People Before Profit blog

Ohio nurses fight for patient rights

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:13:00 +0000

CLEVELAND — Patients are dying because nurses are being mistreated and overworked,” stated Adrienne Zurub, a registered nurse from Cleveland, as she kicked off a June 15 rally here by the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

The NNOC is supporting a bill in the state legislature, titled the Ohio Patient Protection Act, which would raise the ratio of nurses to patients in hospitals.

“Some nurses are forced to care for as many as 13 patients at one time. We say that this just cannot be safe for patients, said Michelle Mahon. “We work with the patients, we advocate for them and we said that we cannot do an adequate job for 13 patients at one time. We need standards that establish three to four patients per nurse.”

“We have restrictions on the number of kids in a classroom, on the number of fish we can catch and on how many can ride a bus,” said Terry Gallagher, another nurse. “But there are no standards on how many patients nurses can be assigned to take care of. Our priorities are off.”

Linda Fearer of Youngstown spoke about her husband’s death, after being released prematurely from the hospital. “The nurse on duty said that there was no way that he should’ve been released, but the hospital is interested only in the bottom line, not people,” she said.

When asked by a corporate media representative whether “passing the legislation would just lead hospitals to cut other jobs,” Mahon replied. “The press should be asking hospitals what their spending priorities are. These are multi-million dollar hospitals that are providing inadequate care because they overwork and understaff but the top officials are becoming rich at our expense.”

Steve Cagan, a recent hospital patient from Cleveland, described how the overworking/understaffing of nurses affected him. “There is absolutely no shortage of nurses. There are plenty of nurses in Ohio, but they are treated miserably by hospitals and don’t stay,” he said.

“We’ll face powerful corporate opponents when this bill is introduced, and we’ll be attacked by them,” said Rhonda Risner Hanos, a registered nurse from Dayton. “Nurses will lead this fight and we’ll have powerful friends, as well.” It is expected that the Ohio Patient Protection Act will be introduced, with strong support from the AFL-CIO and others, within a month.

Merrilee Milstein mourned

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:49:00 +0000

HARTFORD, Conn. — Labor leaders from across the region, state elected officials, friends and family gathered June 12 at UAW Region 9A headquarters here for a memorial service for Merrilee Milstein, long-time union, civil rights and women’s rights activist.

A page one story and editorial in the Hartford Courant mourned the loss to the city of two fighters for women’s and workers rights, Milstein, 61, and attorney Ruth Pulda, who both died on June 9 of cancer-related illness.

Joe Alvarez, former AFL-CIO northeast regional director, credited Milstein, who served as his deputy, with making a “transformative contribution by bringing the science and tools of organizing to the labor movement.” He said, “Merrilee loved action and provided leadership to countless labor battles. In every campaign she was looking not just for a win, but what you build along the way.”

Husband and political activist Brian Steinberg along with other family members recounted Merrilee’s special ability to listen and relate to people, her strong sense of humor, her love of sports and her devotion to her daughter Jane.

Milstein, an activist for social and economic justice since high school, became a member of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE) in 1968 while working as a banquet waitress. From 1972 to 1994 she served as vice president of New England Health Care Employees 1199. She was an organizer and political director, and led the state sector of the union. In 1982 she served as chair of the state’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women.

During her first organizing drive at Yale-New Haven Hospital, she met Sid Taylor, who was chair of the Connecticut Communist Party. When Milstein accepted the Amistad Award from the People’s Weekly World in 2006, she said Taylor taught her two big lessons which had a lasting influence on her life: first, that the worker is always right, and second, that unity and struggle can win big gains.

Over the last 35 years, Milstein helped organize thousands of workers, led strikes and was arrested more than 90 times. She played a major role in building labor and community coalitions in Connecticut and New England. She was a founding member and secretary-treasurer of Legislative Electoral Action Project (LEAP), and served on the executive committee of Northeast Action. In 1991, she was coordinator of the March to Rebuild America with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 1994, she was field director of the Bill Curry for Governor campaign in Connecticut. When Miles Rapoport, now director of DEMOS, was Connecticut secretary of state, Milstein served as deputy secretary and led the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act and other electoral reform.

Milstein was appointed deputy regional director of the AFL-CIO in 1996. She led efforts to build local and state power with central labor councils and state federations in the Northeast. She was District of Columbia coordinator for the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in 2003, and coordinated Labor 2004 in New Hampshire, helping New Hampshire to change from a red to a blue state. After leaving the AFL-CIO, while being treated for cancer, Milstein received a master’s degree from American University in organizational development, and certification in Leadership Coaching from Georgetown.

“Merrilee inspired so many people to make our world fairer, more just and more humane,” said Alvarez. At a reception following the memorial, John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, was the first of many who pledged to carry on the struggles that Milstein fought with such dedication.

Just say NO to offshore oil drilling

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:03:00 +0000

Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando sent out an appeal yesterday urging the public to take action to stop President Bush’s effort to overturn the longstanding ban on offshore oil drilling.

Bush’s move, quickly backed by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, is being assailed as basically a parting gift to Big Oil.

The New York Times slammed the Bush-McCain moves in its lead editorial today, titled “The Big Pander to Big Oil.” The Times points out that the oil companies already have access to 80 percent of offshore oil deposits, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan waters, and they’re not doing much of anything with that.

The Bush-McCain plan is “worse than a dumb idea,” says the Times. “It is cruelly misleading … based on dubious statistics … diverts the public from the tough decisions that need to be made about conservation.”

Greenpeace is calling for signatures on an to McCain, titled “Just Say NO to Offshore Drilling.”

Passacantando’s appeal says, “You've seen the headlines today — McCain, Bush, and Gingrich are organizing a push to drill for oil along our coastlines and lift a 27-year moratorium. They seem to be taking advantage of high gas prices to help their friends in big oil make even more money.”

He continues, “Opening up our coastline to drilling will take up to 10 years before the first drop of oil would reach your local gas stations and it would last for less than 10 years — yet the devastation it will cause is hardly worth the price.”

He goes on to point out that the seismic blasts involved pose a threat to whales, dolphins and other marine mammals, and the potential for major oil spills would threaten our beaches, fish, and marine mammals.

Finally, he notes that global warming is already a major threat to our world's oceans, and drilling for more oil will only cause more greenhouse gas emissions.

“Instead of pushing for more drilling, we should be investing in renewable energy sources,” he concludes.

suewebb @ pww.org

A small picket line turns into a mass outpouring

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:49:00 +0000

CHICAGO — Sixty striking workers who have been taking turns picketing in front of the Congress Hotel here for the past five years could not conceal their joy June 11 as thousands of trade union and community activists joined their ranks.

The first to arrive took the picket signs from the strikers and told them to rest on chairs they set up near a makeshift podium.

As the weary workers rested they watched wave after wave of supporters arriving on foot, by car, by bus and by train, filling first the sidewalks in front of the hotel and then the sidewalks of the entire city block.

They watched as the band from the musicians’ union disembarked from a van and an 18-wheeler brought by the Teamsters pulled up along Michigan Ave., blowing its horn in support.

They watched and listened as bus drivers on an endless trail of city buses passing by added their honking horns to the joyful din.

Dolores Contreras had been out on that picket line through five cold winters and five blazing hot summers. Wiping away a few tears, she said, “This makes it all worth it. We will do this. We will win this.”

Jose Sanchez, another five-year veteran of the nation’s longest strike, said, “With all this I can go on forever.”

The strike began five years ago when the Congress Hotel cut wages by 7 percent to less than $8 an hour, slashed health benefits and hiked employee contributions to the health care plan.

All 100 union workers at the hotel went out on strike, and none have gone back to work there. Sixty continue the strike today, with some financial help from the union. Others have found jobs elsewhere.

The hotel has refused to talk to the union since last August. Workers hired since the strike say they are getting only $7.50 an hour. The hotel claims it is paying $8. The prevailing wage for similar hotel jobs in Chicago is $13 an hour.

The striking union, Unite Here, says it will continue the fight to boost wages and working conditions to levels it has won at other city hotels, and says the strike at the Congress Hotel has benefitted workers all over Chicago.

Mike Ortiz, who was among the thousands marching around the hotel, said that, for him, it was a “coming home” experience.

He had worked 15 years at the hotel before the strike and has since had numerous low-paid jobs from which he has been laid off because of company cutbacks. He’s been out of work almost half a year and his unemployment benefits are about to run out. “I have some deep troubles and I get depressed,” he said, “but I had to come out here today to support this strike. This crowd fills my heart up with joy.”

The hotel management and some Internet travel sites say the strike has had little or no effect on hotel profits or customer service.

But a current hotel worker leaving the building after his shift said that for a year now the hotel has rarely been more than one-third full. Most hotel managers consider a 33 percent occupancy rate to be well below what they need to maintain an acceptable profit level.

Many guests at the Congress complain about customer service.

The World found unsanitary and even dangerous conditions at the hotel in June 2007 when a reporter inspected several floors — including no electricity or lighting on the seventh floor, which was fully accessible to customers by both elevator and stairs.

Nine months later, on March 15, a hotel guest submitted an entry to the Unite Here web site which said, “There was no lighting on the seventh floor. It was very scary. There was a crack in the ceiling of our room and mold in the shower.”

Guests continue to register complaints about conditions at the hotel on the union’s web site.

jwojcik@pww.org

Rallies across country slam Big Oil, McCain

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:47:00 +0000

Here’s what Manny Flores, a Laborers Union member in Denver, had to say about the pain many are feeling at the gas pump.

“Two months ago, I spent $30 per week on gas for work. Now I have to pay over $60 per week. You have a choice — fill the tank, or buy milk for the kids. If I have $50, I spend $20 for gas, and the rest for bread, eggs and milk. With this economy, you can’t live on what you make.”

Flores had taken some of his free time to join fellow union and community members at a Denver rally protesting skyrocketing gas prices and John McCain’s support for Big Oil.

It was one of a series of actions around the country organized by state and local labor federations and labor-affiliated Working America. The AFL-CIO’s blog reports the events and the voices of workers experiencing a profound upheaval in their everyday lives, as they watch gas prices and oil company profits soar. They are angered by the corporate-friendly policies of candidates like McCain.

In Hermitage, Pa., along the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, United Steelworkers Local 1660 President Mike Munger said his members, who work at Wheatland Tube Co., are making personal sacrifices in order to afford to go to work.

“These people are sometimes working six days a week and traveling 60 or 70 miles round trip each day,” he said. “That’s putting a huge dent into people’s gas budget.”

In Indiana, at a June 10 rally on the state Capitol steps in Indianapolis to protest McCain’s proposals for tax breaks for oil corporations and Gov. Mitch Daniels’ increase in the gasoline sales tax, Nancy Holle, from Office and Professional Employees (OPEIU) Local 1, said:

“My son is looking for work and can’t afford to drive to and from employers to drop off his resume. He has to decide which bills to not pay this month because gas has become such an expense.”

In Louisville, Ky., 30 union members held a one-hour protest outside a local gas station, June 11. Holding signs reading “Bush & McCain Love Big Oil,” they drew honks of support from passing drivers. Donnie Colston, AFL-CIO state field director, blamed Bush and McCain policies for “driving up the price of gas for normal consumers,” the Courier-Journal reported.

In Boston, activists from the Greater Boston Labor Council and the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice met McCain’s bus as he was holding a private fundraiser at the posh Westin Copley Place hotel. Labor Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Rich Rogers said the message was: “No more tax breaks for Big Oil and the wealthy. It’s time to turn around America.”

suewebb@pww.org

Top court upholds detainee rights

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:20:00 +0000

Defenders of human rights praised the Supreme Court’s June 12 ruling that hundreds of detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are entitled to a fair trial and other habeas corpus legal rights. Hundreds of those detainees have been held now for six years without criminal charges or jury trials, subjected to torture and other abuses.

The 5-4 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, sparked a sharp exchange between the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees.

Democrat Barack Obama said the court’s decision “is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.” Habeas corpus is the constitutional protection against unlawful imprisonment.

The ruling, Obama added, is “a rejection of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo … another failed policy supported by John McCain.”

McCain assailed the decision as the “worst” Supreme Court ruling he has ever seen. Earlier, McCain had expressed misgivings but said the nation would have to live with the decision. The next day, he reversed course, denouncing it sharply. Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, told the World McCain’s overnight reversal “indicates that his handlers have decided to make this decision the ‘poster child’ for his toughness in the ‘war on terror’.”

Dalia Hashad, director of Amnesty International’s Domestic Human Rights Program, said, “This decision is a victory for justice but it is dimmed by the enormous tragedy of hundreds of detainees who were tortured, held in cruel and inhuman conditions” at Guantanamo and other secret U.S. prisons. Hundreds, innocent of any crime, were quietly released and shipped home without apology or any restitution for their wrongful arrest and torture, she said.

Hashad, an attorney who served as advocate in the American Civil Liberties Union Campaign Against Racial Profiling and is a member of the Palestine Peace Project, said in a phone interview, “I am stunned that in 2008 we are debating this question. Habeas corpus is the bedrock of our democracy.”

The court’s ruling, she continued, is a “very clear pronouncement that the Bush administration is wrong in claiming that the Constitution does not apply in Guantanamo and they can create any law they want to.”

Frida Berrigan, executive director of Witness Against Torture, said the ruling demolishes the legal “architecture” used to justify Guantanamo. It should be closed down immediately, and the detainees freed or brought to trial, she said.

On June 10, Witness Against Torture members held a vigil outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations on the second anniversary of the suicides of three Guantanamo detainees. “They had been held incommunicado, tortured and abused,” Berrigan said. “They saw suicide as the only way out. For them and many others, this decision came too late. Someone should pay, and pay dearly, for what was done to these prisoners.”

An impeachment resolution submitted to Congress this month by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) cites President Bush for the illegal mass detention of detainees at Guantanamo, among other charges.

The June 12 ruling was the Supreme Court’s third decision upholding the detainees’ legal rights. Bush and the Republican-majority Congress did an end run around those decisions with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which was authored by McCain and opposed by Obama. It established a system of military hearings at Guantanamo called “combatant status review tribunals” subject to limited oversight by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. The administration, and McCain, argued that these proceedings passed legal muster because the detainees are not U.S. citizens and the tribunals would be conducted at Guantanamo, outside the jurisdiction of the Constitution.

But Justice Kennedy demolished these arguments. For all practical purposes, he wrote, the Guantanamo detention center is U.S. territory and the Constitution applies.

The tribunals rely on “secret accusations,” and deny prisoners the assistance of attorneys as well as the right to submit evidence proving their innocence, he wrote. The tribunals also lack neutrality essential to insuring the defendants the presumption of innocence.

Three days after the decision was handed down, the McClatchy newspaper chain began publishing a five-part series on the more than 750 men who are, or had been, imprisoned at Guantanamo. McClatchy sent a team of reporters to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo to interview the detainees and local officials. The headline in the Seattle Times June 15 proclaimed, “Many detainees had flimsy ties to terror.” Hundreds were entirely innocent. Of 66 Afghani men detained, most were “low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals,” the article reported. “At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.”

The reporters also found that “despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Midwest disaster

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:56:00 +0000

Emergency programs needed to rebuild, many say

As the rising Mississippi continued to crash through levees June 17, sending walls of water into Midwest towns and threatening thousands of additional acres of farmland, many were already done with days of crying and were beginning the clean up.

Floods that ravaged Iowa and much of the Midwest — Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri — the second week of June changed peoples’ lives forever. Thousands had come back to homes where water was more than waist deep on the ground floor and heavy furniture had floated from one end of the house to the other. For some it was even worse.

Flooding and storms in the Midwest have killed 17 people since May 25 with at least five dying as a result of the floods in Iowa.

George Naylor, 60, has a 470-acre soybean and corn farm 90 miles northwest of Des Moines, Iowa. One fifth of his crops were under water. “There was just way too much rain in too short of a time,” he told the World. “Spring was real late in coming and my crops were planted too late because it was just too cold,” he said. “I can still look out my window and see great big ponds of water on the fields and with all that moisture the little plants will be infected with fungus and disease.”

Having to pick up the pieces of his own life hasn’t deterred him from thinking about how the disaster he confronts is connected to other issues, including global warming and the role government plays after major catastrophes.

“The weather patterns seem awfully strange. It seems like storms have hit us up from Texas up to Iowa and all across the United States.” Naylor said that “no one knows what Mother Nature is going to provide” and that “the real question is if we have the economic institutions to deal with what happens after” the disasters.

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast two years ago many became angry because they considered the way the disaster was handled to be even worse than the disaster itself.

These floods, some say, have exposed one of the worst infrastructure failures in history.

The Midwest levees, roads, water and transport systems have proven vulnerable to natural disaster in a way that many feel could have been prevented if infrastructure had been a top priority all along.

Citing long commutes, dirty water, delayed flights and failing dams, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s infrastructure a “D” in 2005 with a projection of a $1.6 trillion investment (not including security costs) over the next five years to bring the nation’s systems up to a good condition.

In places like Cedar Rapids, where 25,000 were evacuated from their homes and 1.3 million acres of farmland were lost, people have begun returning home and cleaning up.

There is no way to recover what looks like $1 billion in crop damage, however. There is concern, nationwide, that large agricultural firms will use this damage to push for further hikes in already escalating food prices.

While they survey their losses in places like Cedar Rapids small towns in Iowa, Ill. and Missouri now confront what has become a rising and threatening Mississippi River. On June 17 levees broke in Gulfport, Ill., sending what looked like a tsunami gushing through the town.

Twenty-six more levees could potentially overflow along the Mississippi if vigorous sandbagging efforts now underway prove inadequate.

As was the case after the disasters of 9/11, Katrina and the Twin Cities bridge collapse, the people themselves along with the first responders, labor movement and many other community groups are proving to be the real heroes.

Jan Laue, executive vice president of the Iowa AFL-CIO, called attention to a situation that is “very tragic,” also, “because a lot of people are going to be displaced and this will ultimately affect their jobs.”

Her son’s house near Cedar Rapids was flooded. “Union households are affected like anyone else,” she said, adding, “A lot of work needs to be done to put things back to normal and to rebuild and fix hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.”

Lau said the AFL-CIO is pushing for emergency programs to provide assistance and that it is coordinating efforts with the United Way and the Red Cross throughout the state.

A union official in Cedar Rapids said the situation is hard to evaluate because so many people in and around the city are isolated. “The floods here took everything even the courthouse, the police department and the jail. I don’t think you can imagine what has happened here unless you see it.”

She described a people determined, however, to clean up after the disaster and come back stronger than ever: “There is a sense of community and people are working together, helping each other and, despite the big mess, there is a lot of compassion, hope and good will.”

plozano@pww.org

Shades of Green: June 14, 2008

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:17:00 +0000

Uncle Sam sez throw your TV away

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:10:00 +0000

Used to be that consumer products had something called 'planned obsolescence' built into them; they were designed to wear out and be thrown away (partly explaining our nation's overflowing landfills). Now, it seems, President Bush and Congress are helping speed the solid waste crisis, giving us something corporate America likes even better: 'legislated obsolescence,' or 'enforced consumption.' By any name, it may produce a tidal wave of trash.

As of February 17, 2009, the federal government has ordered the shutting down of all U.S. analog television broadcasting signals (a standard since the 1950’s), to be replaced by a digital-only signal.

The necessity of this move is dubious, since both types of signals have been simultaneously broadcast for years. But the impact is clear. Everyone who currently receives a broadcast signal over the airwaves must either buy a new digital High-Definition television (HDTV starts at about $400), or buy a $50 to $70 converter box, for which the government will rebate $40. Otherwise your old analog TV goes black.

The movers and shakers behind this bill are not consumers (who never clamored for HDTV), but the consumer electronics industry, whose sales will be boosted by the law.

Conservative commentator George Will calls the bipartisan HDTV legislation 'the no couch potato left behind' bill, and sees it as a noxious government entitlement program. Liberals question potentially undemocratic federal plans to sell off valuable analog public airwaves to private telecommunications companies.

However, the biggest loser to the great HDTV switchover could be our environment. Solid waste managers worry that consumers will opt for HDTV en masse, consigning perfectly good analog TVs to the U.S. waste stream. Eighty to 200 million televisions could be discarded over the next thirty months, says John Shegerian, CEO of Electronic Recyclers International, a leading electronics waste recycler. Worse, he says, there's no federal plan to recycle those sets, even though 'almost everything in those TVs could be recycled.'

'With all the new technology that keeps making our existing devices obsolete, we are in the midst of an ongoing tsunami of electronic waste,' says Shegerian. 'With February 17, 2009, the federally mandated date for full conversion to HDTV looming, we can only expect the accumulation of unwanted old electronics to go through the roof.'

E-waste is already the fastest growing solid waste stream on earth. The United Nations Environmental Program estimates up to 50 million tons of electronics, called e-waste (TVs, computers, etc.), get trashed annually. That's 4,000 tons per hour. The bad news: the U.S. properly recycles only 12 percent of its e-waste.

Dumped in a landfill, analog TVs will leach toxins: Picture tubes hold up to eight pounds of toxic lead, while television plastic casings contain cancer-causing flame retardants. Other TV toxins can include cadmium, mercury, chromium, beryllium and arsenic. If not recycled, toxic TVs can poison people, soils and groundwater.

That's why California banned electronics from landfills in 2006. Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina and six more states followed, while 35 states are considering such laws. However, banning e-waste from U.S. landfills only moves the problem elsewhere.

Most U.S. e-waste gets shipped to India, Southeast Asia, China and Africa, reports Forbes.com. 'Workers there, often children making pennies a day, troll mounds of garbage in search of computers and TV's. Lacking tools to tear open computer shells, they burn the plastic to get to the valuable stuff inside, breathing noxious fumes. They dip circuit boards in acid and melt lead in the same pans they use to cook their meager meals. They toss any remains back on the pile, where toxins seep into water supplies.'

So concerned is the TV industry about the global e-trash tsunami they've launched a website: 'mygreenelectonics.org.' That'll fix the problem! In fact, the industry seems intent not on squarely facing the TV recycling crisis, but on passing the buck, forcing taxpayers and consumers to foot the lion's share of recycling costs.

To date, only one TV maker, Sony, boasts a free national electronics recycling program for all its products. Meanwhile the so-called Electronics Manufacturers Coalition for Responsible Recycling, led by Panasonic, Sharp, and Philips, has fought tough 'producer responsibility' recycling laws passed in nine states including Texas.

If the industry is really serious about taking responsibility, it should lobby as tirelessly as it did for HDTV, backing stalled federal legislation mandating e-waste recycling. That's something Europe has already done, making electronics manufacturers financially responsible for the complete life cycle of their products, turning recycled e-waste into a valuable resource. Congress could also ratify the Basel Convention, a treaty banning hazardous waste dumping on developing countries.

Of course we all have an alternative to the expense and hassle of technology upgrades. Forgo the sharper picture and bigger sound of HDTV. Just stop watching television all together. Take a walk. Read a book. Play with the kids. Plant a tree.

(c) 2008 Blue Ridge Press

Glenn Scherer is co-editor of Blue Ridge Press and a TV junkie who at the gentle urging of his wife Marty gave up television in 1998.

Whats on - June 21, 2008

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:27:00 +0000

Sheboygan, Wis.

May through October

Civil Liberties Art Exhibitions at the John Michael Kohler

Arts Center

May 25–Sept. 7

Vested Interests

June 15–October 12

Michelle Pred: (dis)possessions

June 29–September 28

Under Surveillance

The exhibitions feature garments, installation works, sculptures, performances, and videos that reflect different perspectives on concepts such as personal and public identity, labor issues, stereotyping, confiscation, and surveillance. Admission is free.

The Arts Center is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Call (920) 458-6144 for additional information, or visit the Arts Center’s Web site, www.jmkac.org.

Berkeley, Calif.

July 4, Fri., 1–5 p.m.

Annual PWW barbeque. Enjoy an afternoon of good food, good music & shopping at a unique flea market. Speaker: Shahram Agahmir, a producer of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa on KPFA, on recent escalation of anti-Iran rhetoric in the U.S. & Iran’s perilous path to self-determination & democratic rule. Donation $10 (no one turned away for lack of funds). Proceeds support the People’s Weekly World. At 2223 Derby St. Info: 510-548-8764.

What’s On listings are 10 lines for $20, e-mail: ads@pww.org

Licking Big Oils boots

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:50:00 +0000

Senate Republicans gave people a slap in the face June 10, voting to block a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing us blind at the gasoline pump with $4.35 per gallon gasoline. Democrats mustered a majority, 51 senators, but GOP leaders rallied 43 senators to block the bill, effectively killing it.

It would have imposed a 25 percent tax on “unreasonable” profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies, which reported $36 billion in profits in the first three months of this year. The legislation would have given the government more power to curb oil company speculation and would have made energy price gouging a federal crime.

The AFL-CIO Working Families network called for a “Week of Action” to protest the price gouging. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said both George W. Bush and John McCain “have handed the reins of the economy over to Big Oil and other corporate interests whose only concern is maximizing their profit margins.”

Since Bush-Cheney seized office in 2000, the five oil giants have reaped $525 billion in profits and presided over gasoline prices that zoomed from $1.47 per gallon to well over $4 per gallon. Oil CEOs are wallowing in money. Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson reports $21.7 million income last year. Occidental Petroleum’s Ray Irani pocketed $34 million.

GOP presidential nominee McCain voted in 2005 against curtailing windfall profits for oil companies. In 2007, he was the only senator to miss a vote on an energy bill that repealed billions in tax subsidies for oil companies. McCain promises if elected to push through a new $3.8 billion tax giveaway for the oil companies. His election in November would ensure another four years of Bush-Cheney giveaways to Big Oil. Democratic nominee Barack Obama, by contrast, vows to “make oil companies like Exxon, pay a tax on their windfall profits.”

If this highway robbery continues, can calls for nationalization of the oil companies be far behind? Venezuela’s example of using nationally-owned oil wealth to lift the living standards of the people is becoming an ever more attractive alternative.

Bush spying OK by McCain

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:44:00 +0000

Sen. John McCain has long posed as a critic of President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of phone calls and e-mails of millions of law-abiding citizens. As recently as last November he proclaimed that “private companies that provide records of Americans to the government without proper legal subpoena … undermine respect for the law.”

But now McCain is the Republican presidential nominee, scrambling to secure the blessing of Bush, right-wing extremists and corporate America. So McCain has flip-flopped, embracing Bush’s sweeping power grab including the warrantless spying conducted by the National Security Agency with the collaboration of AT&T, Verizon, SBC, Sprint and other telecommunications corporations.

Douglas Holtz-Eakins, one of McCain’s closest advisers, wrote a letter to the ultra-conservative National Review recently, proclaiming, “Neither the administration nor the telecoms need to apologize for actions most people, except for the ACLU and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.”

The New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that the Holtz-Eakins letter appears to bring McCain “into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.”

Kurt Opsahl, legal counsel of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out that McCain’s campaign staff is riddled with lobbyists for the telecom giants. They are trying to get Congress to approve Bush’s extension of the NSA spying program with an amendment that grants these corporations immunity from a flood of lawsuits by angry targets of the spying. These citizens claim that Bush flagrantly violated their Fourth Amendment protection from warrantless surveillance in spying on their phone calls and e-mails.

A survey by USA Today uncovered 66 current or former corporate lobbyists working in the McCain presidential campaign, including 23 who have served as lobbyists for the telecoms. They include Charles Black, chief lobbyist for AT&T; Wayne Berman, lobbyist for Verizon; and former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats, a partner in the King & Spaulding law firm that represents Sprint against a lawsuit on the warrantless spying. The telecoms have reported more than $4.4 million in contributions to McCain’s election campaigns since 1999. McCain has been forced to fire some of these lobbyists to quell a firestorm of criticism that he is an agent of corporate America and the rich.

Opsahl said “a strong majority of likely voters oppose immunity for the telecommunications carriers who participated in the government’s warrantless surveillance program.”

Earlier this spring, the House and Senate stunned Bush by voting to reject telecom immunity. Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) opposed the immunity “but Senator McCain voted for immunity,” Opsahl told the World in a phone interview. “McCain should stop listening to Charlie Black, Wayne Berman, Dan Coats and the other lobbyists in the pending lawsuits on his campaign staff and start listening to the American people.”

Opsahl said the telecom corporate influence helps explain why McCain now offers “unqualified support” for telecom immunity. “His arguments read like the talking points that a telecom lobbyist might employ,” Opsahl wrote in a blog on the Electronic Frontier Foundation web site.

“At a minimum, McCain has not provided straight talk on where he stands on warrantless surveillance,” Opsahl told this reporter. “Previously, he said he does not think the administration is ‘above the law.’ But he also issued statements that adopted the administration’s flawed legal analysis. One of the founding principles of our republic was that people should be free from ‘general warrants’. King George had a practice of using ‘general warrants’ to send his soldiers into the homes of American patriots without individual suspicion. In response, our founders included the Fourth Amendment to safeguard the rights of the people from unlawful government surveillance.”

Bush’s surveillance program, he concluded, “is illegal and unconstitutional.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

The Peoples Weekly World got it right

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:34:00 +0000

How did the corporate media get the Iraq war so wrong? This is a question that has resurfaced with former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” and the newly released report by the bipartisan Senate panel that found top officials repeatedly “exaggerated” Saddam Hussein’s threat.

With its millions of dollars in revenue and years of professionalism at their disposal, you would think that the corporate media could have ripped the lid off of the cooked intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and the supposed link between Iraq and 9/11 by the Bush administration.

But they didn’t.

Yet, your newspaper, with its tiny but dedicated staff and volunteer writers, campaigned tirelessly every week from July 2002 until March 19, 2003, to inform the public of the bogus rationale for war. Here are a few examples:

July 2002:

Bush plan to invade Iraq meets growing opposition

September 2002:

Control of oil fuels Bush war against Iraq

October 2002:

Sen. Byrd: Slow down. Ask questions.

NBC and other corporate networks devoted just some 32 words to Sen. Ted Kennedy’s antiwar political speech in September 2002. And NBC anchor Tom Brokaw recently justified it. “All wars are based on propaganda,” he said. “The White House has an unbelievable ability to control the flow of information at any time but especially at a time when they are planning to go to war.”

You would think that Brokaw and the others would have worked just a little bit to find some other “flow of information.” After all, your newspaper did. Here are more examples:

Mandela, Carter, lawmakers: ‘Let UN inspectors work’

(Feb. 8, 2003)

Powell at UN caught in web of lies

(Feb. 15, 2003)

Sen. Byrd: Reckless administration may reap disaster

(Feb. 22, 2003)

When push comes to shove, corporate news takes the side of the super rich and powerful.

You deserve a newspaper that takes the other side. That will bring you the truth, always.

As a subscriber you know the news and analysis you read are critical for your daily lives, and especially the ’08 elections. You can send a message to the corporate media. The bigger our subscriber base the more the corporate media will listen to our side. Introduce the People’s Weekly World to your neighbor, loved one or co-worker. You can bring it to them for a few weeks then ask them to subscribe, only 62 cents an issue.

Thank you for sticking up for truth. Thank you for subscribing.

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Wilderness lovers ask: Why bring a gun to a national park?

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 04:55:00 +0000

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — Nathan Goff, a house painter in Olympia, Wash., drove his wife, Missy, and 19-month-old daughter up to Hurricane Ridge here June 8. The ridge, just a few feet shy of one mile above sea level, is the crown jewel of Olympic National Park. It commands a stunning view of Mt. Olympus to the south and a breathtaking view of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and British Columbia to the north.

It was a chill spring day and the alpine meadows were still blanketed with snow. The young couple stood gazing down into the deep valley of the Elwha River. Directly across loomed the snowy crags of Bailey’s Range. It was so silent and peaceful you could almost hear your heartbeat.

“I’m trying to figure out why anyone would want to carry handguns in a national park,” Goff told a reporter. “To ward off cougar attacks? They are so rare.

Allowing people to carry guns in the parks just adds another element of danger. It’s so totally unnecessary.”

To bring home his point he introduced his little girl. “This is Lily Grace,” he said. “She is not at all armed.”

He was commenting on a change in federal firearms regulations proposed by the Bush administration that would lift a ban on carrying loaded, concealed weapons in all national parks. Instead, the rule would conform to the state firearm law in the state where the park is located. Several states including Florida, Texas and Wyoming now permit carrying handguns either openly or concealed. The Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service, is in the midst of a 60-day comment period on the proposal to lift the general ban on carrying operable firearms in the parks that has been in effect since President Reagan signed it in 1982.

Bill and Nanette Londeree of Navato, Calif., echoed Goff’s view. “This is a solution searching for a problem,” Bill Londeree told the World. “There just isn’t any big problem of crime in the national parks.”

Standing nearby was retiree, Al Phillips of nearby Sequim. “What I’m afraid of is if somebody had a gun, they’d start firing away. I’d rather keep firearms out of the parks,” he said. He glanced toward the mountain range in the distance. “It seems strange to have a natural setting like this and then introduce firearms into it. If we had guns in the parks we would have more problems. These parks are places where people are free to relax and not worry about guns and people who carry them.”

Wendy Goldberg, a resident of Sequim, was stirred to write a letter to the Peninsula Daily News arguing, “A gun-free park enhances pubic safety and helps prevent poaching.” She urged readers to send comments on the rule-change to the Interior Department by going to regulations.gov and locating Docket FWS-R9-NSR-2008-0062-0001. Goldberg said in a phone interview that she and her husband — a board member of Friends of Olympic National Park — are strongly opposed to the rule change. “When we read the Second Amendment, we read a ‘well regulated militia’ has the right to bear arms,” not individuals spending recreation time in our nation’s parks, she said.

Doug Pennington, spokesperson for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told the World, “There is negligible crime in the national parks.” The National Rifle Association, he added, “is trying to gin up as much fear as possible to push this rule through.” He cited a flurry of statements by U.S. park rangers, both active and retired, arguing strongly against lifting the arms ban.

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees blasted Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) for his amendment authorizing the rule change. “It is a hoax to suggest that there is some big demand for people to be able to tote semi-automatic weapons on the trails of Yellowstone or 9-millimeter pistols on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,” they wrote. A member of the group’s executive council, Doug Morris, called Coburn’s bill “an appalling pander to a powerful special interest group,” the NRA.

Some see an ulterior motive in this “states’ rights” gun campaign. Since he took office, George W. Bush has been determined to open the 636 million acres of federal lands to oil, gas, mining and timber exploitation. Mobilizing the ultra-right gun lobby in opposition to the federal ban on firearms in the national parks fits in with the corporate drive to privatize the federal lands. The Natural Resources Defense Council warns that with the Bush-Cheney tenure nearing its end, “federal officials across the West are redoubling their efforts to lease these areas for oil and gas development and to approve permits to drill them, virtually guaranteeing the industrialization of millions of acres of previously wild and open land. Already, almost 26 million acres of these lands have been leased.”

It adds that corporate greed threatens even the most “iconic” wilderness areas. “The White House energy plan endangers the wildlife and resources of several of our nation’s most celebrated wild regions including unspoiled stretches of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and Utah’s Redrock Canyon country.”

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

A win for First Amendment in Miami-Dade, Fla.

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:34:00 +0000

MIAMI – Local antiwar and social justice organizations won back their right to peacefully assemble recently when U.S. District Court Judge Cecilia Altonaga issued a ruling declaring two Miami-Dade County, Fla., ordinances unconstitutional.

Altonaga granted a permanent injunction forbidding the county’s future use of the ordinances that controlled the ability of organizations to obtain permits for parades and street processions and forbade “loitering” on sidewalks, streets, and other public places.

The lawsuit was brought by the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild through local attorneys Rob Ross and Mara Shlackman, on behalf of local anti-war and social justice organizations, including Miami for Peace, South Florida Peace and Justice Network, and Haiti Solidarity.

The lawsuit, Miami for Peace v. Miami-Dade County, Case No. 07-21088-CIV-ALTONAGA, was originally brought when Miami-Dade County refused to issue the organizations a parade permit for a demonstration when President Bush spoke at Miami-Dade College in April 2007.

National Lawyers Guild attorney Ross said “This decision advances the goals of the First Amendment for political organizations throughout South Florida; the government should not have the ability to control who gets to speak in the public square in the United States.”

Co-counsel Mara Shlackman said “To keep our First Amendment freedoms, we must exercise them, and this decision hopefully will encourage more people to utilize the rights for which the American Revolution was fought.” Linda Belgrave of Miami for Peace said, “We have to be willing to struggle for free speech to fulfill our mission of promoting peace and social justice. This decision was a huge victory in that struggle.”

Editorial: Licking Big Oils boots

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:41:00 +0000

Senate Republicans gave people a slap in the face June 10, voting to block a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing us blind at the gasoline pump with $4.35 per gallon gasoline. Democrats mustered a majority, 51 senators, but GOP leaders rallied 43 senators to block the bill, effectively killing it.

It would have imposed a 25 percent tax on “unreasonable” profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies, which reported $36 billion in profits in the first three months of this year. The legislation would have given the government more power to curb oil company speculation and made energy price gouging a federal crime.

The AFL-CIO Working Families network called for a “Week of Action” to protest the price gouging. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said both George W. Bush and John McCain “have handed the reins of the economy over to Big Oil and other corporate interests whose only concern is maximizing their profit margins.”

Since Bush-Cheney seized office in 2000, the five oil giants have reaped $525 billion in profits and presided over gasoline prices that zoomed from $1.47 per gallon to well over $4 per gallon. Oil CEOs are wallowing in money. Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson reports $21.7 million income last year. Occidental Petroleum’s Ray Irani pocketed $34 million.

GOP presidential nominee McCain voted in 2005 against curtailing windfall profits for oil companies. In 2007, he was the only aenator to miss a vote on an energy bill that repealed billions in tax subsidies for oil companies. McCain promises if elected to push through a new $3.8 billion tax giveaway for the oil companies. His election in November would ensure another four years of Bush-Cheney giveaways to Big Oil. Democratic nominee Barack Obama, by contrast, vows to “make oil companies like Exxon, pay a tax on their windfall profits.”

If this highway robbery continues, can calls for nationalization of the oil companies be far behind? Venezuela’s example of using nationally-owned oil wealth to lift the living standards of the people is becoming an ever more attractive alternative.

Rep. Kucinich introduces Bush impeachment resolution

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:47:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential contender, said Monday he wants the House to consider a resolution to impeach President Bush.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi consistently has said impeachment was 'off the table.'

Kucinich, D-Ohio, read his proposed impeachment language in a floor speech. He contended Bush deceived the nation and violated his oath of office in leading the country into the Iraq war.

Kucinich introduced a resolution last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. That resolution was killed, but only after Republicans initially voted in favor of taking up the measure to force a debate.

Kucinich won 50 percent of the vote in a five-way House Democratic primary in March, beating back critics who said he ignored business at home to travel the country in his quest to be president.

On the Net:

* Kucinich: http://kucinich.house.gov

A river walk and garden for the ages

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:04:00 +0000

The man was well dressed, one might even say dapper. He moved to the front of the packed room with a professorial air. Born of the 19th century and known for his advocacy for social justice, he took the podium and with his mere presence held the audience in rapt attention. In the state with the “shot heard around the world” and where abolitionism had deep roots, progressive and revolutionary ideas received welcoming attention.

And it was a tumultuous time. Many were unemployed and government was not responding. The speaker was known for his antipathy toward financial institutions, the military and war. He had written much and with a literary flair about such matters.

What would be his main thrust, his focus, his analysis and solution?

Some heard the topic just before he spoke. They thought it was a joke. Some thought for sure it would be a historical disquisition on the place where they sat. It turned out to be neither. With a calm, unassuming voice, he began.

“In the earlier days, even before this anniversary we are celebrating in Massachusetts now, this valley must have been a magnificent sight. The beautiful mountains on either side thickly covered with massive trees, and in the midst of it all, the Housatonic river rolling in great flood, winding here and there, stretching now and then into lakes which are our present meadows and so hurrying always on toward the sea. And I think everyone would realize then and now that the river was the center of the picture. In a sense the mountains exist for the river; and no matter how much one might climb their sides, they look back upon the river as the central beauty of the panorama.”

Who was this man speaking so eloquently of the environment? Henry David Thoreau? Good guess but wrong. It was W.E.B. Du Bois. The educator/scholar/activist who would traverse two centuries addressing such topics as the color line, war and peace and socialism, and would eventually join the Communist Party USA, was speaking to the annual meeting of the alumni of Searles High School on July 21, 1930. The 1884 graduate of that same school in Great Barrington, Mass., went on to presage the importance of passive open space green ways and an environmental consciousness 50 years ahead of its time.

“What has happened? The thing that has happened in this valley has happened in hundreds of others. The town, the whole valley, has turned its back upon the river. They have sought to get away from it. They have neglected it. They have used it as a sewer, a drain, a place for throwing their waste and their offal. Mills, homes, and farms have poured their dirt and refuse into it; outhouses and dung heaps have lined its banks. Almost as if by miracle some beauty still remains in places where the river for a moment free of its enemies and tormentors, dark and exhausted under its tall trees, has sunk back to vestiges of its former charm, in great, slow, breathless curves and still murmurs. But for the most part the Housatonic has been transformed into an ugly disgraceful thing. We have crossed it with bridges of unbelievable ugliness, we have choked the flow of its waters, and we have done this not only by filling up the river with refuse, but by denuding the guardian hillsides of their trees and shutting off the brooks.”

Du Bois went on to mention rivers of other countries. He emphasized while they were used as highways, people cultivated and appreciated their beauty. He continued,

“You know we are judged by what we neglect. … Perhaps the very freeing of spirit which will come from giving up our attempt to do the impossible, from our ignoring of our greatest source of beauty and completeness, and degrading it with filth and refuse, perhaps from that very freeing of spirit will come other freedoms and inspirations and aspirations which may be steps toward the whole vast problem of country life and the diffusion and diversification and enriching of culture throughout this land. Even if this vision sounds fantastic to the severely practical, certainly the cleansing of the Housatonic will mean better health, less typhoid, safer recreation and lovelier vistas of beauty.”

He urged “that we should rescue the Housatonic and clean it as we have never in all the years thought before of cleaning it, and seek to restore its ancient beauty; making it the center of a town, of a valley, and perhaps — who knows? of a new measure of civilized life.”

All too often powerful voices for social justice from our past are not recognized for the completeness of their vision for a better world. And those visions include the environment. This is doubly so for African American activists and thinkers.

This was not a “one shot deal” on the environment for W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1961, at the time he joined the Communist Party, he wrote the same Great Barrington Alumni Association about the Housatonic River and the environment.

Fortunately, some 30 years later, environmentalists, inspired by Du Bois’ eloquent words and vision, went to work. By the new millennium, 1,900 volunteers, with more than half school-age children and young adults, transformed the riverbank, removing 365 tons of debris, planting native flora and initiating a half-mile public walking trail. On Sept. 28, 2002, the W.E.B Du Bois River Garden was dedicated just a few paces from his birthplace.

In these times of hope and political change, Great Barrington’s river walk and the Dubois River Garden are beautiful destinations for all activists. While there, be sure to rekindle Dr. Du Bois’ other visions of peace and social justice.

Nick Bart is an environmental activist in Connecticut.

For more information and pictures of the Du Bois River Garden and public river walk go to www.gbriverwalk.org/riverwkDuBoisGarden.html

Art Perlo contributed research for this article.

Lets pause for Utah Phillips, 1935-2008

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:29:00 +0000

Utah Phillips spoke directly to each of us in that filled auditorium here on April 24. It didn’t matter that it was his disembodied voice, speaking over a cell phone held up to a microphone, held aloft by Pete Seeger, one of the event’s headliners. The strength of Phillips’ message was as clear as the vitality in his tone. I was happy to be there to hear his response to our benefit concert on his behalf, happier still to witness the warm exchange between him and Seeger, another elder of fighting the good fight.

But this room on that sunny spring day was dedicated to Utah Phillips. We’d all come with the intention of helping this man who’d been there for the greater “us” for decades. He told us of his life and plans for the future. Sure, he sounded tired, but none could accept that he would not get through this challenge. He told us so. None would believe that he would pass away about a month later on May 23.

Damn, at least we can say that it took a lot to silence Utah. But the echo of his work rings loudly.

Phillips was born Bruce Duncan Phillips in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1935. Not simply because he was a Depression baby, not only due to the powerful example of his parents’ work in the militant labor movement, but perhaps due to a calling, Phillips decided early on that he would dedicate his time to social justice.

By the mid-1950s, he was a rambling veteran of the Korean War, damaged from the sites and sounds around him. Phillips was a drifter with a taste for drink. Ending up in Salt Lake City, 20-year-old Phillips arrived at the Joe Hill House, a shelter that was a part of the Catholic Worker movement facilitated by Ammon Hennacy, an anarchist and associate of noted humanist and socialist Dorothy Day.

Hennacy had a tremendous impact on the young Phillips, not only aiding him to get clean and focused, but by way of his radical beliefs and tales. Phillips absorbed these ideas and, adding in the influence of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Borscht Belt comedians, raconteurs and various country musicians, Phillips created “U,” Utah Phillips, the character whose life he’d maintain as his own throughout the decades. Hennacy also introduced Phillips to the Industrial Workers of the World, and he became a life long dues-paying member and activist with this global labor organization. He would later use many of Hennacy’s teachings and statements in his oratories, at once satiric, sentimental and revolutionary.

Though Phillips engaged in several noted career journeys (including an unsuccessful run in 1968 for U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket), he will always be remembered as a folksinger. Making full use of the amazing heritage of song within the Wobbly repertoire, Phillips came to champion the IWW and their Little Red Songbooks. His rounded baritone adorned more than one collection of IWW recordings. In between writing many powerful original songs such as “All Used Up,” Phillips brought to life the ballads of Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin, T-Bone Slim and the “Unknown Proletariat,” who could have been most any of us. But he never failed to see the importance in the smallest of the small.

Oddly enough, Phillips became something of a cult figure with the college crowd in recent years. Two strong CDs with Ani DiFranco brought him a bit of notoriety, but he remained, well —Utah. Sometimes singing and fighting are just that interchangeable. Each time we lift up a guitar, put pen to paper, speak our mind or simply count our blessings, let’s pause a moment for Utah Phillips.

John Pietaro is a labor organizer and cultural worker in New York.

Firefighters and prescription drugs

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:19:00 +0000

Suppose your house is burning down with your family trapped inside. When the fire department arrives at the scene, they tell you the rescue will cost $1 million. After all, aren’t your family and your house worth the money?

This scenario should not sound outrageous. It is essentially what the pharmaceutical industry does to us when they ask us to pay their patent-protected prices for prescription drugs. The drugs we need for our health or our lives are almost invariably cheap to produce, just as the firefighters might be able to easily stage the rescue once they have arrived at the fire. But the drug companies, like the firefighters on the scene, have a virtual monopoly on their services at the critical moment. Therefore, they are quite likely to get their price.

The drug companies’ defenders will argue it takes lots of money to develop drugs. However, to continue with the firefighter analogy, it also takes a lot of money to keep a crew of firefighters trained and ready to answer the call at a moment’s notice. Why do we think it makes sense to make the patient bear the cost of drug research at the point when they need a drug, but not to make the owner of the burning house bear the expense of maintaining the fire department?

The most remarkable part of this story is we do not even have a public debate on how we finance drug research. The United States is currently spending almost $250 billion a year for prescription drugs. If drugs were sold in a competitive market, without government-imposed patent monopolies, we could save close to $200 billion a year. The $200 billion in higher drug prices buys a bit less than $25 billion a year in pharmaceutical research, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Paying $8 in higher drug prices for $1 in research does not seem like a very good deal.

Furthermore, as economists who don’t work for the drug companies will tell you, the huge markups created by patent monopolies are an invitation to corruption. When a drug company can sell a drug for $500 that costs it $4 to manufacture and distribute, it has an enormous incentive to mislead doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of the drug. And, when the drug company performs the research on the drug, and controls the dissemination of research findings, they also have the ability to act on this incentive.

Under the current system, we should not be surprised to find drug companies conceal evidence that their drugs might be ineffective or even harmful. Given the structure of the incentives that the government has created, we should be surprised if drug companies are not dishonest.

There are many different alternatives to patent monopolies for financing drug research. In fact, the U.S. government already spends $30 billion a year on biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. Virtually everyone, including the drug companies, agrees this government-funded research has been extremely valuable.

Would it make sense to double the level of public funding to pay the full cost of developing drugs, and then let all drugs be sold at $4 a prescription in a competitive market? We could more than cover the cost to the government by the savings each year on drugs purchased through Medicare and Medicaid. If the drug companies did not own our politicians, we would be having this debate.

If totally replacing the industry’s research spending sounds like too radical a step, how about the halfway measure of just paying for the clinical trials? After all, this is where the greatest opportunity for corruption exists, with the industry only revealing the data from the trials that it finds useful to release. Here also, the expense to the government of paying for the trials could be more than covered by lower prices on drugs purchased through government health programs.

We should be having a serious national debate on the relative efficiency of the current patent system and various alternative mechanisms for financing drug research. Unfortunately, the drug companies are so powerful that few politicians are even willing to consider alternatives. In fact, the drug companies are so powerful that few media outlets would even print a column suggesting alternatives. In fact, the drug companies are so powerful that few economists would ever consider researching alternative mechanisms.

So, for the foreseeable future, we will expect the owners of the burning house to shell out big bucks to the firefighters coming to the rescue. And we’ll just pretend that there is no better way to do things.

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.org). This article is reprinted from truthout.org.