SMITHBITS RADIO MAGAZINE

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Senator Harris Joins National Day of Action for DREAM Act

A message from Senator Kamala D. Harris

Senator Harris Joins National Day of Action for DREAM Act

Friend,
Yesterday, Senator Harris joined the National Day of Action for a DREAM Act by the end of the year at a DACA Rally in Washington, DC. "Fighting for the Dream Act is about fighting for the ideals of this country we love," said Senator Harris. "It is about fighting for the best of who we are."
 
Click here to watch Senator Harris' speech on the Senate floor Tuesday in support of Dreamers and their contributions to America. 
It's been 90 days since the Administration made cruel decisions to end DACA and we cannot wait any longer. We must protect DREAMers now. 

In light of yesterday's day of action, we must remember to roll up our sleeves and continue to fight for our Dreamers and their families. Senator Harris will continue to be a leading voice on protecting Dreamers, their families, and the hard working immigrants who contribute to our country every day. 
Sí se puede!

Julie
Julie Chávez Rodríguez 
State Director 
U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Winter 2017 Mix R&B Hip Hop Afro/Bashment By DJ P Montana

New show by DJ P Montana


Winter 2017 Mix R&B Hip Hop Afro/Bashment



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The Holiday Stocking Stuffer: Volume One

The Holiday Stocking Stuffer: Volume One

What Betsy DeVos just did is unconscionable


Kamala Harris

Hi, Kenneth Howard Smith, SDC RadioWorks —
Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced a two-year delay in the implementation of a rule that forgives the student loan debt of innocent victims defrauded by for-profit colleges.
The revised rule was designed to make it easier for victims to have their loans forgiven and compel fraudulent schools to pay the cost, not taxpayers.
By delaying this rule, DeVos is once again taking the side of predatory corporations and leaving thousands of innocent people in dire financial situations. This decision comes only a few months after DeVos reversed a ban that protected those who defaulted on their student loans from paying exorbitant collection fees — adding insult to injury for millions who put their trust in the Department of Education to do their job and protect students.
This is a moral outrage and we need to take action to demand DeVos implement these rules immediately. Victims of predatory for-profit colleges cannot wait — and taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize their fraud and abuse.
Our country has a responsibility to make education attainable without digging students into a financial hole.
Instead of leading the charge, the Department of Education is letting big corporations take control of our education system and our tax dollars. We can’t let that happen.
When I was Attorney General of California, we prosecuted Corinthians Colleges, a predatory for-profit college conglomerate like the ones that DeVos is protecting, and won. As Senator, I am proud to work with Bernie Sanders and many of my colleagues to introduce legislation that would make college tuition-free for the vast majority of Americans.
I’m asking you to stand with me as I continue this battle by sending a powerful message to Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education that they must start protecting our students, not siding with corporate vultures masquerading as colleges.
Thanks for all you do.
Kamala Harris
U.S. Senator, California





 

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Senator Harris Working To Ensure Our Voices Are Being Heard

Senator Harris Working To Ensure Our Voices Are Being Heard 

Friend,
Senator Harris continues to work tirelessly in Washington to ensure that voices across California are heard. Below are some of the latest examples of the work Senator Harris is doing in Washington:    
Bills 
  • Combating the Opioid Epidemic Act: Cosponsored this legislation that would invest $45 billion for prevention, detection, surveillance and treatment of opioids. Full text of the bill is available here.
  • Background Check Expansion Act: Cosponsored this bill that expands federal background checks to the sale or transfer of all firearms by private sellers, with certain reasonable exceptions. Under current law, unlicensed or private sellers are not required to conduct a background check prior to transferring a firearm. Full text of the bill is available here.
  • The Environmental Justice Act of 2017: Cosponsored this bill that requires federal agencies to address environmental justice through agency actions and permitting decisions, and strengthens legal protections against environmental injustice for communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities. Full text of the bill is available here.
  • Protect Access to Birth Control Act: Cosponsored this legislation that would rescind the Trump Administration’s interim final rules issued on October 6 that allow companies to interfere in their employees’ health care choices and force women to pay more for an essential part of their health care. Full text of the bill is available here.
  • Bill to Block Trump Travel Ban 3.0: Cosponsored this legislation that would reverse Trump’s executive order and block its implementation. The bill would withhold funding to enforce the executive order. You can find more information on this bill here
Letters
  • Harris Leads Bipartisan Letter Urging Trump Administration to Prioritize Federal Funding for WildfiresU.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris led a bipartisan group of Western Senators including Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Jim Risch (R-ID), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Tom Udall (D-NM) in a letter requesting the Trump Administration to prioritize emergency funding ahead of the next disaster assistance legislation that the Senate will consider in the upcoming weeks. Full text of the letter is available here.
  • Harris, Feinstein Raise Concerns About Wireless Emergency Alert System Deficiencies During California Wildfires: In the wake of the deadliest wildfires in California’s history, U.S Senators Kamala D. Harris and Dianne Feinstein (both D-CA) raised concerns with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai about the limitations of the Wireless Emergency Alert system. Full text of the letter is available here
  • Harris, Colleagues Press Senate Leadership to Include Bipartisan Wildfire Funding Fix in Upcoming Disaster Aid Legislation: With deadly fires still raging in California and across the West, U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris joined a bipartisan group of senators and pressed Senate Leaders Mitch McConnell and Charles E. Schumer in a letter to include a wildfire funding fix in disaster aid legislation the Senate will soon consider. Full text of the letter is available here.
  • Feinstein, Harris Urge Senate Leadership to Prioritize CHIP Reauthorization: U.S. Senators Kamala D. Harris and Diane Feinstein urged Senate leadership to prioritize reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which insures 1.3 million children and 30,000 pregnant women in California. Full text of the letter is available here
  • Senators Request Disaster Funding Information: U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris signed a letter, led by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), in asking the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to share with their offices each federal agency’s request for the next supplemental disaster appropriations bill. Full text of the letter is available here.
  • Senators Request Update On Drug Enforcement Law: U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris signed a letter, led by U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Ed Markey (D-MA), to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) requesting information on the impact of the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act highlighted in a recent report from the Washington Post and “60 Minutes.” Full text of the letter is available here.
  • Senators Call on DHS to Take Concrete Steps to Ensure Accurate Accounting of Deceased Victims of Hurricane Maria: U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris signed a letter, led by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ensure the accuracy of the official fatality count in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Full text of the letter is available here.
  • Senate Democrats to EPA: Show Your Work on Clean Power Plan Repeal: U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris signed a letter, led by Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt asking for more information on the agency’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan. The proposal, released by the agency earlier this month, relies heavily on skewed scientific and mathematical data in order to justify repealing the Clean Power Plan. Full text of the letter is available here.
Be sure to visit our newsroom for breaking news updates and information from Washington! 
Best,
Julie
Julie Chávez Rodríguez 
State Director 
U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

A message from Senator Kamala D. Harris - I’ll Oppose End-of-Year Spending Bill if DACA Not Fixed Calls for path to citizenship to protect Dreamers

A message from Senator Kamala D. Harris

Harris: I’ll Oppose End-of-Year Spending Bill if DACA Not FixedCalls for path to citizenship to protect Dreamers

WASHINGTON - Speaking at a press conference alongside a group of Senate and House Democrats, and University Presidents and Chancellors in support of the Dream Act, U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris today pledged to vote against any end-of-year spending bill if it does not include a solution for the more than 700,000 recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. 
Harris said, “I’m very proud to stand with my colleagues and our great educational institutions to say that we are committed and we are joined in standing with these DACA young people and standing for them in the fight to make sure that we do the right thing. And let me be clear. I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country.”
Harris was joined at the press conference by Gary May, Chancellor of the University of California, Davis. UC Davis is one of the 10 campuses that make up the University of California school system, which represents nearly 265,000 students including a population of 4,000 undocumented students, a significant number of which are DACA recipients. 
 
Click photo to watch video clip of Senator Harris.
Full remarks as delivered below:
I want to thank Dick Durbin for his longstanding leadership on this issue and Senator Schumer who I know was here, and all of my California colleagues.
Yes, California has the largest number of Dreamers and DACA young people. We have an outsized stake in the outcome of this conversation. And I have over many years met with our Dreamers and most recently in the last 10 months met with these young people who are terrified. They are terrified. And because I, like my colleagues, am a public face of this conversation, they approach me in all kinds of places wherever I am, and they come to me and talk about their experience and their fears. It is often the case that they will then break down and sob almost uncontrollably because they are terrified. They are terrified.
They don’t know what their future will be for the next couple of weeks or months. And these are young people who are in our colleges, and we have our great educational institutions that we are very proud of in California and New York here. They are in our colleges, they are in graduate school. They are serving in the military. They are working in Fortune 100 companies. They are contributing. And they’re playing by the rules.
We, as the United States government said to these young people who applied for DACA, “You give us your information. Give us an opportunity to vet who you are, to look into your background, the circumstances of your arrival. Who are your parents, what are you going, have you committed any crimes, are you productive?” We looked into their backgrounds. We asked them for their personal information and then we told them we will not share that information with ICE. In essence, you will not be deported if you play by the rules. And so we have hundreds of thousands of young people in our country right now who took us at our word and trusted the government of the United States that if they play by the rules, we will not share their information with ICE. And now, the United States government is saying we are not prepared to keep our word. We are not prepared to keep our commitment. And that is simply wrong. It is wrong because we should keep our word. And it is wrong because we certainly are not role modeling what we expect of the young people in our country, which is that you follow through on a commitment, you follow through on a promise.
So right now we are at a moment in time where we have got to understand that this is something we cannot play politics with, when we have hundreds of thousands of young people who are terrified because we have not been able to keep our word. That tells us all we’ve got some work to do.
And I’m very proud to stand with my colleagues and our great educational institutions to say that we are committed and we are joined in standing with these DACA young people and standing for them in the fight to make sure that we do the right thing. And let me be clear. I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country.
And I thank all my colleagues for their leadership. Each day in the life of these young people is a very long time and we’ve got to stop playing politics with their lives. We need to let them focus on what we want them to do, which is to study, which is to focus on inventing the next thing, focus on what they’re prepared to do to put their lives on the line for our country in the military. Let’s leave these kids alone and give them a path to citizenship and let’s do the right thing. Thank you.

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Sgt. La David T Johnson Scholarship

It’s not a terribly difficult name to remember: La David Johnson. Five syllables for a fallen soldier who died in an ambush in Niger earlier this month.
But according to Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat who represents the district where Johnson was from in Florida, that name was too much for Donald Trump to remember.
Wilson told CNN in an interview earlier today that Trump, in a call with the soldier’s pregnant widow, “didn’t even know [Johnson’s] name during the phone call.”