With millions of Americans out of work, House Republicans are focusing in on real priorities: decimating private abortion coverage and crippling public funding for abortion, as Jessica Arons reports in RH Reality Check.
In AlterNet, Amanda Marcotte notes that the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, or H.R. 3, also redefines rape as "forcible rape" in order to determine whether a patient is eligible for a Medicaid-funded abortion. Under the Hyde Amendment, government-funded insurance programs can only cover abortions in cases of rape and incest, or to save the life of the mother. Note that the term "forcible rape" is legally meaningless. Supporters of the bill just want to go on the record as saying that a poor 13-year-old girl pregnant by a 30-year-old should be forced to give birth.
Feminist blogger Sady Doyle has launched a twitter campaign against the bill under the hashtag #dearjohn, a reference to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Tweet to let him know how you feel about a bill that discriminates against 70% of rape victims because their rapes weren't violent enough for @johnboehner, append the hashtag #dearjohn.
Everybody chill out
A federal judge in Florida ruled the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional on Monday. However, as political scientist and court watcher Scott Lemieux explains at TAPPED, the ruling is not necessarily a death blow to health care reform:
[T]his ruling is less important than the controversy it will generate might suggest. Many cornerstone programs of the New Deal were held unconstitutional by lower courts before being upheld by the Supreme Court. This ruling tells us nothing we didn't already know: There is a faction of conservative judges who believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Unless this view has the support of five members of the Supreme Court -- which I still consider very unlikely -- it won't matter; Vinson's reasoning would have a much greater impact if adopted by the Court, but for this reason it is even less likely to be adopted by higher courts.
In a follow-up post, Lemieux explains the shaky legal reasoning behind Judge Robert Vinson's decision. The judge asserts bizarrely that being uninsured has no effect on interstate commerce. That premise is objectively false. Health insurers operate across state lines and the size and composition of their risk pools directly affects their business.
Given the glaring factual inaccuracies, Judge Vinson's decision may be overturned by a higher court before it gets to the Supreme Court.
Scamming Medicare
Terry J. Allen of In These Times win's the headline of the week award for an article entitled "Urology's Golden Revenue Stream." She reports that increasing numbers of urologists are investing millions on machines to irradiate prostate cancer in the office. The doctors can bill Medicare up to $40,000 per treatment, but they have to use the machines a lot to recoup the initial investment. So what does this mean for patients? Allen explains:
Rather than accessing centralized equipment and sharing costs, physicians are concentrating their own profits by buying expensive in-practice technologies that pay off only if regularly used. One result is overtreatment, which is driving up health care costs, exposing patients to unnecessary radiation and surgeries, and is frequently no better than cheaper approaches.
One third of Medicare patients with prostate cancer undergo the expensive IMRT therapy, as the procedure is known. In 2008, Medicare shelled out over a billion dollars on a treatment that has not shown to be any better for patients than less expensive therapies.
Obstetric fistula in the developing world
Reproductive Health Reality Check is running a special series on the human rights implications of obstetric fistula. Fistula is a devastating complication of unrelieved obstructed labor in which the baby's head gets stuck in the birth canal and presses against the soft tissues of the pelvis. If labor goes on long enough, the pressure will starve the pelvic tissues of blood, and they will die, creating a hole between the vagina and the bladder, and/or between the vagina and the rectum. Fistula patients face lifelong incontinence, chronic pain, and social ostracism.
The condition is virtually unknown in the developed world, where women with obstructed labor have access to cesarean delivery. However, an estimated 2 million women, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, have untreated fistulas with an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occurring each year. Without reconstructive surgery, these women will be incontinent for life.
Sarah Omega, a fistula survivor from Kenya, tells her story. Omega sustained a fistula when she delivered her first child at the age of 19. She suffered for 12 years before she finally obtained the surgery she needed. As Agnes Odhiambo explains in another installment in the series, fistula is a symptom of a dysfunctional health care system. Women suffer needlessly because they can't get access to quality health care.
The most likely victims of fistula are the most vulnerable members of their respective communities. Early childbearing increases a woman's risk of fistula. Pregnant rape victims may face even greater barriers to a safe delivery, thanks to the social stigma that accrues to victims of sexual violence in many societies. (Not to mention any names, House Republicans...)
Preventing and repairing obstetric fistula is a major human rights issue. The U.S. should make this effort a high priority for foreign aid.
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If off-shoring of manufacturing burns you up, so should the elimination of prevailing wages in construction
For years we've been hearing about the devastation caused by the off-shoring of manufacturing capacity. Families that were firmly in the middle class experienced dramatic declines in their standards of living as their jobs were shipped off to a far off location where the work would be done at a fraction of the cost because the CEOs could pay workers a pittance while evading the costs of keeping the air and water clean. When the left-behind workers found new jobs, the wages and benefits were nowhere near what they had lost. As families became poorer, communities suffered as their coffers emptied because residents had far less to spend back in town. Entire industries and the technical know-how of their workforce have disappeared in the United States.
All of this has rightfully made many Americans angry. But while the most noticeable impacts of off-shoring have been concentrated in a few states in the industrial Midwest, the elimination of prevailing wages in construction has the potential to bring these problems to California. At first blush the comparison between construction and manufacturing does not seem to fit. However a deeper look at the construction industry, its hiring practices, its skill base, and the stabilizing role of prevailing wages shows that the comparison is right on target.
In an open letter to the leaders of the Philadelphia labor movement, the young and energetic organizer for UFCW Local 152 Hugh Giordano has challenged the city's unions to have the courage to support the Green Party. Giordano ran an exceptionally strong campaign as a Green for state legislature this year, raising almost $30,000 from unions and individuals and capturing over 18 percent of the vote in a three way race. Now he would like to spread the same movement for honest politics, workers' rights, and a clean environment (among other things) to the rest of Philadelphia, beyond his single district.
As the members of the party, which I am aiding in every way I can, build the organization for the 2011 local elections, Giordano has seized the opportunity make the area's union leadership reconsider the popular path of supporting corporate Democrats. In his words, "Why are we, the strong men and women of the labor movement, bowing down to the corporate bosses and politicians...Union brothers and sisters, when any one of us becomes 'fearful' or 'controlled' by a political party - it's time to step down and pass the torch on."
The full letter is printed, with Hugh Giordano's permission, below the fold.
I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else. It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.
By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, "How much moral outrage can one person muster? There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don't blame you." I won't lie, I handed a few out myself. Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, "complete lack of solidarity" was striking.
I'm endlessly dismayed by the lack of leadership and moral courage I observe from people and institutions that I would otherwise expect more of. I posted a Quick Hit at OpenLeft called
"Nobody marched at the One Nation "march""
which was about a diary in FDL called
"Progressive "One Nation" Event a Bit Disappointing, We Didn't March: "
in which the question of the lack of strong leadership by unions naturally arises. The contents of this diary flowed from that discussion.
Two new government reports illustrate the complex and troubling state of opportunity in America, but also the right way forward.
The first set of data, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that the gender pay gap is at a historic low, with women earning almost 83¢ for every dollar earned by men—compared with 76¢ a decade ago and until fairly recently. The change is due in part to young women’s progress in the workplace—they increasingly are better educated and out earn their male counterparts—but also to depressed wages and, especially, more rapid job loss by men.
On July 14th, Green Change announced the campaign for a Green New Deal, a 10-point program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability.
Since then over 100 candidates for elected office at all levels have joined the Green New Deal Coalition.
The Green New Deal Coalition will cut military spending, create millions of green jobs, and revive the economy by protecting the planet we depend on.
Green Change is inviting all candidates, individuals and organizations that support a prosperous, sustainable future for America to endorse the Green New Deal.
To date, 11 candidates for governor, 11 candidates for US Senate, and 33 candidates for US House of Representatives have joined the Green New Deal Coalition.
All agree on the need to cut military spending, fund green public works, ban corporate personhood, pass single-payer health care, restore progressive taxation, ban usury, enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax, legalize marijuana, institute tuition-free public higher education, change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental and safety standards, and pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms.
These candidates represent a clean break with the failed policies of the past that have led America down the road to economic and ecological disaster.
The Green New Deal promises a brighter tomorrow for America – one that combines the New Deal’s promise of freedom from economic hardship with decisive action to protect our planet.
Sometimes stories happen because of planning; other times serendipity intervenes, which is how we got to the conversation we'll be having today.
In an exchange of comments on the Blue Hampshire site, I proposed an idea that could be of real value to unions, workers...and surprisingly, employers.
If things worked out correctly, not only would lots of people feel a real desire to have unions represent them, but employers would potentially be coming to unions looking to forge relationships, and, just to make it better, this plan bypasses virtually all of the tools and techniques employers use to shut out union organizers.
Since I just thought this up myself, I'm really not sure exactly how practical the whole thing is, and the last part of the discussion today will be provided by you, as I ask you to sound off on whether this plan could work, and if so, how it could be made better.
It's a new week...so let's all put our heads together and rebuild the labor movement, shall we?
I'm spending a week on the outer banks of North Carolina, so today's post will be much lighter than usual. And instead of focusing on education policy I am thinking more about the nature and content of education itself and how out of sorts our nation is in terms of seeing math and reading standardized test scores as the only meaningful measurements of academic achievement.
Sharing a house on the outer banks with my friend Bill, who I've written about previously here has brought me into contact with a circle of artisans, craft workers, and contractors - the makers and fixers in our society - who have prompted me to think about an overlooked aspect of school reform that is rarely discussed in the media - even among the ed-press. What I'm talking about is the now ancient concept of what was called vocational education when I was growing up and whether it still has a place in the curriculum.
While much of the emphasis among the education community is on "21st century skills and common core standards that completely ignore the notion of education for the trades, there is still a need for people who work with their hands. In his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew B. Crawford explains how this negligence came about:
"Around 1985, articles began to appear in education journals with such titles as 'The Soaring Technology Revolution' and 'Preparing Kids for High-Tech and the Global Future.' Of course, there us nothing new about American futurism. What is new is the wedding of futurism to what might be called 'virtualism: a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. New and yet not so new - for fifty years now we've been assured that we are headed for a 'postindustrial society.' While manufacturing jobs have certainly left our shores to a disturbing degree, th manual trades have not. If you need a deck built, or you car fixed, the Chinese are no help. Because they are in China. And in fact there are chronic labor shortages in both construction and auto repair. Yet the trades and manufacturing have long been lumped together in the minds of the pundit class as 'blue collar,' their requiem is intoned.
Crawford points out how schools create artificial learning environments that children know to be contrived while in the meantime there are readymade opportunities to engage them in useful arts that are intrinsically satisfying and cognitively challenging. Educators far too often push a false dichotomy of thinking vs. doing - a notion that arose from a designed degradation of all forms of work into a "clerkdom" engineered principally by the military industrial complex and high finance.
What Crawford and other advocates for education in the trades point out is that there is an overlap of the notions of "meaningful work" and "self reliance" that is being totally ignored in our education system. And what gets lost is the concept of "individual agency," in which we come to view ourselves as having a handle on our world rather than being at the mercy of impersonal forces from afar.
The Rand Paul campaign was really proud of the $2500 their campaign received from the National Right to Work for Less Committee. Of course there is a very good reason for that. The National Right to Work Committee is an extremist group and as we all have seen Rand Paul is an especially extremist candidate. He opposes the right of Americans to have and maintain a middle-class and falls into the most helpless realm of corporate apology and welfare condoned by his new mentor, Mitch McConnell. The difference is, Rand Paul was undisciplined enough to tell you how Republicans really feel about you.
This is the second and third parts in a series of blogs Nourishing the Planet will be writing about workers in the food system. Nourishing the Planet research intern Ronit Ridberg recently spoke with Erik Nicholson, National VP of the United Farm Workers of America. In the first part of this two-part interview, Erik talks about the global agricultural system and the role American consumers play in it. Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.
Name: Erik Nicholson
Affiliation: National Vice President, United Farm Workers of America; International director of the Guest Worker Membership Program. Founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers of America is the nation's first successful and largest farm workers union currently active in 10 states.
Location: Tacoma, Washington
Bio: Erik Nicholson has worked extensively on pesticide issues affecting farm workers and their families as well as child labor, housing, consumer outreach, education and legislative issues. He currently serves as one of two national farm worker representatives to the Environmental Protection Agency's national pesticide advisory committee, the Pesticide Program Dialog Committee.
Nicholson led the two-and-a-half year organizing campaign at the national guest worker labor-contracting firm Global Horizons, resulting in the first national guest worker union contract in the history of the United States. He currently is working to develop an international infrastructure to better advocate on behalf of guest workers.
Can you please contextualize the work you do, in what has become a global system of agriculture?
We are now importing the majority of the food we eat. The overwhelming majority of workers who harvest the food we eat in the United States are not from this country. And many if not most of the workers employed in the fields in the United States are displaced farmers from their own countries (mostly Mexico but not exclusively.) So we're seeing that many of the same pressures and challenges that are facing farmers in the US are the very same ones that are displacing small farmers in the global South and resulting in them coming in search of employment to the United States, Canada, Australia, and European Union. At the same time, farmers and sometimes their spouses in the US are looking for second jobs in more urban settings.
When Vietnam entered the global market with coffee we saw an unprecedented exodus of coffee farmers out of eastern Mexico. When NAFTA was signed, mass exodus of corn farmers - so we see a direct correlation between these international trade policies and agricultural practices and kind of the global crisis of agriculture that we're facing.
Within that context you look at agriculture in the United States and pretty much anyone born in this country has no aspirations to work in the fields. And I think if we're honest with ourselves, the reason is because we all know the conditions are not good, the pay is pretty bad, and there's really no benefits. As a result we have depended on immigrant workers to come up and do the work that we haven't wanted to do. And so if you look at the history of the United Farm Workers, we've had workers literally from around the world as members - from Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Yemen, African Americans and of course, Mexicans, Central Americans, and the internationalization of the work-force continues. We now have workers working under contract from Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, and it's very much become a global workforce that is harvesting the food we eat.
UFW recently hosted an international gathering of farm workers from 14 different countries. Can you share some of your impressions of that gathering?
It was just amazing to have people who are doing the same work we've been doing for fifty years in the United States, together in the same room. We were in awe of just how bad it is out there. We think it's bad here, and then you talk to folks from Ecuador or Peru, who come to the States telling us, "What are you guys complaining about? You don't know the half of it." And so as we really compared notes, the contexts were different but it was appalling just how bad it is for farm workers across the world. That was sobering.
But at the same time, it was tremendously exciting to meet people who give a damn, and who are actually out there in the trenches trying to make a difference. It was a very lively conversation. We did a lot of work just getting to know each other and the different contexts in which we're working and actively looking for ways to collaborate. One of the first things that came to mind for all of us was that we need to educate the world about how bad it is for farm workers and why everyone who eats should care! We've established relationships that have never existed before, and are actively working to build upon those to see what we can do for workers globally.
What do the popular "food movements" of today have to do with farm workers' rights, and how can individual consumers get more involved in supporting change around the world?
Just look at the whole conversation about "sustainability", the Buy Local fad, and that was preceded by the organic fad, and the whole mythology that was erected around those concepts that included somehow that workers were going to be treated better. When the reality is there are local farmers I would never ever in a million years buy something from, and gladly pay a premium to have it flown in 2000 miles because I know workers are treated well. And while workers aren't exposed to as many toxins in organics, there are still toxins in the organic world that are allowed, and organics does nothing on the labor front. So I think we need to make sure that labor is part of the equation.
I've found that people are frequently reluctant to dirty their hands because you're dealing with three very politically charged issues: the sustainability of small farmers, immigration policy, and labor. If you really want to stand with the people who are out there right now in the field, rather than projecting a better future theoretically, find out who's picking your food and how you can stand with them. Boycott Arizona and let your voice be heard that those types of laws are unacceptable. Support immigration reform, so we can provide legal status to the hundreds of thousands of people that put food on our table. And then really be an advocate to help support the people that are here, now, in their struggle to make a better life for themselves.
It is incumbent on us as people who care about food and care about the viability of small farmers, to understand that these realities are the same for hundreds if not millions of people worldwide.
The unemployment rate for over-55s is at the highest level since 1948. Since the recession started, both the number of older people seeking work and the rate of unemployment for over-55s have increased more sharply than for all other demographic groups. And older workers comprise a high share of the long-term unemployed. In May, the average duration of unemployment for older job-seekers climbed to 44.2 weeks, 11 more weeks than the national average. Nearly six in ten older job-seekers have been out of work for more than six months.
If national trends are anything like what I see here in Silicon Valley, where many of the waves of layoffs specifically targeted older workers because they have higher health-care costs and are paid more, then enforcement could make a difference. People could begin to find jobs with healthcare, and start meeting their mortgage and other obligations again.
Companies here in Silicon Valley shed their older workers during the years of Bush-era non-enforcement of labor laws. They were forced to sign "waivers" saying they would not complain about the age discrimination, told if they did not sign they would not receive any severance that was available or would be denied unemployment compensation.
Now, during the Obama-era non-enforcement of labor laws many companies around here flat-out will not hire people over "a certain age" (varies by profession) and everyone knows it. The unemployment rate is lower because so many older people understand the situation and are not "actively" looking for work. They are still unemployed but not counted in the statistics.
About a week ago, last Thursday to be sure, a number of media outlets were reporting on a Labor Department report that said new weekly claims for unemployment fallen by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 456,000. Most of those same stories included details that total unemployment benefit rolls had fallen by 255,000 to 4.5 million.
(earlier version Cross posted at tpm/and my blog codylyonblogolater)
First, let me just say that we lost, and there is no covering that up. Even though it was close, a win would have been almost 100% better than a loss.
Now, with that said
Anti-Wall Street messaging works: Blanche Lincoln produced strong language on the derivatives portion of the all Street reform bill. She went to the left of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate leadership in her language. Further, it ended up in the bill that passed the Senate because of her primary challenge, and then she proceeded to campaign on it:
[corrected: had the wrong video up overnight]
Even if the Chamber of Commerce went to bat for Lincoln, that is a strong, anti-Wall Street message.--and it is the message that voters heard Democrats should follow suit, keep Lincoln's language in the Wall Street reform bill, and run on it themselves. Honestly, it might be the only thing to save them in 2010, as it saved Lincoln.
Very few incumbents are challenged this hard: Primary challenges rarely come tthis close. For all the blather about the anti-incumbent mood, as Larry Sabato noted over Twitter:
So that's 4 incumbents down, 200 renominated. Um, how's that "anti-incumbent wave" going, my dear headline writers?
Incumbents almost never lose in primaries. Even the losses that have occurred this year all come with asteriks. Arlen Specter and Parker Griffith switched parties. Alan Mollohan had ethics problems. Bob Bennett faced a caucus, not a primary. A Halter win would have been the ultra-rare, straight-up defeat of a Senator largely because that Senator angered her base and progressive organizations. Those defeats happen less than once every two years. Getting challenged this hard is almost as rare.
Low union, netroots denisty: Arkansas is one of the weakest states for the labor and netroots organizations backing Halter. As Eddie Vale points out, Arkansas is 49th out of 50 in terms of union density. It probably isn't too much higher in terms of netroots density. If we can come close in this state, then Senators in almost every other state better take notice.
It is a tough night, but there are good reasons to be proud. We might get some good legislation from this campaign, primary challenges very rarely come this close, and it was this close despite Arkansas being a terrible state for labor and the netroots. Winning would have been a helluva a lot better, but that ain't nothing.
And, most importantly, we are going to keep running these primary challenges, no matter what, bad Dems don't get a break because of what happened here.
The U.S. Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls rose by 431,000 last month, the largest gain since March 2000. That followed an unrevised 290,000 increase in April.(...)
Taking into account revisions to prior months, the U.S. economy added an average of nearly 200,000 jobs a month in the January-May period, a positive sign for the job market as it recover from the worst recession since the 1930s.
An alternative measure of unemployment, which includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time because of the weak economy, fell to 16.6% from 17.1%.
Not bad! Unfortunately, its all pretty much due to the census:
However, the May figure was boosted by the hiring of 411,000 temporary workers for the decennial count of the U.S. population. Only 41,000 private-sector jobs were added.
The unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 9.7% in May from 9.9% in April, according to a separate survey of 60,000 households. Economists were expecting the jobless rate to sink to 9.8%.
The decline wasn't particularly good news, however, because the drop was due to 322,000 people dropping out of the labor force. While unemployment dropped by 287,000 to 15 million, employment also fell, dipping 35,000 to 139.4 million.
Long-term U.S. unemployment, which measures the proportion of unemployed workers who have been jobless for over six months, is at the highest rate since economists began measuring it in 1948. Of America's jobless , 45.9 percent are considered long-term unemployed, for a total of about 7 million workers.
Avoiding labels will not help Democrats at the ballot box one iota. Only stimulating our economy and creating jobs will do that. FDR and Democrats did not win landslide victories in 1934 and 1936 by engaging in a Hoover-like attempt to freeze spending and pay down the debt during a time of crisis. They spent, and spent big--resulting in Asian Tiger-like a GDP growth of 10.9% in 1934, 8.9% in 1935, and 13.0% in 1936.
If you want to know why Democrats and FDR did so well in 1934 and 1936, it is because they delivered results. Huge, huge GDP growth. The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are not delivering anything close to that.
Unemployment and GDP growth are very different measures of the state economy. Still, the point here should be clear. The path to electoral victory for a governing party is to deliver big-time, positive results. Right now, Democrats are not delivering those results with nearly the speed nor breadth which the population demands. As such, right now electoral forecasts show Republicans ready to make big gains.
STATE BLOGS
Name: Erik Nicholson
