to side with the government and, again, kick out strangers and insurgents who come wandering through villages brandishing arms and demanding food and supplies.
Time will tell if this calculation is in fact correct.
This year the corollary buzzword to political development is "corruption," which is universally recognized as being very bad and getting, if anything, worse. American officers in eastern Afghanistan say corruption is their number one headache, ahead of the war-fight itself, because "political development" is dramatically weakened when villagers are forced to pay for building permits, vehicle passage, and anything to do with the government. Villagers resent the unlawful demands for payment, and their desire to back the Kabul government is undermined.
One reason corruption has become imbued in the fabric of society is not because Karzai is corrupt (though his cronies are considered almost uniformly to be). It is that he is too fearful to rein it in, and fears a backlash from powerful armed men with something to lose, which could lead to his early assassination.
Another reason corruption is rife is because the police agencies were allowed for 6 years, until fall of 2007, to be paid less than half a living wage for a family of five - about $60 or $80 per month instead of the $160 or so it actually takes to live. For many of the Afghan police forces, corruption was necessary to survive and is now ingrained.
So it is with hope, optimism and a feeling of deja vu that we head into the 2008 fighting season.
Of course, this strategy ignores the massive sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal areas that serve as recruiting and training grounds for an enemy that will literally be out of a job if he lays down his arms. Those areas are untouchable.
All in all, this year should be an interesting one.

Every time I view channel 13 or visit this website I am amazed. My love and respect for the people of this is heightened with each viewing or read.

Jeff's (Wormtown Taxi)blog expressing his insight regarding the city's treatment of the cable franchise, reminds me of why this whole situation matters to everyone. There would be something deeply wrong with our city government, it's leadership, it's system of operation if Jeff is right. It would be wrong to toss aside the over 22 years of WCCA's accomplishment, and valuable service. It is wrong to think that advocating for WCCA is just about jobs. It would be wrong to impose further bureaucracy to drain funds mandated by law, that are not tax dollars, away from public access. To do something wrong against WCCA is to do something wrong to the people of Worcester.
Who are these PEOPLE on this channel?

Well, if you take a quick look at WCCA TV channel 13 or on WCCA TV's website, you will see this is a TV station about YOU about Worcester, from the ground up.

YOU ARE WCCA:
You're: the abolitionist(Love146), the youth media student (Young Views Real News, Teen Central), the music enthusiast(Video Jam, Youth Session), Indymedia, a blogger (the Taxi guy), the Cultural Coalition(WCC) , a church, a library, a historic Institution, a college, a museum, an independent journalist (Ramona Interviews), an activist collective, a graduate student, a neighborhood center, a medical society, a monk (Love Truth and Miracles), a politician (Coffee with Konnie), a concerned citizen (Flipside), a technology buff, a charitable organization, an immigrant, a homeless person, a veteran, a retiree, a mom, a friend, a tax payer, a cable subscriber, an author, a cook, an artist, and everyone else. YOU ARE ALL WCCA TV.

Concerns about the future of WCCA are concerns about YOUR voice

It is such an honor to see YOU on WCCA TV.

We appreciate your support and encouragement.

Mauro De Pasquale, Executive Director, WCCA TV,
“The People's Channel”

Thanks to Rob McCausland for sharing the following:

free press: media is the issue

February 21, 2008

For Immediate Release

Craig Aaron , Free Press, (202) 265-1490, x25

CAMBRIDGE , Mass. -- On Monday, Comcast will be scrutinized by the Federal Communications Commission at a public hearing about the policies that will shape the future of the Internet. The Cambridge event will feature testimony from legal scholars, technology experts, entrepreneurs and industry representatives as part of the FCC's ongoing investigation into the blocking of legal content by the cable giant and other Internet service providers.

WHAT: A Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet
DATE: Monday, Feb 25, 2008
TIME: 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
WHERE: Harvard Law School , Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall
1515 Massachusetts Avenue , Cambridge , Mass.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition will be recording public testimony outside the hearing throughout the day.

In January, the FCC launched an official inquiry in response to a complaint filed by Free Press and members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition -- as well as thousands of letters from concerned citizens. The Associated Press first exposed Comcast last fall for actively interfering with peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. The company argues the FCC has no authority to prevent it from blocking Internet traffic on its networks.

Comcast and other big phone and cable companies have been lobbying to kill Net Neutrality -- the longstanding principle that prevents them from discriminating against Web sites or services based on their source, ownership or destination. Last week, Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) introduced the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" (HR 5353) -- landmark legislation that firmly establishes baseline consumer protections in communications law to ensure the Internet is open and free from discrimination.

"The value of the Internet comes from the millions of people and businesses who use it," said Marvin Ammori , general counsel of Free Press and lead author of the complaint that spurred the FCC's investigation. "We can't let the narrow interests of Comcast or any other network providers short-circuit the Internet's limitless economic and social possibilities. With stakes so high, the FCC must act quickly to shut down anti-competitive and discriminatory actions that put the open Internet in jeopardy."

The hearing will open with statements from all five FCC Commissioners, followed by a policy panel, where Ammori and renowned legal scholars Tim Wu of Columbia Law School and Yochai Benkler of Harvard Law School will square off against representatives from Comcast and Verizon.

"What we're going to see on Monday is a trial of the Internet," said Wu, who coined the term "Net Neutrality." "Comcast is in the docket, accused of crimes against the public interest, and we'll see how well they are able to defend themselves."

The second panel will delve into the technological aspects of Internet traffic. It will feature, among others, several experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Scott Smyers of Sony Electronics; and Eric Klinker, chief technology officer of BitTorrent -- developer of the innovative file-sharing service targeted by Comcast.

Vuze Inc. -- which filed its own complaint against Comcast with the FCC -- will demonstrate its technology for sharing high-definition video prior to the first panel. Outside the hearing, there will be a "technology fair" where online innovators will show off their products and services.

"Now is the time to establish rules and regulations that will enable the evolution of the Internet," said Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze. "A few powerful companies control the bandwidth through which consumers access Internet content, and through which innovative companies like ours deliver services. We support building an open Internet that fosters innovation for all."

In addition to testimony from experts in the field, the FCC has invited the public to share opinions for the official record. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition will be recording public testimony outside the hearing throughout the day. And consumers across the country unable to attend the hearing are invited to record and upload their testimonial videos to www.vuze.com .

Both the testimony recorded outside the hearing and the videos uploaded to the "FCC Channel" on Vuze will be submitted as a part of the official public record in this hearing.

Experts are available for interviews prior to the hearing. To schedule an interview, contact Craig Aaron of Free Press at (202) 265-1490, x25 or caaron@freepress.net.

View the FCC's official announcement and agenda here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280373A1.pdf

###

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is a grassroots, nonpartisan alliance of hundreds of groups, thousands of bloggers, and more than 1.6 million concerned Americans who have joined together to protect Internet freedom and Network Neutrality. No corporation or political party funds the coalition. Statements by the SavetheInternet.com Coalition are not necessarily endorsed by every participating organization. Learn more at www.SavetheInternet.com

Sharing this from Chuck Sherwood, ACM list:

IS AT&T AVOIDING POOR, MINORITY NEIGHBORHOODS?

[SOURCE: The (Munster, IN) Times, AUTHOR: Charles Emory, Pilgrim Baptist Church]
[Commentary] To be sure, leaders at the federal and local level are working feverishly to spread broadband across the nation, reforming existing programs to support infrastructure investment, and experimenting with new ideas like the "Connect Kentucky" model that has helped increase the demand for broadband services in that state. But here in Indiana, we seem to have hit a roadblock on the path to broadband ubiquity. As reported in the Indiana Business Journal, AT&T is alone among broadband providers in refusing to divulge where it has deployed its fiber-optic U-Verse service. So the public has no way of knowing which households can access the lightning-fast service capable of delivering broadband, television and phone -- and which households are being left behind, perhaps because of their income, race or geography. Our elected leaders ought to act now to remedy AT&T's startling lack of cooperation and candor with regard to its fiber build-out. The public deserves some level of disclosure to ensure that broadband discrimination does not occur, and if the company refuses to comply, then lawmakers ought to revisit the video franchising legislation that exempted AT&T from the build-out obligations to which every other provider has adhered.
http://nwitimes.com/articles/2008/02/20/opinion/guest_commentaries/doc375d1be320f93346862573f4007be4e9

Doug Grindle writes:

"When Does The Level of Violence Become Acceptable?

The night convoy supply run in Iraq isn't what it used to be.
Tonight we are doing the run between Camp Anaconda (40 miles north of Baghdad) and Camp Scania (almost 200 miles south of Baghdad).
The risks of doing this run are:
IEDs (improvised explosive devices - aka roadside bombs); EFPs (explosively formed penetrators - charges that blast molten metal through armor effortlessly); and small arms fire.
The drivers, huddled behind thick armored glass, peer into the night. All three crewmen in each humvee - the driver commander and gunner - focus intently on the 25 yards of road lit up by the glare of the headights, looking for bombs.
It is a testing time, for both the powers of concentration as well as basic human courage.
These people (men and women, for I am with B-Co, 297th combat support battalion, which includes women, including the woman driver in our truck, Spc Jiminez, known as "Jimmy") do this almost every night. They will continue to do this in coming months before rotating home to Alaska in the Spring.
Almost every night something happens on this road, called Tampa, which is the main supply route leading north from Kuwait, and along which flow masses of supplies - tires and bullets, ice cream and eggs - that an army uses to fight. A couple of weeks ago one of the trucks of this squad was blown up (no one was killed) doing a similar run. These soldiers drive all over Iraq, escorting supply trucks.
But despite the present danger, this run isn't what it used to be.
Its been two years since I first covered (another unit) driving this stretch of road. Simply put, this run sees a lot less action than before. There used to be more bombs, more small arms fire, more of everything, up until as recently as last June. These days the army's techniques are better, the insurgents are fewer in number. Attacks are down.
In recent months the army is running about one casualty a day. That's just under 40 a month, down from casualty counts of over 100 a month in mid-2007.
At some point Americans and Iraqis are going to have to contemplate the next step in the war (unless things reverse and get dramatically worse) - when does America call victory and go home? How many casualties per month does it take before a war becomes something less than a war? One American a week? Two a month? 70 Iraqis a week, both civilian and security forces?
For now this question doesn't affect daily life here. These soldiers driving the main supply route in the dead of night will keep on, until they head home in a few months.
For the soldiers, if you are part of a squad that takes a hit, even one casualty per year is almost certainly way too many."

It is a great initiative to remember and participate in:
link