If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday — which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality — it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:
• No federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Instead, state administration of federal family planning funds, which means that Republican governors and legislatures will not spend them.
• No local financing for abortion services in the District of Columbia.
• No foreign aid to countries that might use the money for abortion or family planning. And no aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family-planning services.
• No regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• No funds for health care reform or the new consumer protection bureau established in the wake of the financial collapse.
Abortion. Environmental protection. Health care. Nothing to do with jobs or the economy; instead, all the hoary greatest hits of the Republican Party, only this time it has the power to wreak national havoc: furloughing 800,000 federal workers, suspending paychecks for soldiers and punishing millions of Americans who will have to wait for tax refunds, Social Security applications, small-business loans, and even most city services in Washington. The damage to a brittle economy will be substantial.
Democrats have already gone much too far in giving in to the House demands for spending cuts. The $33 billion that they have agreed to cut will pull an enormous amount of money from the economy at exactly the wrong time, and will damage dozens of vital programs.
But it turns out that all those excessive cuts they volunteered were worth far less to the Republicans than the policy riders that are the real holdup to a deal. After President Obama appeared on television late Wednesday night to urge the two sides to keep talking, negotiators say, the issue of the spending cuts barely even came up. All the talk was about the abortion demands and the other issues.
Democrats in the White House and the Senate say they will not give in to this policy extortion, and we hope they do not weaken. These issues have no place in a stopgap spending bill a few minutes from midnight.
A measure to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions came up for a Senate vote on Wednesday and failed. If Republicans want to have yet another legislative debate about abortion and family planning, let them try to pass a separate bill containing their restrictions. But that bill would fail, too, and they know it, so they have chosen extortion.
The lack of seriousness in the House is reflected in the taunting bill it passed on Thursday to keep the government open for another week at an absurdly high cost of $12 billion in cuts and the ban on District of Columbia abortion financing. The Senate and the White House said it was a nonstarter. Many of the same House members who earlier had said they would refuse to approve another short-term spending bill voted for this one, clearly hoping they could use its inevitable failure in the Senate to blame the Democrats for the shutdown. What could be more cynical?
The public is not going to be fooled once it sees what the Republicans, pushed by Tea Party members, were really holding out for. There are a few hours left to stop this dangerous game, and for the Republicans to start doing their job, which, if they’ve forgotten, is to serve the American people.
By: Editorial, The New York Times, April 8, 2011
April 8, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Abortion, Congress, Conservatives, Consumers, Democrats, Economy, Federal Budget, GOP, Government Shut Down, Governors, Health Reform, Ideology, Lawmakers, Planned Parenthood, Politics, Public, Public Employees, Republicans, Right Wing, Senate, State Legislatures, Tea Party, Voters, Women's Health, Womens Rights | EPA, Foreign Aid, Greenhouse Gases, Health Care Reform, House Republicans, Jobs, Military Pay, Spending |
Leave a comment
Wisconsin Democrats are filing recall petitions that could result in the Wisconsin Senate being controlled by Democrats. Summer 2011 will bring white-hot midterm elections and a potential Wisconsin Waterloo for the GOP that is spreading to other states and could shift the tectonic plate of American politics.
In Wisconsin, Ohio and other states a powerful backlash is brewing from giant swaths of voters who failed to turn out for Democrats or regret their votes for Republicans in 2010. They feel demonized by GOP attacks and financially threatened by GOP policies. They will be highly motivated to vote.
Wisconsin Democrats could win the three state Senate seats necessary to turn control of the Wisconsin Senate to the Dems, because voters do not want political holy wars against teachers, public workers or anyone else. They do not want fanatics in politics, fiats by government, incendiary partisanship or crusades against collective bargaining, which voters widely believe is a valued part of the American system.
Recently the Polish trade union Solidarity, one of the great voices for freedom in modern history, endorsed the Wisconsin workers and condemned the attacks on them by GOP Gov. Scott Walker. More voters agree with Solidarity than with Wisconsin Republicans.
In Ohio, the widely unpopular Republican governor, John Kasich, who was caught on tape verbally abusing a police officer who gave him a ticket, has now added both police and firefighters to the list of enemies he attacked in legislation. Most Americans view firefighters and police as heroes who risk their lives to save their neighbors, not as demons to attack or targets to have their financial security threatened.
In Washington, the GOP has added the venerable AARP to its enemies list. AARP has long represented tens of millions of seniors with honor. For Republicans to launch a Nixonian attack against them is an act of political stupidity that will not be well-received by senior voters.
Republicans wage holy war against National Public Radio, one of the fairest media in the nation, and one that provides vital service to small-town America and includes many Republicans among its fans.
Republicans threaten to shut down the government to pursue their war against Planned Parenthood, which is supported by many Republican women, while they attack a long list of programs important to mainstream American women. Many Republicans oppose efforts to achieve pay equity for women.
House Republicans even want to cut programs that help homeless veterans, cuts that Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) speak eloquently against.
The Texas GOP is likely to attempt to cheat Hispanics out of representation in Congress through a gerrymander similar to that once orchestrated by disgraced former House Republican Leader Tom DeLay. Many Republicans use tactics on immigration that are anathema to many Hispanics.
House Republicans will be widely blamed for any government shutdown or economic collapse from a failure to extend the debt ceiling if they pursue their partisan and ideological vendettas and refuse to accept 50-50 offers from Democrats.
A Wisconsin Waterloo is a real danger to Republicans. Where the GOP sees demons to attack, many voters see themselves.
By: Brent Budowsky, The Hill, April 4, 2011
April 5, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, States, Voters, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | AARP, Gerrymandering, Gov John Kasich, Government Shutdown, House Republicans, NPR, Ohio, Solidarity, Wisconsin Democrats, Wisconsin Senate |
Leave a comment
The part of Paul Ryan’s budget that’s going to get the most attention is his proposal to privatize and voucherize Medicare. But the part that worries me the most is his effort to slash Medicaid, with no real theory as to how to make up the cuts.
Ryan’s op-ed introducing his budget lists Medicaid under “welfare reform,” reflecting the widespread belief that Medicaid is a program for the poor. That belief is wrong, or at least incomplete. A full two-thirds of Medicaid’s spending goes to seniors and people with disabilities — even though seniors and the disabled are only a quarter of Medicaid’s members. Sharply cutting Medicaid means sharply cutting their benefits, as that’s where the bulk of Medicaid’s money goes. This is not just about the free health care given to some hypothetical class of undeserving and unemployed Medicaid queens.
But perhaps cutting it wouldn’t be so bad if there were a lot of waste in Medicaid. But there isn’t. Medicaid is cheap. Arguably too cheap. Its reimbursements are so low many doctors won’t accept Medicaid patients. Its costs grew less quickly than those of private insurance over the past decade, and at this point, a Medicaid plan is about 20 percent cheaper than an equivalent private-insurance plan. As it happens, I don’t think Medicaid is a great program, and I’d be perfectly happy to see it moved onto the exchanges once health-care reform is up and running. But the reason that’s unlikely to happen isn’t ideology. It’s money. Giving Medicaid members private insurance would cost many billions of dollars.
That’s why it’s well understood that converting Medicaid into block grants means cutting people off from using it, or limiting what they can use it for. You can see CBO director Doug Elmendorf say exactly the same thing here. There’s just not another way to cut costs in the program. You can, of course, work to cut costs outside of the program, either by helping people avoid becoming disabled or making it cheaper to treat patients once they become disabled or sick, but those sorts of health-system reforms are beyond the ambitions of Ryan’s budget.
To get around some of this, Ryan’s op-ed talks about state flexibility, with the implication being that states have some secret Medicaid policies they’ve been dying to try but that the federal government simply hasn’t let them attempt. But the truth is there’s been a tremendous amount of experimentation in Medicaid over recent decades. Indiana converted its Medicaid program into health savings accounts. Tennessee based its program around managed care. Massachusetts folded its Medicaid money into Mitt Romney’s health-care reforms. Oregon tried to rank treatments by value. Some of these reforms have worked well and some haven’t worked at all, but none have solved the basic problem that covering the sick and disabled costs money, and you can’t get around that by trying to redesign their insurance packages. For that reason, block-granting Medicaid ultimately means cutting health-care coverage to the poor, the elderly and the disabled, even as it doesn’t actually address the factors driving costs throughout the health-care system.
By: Ezra Klein, The Washington Post, April 5, 2011
April 5, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Affordable Care Act, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Consumers, Federal Budget, GOP, Government Shut Down, Governors, Health Care Costs, Health Reform, Ideology, Medicaid, Politics, Public Health, Rep Paul Ryan, Republicans, States | Beneficiaries, Block Grants, CBO, Disabled, Elderly, Privitization, Seniors, State Flexibility, Vouchers, Welfare Reform |
Leave a comment
“I Am a Man” read the sandwich board posters worn by public sanitation workers in Memphis. Their strike in 1968 came at a time when African American men were still called “boy” to their faces. Their fight for dignity, fair wages and the hope of a better future for their families drew the support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in that city 43 years ago today.
The critical services that public employees provided in our communities then and now range from the most humble, such as garbage collectors, to the most dangerous (police officers and firefighters) to the most profoundly influential on the lives of our children.
Yet in state after state, the collective bargaining rights of dedicated teachers and other public employees have been denied or are in serious jeopardy just as they were in the civil rights era. The same politicians pushing these laws are attacking affirmative action, assailing voting rights and pushing laws to block any path to citizenship for millions of hardworking immigrants in this country.
King made clear connections between what he called “our glorious struggle for civil rights” and collective bargaining rights. He called the labor movement “the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress . . . [and] gave birth to . . . new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life.”
Heirs of King’s legacy who serve our communities see similarities between the struggle in Memphis then and the struggles in Madison and Columbus now.
Dian Palmer, a public health nurse in Milwaukee whose family moved to Wisconsin from Mississippi for better jobs and greater opportunity, starkly remembers the days when her family faced housing discrimination in their new home state because of the color of their skin.
Palmer is “disgusted” by the ways that what is going on today reminds her of those times. Last month Wisconsin state legislators stripped away collective bargaining rights, wages and benefits from nurses like Palmer, teachers and other public workers and made cavalier comments about how they should all just “get over it,” she says.
Lynn Radcliffe, an administrative assistant in the Cleveland schools’ special education program, testified to Congress last month that today’s public employees are facing the same harsh treatment the Memphis sanitation workers did — “being treated as less than, disrespected and economically deprived of earning a decent wage to take care of their families.”
The powerful business interests that align today against working people hearken back to the “downtown business improvement association” that opposed justice for the striking Memphis sanitation workers. Today’s shadowy 527 groups funded by the Koch brothers and their oil conglomerate — and other bad-actor corporations and executives — would destroy our nation’s last real defense against unrestricted corporate power and Third World wages and working conditions for all.
The Memphis city workers in 1968 tapped into the spiritual power of our common humanity — a source of power that seems to be gaining traction as people stand up for state and local workers today. A key part of King’s theology was the stranger on the Jericho road, which turned around conventional thinking about uniting with people who we perceive as not being like us.
We saw this spirit reflected in the tens of thousands of people who rallied in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states to fight for a vibrant middle class for all workers. Protesters from all walks of life accepted King’s challenge: “The question is not, If I stop to help the [sanitation workers], what will happen to me? The question is, If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?”
In today’s jobless recovery, people of color and women are being hit hard. As public services are cut along with collective bargaining rights, women are disproportionately among those laid off and facing income cuts. The “underemployment” rate of discouraged and part-time workers is roughly 15 percent for whites but 25 percent for black and Hispanic workers.
This week, at pulpits, synagogues and other locations nationwide, ordinary people will commemorate King’s death by standing together to tell the powerful interests and the politicians who carry out their wishes that enough is enough.
We are uniting to stand up for the dream of what Martin Luther King Jr. called “a tolerable life.” In today’s terms, that translates as “a middle class life.” A path into the middle class for millions of Americans — black, white, Latino, Native American and Asian American — is not a dream that we will allow to die.
By: Benjamin Todd Jealous and Mary Kay Henry, The Washington Post, April 3, 2011
April 4, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Congress, Corporations, Democracy, Equal Rights, Governors, Human Rights, Immigrants, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Middle Class, Politics, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin | Civil Rights, Martin Luther King, Memphis, Ohio, Public Workers |
Leave a comment
When a couple dozen brawny, uniformed and helmeted firefighters, led by a bagpipe player, marched through a crowd of pro-union protesters in Madison, Wis., last month, I knew, almost to a certainty, that Gov. Scott Walker had picked a fight with the wrong crew.
As the firemen assembled on the Statehouse steps, the swelling, boisterous crowd, which had raucously encircled and occupied the Capitol for days, pushing back against Governor Walker’s plan to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights, all of a sudden slipped into silent reverence.
While the plan exempts policemen and firemen, the first responders rallied under the oldest first principle of militant unionism: An Injury to One is an Injury to All. And the presence of these mostly white, husky, mustachioed firemen — many with soot still speckling their uniforms — had highlighted a major issue that generally goes undetected by the news media when covering labor conflicts.
In short, it’s what my old union called “the Husband Issue.”
Allow me to explain.
I spent five years as an organizer, and hundreds of hours in the living rooms, at the kitchen tables and on the porches of countless low-wage nursing assistants, hospital food workers and clinical lab scientists, trying to talk them into our union.
These were almost always women. No surprise, really. Whatever growth there has been in organized labor over the last few years — and there hasn’t been much — has been primarily among service workers, that near-invisible class of underpaid workers who clean bedpans, vacuum hotel rooms and mop the floors of operating rooms. I recall one heady organizing drive in Southern California that unionized 9,000 hospital workers, and they were almost exclusively low-wage immigrant women.
Most of those I was recruiting had never been in a union before, had no relatives in unions, and were being introduced to a strange new concept, collective bargaining. For any question a woman had, whether about dues, strikes, seniority, pensions or what she had to gain from forming a union, I had an answer ready to go. (Dues give you power; strikes are rare; every one deserves to retire with dignity. You want a direct say in your wages and benefits, don’t you?).
There was one rebuff, nevertheless, against which I was utterly powerless. It had nothing to do with politics, the boss or dues. Seven simple but devastating words: “I need to ask my husband first.”
Despite the endless training we got on how to ease workers’ doubts, we could never really establish a convincing response for the Husband Issue. It would shift the dynamic so suddenly, and require treading on such volatile emotional territory, that we would often politely say goodbye and scuttle out the door.
(For the record: No man I ever spoke to said, “Excuse me, I have to check first with my wife,” before signing a union card.)
In the current storm over public employee unions rattling the Midwest, this issue of gender is usually overlooked. Women, working as state clerks, teachers and nurses, dominate the organized public sector. And just as Rust Belt Republicans have deftly exploited longstanding stereotypes about public workers as lazy, pampered and gorging themselves on the taxpayers’ teat, they have also made cynical use of gender clichés to try to keep female-dominated unions in their place.
The reality that women are increasingly the breadwinners, providing the financial stability for middle-class families through a good union job, doesn’t seem to inform the Republican state of mind. Instead, women’s income and benefits are still perceived by many as strictly supplementary to the nuclear family, if not entirely superfluous. And therefore they are a prime target for budget cuts.
In addition, pink-collar jobs already require a saint-like disposition and an overall doing-more-with-less attitude. Cutting the pensions of these female workers, freezing their wages and curtailing their rights seems, to many, one of a piece with the suffering and forbearance reserved for our mothers.
The error committed by the antiunion governors is that their attack this time around was so slashing that it cut to the very marrow of organized labor: middle-class white men who saw their futures and their rights threatened. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich even signed a law that goes so far as to prohibit policemen and firemen from negotiating over their staffing, or even the number of patrol cars and trucks at their disposal.
Police officers and firemen? Who is going to successfully argue that these guys are pampered and spoiled?
Call it what you want, and ascribe it to whatever motivation you please, but there’s just a radically different emotional atmosphere, a very divergent set of optics and ultimately an explosive political dynamic established when stoic firemen in bulky parkas and red helmets are on the picket line rather than teachers in pink T-shirts.
For better or for worse, they are still the Alpha Males of American society, our designated and respected protectors. They might be routinely taken for granted as a reliable conservative force, but someone forgot they are also still union men. These are men who recall clearly how the old-line male-dominated industrial unions — the steelworkers, autoworkers, miners and millworkers — have been whittled down or expunged. And to fiddle around with their livelihoods is like watching someone push your dad around. The reaction is an instinctive anger, horror and a sensation of the bottom falling out.
So, when those firemen took the steps of the Madison Capitol a few weeks ago, I was among those heartened and stirred. I could not resist, though, feeling more than a twinge of disappointment. I fear if it had been just some state home care workers or public school kindergarten teachers up there on the steps, it would not have ignited the same public sympathy and this fight would not be taken as seriously as it is.
By: Natasha Vargus-Cooper, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 2, 2011
April 3, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Employment Descrimination, Equal Rights, Governors, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Media, Middle Class, Politics, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Women | Firefighters, Gov John Kasick, Gov Scott Walker, Husband Issues, Midwest, Policemen, Public Employees, Republicans |
Leave a comment
Unknown Feed
mykeystrokes.com 