People Before Profit blog

Breakthrough and peril for the Green Party

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 07:52:00 +0000

Opinion

Up against the campaign of a wealthy businessman who outspent him nearly 10-to-1, a strong progressive candidate nearly won the [Dec. 9] runoff election to become San Francisco’s mayor. Some national news stories depicted the strong showing for Matt Gonzalez as a big surprise. But it shouldn’t perplex anyone when vigorous grassroots organizing combines with a sound strategy to get breakthrough results.

Local elections in San Francisco are officially nonpartisan, and ballots don’t indicate party affiliations. But the contenders spoke openly of their party labels. The Democrat in the race, Gavin Newsom, became so worried that Bill Clinton and Al Gore flew in to campaign for him. In contrast, Green Party member Gonzalez relied on several thousand active volunteers.

Contrary to all the conventional media wisdom, the Gonzalez campaign surged to receive 47.4 percent of the votes.

Routinely discounted by pundits in the mainstream media, the Green Party has been making some inroads. The party now claims 205 elected officials in 26 states. This year, Greens won posts ranging from auditor of York, Pa., to alderman in New Haven, Conn., to city commissioner in Kalamazoo, Mich., to water district official in Maine.

These are low-ranking positions, but big political trees can grow from little acorns. That’s exactly what happened with Gonzalez in San Francisco. His step-by-step approach, building coalitions along the way, brought him to the point where he is now president of the city’s powerful Board of Supervisors.

Gonzalez represents the kind of pragmatic idealism that the Green Party needs. His recent achievements include spearheading a victorious ballot initiative raising the city’s minimum wage to $8.50. A strategic thinker, he recognizes the need to build the Green Party from the ground up while striving to prevent Republican consolidation of power.

Next year, in California, the right wing will seek to gain a seat in the U.S. Senate by defeating the liberal Democratic incumbent. Gonzalez, determined to help prevent that, says he intends to back Sen. Barbara Boxer’s re-election bid.

Likewise, as the San Jose Mercury News reported on Dec. 7, Gonzalez has a savvy view of next year’s race for the White House. In the newspaper’s words, Gonzalez spokesperson Ross Mirkarimi said that “if Nader runs again for president in 2004, Gonzalez won’t support him.”

But many Green Party leaders are insisting on a presidential race next year. At an annual fall meeting, says a Green Party news release, “members of the Wisconsin Green Party unanimously endorsed a statement calling on the Green Party of the United States to run a strong presidential campaign in 2004, while also maintaining focus on races at the local, state, and federal levels.” The release noted that similar resolutions had been approved at Green Party gatherings in Michigan, Iowa and New England.

Some Green activists have argued that the party’s local campaigns need the sort of media attention and excitement that was generated by Ralph Nader’s presidential run under the Green Party banner in 2000. But try telling that to the thousands of Matt Gonzalez supporters who just achieved the most impressive showing for a Green Party candidate in history.

If Nader runs for president again in 2004, his campaign seems doomed to be virtually opposite of the Gonzalez effort. Nader would be lucky to get half as many votes as his previous total of 2.7 percent nationwide. A Nader campaign would not offer voters a chance to wrest the White House away from the right wing. At a time when preventing a second presidential term for George W. Bush is a historic imperative, a Nader campaign would be – at best – beside the point. At worst, a gift to Karl Rove.

There has been a lot of talk among some Green Party leaders about a “safe states” strategy, with the party’s presidential campaign efforts being mostly concentrated in states where either Bush or the Democrat has a lock. But that scenario seems to be a fallback illusion for Greens who don’t want to fully re-examine the purported wisdom of a Green Party presidential campaign next year.

In the Nov. 24 edition of The Nation magazine, longtime Green Party analyst Micah Sifry quotes Nader as pooh-poohing a safe-states approach: “You either run or you don’t. You don’t say to people in some states that we’re going to ignore you.” And Nader added that “no candidate will want to be bound by” that kind of restriction.

For Green Party activists and their candidate, the apparent benefits of a presidential run may include the media coverage, which – however inadequate and slanted – still beats being ignored. But what’s at stake far transcends such concerns.

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and writes a syndicated column on media and politics.

Democracy crumbles under cover of darkness

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 07:46:00 +0000

Opinion

Never before has the House of Representatives operated in such secrecy:

At 2:54 a.m. on a Friday in March, the House cut veterans’ benefits by three votes.

At 2:39 a.m. on a Friday in April, the House slashed education and health care

by five votes.

At 1:56 a.m. on a Friday in May, the House passed the Leave No Millionaire Behind tax-cut bill by a handful of votes.

At 2:33 a.m. on a Friday in June, the House passed the Medicare privatization and prescription drug bill by one vote.

At 12:57 a.m. on a Friday in July, the House eviscerated Head Start by one vote.

And then, after returning from summer recess, at 12:12 a.m. on a Friday in October, the House voted $87 billion for Iraq.

Always in the middle of the night. Always after the press had passed their deadlines. Always after the American people had turned off the news and gone to bed.

What did the public see? At best, Americans read a small story with a brief explanation of the bill and the vote count in Saturday’s papers.

But what did the public miss? They didn’t see the House votes, which normally take no more than 20 minutes, dragging on for as long as an hour as members of the Republican leadership trolled for enough votes to cobble together a majority.

They didn’t see GOP leaders stalking the floor for whoever was not in line. They didn’t see Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay coerce enough Republican members into switching their votes to produce the desired result.

In other words, they didn’t see the subversion of democracy.

And late last month, they did it again. The most sweeping changes to Medicare in its 38-year history were forced through the House at 5:55 on a Saturday morning.

The debate started at midnight. The roll call began at 3 a.m. Most of us voted within the typical 20 minutes. Normally, the speaker would have gaveled the vote closed. But not this time; the Republican-driven bill was losing.

By 4 a.m., the bill had been defeated 216-218, with only one member, Democrat David Wu, not voting. Still, the speaker refused to gavel the vote closed.

Then the assault began.

Hastert, DeLay, Republican Whip Roy Blount, Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas, Energy and Commerce Chairman Billy Tauzin – all searched the floor for stray Republicans to bully.

I watched them surround Cincinnati’s Steve Chabot, trying first a carrot, then a stick; but he remained defiant. Next, they aimed at retiring Michigan Congressman Nick Smith, whose son is running to succeed him. They promised support if he changed his vote to yes and threatened his son’s future if he refused. He stood his ground.

Many of the two dozen Republicans who voted against the bill had fled the floor. One Republican hid in the Democratic cloakroom.

By 4:30, the browbeating had moved into the Republican cloakroom, out of sight of C-SPAN cameras and the insomniac public. Republican leaders woke President George W. Bush, and a White House aide passed a cell phone from one recalcitrant member to another in the cloakroom.

At 5:55, two hours and 55 minutes after the roll call had begun – twice as long as any previous vote in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives – two obscure western Republicans emerged from the cloakroom. They walked, ashen and cowed, down the aisle to the front of the chamber, scrawled their names and district numbers on green cards to change their votes and surrendered the cards to the clerk.

The speaker gaveled the vote closed; Medicare privatization had passed.

You can do a lot in the middle of the night, under the cover of darkness.

Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) represents Lorain, Akron and other communities in Lorain, Summit, Cuyahoga, and Medina counties in northeast Ohio. This commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Dec. 11, and is reprinted by permission of the author.

Free trade batters worlds farmers

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 07:14:00 +0000

Opinion

This year, the efforts of farmers, consumers, and fair trade activists to protest unfair trade policies have had dramatic results. In November, meetings held in Miami to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) ended early, and in September, negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Cancun, broke down.

These developments may be a turning point in the struggle to protect our food system from corporate takeover. By refusing to compromise, the developing countries played David to the corporate Goliaths who dictate the trade agenda of the United States and European Union.

Far-reaching agricultural trade policies and low commodity prices are already battering farmers around the world. In just under a decade, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has driven millions of family farms to extinction. In recent years, prices for corn and soybeans in the United States have been lower than in 1978. Since 1994, close to 1 million Mexican farmers have been displaced, uprooting rural residents who then move to large cities and the United States looking for work.

The blame for low prices is often assigned to the subsidies given to U.S. farmers. Cheap U.S. grain unfairly floods other countries and destroys their rural economies. Therefore, the argument goes, getting rid of subsidies would make the price of grain rise. While the use of subsidies is hypocritical and clearly not in the spirit of free trade, the missing link in the debate is that corporations benefit from the subsidy system, not farmers.

When farmers are under economic stress from low prices, they do exactly what corporations want – they maintain or even increase production, sparking a downward price spiral. The first U.S. farm program in 1933 solved this by placing a floor under prices, buying crops in times of abundance to create a food security reserve, and establishing soil conservation programs to take land out of production. But since the 1996 Freedom to Farm Bill eliminated price floors under basic commodities, prices have been determined by traders at the Chicago Board of Trade and other exchanges. This law also eliminated the food security reserve and conservation set-asides, so every bushel produced must now be dumped on the market. Thus farmers have no choice but to plant “fencerow to fencerow.”

The elimination of price floors created an enormous amount of uncertainty in agricultural markets, uncertainty that has been addressed each year with billions of dollars of direct payments to farmers. In other words, eliminating price floors has simply allowed the giant food corporations to pay a very low price for farm commodities, while the U.S. taxpayer pays for subsidies to keep farmers afloat. In effect, consumers have financed the industrialization of our food system. It’s corporate welfare in disguise.

While the cheerleaders for free trade claim that their goal is “efficiency” that will somehow benefit us all, the sad truth is that free trade agriculture policies pit farmer against farmer, and put the interests of consumers at the bottom of the list. Because U.S. and WTO agricultural policies suit the interests of corporate agribusiness, they allow much of the cost of producing food to be imposed on others (through government subsidies to make up for low prices, environmental damage caused by intensive production practices, and low wages paid to farmers and food workers). Under such policies, large companies profit from a “cheap” food supply, while independent family farmers are forced off the land.

Farmers from around the world are organizing to preserve their food sovereignty: to control their own destiny when it comes to food production, farm policy and trade, rather than being rolled over by the corporate-driven WTO and free trade. They first called on the WTO to get out of agriculture, and now they are demanding the same from the FTAA.

Here in the United States, groups like the National Family Farm Coalition are calling for an end to the current subsidy system, restoration of a food security reserve, and a price floor that enables farmers to earn a fair return from the market, not the taxpayers. This is how we will achieve a food system that values family farm production, local food, a countryside with clean air and water, and the right of family farmers around the world to survive.

George Naylor is a family farmer in Churdan, Iowa. He is president of the National Family Farm Coalition, nffc@nffc.net. Wenonah Hauter is director of Public Citizen’s energy and environment program. She can be reached at cmep@citizen.org.

Etch A Sketch and the Wal-Mart phenomenon

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 07:10:00 +0000

Opinion

Perhaps the most successful, imaginative toy of all time has been Etch A Sketch. It thrilled our youngsters – and their parents and other adults – some 40 years ago and it still does today.

For years, it was an entirely U.S.A.-made, union-made product, done from start to finish at Ohio Art Company in Bryan, Ohio, a city of 8,000 located just off one of the first western exits of the Ohio Turnpike.

Etch A Sketch was the pride of the area, and likely Bryan’s best-known product. It employed between 100 and 200 production workers, often including three generations from the same family. When the workers went on strike during the 1980s, they exhibited great solidarity. The struggle became a typical one, pitting the wealthy owner of the plant – who lived in the proverbial town mansion – against a hardscrabble workforce. The town rallied behind the workers. Even the police department cooperated in assuring that the imported scabs (strikebreakers) followed strict guidelines as they attempted to drive through picket lines to enter the plant.

The scene still remains in my mind of some of the oldest women on the line walking slowly across the parking lot entrance, with a police officer patiently waiting, allowing one car at a time to enter, frustrating the scabs and the company. The scabs made little impact on the strike, which ended a few weeks later with the usual compromises on each side.

Today, those workers no longer have jobs at Ohio Art. The company now makes Etch A Sketch in Shenzhen, China, using a privately owned nonunion company that pays wages so low that it’s a bargain for Ohio Art.

The closing of Etch A Sketch production in Bryan is a story that has occurred thousands of times in the last 30 years in factory towns all across the U.S., particularly in the industrial Rust Belt, as factories after factories have closed down or reduced their workforce.

William Killgallon, the Ohio Art owner whose mansion strikers picketed 20 years ago, lamented the shutting down of production in his home town, saying he missed the friendships made over the years with the workers in the plant, but he had no other choice if he was to continue to compete and sell his goods. (Note: I spent enough time in Bryan, particularly during the strike, to know that Killgallon and his workers hardly ever frequented the same social establishments.)

This brings us to Wal-Mart. It is now the largest employer in the U.S., and has 20 percent of the retail business of the country’s 100 largest retailers.

Wal-Mart has fine-tuned efficiency to a fare-thee-well, using technologies that defy the imagination and personnel practices from the robber baron era. It has indeed become the store of choice for many low-income folks, and, it’s largely true, the prices are lower than most stores.

What’s wrong with that? Plenty. For instance, Wal-Mart can dictate to its suppliers just about anything it wants. Some suppliers devote 70 to 80 percent of their production to Wal-Mart, and are particularly vulnerable.

Thus, when Wal-Mart wants to bargain a lower wholesale price, the supplier is forced to accept it, or face the loss of most of its business and possible bankruptcy. That translates into suppliers being squeezed, forced to pay their workers less, cut benefits and, if there is a union involved, “get tough” at the bargaining table. Eventually, suppliers are forced to go to Mexico, China, or Sri Lanka if they wish to continue to produce the goods for Wal-Mart.

Such was the case of Ohio Art, which was urged by Wal-Mart to produce a product that could sell for under $10. When introduced in 1960, Etch A Sketch sold for $3.99, and with inflation would sell for $23.99 in today’s prices. So, to keep the business, Ohio Art moved production to Shenzhen. Meanwhile, Chinese unions, which are battling to organize workers at private and foreign-owned companies, say Wal-Mart and other U.S.-based corporations are fiercely opposing their efforts.

Wal-Mart’s practices, of course, are copied by its competitors, like Target, Kmart and Sears. And the low-wage practices snowball throughout the economy. More and more Americans are moving into lower incomes, after losing union jobs paying from $12 to $25 an hour to those in the $6 to $8 level.

Some economists (most with little connection to working people) say this is the cost of progress in a capitalistic system.

They say Wal-Mart is “good” since it forces U.S. industry to be more efficient and productive.

Neat argument. But the benefit from the improved efficiency and productivity is not to the workers in towns like Bryan, Ohio, but to Wal-Mart and other corporations.

Wal-Mart probably doesn’t want to remind folks about its marketing claim early in company history that it sold U.S.-made products. (Remember that campaign?) Now, try to find a U.S.-made product at Wal-Mart.

It’s easy to blame Wal-Mart for the ills facing working people. The blame is far broader: it’s in a system and government that permits businesses to continue such practices. There are antitrust laws that can be applied to Wal-Mart. There are collective bargaining laws that need reform to give workers a real opportunity to organize, there are wage and hour laws that need to be considered, and there are trade practices that need fixing.

Meanwhile, if we are inclined to shop at Wal-Mart, consider the former workers at places like Ohio Art and the price they have paid in the name of economic progress.

Kenneth Germanson is a retired labor union representative who currently works as an advocate for low-income families in Milwaukee. He can be reached at advoken@execpc.com.

Oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 07:07:00 +0000

Opinion

Republicans don’t have solutions for the unemployment crisis (how often can you spend $180 billion on an illegal war to make the economy seem like its growing?). They have no handle on the Iraq quagmire, and want to sidestep the growing discontent of 41 million seniors, hide the health care crisis, and take attention away from the international isolation Bush has led us into. Additionally, they fear that Bush is losing support even in his own far-right base. So, what is their hot item issue? They have initiated efforts to define marriage constitutionally as between a man and a woman – the Federal Marriage Amendment.

This amendment essentially tells lesbian, gay, and transgendered people that they do not qualify for equal participation in the rights and benefits of society. Ironically, the Republicans are trying to codify this anti-democratic sentiment in the Constitution, a document that, though very battered in the last two years, is still recognized as a protector of our basic rights. A “marriage” amendment would be the capstone for the ultra-right’s anti-equality, anti-rights agenda.

Further, the drive for this amendment is intended to suggest that people who support equality in principle might be supporting deviants. After last summer’s Supreme Court ruling overturning anti-sodomy laws, Bush said our ideal of tolerance and equality “does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage.” Bush was encouraging people who think they are “like him” to oppose equality for lesbian, gay and transgendered people. More to the point, he was saying that opposing equality is morally justifiable.

Others in the far right have likened the struggle for equality for gay people to terrorism. They blame gay people for crime, disease, the decline of the country, child poverty, and even teen pregnancy. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who last spring came under attack for calling gay people sexualized animals, called efforts to expand marriage laws to include gay people as “attacks” on marriage. Santorum wrote in USA Today last July that gay people want to destroy families and that “in study after study, family breakdown is linked to an increase in violent crime, youth crime, teen pregnancy, welfare dependency and child poverty.”

Santorum doesn’t indicate which studies show that gay people are the cause of family breakdown. Nor does he mention as sources of family breakdown the elimination of millions of jobs, the stripping of the manufacturing base, the declining real wage, the decay of communities caused by the flight of capital offshore, or the fact that more and more people must work three and four jobs to make ends meet. He is silent on the increasing tax burden on working people as wealth is redistributed to the ultra-rich with “tax reform.” Not a word on the slashing of public investment in job training, public education, health care, welfare and other social programs that help keep working families together. And don’t look for him to mention immigration policy that criminalizes the search for work across national borders, ripping tens of thousands of families apart each year.

No. It’s gay people that are the source of our ills.

Far-right loudmouth Jerry Falwell recently announced his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, saying, “I’m dedicating my talents, time and energies over the next few years” to passing the antigay measure. Apparently, the 66 million people in or on the verge of poverty don’t make his priority list.

In short, the far right is desperate to avoid critical issues like the economy, the war, the health care crisis – issues that touch directly on the quality of life of the vast majority of people. Instead they lead a charge against the rights of a minority whom they blame for the problems we face. Antigay scapegoating, like its racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant cousins, is designed to split us, when we need unity most.

Heightened attention to this issue presents a new challenge to the working class. Perhaps at one time it was enough to be silent on the issue of gay equality: “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Silence is no longer sufficient. Our unity and social progress depend decisively on our vigorous defense of civil rights and equal access to social benefits for everyone. Together we can deliver a blow to the far right by defending equality for lesbian, gay and transgendered people. Say no to the Federal Marriage Amendment; say yes to equality for lesbian, gay and transgendered people.

Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs. He can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.

Whats a CEO worth?

Fri, 12 Dec 2003 07:03:00 +0000

Opinion

I’ve had the opportunity, just lately, to offer some insight to a couple of very young people entering the work force of the real world for the first time.

Although they are pursuing two very different careers, my observations to both were the same: You can’t start at the top. This is a fact of life that we all face at one time or another, usually with the first paycheck after the first 40 hour work week.

Although I never really expected to be at the top, I never dreamed that the difference in pay, from up above to down below, would be so enormous.

I followed Richard Grasso’s resignation as chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. Grasso is going to get about $135 million in pay and retirement benefits. This caused an uproar which eventually forced his reluctant resignation.

Frankly, if I had that kind of money coming, I wouldn’t be at all reluctant to resign. I was a little worried, but let’s face it, he’s been gone over a month now and I don’t miss him at all.

I looked at Jeffrey R. Immelt, CEO of GE. According to the AFL-CIO website, Immelt’s 2002 compensation package totaled $22,918,357. Maybe a little more if stock options are considered. Of this his salary was $3,000,000, and he received a bonus of $3,900,000.

By GE standards, Douglas N. Draft, CEO of Coca-Cola is underpaid. His 2002 package was just $5,830,785. He only received $1,500,000 in salary, but he got a bonus of $4,000,000.

Haliburton Co. CEO David J. Lesar, in 1992, pulled in a total of $10,284,014 including a bonus of $2,200,000 and a salary of $1,000,000. And then, there’s Wal-Mart.

In 2001, CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. received a salary of $1,123,007, a bonus of $1,784,750 and other miscellaneous monies for a total of $21,740,520. That’s miles and miles from the checkers, the shelf stockers, the secretaries and even the store managers.

These compensation packages are only a tip of the iceberg. At the same time that workers’ retirement savings have suffered through the stock market decline, hundreds of millions of dollars are being stuffed into retirement deals for the executives even though their pay is already way out of line with company performance.

These executives have negotiated retirement benefits that promise a lifetime of income, thousands and thousands of dollars more than what they would get under the retirement plans of their rank-and-file workers.

Many companies have made arrangements that guarantee the benefits to the executives even if the company goes bankrupt or there’s accounting fraud.

Ken Lay, CEO of Enron, got $12,000,000 from an insurance policy that was protected from Enron’s creditors.

How did these salaries get to so out of hand? How much more important than their workers are these people? Once, it might have been measured in thousands, but now it’s measured in millions.

And speaking of millions, a new movie scheduled to be released in December is “Cold Mountain.” This is based on a book by Charles Frazier about the Civil War. Now if there is one historical event that is ours and ours alone, it would be the Civil War. It was fought entirely in the United States. “Cold Mountain,” the book, takes place, for the most part, in the Carolina mountains, and for the other parts, in the southern United States.

The movie, when finished, is expected to cost about $80 million.

They say that’s modest for a movie these days. By the way, the movie will be filmed, with only a few exceptions, in the remote mountains and valleys of Transylvania, Romania.

Reprinted from the Nov. 6 issue of The Labor Paper, published by the West Central Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council, 400 N.E. Jefferson, Peoria, IL 61603. Mary Sheets can be reached at mary@westcentralbct.org.

Mentally ill abandoned by the system

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 07:05:00 +0000

Opinion

Fifty years ago half a million of us lived in public mental health hospitals, some voluntary but many against their will. How is it that today, by some estimates, only approximately 80,000 of us are in these hospitals? And where are the mentally ill today if not in hospitals?

The introduction of successful anti-psychotic drugs in the 1960s meant that the mentally ill could be treated as outpatients in community mental health centers. The resulting massive closure of state mental hospitals, “deinstitutionalization,” was fueled by increasing awareness of the infringement of liberties inherent in involuntary hospitalization. The federal government provided funds for the establishment of community centers. States cut funds for their mental hospitals but declined to provide the money for continuing care and the community center concept died a quick death.

Patients who had spent decades or entire lives in state hospitals now had to fend for themselves. Those who could enter the few community centers or had families to whom they could turn were fortunate. Many found themselves homeless, cut off from the support they had received in the hospitals as well as medication that might enable them to function. Not that state hospitals were country clubs: the care was frequently ineffectual and often brutal. But it could hardly have been more brutal than life on the street, where the mentally ill are often victimized. Only those who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or to others can receive treatment – if they can find it. When they do, it is almost always short-term; released as soon as they are stabilized, they receive no follow-up care.

A generally accepted figure for the number of mentally ill in the general population is 5 percent. Of these perhaps 5 or 10 percent are seriously mentally ill. By contrast, 20 to 33 percent of today’s homeless are thought to be seriously mentally ill. They are far more likely to have been homeless longer than others. They often commit minor offenses in order to be jailed: cycling in and out of jail may not get them treatment, but it provides a place to sleep and a few meals. There the only treatment they receive is that meant to keep them docile and obedient. It can be anything from pepper spray to beatings and chaining. The mentally ill individual may cycle in and out of jail indefinitely depending on the degree of illness and the need for shelter and food or both.

When, homeless or not, their behavior is sufficiently out of touch with reality they often commit crimes of violence which land them in prison. Frequently confined in isolation, they are even less able to function than in the outside world. When their aberrant behavior is found to violate prison rules they are further castigated, which only exacerbates their condition. They receive minimal treatment if any at all and, if their conditions worsen so that they become more recalcitrant and violent, they often face beatings, various forms of restraint and further isolation.

In mid-2002 there were approximately 665,500 people in this country’s jails, about a third of the total number of approximately 2,020,000 incarcerated individuals. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report (“Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness”), “somewhere between 8 and 19 percent of prisoners [between 161,600 and 383,800 individuals] have significant psychiatric or functional disabilities.” The report cites the American Psychiatric Association (APA) finding that perhaps as many as one prisoner in five is seriously mentally ill. Of these more than 70,000 are psychotic.

It may be less expensive as well as better for the mentally ill to be treated in a community facility; it is far more expensive to “treat” them in prison or jail – consider overtime by guards, hospital stays, broken property and cleanup of biohazards like blood and feces. The average jail prisoner costs a jurisdiction around $90 a day; a mentally ill prisoner may cost the taxpayer as much as 10 or 12 times that. And this cost is not for treatment but rather for containment.

Prisons and jails have become warehouses for the mentally ill. According to the APA, some 700,000 mentally ill are processed annually in the criminal justice system. It has been estimated that between 25 and 40 percent of our mentally ill will eventually be processed. The number of imprisoned mentally ill is three times the number hospitalized, according to NAMI, (formerly the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill). Incarceration under any circumstances is difficult; for the mentally it often becomes torture plain and simple. This situation can only raise once again the question: just what are our national priorities?

Julia Lutsky is a reader in New York City. She can be reached at blaine.jack@prodigy.net.

Bush administration resurrects J. Edgar Hoover

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 06:53:00 +0000

Opinion

As the right wing in the U.S. is in lock-step in its attempted march back in time, using twisted reasoning for public consumption, a report from The New York Times lets us know that the tactics of McCarthyism and COINTELPRO are being revisited. COINTELPRO was the name of the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program, used to hammer the Black liberation and progressive movements in the ’60s and ’70s into submission or obliteration by dirty tricks, wiretaps, slander, “legal” railroading, and outright murders by police.

“FBI Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies,” written by Eric Lichtblau in the Nov. 23 edition of the Times, tells us nothing we don’t already know, but it is now in the “newspaper of record” that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and the Bush administration are attempting to slander the exercise of First Amendment rights in antiwar protests by alluding to those protests as being possible “terrorist” threats.

The first paragraph of the article states, “The [FBI] has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to a confidential bureau memorandum.” The FBI memo, which was circulated on Oct. 15, 10 days before thousands took to the streets in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, is viewed as the first corroboration of a “coordinated nationwide effort to collect intelligence regarding demonstrations.”

The memo spoke of “training camps” used by protest organizers to prepare for demonstrations. Using the term “training camps” in the context of antiwar protests is a deliberate attempt to tie in protests with terrorism. American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero responded, “The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is [being] blurred, and I have serious concern about whether we’re going back to the days of Hoover.” Romero referred to former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who, in his tenure as director in the ’60s and ’70s, ordered his agents to spy on dissenters including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Times reporter Lichtblau wrote, “Civil rights advocates, relying largely on anecdotal evidence, have complained for months that federal officials have surreptitiously sought to suppress the First Amendment rights of antiwar demonstrators.”

Critics of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq have sued the federal government to find out what their names were doing on a “no fly” list. That list is used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding airplanes. Does being a critic of imperialism make one a “terrorist”? To protest against a war that is creating more terrorists is to be very anti-terrorist. To protest against a war that has seen innocent Iraqi civilians terrorized by “shock and awe” and “Operation Iron Hammer” is to protest against terrorism coming from the U.S.

IraqBodyCount.net (IBC) keeps a running tally of the dead and wounded in Iraq. As of IBC’s October tally, more than 9,000 innocent civilians had been murdered by the U.S. That’s terrorism on a massive scale.

Civil rights advocates have also complained that the federal government and local authorities in Denver and Fresno, Calif., in a replay of Hoover’s COINTELPRO, have been spying on antiwar protesters and infiltrating planning meetings.

With logic twisted into a shape reminiscent of that pretzel White House Resident Bush said he choked on, the FBI memo, in discussing demonstrators’ “innovative strategies,” including Internet usage, said strategies such as videotaping arrests were a means of “intimidation” against the police.

The facts are straightforward. We have the right to protest. We have an obligation to make our voices heard in the fight against imperialist war. No one should be intimidated by the Times report, which may have been its purpose.

The next time I’m at an antiwar meeting, I’ll be sure we save seats for the FBI. After all, most antiwar protesters, those fighting for peace in the world, know the games the right wing gets into. We won’t be swayed. We must stop the occupation of Iraq, bring the troops home, and stop the killing done for capitalist power and profit. Ain’t nobody going to turn us around. Let them scrutinize that.

The author can be reached at bjhope215@yahoo.com.

Medicare: It aint over til its over

Fri, 05 Dec 2003 04:22:00 +0000

News Analysis

Although the Medicare bill that squeezed through Congress purports to provide relief to some seniors, it also gives big pharmaceutical companies nearly free reign to fleece taxpayers with exorbitantly priced drugs.

The AFL-CIO said the measure, which cleared the Senate by a vote of 54-44 on Nov. 25, “moves Medicare toward privatization, forces 32.5 million beneficiaries to pay higher out of pocket costs, opens the door for $139 billion in additional profits for the pharmaceutical industry, prohibits the government from negotiating lower drug prices and does nothing to rein in soaring drug prices.”

A beneficiary would be responsible for the first $250 in drug costs each year. Of the next $2,000, Medicare would cover 75 percent and the beneficiary would pay $500. The beneficiary would then be responsible for all of the next $2,850 in drug costs.

A provision that would have allowed seniors to buy drugs from Canada was stricken, meaning that Medicare beneficiaries will be forced to pay – and the government will be forced to subsidize – whatever the companies charge. The Congressional Budget Office says annual spending of the new benefit would start at $26 billion in 2006, rising to $73 billion in 2013.

An analysis of the bill shows that 50 percent of the over-65 population would face pharmaceutical expenses too low to reap any benefits from the program in 2006, the first year of the new program.

Take, for instance, individuals who expect to need $700 in prescription drugs in 2006. If these persons buy into the proposed drug benefit plan, they will first pay a total of $670 for the plan premium ($420) and the deductible ($250). For expenditures exceeding the deductible but below $2,250, the new Medicare Part D covers 75 percent of the costs – meaning these enrollees would spend about $112.50 in co-payments for their $700 worth of medication. Ultimately, those under Medicare Part D would shoulder a total cost of $782.50 ($112.50 co-pay plus $670 in premium and deductible), while those without the plan would have simply spent $700 on their drugs.

Interviews with seniors as reported in the press showed little enthusiasm for the legislation. Under the new legislation insurance companies could offer variations of the standing drug benefit, meaning that many beneficiaries fear they would need lawyers to figure out the new benefits.

Many fear the Republican bill will harm senior citizens, and they say the AARP – the nation’s most influential retiree lobby, with 35 million members – sold them out.

The bill “destroys one of the most successful programs in the history of this country,” Isaac Ben Ezra, president of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, said as he led a demonstration of about 40 people against the bill. “Shame, AARP,” the marchers chanted.

AARP CEO William Novelli said between 10,000 and 15,000 members have quit the group over the bill.

The law sets up competition between traditional Medicare and private plans, beginning in 2010. Activists worry that could lead to the privatization of Medicare and place the elderly in the hands of “insurance sharks” more concerned about profits than quality medical care. Elderly people have also questioned the AARP’s motives, because it has a for-profit arm that earns royalties from the sale of health insurance.

Sam Oser, a 77-year-old retiree in West Palm Beach, Fla., organized a protest in his retirement community and burned his AARP card. “The more we thought about the Republican plan – the more we thought about it, the angrier we got and we felt the AARP was really selling us out,” he said.

Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance of Retired Americans, charged the Bush administration and Congress with callously using a much needed and long awaited prescription drug program to privatize Medicare. “They may say they are looking out for seniors but seniors won’t be fooled. They know a lemon when they see it and the GOP is offering seniors a lemon of a bill.”

Paul Krugman, an economist who writes for the New York Times, points out that drug company stocks have soared since the bill’s details became public.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) called the document a “partisan effort that embodies the [Bush] administration’s right wing ideology and its desire to fuel the profits of the rich and powerful. … The bill is a calculated program to unravel Medicare, to privatize it and to force senior citizens into the cold arms of HMOs.”

The legislation becomes fully effective in 2010, meaning that nothing is yet set in stone. The fight over its implementation faces three national elections – 2004, 2006 and 2008 – and there are certainly opportunities to repeal its worst features. The time to get started is now.

The author can be reached at fgab708@aol.com.