In a post about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s bid to strip public employee unions of collective bargaining — the most important and effective tool for protecting workers — Van Jones wrote:
If a foreign power conspired to inflict this much damage on America’s first responders and essential infrastructure, we would see it as an act of war.
It is an act of war, a now all-but-openly-declared war — and not just against unions, but against American workers and against the middle class.
Americans are accustomed to denying even the existence of classes, let alone class conflict. This week America’s ongoing class war arrived on our doorstep with the subtlety of a daisy cutter — in the form of Walker’s union-busting politics, and the massive protests in Madison and beyond.
Now that the battle is joined, the big questions are what the outcome will be, and whether Democrats will take the opportunity to tell American workers unequivocally whose side they are on.
What we are seeing in Wisconsin is job killing in action, with the goal of eliminating or permanently weakening the middle class. Conservative policies were responsible for the death of American manufacturing and the loss of “good jobs” — jobs with decent wages and benefits that aided the growth of the middle class from the working class.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research defines a “good job” as one with health insurance, a pension plan and earnings of at least $17 per hour. That works out to about $34,000 a year, the inflation-adjusted median income for men in 1979, when U.S. manufacturing jobs numbered 19.6 million, an all-time high.
Since then, however, the economy has lost nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs — 52,000 in February alone. Among them were many of the 3.5 million “good jobs” lost from 2000 to 2006, according to John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR.
As those jobs disappeared, many blue-collar workers were forced to take jobs with far less pay and benefit security.
…Helping fuel the loss of good jobs has been a decline in union membership, industry deregulation, increased outsourcing of state and government services and economic policies that focus more on containing inflation than on maintaining full employment, Schmitt said. (Emphasis mine.)
What Conservatives Really Want
Now conservatives have turned their eliminating what may be the last “good jobs” left in America, in terms of benefits. It’s not just public employees and public employee unions conservatives have in their sights, but the very concepts of a common good and a public interest. George Lakoff explained in “What Conservatives Want,” a post dedicated to the protesters in Wisconsin (emphasis mine):
Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.
…The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.
The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, “Let the market decide” assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that.
Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life for a civilized society, and, as necessary, for business to prosper.
The public workers targeted in Wisconsin and others are the same people who make middle-class life and security in America possible. They are the people who ensure our safety, who safeguard our health, and facilitate us getting where we want to go, among other things. They are the police who responded within minutes after our house alarm was set off by a strong wind that blew open a door that lacked a deadbolt lock; the teachers and school staff that helped our son when he needed it; the paramedics who responded quickly when a neighbor’s child had trouble breathing; the firefighters who responded when a neighbor detected a gas leak; the bus driver that gets our son to school safely each day; the public transportation workers who get me to work and back home safely each day. The list goes on and on.
When abstract budget cuts translate into fewer teachers, police officers, health workers, firefighters, etc. in our communities, we begin to realize that such cuts hurt rather than heal.
The very necessities that support the existence of a middle class are threatened. They will not be replaced if conservatives are successful in eliminating them. They will not be affordable if privatized. The reason that there are public services supported by public workers is that there are things we believe need doing and should be done even if they’re not profitable. Where there is not enough of a profit margin for private industry to see a benefit, and too great a need for charitable entities to meet entirely, it becomes a question of the public interest, requiring a public solution.
We are faced with a conservative movement that not only doesn’t believe in a public good but sees it at the biggest of our problems.
Ideology vs. Reality: Something Has To Give
Wisconsin and other states are where the irresistible force of ideology meets the immovable object of reality. While many Americans support the idea of “tough” budget cuts, most Americans want the painful cuts made somewhere else — someplace where they won’t feel it. Like the Johnny Mercer lyric that says, “something’s gotta give.” It will either be the will of the people or the ideological move to increase economic pain and inequality.
As America looked on with the rest of the world at the amazing, dictator-toppling protests in Egypt, we heard reports of how Egypt’s economic inequality catalyzed a citizens’ movement. And we learned that economic inequality is worse here than in Egypt.
It’s no coincidence that even conservatives see the parallels between Cairo and Madison. The connection between the uprisings in Cairo and Madison aren’t lost on the participants in both. Facilitated by the internet, protesters in Cairo and Madison have exchanged statements of solidarity.
Technology may have partly bridged that gap, but what brings the uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere closer to home is not so much the technology as the understanding that passes along it, through barriers of culture, language, religion, etc. What does it mean when Americans in Madison, Wis., see themselves in the same boat at protesters in Egypt?
It means that our domestic economic policies have mirrored our economically driven foreign policy, with consequences as devastating to working and middle-class Americans as those our decades-long support of Mubarak’s regime was to Egyptians.
A New York Times article recently stated, “Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt has long functioned as a state where wealth bought political power and political power bought great wealth.” The same can be accurately said of the U.S. in the past 30 years. In Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson explain what’s happened in the last 30 years.
That shift occurred in the 1970s because businesses and the super-rich began a process of political organization in the early 1970s that enabled them to pool their wealth and contacts to achieve dominant political influence (described in Chapter 5). To take one of the many statistics they provide, the number of companies with registered lobbyists in Washington grew from 175 in 1971 to nearly 2,500 in 1982 (p. 118). Money pouring into lobbying firms, political campaigns, and ideological think tanks created the organizational muscle that gave the Republicans a formidable institutional advantage by the 1980s. The Democrats have only reduced that advantage in the past two decades by becoming more like Republicans–more business-friendly, more anti-tax, and more dependent on money from the super-rich. And that dependency has severely limited both their ability and their desire to fight back on behalf of the middle class (let alone the poor), which has few defenders in Washington.
Americans are fast approaching a crossroads where the abstract budget cuts run headlong into reality of the pain those cuts will inflict on our families and communities. And in the communities where Americans live and work, the abstract notion of budget cuts translates into real economic pain. It translates into states taking action to increase economic pain while at the same time undercutting their ability to relieve the worst of it.
A Lost Middle Class, Unbridled Corporate Power
The war against public employees is also a war on the many things government does that support the middle class. That Republicans have not offered alternatives to these supports either reflect their lack of concern about the American middle class, or their confidence that the private sector will eventually supply alternative supports.
Either way, we’re probably facing a “lost decade” in which middle and working-class Americans suffer the loss of these supports, facing stagnation at best and downward mobility at worst. For younger generations, this will come a crucial time developmentally, during which they would otherwise acquire or inherit advantages they could then pass on to their children, thus perpetuating the middle class.
This is an attack on the middle class, both directly and indirectly; even on those of us who have fallen for the right’s “politics of envy” and thus focus our ire on public employees rather than at those further up the economic ladder who are, still, feeling no pain in this recession. Instead too many of us look at public employee unions and ask “Hey, why should they have it so good?,” instead of asking “Hey, how come we don’t have it that good?” (Perhaps because only 6.9% of private employees are unionized now, due in no small part to Republican efforts to aid corporate union-busting.)
As Kevin Drum notes, killing off unions removes the only remaining counterbalance to corporate power.
… Of course unions have pathologies. Every big human institution does. And anyone who thinks they’re on the wrong side of an issue should fight it out with them. But unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power. They’re the only large-scale movement left that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.
So sure: go ahead and fight the teachers unions on charter schools. Go ahead and insist that public sector unions in Wisconsin need to take pay and benefit cuts if that’s what you believe. Go ahead and rail against Davis-Bacon. It’s a free country.
But the decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. No matter what doubts you might have about unions and their role in the economy, never forget that destroying them destroys the only real organized check on the power of the business community in America. If the last 30 years haven’t made that clear, I don’t know what will.
Perhaps now more Americans know how high the stakes really are. Recent polls show that 65% of Wisconsin residents and 61% of Americans support the right of public employee unions to bargain collectively. (In Wisconsin, Walker is losing the support even among Republican senators.)
This attack on the middle class comes at a time when the middle class has already been weakened by the economic impact of conservative policies and politics. Wisconsin illustrates that conservative economic and fiscal policies create crises that Republicans then exploit to accomplish political ends — weakening their opponents and rewarding their cronies along the way. Naked cronyism is employed in pursuit of what to conservatives is a higher goal: to “finish the job” of remaking our economy (to more closely resemble those of other countries also facing citizen revolts) through destroying regulation, consumer protection, collective bargaining, labor organizing, and thus ensuring continued growth of economic inequality.
Mother Jones magazine spelled it out in just eight charts.
The importance of this end, the permanent diminishing of the middle class, to Republicans is evident in how far they are willing to go and how unswerving they are in the face of public opposition and the cognitive dissonance of reality.
So, the debt or the deficit is not the point in the first place—because the deficit is merely the symptom, not the disease. The disease is the conservative economics that have created the crisis. The crisis they have created is the point. Give conservatives this: They never let a crisis go to waste, in the way the Obama administration have done thus far.
Indeed, in his short time in office Walker has destroyed (and threatened to destroy more) jobs than his policies are likely to create, if previous applications of conservative policy are any indication. The $117 billion in tax breaks that Walker and the Republican legislature pushed through for GOP cronies basically created the very crisis he claims to address. That Walker refuses any compromise at all, even though the unions agreed to accept wage and benefit reductions as long as they keep the right to collective bargaining, shows that the budget isn’t the point. Power is. That Walker doesn’t have time to talk to the state’s Senate Democrats, but does have time to take a call he thinks is from one of the Koch brothers, shows exactly whose side he’s on.
If Walker accepts compromise, then unions survive to bargain another day. Meaning that the wage and benefit reductions are not guaranteed permanent. If Wisconsin’s economy improves, the states public employee unions would be a position to bargain for a return to previous wage and benefit levels, based on the argument that their sacrifice should end with the state’s budget crisis ends.
The Crossroads, In Washington And Beyond
We are approaching a crossroads. It happens that this time it’s been reached in Wisconsin, and other states are approaching the same point. At some point, it becomes impossible to camouflage the blatant cronyism, inequality, and bald-faced contradictions in what conservatives promise and what their policies actually deliver. At that crossroads, things can go at least a couple of ways.
Either people resist, because they are still inspired by the possibility of change and believe in their ability to affect change with great effort, or they are successfully crushed by economic pain and effectively disenfranchised the point that not only do they no longer believe in the possibility of change, but they no longer bother with an effort because they believe “The government does what it wants to do. We can do nothing.”
“The people united,” goes the chant, “will never be defeated.” The fate of that union, and the ability of united people to change the direction of government, is being decided in Madison, Wisconsin, today. And maybe in your state capitol tomorrow.
We will soon face a stalemate in the federal government similar to that in Wisconsin. Since congressional Democrats won’t have the option of flight, they had better be ready to fight, and to make the case that Republicans have refused to bargain at all, let alone bargain in good faith. Democrats must make the case that they are working to prevent Republicans in Congress from doing to the rest of the country what Gov. Walker and Republican legislators are trying to do in Wisconsin and other states now.
What’s happening in Wisconsin and across the country may be the beginning of Americans realizing the consequences of voting in Republicans whose policies don’t reflect what Americans really want. It may be the beginning of the Republicans running smack into the reality that the midterm elections did not give them a mandate or confer a public stamp of approval on their agenda.
We can only hope it is the beginning of Americans turning back that agenda when it comes to their hometowns.
A popular business tip advises would-be business leaders to “Find a parade and get in front of it.” The question is whether Democrats, having failed to start a parade after 2008 will have the sense to jump in front of the one that started in Wisconsin and, at long last, lead it.
Democrats’ first step towards real leadership, from the president on down, should star with an unequivocal statement of support for public employees and public employee unions in Wisconsin and other states, support for the right to organize and bargain collectively, and ultimately support for the progressive values that are the foundation of all the above.
The conservative war against the working people, the middle class, and fundamental American values has burst out into the open. It’s time now for the president and Democrats to speak up and stand up; to leave no doubt whose side they’re on, by publicly joining the fight.
“Last year I invested in a bond fund and now I’ve lost money. What happened? I thought bonds were supposed to be safe investments!”
Recently several people have asked me this same question. Given the turbulent economic times we’re (hopefully!) coming out of, it’s understandable that folks want to find a “safe investment” to hunker down in.
Alas, the phrase “safe investment” is an oxymoron. The whole point of investing is taking on some risk with the hope, but not the guarantee, of earning a higher return than you’d get from doing something risk free.
So how did bonds get the reputation of being “safe?” Well, at their core, bonds are loans. You lend money for a pre-determined period of time. In return you receive interest at specified intervals. When your loan (a.k.a. bond) matures you get back the money you originally loaned – if the entity hasn’t gone bankrupt.
It is the return of that original investment that has caused people to view bonds as “safe” investments. Alas, there are always risks with any investments. The two classic ones for individual bonds are:
- Credit Risk: This is the risk that the entity you lend to goes belly up and can’t pay you back.
- Interest Rate Risk: Bonds are like seesaws. When interest rates go up, the price of bonds go down. If you hold your bond until it matures, the impact is all on paper. But if you are forced to sell your bond before its maturity date and interest rates are higher than when you bought that bond, the price you’ll receive will be less than you originally invested.
Another problem with individual bonds is you often need a pretty hefty chunk of change to buy them. This is where bond mutual funds come in. For example, if you had $10,000 to invest you might be able to buy one bond. But by pooling your money with other people’s money, bond mutual funds enable you to take that $10,000 and spread it out over many different bonds. That helps you spread out your risk.
However, when individual investors decide to take their money out of a bond fund, the portfolio manager may be forced to sell bonds at less than desirable prices to give them back their money. You could call this liquidity risk. Over the past year, as interest rates have inched up and there have been concerns about credit quality, the price of some bond funds has declined as these risks all reared their heads.
What does this mean for you? It means that like stock funds, bond funds also have some risk associated with them. They should not be thought of as “100% safe” substitutes for FDIC insured savings accounts. Rather, they are intended to be part of a well-balanced portfolio. Another way to keep your risk low is to invest in bond funds that have average maturities of 5 years or less because they seesaw around less violently as interest rates move.
What additional questions do you have about bonds or bond funds?
[This post originally appeared at ManishaThakor.com.] Want more financial love? You can follow Women’s Financial Literacy Initiative founder, Manisha Thakor, on Twitter at @ManishaThakor, sign up to get her email updates delivered right to your inbox here, and enroll in her innovative new online personal finance course called “Money Rules.”
These days, it’s relatively easy to be a talking head on news programs.
Just find some sucker with a lot of money willing to fund you, created an organization with an important sounding name, give yourself an important sounding but meaningless title (senior fellow, research analyst, president, etc.), and they’ll practically be beating at your door.
An incident yesterday on Fox News more than demonstrates that point. Not long after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama Administration would no longer defend DOMA, Fox News personality (you really don’t think I’m going to call her a journalist, do you) Megyn Kelly had National Organization for Marriage head Maggie Gallagher on her show to whine about how evil this decision is for families.
Of course Gallagher’s definition of families never seems to include lgbt families, leaving a lot of people out.
Nevertheless, Kelly allowed Gallagher to push her usual silly talking points, including one about how gays are inaccurately being compared to black people in terms of civil rights.
I sincerely hope that in discussing the DOMA decision – and hopefully this piece – no one falls for the divide and conquer technique of this person – Gallagher – who cares as much about the black community as she does the lgbt community.
And that level of care is zero.
What Gallagher and Kelly did were evasive tactics, much like other tactics Gallagher seems to have mastered when talking about gay marriage. Give her five minutes and she will try to pivot the conversation from the same-sex households negatively affected by her activism to how she and others like her are supposedly unfairly called “bigots” for supposedly simply trying to “protect marriage.”
Okay, let go on that angle. Let’s break down the acts of Gallagher and NOM and pose the question – are these the acts of a bigoted, homophobic organization or people simply trying to “defend marriage:”
November 20, 2009 – Signer of Manhattan Declaration wanted to jail gays and lesbians – By signing an anti-gay document, The Manhattan Declaration, Gallagher and NOM affiliates themselves with folks who want to jail lgbts.
February 1, 2010 – Maggie Gallagher commits ’sin of omission’ to make case against marriage equality – Gallagher cites a study to bash gay marriage and gay parenting, even though the study had nothing to do with either concept.
March 8, 2010 – TinyU-R-Gay: @NOMupdates limits gay lives to less than 140 characters/years – A NOM tweet actually pushing the lie that gays have a short life span.
June 14, 2010 – National Organization for Marriage: Gays Were Never Hunted Down and Murdered Like ‘Jews, Christians, and Blacks’ – NOM is found to be affiliated with Louis J. Marinelli during its failed summer for marriage tour. Amongst other things, Marinelli claims that gays want to molest children. When Marinelli’s words became public, NOM claimed that the organization had no affiliation with Marinelli. However certain links posted as an update to the story demonstrated that NOM did have an affiliation with Marinelli.
June 28, 2010 – Message to Maggie Gallagher: associating with bigots does make you a bigot - NOM associates itself with another bigoted group, The Traditional Value Coalition. Amongst other things, TVC head Lou Sheldon has said that gays should be referred to as “sodomites.”
July 27, 2010 – National Organization for Marriage needs to disavow its ‘zany’ followers - NOM not only has a problem with the homophobia of those in its ranks, but also those who support the group, particularly the guy with the poster of the hangman’s nooses.
February 11, 2011 – PolitiFact catches anti-gay group NOM in a huge lie about gay marriage and children – Pultizer Prize-winning news site calls NOM out on a lie that gay marriage is being taught to kindergartners in Massachusetts.
February 17, 2011 – National Organization for Marriage called out AGAIN for distortive tactics – NOM commissions a misleading poll claiming that the majority of folks in Maryland oppose gay marriage. They are called out on it by a local columnist.
February 22, 2011 – National Organization for Marriage makes the case for being an anti-gay hate group – NOM pushes a piece written by syndicated columnist Mike McManus of the group Marriage Savers. The column has several distortions about gays, including the lie that gay men have a shorter life span than heterosexuals. NOM has not distanced itself from this piece.
Again, I ask does this sound like a Christian defender of “the family” or a homophobic bigot exploiting fear and ignorance for a paycheck?
On February 15, President Obama bestowed the Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest award, to a group of people which includes former president George H.W. Bush. Having spent five years researching the elder Bush and discovering a staggering array of secrets to the man’s life—none of them favorable, I was curious why Obama gave Bush the medal.
Officially, it goes to individuals “who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” In fact, it goes to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. In the case of Bush, it was an obligatory Washington ritual for a former President who is in the last chapter of his life.
Notwithstanding the inevitability of the process, President Obama needed to trot out some explanation or other as to why each recipient was deserving. In remarks at the ceremony, he said that H.W.’s “His life is a testament that public service is a noble calling….his humility and his decency reflects the very best of the American spirit.” And he referred to Mr. Bush’s “extraordinary life of service and of sacrifice.”
His life has certainly been extraordinary. Though whether “decency” is the right term, or whether his activities “reflect the very best of the American spirit,” or whether his has been a “life…of sacrifice” seem to be debatable.
There’s another side to the elder Bush. It goes to the heart of his purported “humility,” and whether it is truly humility—or his need to hide so many secrets. Especially as it relates, remarkably, to the assassination of another president, John F. Kennedy.
Here are some questions that must be asked of George H.W. Bush, while he is still around to be asked. These questions are based on revelations from my book, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, copies of which can be found in major American bookstores and libraries, including the Library of Congress. The underlying points are all documented and footnoted—and some of these questions have appeared before in an earlier post on this site and others.
-Former president Bush, we all know that you served for a single year as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. What about the fact trail suggesting that, just like the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, you actually spent your entire adult life prior to becoming vice president working in covert operations—but unlike Putin, have not admitted that? What about documentation showing that, as far back as the early 1950s, your small but hyperactive company, Zapata Offshore, was commercial cover for super-secret ops?
-Some years ago you claimed not to remember where you were on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963? Have you since been able to recall?
-Can you tell us about your decades-long friendship with George de Mohrenschildt, the man who was in and out of Lee Harvey Oswald’s house on almost a daily basis in the year before the Kennedy assassination?
-Did you, as characterized in an FBI memo, work as a CIA officer in tandem with Cuban exiles at the time of the Kennedy assassination?
-Why have you never spoken publicly about the documented call you made to the FBI on Nov 22, 1963, in which you identified yourself fully and claimed to have information on a possible suspect in Kennedy’s death? What was the purpose of that call, in which you mentioned your whereabouts at the time of the call, 1:45pm, as Tyler, Texas, i.e. about 99 miles away but just a short flight on the private plane on which you were traveling? Why did you tell the FBI that you were en route next to Dallas and would stay at the Sheraton there when you had already been at the Sheraton the night before — and right after that call flew to Dallas but only to switch planes and fly back immediately to Houston? Why were you giving the FBI the impression you would be staying in Dallas the night after the assassination instead of letting them know you had stayed there the night before the assassination?
-Why was your own assistant at the home of the man you would finger as a suspect in the shooting, and why did he end up providing the man with an alibi? Was the ultimate purpose of that call not to cause the alleged suspect any permanent harm, but merely to use the call as an excuse to state in government files that you were in a place other than Dallas?
-Since you claimed not to remember where you were when Kennedy was killed, how is it that after these FBI memos surfaced, your wife Barbara suddenly found and published an old letter placing you and her in Tyler, Texas shortly after the shooting?
-On the day of the assassination, were you in touch with your friend and Republican running mate Jack Crichton, a military intelligence figure who was connected to figures forcing their way into the pilot car of Kennedy’s motorcade? The same Crichton who controlled the man who served as the interpreter between Oswald’s wife and police and reframed her words so as to implicate Oswald in Kennedy’s shooting? The same Crichton who was working out of a secret underground communications bunker below the streets of Dallas? The same Crichton whose secret military intelligence unit counted dozens of men who simultaneously held jobs as Dallas police officers? The same Crichton who did secret oil industry intelligence work in the Middle East while you did intelligence related oil industry work via your company, Zapata Offshore?
-Finally, do you know people who consider the events of November 22, 1963 to, in their minds, “reflect the very best of the American spirit?” You say almost nothing, ever, about the Kennedy assassination, even skipping over it in your own memoir, which details much more trivial events of the same year. Why is that? And why then, in your eulogy for former President Ford, a member of the increasingly-discredited Warren Commission, did you go out of your way to oddly praise him for promoting the increasingly-discredited “single bullet theory?” You said:
“After a deluded gunman assassinated President Kennedy, our nation turned to Gerald Ford and a select handful of others to make sense of that madness. And the conspiracy theorists can say what they will, but the Warren Commission report will always have the final definitive say on this tragic matter. Why? Because Jerry Ford put his name on it and Jerry Ford’s word was always good.”
Why did you, so bizarrely, smile when you uttered those words?
Now, with your Medal of Freedom, given you by a Democratic president who ran as an agent of change, you truly seem to be enjoying the last laugh.
Pres. Obama gives Medal of Freedom to George H. W. Bush
This article originally appeared on RH Reality Check.
On Friday, February 18, the U.S. House of Representatives dealt a crushing blow to the health and well-being of millions of women across America: in a 240-185 vote, the the House approved H.R. 1 — also known the Pence Amendment — which would prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding for any purpose, including providing basic preventive health care to women and families.
Consider it a slap in the face to women in general, especially to low-income women who have nowhere else to turn for their primary health care.
At present, Planned Parenthood provides nearly four million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, 830,000 breast exams, more than a million Pap tests, and helps prevent more than 612,000 unintended pregnancies each year. Annually, three million women and men in the United States visit Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers for trusted health care services and information; for some of those clients, largely those that are low-income, the nurses and doctors at Planned Parenthood are the only health care providers they ever see.
Because we at the Ms. Foundation for Women believe, without question or qualification, that all women are due the fundamental human right to quality reproductive health, education and services, we have been a long-time partner and supporter of Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide. We currently count Planned Parenthood of Utah, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Michigan, Planned Parenthood Southeast (which covers Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi), and the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts among our cherished grantees. And today, in light of the shocking news out of the House of Representatives, we are ever more committed to the goals of Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights, health and justice organizations whose efforts protect and value the lives of women across America.
For those of us who have stood on the front lines of the reproductive justice movement for years, there’s no doubting that this attack on Planned Parenthood is a not-so-covert attack on abortion rights. Planned Parenthood has been targeted, in this case, because it does provide (among many other services) abortions to a small percentage of its clients. This is a fact that Conservatives like Rep. Mike Pence, who authored the bill, abhor — and will apparently go to deeply irrational lengths to prevent. Because whatever your stance on abortion may be, there’s no mistaking that providing preventative health care to millions of women, men and families is in fact a good thing. Preventative services save lives, and, in the long-run, save money — an outcome you’d imagine this “pro-life” and “fiscally conservative” cadre from the Right could get behind.
Instead, the Right has chosen to make millions of everyday Americans, many of them low-income, the collateral damage in their war on reproductive rights. The impact of the proposed funding cuts would likely be immediate and stunning. “Without Title X funding for Planned Parenthood in Atlanta, we can anticipate seeing more women who can only afford to purchase their birth control but cannot afford an exam,” says Leola Reis, spokesperson for our grantee group PP Southeast. “We anticipate increases in undiagnosed cancers and STDs, and over all increasingly poor health outcomes for Georgians.”
That is a reality we, as a nation, can little afford to promote. Subjecting women and other vulnerable communities to reductions in health care access in the name of budget cuts and moral wranglings over abortion is both dangerous and absurd. Those of us who value women’s lives and the health of our nation must do all we can to push back against the rising tide of anti-woman and anti-justice rhetoric emanating every day from the Right.
“Morality,” Rebecca Traister noted recently in Salon, “is not the exclusive domain of the unborn, whatever we have been told for decades. Morality is on the side of women, on the side of children, on the side of a society that offers aid to its impoverished and to its young and does not discriminate against half its population.” From our perspective, there’s no question that Planned Parenthood stands on the just side of our moral arc – one that focuses health and lives of women. We are as proud as we ever have been to stand alongside Planned Parenthood.
Anika Rahman
President & CEO
Ms. Foundation for Women
Written by Jodi Jacobson for RHRealityCheck.org - News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
In a conference call today, the Governors of Connecticut and Vermont and the Mayor of New York City described the devastating effects the GOP’s cuts to Title X and Planned Parenthood would have on women in their states as well as on the fiscal health of their region.
Juxtaposing the needs of women in one of the nation’s largest cities (New York City) and in Vermont, one of the nation’s most rural states, the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg and the Governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin spoke today about how cuts to both Title X and to Planned Parenthood would undermine the health of the populations they represent. Each of their concerns were echoed by Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy.
Last week, the GOP/Tea-Party-dominated House of Representatives passed both a Continuing Resolution (CR) that effectively eliminates funding for Title X programs, and the Pence Amendment to the CR that specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), prohibiting federal funding of preventive health care services provided by the organization.
Over 90 percent of services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics are made up of preventive care, including breast and cervical exams, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and contraceptive supplies. PPFA clinics serve more than 5 million clients across the country each year. If the House budget and the Pence Amendment are passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Obama, literally millions of women and men will lose their only source of health care.
The Family Research Council has yet to give a “detailed response” to charges lodged by the Southern Poverty Law Center that it spreads untrue propaganda about the lgbt community by means of either junk science or distorted science.
However, the group did take time out of its day to send out the following email requesting money. I took the liberty of zeroing in on the most pertinent part:
As you may have heard, the ultra-liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) recently declared Family Research Council and a few of our allies as “hate groups.”
How do you feel about you and FRC being lumped in with neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, racist skinheads, and other radical organizations?
I am outraged. But more than that, I am concerned. Never before has FRC been slapped with such a false and malicious accusation by an organization claiming to be mainstream.
Thankfully, we have hundreds of good friends who have stepped forward to denounce the SPLC in the strongest possible terms and to declare their support of FRC. The list includes national leaders who signed a Statement of Support.
Now I urge you to show you won’t be intimidated into silence. Please follow this link to take your place alongside these leaders and others in defense of FRC by making a tax-deductible donation to support our work.
The SPLC is pressuring major news networks, magazines, newspapers, and online news and opinion outlets to not invite us on their programs, run our opinion pieces, or quote our views. It even hosted an event aimed solely at smearing FRC.
Astonishing, isn’t it?
The SPLC is now attacking FRC and other groups that uphold Judeo-Christian moral views, including marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
By labeling its opponents “hate groups,” the SPLC is saying: No discussion. No consideration of the issues. No engagement. No debate!
As usual FRC is playing the victim while evading the true story. SPLC said the following about FRC and several other so-called pro-family groups:
. . . a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities. These groups’ influence reaches far beyond what their size would suggest, because the “facts” they disseminate about homosexuality are often amplified by certain politicians, other groups and even news organizations. . . Generally, the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.
The falsehoods in question include the beliefs that:
- Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals,
- Same-sex parents harm children, and
- Homosexuals don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals.
For its part, SPLC has listed detailed reasons as to the inaccuracies of these claims.
FRC, on the hand, has yet to fully answer SPLC’s charges even though it said two months ago that it would give a “detailed response.”
FRC’s entire campaign of “they are trying to silence us” has been a clever dodge, or a non-sequitir which only serves to cover up that SPLC is in fact pushing for the debate while FRC is avoiding it.
Conveniently absent from FRC’s email – and its other statements – is suitable refutation to SPLC’s charges or any type of refutation at all.
At the times in which FRC did try to address the charges head on, such as when FRC head Tony Perkins went on the news program Hardball or when an FRC employee recommended a piece written by Perkins, the organization was called out for engaging in exactly the same tactics SPLC accused them of – distorting science to denigrate the lgbt community.
No one wants to silence FRC.
Not SPLC, nor do I, nor does any other person who sent emails to the organization asking for the “detailed response” to SPLC’s charges, which FRC promised to give.
All we want are answers. And we have yet to receive those answers.
In the long run, FRC’s plea for donations may be successful in terms of monetary benefits.
But what about personal integrity?
If the FRC considers itself a Christian organization, then it needs to act like one.
And somehow I don’t think that spreading untrue stories about the lgbt community and then playing the evasion game when called out on this behavior is a Christian virtue.
Stating that you are a moral, Christian group doesn’t necessarily make you one. Especially when your actions have been most un-Christian.
[The interview on The Jason Mattera Show begins here at minute 57]
Sunday was the climax of the Herman Cain Race Minstrel Affair. After declining to appear on Fox News, I decided that if given an opportunity to go on a popular Right-wing radio show to discuss my views on black conservatives, I would accept such an invitation. Fate is indeed a trickster, as the next day I was invited to appear on the Jason Mattera Show on WABC 770 AM in New York City.
For those not in the know, this Right-wing personality has made a career as an “ambush” journalist whose claim to fame is a series of sophomoric “interviews” with Al Franken, John Murtha, and Charlie Rangel among other notable figures. Mattera, an unapologetic homophobe and bigot, is so unprofessional that even Bill O’Reilly schooled him on the importance of civility in journalism.
Thus, all subtlety would be thrown out of the window when/if I appeared on his show. I made a simple calculus: 770 AM is a huge station with great reach which I could play to my advantage; two, an appearance on a cookie cutter Right-wing radio show would be a chance to conduct a long-planned experiment.
The Right-wing echo chamber is not based on reasoned discourse because its premise is anti-intellectualism. Consequently, those not of the Right-wing tribe often lose in “debates” when on their turf because the tendency of progressives/Leftists/centrists/reasonable Conservatives is to want to talk and exchange ideas. Popular Conservatism is based on the opposite–scream and recite the talking points. The only way to win is to either play for a stalemate, or alternatively to deploy the rhetorical strategies of mouth-breathing Populist Conservatism against them.
In my appearance on The Jason Mattera Show I decided for a combination of both approaches. Mattera is a bully. Mattera is also someone who must control the situation in order to make his points because he is so utterly and totally bereft of substantive ideas. How do you beat a bully? You bully them back. How do you defeat an ambush? You ambush your attackers.
The Mattera Show did a good deal of subtle post-editing in their podcast of my appearance on Sunday (personal note: always record your own interviews for posterity sake). In my live exchange, Mattera was noticeably flustered and could not answer basic questions: are black people who vote for the Democratic Party children or stupid? Are poor whites who vote for the Republican Party on a “plantation” of sorts?
He conveniently edited these out with repeated inserts of “lower his mic.” During the live broadcast Mattera had no answer and fell all over himself evading the question.
I had some contacts listening to the show live. That group included neutral folks so that I could get some unbiased feedback. The consensus on their end was that I owned Mr. Mattera from step one. In the version which Jason Mattera did not throw down the memory well, I think I fought him to a standstill and won on points (especially given the fact that kicked me off the show in consternation and resorted to profanity and calling me a “kook” when he could not make his “logic” stick). There is also a caller–now edited out–who further angered Mattera when she seconded everything that I said.
The Right-wing shock jock class is not one that I want to be associated with on a repeated basis. As I told a friend, I felt as though I lost a few I.Q. points from merely being a “guest” in such a venue. I can only imagine the damage which Right-wing media does to its listeners. Your thoughts?
The segment starts at about minute 57.
A gun-toting anti-immigrant activist convicted of murdering a 9-year-old girl received the death penalty in Arizona this afternoon. Not that anyone around the state capitol had time to take notice.
While huge protests against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union budget continue to galvanize progressive ranks across the country, including a clarion call by Van Jones for an “American Dream movement,” Arizona’s radical Tea Party-controlled legislature has taken the battle over immigrant rights to a new extreme.
Forget about state unions and teachers: Arizona’s radical anti-union/faux right-to-work state leaders are now going after children. And cars.
It may be 1,700 miles away from Madison–and the national news media–but the final showdown over the American Dream is taking place in Phoenix, Arizona. As the bellwether state of rebellion, Arizona is far from only being a punch line on comedy TV shows as the “meth lab of democracy.” Conservative states across the country, including Wisconsin, are watching Arizona; the borderlands state’s once ridiculed actions are suddenly turning into the blueprint for legislatures from Alaska to Alabama.
With arguably the nation’s worst structural deficit, and despite the indisputable fact of plunging crime rates and border arrests and ramped up federal border patrols, Arizona’s radical right has introduced a blockbuster “omnibus immigration” bill that would blatantly challenge a US Supreme Court ruling and deny K-12 education access to undocumented children.
In a reference to Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrant legislation introduced last year, Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini calls its “SB 1070 on steroids.”
That’s just for starters. Perhaps in a gesture to Arizona’s impeached right-wing governor and car salesman Evan Mecham, the bill would also seize cars from any undocumented immigrants.
Another bill, SB 1405, would require medical facilities to determine citizenship before providing care.
The “Super Tuesday” bills are being taken up less than two weeks since the state of Arizona brought a suit against the Obama administration for failing to halt an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants.
Despite backpedaling on her outrageous claims of beheadings in the Arizona deserts, Brewer’s unyielding anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to resonate across the state today.
Convicted of murdering 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in a small ranching town south of Tucson, Washington-state transplant and anti-immigrant activist Shawna Forde was sentenced to the death penalty today.
The Arizona legislature, meanwhile, considered a bill that would prevent undocumented immigrants from obtaining any legal damages in court from attacks.
The protests in Wisconsin could easily spread. While not every governor will recklessly attack collective bargaining, all states are facing major budget constraints.
This is the strategic moment to dramatically juxtapose the pain of local budget cuts with the scandal of corporate tax dodging. This April 15th Tax Day, let’s make our national focus be on stopping tax haven abuse and closing corporate tax loopholes.
States must close combined budget gaps of over $102 billion –and most are choosing deep budget cuts. Meanwhile, thanks to ways that U.S. corporations game the system to reduce their taxes, overseas tax havens cost the U.S. treasury over $100 billion a year.
In England, the movement UK UNCUT, has galvanized street protests, media investigations and legislative action. They have dramatized the scandal of billions lost thanks to overseas tax havens and corporate loopholes with the human face of federal and state budget cuts.
In every U.S. state, we should be doing the same. Every time a politician complains that “there is no money” or “we must make these cuts,” we should be pointing to the corporate tax dodging that could immediately close our budget gaps.
We should name names and show up at their branches. First there are the banks that wrecked our economy and accepted billions in taxpayer funded TARP funds. These include Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Our message: Pay up!
Pay up! General Electric, Carnival Cruise lines, Boeing, FedEx, News Corp, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble. They pretend their profits are earned in tax havens like the Grand Cayman Islands and their losses are earned in the U.S., lowering their tax bills.
These US companies use our shared infrastructure, but don’t pay their fair share. They enjoy our roads, national defense, emergency services, and federally-funded research. They are profitable but don’t pay their full freight. They undercut local businesses that pay their taxes while struggling to compete on an unlevel playing field.
“There’s a direct connection between corporate tax dodging and what’s happening in people’s lives,” said Carl Gibson one of the founders of US UNCUT Mississippi. “If we close those loopholes, we wouldn’t have to be cutting back on firefighters, library hours and student loans.”
Gibson started a web site after being inspired by the movements in England. “I work three jobs and can barely cover my $450 per-month rent,” said the 23-year old Gibson. “But I still pay my taxes. All I’m asking is that the wealthiest corporations pay what they owe, too.”
US UNCUT is launching the first wave of protests this Saturday, February 26th with a focus on Bank of America. There are actions planned in over 20 states. Bank of America has launched a glitzy PR campaign about how charitable and community-minded they are. But we should remind them the only way back into our good graces is to “Pay up!”
The Tax Justice Network and Business and Investors Against Tax Havens have been pressing over the last year to keep these issues in the public spotlight. With US UNCUT teaming up with the Other 98 and other coalitions focused on corporate tax dodging, we can anticipate a lively April 15th Tax Day.
Originally Published at Common Dreams www.commondreams.org
