People Before Profit blog

Editorial: Young women under attack

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

It is appalling and cruel that anti-democratic anti-abortion forces, including the Bush Justice Department, are attacking the rights of young women, often the victims of rape and incest.

On Nov. 30, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving a New Hampshire law that prevents doctors from performing an abortion for a young woman under the age of 18 until 48 hours after a parent has been notified. Contrary to 30 years of Supreme Court precedent, the law contains no medical emergency exception to protect a pregnant teenager’s health. Lower courts struck down the law because of this omission.

New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte appealed that decision, and now the Supreme Court will weigh in.

Under the New Hampshire law, women under 18 who may have been abused by one or both parents are forced to get their permission in order to obtain an abortion. By choosing to take this case to the Supreme Court, anti-abortion groups and New Hampshire officials are effectively putting judges into young women’s bedrooms and doctors’ offices, interfering with their most personal medical decisions.

Currently, 21 states require parental consent for young women under 18 to exercise the abortion option and 13 have parental notification on the drawing boards.

Are young women out of control? According to Planned Parenthood of New England, of the 550 abortions performed in their New Hampshire clinics in 2004, 52 of the patients were under 18. That does not sound like wild in the streets. And what do anti-abortion activists propose to control the behavior of young men? Or has immaculate conception replaced biology?

Young women do require protection, sometimes including state intervention, in instances of crime such as incest, or neglect and poverty. But the Bush administration and its anti-abortion control freaks would expose young women to more, not less, danger.

This case is one of a series of challenges to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that will be decided by the Roberts Court. How the court rules could advance or set back the rights and dignity of women and all Americans.

Katrina exposes crisis in public health

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:40:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) — Hurricane Katrina shows the U.S. public health care system, which is supposed to handle millions of people in event of a calamity, is in great danger, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association and a former Maryland secretary of public health said.

Benjamin issued this dire warning at a health care symposium sponsored by the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees on Nov. 9. He challenged unions, and indeed the entire country, to do something about it.

Katrina’s devastation wrecked Louisiana’s public hospital system, leveled at least one New Orleans hospital, and left tens of thousands of residents of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama without basic health care services.

“There was a failure beforehand” to plan for catastrophes, Benjamin said. “There was a failure of implementation” of those plans that had been created. And “there was a failure in environmental planning,” which resulted Katrina’s floods releasing poisonous chemicals from many toxic waste sites in the New Orleans area.

You have a real fundamental failure in public health, and this is just the tip of the iceberg in the U.S.,” he warned.

The other panelists — Fire Fighters Occupational Safety and Health Director Patrick Morrison, AFSCME industrial hygienist Denise Bland-Bowles, AFGE communications specialist Adele Stan and AFT/UFT industrial hygienist Ellie Engler — discussed the specific hazards they found in New Orleans after Katrina.

Morrison cited the dangers of water-borne disease to first responders. School district bus drivers had to come back after the flood waters receded, said Bland-Bowles, but “they’re not trained to deal with sludge, slurry and mold.”

Benjamin noted health problems in the wake of Katrina: Were people even safe? Were those still in the city [New Orleans] getting health services? Could people move back into their homes, given all the toxins?” he asked.

Many of the same problems described could recur in other disasters, including hurricanes and terror attacks, the panelists said.

Morrison said that even now, four years after 9/11 — where his union lost 343 New York City Fire Fighters plus their priest when the World Trade Center towers collapsed — telecommunications systems between first responders crashed in Katrina. That failure must be fixed, he warned. The National Incident Response System created after 9/11 “looked great on paper, but it wasn’t there” when Katrina hit, Morrison said.

A second facet of the communications breakdown was failure to get the word to the most-vulnerable groups, particularly the poor, and to help them to move away from danger. “I don’t know where FEMA was. They’re still trying to get organized,” Morrison said.

The public health system - its hospitals and clinics, which were damaged or destroyed by Katrina - is practically the entire health system for the poor in areas such as New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. But public policy in terms of aiding that system and equipping it to treat massive numbers of people in a disaster does not recognize that fact, Benjamin noted. In the Katrina-hit area, Bland-Bowles said, the public health system needs to be completely reconstructed. That would hold true for other disasters, too, panelists added.

When a major city is evacuated and smashed, as New Orleans was, it needs basic public health workers — sanitarians, restaurant inspectors, environmental health specialists — to help ensure it is habitable again. But its own employees are scattered all over the country, the panelists noted. That leaves inspection often in the hands of private industry, which may be unable or unsuited for the job.

The key decision is whether to restore mold-devastated buildings, or tear them down as completely uninhabitable and build again from scratch. The mold devastation affects not just plaster walls but basic structural supports of buildings, Bland-Bowles said, but many area insurers are resisting findings that buildings must be condemned.

The panelists said that, given federal budget cuts and the Bush administration’s attitudes towards the poor, unions may be left with the task of stepping in and ensuring public health care in future disasters. They also have to stand up and defend public services, which people rely on when disaster hits. We need to be brave enough to fight for those services, despite the catcalls,” Stan concluded.

Cheney seeks sixth deferment

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:34:00 +0000

Veep hopes to secure place in history.

Vice President Dick Cheney announced plans today to seek an historic sixth draft deferment, realizing a longstanding personal dream of his.

Clutching his deferment application in his hand as he addressed reporters at the White House, a beaming Cheney said, “I am so close to getting this sixth deferment I can taste it.”

Washington insiders were surprised that the vice president chose this moment to seek a sixth deferment, with the debate over the war in Iraq at full throttle and Cheney’s lack of military service increasingly a target of his critics.

Furthermore, even without a deferment, Cheney would be unlikely to pass the routine physical necessary to serve in the military, since simple tasks like stepping out of a limousine or shaking hands with dignitaries leave him easily winded.

But according to vice presidential scholar Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, the vice president may be trying to secure his place in history by obtaining his latest deferment.

“FDR will go down in history as the only president elected to four terms,” Mr. Logsdon said. “Dick Cheney wants to be known as the only vice president with six deferments.”

At his White House press conference, the vice president snapped at a reporter who questioned why he was seeking a draft deferment at all when there was no draft at the present time.

“Better safe than sorry,” the vice president said.

Elsewhere, in order to keep details of her wedding from leaking to the press, pop star Christina Aguilera made all of her guests sign a confidentiality agreement and disinvited Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

Greenspan, Bernanke, and the Fed

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:31:00 +0000

The federal deficit is becoming a central point of political struggle. Republicans in Congress are trying to enact a series of cuts in vital programs while extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. In the midst of this struggle, President Bush has been given the opportunity to make an important appointment. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board (the Fed) since 1987, is stepping down in January, and Bush has nominated Ben Bernanke to replace him.

The Fed’s mission

The Fed’s mission includes promoting maximum employment and stable prices, regulating the banking industry to ensure safety and protect consumers, and maintaining the stability of the financial system. Its role has been made to sound uninteresting, technical, and best left to experts. In fact, it means a lot to working families.

Over the last 18 years, Fed chairman Greenspan has cultivated his image as an economic Merlin, assuring prosperity by his astute reading of the economic tealeaves and subtle policy adjustments. Most of the press have played along, giving him credit for everything from U.S. economic prosperity to saving the world from financial meltdown, while allowing him to escape blame for increasing economic insecurity and class polarization.

Most of the commentary on his replacement has focused on the differences in style between Greenspan and Bernanke, on Bernanke’s excellent reputation and qualifications, on the unlikelihood of significant changes in Fed policy. Some have written of the difficult economic problems that will confront the next chair. Virtually all the press promotes the idea that the Federal Reserve and its chair are non-political, doing work of an essentially technical nature.

But far from being non-political, Greenspan has played an important role in the attack on Social Security and in promoting Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. And since before the Greenspan era, the Fed has largely ignored its mission of promoting maximum employment, and on occasion even promotes unemployment as a means to “fight inflation.” Despite evidence to the contrary, the Fed tends to view any increase in wages as a cause of inflation. Justin Fox, writing in Fortune magazine, points out why this is a problem: “There’s still something strange in worrying along with Alan Greenspan whether the employment cost index [ECI] is rising too quickly when the ECI is what we get paid.” In other words, workers are being tricked into supporting measures that keep their wages low, in the name of price stability.

Wall St. vs. Main St.

The Fed has also failed to regulate the banking industry, allowing huge mergers, an explosion of speculation, and a huge growth of predatory and dangerous credit card and mortgage debt. This has meant vast Wall Street profits — at the expense of consumers and of the financial stability the Fed is supposed to protect. In short, whenever there is a conflict of interest between Wall Street and Main Street, the Fed is on the side of Wall Street.

Will things be different with Bernanke?

Will anything be different with Bernanke as the new chair of the Fed? Even critics of Bush’s economic policies welcomed Bernanke’s appointment. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman praises Bernanke as qualified, non-political, and the best possible Republican for the job. “It would be hard to imagine him doing what Mr. Greenspan did: throwing his prestige as the Fed chairman behind irresponsible tax cuts.”

With deference to Krugman, who is a strong and effective critic of the administration’s economic policies, I am skeptical. In fact, on Oct. 20, Bernanke declared his support for the administration’s tax cuts, which many economists see as irresponsible and whose benefits go mainly to the rich and the multinational corporations. Bernanke was speaking as chair of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, a post he accepted in June. To accept a job in the Bush administration is an implicit endorsement of Bush’s policies, which have been a disaster for the working class.

I suppose we should be grateful that Bernanke is neither an incompetent nor a crook. But as Vic Perlo pointed out in this space in 1994, “Isn’t it an outrage that a small group of unelected officials and bank presidents — the “Open Market Committee” of the Federal Reserve Board — can act as the government regulators of the economy? And that their top man, a devotee of spiritualism and doubletalk, is able to mask the real anti-labor goal by talking about inflation while opposing even modest proposals for government caps on drugs and other monopoly goods and services?”

economics at cpusa.org

Bush aims to derail Amtrak

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:30:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — Amtrak’s Board of Directors is engaged in union busting in order to shift the ownership of this valuable public asset over to the Bush administration’s private campaign contributors. This was the charge leveled by Mark Kenney, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) at a rally at the 30th Street Amtrak station here Nov. 16. The situation is heading toward a service shutdown of Amtrak, which would also shut down the commuters who depend upon the Northeast Corridor, according to union rail workers.

For six years, Amtrak has refused to fairly engage in contract negotiations with its unions, holding them in mediation. The major stumbling block is Amtrak’s determination to “slash health care for our disabled workers, real wage cuts for the rest of us and work rule changes that will brutalize working conditions,” said Jed Dodd, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED). Both BLET and BMWED have recently merged into the Teamsters union as part of its rail conference.

The BMWED represents 2,500 employees who construct and maintain the railroad track, buildings and bridges as well as the overhead catenary system for Amtrak’s Northeast corridor. In laymen’s terms, says Dodd, they are the people we see who have those dangerous jobs working on the rails as we pass them by on our train rides.

During the Nov. 16 rally, scores of tractor-trailers and taxis passed, honking their horns. A school bus filled with students honked and most of the students waved and put up their fingers in the victory sign.

At the rally, Kenney called the Amtrak Board of Directors “political patrons of the White House who know nothing about operating a railroad and, in fact, are opposed to the continued operation of Amtrak.” Kenney charged the Bush administration with unraveling the social contract by “deliberately under-funding public education, trying to privatize Social Security, breaking contracts with volunteer soldiers, spreading unnecessary fear and distrust among the American people or killing the Amtrak system.” He added, “We, as rail labor, have no intention of idly sitting by as the handmaidens of the Bush White House attempt to destroy our livelihoods without a battle to rival all others.”

damisbell at aol.com

Gulf Coast Update

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:13:00 +0000

‘Right to return’ Dec. 10 protest

“Just as the government failed to get folks out and people were left to die, they are failing right now to give survivors decent shelter and an opportunity to return,” said William Quigley, law professor at Loyola University New Orleans Law School.

“Our experience in New York City is that FEMA is impeding the process to getting long-term housing,” said Dana Montana of the Atlantis Coalition, an organization of survivors living in hotels in Queens, N.Y.

The coalition is a member of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund. PHRF is organizing a Right to Return March in New Orleans on Dec. 10.

John O’Neal, New Orleans artist and member of the PHRF coordinating committee, said the Dec. 10 march is about rallying the nation’s conscience. “We deserve a place to live and the redevelopment of our communities should not be in the interests of convention centers, petrochemical corporations and gambling that will take all the money out.”

FEMA forced to postpone evictions

Stung by protests charging it was pushing hurricane victims out before the holidays, FEMA extended its hotel housing program by one month for homeless Katrina and Rita evacuees.

An estimated 150,000 people still live in hotel rooms. They have until Jan. 7 to find other housing before the federal government evicts them from the hotels. The deadline is Dec. 15 for 3,700 other households scattered nationwide.

Local officials back the charge that FEMA has been a hindrance in guaranteeing survivors housing. FEMA has been blocking cities like Houston from signing apartment leases on behalf of hurricane victims. Houston has been moving about 400 people a day into apartments from hotels, offering government-financed housing with one-year leases.

Katrina victims caught in insurance nightmare

Silvia I. Cosenza, who lived in Gretna, La., until Hurricane Katrina roared through, says she’s been caught in an insurance nightmare: An insurance adjuster ruled that her neighborhood was not flooded and denied her flood claim.

That came as a surprise to Melmary Matheny, who lives across the street and has already received partial payment on her flood claim and has been told to expect another check soon.

Some 1.6 million people filed insurance claims from Katrina, another 1 million from hurricanes Rita and Wilma. In many cases, homeowners living in areas that were equally flooded have had drastically different experiences.

The federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program, which is operated by FEMA, ultimately pays the claims. Insurance companies are contracted by FEMA to sell and process claims.

Secrecy shrouds claim handling in the $1.3 trillion insurance industry. Insurance companies, which are regulated by the states, are not required to disclose their claims practices, including how quickly claims are processed, how many are denied and for what reasons.

Mold poses serious health risk

Mold is everywhere in flood-ravaged New Orleans and it poses a serious health risk, according to a nonprofit environmental organization.

Citing extremely high mold spore counts gathered in mid-October — both indoors and outdoors — the National Resources Defense Council called on the federal government to provide residents cleaning out their moldy homes with respirators and protective gear. It also urged the government to create an effective mold monitoring system.

Gulf Coast Update is compiled by Terrie Albano (talbano at pww.org).

Human costs of Clevelands school cuts

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:09:00 +0000

The following interview with a Cleveland teacher was conducted on Oct. 31. The teacher’s name was changed at her request.

“Oh, I see you have no life either!” With that grim joke, Cleveland teachers greet each other when they come in to work on Saturdays without pay.

“It’s the only way I can get my room organized and collect my classroom materials for the coming week,” explained Virginia Little, an art teacher at an elementary school. “It’s all about money,” Little added. The words just kept tumbling out of her mouth as she described the catastrophe that has hit her city’s schools.

“Cleveland schools have no money. The referendum for more school funding failed because homeowners can’t afford higher taxes. Charter schools have made it worse. They are run for profit by people who are not educators. When they don’t make a profit they close, right in the middle of the school year. Then we get those students back in the public schools, but they come without money. The state school allotment has already been spent by the charter school that closed.”

“I work all the time,” Little said. “I come home from school exhausted. But I have to do my records at home. It’s the only way I can find time to do the work I really love, interact with the students. By the time I finish my records, I fall asleep. Then it is time to go to work again.”

When Little listed her workload, I exclaimed, “That’s got to be illegal.” She is the art teacher for grades K-8 (kindergarten through 8th grade). That, by itself, means nine different teacher preparations. “And sometimes I have to teach preschool, too,” she added.

“How many students do you teach?” I asked.

“About 500,” Little replied. “It wasn’t always like this. There used to be two art teachers here before the budget cuts. We used to have grades 3 to 5 before the cuts. Then they closed a school for grades 6 to 8 and sent them here. Then we got the K to 3 and preschool when another school closed. That adds to about 500 students I have to teach and grade.

“We still give letter grades, A through F,” Little continued. “Then we have to fill out eight to nine more columns for each student. That includes four columns for academic standards or benchmark levels. Four more columns are for attendance and behavior plus a comments column. We fill out these reports every nine weeks and every four weeks for failing students. The standards are good but I can’t stand the overload. Too many students! Guess I’ll have to look for another job.”

Little is one of the most creative and dedicated teachers I have ever met. To interest her students in a particular artist, she makes slide shows for her classes. The slide shows introduce the artist’s life and times and show examples of his or her work. Then students create their own art in the style of the artist.

To add interest, this talented teacher created a school-wide campaign. She printed campaign buttons with the artist’s portrait and name. The pin was awarded to any student or teacher who answered one of three basic questions about the artist. Soon the whole school was wearing pins and parents wanted them too. On the artist’s birthday, a big party took place. Two huge cakes with icing that traced the artist’s face were displayed. Anyone with a button could get a piece of cake. Parents came too to get their piece of cake. Everyone had a wonderful time.

It is the students and community who will lose if good teachers like Little are forced to quit. But parents and labor-community actions have saved Cleveland schools before. They can do it again.

bealumpkin at aol.com

Battle rages vs. budget cuts

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:52:00 +0000

300,000 each month to lose food stamps under GOP scrooge plan

WASHINGTON — The Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) denounced as a “spectacle of greed” a House vote Nov. 18 to approve $50 billion in cutbacks to food stamps, Medicaid and other vital benefits for the poor coupled with a push for $70 billion in tax cuts for millionaires.

But the House leadership had to twist arms and delay the vote late into the night to gain the razor-thin 217-215 approval of the so-called “Budget Reconciliation” bill. Ellen Teller, a grassroots organizer for the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a group affiliated with CHN, pointed out that the Senate version of the bill is “totally irreconcilable” with the House bill. For example, the House version would terminate food stamp benefits for 300,000 people each month including 70,000 legal immigrants. But the Senate version contains no cuts in the food stamp program.

“You don’t compromise the food stamp program,” she said. “It has performed admirably during the hurricanes and other disasters to take in people who needed the assistance. Our position is ‘No cuts!’ We oppose this budget reconciliation bill.”

CHN leaders called on the 750 organizations in their coalition to redouble the fight to block the cuts when House and Senate conferees meet to try to iron out the differences between the versions, probably after Dec. 12. CHN mobilized such a huge outpouring of messages against the bill in October and November that the GOP leadership admitted they lacked the votes and temporarily pulled the bill from the floor.

“A number of things could happen,” Teller said. “It could die in conference. It could be reported back and rejected on the House or Senate floor. Look at what is at stake: Food stamps. Medicaid. Student loans. Foster care. Drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. So many constituencies are hit by this legislation.”

She warned that the lawmakers may engage in horse-trading, pitting food stamps against Medicaid, for example. “None of us is so myopic as to fall for that,” she said. “Nutrition programs are our piece of the pie. But we support all the programs that serve low-income people.”

A shift by even a handful in the closely divided House could kill the measure, she said. In New York, constituents bombarded the office of Rep. Ed Towns to express their disappointment that he was absent and did not cast a “no” vote on the bill. “And Rep. Randy Cunningham who voted yes is no longer there,” she said, referring to the Republican lawmaker who admitted taking more than $2 million in bribes from Pentagon weapons contractors. He has resigned in disgrace.

In a statement released to the media, CHN charged that the cutbacks will “kick people when they are down and block their efforts to pick themselves up.” The Urban Institute-Brookings Institute Tax Center charged that 53 percent of the tax cuts pushed by President George W. Bush and the GOP leadership will go to the 1 percent with annual incomes above $1 million. “Are you as outraged as we are?” the CHN statement asked. “Tell your House member to vote No on tax reconciliation.”

On Dec. 17, 22 Republican Housemembers stunned the GOP leaders by joining all 201 Democrats in voting 224-209 to kill a separate $142.5 billion spending bill for health, education, labor and other domestic programs in next year’s federal budget, the first revolt by GOP moderates since the Republicans seized majority control of the House in 1994.

Here too the issue was draconian cuts in vital programs, including $1 billion in cuts for health care and the elimination of $7 billion to prepare for a looming Avian flu pandemic. The package also slashed higher education funding by $14.5 billion, neatly offset by the $14 billion in tax giveaways for the profit-bloated oil and gas corporations.

Yet one day later, the GOP leadership succeeded in reversing the votes of a handful of those same moderate Republicans, enough to squeak through the $50 billion cuts by a two-vote margin.

Fear of an angry voter backlash is driving deep splits into Republican ranks as incumbent lawmakers look ahead to the 2006 election. How will moderate Republicans explain to their constituents that they voted to slash food stamps and Medicaid to the poor and dole out $70 billion in tax cuts to the rich when the nation is still reeling from Hurricane Katrina?

Debbie Weinstein, CHN executive director, told the World, “These are issues that directly affect low-income people, whether or not they are going to be able to get food and medical care, foster care for children. These mean-spirited cuts are just not acceptable.”

The programs are “mandatory,” she explained, meaning that money to fund them increases automatically if the need rises with no need for the House or Senate to approve increased spending. “From a human needs perspective, it would be better if they do not act,” she said. “Just let this bill die.”

She urged people to sign an online petition, “Act Now: Emergency Campaign for America’s Priorities” sponsored by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, USAction, and CHN. The petition can be found at www.usaction.org/ecap or at www.unionvoice.org.

greenerpastures21212 at yahoo.com

'Don't Ask Don't Tell' could get military off your campus!

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:31:00 +0000

December 6, Don't Ask/Don't Tell Day of Action. Do you know about the Solomon Amendment? It is the legislation that mandates that colleges will LOSE their funding if military recruiters are not allowed full access to recruit on campuses.

This policy forces schools to allow military recruitment, even though the Pentagon's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy blatantly violates many universities’ anti-discrimination policies.

Well, thanks to the persistence of student activists who have challenged this unfair law, on December 6th the Supreme Court will hear the FAIR v Rumsfeld case, which will determine whether schools have the right to kick recruiters off campus, without losing federal funds.

The students’ message is clear: the military should be kicked off college campuses because it openly discriminates against LGBTQQI people and is NOT an “equal opportunity employer”. On December 6th, as the Supreme Court considers this historic case, we urge students across the country to bring light to the military’s discrimination policies and presence on your campus.

For more info on the court case see .