Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is determined to get a health care bill passed in the Senate by Christmas.
This is a momentous time, as John Nichols writes in The Nation:
...Harry Reid has a health-care reform bill, and it is advancing. Indeed, with Saturday night's 60-39 Senate vote to open a historic debate on the measure, the movement humanize America's healthcare system -- which began almost 70 years ago -- is closer to a congressional breakthrough than at any time in its history.
It won't be a cakewalk, though. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has famously threatened to torpedo the bill if it includes a public option. This week he tried to rewrite history. "This is a kind of 11th hour addition to a debate that's gone on for decades," Lieberman told reporters that "Nobody's ever talked about a public option before. Not even in the presidential campaign last year." Brian Beutler sets the record straight at Talking Points Memo: In fact the Obama campaign's health policy white paper explicitly called for the creation of a public option.
According to Mike Lillis in RH Reality Check, progressive senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is feeling optimistic about the public option's prospects.
Also in RH Reality Check, reproductive health policy analyst Jessica Arons reports that the merged Senate bill does not call for the much-debated abortion restrictions encoded in the Stupak amendment to the House bill.
In the Progressive, Ruth Conniff takes a closer look at the controversy over the latest mammogram guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a commission appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Compared to the old guidelines, the new recommendations suggest that women start getting regular mammograms later and wait longer in between screenings.
Liberals and conservatives are accusing the federal government of cheating women out of preventative care to save money. But as Conniff explains, more mammograms aren't necessarily better. There's just not much statistical evidence that screening women in their forties saves lives. In this age group, regular mammograms are more likely to generate hair-raising false alarms than lifesaving discoveries. Furthermore, mammograms use x-rays, which are inherently carcinogenic. That doesn't mean that mammograms are dangerous, just that unnecessary exposure should be avoided. Conniff writes:
...[O]verscreening and overtreatment are as much of a plague in the U.S. medical system as cost-cutting measures. And looking at breast cancer screening rationally, as the federal panel has done, makes a lot of sense.
Speaking of public health, as I report for Working In These Times, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration has published new guidelines to help retailers reduce the risk of crowd stampedes and trampling deaths at Black Friday sales. Have a safe and happy holiday and good luck standing in line for that $99 Blu-Ray player.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>Unemployment figures in the U.S. are staggering: The official rate stands at 10.2%, the highest in 26 years. A broader measure that includes people who are involuntarily working part-time or who have given up looking for work is at 17.5%. That's a full-blown economic emergency.
But, as Joshua Holland explains for AlterNet, President Barack Obama's response to the unemployment crisis has not matched the urgency of his response to the crisis on Wall Street. This isn't just unfair, it's bad economics.
"It's important to understand that the economic crisis in which we find ourselves is not just a function of a shaky financial system but of a crash in consumption that's come along with the evaporation of $14 trillion worth of the wealth of American families," Holland writes.
Widespread joblessness can be every bit as damaging to the economic structure as a financial crisis. When people are out of work, they buckle down on household expenses. When several million people cut back at the same time, the economic machine grinds to a halt. If people are not buying and selling stuff, the economy isn't working.
As Mary Kane explains for The Washington Independent, about 40% of families don't have enough money to cover expenses through a three-month stretch of unemployment--even if one member of the household is receiving unemployment benefits. Kane highlights a Brandeis University study that reveals the haggard state of the American household and the unfair distribution of wealth along racial lines. A full 66% of African-American and Latino families can't afford three months without work. At a time when 5.6 million workers have been jobless for at least six months, the study highlights just how dire finances have become for many households.
GRITtv's Laura Flanders discusses potential labor market remedies with economist Dean Baker and The Nation's John Nichols. Baker suggests a work-share arrangement, in which employers cut back on their workers' hours to allow more people to work. To prevent losses for households, the government would step in and pay for the shortfall in hours. Employers would have more part-time jobs available, but the government would make sure everyone was paid as if they were working full-time. Baker also endorses a public jobs program, which he says could be especially useful in cities like Detroit and Cleveland that have been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn.
Nichols highlights the political consequences of failing to fix the unemployment mess. Unemployment directly affects the lives of voters. If widespread joblessness persists through November 2010, Democrats will net huge Congressional losses. If Obama thinks it's hard to garner bipartisan support for his legislative priorities now, imagine a few dozen more Republican obstructionists.
It's not that Obama failed to respond to the unemployment crisis. He did. That's what the stimulus package was all about. Today's 10.2% unemployment is a catastrophe, but it would be more like 12% without the stimulus package. But, given the seriousness of the issue, Obama is not giving unemployment enough attention.
In fact, Obama's economic priorities are a mirror-image of his campaign promises, as Robert Scheer argues in both a column for TruthDig and an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! After talking tough about reining in recklessness on Wall Street and making the financial system more accountable, Obama has hired many of the very policy makers who pushed through the deregulatory agenda back in the 1990s. Top Obama administration officials like Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Gary Gensler and Neal Wolin helped make this mess in the first place.
"This is not a minor criticism," Scheer says. "I think the guy is betraying his own presidency."
Obama's timid efforts to rein in Wall Street and heal the ailing job market are setting the stage for a political disaster. If Obama and Congressional Democrats can't take strong action to fix the economy, they will find themselves with much narrower majorities next November. The economy, and the public institutions that support it, are supposed to work for everyone, not just the financial elite.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>Last weekend in Singapore, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a comprehensive international climate deal will not be reached during the climate change summit in Copenhagen. While many might view this as a letdown, lowering expectations might actually be a good thing, as Matthew Yglesias notes for the American Prospect. According to Yglesias, the conference can now be framed as a relative success whatever happens, and that will keep the momentum for climate action going after Copenhagen.
]]> Now that the conference is no longer a shoe-in failure, it's more important than ever that the president is on hand. Obama's attendance will signify that the his administration is committed to passing climate legislation through the Senate.In the video below, The Real News notes that Obama is simply trying to buy more time. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband, is hopeful that a legally binding treaty that focuses on the clear, main points, like how much to reduce emissions and finance the bill, are still attainable. Even though the Senate has not passed a climate bill, the United States can still play a constructive role in Copenhagen.
But will the international climate summit put any pressure on the Senate to actually pass a climate bill? Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly remains skeptical. "Republican [lawmakers] seem entirely unfazed when told, 'There's a health care crisis, and the entire country is waiting for you to be responsible and do your duty,'" writes Benen. "These same lawmakers will soon be told, 'There's a climate crisis, and the entire world is waiting for you to take your obligations seriously.' Will they find this compelling? I suppose time will tell."
In Mother Jones, Bill McKibben criticizes Obama's weak leadership on climate change. Rather than applying the necessary political pressure to reach a climate deal, Obama has made climate change a second priority to health care reform. Even worse, the Obama administration conceded a sturdy treaty because it was unrealistic that Senate would pass it. McKibben notes that the "White House is starting to use the Senate in the same way that the Bush administration used China - as a scapegoat for doing too little. You don't get to blame the Senate if you haven't pushed the Senate as hard as you possibly can."
Grist's David Roberts argues that the real culprit is not Obama, but the recalcitrant Senate. Calling Obama's leadership a failure is premature because he still has a chance to push reform and make a difference. Roberts also contends that McKibben's analogy of Obama using the Senate like Bush used China is unsound:
"The analogy is apt insofar as China was out of Bush's control and the Senate is out of Obama's. But it's inapt in that there's plenty Bush could have done without China and he didn't; there's plenty Obama can do outside the Senate and he's doing it. When it comes to matters under executive branch control, the progress over the last 10 months have been amazing - new fuel-economy rules, new enforcement of efficiency standards, EPA moving forward on CO2 regulations, energy standards and goals for all federal departments, tons of green stimulus money, national retrofit programs, delay of mining and drilling permits, sustained bi- and multi- lateral international climate diplomacy... the list goes on. Obama is doing what a president can do - more than any president has ever done."
Where do the American people stand on climate action? According to a recent poll featured on Yes! Magazine, 75% of Americans "favor government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, cars, and factories" and 59% of Americans "favor the U.S. taking action on global warming, even if other countries like China and India do less."
To channel this national consensus for urgent climate action, Peter Rothberg of The Nation compiled a guide that outlines how activists can get involved before Copenhagen. The guide recommends tactics that average citizens can use to pressure the key actors at Copenhagen.
Progress at Copenhagen is still possible, but there's no guaranteed outcome. If the U.S. wants to play a valuable role at Copenhagen, it should rise above the fray in Congress and focus on producing a viable pact with international support in the upcoming year. Copenhagen needs to serve as a wake up call that climate change is a collective global problem that needs a collective global solution.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>First it was immigrants from Mexico, now Muslims in the armed services. After the tragic shootings at Fort Hood, conservative pundits are verbally attacking Muslims and Arab-Americans, much like they have vilified the immigrant community. The complexities of Islamic faith are being glossed over and "Muslim Terrorist" is stamped upon any act of violence involving their community. As a result, nuanced voices are buried in favor of suspicion and violence.
]]> Dr. Riad Z Abdelkarim loves and serves this country, but is lumped in with alleged and actual enemies of the state due to his faith. In an article for The Progressive, Abdelkarim writes about his sense of anger and betrayal over the Fort Hood massacre. He is angry that the perpetrator of such harm is an American and as a doctor. He feels betrayed because the killer practices Islam, which is a beautiful and inspiring faith to Dr. Abdelkarim. "The Fort Hood murders are a huge setback" to the progress that Arab-Americans and American Muslims have made to clear the "guilt by association" that has affected their communities since 9/11, writes Abdelkarim.The Real News Network also thoughtfully examines the aftermath of Fort Hood. Host Riz Khan gives background on shooter Nidal Malik Hasan and explores the effects of the Fort Hood shooting. Kahn asks "If a Muslim commits a serious crime in America, is that crime seen as that much more deadly?"
The violent culture that many U.S. citizens attribute to Islam and Arab-Americans criminalizes everyday people. For example, a bit of Arabic script led to a frenzied media reaction when Texas border guards found "ski jacket with three unusual patches" in Hebbronville, Texas in 2005. The patches were irresponsibly described as "terrorist garb" by "right wing media," according to the Texas Observer. "One [patch] featured a lion's head, a parachute and Arabic script, another an airplane flying toward a tower and the words 'Midnight Mission.' The third patch read 'Daiwa.'"
It all made for a "fine story," as Melissa Del Bosque writes. But the results were not so dramatic. "Daiwa" is an ad for a "popular fishing company," the Arabic is the symbol of a "defunct air brigade in Syria" that was in fact "anti-Islamist," and the jacket more than likely bought at one of the "pulgas" (flea markets) located closer to the border. It is fortunate that the voices trying to connect Al Qaeda and Mexicans were not successful.
In RaceWire, Debiyani Kar reports on the Obama administration's latest announcements that immigration reform would come in 2010. Kar cuts to the heart of the issue, reminding us that "it is time to pause and make the connection again between (im)migration and globalization." If our nation is truly interested in addressing the roots of the problem, rather than passing sweeping reform every decade, we have to address this issue. Meanwhile, Kar also reminds us that migrants "are not waiting for legal reforms to take control of their economic futures," and wield their own economic power.
A liberal activist who goes by the handle of "Robert Erickson" subverted an anti-immigration rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, as the Minnesota Independent reports. Erickson called for sealing up the borders and sending "these people back where they came from" while the crowd of 50-60 people cheered along. Then Erickson revealed that he was actually calling for the removal of European immigrants, who are "responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world!"
The fallout from Lou Dobbs' severance with CNN continues. Dobbs was an integral part of the CNN news team since 1980. Roberto Lovato, reporting for The Nation, called Dobb's abrupt departure the "fast and fiery demise of a media titan." Lovato discusses Dobbs' career arc and departure from CNN. He also underlines the scope of the immigrant movement and "the centrality of spirituality to social change."
These are reminders we need when engaging struggle! Spirituality, love and laughter keep us refreshed and strong for those times we must engage injustice or oppression. And we can't show a dinosaur like Dobbs the door without commentary from two of the most celebrated pundits on the circuit today, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Both comedians' segments on Dobbs are featured at Talking Points Memo in an article by Ben Craw.
For some more humor, let's return to The Nation. Alana Levinson comments on Saturday Night Live's rendition of Lou Dobbs' last live speech, in which a parodied Dobbs said he wouldn't rest until all people have the opportunity to sell fruit on the roadside, "not just the Latinos." When compared to rants about disease and criminal Mexicans, comedic responses to Dobbs' departure are a positive contribution.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>A Michigan woman threatened a Minnesota newspaper with mass murder for criticizing Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN)'s anti-health reform rally, reports Paul Schmelzer in the Minnesota Independent:
...A woman in Michigan, angered over a newspaper editorial criticizing Bachmann's event, threatened to take a gun to the paper and "do what they did at Fort Hood" in response.
How pro-life.
David Corn of Mother Jones reports that Bachmann (R-MN) may also face an ethics investigation for using her taxpayer-funded website to promote the Tea Pary-Superbowl of Freedom, a partisan political rally to defeat health care reform. The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-profit political watchdog, alleges that Bachmann violated a House rule against using official websites for "grassroots lobbying or [to] solicit support for a Member's position." She literally told her supporters to come to Washington on Nov 5 and tell their representatives to vote against health reform. That's textbook grassroots lobbying and a clear no-no for a taxpayer-funded website.
Speaking of pesky rules and regulations, Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-MI) C Street residence is no-longer tax exempt. Stupak, who became famous for inserting a radical and far-reaching abortion funding ban into the House health reform bill, lives with several other lawmakers at a house on C Street. The house is owned by a secretive fundamentalist sect known as The Family. For years, C Street avoided paying property taxes by claiming to be a church. All that's over now. Ed Brayton of the Michigan Messenger reports that the IRS has finally figured out that C Street is a dorm.
Alex Koppelman reports in Salon that Stupak is reiterating his threat to kill health care reform if his language is stripped from the final bill:
"They're not going to take it out," Stupak said of Senate Democrats during an appearance on "Fox and Friends" Tuesday morning. "If they do, healthcare will not move forward ... At least 10 to 15 to 20 of us will not vote for it."
At Feministing, Jos Truit
discusses the Hyde Amendment, a piece of 1976 legislation that bans the
use of federal funds for abortions. The Hyde Amendment is back in the
news because Stupak is falsely claiming that his amendment merely
applies Hyde principles to health insurance.
Does he know that 45,000 born people die every year because they don't have health insurance?
The fight over abortion coverage in a reformed health care system is far from over. It's unlikely that Reid wrote Stupak language into his version of the bill, and it's equally unlikely that anti-choicers have the 60 votes to add it back in as an amendment. (Contrary to popular belief, the Senate is much more pro-choice than the House.) Anti-choice Dems Sens. Ben Nelson and Bob Casey seem to be walking back from their earlier threats to vote against a bill without Stupak language.
Harry Reid announced that Democrats would meet today to preview the Senate's version of the health care bill. The first procedural vote on the Senate bill could come before Thanksgiving.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>By proposing financial reforms that won't curb Wall Street excess, U.S. policymakers have offered an unacceptably weak response to our enormous financial crisis. If voters don't demand that their elected representatives help workers and consumers instead of simply boosting corporate profits, the economic downturn will last for several more years and leave the economy vulnerable to another bank-induced meltdown.
The banks have unbelievable lobbying clout. In an interview with Cenk Uyger of The Young Turks, Heather Booth, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, describes how one-sided the Wall Street reform fight has been. Despite broad public support for a fundamental financial overhaul, going up against the bank lobby is, as Booth describes, "a David and Goliath fight." It's basically Americans for Financial Reform against every major corporation in the U.S.
Booth notes that the Chamber of Commerce has vowed to spend $100 million on a campaign to defend the "so-called free enterprise system"--you know, the "free market"--in which corporate lobbyists spend millions of dollars to write the rules of the economic game. Just seven financial lobby groups have spent a massive $147 million peddling influence over the past two years.
In fact, as Janine Wedel observes for Salon, the U.S. economic system is starting to look an awful lot like the clannish systems of government that looted Eastern European countries in the early 1990s. Today, the public good takes a backseat to the narrow interests of powerful corporations.
With the Obama administration working with advisers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, we're not just watching Wall Street write its own regulations. We're watching the financial sector re-write the official role of the government in the economy. In this new role, the government's top priority is securing profits for corporate America.
"The intertwined coterie of financial and policy deciders in the United States is creating not only the financial architecture of the future, backed by the power and billions of the state, but, more generally, new relationships between the bureaucracy and the market," Wedel writes.
GRITtv's Laura Flanders echoes this theme in an interview with John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and journalist Russ Baker. Lobbyists have so thoroughly hijacked the U.S. economy, Perkins argues, that the nation's government now resembles those of Latin American nations he worked with in the 1980s and 1990s.
"I don't think the U.S. president has much power these days, to be honest with you. . . . It's the big corporate executives who call the shots today, and let's face it, they financed Obama's campaign," Perkins says.
The very efforts the government deployed to save the financial system are being perverted to create another disaster. In a five-part interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, Jane D'Arista, an influential economist and author of The Evolution of U.S. Finance, explains how Wall Street destroyed itself over the past decade. By borrowing massive amounts of money, Wall Street was able to place bigger bets in the capital markets casino, resulting in huge profits when those bets paid off. But when the bets backfired, the losses were just as massive. Companies couldn't pay them off, so the government stepped in to support them.
One of those support mechanisms came from the Federal Reserve, which began making incredibly cheap loans to firms that engaged predominantly in speculative trading. The Fed used to lend exclusively to commercial banks, which used the money to make loans that helped grow the real economy. But now those loans are being used to support risky securities trading, so we're seeing big profits in the financial sector, without much help for workers and consumers. This is a major long-term problem--if the economy can't keep pace with the Wall Street casino, those speculative trades are going to backfire and we'll be right back to the chaos of September 2008, only with an even weaker economy.
All hope is not lost. As Perkins and Baker emphasize in their interview with Flanders, citizens have to demand corporate accountability and a government that actually serves the public good. For much of the past decade in Latin America, governments have been elected that stood up to major corporations and demanded that they stop pillaging their nation's resources at the people's expense.
In addition to demanding much stronger reforms for the financial sector, we have to demand that the government respond seriously to problems facing workers. With the unemployment rate at 10.2% and expected to go still higher, we need jobs. As Steve Benen notes for The Washington Monthly, Obama's economic stimulus package helped stave off total economic devastation. What we need now is another stimulus to get people back to work, not just slow the pace of job losses.
"A bold, ambitious jobs bill can make a huge difference--the stimulus got us out of the ditch, a new effort can get us going in the right direction again," Benen writes.
And the only argument against this plan is that we "can't afford it." That is--the government's fiscal deficit is too high, and we just can't spend money to help people in real economic trouble.
But as Christopher Hayes writes for The Nation, the deficit excuse is pretty pathetic. Economic stimulus bolsters economic growth, thus improving tax returns for the government in the future. And any spending on any project can be taken out of the budget from other measures. Hayes notes that our massive military spending is almost never included in discussions about "fiscal responsibility." If we were really worried about how much it would cost to fix the economy, we could stop spending so much money killing people.
"Fiscal conservatism and deficit concern is nearly always code speak in Washington for something else," Hayes writes. "Most often, when someone in Washington says they're concerned about the deficit, what they're really saying is, 'I would like to make sure we have a government that focuses maximally on blowing people up.'"
The government has to start saying 'no' to corporate America. Corporate profits are not the same thing as a strong economy. We need to demand an economic policy that answers to workers, not just bank balance sheets.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>For weeks, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) has opposed climate change legislation. In the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, he openly voiced his doubts and was the only Democrat to refrain from voting for the bill's passage. Now that the bill is in the Finance Committee, which Baucus chairs, many worry that the bill is doomed. However, it looks like Baucus might have outwitted us all.
]]> Aaron Wiener of the Washington Independent reports that Baucus's opening statement at the Finance Hearing on Tuesday was surprisingly favorable. Baucus pledged his commitment to "passing meaningful, balanced climate change legislation" and even preempted economic attacks on the bill.Jeff McMahon of AlterNet argues that this was the strategy all along: "By appearing to oppose the climate bill, Baucus may be staging its passage." House Democrats implemented a similar strategy for health care reform when they appeared to give up the public option to stifle the opposition's absurd antics. Much like the Senate's climate bill, the public option was prematurely declared dead. Nevertheless, the House still successfully passed a health care bill with a public option--and the climate bill was still able to move past the EPW committee.
"Max Baucus' no vote in the [EPW] Committee establishes Baucus as the bill's credible opposition, the representative of money and industry, especially with Republicans excusing themselves from the process through either the certainty of their opposition or, in the case of a boycott, their literal absence," McMahan writes.
Baucus' strategy helps him effectively gain traction within the Senate and in his home state, where the outdoors and hunting are valued. As the chairman of the Finance Committee, he advocates for economic concerns and a strong climate bill that is likely to pass the Senate.
Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) can't seem to catch a break, as Kate Sheppard notes for Mother Jones. The Republican Party of Charleston County, S.C. unanimously voted to censure Graham for working with Democrats on a climate bill. Charleston Country Chairwoman Lin Bennett argues that Graham has "weakened the Republican brand" and that "his work on climate legislation is the last straw." In addition, the American Energy Alliance, a shady industry group that benefits from blocking clean energy, has reportedly spent $300,000 on advertisements to rebuke Graham for his support on climate legislation.
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that Graham's censure is particularly ridiculous because Graham has one of the most conservative voting records. According to VoteView analysis, Graham is currently the 18th most conservative member of Congress. Evidently, that is still not enough for South Carolina Republicans.
"One of the other angles I find interesting is that, for the better part of the year, the small and discredited Republican minority has insisted that they'd like to see "bipartisan" lawmaking," writes Benen. "And yet, when Lindsey Graham tries to work with Dems on one issue, and gets much of what he wants in concessions, he's immediately slammed -- formally -- by Republicans in his own state."
It is clear that South Carolina Republicans have no tolerance for politicians that stray from the hard party line of "freedom, rule of law and fiscal conservatism." But Salon's Andrew Leonard notes that Graham's censure is hardly surprising, considering the state's history of succession: "South Carolina Republicans are sui generis: Whether it's Sen. Jim "healthcare will be Obama's Waterloo" DeMint or Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson or Gov. Mark "no stimulus for me" Sanford, they rarely disappoint. One would expect no less from the first state to secede from the United States after Lincoln's election and the first state where shots were fired in the Civil War."
Finally, the Applied Research Center (ARC) is working to ensure that women and people of color will also reap the benefits of a green economy. Michelle Chen notes for Air America that ARC has created a Green Equity Toolkit to help marginalized communities hold employers accountable for just working conditions and equal access to green jobs.
"Considering how difficult it's been to get big business on board for meaningful carbon-emissions regulation, Congress might want to bank on some of the enthusiasm springing up from communities that are starting to see the link between their economic and environmental futures," Chen writes.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>After 30 years, commentator Lou Dobbs--infamous for his tirades against undocumented immigrants--has left CNN, as TPM reports. Dobbs employed disturbing, dangerous, and dated language to slur immigrants, often equating them with disease and infection. There is a connection between this type of demagoguery and violence.
]]> Clearly, the organizing efforts of groups like Basta Dobbs have borne fruit, as even Dobbs admits. GRITtv recently covered the "way the mainstream media equates 'Latino' with 'immigrant'" and Latino organizing efforts to correct this perspective."Over the past six months, it's become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country, and affecting all of us," Dobbs said in his last live broadcast for CNN. Other commentators belonging to the old school of racist separatism ought take note. It's a new day in the USA.
Much like the ideological frames that Dobbs was fond of, our current immigration policies wrongly mark some citizens as harmful so that others can "benefit." This week, ABM Industries in Mineapolis worked with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to execute a silent raid similar to September's raid on American Apparel. In the case of ABM, 1,250 janitors were fired in an economy where massive job loss further harms struggling communities.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues laboring under this illusion, as National Radio Project reports, and the effects of enforcement-first policies have been drastic. Once upon a time Latinos and immigrants and whites lived together mostly peaceably in Maricopa County, AZ. Now, people scream "build a wall, deport them all" and law enforcement sweeps are aimed at the undocumented. Fear rules the town. National Radio Project reports on these seismic changes, and also how gangs are able to extort community members because nobody dares call the police.
Tyler Moran reports for New America Media on how the broken immigration system affects all workers, and not just the undocumented. Systems that would normally redress unfair working environments fall apart when workers cannot stand up for themselves. Moran calls this dynamic "a secret weapon for keeping down wages and working conditions."
Using a wicked sort of revolving door style, "unscrupulous employers" hire the undocumented for lower wages, and if they happen to complain about conditions or pay, the employer calls the Department of Homeland Security or uses the threat to suppress challenges. This type of exploitation brings down the wages and conditions for all, and has no place in a modern society.
Jorge Rivas reports for RaceWire on recent attempts by some cable news networks to diminish the worth and meaning of Megrahtom Keflezighi's New York marathon win. Even though Keflezighi legally immigrated and is an American citizen, to CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell, the win was "empty." And Keflezighi's Americanness itself is merely "taking a test and living in our country." Dividing "real Americans" from people like Keflezighi is an ugly reflex. It does nothing to prom0te a healthy country.
Emily Deprang reviews Helen Thorpe's Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America for the Texas Observer. The story unfolds on a bus trip from Tucson to Houston and back and "details four young Mexican women" in varying legal situations--two with papers and two undocumented. DePrang calls the book "an epic journey through the realities of undocumented life" and feels that "every American--documented or not--deserves to meet Marisela, Yadira, Elissa, and Clara."
Marcelo Ballve, reporting for New America Media, recaps the minute, but important, shifts that have come about since last week's elections, and how they may aid the coming immigration reform showdown. "Viewed through the lens of the immigration issue," the results are not dramatically telling on either side.
In states like Virginia and New Jersey, Republican hardliners gained power. But in other places, like New York's 23rd district and California's 10th district, the Democrats picked up two seats. This two seat gain should make it "just a bit easier for House Democrats to marshal the votes" they need to advance immigration reform soon. Ballve explores numerous other states, stances, and policies--such as the 287(g) program--and how the political landscape has been affected. Clearly, it's all very much in play.
Finally, a note on Veteran's Day from Alemayehu Addis, an immigrant and a veteran.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>A clique of anti-choice Democrats in Congress joined forces with Republicans to write abortion access out of the House's health care reform bill last Saturday. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) wants to force women to choose between affordable health insurance and abortion coverage, even if they pay for abortion coverage with their own money.
Pro-choice Democrats and women's health activists are up in arms over the eleventh hour deal. Ellie Smeal of Ms. Magazine denounces the Stupak amendment as a betrayal of women:
Millions of poor and middle-class women would be denied abortion coverage and millions more would lose the coverage they already have, since 85 percent of private plans now cover abortion. Far from being abortion-neutral, the Stupak amendment is a giant step backward for women. It's unacceptable. In the compromise to get the bill passed, women and their health-care rights were thrown under the bus.
Yesterday, The Pulse interviewed Jodi Jacobson, political director of RH Reality Check, about the implications of the Stupak amendment for reproductive choice in America. Jacobson explained that, if language from the Stupak amendment finds its way into the final health care bill, insurance companies would be forced to eliminate all abortion coverage if they wanted to participate in any aspect of the health care reform plan. Listen to the full interview here. (Note: there's a slight delay before the audio starts.)
Jacobson calls the Stupak language a "monumental setback." If an insurance plan accepts customers who take government subsidies, then nobody on that plan could have abortion coverage--not even those who were paying their whole premium out of pocket. In effect, the Stupak amendment would be "a total ban on public and private money for abortion coverage," Jacobson said.
In TAPPED, Michelle Goldberg accuses the Democrats of "leaving women behind" in their rush to pass health care reform at any cost. Goldberg warns that if the amendment becomes law, Democrats will have handed the anti-abortion lobby its biggest victory since the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Act.
In the Nation, Eyal Press argues that the Stupak amendment would be an especially cruel blow to poor women:
If this highly regressive amendment makes its way into the legislation that Barack Obama eventually signs, millions of less affluent women who obtain access to affordable health insurance will thus join the ranks of low-income women on Medicaid, most of whom live in states that don't cover abortion procedures. The two-tiered system that dictates who in America has "choice" (more privileged women do, less affluent women do not) will be further entrenched.
Robin Marty of RH Reality Check wonders whether the Stupak amendment would apply to miscarriages as well as elective abortions. Sometimes, when a fetus dies in utero, doctors must surgically remove it. It's the same procedure as an elective termination and it has the same name: Abortion. Last month, Marty lost a much-wanted pregnancy. Doctors laid out her options: a $1500 surgery, a $40 chemical abortion, or an interminable wait to expel the dead fetus naturally. Marty chose the surgery. She worries that the Stupak amendment would take that choice away from other women.
The House bill is not yet the law of the land. There is still time to strip the Stupak language out in conference (the merging process whereby the House bill is combined with whatever comes out of the Senate).
But will it actually get stripped out in the senate? Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) announced that "If it isn't clear that government money is not to be used to fund abortions, I won't vote for it."
On a conference call yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) told The Pulse that he was optimistic that a compromise could be worked out. "Ben Nelson said he wasn't going to support a bill if it isn't clear that government money won't be used to fund abortions," Specter said, "Well, we can make it clear that if someone wants to buy abortion coverage with her own money, she can do it."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>On Friday, we learned that the U.S. unemployment rate officially broke 10% for the first time since the early Reagan years. This is about as bad as it gets for a modern, developed economy. No economic force takes a heavier toll on a society than rampant joblessness, and few personal setbacks take a deeper psychological toll than being out of a job for months on end. If Congress and President Obama don't do something to create jobs fast, both are going to pay a hefty political price when next year's mid-term elections roll around.
So how bad is it? In October, the economy shed 190,000 jobs and the unemployment rate jumped from 9.8% to 10.2%. That percentage is the most optimistic reading of the labor market in Friday's report. If you take people who want full-time jobs but are settling for part-time work, then add those who have simply given up on finding a job, the rate is a massive 17.5%.
The problem is not that either Obama or Congress have failed to act on the problem, but rather that they have not done enough. When Congress was moving on Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package back in February, we were shedding upwards of 700,000 jobs a month. So the stimulus package has worked--it's probably helped keep unemployment from jumping to 12% or 13%. But this is cold comfort to the nation's 15.7 million unemployed, 5.6 million of whom have been out of a job for more than six months.
As Robert Reich notes for Salon, Obama's economic advisers dramatically underestimated how bad things would get when they crafted the stimulus package. As a result, the package was too small and unemployment has remained high. Obama needs to go back to Congress and demand more economic relief funding. Republicans will continue to whine about government spending to excuse their obstructionism, of course, and conservative Democrats will probably start sweating, too--Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) helped cut back the original stimulus bill in February to help boost his "centrist" credentials. This of course had nothing to do with economics or policy. Government spending is what saves the economy in a recession. In a downturn as severe as this one, it takes a lot of spending to turn things around.
But as Reich notes, Nelson and his cohorts will have a lot more to worry about in the 2010 elections if the economy doesn't actually improve over the next year. And few economists think it will. The Congressional Budget Office, which is run by a conservative economist named Douglas Elmendorf, projects an average unemployment rate of over 10% in 2010. That's worse than this year. Democrats from swing districts need to support economic relief packages. Continued economic malaise will severely hurt them at the polls.
Congress finally took some action on joblessness on Thursday, voting to extend unemployment benefits for an additional 14 weeks. If we want the economy to recover, we need people to spend money, but if people aren't working, they don't have any money to spend. So the government cuts people checks to help them get by and stimulate a demand for goods and services. Even most conservative economists thinks this is a good idea.
But as Kevin Drum notes for Mother Jones, the soundness of the policy did nothing to prevent Republicans from fighting the effort to extend benefits tooth-and-nail. The bill had to overcome three--that's right, three--filibusters in the Senate from Republicans, who held up the bill for weeks for no apparent reason. In a blog post for The Washington Monthly, Steve Benen explains the economic cost of this obstructionism: In the weeks of delay, 200,000 people looking for work stopped receiving benefits.
But extending unemployment benefits will not solve our economic woes. The total program is just $2.4 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions of dollars the government put up to salvage Wall Street. $2.4 billion is not enough to reverse the unemployment trend. Cutting the checks certainly helps, but as Matthew Rothschild emphasizes for The Progressive, we need an economic policy that actually puts people back to work. We've known for months that the stimulus was too small and watched the labor market continue to deteriorate. We need more than tweaks at the economic margins, we need a robust job creation plan.
As Stephen Franklin notes for Working In These Times, we already know that the recession has created a significant jump in the nation's poverty rate. According to official government statistics, the rate climbed from 12.5% to 13.2% in 2008, the largest increase since 1991. But the National Academy of Science thinks the government statistics are misleading, as they account for rising costs associated with medical care, transportation, child care and different regional living standards, as Franklin notes. Taking these factors into account, the National Academy of Sciences calculates the actual poverty rate to be 15.8%. That's an additional 7 million people living in poverty, for a total of over 47 million. That's more than the entire population of the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia metropolitan areas combined. What's worse, we don't have poverty statistics for this year, when the most severe economic damage was been dealt.
Workers are facing tough economic prospects around the world. Writing for The Nation, Kristina Rizga details Latvia's economic turmoil. Just like the US, overexcited bankers in Latvia inflated a massive real estate bubble that took down the entire economy when it burst. But with the bubble burst, much of the country is now out of a job and stuck with a mortgage worth far less than what they paid for it. It's almost exactly the same story we've seen at home.
No domestic economic problem is more pressing than our epic levels of unemployment. We need another round of stimulus to get people working again. If not, we'll see the same public unrest here as in Eastern Europe.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill yesterday morning. Last week, Republican Senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set "the stage for other panels to amend the legislation."
]]> To no one's surprise, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) immediately complained about the legislation on Fox News. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) was the lone Democrat that did not vote, which Inhofe interpreted as a sign that the bill is "dead."Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was much more upbeat and argued that the Republican boycott actually marred their credibility. "The absence of the Republicans during the Environmental Protection Agency's presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one," Boxer said. "We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill."
Inhofe also condemned Boxer for passing the bill through the committee unconventionally. Aaron Wiener writes for The Washington Independent that "Without a quorum that included at least two Republicans, the committee was unable to open formal debate on amendments to the bill. But passage requires just a simple majority, and Chairman Boxer and the Democratic leadership chose to forgo amendments in order to move the legislation quickly, given that the end of the GOP boycott was nowhere in sight." Luckily, now that the bill is moving on to other committees, Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues will no longer have much of a say on the bill's final outcome.
With Copenhagen just a month away, Kate Sheppard argues for Mother Jones that the odds of passing a viable climate bill before the climate summit are very grim. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will run a series of studies after each committee's climate and energy bills are combined into a single piece of legislation. Even though the bill passed through the EPW committee, other committees, such as the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Finance Committee, and Agriculture Committee, need to weigh in before the bill is reviewed by the EPA and sent for a vote in the full Senate. How will this affect climate talks in Copenhagen? Sheppard writes that, "Without the urgency imposed by the Copenhagen deadline, any little momentum that the climate bill had could disappear very fast."
While this news is discouraging, Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly points out that, "It's worth remembering that it wasn't too terribly long ago that reports said the same thing about health care reform. Legislative battles can often take some unpredictable twists and turns." This is certainly true, but in order for the legislation to pass, more Republicans will have to get on board. Democrats are trying to gain Republican support for a bipartisan bill by pledging to meet them halfway.
"For several GOP lawmakers, the key on energy policy is building new nuclear power plants. So, Dems are willing to make a deal -- they'll back approval for expedited construction of U.S. nuclear reactors in exchange for support for the rest of the bill," Benen writes.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC.) showed that some Republicans are capable of exerting leadership. In a press conference with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Graham criticized Republicans' childish behavior toward climate change legislation. He asked, "If you can't participate in solving the problem, then why are you up here?"
David Roberts writes for Grist that the three senators pledged to work with the White House to rescue the climate bill. The senators' plan is not meant to undermine Sen. Boxer's efforts but to strengthen the bill overall through a "dual track."
"By stepping in, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are letting the political establishment know that the Very Serious grown-ups are back in charge. (It's pretty telling that Kerry feels the need to craft another bill alongside the one with his name on it.) They will go to the White House, close the door, and hash out what kind of bill can really pass," writes Roberts.
The road ahead won't be easy. Congress' inability to pass climate change legislation could ruin any chance of success in Copenhagen. In weeks to come, the bill will move on to other Senate committees and the world will be watching. Stay tuned.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>While many pundits and political analysts are musing about what Tuesday's mixed bag election results mean for Obama administration, New America Media reports that "there's another trend to watch; the surprising prominence of immigration politics."
]]> Even in states where other concerns "like small farms and forestry management" are far more immediate, "immigration has become a litmus test issue for the conservative movement," and the expectation is, oddly, a "lockstep" goal toward opposing legalization. One has to wonder how the self-destructive choice to oppose immigration at any cost came about.ColorLines' Leticia Miranda asks "What's next?" now that the infamous Hutto immigration detention center, notorious for myriad human rights violations such as keeping children in prison-like conditions, is closing. Detainees are simply being moved to another detention center in Pennsylvania. So how will we know that substandard conditions and alleged sexual abuse will not be repeated? The problem is not location. The problem is that a class of people have been isolated and assigned lesser worth. making it easy to exploit them. Still, the closing of Hutto is an accomplishment for the ACLU and other activists that worked so hard to make it happen. It's also a sign that our nation will not tolerate such conditions.
Another positive sign of progress is the reversal of what the Washington Monthly dubbed "a senseless ban" that prohibited HIV-positive individuals from migrating or traveling to the US. Author Steve Benen notes that progress in overturning the ban, which was imposed by the Reagan administration 22 years ago, began with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and then-Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) in 2008.
In negative news, the anti-immigration group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) have released a bizarrely antagonistic press release calling Rep. Gutierrez (D-IL) a "traitor," as The Washington Independent reports. The full press release is here. In it, William Gheen, President of ALIPAC, happily warns that ALIPAC is "ready to organize and channel the backlash wave of anger that is coming into peaceful civic action" and for no apparent reason, employing a Dirty Harry quote beseeching an unnamed person to "Make my day, punk!" People like Gheen and Lou Dobbs are forever talking about a culture war and are obviously not interested in human beings.
It is far too easy to get the same impression about the Department of Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Reporting on an Associated Press analysis of previously undisclosed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Wiretap declares ICE to be "critically flawed, replete with agents who have badly bungled ongoing cases." This includes "covering up crimes and even interfering in a police investigation into whether one informant killed another." The list of ICE's violations of the public trust include "soliciting sex from witnesses, letting informants smuggle undocumented folks, sexual relationships with informants" and using their position improperly to accrue "personal gain."
As author M. Junaid Levesque-Alam makes clear, any agency will develop some degree of corruption that must be rooted out. But the dangers increase when you empower an agency "specifically created to target the vulnerable" with federal authority and weapons, all the while calling this population "illegal aliens."
Also in Wiretap, Jamila King reports on San Francisco's ongoing battle with Mayor Gavin Newsom regarding when deportation proceedings should be initiated against youth that have bee arrested but not tried for a crime. The city recently voted that juveniles accused of crimes must actually be convicted before they are deported.
Oddly, even in the face of "crowds of people gathered at city hall to celebrate the board's decision to overturn" the "draconian mandate," Newsom vetoed the change last Wednesday. Supervisor David Campos responded to the veto by saying it was a "sad day for San Francisco" and that Newsom had "chosen to be on the wrong side of history on this issue." King reminds us, however, that Newsom's move is toothless. The Board of Supervisors had enough votes to override his veto.
Deportation is a serious issue. Last week the Diaspora featured "Torn Apart" ColorLines' web-only series on deportation's effects on families of color. Free Speech TV has posted an alert to protect families from deportation. It includes a link with actions you can take to help.
Finally, as The Real News reports, Mexico is offering amnesty to all undocumented immigrants within its borders, be they from the US or other nations (video below). Juan Ignacio Pedroza, Migratory Regulations Official for Mexico, makes clear why the country is making such a move. The government of Mexico sees immigrants as an economic boon, and wants to offer them a path to citizenship so that they can contribute and be part of the social fabric.
Mexico is an older nation and surely imperfect. But this decision demonstrates wisdom about how a people can come together that we might learn from here in the US.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The House released a final version of the health reform bill. It has a public option all right, but not the robust version progressives were hoping for. The public plan would only cover 2% of Americans and premiums will cost more than anticipated.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) continued to threaten to join a Republican filibuster of a health care bill with a public option. A lot of people still think he's bluffing. Realistically, the public option probably faces more serious threats from inside the Democratic caucus. It's been whittled down at an alarming rate.
Nick Baumann of Mother Jones asks "What now for the public option?"
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that public option premiums will actually be higher than the premiums for private plans on the health insurance exchanges. That doesn't mean it's going to cost the government more money--the public option is paid for by premiums, not taxes; it actually cuts the deficit. But it will be more expensive than some private plans. Wasn't part of the point of the public option to prove that a government-run program could compete successfully with privately-run plans? Well, yes, but here's the problem: that was all based on the idea that the public option would pay health care providers at Medicare rates.
Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent reports that the House health care bill would eliminate the popular and cost-effective Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and shift its low-income beneficiaries onto private health insurance exchanges.
This looks like a stealthy preemptive strike on the prospect of single-payer health care. CHIP is a single-payer program that progressive health policy types envisioned as a prototype for a future single-payer system for all kids, or even eventually for everyone.
As Lillis points out, abolishing CHIP is also a gimme to insurance companies. Generally speaking, kids are cheap to insure because they're healthy. Private insurers would love to stock their risk pools with kids on federal subsidies. It's like getting paid to stock your pond with delicious trout. We worry about adverse selection making the public plan more expensive. Well, CHIP is the reverse of that because this public program is keeping the good risks for itself.
Suzy Khimm argues at TAPPED that killing CHIP could be a good thing, provided the kids continue to enjoy the same legal protections that they get under the public plan. Khimm suggests that moving low-risk kids into insurance exchanges could help keep costs down for everyone by making the risk pool healthier on average:
That being said, if CHIP's dismantling ended up moving more folks into the health-insurance exchange, it wouldn't simply be a boon for "the insurance lobby and moderate Democrats." It could strengthen one of the most fundamental parts of the Democratic reform package -- a robust insurance exchange with a pool of participants that's large enough to drive down costs precisely because insurance companies have an incentive to jump in and compete for customers. Moreover, folding CHIP into the exchange would add a younger, healthier pool of participants to the exchange, offsetting its potential of becoming a dumping ground for the sick and elderly. Finally, CHIP has always suffered from under enrollment -- about 6 million children aren't insured in the program who should be -- and by bringing whole families in under the same plan, more children will be covered.
The frustrating thing about so-called health care reform is that legislators don't really want to change the system. They want to make the system work better while catering to all the established interests that made it suck in the first place.
Politicians aren't the only ones to balk at fundamental change. The Real News Network interviews Sam Gindin (video below), a former assistant to the Canadian Auto Workers Union, now a professor at York University. Gindin says that, over the years, labor conceded too much on health care and thereby failed to reestablish itself as a leading force for progressive change in the United States. Helping elect Barack Obama was a step in the right direction for labor, he maintains, but it's not nearly enough.
As John Nichols of the Nation put it, when the House finally wrote the bill, the compromise was even more compromised than expected.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Last week, President Barack Obama released key legislation designed to fight the banking industry's too-big-to-fail problem. But Obama's plan doesn't actually address too-big-to-fail at all. It reinforces a broken system in which economically dangerous companies are bailed out whenever they drive themselves to the brink of failure.
If we want the economy to support all people, we have to break up the big banks and start treating the creation of good jobs as an economic priority on par with Wall Street rescues.
The editors of The Nation break the political debate over banking into three camps:
The Nation editors rightly see the third strategy as the most sensible. While the "break-up-the-banks" policy is being portrayed as a left-wing pipe dream by cable news networks, the policy actually relies on an age-old observation of conservative economists. Regulators make mistakes, and they often get co-opted by the very industries they are supposed to be supervising.
The practical policy is to impose structural limits on what activities banks can participate in and how big they can get. Just look at the list of high-profile supporters: former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Citigroup Chairman John Reed, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King. I don't remember seeing any of those guys at the Iraq War protests.
Many of the regulatory blind spots that brought down the economy were obvious to some policymakers for years. Back in 1994, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) wrote an article for The Washington Monthly warning that derivatives trading was putting the economy in grave danger. Commodities Futures Trading Commission Chair Brooksley Born tried to take action on these derivatives, but was overruled by other regulators, including then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, and then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, now the top economic adviser to President Obama. Summers and Greenspan even convinced Congress to pass a law banning the regulation of key derivatives, including credit default swaps, which ultimately brought down insurance giant AIG.
Fifteen years after Dorgan's article first ran, The Washington Monthly is featuring it again, along with a recent speech by Dorgan that details massive failures in Wall Street and Washington.
"We had regulators come to town in recent years and willfully boasted that they wanted to be blind as regulators," Dorgan says.
There are good elements of Obama's plan to deal with too-big-to-fail. It gives policymakers the option of putting a too-big-to-fail institution through a special bankruptcy process administered by the executive branch, thus avoiding the problems created in bankruptcy court when Lehman Brothers failed. But the bad part is really bad: Officials would also have the option to provide unlimited bailouts to Big Finance via loans, guarantees and even asset purchases.
As Mike Lillis notes for The Washington Independent, some responsible Democrats like Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) have been objecting to this aspect of the legislation for months. Sherman, in fact, calls it "TARP on steroids," noting that the bank bailout at least came with some meager oversight and a limit on the program's actual size.
The bank lobby is spending money like mad to maintain their stranglehold on the economy. Neither Congress or the administration will change course without intense public pressure. So it was very reassuring last week to see thousands of people protesting the annual meeting of top bank lobby group, the American Bankers Association. David Moberg chronicles the protest in a blog post for Working In These Times that covers speeches by both key union leaders and ordinary people facing foreclosure after watching their tax dollars go to the very bankers who wrecked the economy.
"There was broad agreement on anger at the banks for providing so little, if any, public benefit for the massive bail-out, and for so quickly returning to the greed and abuse that precipitated the crisis," Moberg writes.
Laura Flanders covers the protests for GRITtv, including video of protesters chanting "Bust up big banks!" In a roundtable discussion with Christina Clausen of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union, George Goehl of National People's Action and Rob Robertson of the Right To The City Alliance, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi explains the overriding impotence of the regulations Congress is about to approve. Regulators will not be able to crack down on abusive derivatives, a full 8,000 of 8,200 banks will be exempt from Consumer Financial Protection Agency oversight, while the same agencies that screwed up heading into this crisis will be charged with preventing the next one.
"They've had sweeping powers to do whatever they wanted," Taibbi says. "They've had this regulatory power all along."
What we need are good jobs, and lots of them. Obama's economic stimulus package has made tangible economic progress. It's saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, and is clearly responsible for the turnaround in gross domestic product (GDP) we saw in the third quarter. But a full 17% of the workforce remains unable to find full-time work, as Julianne Malveux explains for The Progressive.
When Wall Street crashed in 1929 and unleashed the Great Depression, the government eventually stepped in as an employer-of-last-resort. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). built schools, parks, roads and bridges which still serve our communities today. Both the WPA and the CCC employed literally millions of people--in the 1930s. It's a model that could work very well today.
As the current recession makes clear, ending too-big-to-fail and guaranteeing a good job for everyone in our society who wants one are the two most critical structural reforms our economy needs. Don't let lawmakers forget it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
]]>This week the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held three hearings on the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill and, as David Roberts reports for Grist, Republican Senators had an "adolescent tantrum" about the cost of emission reductions. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Congressional Budget Office, Energy Information Administration and other organizations have extensively debunked this line of debate.
]]> Aaron Wiener agrees that the committee's hearing was a "fairly one-sided debate" in The Washington Independent. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has already threatened a Republican boycott of the Committee's markup of the Kerry-Boxer bill, which would prevent the quorum needed to do business. And on Tuesday, every Republican cut out early while Democrats discussed energy policy details with members of the Obama administration. Considering that the bill isn't even at the markup stage, we can expect more disruptive antics from the right in weeks to come.Republicans won't be the only problem. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) voiced his reservations about the bill on Tuesday. That makes his vote unlikely, as Kate Sheppard notes for Mother Jones. Baucus doesn't want the EPA to regulate carbon emissions, and he thinks that the bill's plan to curb emissions by 20% by 2020 is too ambitious.
Does his opinion really matter? Unfortunately, yes. Baucus is a member of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee, which must approve the bill before it is brought before the wider Senate. He is also the chair of the Finance Committee, meaning that he has jurisdiction over how the bill will allocate emissions permits. With a 12-7 democratic majority in the Environment and Public Works committee, legislation could move forward without Baucus, but he could still stall the bill in the Finance Committee.
"In the health care debate, Baucus delayed the bill in the Finance Committee for months, watering it down in an effort to win the support of the panel's Republicans. In the end only one (Olympia Snowe) voted for it. Now, he's apparently proposing a similar process for the climate bill...[and] questions whether the bill as written 'will lead us closer to or further away' from that goal."
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has finally taken an aggressive stance on climate change. In a video featured by The Uptake, President Obama called for a bipartisan effort to pass legislation and a clean energy economy. He also publicly announced that "the naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue...are being marginalized." The speech on Friday marked Obama's second address on climate change (the first was at the UN last month) and the first aimed at a domestic audience.
While Obama's speech was definitely important, Nancy Scola of The American Prospect argues that Energy Secretary Steven Chu's trip to Google's headquarters on Monday was even more significant. Chu announced the first round of $150 million in funding under the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) - or the "Department of Energy's experimental program for high risk, high payoff concepts for transformative energy technologies ... which just might help America find innovative solutions to our energy challenges." The ARPA-E was actually created under the Bush administration, but no funds were appropriated to get it up and running. Obama allocated $400 million from the stimulus for the program in hopes of sparking creative solutions to energy problems.
And on Wednesday, Obama unleashed the largest award of stimulus money in a single day--3.4 billion dollars in grants--to improve the national power grid. At a solar energy installation in Florida, Obama explained his hopes to replace our current infrastructure that is expensive and susceptible to outages and blackouts with a more resilient and efficient "smart grid."
Andrew Dunn of Air America notes that "It looks like a win-win for Americans--a better, more efficient power infrastructure along with jobs created to construct and maintain that system." Dunn also featured a clip from the Rachel Maddow Show describing recent efforts to promote alternative energy. Maddow reports that Vice President Biden spoke at an auto plant in Delaware that will now produce electric cars. The new auto plant is expected to create 2,000 factory jobs and over 3,000 vendor and supplier jobs by 2014, in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Congress and the Obama administration are finally stepping up on
climate efforts. It's about time. The US is ready to catch up with the
rest of the world and address climate change seriously. There will be
many obstacles ahead, but by sharpening domestic energy policies that
promote a greater reliance on clean energy, we can re-create the
nation's economy and show the international community that we are
committed to arresting climate change.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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