I’m really thrilled with the responses to my recent article, Is the Near-Trillion Dollar Student Loan Bubble About to Pop?
A couple of people have written really nice long responses to it that add some significant value. There are a million articles that could be written about the student loan crisis, and I’m gratified to have helped move the conversation forward for other people to spin off of.
I thought I’d link a few of them here for you.
Kay Steiger dug in deeper to the causes for the rising tuition that’s created what I and others refer to as the student loan bubble. She wrote:
Shrinking state investments in higher education. Part of this is that, public universities, which educate a large percentage of students, have seen the amount of public financing shrink. Though states were once dedicated to ensuring a free or low-cost education for its residents, that commitment has largely fallen by the wayside was state budgets tighten. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that since the beginning of the recession, 43 states have cut funding assistance to public universities.
Among other reasons she highlights, one stands out:
Some schools are actually ripping people off. While the vast majority of colleges really are there with the mission of educating their students and helping them reach a better financial future, there are some schools out there that seem to actively be ripping people off. Some of these schools, according to government investigations, seemed to be calculating tuition prices to maximize the amount of federal subsidies, recruiting students by way of questionable tactics, and providing poor-quality training for jobs they purport to prepare students for. (Let me be clear on this—not all for-profit schools are setting out to rip people off. I’m talking about some of the particularly bad actors.) This gets into much of the debate over for-profit colleges, the Department of Education’s attempt to regulate them. Lately the for-profit colleges themselves have released a code of conduct to demonstrate that they can be a self-regulating body. Whether this combination of administration regulation and self-policing works remains to be seen.
Where I differ with her is over solutions. She suggests that we want to encourage students not to take student debt lightly, just as we don’t want to encourage mortgage holders to walk away from their homes. The problem right now is that students are saddled with debt that they’re stuck with for life. They can’t walk away from the asset they purchased when its value drops like a person who bought a house can–they can’t even declare bankruptcy if the current economy has led their purchase to be worth less than they thought–in this case, if they’re unable to find work that allows them to pay down their debt.
Mike Konczal also responded to my piece, and compared the never-ending nature of student debt to colonial indentured servitude:
How well does colonial indenture match up with student loans? Pretty well I’d argue. That’s the provocative thesis of this great Jeffrey Williams piece in Dissent, Student Debt and the Spirit of Indenture. I brought this thesis up to a conservatively-minded economic historian I know and he delighted in it – as he pointed out, in colonial times people died so quickly and they could disappear easily. As such indenture needed to function in a “total institution”-like space with coercive punishment very present to get maximum returns to creditors. With today’s longevity, as well as our surveillance and monitoring technologies, indenture can function in the background as a cut deducted from your checking account every month for a few decades.
Steiger suggests that maybe the key to the question about student loans lies in the situation of the person I called Max Parker in the article, who told his story of having to leave school midway through and being unable to return because of the size of his debt.
While I agree that Parker’s case is heartbreaking, I don’t think that’s the most important problem. I’ve often quoted the wonderful BBC journalist and author Paul Mason on the “graduates with no future,” the students around the world who finished school at a time of economic crisis, who did everything they were supposed to do and still have no opportunity. In the UK, where Mason is based, the current graduates don’t have US-style student loans, yet they still have no future. And here, the rate of default is rising for grads–and even those who, like Colleen Williams, mentioned in my piece, manage to make their monthly payments, are stuck pumping lots of money into servicing their debt rather than into the economy, creating yet another drag on the whole.
Konczal takes yet another tack in pointing out that the current system of student loans is unsustainable, looking at those who do go on to economic success (whether they are happy, fulfilled, or productive is another argument entirely, one should note) after graduation. He quotes a paper by Jesse Rothstein, Constrained After College: Student Loans and Early Career Occupational Choices, which says that “an extra $10,000 in student debt reduces the likelihood that an individual will take a job in nonprofits, government, or education by about 5 to 6 percentage points.”
He continues:
For our purposes, even those for whom this arrangement works find themselves pushed out of government, education or non-profit work by their debt loads. Debt puts contraints on what people are capable of doing, and one way out of that constraint is to work in the fields that pay the most. For those who want to see our best working in schools, government, nonprofits, taking chances starting entrepreneurial work or simply not working to replicate already existing power structures, this is a terrible arrangement.
We can see this in action as the financial sector has grown all out of proportion with the rest of the country (and broken the economy, leaving so many of these grads stranded, along the way). A recent study points out that the financial industry has “cannibalized” (no, really, that’s a quote) the best and the brightest not just from business schools. No, it’s taking “new master’s- and doctoral-level graduates of science, engineering, math and physics, and pays them starting wages that are five times or more what they would have earned had they remained in their own fields.”
(The same can be seen in the medical field, as fewer doctors are going into primary care because it pays less than specialty fields do.)
Were Max Parker to graduate with his double degree in econ and physics, the likelihood that he’d end up just the kind of person being headhunted by financial firms–and feeling obligated to go there, just as he’s now feeling obligated to go into the military, because of the size of his debt.
In other words, Konczal notes, even when the system works, it’s actually working to create more inequality by sucking up those who are considered worthy into high-paying jobs and leaving the rest with their incomes cannibalized for decades. It’s creating a brain drain on just the kinds of things we want our well-educated young people doing, working for social good, innovating, going into public service–as Tarah Toney pointed out in my piece, she wanted to go into teaching after working her way through school, but there were no jobs and her debt pushed her instead to take a job at a real estate office.
Konczal and Steiger both note that keeping tuition low, especially at public universities, is a necessary solution to the problem. But that would only solve the problem for some of the grads of the future. Right now, the economy desperately needs spending and, as Rep. Hansen Clarke noted (and I quoted in my piece) households are burdened with debt that in most cases they took on in good faith, and the majority of the new jobs that have been created since the beginning of the recession have been low-wage, hardly enough to keep someone going, let alone allow them to pay hundreds of dollars a month on a student loan that seems, more than ever, like a waste of money.
So I saw it again last night, because I’m an addict, and because I haven’t seen a movie since Inglourious Basterds that I wanted to pull apart so much. I swear it’s just coincidence that they both star Michael Fassbender.
I’ve already written about the queer subtext (basically text) of the film, and Ta-Nehisi Coates has written beautifully about the near-complete absence of any acknowledgment of the Civil Rights movement (I saw a tweet yesterday: “Where are the black people?” “The white people are metaphors for the black people!” that sort of summed that up) and the generally crap race politics of the film.
But what struck me last night, which relates to what I wrote before, was the gender politics. And while I’ve seen a few posts generally “calling out” the film on its regressive gender treatment, I want to complicate that a little more.
I confess to being a Magneto fangirl—I’ve always been the girl who likes the bad boys, and also the Xavier/Magneto tension has always been fascinating before being subtly queered by casting out gay actor Ian McKellen to play opposite sexy Patrick Stewart in the first few films. And anyone who follows my Tumblr knows what I think of Fassbender. So of course I come to this film with a pro-Erik Lehnsherr slant.
But even so, I think that his treatment of women adds a layer that’s been missed in most of the posts I’ve read on the subject.
Erik is defined by the loss of his mother and his singleminded focus on revenge. Until he meets Xavier, we have no other insight into his character. Until Xavier says “There’s so much more to you than you know,” no hint that he might have a personality, a life outside of the hunt.
He doesn’t seem innocent, but rather bored by the whole thing. “Kinky,” he says, laconically, coming upon Raven flirting with Hank McCoy as Hank tries to take her blood for research. In the strip club with Angel, he makes a dirty joke but both he and Charles appear more interested in one another than in her body (and Angel later goes off with Sebastian Shaw after making the telling remark that she’d rather be stared at with her clothes off—Shaw will certainly oblige that).
While Charles exhibits casual sexism, ignores Raven in favor of more “normal” girls and uses the same pick-up line on several of them, lines up female mannequins for Havok to practice on, and generally treats women quite differently from men, Erik treats everyone with the same disinterest or scorn. His interest in Raven is never sexual (even their kiss is nearly chaste, and then cuts straight to her confronting Charles, implying that she did indeed leave as he told her to), but in making her see and embrace her mutant self. “Perfect,” he says to her when she lets her natural shape take over, but he also tells Hank “Never looked better,” when he’s in full-on Beast mode.
Sebastian Shaw, of course, is the near-pure embodiment of masculinity (I’d argue the only better example in the X-Men mythos is the Juggernaut), and he entertains powerful men by bringing in gaggles of scantily-clad girls, and treats Emma like a servant—and what a great subplot that would have made, were this movie at all interested in Emma Frost, for her to subtly undermine Shaw or flat-out turn against him and decide to help Erik, rather than to be passively stuck waiting in jail for whomever will free her.
While I’m on the subject of Emma, I acknowledged in my first piece that she was completely wasted here, but I need to linger on it because I love the character so, normally. The script (which has at least one woman’s name credited) does her no favors, but January Jones does herself no favors, either. I’m not a Mad Men watcher, so I don’t know if Jones is capable of much better. Interestingly, Kay Steiger wonders if Mad Men is the inspiration for the sexism (and perhaps the 60s setting?). If the part had been better written and acted, even though it’s a small role, it could have done more to undermine the feeling that Kay notes here, that the sexism is sprinkled into the film without commentary.
(One of the reasons I couldn’t get into Mad Men after a couple of episodes, actually, was that I had trouble understanding where that commentary was on the show’s sexism. But I haven’t watched much, so.)
I want to disagree with Kay, though, on the lack of commentary on the sexism in X-Men: First Class, though, because I think that the contrast between Charles’s treatment of women and Erik’s, or Shaw’s and Erik’s, is telling.
Professor X is too often painted as near-saintly, the Perfect Mentor (and the most interesting part of X3 was his admission that he’d screwed up with Jean), the Perfect Friend always ready to forgive Erik and welcome him back. The fact that he does as much to drive Erik away as Erik does to leave is too rarely remarked upon, as is his arrogance, his willingness to decide that he knows best for everyone around him.
By showing us his mistakes, his foibles, his generally jerky moments, this film humanizes him and makes him a real character—but it also makes plausible that Raven/Mystique and Erik don’t just up and turn evil because it’s fun. That they were driven off by a guy who talks a good game about mutant rights and equality but wants to shove them in the closet, by a guy who finds mutants attractive as long as they don’t step too far outside the bounds of “normal,” by a guy who treats women like dirt.
Come on, progressive women, don’t we all know men like that? And don’t they just make you want to bail on the whole project, sometimes?
Erik, meanwhile, treats Emma and Raven as equals. He treats Emma with the same violence that he treats male enemies (less so, actually, because he doesn’t kill her, but he shows the same willingness to use pain to get what he wants), and he treats Raven not as a child to be coddled or a trophy to be bedded by as a person in need of mentoring. While Charles has ignored her to mentor the boys (remember, the only other woman in the “First Class” of the title has gone off with Shaw to be his new arm candy), Erik takes the time to push her, to support her.
Yes, the scene with Emma against the bed, the pole wrapped around her throat and cracking is unnerving. It’s meant to be. So is the scene where Erik stabs through a man’s hand twice, or where he slowly yanks out a man’s tooth by its metal filling. He’s a victim of abuse and torture who now uses it on others. But he doesn’t go out of his way to do it to women, or to abuse them in ways specific to their femininity. Further, Emma Frost has already, in a previous scene, dropped him to his knees with her telepathy and then knocked him off a boat with one punch. She’s hardly helpless.
(In a way, it reminds me of the “Ellen Willis test”, where Willis wrote that to test the sexism of a song, reverse the genders. Thus the Stones’ “Under My Thumb” is less sexist than Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” because “Under My Thumb” works fine when you picture it sung by a woman, but the condescension in “Wild World” is of a sort nearly always directed at women by men. In my version, if you flip the genders in a particular scene, would it work? You could easily picture Erik wrapping a bedpost around the throat of a male villain, but could you see Charles treating a male CIA agent the way he treats Moira, or treating his male trainees the way he does Raven?)
Erik’s violence is part of his character, part of what repeated abuse as a child did to him. Part of his trauma and part of his appeal. I over-quote this Jean Genet line, but I can’t resist applying it to this character, this actor, this portrayal:
“I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamoured of danger. It can be seen in a look, a walk, a smile, and it is in you that it creates an eddying. It unnerves you. This violence is a calm that disturbs you.”
Near-great movies sometimes interest me more than great ones. I often want to rewrite small parts of them to make them better. This one does that to me again and again. Its ending, for instance, would be once again a much more powerful commentary on the sexism of its time if the crash heard right after the CIA agents mock Moira for her femininity was Emma Frost breaking her own badass self out of jail. They’ve already shown her breaking through the glass to talk to her jailers on the other side—couldn’t she then force them to let her go? She’s certainly capable of it, with the one-two punch of telepathy and near-unbreakable diamond form.
But no, Emma waits.
Waits for Erik, who then once again acknowledges her as equal—this time to Charles, asking Emma to fill the gap in his life.
And leaving me hoping for a sequel that actually spends some time and effort on her character. That draws out all of Charles’s unacknowledged privilege and Raven’s growing into the fierce Mystique we know and love, and that maybe spends some time grounding itself not in near-nuclear war, but instead in the social movements and upheaval of the 60s.
What better place for the X-Men to continue hashing out all their identity issues?
Ten Democrats cosponsored H.R.3, even with language redefining rape; four of those ten also apparently don’t care if pregnant women die. Sarah Jaffe takes a closer look at all ten, find all posted to date here. Originally posted at RH Reality Check.
Meet Mark Critz. He got a huge chunk of cash from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee last election to hold the seat he’d won in a special election after the death of his old boss, John Murtha. How huge? $2,107,202.86
Murtha was best known for coming out loudly and angrily against the Iraq war–as the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and a veteran, he was “taken seriously” the way us antiwar ladies usually aren’t. But Murtha wasn’t a dove by nature: he’d voted for the war in ‘02, making his claims of being “pro-life” once again a little iffy.
Critz follows in his boss’s footsteps and opposes our right to our own bodies–he’s a cosponsor of HR3 and HR358–the one that would let us die if a doctor thought that saving us might injure a fetus.
Real Clear Politics has some dirt on Critz from his first campaign:
“I’m pro life and pro gun. That’s not a liberal,” Critz says in his own spot.
Critz’s camp also says he opposes a proposed cap-and-trade law, something Murtha voted for when the House first acted on it last year.
These positions reflect the unique character of the district. Democrats have a heavy registration advantage on paper, and Murtha won his seat consistently with little trouble. But it was the only seat in the country carried by John Kerry in 2004 but not by Barack Obama four years later. In the heart of steel and coal country, the Democrats here are far more conservative than the national party, as Murtha was on many issues.
While Critz walks this fine line, his opponent is calling him out. To coincide with Tuesday night’s fundraiser, Republican Tim Burns’ campaign issued a release accusing him of “political double talk,” asking: “If we can’t trust candidate Mark Critz to be honest about his real support for Nancy Pelosi’s agenda, why would we ever send him to Congress?”
“Unique,” eh? Let’s just take five seconds to be honest about why Barack Obama didn’t carry that district. It’s the same reason that I and other people canvassing for Obama got chased off of Democratic-registered doorsteps in Pennsylvania during the Democratic primaries. Race.
The district is white and working-class: these were the voters that Richard Trumka was speaking to in his famous call-out to union members to support Barack Obama. “There’s not a single good reason for any worker, especially any union member, to vote against Barack Obama. And there’s only one really, really bad reason to vote against Barack Obama. And that’s because he’s not white. And I want to talk about that reason, because I saw it in Pennsylvania in the primaries.”
Kristen McHugh notes “SW PA (Pittsburgh area, Allegheny County) would probably support far more progressive candidates than we get, but the machine rejects them, even at the mayoral level.” She sent me this post, which has more information about the 12th District, gerrymandering, and interestingly enough calls out from the Right the same things I call out from the left:
Puzzling, isn’t it, why a pro-life, pro-gun politician belongs to the political party that is neither pro-life nor pro-gun. But I suppose the 2 to 1 Democratic predominance in the district might have something to do with that. And Critz had better have very good balance: the longer he tries to straddle that fence over Obamacare, the more likely he is to slip up and hurt himself in a very painful fall.
As in, Republicans aren’t buying it, either. But John Kerry was a clearly pro-choice politician–anyone else remember the controversy over denying him communion when he was running for president? And he carried that district in the year that Bush still won the national election. You don’t HAVE to be antichoice to win these areas. (You may still have to be white.)
I’m getting off topic, though. So let’s return to Critz!
Critz’s top donor is a company called Progeny Systems, a defense department contractor, but not by much. Unsurprisingly, given his blue-collar district, he got a lot of union money too.
He’s a Catholic, like most antichoice Democrats (but certainly not all of them–and certainly there are plenty of prochoice Catholics as well).
He voted against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, and just this week voted to extend the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act–even 26 Republicans broke with their party on that one. Like Shuler, he voted against the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and he gets a 0% rating from Project Vote Smart as he’s refused to give them his positions. He does get an A from the NRA, though.
None of the bills he’s sponsored thus far have been enacted by Congress.
Critz is on the Committee on Armed Services, the Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces and the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, as well as the Committee on Small Business.
All of this could become irrelevant, though, if Critz’s heavily gerrymandered district is redistricted out of existence, as Republicans took control of Pennsylvania again this year.
The party invested heavily in Critz despite his “woulda, shoulda, coulda” comments that he’d have voted against health care reform and climate legislation and his demonstrated opposition to LGBT equality. And was that necessary?
After all, as the Christian Science Monitor notes, “Murtha had voted for health-care reform and cap-and-trade, for example, while Critz says he opposed both.” Sure, Murtha had been there forever, but was it really necessary for his successor, wrapped in his mantle, to come out to his right?
You can ask Critz yourself, of course. Email him through his website, or:
1022 Longworth HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2065
Fax: (202) 225-5709
And you can once again get in touch with the DCCC and ask them why they spent $2,107,202.86 on Mark Critz.
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003
Main Phone Number: (202) 863-1500
Meet Heath Shuler Here. Meet Joe Donnelly next!
So! H.R.3 supposedly won’t redefine rape anymore, but the fight’s just getting started. We learned last week that the new Congress followed H.R. 3 with H.R. 358, the Protect Life Act, which would redefine “conscience” clauses to allow pregnant women to die if saving them would require harming the fetus.
And the thing is, the DCCC and other organizations are blaming this on Republicans. But just like the Stupak-Pitts amendment to healthcare reform, this bill comes to us as a special gift from some Democrats, too. Ten of them cosponsor H.R. 3 and did so even with rape-redefining language; four of those ten also apparently don’t care if pregnant women die.
So let’s get to know them, shall we?
Heath Shuler gets my especial ire because he challenged Nancy Pelosi for Minority Leader status in the new Congress. Though she easily won, the fact that an antichoice Blue Dog got 43 votes to lead the ostensible Democratic caucus is telling. 24 of the 58 Blue Dogs were defeated in this round of elections, which should’ve taught them the lesson that some of us have been screaming for years–in a choice between Republican-lite and Republican, voters usually go with the real Republican. We can apparently blame Bill Clinton and Rahm Emanuel for Shuler’s running for office in the first place, and Clinton continued to campaign for him even after he voted against two of his party’s major priorities.
In a week when we’ve been talking a lot about rape and NFL quarterbacks, I think we should note that Shuler is also a former NFL quarterback. Take that how you will. He’s also a member of the Family, the secretive religious group described so well by Jeff Sharlet, and called by the New Yorker a “Frat House for Jesus”. You know, along with such pro-woman great dudes as Jim DeMint.
The DCCC spent $231,112.63 on Shuler’s reelection this year in North Carolina’s 11th district. The Blue Dog PAC also kicked in $30,000, and Shuler’s largest individual donor was a company called Phillips & Jordan, to the tune of $56,150. (They contribute mostly to Republicans, but Shuler was by far the biggest recipient of their largesse–hmmm. They appear to get quite a few federal contracts, mostly for demolishing things in New Orleans post-Katrina. I’m not even going to get STARTED on that.)
Speaking of North Carolina, it’s hardly a true-blue state, but it did go Democratic for Obama, and Asheville, the largest city in Shuler’s district, is a pretty lefty spot, a draw for artists and creative types. Ari Berman quotes a few of Shuler’s disaffected constituents:
“We’re so disappointed in Shuler,” said former Polk County Democratic Party chair Margaret Johnson. “We laugh when we think about all that we did for him.” Kathy Sinclair, the former Democratic chair in Buncombe County—the largest in Shuler’s district—was even more blunt. “I’m not sure he is really representing his constituents of Western North Carolina,” she told me last spring. “I didn’t vote for him last time, and I won’t vote for him next time.”
In 2010, Shuler faced a primary challenge from a political unknown, Aixa Wilson, who took 39% of the vote–and won Asheville outright–despite not taking any donations. That’s right, none. That takes skill. Karen Oelschlaeger, an Asheville resident, told me that Shuler refused to debate his primary opponent, skipping a League of Women Voters forum rather than face the opposition. In 2008, Shuler refused to debate his Republican opponent outside of one AM radio appearance right before election day–Oelschlaeger notes that the Republican took to carrying a cardboard “Shulerman” cutout to debates.
Oelschlaeger says “It is my personal opinion and hope that a well-funded moderate Democrat should/could have a decent chance at winning the district if they ran a solid, serious campaign…”
Shuler’s top earmarks are relatively inoffensive–parks, textile industry, Reading is Fundamental–but there are a few military earmarks in there. Not that that’s not par for the course.
Let’s talk about his votes, then, shall we? Shuler voted against the healthcare bill and against the stimulus package. He (obviously) voted for Stupak-Pitts before voting against the bill. A blogger has posted a form letter from Shuler’s office explaining his “pro-life” standards, but I’d be pretty willing to argue that if he was “pro-life,” he ought to vote for a stimulus bill that was going to support “life” by putting (not enough) people to work. Also, “life” might have included a public health care option that would have covered more people than the current health care bill, but that wasn’t deficit neutral enough for Shuler, who has a “National Debt Clock” on his website.
His complaint about the stimulus was, of course, “too much spending,” though I can’t argue with him that it needed more infrastructure investment. He also voted against the original $700 billion bailout, so at least he’s consistent. He also apparently thinks the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a waste of money.
He was one of the original 19 Dems who signed on to Stupak’s original threat to torpedo their party’s biggest priority over abortion.
He voted with Republicans to end public funding of elections, presumably because he has no trouble raising money. He also voted for FISA extension, giving “U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.”
He also tends to vote with Republicans on war. That’s a very pro-life position, you know. So is wanting Amtrak passengers to be able to transport guns safely.
He also wants a border fence, to crack down on immigration, and is very concerned with collecting “abortion surveillance data.” Because if you want to get an abortion, and he can’t stop you while Roe still exists, he’s not only going to prevent it from being funded any way he can, but then he wants to know who you are. Slut.
I don’t need to tell you what all this spells out, do I? The same representatives who have little regard for the life of pregnant people, are often the ones who hate immigrants, who don’t care about health care, who don’t care about jobs. They do care about corporations’ right to spy on you, and presumably for corporations’ right to buy elections.
And Democrats keep supporting them. They keep campaigning for them and funding them. $231,112.63 of the DCCC’s money just for this one candidate. In addition to Bill Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz went to North Carolina to stump for Shuler–the same Debbie Wasserman Schultz who calls H.R.3 “a violent act against women.”
What does someone have to do to get thrown out of the party? The answer you get from Democrats is usually “Well, it’s better to have an antichoice Democrat than an antichoice Republican.” Better for whom?
So what do we do about it?
I’ve got a couple of answers. They both involve calling, emailing, and visiting your Congresscritter.
You can contact Shuler through his website, or here:
229 Cannon House Office Bldg.
Washington, DC, 20515
Phone: (202) 225-6401
Fax: (202) 226-6422
You can also contact the DCCC here, and tell them what you think of their spending on Democrats like Heath Shuler.
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003
Main Phone Number: (202) 863-1500
Next up: Mark Critz.
SO.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee thinks that we should, and I quote from their Twitter:
“Tell the GOP to abandon their bill to deny health coverage to rape victims”
See, there’s just one problem with that.
It’s not just the GOP’s bill.
10 Democratic representatives are co-sponsors of the bill and were co-sponsors BEFORE Chris Smith dropped the “forcible rape” provision from it.
10 male Democratic representatives.
So they want me to sign a petition so they can then harass me for money that they will then give to more Democrats who in turn think it’s just fine if I am forced to carry a rapist’s baby, as long as I was only raped while I was unconscious.
One of those Democratic cosponsors is Heath Shuler, who challenged Nancy Pelosi to be Minority Leader in the new Congress. 43 Democrats voted for him to have that position.
How much money do you think the DCCC gave to those 10 Democratic reps?
$3,379,322.85
You’ll pardon me if I’m not signing the DCCC’s petition, right?
Events were held across the country Monday to mark the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. At a ceremony at the White House, disability rights activists made the point that passing the law was only the start. “Civil rights laws do not self-enforce, ” said Marca Bristo, “They only come to life when enlightened citizens…push the envelope.”
As with racial apartheid, so with the passage of the ADA — First comes change on the books. Then we need change in our heads. As last week’s Shirley Sherrod story reminds us, who do we believe is capable of what? Discrimination in our heads is as deadly as any law.
Against all the odds, thousands of people with all manner of special challenges showed they were more than able to do the seemingly impossible. They forced a foot-dragging Congress to pass and a Republican President to sign the most significant civil rights legislation in 20 years. And every time we find a a step replaced by a slope — we have them to thank.
A law like the ADA would certainly have changed my family’s life. I don’t have time to go into it. But suffice to say — I was lucky to learn early what people with disabilities face — and what, regardless, they do. In honor of all those who did — and do the impossible — here’s a reminder… Are the rest of us ready to get over our disabled way of thinking about what’s possible? This is from 1967. In a packed Broadway theater…
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
I made the Hunter S. Thompson joke as we circled the Strip in the airport shuttle.
If not for the connection to the Good Doctor, Las Vegas would seem an incongruous place for a left-leaning convention. The place pumps enough energy into glittering, flashing neon lights to warm half the globe, and feminist bloggers enjoying cocktails served by scantily clad waitresses just, well, doesn’t seem right, no matter how pro-sex we feminists are.
I was in town for a brief two and a half days for Netroots Nation, the convention formerly known as Yearly Kos and maybe a little misnamed. I expected lots of panels about media, about writing and Web tools, and instead I got candidate after candidate for office.
Of course, I also got Van Jones. I got some new friends. I got a panel on new Civil Rights movements that featured the fabulous Tim Wise driving home the point that economic insecurity is a racial justice issue; that the social safety net was dismantled in the U.S. when it became coded as handouts to black and brown people instead of something that we might all use when we’re down on our luck. And yes, dear readers, I got a little drunk.
Luck is, of course, the theme in Vegas, and I suppose that made it more appropriate as well that we were there. Hoping, naturally, for a little luck of our own come November, that a Democratic-controlled Congress has passed enough legislation that people don’t hate that Democrats can hang on to majorities in both houses. But had we really traveled across the country just to listen to stump speeches and not one, but two versions of the apocryphal Franklin Delano Roosevelt “Make me do it” story? (One, told by Nancy Pelosi, starring Frances Perkins, first female Secretary of Labor, and the other according to Al Franken starring A. Philip Randolph.)
Mostly, I was a little stunned at the disingenuousness of politicians coming to a fairly politically sophisticated audience to give rote speeches. I sat next to award-winning investigative journalists, longtime media critics, activists who fight in the trenches day after day for immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBT equality. Were we supposed to cheer Democrats, this year?
I’m collecting here the best explainer posts, widgets, and videos on the health care legislation that just passed. Immediately after the bill made it through, I started getting questions from friends who are politically aware enough to know it was happening, but not nearly as hooked-in as I am–and I couldn’t even tell them what was in the bill. So, here’s my attempt to help with that problem. Above is a video from GRITtv with Maggie Mahar of HealthBeatBlog.org and Jacob Hacker, the inventor of the public option (that we didn’t get) explaining what’s in the bill and when it takes place.
The Washington Post made this really great interactive gadget that should tell you how the bill will affect you.
The New York Times also has a gadget, though not quite as cool to my mind as the WaPo’s, it is simpler.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has a handy subsidy calculator as well, just in case the last two widgets didn’t tell you enough about your personal finances.
From CNN, a rundown on when different provisions kick in.
Nick Baumann at Mother Jones with a plain-English rundown of what happens this year.
MoveOn.org has Ten Things Every American Should Know, though frankly it’s more like Ten Talking Points. Still, stats worth looking at.
CBS has a nice summary of the bill in bullet points.
Karoli at Crooks & Liars has ten immediate benefits of the bill and a rollout timetable.
This is just a start; I plan to keep collecting. Please leave your suggestions in comments, and feel free to steal this! Almost all of these suggestions came to me via Twitter, thanks to everyone who sent ‘em.
Ted Kennedy wasn’t there to see it.
Instead, it was Democrats’ loss of his seat that sent the Senate’s health care bill through the House of Representatives mostly unchanged yesterday, causing, among other things, a hissy fit by a clique of older white men who decided that their right to rant about the unborn babies that might possibly be aborted by women with health insurance was more important than the rights of born (and grown up and working) people to have health insurance.
They didn’t succeed in stopping the bill. No, Bart Stupak and his coterie managed to finagle an executive order out of Obama upholding the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funds from being used for abortion. Even with that, they still got called “baby killers” on the House floor—by a Republican rep who had no intention of voting for the bill.
Indeed, no Republican voted for the bill. 34 Democrats also voted against the bill, a vastly watered-down piece of legislation that nevertheless will provide health insurance for some 32 million people (almost a million people for each Democrat who voted against it—interesting, no?) who don’t already have access.
I don’t mean to be a downer, though. Last night, I sat in a bar and toasted with friends with whom I canvassed, called, and organized for Obama leading up to the election, friends with whom I knocked back shots of Jack Daniels on election night 2008 and felt just for a moment that change was possible. We had the poor bartender turning the volume off and on on the TV, tuned to CSPAN, over and over again, drowning out the insincere laments for the unborn—think of the BABIES—and cheering Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that health care will now be enshrined in law as a right, not a privilege.
Of course, to truly create health care as a right we’d have to move from a system of requiring people to buy insurance to a system that provides care to all, but let me stop nitpicking. Really. Even Noam Chomsky said he’d have held his nose and voted for the bill, were he in Congress.
It’s a major victory for the Democrats, after all. In the face of rock-solid Republican opposition and dissent within the party over issues that should be taken for granted, an insurgent social movement and an entire cable news network, they passed one of the most important pieces of legislation in many of our lifetimes. Members of Congress who fought for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, who were there to vote for Medicare and Medicaid, called it such, as they acknowledged its (large) limitations.
Read the rest at Global Comment.
As food consciousness hits Americans—and wealthy Global Northerners everywhere—it’s not just cooking that has seen a resurgence. Farming is experiencing a new cachet that it hasn’t seen in ages. Dirt is cool, rather like those ill-fitting thrift-store clothes—it proves that you don’t care about social status or glossy magazines… right?
Raising some tomatoes in the backyard isn’t exactly new—my mother did so when I was younger, and though she hardly kept us afloat through the fruits of her labor, it was nice to have fresh veggies on the table.
Peggy Orenstein had a piece this weekend in the New York Times Magazine, titled “The Femivore’s Dilemma.” She starts her article by talking about all her hip friends—cracking wise about “the Vatican of locavorism” and laughs, “Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird.”
Her feminist friends are now not just staying home to raise the kids, but finding liberation in raising chickens, growing food, and making other necessities. But her casting of backyard hobby gardening as fulfilling the holes in the lives of feminists who wanted to work, as is usual for middle-class feminists, leaves out the fact that fighting to get jobs was a goal of the privileged. Other women were already working, not for fulfillment, but for survival.
In the same way, backyard gardening, in Orenstein’s view, is a new way for feminists to find fulfillment, a way to do more work than just the housework but less work than a full-time job. Meanwhile, Warwick Sabin points out:
“It used to be that keeping a few free-range chickens, tending some grain-fed hogs, and raising a small vegetable garden was how people simply survived. Now these are often vanity projects for young hipsters and retired hedge-fund executives who have discovered the forgotten pleasures of “heirloom” tomatoes and artisanal sausage. Incredibly, we’ve reached a point in our society where things that humans have done for thousands of years—grow a vegetable, smoke or cure a piece of meat—now provide the grounds for smug satisfaction.”
My mother gave up her garden when she had to go back to work to really put food on the table. The backyard tomatoes weren’t going to keep my sister and I going, and my father’s income suddenly wasn’t enough for us. And there lies the problem, the tension between the hipness of foodie-gardening and the real work of producing food: gardening in your backyard is a hobby, not work that can pay your bills.
More at GlobalCommentl.
