People Before Profit blog

Religion hits the Iowa race

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:21:00 +0000

It seems to be a whole new race for both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa. This is particularly true for the Republican candidates, who were in a lackluster campaign until Romney, the leader of the pack, saw Huckabee closing in on him from near the back of the pack, and actually nosing ahead by a couple of points. Romney had to do something to stop this momentum.

He and the news media assumed that since Huckabee is a former Southern Baptist minister, while Romney is a Mormon, the Republicans’ hard-core constituency of Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists must be biased against Romney’s Mormon religion.

This was not an unfounded assumption, since the Christian right in general does not consider Mormons to be Christian, regardless of how Mormons identify themselves. Mormons do not consider the Bible to be “without error or contradiction” as do evangelicals and fundamentalists. The Christian right also complains that the Mormon Church has put the Book of Mormon, with its prophesies by Joseph Smith, the church’s “latter day saint” founder, on equal footing with the Old and New Testaments.

In a speech reminiscent of Kennedy’s 1960 speech aimed at overcoming bias against his candidacy as a Roman Catholic, Romney declared, “When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God.” He also implied common ground with his core constituency by adding, “There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessing of the Creator.” When asked about atheists and agnostics, he conceded that some people not of faith are also moral.

Though these words may have assuaged the misgivings of a few, polls taken afterward saw Huckabee widen his lead over Romney’s, with others in the pack far behind. The speech appeared to consolidate the conservative religious base behind Huckabee.

However, there are other factors that may weigh as heavily in the scales as religious bias. Leading up to the startling change in the lead of the two candidates, their differing appearance in debates left a marked impression on Iowans. Romney appeared decisive and presidential, but too sure of himself, like an arrogant CEO with unlimited financial resources. His agenda and demeanor were of someone too dangerous to trust with power.

Huckabee on the other hand looked a little frumpy, but genuine, with a sense of humor, poking fun at himself. With a kind of “down home” charisma, he came across as thoughtful, fair and kindly, not strident or fanatical, with no air of unctuous piety or self-righteousness. However, with a “stay the course” agenda not unlike Romney’s, Huckabee is really more dangerous. His “sincere” demeanor aims to attract not just his Christian right constituency, but the large number of independent voters and “Reagan Democrats.” With the right running mate he could split organized labor’s vote and take away not just Catholic conservatives, but also moderates.

The 2008 election could be a real horse race, and cannot be taken for granted!

Faced with this new turn of events, Democrats will need to come out of the caucuses and primaries united and able to reach out to the missing middle of the electorate. Moderate and progressive Christians, Jews and Muslims have a particularly critical role to play. They recognize that in this incredibly diverse country and world, we must have genuine mutual respect and tolerance in order to live together. Without it we could end up destroying ourselves in wars of religion and environmental devastation.

Moderate and progressive religious groups, in addition to nonreligious groups, can together argue with conviction that our secular political framework is necessary to the common good. We need to put aside our differences and thoughtfully listen to a nation that has rejected endless wars, abhors torture and undermining of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and mourns the resultant loss of hope and community. A better world is possible, and everyone knows it. Most of us know that it won’t happen by “staying the course.” We need to come together, listen to the hurts, speak to the hopes, and make it happen together!

Gil Dawes is a Methodist minister and social justice activist in Iowa.

Where have all the birds gone?

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:01:00 +0000

During the next two weeks, from Dec. 14, 2007, until Jan. 5, 2008, the Audubon Society will conduct the 108th annual Christmas Bird Count across the nation. Last year, nearly 70 million birds were counted by 58,000 volunteers, a record level of participation.

The tradition was founded on Christmas Day, 1900, when a small circle of bird lovers offered the bird count as an alternative to the “side hunt,” a Christmas Day activity in which teams competed to see who could shoot the most birds and small mammals.

The Audubon Society urges everyone to join. Experience is not required. Shotguns must be left at home, which may exclude quail hunter Dick Cheney.

“Each of the citizen scientists who braves snow, ice, wind or rain to take part in the Christmas Bird Count is making an enormous contribution to conservation,” said Geoff LeBaron, director of the program. “Counting is the first step in learning how environmental threats are affecting our birds — and in helping to protect them.”

Counting the birds may be a step toward counting tens of millions of votes next November electing a “bird- and environment-friendly” president, House and Senate.

Wild birds: classic canary in the coal mine

John Flicker, president of the Audubon Society, told a recent news conference that wild birds “are the classic canary in the coal mine,” and when these fine feathered friends are threatened, humanity too is at risk.

Flicker was one of several conservation leaders who joined in the Nov. 28 telephone news session to release Watchlist 2007 prepared jointly by the Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy (ABC). The report identifies 178 bird species in the continental U.S. and 39 species in Hawaii threatened with extinction. The People’s Weekly World participated in the telephone hookup.

Habitat loss puts birds at risk

“We care about birds and we care about the environment we share with them,” said Flicker, adding that 26 percent of the birds in the report are on the “Red List” facing “imminent risk of extinction.” The cause, he said, is habitat loss, including destruction of wetlands, competition with invasive species, real estate development, urban sprawl, oil and gas extraction, and global warming.

“For Watchlist birds, the clock is ticking,” he said. “We need to take action at every level to pull these species back from the brink of extinction.”

ABC President George Fenwick told the news conference, “We can do much more. Conserving birds should be nonpartisan.” What is needed, he added, is the establishment of more wild bird reserves and increased funding for the Migratory Bird Conservation Act. He also called for government action to curb climate change and the use of pesticides and herbicides.

Greg Butcher, director of Audubon’s Bird Conservation Program, said, “Human actions continue to put bird species and the environment we share with them in jeopardy.” He cited the Gunnison sage grouse, its range restricted to southwest Colorado and adjacent Utah; the lesser prairie chicken, its numbers dwindling in the Midwest and Southwest; and the reddish egret along the Gulf Coast. All will “will fade into extinction” without quick action to save them.

Politics of funding

Yet none of these birds has been given the protection of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), despite determined efforts by bird lovers to convince the federal government to add them to the list.

“It’s astounding to us that several of these species are so close to the edge but haven’t even received Endangered Species Act protection,” Butcher said. “This list is a reminder that we need to act and act now. Unfortunately, there has been a complete halt to adding to the ESA list under the current administration.”

Butcher said petitions were submitted urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add the Gunnison sage grouse to the ESA list. But the Bush administration “mistakenly” rejected the request. “Underfunding of the ESA blocks enforcement,” he added. “There just isn’t enough money to implement it.”

Scandals at Fish and Wildlife Service

A reporter asked about the scandals engulfing Julie A. MacDonald, President Bush’s choice to head the Fish and Wildlife Service. She was forced her to resign last April. “Corruption in the Department of the Interior may have contributed to this [sage grouse] decision,” replied David Pashley, ABC’s director of conservation programs.

He was referring to revelations that MacDonald rejected the findings of an Interior Department inspector general that the sage grouse be given ESA protection on grounds that their habitat was being destroyed in vast parts of the Rocky Mountain west by oil and gas drilling. Adding the sage grouse to the ESA list would have meant curtailing oil and gas corporations from drilling on federal lands. She leaked the inspector general’s internal document on the sage grouse to oil, gas and mining lobbyists.

In another case, MacDonald demanded that Fish and Wildlife scientists reduce the nesting range of the endangered Southwest willow flycatcher to a radius of 1.8 miles from their recommended 2.1 miles so that it would not cross into California where her husband has a ranch.

Twice MacDonald leaked internal documents on EPA water quality to individuals whose e-mail address ended in chevrontexaco.com.

She also leaked internal Fish and Wildlife documents to the rabidly right-wing, pro-oil, pro-mining, and pro-timber-cutting Pacific Legal Foundation, which has filed repeated lawsuits against the Endangered Species Act.

When she stepped down, Kieran Suckling, policy director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said, “Julie MacDonald’s reign of terror over the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is finally over. The Endangered Species Act and scientists everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief.”

But eight months after she was gone, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their oily cronies still stand in the way of protecting endangered wildlife.

Western mountain states face biggest threats

During the telephone news conference, a reporter from Billings, Mont., asked about the level of threat to birds in his region. Flicker replied that the “Inter-Mountain West is the most threatened region due to energy development. There is an exceptionally high correlation between gas development and loss of habitat with the sage grouse and other nesting birds at risk.”

Butcher added, “Looking closely at Colorado and Wyoming, where huge numbers of leases of oil and gas lands have been approved, nesting grounds are being extremely disrupted by oil and gas development.”

He added, “The entire rancher type of living is being threatened by excessive development.”

The speakers stressed that the refusal to enforce the ESA and fully fund federal conservation programs is especially tragic — or outrageous — because they have proven so effective.

There is good news

“The good news is that people can make a difference,” Butcher said. Several species granted ESA status “now show stabilizing or even increasing populations.” Pashley concurred, telling the reporters, “The Watchlist sounds a real warning but fortunately, when we put our minds and laws to it, as we did with the bald eagle, whooping crane, and California condor, we can make a difference.” All these birds are making a slow but steady recovery, although only the bald eagle is a candidate for removal from the ESA list.

This is the second grim report on the status of birds in 2007. Last June, Audubon released a report titled “Twenty Common Birds in Decline” showing that “some of America’s most familiar and beloved birds have taken a nosedive over the past 40 years, with some down as much as 80 percent. Overall, the 20 species’ populations have plummeted at least 54 percent since 1967.”

The list includes the northern bobwhite, evening grosbeak, common tern, eastern meadowlark, rufous hummingbird, whippoorwill, and little blue heron.

Bird watchers organize

This reporter asked the participants in the news conference if bird conservationists are attempting to make bird conservation an issue in the 2008 elections, to demand that presidential and congressional candidates spell out how they will save wild birds. Flicker replied that volunteer activists at the Audubon Society’s network of 500 local chapters “are showing up at town hall meetings to raise these issues all the way up to the federal level.” The society is sending organizers “around the country to mobilize people to create a sense of urgency on these issues.”

Greg Butcher said the number of bird watchers and bird lovers across the nation is between 40-60 million, more even than the membership of the AARP. “The bird conservation alliance has to get people who are about birds engaged in the political process,” he added.

Tim Wheeler (greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com) is the national political correspondent for the People’s Weekly World/Nuestro Mundo.

Coal company keeps miners on street for holidays

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:28:00 +0000

PITTSBURGH — Despite a rare, pro-labor ruling from the National Labor Relations Board, union coal miners who once worked at the Mammoth Mine in Kanawha County, W.Va., near Charleston, have still not been allowed to return to work.

Although the mine is operating, the unionized coal miners — roughly half the workforce until three years ago — lost their jobs when the previous owner Horizon went bankrupt and the mine was bought by Massey Energy. Massey quickly weeded out the union members and reopened the mine as a nonunion operation.

Late last month, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Paul Bogas ruled that Massey had discriminated against the union miners, members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), because of their union affiliation.

The evidence presented by the union on behalf of the miners was so compelling that Judge Bogas was forced to rule in their favor. One smoking gun was a spreadsheet provided to Mammoth Mine’s Human Relations Director Kevin Doss by Massey official Jeff Gillenwater detailing the “union time” of every miner. Eighty-five miners lost their jobs based on this data.

According to NLRB documents, Bogas ordered the company to rehire the miners, pay back wages and bargain with the union.

In his ruling following a 16-day trial, Bogas wrote that a bankruptcy court’s earlier decision to toss out the union contract at the Mammoth Mine when Massey bought it was unjustified. Bankruptcy does not grant a green light to new owners to break the union, he wrote. His ruling goes against a longstanding interpretation of the law that dates back to the Reagan era.

The judge further noted that since the mine became nonunion, production at the Mammoth Mine has fallen from 35 tons a day per miner in 2003 to 23 tons per miner today.

But the coal miners see this important and rare victory as bittersweet. The NLRB process allows Mammoth Energy to appeal the decision and keep the union miners out of work.

“If things went as the Lord intended, those miners would be back at work for the holidays, but they are not,” UMWA spokesman Phil Smith said in a phone interview with the World. “All 160 miners at Mammoth would be working under the 2002 agreement right now, and we would meeting with Massey working out terms negotiated under our new contracts. That is not the case.”

Even with Bogas’ favorable ruling, Smith blames the NLRB for a pattern of anti-union decisions. “This is a unique decision,” said Smith, “but the NLRB has been a mess for years and is only getting worse. It was supposed to promote collective bargaining; now it busts unions.”

“We are fighting back, injunction ready, to get union miners back to work,” he said. “We will go through the court, but it is the fight on the ground that makes the difference. Our new contracts represent progress, but that only came after the tremendous strike against Foundation Coal right there in Pennsylvania.”

The new five-year contracts between the UMWA and the Bituminous Coal Operators Association, signed in July, raises wages to a top rate of $24.42 by the end of the agreement in 2011, increases pensions and preserves full health care coverage for active and retired miners. Co-payments for health care are frozen.

In an era where raises are unheard of and health care a distant memory, the new contracts for workers who keep the lights on and the steel rolling stand out.

The impact of decent, unionized jobs on small, struggling communities throughout Appalachia is a sparkling light, a season of hope, at the end of long, dismal tunnel.

dwinebr696 @aol.com

Unions bring holiday cheer in hard times

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:26:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio — For over two decades, unions here have mobilized during the holiday season to give food and children’s gifts to needy families. This year, however, the campaign was bittersweet. The hundreds of union volunteers who braved the brutal cold to get the gifts out at the big United Auto Workers Local 969 hall on the city’s west side had heard that the Delphi plant where the local’s members worked was being closed.

“It’s especially hurtful this time of year,” said Mark Sweazy, Local 969 president, “but it would hurt anytime. At one time we had over 5,500 workers here. We made door latches, but worked on all sorts of infrastructure related items.”

“It’s just so damned ridiculous,” he said. “We have bridges failing, people that can’t get homes. We need roads, transport, schools and hospitals, but all this government wants to spend money on is a damned war that nobody wants. It’s driving us to disaster! They’re taking jobs overseas at the very time we most need to rebuild our own nation.”

Asked what needed to be done to change things for the better, Sweazy responded, “We need a revolution! At very least, we need someone like FDR as president. Someone who’d put people back to work building things we really need. Rebuild the infrastructure — we all go back to work and we rebuild our nation.”

Despite bitter cold and a major blizzard, volunteers from all the unions in the area flocked to the UAW on Dec. 15 hall to help pack food, wrap packages, direct traffic and hand out the boxes.

Nearly 3,000 families, mostly nonunion, piled into the long lines to get the union gifts.

At the lunch break, steelworker Dave Caldwell, president of the Columbus Central Labor Council, read a card one of the recipients had given him. “Our family is so grateful to all of you,” it read. “Without the union’s help we wouldn’t have a Christmas this year.”

He added that, while organized labor had been doing this mobilization every year since 1982, this year was by far the largest. “Without organized labor,” said Caldwell, “people in many cases would have nothing because of what these corporate Republicans have been doing to us. We must use this as a boost to get ourselves organized to beat them next year.”

Even with the tough times this year, the mood was festive and optimistic. Kim Joseph, an AFSCME member who works for Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency, said she was having a wonderful time. “I just love the camaraderie!” She is a Steelers fan who moved to Columbus from Pittsburgh a decade ago. “This is the only time I’ve seen Browns and Steelers fans get along,” she laughed.

Ohio is one of the economically hardest hit states, having lost nearly 300,000 jobs since George W. Bush took office. Ohio leads the nation in foreclosures. Besides the Delphi closing in Columbus, Lazarus and Shottensteins department stores have closed. Management at the Buckeye Steel mill here used a phony bankruptcy to break the union and steal workers’ health care and pensions.

As the gifts were distributed, Walt Workman, executive secretary of the Franklin County Central Labor Council, said, “People this year are just more appreciative than ever before.” He commented, “This started with just a few folks, but it has become huge. All the area unions are now helping out, sending volunteers and donations. Unions even approach local businesses for donations. The past six-seven years it’s gotten so much worse, with jobs being shipped overseas. People are more in need, and it’s great to see all the unions pitching in to help.”

Among the local volunteers were Lien and Van Nguyen. Vietnamese immigrants and local business owners, they’ve both been volunteering for the past few years. Not only that, but they are now returning to Vietnam every year and working with unions on similar projects there. “We just feel that we should give back to our community,” said Lien. “We just love working with people. We feel lucky to be able to help out.”

Transport worker Andre Jordan, a longtime activist in the inner-city community, spoke for everyone when he said, “I get a great feeling working with the unions, helping people out, but I’ll feel a whole lot better when we change things and we don’t have to do this. In this rich country, we shouldn’t have to do this!”

House and Senate OK budget that falls short on human needs

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:16:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Millions of children, senior citizens, sick and disabled people will suffer because President Bush and his Republican allies in Congress blocked increased funding for low-income programs contained in a domestic spending bill approved this week.

“Those in Congress who stand pat with the president’s cuts are voting to inflict more harm on millions and to reject investments in our future,” the Coalition on Human Needs charged in a statement.

The coalition made that charge as the House voted 253-154 to approve $516 billion in domestic spending for 14 non-military Cabinet agencies. The Senate followed suit Dec. 18, approving the domestic spending package. They voted 70-25 to add $70 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars without language requiring troop withdrawal. Democratic lawmakers, unable to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override Bush’s repeated vetoes, were forced to accept his $933 billion ceiling on all domestic spending to avoid being blamed for shutting down the government.

The Democrats had attempted to increase funding for human needs programs by $27 billion, or about 7 percent. Bush claimed those increases were “wasteful” and insisted on less than 1 percent increases, far below the inflation rate.

But Bush ramrodded his $459.3 billion 2008 Pentagon budget through and signed it into law last Nov. 13. It was $42 billion, or 9.7 percent, higher than the current Department of Defense budget. It did not include $194 billion Bush has requested for the Iraq-Afghanistan wars.

Adam Hughes, an analyst for OMB Watch, a group that tracks the federal budget, told the World that Bush’s $933 billion ceiling is “disingenuous, to put it mildly. Actually he is flat out lying.” Add $516 billion in domestic spending and $459 billion in the DoD budget. It comes to $975 billion, $42 billion higher than his ceiling. The $42 billion is “emergency supplemental war spending.”

“Bush does not count that against his ceiling,” Hughes said.

Coalition on Human Needs Executive Director Deborah Weinstein rejected attempts to pillory the Democratic leadership for bowing to Bush intransigence. Bush’s vetoes, and votes by a majority of Republicans to sustain those vetoes, have been the GOP’s election-year strategy from the beginning, political observers have noted. They calculate that their obstructionism will sow anger and frustration against the Democrats.

“We place the blame squarely on the president and his followers for the downward adjustments in these vital programs,” Weinstein told the World. She praised the House and Senate leadership for adding emergency funds for several urgently needed benefit programs. The Democratic leaders saved the Commodity Supplemental Food Program’s “Meals on Wheels” that delivers box meals to half a million low-income elderly each day. Bush attempted to terminate the program. They provided $654 million for the Community Action Program that helps the poor, which Bush also wanted to terminate. Congress also added $2 billion more in federal funding for education programs and increased funding to benefit veterans by $3.7 billion.

“In many instances, the House leaders have tried to protect human needs programs,” Weinstein added. “They actually increased funding for the WIC nutrition program and LIHEAP home heating above what they had earlier approved because of increased need.”

She blasted Bush’s cuts as “shameful” and praised the broad coalition of unions, low-income groups and faith organizations for struggling over many months to expand these vital programs, including the SCHIP children’s health program. “We will come back next year and work for the improvement that children and the elderly and working families need,” she said.

The “guns vs. butter” federal budget battle now looms over the 2008 presidential and congressional elections, Weinstein said. “We have read the polls and they show that the people are worried about the economy, the uncertainty over affordable housing, and health care. They want leaders who will allow our nation to move forward on these issues and not backward. We need more secure housing and health care, and not do what the administration has done which is to make the people less secure.”

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

Auto mileage to rise, but Big Oil keeps grip on Congress

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:15:00 +0000

The Senate voted almost unanimously Dec. 13 to raise car and truck fuel economy standards for the first time in 30 years. The bill, passed 86-8, requires a 40 percent increase in fuel economy for U.S. vehicles, to an average of 35 miles a gallon by 2020.

It is considered a landmark step toward cutting greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to taking some 60 million cars off the road. Sixty percent of the oil consumed in the U.S. is for car and truck fuel.

The House quickly passed the bill on Dec. 18, 314-100, and it was signed into law by President Bush on Dec. 19.

But to get passage of the measure, the Senate’s Democratic leadership dropped two key environmental provisions that were blocked by a Republican filibuster. The two provisions were strenuously opposed by the oil, gas and electric utilities industries.

One would have provided $22 billion in tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, as well as for fuel cell and “clean” coal technology development. Much of it would have been funded by repealing oil industry tax breaks to the tune of approximately $12 billion.

The other provision would have required utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.

Both provisions were part of an energy bill previously passed by the House over Republican objections.

Although the Senate voted 59-40 to end the GOP filibuster, it was one vote short of the 60 required.

League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski hailed raising vehicle fuel standards as a “significant first step.” But, he said, “at a time when the oil industry is enjoying near-$100-per-barrel oil and record profits,” the Senate had, by one vote, “sided with Big Oil and against the American people and the environment.”

Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said it “shows the extent to which the oil and fossil fuel industries hold sway over the U.S. Senate.”

“Apparently, lawmakers didn’t want to bite the oil industry hand that feeds them,” Claybrook said in a statement. “The 40 senators who voted against advancing the [original] bill have accepted $7 million in campaign contributions from oil companies, PACs and executives since 2001.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) commented, “The oil companies are now celebrating in their boardrooms. Not only do they have the highest profits in history, they continue to have a death grip on this Senate.”

For the 2006 elections, with Republican control of Congress on the line, oil and gas corporations gave $20 million to candidates for federal office and 82 percent went to Republicans, according to the watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics. Exxon Mobil alone gave over $800,000, 90 percent of it to Republicans.

For the 2008 election cycle, oil and gas industry donations as of the end of October were going nearly 75 percent to Republicans.

The American Petroleum Institute claimed that repealing the industry’s tax breaks would be “counterproductive in that it takes capital away from expanding domestic oil and natural gas production and refining capacity.” The oil lobby organization produced a 30-page report threatening that the measure would have “significant adverse effects on the economy and consumers — including nearly 5 million lost jobs and $1 trillion in lost economic output.”

In testimony to Congress last May, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program, debunked these claims, documenting how U.S. oil companies are raking in profits hand over fist and devoting the bulk of those profits to enriching their shareholders, rather than expanding energy supplies or developing alternative energy.

Slocum called for repealing government subsidies to the industry “with the proceeds invested in renewables, alternative fuels, energy efficiency and mass transit.”

Also lobbying heavily against the tax and renewable electricity provisions were the Edison Electric Institute, which represents electric utility companies, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce and the paper, mining, petrochemical and refining industries.

Auto companies grudgingly supported increasing vehicle fuel efficiency standards this time, after having long battled such moves. Slocum noted that raising the fuel standards could actually benefit the auto industry by making it produce cars that meet consumer concerns about fuel economy and the environment.

The bill passed by the Senate also requires a fivefold increase in biofuel production and tightened energy efficiency standards for government buildings and consumer products. Some environmentalists criticize the focus on biofuels, saying production of biofuels like ethanol actually creates greenhouse gases, and use of food crops such as corn for fuel drives up food prices.

suewebb @pww.org

What likely Iowa caucus goers have to say

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 08:12:00 +0000

As the race for the 2008 presidential elections gains momentum, the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses are right around the corner. They can make or break candidates for the Democratic and Republican Party nominations.

In the most recent poll taken by the Des Moines Register, Sen. Barack Obama leads Democrats with 28 percent in Iowa. Sen. Hillary Clinton has 25 percent, and John Edwards has 23 percent. Mike Huckabee leads Republicans with 29 percent. Mitt Romney has 24 percent, and Rudy Giuliani has 13 percent.

Voters and activists in Iowa say there are many issues that will determine how caucus goers cast their votes.

Virgene Martin is a fourth generation family farmer of crops, cattle and hogs on 1,500 acres of land in Bridgewater, Iowa, 63 miles southwest of Des Moines. She said major hog-farm corporations are trying to build their “factory farms” in her hometown, causing a major concern for her and other family farmers. “They’re just in it for the money and running family farms out of business,” she said.

Martin is also concerned about the stench and possible airborne diseases that such hog factories can produce.

At a recent presidential forum held in Iowa, Martin asked John Edwards what he would do for family farmers against big corporations. Edwards favors a federal moratorium on the expansion of corporate hog-farm factories, she said.

Martin said she is going to support either Edwards or Obama. “It’s going to be a hard decision,” she said. She added, “It’s important voters get involved now and investigate who is funding the candidates, especially if it’s big corporations.”

“Don’t wait until a disaster comes to your county — it’s important to participate and be active in your community,” she said. Martin expects the Iowa caucuses to have one of the biggest turnouts in years.

Erica Palmer is a community organizer with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. She works for the Latinos in Action chapter based in Marshalltown, a community of about 26,000 people that is 20 percent Latino, of whom a large majority are immigrant families.

Palmer said Marshalltown was put on the map a year ago when immigration officials raided a local meatpacking plant and arrested over 90 workers. The following week, officials also raided many homes.

“The No. 1 issue is immigration reform,” said Palmer. “After the raids, the fear took over within the immigrant community such as going to work, going to school, or even going shopping.”

Palmer said the current immigration system is inadequate and needs to be fixed. She added that immigrant workers deserve a pathway to citizenship and that the raids and the resulting separation of family members, along with anti-immigrant town ordinances, are not the solution. Addressing national security after 9/11 is important, but targeting immigrants doesn’t make any sense, she said.

“Immigrants bring new life to our communities, and we’re sending the wrong message that we don’t want them here,” said Palmer.

Lois Crilly, who is unemployed, is active in the fight for universal health care in central Iowa. “Its time has come,” she said. “There is so much pressure now from voters.”

Crilly said more and more health care programs are underfunded, causing workers who want to retire early to hold back from doing so because they can’t afford to pay health insurance premiums, deductibles or co-payments. “More and more of the burden in paying for health care is going to the people who have the least ability to pay for it,” she said.

Crilly said Medicare is another big issue in Iowa. “Medicare is a runaway for fraud and abuse by health care providers,” she said. Crilly believes the average Medicare recipient now pays more for prescription drugs than for doctor visits.

Another important issue is environmental safety, including clean water and air, according to Dawn Jorgensen, a Des Moines teacher. Jorgensen hopes the next president can implement changes needed to stiffen laws on air pollution in Iowa.

Environmental protection is an issue for everyone, said Jorgensen. “Right now, some of the issues being passed in Congress only benefit corporate profits and not the environment,” she said.

“The upcoming elections will affect everybody,” Jorgensen said. “However, it would be nice to continue to get all the attention we’re getting now in Iowa after the caucuses are over.”

plozano@ pww.org

Bulletin from New Orleans: 3 Public Housing Demolitions Halted!

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:19:00 +0000

But threat remains - struggle heats up

Coalition to Stop the Demolitions Update and Mobilization Statement

Your Help Needed!

The Coalition to Stop the Demolitions would like to thank all of our allies and supporters throughout the United States and the world who came and stood with us in New Orleans or took action on the streets your city, or who called, emailed, or faxed the New Orleans City Council, Mayor Ray Nagin, Senator Vitter, the Senate Banking Committee members, etc. Your support played a pivotal role in helping us attain the victories we accomplished last week in halting the demolition of three of the four major public housing locations in New Orleans.

However, the fight is far from over and we still need your help. Despite our victories in both State and Federal Courts last Friday, we recognize that it is quite possible that we might lose the City Council vote on Thursday, December 20th by a decision of four to three (or perhaps even five to two). We are fairly certain that at least three of the white City Council members are going vote against us, including Jacquelyn Clarkson, Stacy Head, and Shelley Midura. There is a possibility that Arnie Fielkow, the current Council President, might vote in favor or abstain in order to not lose favor with a sector of the Black electorate whom he will need to fulfill his Mayoral aspirations. As for those who may stand with us, there are likely only two members who are solid. These are James Carter and Cynthia Willard-Lewis. The third Black Council member, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, is definitely a critical swing vote. We need to put pressure on each and every one of these City Council members between now and the 20th (please stress outreach to Internally Displaced Persons in your area and encourage them to call as a priority).

In addition, the Federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the residents of the St. Bernard was transferred from Washington , D.C. to the US District Court – Eastern District of Louisiana. Based on his past behavior, we do not expect this judge will do anything to stop the demolitions.

What this means is that by Friday, December 21st we may realistically be engaging in our second wave of mass non-violent civil disobedience action. Should this be the case, we are going to need all of our allies and supporters everywhere to be ready yet again to take decisive action to stop these inhumane demolition orders.

Things we foresee as being critical this week:

1. We need to blitz the City Council of New Orleans and demand a. That they vote NO to the demolitions, and b. That they hold a public hearing on the demolitions in the evening so that more working class people can participate. Information on how to contact the City Council is provided below.

2. We need for as many people who can come down to come down to

a. Pack City Council on Thursday, December 20th,

b. Be prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in line with the residents council principles and the coalitions pledge of resistance statement (see for both documents). To engage in this initiative you must register with the coalition at action@peopleshurricane.org.

c. We would also like to encourage Black and other oppressed nationality organizers to come down and help us with outreach, base building, and coalition building work over the course of the next several weeks.

3. We need to continue pressuring Senator David Vitter with calls, faxes, and emails demanding that he support Senate Bill 1668 and allow the bill to move from the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to the Senate for a vote. 4. We need to pressure Senator Mary Landrieu to demand that the Federal government via President George W. Bush and the Justice Department suspend the demolitions until the Federal investigation of Alphonso Jackson is complete. 5. We need to seize these next three days to reframe the struggle to stop the demolition based on the demands of the Coalition (see below). To this end we need everyone to

a. Write letters to the editor for your local news outlets,

b. Blitz the major newsprint, TV, and cable media networks and demand that they cover the issue, and

c. To write articles on the issue based on the Coalitions demands and post them to as many listserves, blogs, and websites as you possibly can.

Finally, we need some resources to carry out this work. Some of the things we need resources for include:

1. The “Stop Da Demolitions” Mixtape made by Sess 4 – 5, Nuthinbutfire Records, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for the Coalition the Stop the Demolition. We need $1,400 to produce and print 2,000 CD’s for youth outreach and education.

2. We also need resources to help with transportation, food, and accommodations for both residents and volunteers.

3. We need resources the cover the Coalitions cell phone expense.

4. We need resources to cover printings (flyers and posters).

5. Finally, we need resources materials to produce banners and other mobilization props.

Donations can be made out to the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition (MDRC) and mailed to P.O. Box 31762 Jackson, MS 39286 . Please indicate on your donation “Coalition to Stop Demolitions”. All donations are tax-deductible.

Our Demands

I. City Council needs to vote NO on demolition. The Council meeting should be moved to an evening time to accommodate people’s schedules and allow a full public hearing on demolition before taking a vote.

II. The mayor needs to meet with the faith leaders who have requested a meeting with him about the housing crisis in the city

III. No Demolitions – reopen the existing units and rebuild dignified housing at former public housing sights.

IV. Guaranteed one-to-one replacement for all public housing residents.

V. All available public housing units should be made available for the homeless and those likely to face homelessness from the pending loss of rent vouchers and trailer recalls.

VI. The Federal government needs to suspend demolition until the investigation of Alphonso Jackson and the contraction process is completed.

VII. Rent Control to provide deeply affordable housing so that all will be able to return to the city.

VIII. Stop the privatization and gentrification of the City.

Resident Principles

I. All Actions should be non-violent.

II. There should be no weapons or drugs at any actions, and no alcohol or drug or weapon possession at any action.

III. No destruction or defacement of resident property.

IV. No coalition meetings without resident knowledge and input.

V. No media without residents or resident knowledge.

VI. Focus on defending public housing and affordable housing in the city for all.

City Council Contact Information

Arnie Fielkow 504.658.1060

Jacquelyn Clarkson 504.658.1070

Stacy Head 504.658.1020

Shelly Midura 504.658.1010

James Carter 504.658.1030

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell 504.658.1040

Cynthia Willard-Lewis 504.658.1050

Monday, December 17, 2007

EDITORIAL: Stop new reality show!

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:16:00 +0000

The Republican presidential candidates are now vying with each other to see who can bash immigrants the hardest. Those who in the past have appeared more pro-immigrant are now jumping on the bashing bandwagon. In 1994, Rudy Giuliani said that undocumented immigrants were an asset to New York City. Now he says he would have deported them all if he could have. Mike Huckabee used to talk about giving undocumented students a break, but his latest position paper is fiercely anti-immigrant. Ron Paul would end the citizenship of U.S.-born children of the undocumented. And the same thing is happening at the level of congressional races, with some Democrats caving into the hysteria.

That the Republicans do this is not surprising. After all, what does the GOP have to show to the electorate after two terms in the White House?

But using immigrants as the collective scapegoat for the Bush administration’s (and capitalism’s) crimes is extremely dangerous. It actually helps those corporate sectors that exploit immigrant workers because it pushes them deeper into the underground economy. With its mass deportations, the Bush administration contributes mightily to this atmosphere of terror.

Workers and progressive people of all races, both immigrants and U.S.-born, must raise our voices and demand an end to this anti-immigrant demagogy. We must encourage all, whether Democrat, Republican or independent, to speak out in support of a humane immigration reform which legalizes the undocumented and expands the rights of all working people.

EDITORIAL: American coup anniversary

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:13:00 +0000

The following is excerpted from a People’s Weekly World editorial on the Dec. 12, 2000, Supreme Court decision re: Bush v. Gore, which started on page one of that edition. As we head into the 2008 presidential elections, we reprint it here to commemorate the seventh anniversary of a “very American coup.”

It didn’t come at the point of a gun. It didn’t come with jack-booted soldiers. It came in lawyers’ suits and justices’ robes. The will of the people may never be known, as the hero of the court, Justice Stevens wrote, but the identity of the loser is perfectly clear.

The American people lost. Democracy was subverted.

It was subverted, as always, by a small grouping of right-wing extremists who knew they couldn’t win the old-fashioned way — by the majority votes of the American people. It came in distorted arguments, confusing the issue, focusing on technical details to make people’s eyes glaze over. Equal protection from hanging chads, they claimed, while the real issues of voting rights were denied.

Voting rights has a long history of struggle in this country. Justice Scalia was right on one thing: Voting rights were not enshrined in the original Constitution. They were fought for. People died for the right.

The original voters were propertied white men, not working-class or poor white men. Only property owners could vote. At that time, some people were property.

Bit by bit, struggle by struggle, it took long years of battles for the rights of workers, women, Blacks and all minorities to win the right to vote. It took struggle and unity of all the disenfranchised to win these rights.

So with some paper and ink, the ideological right-wing majority on the Supreme Court wrote an opinion that seeks to send us back 150 years. As Rev. Joseph Lowery, leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told the Dec. 13, 2000, Tallahassee demonstration, when he likened this ruling to the Dred Scott decision. That was a decision that “went down in infamy,” Lowery said, and this ruling will, too.

The American people won’t let this decision stand. The American people will look back at this election and post-election days as a new moment in the struggle for democracy. It will become clearer which forces stand for democracy and its expansion and which forces stand for subversion and reaction.

No mandate, no honeymoon! People won’t accept cavorting with thieves and liars. George W. Bush may set an agenda to undo Social Security, public education, labor, voting, civil and women’s rights, but people won’t relinquish them.

With the New Year, new Congress and a newly-installed administration there will be new and bigger struggles, with a new kind of multiracial labor and people’s coalition emerging. With this, a historic negative can be turned into a historic positive.

A coup has occurred. The majority-will has been subverted. It was done with right-wing spin doctors, lawyers and judges. It was done with fraud and corruption, racism, anti-Semitism and intimidation. It was a very American coup.

Report: Step up fight vs. AIDS among Latinos

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:54:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Last October the Greater Humboldt Park Community of Wellness, a coalition of health-related groups here, released a report titled “A Call To Action: Regarding HIV/AIDS Among Illinois’ Latino Communities” that investigated the community’s current response to the disease.

The group hopes to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and is calling on community residents and civic leaders to respond to the problem of inadequate funding of the fight against the epidemic in Latino communities in Illinois.

The report says that, nationally, the disease shows no signs of abating. From 1999 to 2001, new HIV infection rates among Latinos increased by 26 percent in the 29 states that confidentially report HIV diagnoses. They reported that the number of Latinos living with AIDS increases by more than 300 every year.

Juana Ballesteros is director of the Humboldt Park group and author of the report. She has also done clinical research with women who are pregnant and HIV-positive.

“You cannot stereotype HIV/AIDS,” Ballesteros said. “It’s not a disease of sex workers, drug users or of gay men.” She said the women she has worked with, most of them African American, are “everyday women who have families and 9-to-5 jobs.”

“They have the right to have families and children who are HIV-negative,” she added.

Ballesteros said over 50 percent of persons who are newly diagnosed as HIV-positive in the U.S. today are African American.

“The purpose of the report is because we know that it’s an epidemic in the Latino community locally and nationally,” she said. “And in the Latino community it is such a stigmatized disease that we can’t even openly discuss it on our own.”

The report identifies four specific actions that government officials, public health groups, service organizations, community members, the media, and individuals and families impacted by HIV/AIDS must consider.

HIV/AIDS awareness, involvement and the visibility of the disease should be increased in the community, says the report. In addition, the report recommends that educational forums be held at all levels to make the community aware of various health-related resources for combating the disease.

Supporting existing community Latino organizations with technical assistance in order to strengthen their work is also recommended.

More funding with larger and multi-year grants, instead of small, annual ones, is also needed in order to increase activities that respond to fighting HIV/AIDS.

Finally, political involvement and active advocacy on the local, state and federal levels that inform elected officials about the factors fueling HIV/AIDS among Latinos and others must be heightened, says the document.

“Elected officials need to be more involved,” said Ballesteros.

Ballesteros said the work is not easy and more prevention messages are crucial including advocacy and funding toward curbing the disease. “This has to go beyond just calling your representatives, people need to work together on all levels with services that already exist in the community.”

This work cannot just be done by the medical community, she said. “The public and private sectors can and must do more to address HIV/AIDS in our community.”

plozano @pww.org

Striking screenwriters refuse to surrender

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:54:00 +0000

Those who think it is only a matter of time before striking screenwriters cave in to the Hollywood producers are not getting what this strike, now supported by two-thirds of the public, is all about. This point was made clear Dec. 7 when talks between the writers and producers broke down.

The strike was expected to be a fight over pay formulas. But the writers have turned it into an epic struggle to force the media conglomerates who control the entertainment industry into ceding some of that control to the workers.

It started when 12,000 television and movie writers, represented by the Writers Guild of America, walked out in November, shutting down a dozen sitcoms and almost all late-night entertainment shows.

At a time when corporations like to portray unions as out for the count, the writers, drawing widespread public support, have struck a blow for solidarity reminiscent of the militant unity that built industrial unions decades ago.

Recent polls by Survey USA and Variety indicate that the 66 percent support for the strike cuts across all sections of the public, and that the majority blame the corporate media for the deteriorating quality of television and movie writing.

“Writers are the Rodney Dangerfields of the TV and movie industries. They get no respect,” columnist Clarence Page wrote recently. “The rest of us walk out of theaters … wondering why some more of the big money that we see up on the screen wasn’t spent on developing better scripts.”

Many issues are on the table in this strike, the guild’s first since its five-month walkout in 1988.

The writers are demanding a tiny 2.5 percent of the money that media conglomerates are making from reusing the writers’ work on the Internet, smart phones, iTunes, movie downloads and other media. The writers also want a bigger share of DVD profits than the 0.36 percent they settled for in 1988, when home video was something new.

The writers are using the new media as a powerful weapon in their battle. They have written and produced clever videos posted on web sites such as strikeswag.com and slashfilm.com. They have titles like “Voices of Uncertainty” and “Why We Fight.” Striking writers from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” have one titled “Not the Daily Show, with Some Writer.”

In “Voices of Uncertainty” on the slashfilm.com site, Sumner Redstone of Viacom brags to investors about “golden opportunities” to make billions from digital technology. A message flashes across the screen: “Golden opportunities not available to writers, strikers or residents of Guam.”

Patrick Vernon, president of the Writers Guild of America West, has said from the beginning that writers must restore leverage lost as corporations took control of the entertainment business. He has described Hollywood as teetering on the brink of a dark age for creativity. Recently he told the press: “I think if they could do business without us, they would, and so they are making our task as mechanical and simple and low paying and unartistic as possible.”

The union is lobbying the corporate studio owners to agree to union representation for the thousands of writers on reality and animated shows who are not yet organized. This would create a major shift in favor of workers in the entertainment industry.

Five weeks into the strike, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has issued a sharp attack against the union, accusing leaders of “pushing an ideological mission far removed from the interests of their members.” The bosses know that what the writers seek is a radical shift in industry power. What really worries them is the apparent willingness of the public to back such a shift.

This is what is behind the breakdown of talks on Dec. 7. The companies were unable to restrict the negotiations to the narrow issue of wages. The writers, with the public behind them, are telling the bosses that this time they want a real piece of the pie.

jwojcik @pww.org

Civil rights leaders demand foreclosure halt

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:52:00 +0000

NEW YORK — Outside the New York Stock Exchange Dec. 10, holiday music competed with the chants of “Save our homes!” A few yards away from the Wall Street Christmas tree display, hundreds of protesters gathered to demand a swift and decisive response by government and big business to the growing subprime loan crisis sweeping the nation.

Wall Street firms will dish out a projected $38 billion in bonuses to executives and financiers this year while more than 2.5 million families are expected to lose their homes to foreclosure. The rally, which demanded “Restructure loans, don’t repossess homes,” was called by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who heads the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.

“The only person who should be evicted from his house is George Bush. The people will foreclose on him,” said Jackson.

The rally called attention to the racist impact of the nation’s loan practices and to the economic crisis facing all Americans if the calamity is not solved. Jackson called it an “economic tsunami.” He has called the foreclosure crisis the most important issue facing the country besides the war in Iraq, and termed the subprime loan schemes a “21st-century noose.”

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition reported earlier this year that “African-Americans of all income levels were twice as likely or more to receive high-cost loans as whites.”

“It is no accident that we are here on Wall Street today,” said John Taylor, the coalition’s president. “Welcome to the birthplace of the subprime crisis.

“While Rome burns, they are having a party,” said Taylor. “And we are paying for it.”

Many have pointed to Wall Street’s role in selling these loans to investors.

Disputing efforts to blame borrowers for not reading (or understanding) the “fine print” of shoddy mortgage agreements, Jackson said the current crisis is really the result of “outright scams and schemes” by lenders and brokers. He argued that they created artificially low credit scores, particularly for African American homebuyers, and artificially inflated home prices, thereby foisting outrageous interest rates on working families.

“I didn’t understand much about mortgages,” said Marilyn Ruano of Brooklyn at the rally. “I also didn’t have a lawyer. I was offered a lawyer by the broker.” It is illegal but common practice in New York for brokers and buyers to share a lawyer.

Ruano’s mortgage payments ended up being $5,000 per month, and she had to rely on credit cards to make payments. Now the interest rates are climbing and she faces foreclosure. “I am not giving up my home without a fight,” she said.

Jackson is calling for a comprehensive, well-funded plan to not only regulate the industry but save the homes of millions of people. He calls his proposal a “Marshall Plan for Mortgages,” modeled after the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that financed the New Deal after the Depression in the 1930s.

“Mr. Bush comes in late with little,” said Jackson, referring to Bush’s “Hope Now” plan. Bush’s plan would only bail out borrowers who are current on their payments, only 7 percent to 15 percent of at-risk borrowers.

Other speakers also called for restructuring loans to prevent more foreclosures. “To restructure means to give people a fresh start, and opportunity to retain their homes,” said National Urban League President Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans. “A small step is not enough,” he said. “We need a giant leap.”

Advocates warn that the impact of the crisis will go far beyond the families who lose their homes. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, “Foreclosures will cost homeowners as much as $164 billion” and “the total decline in house values and the tax base from nearby foreclosures will be $223 billion.”

A new study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors shows that foreclosures could cause $6.6 billion in tax revenue losses nationwide.

New York City Councilman James Sanders Jr. of Queens, who represents one of the hardest hit areas of the state, previously introduced city legislation to curb predatory lending. The law was thrown out after lenders fought it in court. “These are the new robber barons,” Sanders said.

The coalition that sponsored the Wall Street rally also included the NAACP, National Action Network, 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East, United for Peace and Justice, Transport Workers Union Local 100, ACORN and United Federation of Teachers. NAACP chapters also organized rallies in 50 other cities.

Rainbow/PUSH urged partici-pants to build a movement to end predatory lending and save the homes of working people. It is hosting a public meeting on foreclosures Jan. 5 here at Trinity Church as part of its Wall Street Project conference. Jackson called for marches around the country that day to protest foreclosures.

ldellapiana@cpusa.org

Toxics and children

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:16:00 +0000

Here is a right to life issue.

We’ve been hearing a lot in recent weeks about the dangers of toys from China that are contaminated with lead. But the true dimensions of the toxic threat against our children are of far greater magnitude. And the threat isn’t made in China, but right here in the USA.

Chronic disease, disability and dysfunction are reaching epidemic levels among the nation’s children. One of every three of our kids suffers from some sort of chronic illness. One of every two pregnancies fails to come to term or produces a less-than-healthy baby, according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences. The incidence of childhood cancer, asthma, birth defects and neurological ailments ranging from ADHD to autism is on the rise. Many studies show that Americans are having increasing difficulty conceiving and bearing children.

There are multiple causes of this epidemic. But glaring facts point to one powerful source. The increasing incidence of childhood illness has been paralleled by an explosive, exponential increase in the number, quantity and variety of chemicals and metals poured into the environment by industry and commerce. Some 80,000 chemicals are now in use in this country and most have been developed since World War II. This country now produces or imports 42 billion pounds of chemicals a day. Many of these substances are known to be toxic — poisons.

Are these chemicals directly responsible for sickness and sometimes the death of our children? We do not know for sure. Most of the chemicals in use have never been adequately tested for their effects on human health and fewer still for their effects on children. It is difficult to prove that a specific chemical caused a specific illness in a specific child at a specific place. Moreover, those who make and sell these dangerous substances go to great lengths — and expense — to counter evidence of harm, hiring scientists, lawyers and publicists to create a cloud of uncertainty around evidence of the harm caused by their products and processes.

There is evidence, however, a large and growing body of which shows a clear association of many toxic chemicals and metals with chronic childhood illness. Tests on laboratory animals and epidemiological studies of clusters of childhood illness, now supplemented by rapidly expanding scientific techniques such as finding the toxic footprint on genes and the use of supercomputers to track the path from poison-source to victim, are providing ample documentation of the toxic assault on our young.

The developing bodies and minds of children are particularly vulnerable to chemicals in the environment. Children are not little adults. Babies and infants breathe more air, drink more liquids and eat more foods treated with chemicals, pound for pound, than adults. They spend much of their waking hours close to the ground where many of the hazardous substances accumulate and anything they can grab may go into their mouths.

The unborn child is most at risk. In its mother’s womb a single hit of a toxic substance can cause a birth defect, plant the seed of future illness such as cancer, or even kill the fragile new life. A new baby may be lost before the mother is even aware she is pregnant. Many thousands of babies are lost every year to spontaneous abortions and miscarriages.

These poisons are everywhere in the child’s environment. They are in the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat, the ground they play upon. They are in everyday products in the home, including many plastic products, their mother’s cosmetics, pesticides, sometimes their blankets and pajamas. They are found in playgrounds, schools, even in hospitals.

The children in poor and minority communities tend to be most at risk, because that is where industrial facilities and waste dumps are usually placed. But no child is fully safe, no matter how affluent their parents, how clean their homes, how well-ordered their communities, how exclusive their schools. There is no place to hide. No place on earth is uncontaminated by chemicals.

We need to act to protect our kids. Government and industry have paid little heed to this threat in recent years. It is up to us to demand that the toxic flood that threatens our children be stemmed. No matter what our politics or ideology, whether we are pro-life or pro-choice, if we love our children, we should want to protect them. We should require that chemicals be fully tested as safe before they are put in commerce. We should require that safe products be substituted for dangerous ones. We should insist our elected officials adequately enforce health and safety laws and if they do not we should turn them out of office.

Our children deserve no less.

Philip Shabecoff is a journalist and author. His latest book, “Poisoned Profits,” co-authored with his wife, was published by Random House in August. © 2007 Blue Ridge Press.

The hawk and the Klansmen

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:02:00 +0000

The Stavitch Bike Trail extends for 10 miles on the Mahoning River, just south and a little east of Youngstown, Ohio, past the giant ruins of Republic Steel and Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company and alongside a railroad track that connects the post-industrial towns of northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

The trail is a bike enthusiast’s dream: an almost level terrain save one or two inclines, and combines shade, sun and solitude. It’s isolated yet connected, rural but just minutes away from the urban slums scattered throughout the once-proletarian landscape. Along the rusted-out valley, fast moving railroad trains keep company with the slow drift of the river. Squirrels and rabbits compete with butterflies tracing themselves back and forth through pussy willows blowing in the wind. On the other side of the railroad track, a Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco billboard backs a barn-like structure across a town square and the city’s courthouse.

About four miles down the trail, a rustle in the trees reveals a brown flurry in flight, a five- to six-foot wingspan sailing across the path and into the forest. Following in its wake, another hawk soars noiselessly in pursuit, twinning its partner’s movements, dancing through the trees. The sun comes out from a behind a cloud, a small yellow butterfly skirts the path, a train whistles somewhere down the tracks.

And then, a turn in the road. Suddenly there’s a hint of darkness. Has the sun lost its race with the clouds? A look up reassures, but then to the left along the path, black bushes decorated with an even darker fruit and in the distance pools of stagnant algae-filled water from which rise the rotted trunks of trees, like so many fingers grasping. A look down upon the winding path reveals it: first, a star circumscribed with a circle and in each of three triangles the number 6, and a second later, three hooded figures and under them the letters KKK, and chalked in white beneath, “The Klan rises again.” For a moment the breath catches in the throat and even in movement, the world stands silent and still. And then through the screaming silence, a sudden screech and the hawks rise away and into the trees.

Joe Sims (joesims @politicalaffairs.net) is editor of Political Affairs.

A political river is being crossed

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:00:00 +0000

These are edited excerpts from “On the Road Again,” a report to a recent meeting of the Communist Party USA National Committee. Further excerpts will appear in next week’s issue. The full text is available at .

We are at the cusp of a new stage of struggle that has the potential to shift the balance of forces in our country, not incrementally and momentarily, but decisively and enduringly in favor of the working class and people and against the right that has dominated political life for nearly three decades.

Now, this is still as much a potential as a reality, but it would be a mistake not to see the possibilities of the present moment. While we do not want to overestimate this process (and in doing so, get ahead of ourselves in formulating strategy and tactics), we don’t want to underestimate it either.

Communists, not to mention the larger movement, must be able to discern in the chaotic thicket of day-to-day events the larger patterns of political development, and nurture the new shoots of struggle that contain the possibility of reconstituting politics along progressive lines.

All around us we see competing images and realities that reflect the clash between two stages of struggle, one in which the extreme right is expending its energies to remain dominant, and the other in which the labor-led people’s movement is struggling to become dominant.

In the old stage, domination by force is the favored instrument of foreign policy. In the new stage, cooperation, multilateralism, diplomacy and peaceful resolution of conflict are gaining ground.

In the old stage, government is best that governs least. In the new stage, government is a necessary steward of public education, retirement security, health care, the environment, housing and equality.

In the old stage, the market is seen as self-correcting, efficient and a fair distributor of wealth. In the new stage, the market is seen as operating to the advantage of big business, aggravating inequalities, degrading the environment and strongly tending to frequent failures.

In the old stage, income inequality is a good and natural thing, In the new stage, the rich should pay a larger share of the tax burden, CEO compensation is outrageous and a living wage is a right.

In the old stage, the “Washington consensus” dominates trade policy and the mantra is “globalize, globalize.” In the new stage, the consensus is fracturing and capitalist globalization is meeting stiff resistance from all quarters of the world.

In the old stage, neo-liberalism is the political and economic model — the doctrine and practice at the government and corporate level that aims to maximize capitalist class power and profitability, deregulate markets, destroy the public sector, facilitate the internationalization of capital, drive down living standards, erode working class and progressive social solidarities and restructure the role and functions of the state. In the new stage, challenges to that model are mounting, however vaguely defined those challenges are right now.

In the old stage, the right wing mobilizes popular sentiment along racist, male supremacist, anti-immigrant and homophobic lines. In the new stage, such appeals have less currency and are meeting new resistance, illustrated by the mass outcry against the racist injustice in Jena, La.

In the old stage, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity dominated cable news; in the new stage, they are eclipsed by Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, Tavis Smiley, Steven Colbert and Rosie O’Donnell.

In the old stage, warnings of climate change are met with skepticism, thanks largely to right-wing-organized opposition. In the new stage, Al Gore wins the Nobel Prize for his work on global warming.

In the old stage, there is no Moveon.org or YouTube, no left and progressive online organizations or news sources. In the new stage, these are major players on the political scene.

In the old stage, the idea of a “people’s agenda” is seen as wishful thinking. In the new stage it is something that people think can be fought for and even won.

In the old stage, it is argued that Democratic candidates have to tack to the right in order to gain electoral advantage and broaden their voter base. In the new stage, Democratic candidates hurt themselves and the potential of their voting constituencies with such tactics.

It’s obvious, but I will say it anyway: we are not going from a non-revolutionary stage to a revolutionary one, in which the capitalist system has broken down completely.

But, a river is being crossed: a movement of potentially enormous scope and depth is in its early stages of formation. And its immediate and inescapable task is to decisively defeat the Republican right in the 2008 elections. Such a victory wouldn’t consolidate a new stage of struggle, but it would position this developing movement to undo the damage of three decades of right-wing extremist rule and to challenge the profits and privileges of corporate capital in far more favorable conditions of struggle.

Thus, in my view, anything that slights or, going further, cynically ridicules the importance of the 2008 elections and its outcome is misguided. It might have a militant and left ring, but it utterly fails to understand what is necessary to move class and democratic struggle to a new stage.

Sam Webb (swebb @cpusa.org) is national chair of the Communist Party USA.

Protests tell GOP grinches: dont block kids health care

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:22:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — In the spirit of holiday giving, labor and community activists are descending on lawmakers’ offices this month with a warning: enact SCHIP children’s health care by a veto-proof margin now or face removal from office next fall.

“This president and his allies in Congress need a visit from Dickens’ ghost of Christmas future, the way they’ve been treating millions of Tiny Tims,” said Jeremy Funk, spokesman for Americans United for Change, which is spearheading the nationwide campaign to save SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program), now serving 6.6 million youngsters. The campaign includes delivering empty presents to the offices of Republican lawmakers and presenting Bush loyalists on Capitol Hill with “Grinch that Stole Christmas wish lists.”

President Bush has vetoed the measure twice, calling a $35 billion increase over five years to cover an additional 4 million children “wasteful.” The House has fallen 11 or 12 votes short of overriding his vetoes.

Funk pointed out that the same handful of Bush loyalists who sustained his veto voted again Nov. 14 “to once again give President Bush a blank check in Iraq” by opposing the Orderly and Responsible Iraq Redeployment Appropriations Act.

He added, “It’s sick kids that will end up paying the price if congressional Republicans continue to embrace Bush’s backwards priorities of spending trillions of dollars policing an endless war in Iraq while opposing a fraction of that amount on health care for our most vulnerable citizens.” For the amount spent in just one week in Iraq, 800,000 children could get health insurance for an entire year, he said.

A just-released report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service warns that states will start running out of SCHIP funds by next March even if Congress approves an extension at current funding levels. “The status quo is not an option,” Funk told the World. “At current levels of funding, 21 states will run out of SCHIP funds and 1.6 million children will be forced off the SCHIP rolls.”

Larry Pellegrini of the Georgia Rural Urban Summit told the World by telephone that a broad coalition of children’s advocates has visited the district offices of Georgia’s seven Republican and six Democratic House members. All the Republicans and even one Democrat, Jim Marshall, voted to sustain Bush’s vetoes. They caved in to the tobacco lobby, which opposes SCHIP expansion because it would be paid in part with higher cigarette taxes.

“SCHIP has been a bipartisan program,” Pellegrini said. “It’s an issue that enjoys a high level of popular support. People may forget how they voted on a trade bill. They will not forget how they voted on children’s health care. These lawmakers will regret their votes against SCHIP and many will not be back” in 2009.

Charlie Wishman of the Iowa Citizen Action Network said scores of children’s advocates met with Republican Rep. Tom Latham to thank him for voting for SCHIP. But they scolded Latham for voting against the omnibus spending bill for Health and Human Services and the Labor Department. Latham claimed the Democrats had cut funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). But the Democrats’ bill still provided billions more for LIHEAP than Bush proposed. Bush vetoed that spending bill as well.

Wishman said the SCHIP battle is throwing into stark relief the warped priorities of the Republican presidential contenders in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. “Every Democratic presidential candidate is supporting SCHIP and the Republicans are running away from it,” he said. “Fully funding SCHIP would cost about the same as 63 days of the war in Iraq.”

Wishman blasted the Republicans for using anti-immigrant hysteria to attack the bill. Under a round-the-clock, highly racist drumfire, the latest SCHIP bill expressly excludes undocumented children. However the Republicans continue to attack it by claiming it benefits such children. “We believe in providing health care not only for every child in America but every person in America,” Wishman said.

Joining the local protests at over a dozen district offices of Republican lawmakers are members of USAction, MoveOn.org, the Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, TrueMajority and Catholics United.

greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com

HUD Sends New Orleans Bulldozers and $400,000 Apartments for the Holidays

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:50:00 +0000

On the 12th day before Christmas, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4,600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units - an 82 percent reduction. HUD is in charge and one HUD employee makes all the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago - all decisions are made in Washington, DC. HUD plans to build an additional 1,000 market rate and tax credit units - which will still result in a net loss of 2,700 apartments to New Orleans - the remaining new apartments will cost an average of over $400,000 each!

Affordable housing is at a critical point along the Gulf Coast. Over 50,000 families still living in tiny FEMA trailers are being systematically forced out. Over 90,000 homeowners in Louisiana are still waiting to receive federal recovery funds from the Road Home. In New Orleans, hundreds of the estimated 12,000 homeless have taken up residence in small tents across the street from City Hall and under the I-10.

In Mississippi, poor and working people are being displaced along the coast to allow casinos to expand and develop shipping and other commercial activities. Two dozen ministers criticized the exclusion of renters and low-income homeowners from post-Katrina assistance: “Sadly we must now bear witness to the reality that our Recovery Effort has failed to include a place at the table ... for our poor and vulnerable.”

The bulldozers have not torn down any buildings yet and New Orleans public housing residents vow to resist. “If you try to bulldoze our homes, we’re going to fight,” promised resident Sharon Jasper. “There’s going to be a war in New Orleans.”

Resident resistance is being expanded by allies from a coalition of groups who see the destruction of public housing without one-for-one replacement harming all renters and low-income homeowners.

Kali Akuno, of the Coalition to Stop Demolition, explains why many people who do not live in public housing are joining residents in this fight. “In the past two years, New Orleans has faced a series of social crises that have struck a blow to our collective vision for a more just and equitable city, not simply one that is more inviting to elites. Yet, none of these crises has been as uniquely urgent as this. What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return.”

A federal court has refused to stop the scheduled demolitions. Residents offered evidence to show the three-story garden-style buildings were structurally sound, and pointed out the local housing authority itself documented it would cost much less to repair and retain the apartments than demolish and reconstruct a small fraction of them. The New York Times architecture critic described them as “low scale, narrow footprint and high quality construction.” HUD promised to subject plans for demolition to 100 days of scrutiny - yet approved demolition with no public input in less than two days. The court acknowledged some questions about the fairness of the process but concluded that if the demolitions turn out to be illegal, residents can always recover money damages later.

The US House of Representatives passed a bill that requires one-for-one replacement of any public housing demolished, but Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) has stopped the Senate version cold.

The Institute for Southern Studies reports the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, S. 1668, sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), had the support of the entire state’s delegation and - until September, when HUD and Vitter suddenly withdrew their backing. There’s been much speculation over Vitter’s sudden about-face on the measure, especially since he’s been reluctant to disclose his objections in much detail.

The Congressional Quarterly Weekly offers partisan politics as one explanation for his actions: “... [P]olitical experts say the senatorial flap is not unexpected, given Louisiana’s rough-and-tumble politics and Vitter and Landrieu’s chilly relationship. Landrieu is up for re-election next year and has emerged as the GOP’s top target among incumbent senators, in part because of the state’s rightward shift in recent elections.”

“The fact that Mary Landrieu is widely identified as the most vulnerable Democrat coming into the next election cycle , you certainly don’t want to give her big victories in helping the state,” said Kirby Goidel, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University. “He probably feels safe enough to hold it up as long as it’s not too obviously political and he has some policy-related cover. He’s a pretty hardball political player.”

Republican interests are clearly not served by the return of all African-Americans to New Orleans. Louisiana was described before Katrina as a “pink state” - one that went Democratic some times and Republican others. The tipping point for Louisiana Democrats was the deeply Democratic African-American city of New Orleans. Immediately after the hurricanes struck, one political analyst said, “the Democratic margin of victory in Louisiana is sleeping in the Astrodome in Houston.” Tiny turnout by African-American voters in New Orleans in recent elections has led white Republican interests to calculate immediate new political gains. Demolition of thousands of low-income African-American occupied apartments only helps that political and racial dynamic.

But no one will say openly African-American renters are not welcome. Supporters of the destruction of thousands of apartments have come up with a series of stated reasons for their actions, but it clearly looks like political gain and economic enrichment for contractors, lawyers, architects and political friends are the real reasons.

Reduction of crime was supposed to be the main reason for getting rid of thousands of public housing apartments - yet crime in New Orleans has soared since Katrina, while the thousands of apartments remain shut.

Every one of the displaced families who were living in public housing is African-American. Most all are headed by mothers and grandmothers working low-wage jobs or disabled or retired. Thousands of children lived in the neighborhoods. Race, class and gender are unstated parts of every justification for demolition, especially the call for “mixed-income housing.” If the demolitions are allowed to go forward, there will be mixed income housing - but the mix will not include over 80 percent of the people who lived there.

This absolute lack of any realistic affordable alternative is the main reason people want to return to their public housing neighborhoods - or be guaranteed one for one replacement of their homes. Absent that, redevelopment will not help the residents or people in the community who need affordable housing.

HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has his own reasons for pressing ahead with the demolitions. HUD has approved plans to turn over scores of acres of prime public land to private developers for 99-year leases and give hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants, tax credit subsidies and long-term contracts. One of the developers described it as the biggest tax-credit giveaway in years.

There may be crime in the projects after all - even if the residents are gone. Consider the following examples:

Investigative reporter Edward T. Pound, of the National Journal, has uncovered many questionable and several potentially criminal actions by HUD in New Orleans. Pound reported HUD Secretary Jackson worked with, and is owed over $250,000 from, an Atlanta-based company, Columbia Residential. Columbia Residential was part of a team that was awarded a $127 million contract by HUD to develop the St. Bernard housing development. Columbia was also awarded other earlier contracts for as yet undisclosed amounts under still undisclosed circumstances.

Pound also discovered a golfing buddy and social friend of Secretary Jackson was given a no-bid $175 an hour “emergency” contract with HUD within months of Katrina. The buddy, William Hairston, was ultimately paid more than $485,000 for working at the Housing Authority of New Orleans over an 18-month period.

A review of the dozens of no-bid contracts approved by HUD in New Orleans shows millions going to politically connected consultants, law firms, architects and insurance brokers.

What is scheduled to happen in New Orleans is happening across the United States. It is just New Orleans offers a more condensed and graphic illustration. The federal government is determined to get out of housing all together and let the private market reign. A 2007 report of the Urban Institute confirms that in the last decade over 78,000 low-income apartments have been demolished by HUD. That is why locals are receiving support and solidarity from residents and housing advocates in Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and New York.

Destruction of housing for the working poor is also a global scandal as corporations and governments push entire neighborhoods out. In India, traditional fishing villages destroyed by the tsunami are being forcibly moved away from the coast and the land where they lived is being converted to luxury hotels and tourist destinations. The International Alliance of Inhabitants, which opposes the demolitions in New Orleans, points out poor people’s neighborhoods are also being taken away in Angola, Hungary, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Poor and working people in New Orleans and across the globe are living on property that has become valuable for corporations. Accommodating governments are pushing the poor away and turning public property to private. HUD is giving private developers hundreds of millions of public dollars, scores of acres of valuable land, and thousands of public apartments. Happy holidays for them for sure.

For the poor, the holidays are scheduled to bring bulldozers. The demolition is poised to start in New Orleans any day now. Attempts at demolition will be met with just resistance. Whether that resistance is successful or not will determine not only the future of the working poor in New Orleans, but of working poor communities nationally and globally. If the US government is allowed to demolish thousands of much-needed affordable apartments of Katrina victims, what chance do others have?

Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can contact him at Quigley@loyno.edu. Bill is one of the lawyers for displaced residents.

This editorial originally appeared on t r u t h o u t December 3: