People Before Profit blog

Five years after Katrina, it’s “win or die”

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:23:00 +0000

Five years after Hurrican Katrina, the human-made disaster that preceded the storm and got worse afterward continues. Taking advantage of a legacy of deregulation that flourished during the Bush years, corporate profiteers have sunk their teeth into the rebuilding operation.

On the whole, with all the work that reconstruction of a hurricane-devastated city requires, unemployment in New Orleans is actually below the national average of 9.5 percent. But that has not reduced the city's poverty rate, which remains twice the national average.

"There's lots of work that needs to be done. The problem is that nobody's making a living off the work but the chiefs and thieves," said Robert "Tiger" Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO.

As an example he pointed to a recent federal government $1.8 billion school construction grant to the city. "Workers are going to be hard pressed to get good paying jobs out of the grant," he said. "The money is coming to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and doesn't include Davis-Bacon requirements that workers be paid the prevailing local; wage."

"What's happening," said Hammond, "is that workers are deliberately misclassified as independent contractors so employers can pay them less than if they had a union contract. It was hard enough to get a union job before Katrina. Now it's even harder."

The public school system in New Orleans is one of the areas where much remains to be done.

The official picture state leaders put forward is a system being "re-invented" after Katrina. Seventy percent of the city's schools are now charter schools, a far higher rate than in any other city in the country.

The state-run Recovery School District now directs two dozen schools and "oversees" 46 charters.

With the majority of schools under state control or operating as charters, and with a post-Katrina state law banning collective bargaining for many teachers - the AFT's United Teachers of New Orleans, which once had 4,500 members, is down to fewer than 1,000.

Many students attend classes in portable classrooms, still awaiting permanent facilities.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a complaint with the Louisiana education department, saying the state has failed to ensure that students in New Orleans with disabilities have equal access to education and are protected from discrimination.

Five years after Katrina the city is no longer the totally devastated scene of breached and crumbling levees and 200,000 destroyed homes that it was immediately after the storm. New businesses and the tourist French Quarter are all back in operation.

But 50,076 homes, 23 percent of the city's residential properties, remain blighted, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution. This puts New Orleans far behind other troubled cities like Detroit.

About one-third of the families that fled New Orleans in 2005 have never returned, leaving, many say, fewer people to revive the culture and spirit the city is famous for.

"Blight was a problem even before the storm, but Katrina accelerated it," said Sam Rykels, assistant secretary of the Louisiana State Museum. "New Orleans' historic character is now in precipitous decline and it will take considerable political will to change the city's property rights laws so decaying buildings can be reclaimed."

Among the important things not rebuilt is the city's health care system. The greater New Orleans area had 23 hospitals before Katrina. Today it has only 12. A visit to a hospital requires long drives and even longer waits. Charity Hospital, which served the city's poor and uninsured, closed down in the flood that followed the hurricane and has never re-opened.

Before Hurricane Katrina, Hammond lived in St. Bernard Parish, one of the areas hardest hit by the disaster. "I had 11 feet of water in my house. We were under water," he said. He said the hospital in his parish, destroyed by the storm, still hasn't been rebuilt.

Asked to describe the mood of the people of New Orleans, five years after Katrina, Hammond said: "It's frustrating. We are surviving but it could be much better. We're not going anywhere. We'll be here until we win or we die."

Photo: Hurricane Katrina survivor Robert Green, Sr., who lost his mother and granddaughter in the storm, hugs Veronica Henry after leading a parade through the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans on Katrina's fifth anniversary, Aug. 29. (AP/Gerald Herbert)

Ted Strickland blasts GOP “monkey business” opponent

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:44:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Blasting his Republican opponent as someone who "only cares about Wall St.," Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland rallied labor supporters here Monday to mobilize for the crucial November elections.

Speaking at United Steelworkers Local 979 hall, Strickland told a gathering of steelworkers, painters and laborers that unlike contests where differences are small, "I flat out disagree with John Kasich on every issue."

Kasich, a former congressman and a managing director of Lehman Brothers prior to its collapse, has run innumerable TV ads noting that during Strickland's time as governor Ohio lost 400,000 jobs.

"Actually," Strickland said, "the U.S. lost 8.5 million jobs. But this is not because of policies in Columbus, Ohio. It was caused by the policies of Bush and Cheney and the shenanigans on Wall Street."

The collapse of Lehman Brothers was a key part of this, Strickland charged. "It was the largest bankruptcy in history and it cost Ohio pension plans $400 million."

Kasich, however, did not suffer, Strickland pointed out. "He got a $400,000 bonus."

"Kasich says he should be elected because he has business knowledge," Strickland said. "Lehman Brothers cooked the books. They deceived investors. What he knows is monkey business."

While in Congress, the multimillionaire Kasich voted against raising the minimum wage and voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has cost Ohio hundreds of thousands of jobs, Strickland said.

"He calls for eliminating the state income tax, which accounts for 46 percent of our revenue," Strickland said. "That is reckless. It is irresponsible."

Kasich also would privatize the state Department of Development and other agencies, the governor charged.

"This is a tough time to be governor," Strickland said. "People are rightfully concerned. They are anxious. They wonder if government is capable of helping."

But, he said, "We can't go back to the same policies that led to this recession. We can't go back to the years of bad decisions, bad policies. The Republicans controlled Ohio for 16 years. Barack Obama has been president for less than two years. As Vice President Biden said, ‘Things are hard, but they are not hopeless.'"

"I am the proud son a steelworker," Strickland said, "and I never forgot where I came from."

Strickland cited achievements of his administration despite the recession, including allocating $1.6 billion for job creation and retention, achieving the sixth highest economic growth of any state, freezing college tuition and increasing enrollment and increasing investment in job training and public education.

"I'm not perfect," he said. "You should not compare the governor to the Almighty. The governor should be compared to the alternative. We must not turn our state over to Kasich."

Photo: Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland addresses the Lorain, Ohio, Labor Day Festival in 2008. Second from left in red shirt is Rich Trumka, then AFL-CIO secretary treasurer and now the federation's president. (AFL-CIO)

Calls for new stimulus as 1 in 6 rely on anti-poverty aid

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:49:00 +0000

As the government released figures today showing that its anti-poverty programs are serving a record one in six Americans, demands for a second stimulus heated up.

More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid, a program aimed principally at the poor, up 17 percent since the recession began in December 2007. More than 40 million are on food stamps, a 50 percent increase during the same period.

The number receiving unemployment benefits has quadrupled to 10 million and there has been an 18 percent hike in the number on welfare, now up to 4.4 million since the recession began.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who has thus far refrained from entering current economic debates, said this weekend that the Fed was not in a position to fix the economy by manipulating interest rates. He said he has told Congress that additional fiscal stimulus is needed to support economic recovery.

Laura Tyson, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, also argued strongly for a second stimulus program, declaring on Aug. 28 that "by next year, the stimulus will end, and the flip from fiscal support to fiscal contraction could shave one or two percentage points off the growth rate at a time when the unemployment rate is still well above 9 percent. Under these circumstances, the economic case for additional government spending and tax relief is compelling."

Tyson, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, was chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration and is a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

According to Tyson, "The primary cause of the labor market crisis is a collapse in private demand - the same problem that bedeviled the economy in the 1930s ... So there is now a substantial gap between the supply of goods and services the economy is capable of producing and the demand for them. This gap is starkly reflected by the 23 million Americans who are looking for full-time jobs and the millions more who have left the labor force because they could not find one."

Tyson said the two types of spending with "the biggest bang for the buck" are unemployment benefits and aid to state governments. "The federal government should pledge generous financing increases for both programs through 2011," she said.

In addition, she said that "an increase in government investment in roads, airports and other kinds of public infrastructure would be cost-effective, too, as measured by the number of jobs created per dollar of spending."

Tyson, who made her assertions in an article in The New York Times, also noted that the American Society of Engineers has identified more than $2.2 trillion in public infrastructure needs nationwide. A 2008 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that, on strict cost-benefit grounds, it would make sense to increase annual spending on transportation projects alone by 74 percent, she noted.

Tyson said such programs are affordable. Focusing on budget cuts instead, she said, would "tip the economy back into recession or condemn it to years of faltering growth and debilitating unemployment" which "would depress tax revenue and could mean larger deficits."

Jeff Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute said downward revisions in the Gross Domestic Product made congressional action on a second stimulus even more urgent. New data revised the GDP downward for the second quarter to 1.6 percent from an initial estimate of 2.4 percent.

"Without the stream of spending provided by the Recovery Act, the economy would have contracted outright," said Bivens. "This is most troubling, as Recovery Act money is almost spent and will provide no boost to growth going forward. The case for more action from policymakers to support the recovery and return the job market to health is now overwhelming."

On Aug. 30 an organization of normally conservative economists, the National Association for Business Economics, released a survey of its membership that also showed overwhelming support for job creation.

Three-quarters of the members of the group said policymakers should focus on promoting growth and job creation rather than deficit reduction. Seven out of 10 of the economists said promoting economic growth should be the policy priority at the federal level, while only 29 percent said the deficit should take precedence.

Many conservatives say they oppose more economic stimulus because, in their view, the $787 billion fiscal stimulus package passed in 2009 was a failure.

But Tyson challenged that. "It has not failed. It is working as intended," she said. "Its spending increases and tax cuts have boosted demand and added about three million more jobs than the economy otherwise would have. Without it, the unemployment rate would be about 11.5 percent. Because about 36 percent of the money remains to be spent, more jobs will be created - about 500,000 by the end of the year."

Photo: Eric Kilby cc 2.0

Progressive Caucus tells deficit panel: “Take Social Security off the table”

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:12:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have told the two co-chairs of President Obama's deficit-cutting commission to "take Social Security off the table," caucus co-chair Rep. Raul Grijalva says.

In an Aug. 24 telephone press conference about the nation's top retirement program, the Democratic lawmaker from Tucson, Ariz., added that he and his colleagues suggested other ways of stemming the flood of federal red ink in future years.

Their proposals included closing corporate tax loopholes, letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, imposing higher royalties on firms that take valuable resources - such as minerals and oil - from federal lands and cutting defense and homeland security spending, Grijalva reported.

The 12 to 15 Progressive Caucus lawmakers who met with Grijalva and deficit commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles, a former top Democratic White House staffer, and Alan Simpson, a former GOP senator from Wyoming, also made the point that cutting Social Security wouldn't fly politically, either in Congress or the country.

"This was an affirmation of where we stand and of what we won't tolerate" in deficit-cutting plans, Grijalva added. "Because of its size and its impact, it's important to make the point now that Social Security must be off the table," he said - even before the deficit-cutting panel issues any findings and recommendations.

That ban includes any proposals to raise the retirement age, as GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner favors, or to cut benefits, Grijalva added.

Grijalva discussed the caucus meeting with Bowles and Simpson, which occurred just before Congress recessed in early August, as the Economic Policy Institute marshaled arguments to take Social Security off the deficit-cutting list. The commission co-chairs were non-committal, saying everything is being considered including the nation's retirement program, the congressman reported.

It shouldn't be, said EPI's Ross Eisenbrey, along with former Social Security chief actuary Harry Alexander and Nancy Altman, co-chair of a coalition - including the AFL-CIO and many major unions - formed in July to protect Social Security from the deficit-cutters.

That's because Social Security has its own trust funds and does not contribute to the flood of red ink the presidential panel is investigating, the four said. The lawmakers' caucus made that same point to Bowles and Simpson, Grijalva added.

Photo: Progress Ohio

Protesters to GOP Kirk: hands off Social Security; jobs now

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:57:00 +0000

LISLE, Ill. - Angered by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk's repeated votes against extension of unemployment compensation and jobs creation, protesters crashed a posh Kirk fundraiser here Aug. 26.

Chanting "Hands off Social Security" and "Jobs now!" demonstrators were blocked from entering the swanky affair by startled donors and eventually escorted out.

Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill) has voted against working families too many times, and (his election to the US Senate) isn't going to happen," said Siobhan Kolar of Chicago Jobs with Justice. "He's a liar and a flip-flopper and we need to stop him."

Kirk voted against the $26 billion HR 1586 Education and Medicaid Assistance Act, which among other things saved the jobs of 161,000 teachers including 6 thousand in Illinois alone. The bill saved the jobs of 158,000 other public employees including firefighters and police.

Even with the bill's passage, 1,700 Chicago public school teachers and another 10,000 statewide will be fired adding to already over crowded classrooms.

Kirk said he voted against the bill to prevent the budget deficit from getting worse. Most progressive economists maintain the deficit will get far worse with higher unemployment and deeper cuts to public services. JWJ, the AFL-CIO and others are calling for a tax on Wall Street speculators to close the deficit and fund jobs creation and public services.

Kirk has also voted against extension of unemployment compensation 6 times for the same reason despite a 12% unemployment rate in Illinois.

"In this economic time the people need a senator who is going to come in and work with the President and Congress to get resources back to communities, creating jobs and rebuilding the economy," said Rev. Michael Stinson, pastor of the General Assembly and Church of the First Born. "Mark Kirk is out of touch."

"If the Republicans get control it's really going to be hard for President Obama to get legislation passed to rebuild this economy," said Stinson. "They want to go back to doing things like benefiting the upper crust of society and not the average people."

Protesters were also concerned about where Kirk stands on privatization of Social Security and Medicare and termination of the Children's Health Insurance Program. According to DeLane Adams, Illinois State Director of Americans United Change, Kirk has been mum for months on where he stands on the detailed GOP privatization proposal put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (WI).

"There is a serious proposal for privatization from a Congressman who could one day be in a position to advance this Bush-era scheme for making Wall Street bankers richer. We are just hoping to get a straight answer from Rep. Kirk on how he would vote. Right now, we're left to wonder if Kirk's silence has anything to do with the more than half a million dollars he has taken from Wall Street interests this year," he said.

Photo: (John Bachtell/PW)

Judge rules for L.A. Clean Trucks Program

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:10:00 +0000

In a major step forward for better air quality around the nation's ports, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder ruled Aug. 26 that the Port of Los Angeles is within its rights to implement a Clean Trucks Program that makes trucking firms responsible to maintain their own fleets of clean trucks.

Judge Snyder's ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the American Trucking Associations, which contended the port had no right under federal law to regulate the trucking industry's labor practices.

Among its provisions, the LA Clean Trucks program requires trucking firms doing business with the port to sign concession agreements including hiring their drivers as employees.

At present, many drivers are forced to work as "independent contractors," buying and maintaining their own trucks and averaging just $10 to $11 in take-home pay. Some 95 percent of the country's 110,000 port trucks now fail to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's current emissions standards.

"This victory bolsters the standing of burgeoning clean port programs across the nation," said Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Melissa Lin Perrella, who argued alongside the port at the trial. "Millions of people live in port communities across the country and are forced to subsidize the outdated port operations with their lungs. This decision allows the Port of Los Angeles to continue introducing cleaner trucks while getting dirty ones off the road and sets the stage for healthier communities nationwide."

LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the decision a sign of "real progress ... now we can finally more forward with our Clean Trucks Program, a model for ports around the nation."

Calling the judge's decision "really clear," Valerie Lapin, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports, said it opens the way for Oakland and other ports to move forward with similar programs. "We've waited long enough," she said. "It's time to put an end to this toxic pollution that's causing asthma and cancer and forcing the drivers to work in exploitive conditions."

The nationwide coalition of over 125 organizations of environmentalists, port workers, residents, public health officials, faith and labor organizations works for sustainable economic development at ports around the country.

Lapin added that ATA's announcement it plans to appeal makes passage of H.R. 5957, the Clean Ports Act, introduced into Congress by U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, late last month, even more urgent.

The legislation, which now has 67 co-sponsors, would clarify federal transportation law so local governments can fully implement market-based solutions to protect public health, spur green job creation, and pave the way for vital port infrastructure projects.

Studies have repeatedly shown that poor air quality in neighborhoods near ports is associated with high rates of asthma, lung cancer and heart disease. (national dec 09) Trucks serving the ports are heavily implicated in the findings.

In 2008 the Los Angeles Harbor Commission voted to require all trucks transporting goods to and from the port to meet 2007 federal emission standards by 2012. The Clean Trucks Program aimed to cut emissions by 85 percent. Among its provisions was the requirement that all port truck drivers be employed by the trucking firms they served. Besides making the firms responsible for the trucks, this provision also cleared the way for drivers to unionize.

However, the American Trucking Associations immediately filed suit, claiming that under federal law, the port had no right to require that drivers be hired as employees.

Photo: Trucks line up at the Port of Oakland. (Marilyn Bechtel/PW)

Hysteria over Islamic center claims first victim

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:01:00 +0000

NEW YORK - What started off as a local controversy over the construction of an Islamic community center not far from Ground Zero has, at the behest of extremist right-wing politicians and radio hosts, turned into a national hysteria that many warned would erupt into violence.

Now, that violence has materialized, taking its earliest form August 26, when taxi driver Ahmed Sharif, a father of four, was stabbed in the throat by passenger Michael Enright, apparently for the sole reason of being a Muslim.

The driver, who was able to escape, described the confrontation at an August 27 press conference quickly organized by his union, the Taxi Workers Alliance, a local affiliate of the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council.

Sharif picked up Enright in midtown Manhattan in the early evening. Because of the place and time, he left the safety partition, which separates driver and passenger, open. After what seemed to be friendly discussion, the passenger asked Sharif if he was a Muslim. When Sharif answered in the affirmative, Enright, after saying, "Consider this a checkpoint," pushed the knife into Sharif's throat. Luckily, Sharif found a nearby police officer who called for help and arrested the attacker.

Revulsion at the incident has been widespread. According to TWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai, "We have been getting phone calls and messages from not only New Yorkers but from people throughout this country, saying to us we stand with you against hate, this incident is not what America is about, we are a better people, and that taxi drivers and Muslim Americans deserve better."

Many say though some sort of public debate around the proposed Islamic center was inevitable, extremist right-wing forces have been trying to provoke a culture war-to their own advantage.

"The Republicans are using this as a tool to try to win the House and Senate," City Council member Robert Jackson, D-Manhattan, told the World.

Still, Jackson gave credit to his often times adversary, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has come out as a supporter of the Islamic center and met with Sharif the morning of the rally. Jackson said Bloomberg "has been emphatic in his position. I think he represents the entire city in that respect."

Bill Henning, president of Communication Workers of America Local 1180, told the World the shrill tone of the debate over the center was because "opportunistic politicians are looking to motivate their right-wing base to come out in November. That's what this is all about. It's a cynical ploy on their part, but it has real consequences because it appeals to unstable elements in our society."

Aside from the issue of hate crimes and discrimination against Muslims, the issue has once again brought to the fore the question of job safety for taxi drivers. Earlier this year, the legislature passed a law that would make assaulting taxi drivers a felony on par with those who assault police officers and transit workers.

However, Governor David Paterson has stalled on signing the bill into law.

"The governor stands in the way," Desai said, wondering aloud whether or not a sign, as would have been mandated by law, in the back seat warning passengers that assaulting a taxi driver would carry a mandatory jail sentence could have possibly deterred Enright.

Photo: Taxi driver Ahmed Sharif speaks at an August 26 press conference in New York City. (Dan Margolis/PW)

Demands to fire Simpson increase despite apology

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:33:00 +0000

Despite his apology for insulting a leading advocate for seniors and tens of millions of Social Security recipients, demands that President Obama fire Alan Simpson, co-chair of his deficit reduction commission continue to increase today.

In an e-mail to Ashley Carson, executive director of the Older Women's League, Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, attacked her for a blog in which she opposed Simpson's position that the retirement age should be raised in order to save on Social Security payouts.

Simpson responded to Carson: "People like you babble into the vapors and all the rest of that crap." He said Social Security is "like a milk cow with 310 million tits" and ended his letter by telling Carson to "call when you get honest work."

Previously, Simpson has come under fire for calling seniors "greedy geezers," has described lower-income Americans as "lesser people in society'" and has complained that he was frustrated hearing from retirees who "live in gated communities and drive their Lexus to the Perkins restaurant to get the AARP discount."

Simpson's public apology to Carson last night has not stopped a groundswell of calls for his firing from continuing today.

The AFL-CIO issued a statement urging calls to the White House at 202-456-1414, urging the president to demand Simpson's resignation.

Carson herself said, "Apparently Mr. Simpson thinks that defending the rights of women is not honest work."

In a joint letter to President Obama, Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling and Executive Director Edward Coyle urged Simpson's dismissal. The letter said his remarks are "conduct unbecoming a person named to co-chair a presidential panel. Moreover, it is the latest in a series of derisive and inappropriate comments Mr. Simpson has made about our nation's seniors and the Social Security benefits they have earned and rely upon to make ends meet."

In another letter to the president, the National Council of Women's Organizations said, "Such open contempt goes beyond the pale and cannot be tolerated from someone in such a position of authority."

At the White House Wednesday night Jennifer Psaki, deputy communications director said, "Alan Simpson has apologized and while we regret and do not condone his comments, we accept this apology and he will continue to serve."

Late Wednesday Sen. Bernie Sanders, I, Vt., and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., were the first elected officials to demand Simpson's firing. In a letter, provided to the press, they said, "Social Security provides the majority of income for two-thirds of the nation's elderly and for one-third it provides nearly all their income. Without it, millions of Americans would be living in abject poverty as was the case before the creation of Social Security. It is false and demeaning to say that these people, the vast majority of whom have worked their entire lives and contributed into the Social Security system, are somehow 'milking' the system."

The Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who opposed the deficit commission as a bad idea from the beginning, said, "the supposedly grown-up Republican co-chair has been talking nonsense about Social Security from the get-go. When you have a commission dedicated to the common good, and the co-chair dismisses Social Security as a 'milk cow with 310 million tits,' you either have to get rid of him or admit that you're completely, um, cowed by the right wing. An apology won't suffice. Simpson was completely in character here."

On MSNBC's Countdown program Wednesday Eric Kingson, the chair of Social Security Works, said that Simpson should be fired and that Social Security in its entirety should be removed from the purview of the deficit commission.

Photo: These Florida seniors are active in the Alliance for Retired Americans (Kathie McClure/CC)

Women’s Equality Day celebrates hard-won right to vote

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:54:00 +0000

Today, August 26, marks the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution being signed into law. The 19^th Amendment granted women in the right to vote for the first time in the nation's history.

In 1971, Congress designated August 26 Women's Equality Day.

Women's rights activists say today is bittersweet. Although progress has been made over the years, looking ahead there is much to be done.

In 2010, women make up half the U.S. workforce, but only earn 78 percent as much as men. Women earn the majority of college degrees, but are still more likely to serve as the primary parent and housekeeper.

Studies show that women are 51 percent of management and professional workers, yet in the largest companies in the U.S. only 3 percent have female CEOs and only 16 percent of board members are women.

Women only hold 17 percent of seats in the U.S. Congress - well below Europe's 22 percent and far behind the Nordic countries' 42 percent.

Despite shortcomings, women's rights leaders say there is much to celebrate, including President Obama signing of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act last year, enacted to overcome a bad decision by the Supreme Court.

In recent years, the U.S. has seen Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., become the first woman elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Also Hillary Clinton came closer to winning a major political party nomination for U.S. president than any woman before her. And for the first time ever there are three sitting female U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Despite some historic milestones, the National Organization of Women says women are still denied the one thing that would make them truly equal to men - equal protection of the law, which all men receive thanks to the 14th Amendment.

"When history books and the media celebrate women's successful fight for the right to vote, they often imply that women now have constitutional equality," said NOW President Terry O'Neil.

"The fact is, sex discrimination against women is not unconstitutional, and statutes prohibiting it have no constitutional foundation," she adds. "It is time to write women into the Constitution by ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment."

The ERA was drafted by suffragist leader Alice Paul and introduced in Congress in 1923 to correct the deficiency of the 14th Amendment by providing the constitutional foundation that women have equal protection under the law. The measure passed Congress in 1972 but failed to be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Every year since 1982 the ERA has been reintroduced and repeatedly shot down in Congress.

"Women can do their part by voting in 2010," says NOW. "We must vote for candidates who believe that equality is a basic human right - candidates who believe in reproductive freedoms, who support equal rights for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered people, who are dedicated to eliminating racism and violence, who promote economic justice, and who believe that women must be included in the U.S. Constitution."

The American Civil Liberties Union says it's time for the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that would finally close the wage gap between men and women. The House overwhelmingly passed the bill last year and it currently has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate.

Photo: Suffrage hay wagon campaigns for women's rights to vote, circ. 1910. (LOC)

Iraq/Afghanistan vets give support to Islamic center

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:19:00 +0000

In a letter of support for the First Amendment, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have sent an open letter to the organizers of Park51 Community Center in lower Manhattan describing the effort as being "about as pro-America as one can get."

Park51 is the new name of the community center, which would, in addition to athletic and cultural facilities, house a prayer room for Muslim users of the center. It recently came under fire from Republican Party leaders and pundits like Sarah Palin, Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich. In a chorus they argued that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to build a center in lower Manhattan, the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Despite the opposition from the Republican Party, and because of the long community ties the Park51 group has in New York, both the city's political establishment and most of its residents have supported the move.

The veterans' letter comes after strong statements on behalf of the religious freedoms of all Americans from New York Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama.

Authored by VoteVets.org, an organization that advocates for veterans' issues and supports veterans for elected office, the letter urged the Park51 organizers not to abandon the project.

In addition the letter asked the group to circulate the letter to any interested party, "so they know that veterans like us see this as an important issue of our very Constitution and our national security."

The veterans cited their sworn oath as members of the military "to uphold the Constitution" as a basic reason for their support for the project.

The letter noted the hypocrisy of the opponents of the project:

"For all the talk these days from some quarters about the importance of protecting the Constitution and allowing the free market to work unfettered, those same people are fighting against your community's right to buy property and worship freely. Our duty to protect the Constitution didn't end when our service did. It's up to us to stand up for the right for all Americans to enjoy the Constitutional freedoms that so many around the world don't have. So, we are standing up for you."

Protection of the rights of all Americans to practice their faith in the manner of their choosing would also "deal a blow to the propaganda of al Qaeda and Islamist extremists, who recruit on the talking point that the United States is in a war against Islam."

Finally, the letter noted that taking a stand on behalf of the Constitution promotes the safety of U.S. military forces abroad.

"As veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan," it concluded, "we believe the construction of your community center isn't 'anti-America' at all. In fact, building your community center is about as pro-America as one can get."

The full letter can be found here, and veterans are encouraged to sign and circulate it.

Photo: Canada's Cordoba House -- pictured here -- runs a soup kitchen. Cordoba House was the original name of the Manhattan center. (Via Tribeca Citizen)

Death Row inmate Troy Davis faces execution, again

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:13:00 +0000

Troy Davis, an African American man on Georgia's death row, faces execution, again, after a federal judge ruled yesterday, Aug. 25, in a Supreme Court ordered appeal.

Last year, the Supreme Court, in an extraordinary habeous corpus ruling -- the first in 50 years -- ordered the lower court to rehear the case.

The hearing, however, was held in the same county in which it was originally tried.

U.S. District Judge William Morris found that Davis had failed to prove his innocence. "The burden was on Mr. Davis to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in light of the new evidence," said Judge Morris.

The legal standard for such appeals - providing one's innocence - is higher than reasonable doubt.

Commenting on the high legal threshold, Democracynow.org quotes Larry Cox, the executive director of Amnesty International, as saying, "The testimony that came to light demonstrates that doubt still exists, but the legal bar for proving innocence was set so high it was virtually insurmountable. It would be utterly unconscionable to proceed with this execution, plain and simple."

The hearing was on June 24. At it, Davis's attorney presented recantations from seven of nine eyewitnesses who recanted testimony.

The judge argued that this was not enough.

"The judge examined each of the seven recantations and concluded that only one was entirely credible. But, he said, the credible recantation came from a witness whose earlier trial testimony was 'patently false' and was thus not important to the conviction," writes the Christian Science Monitor.

However Amnesty International, in a statement issued after the verdict says, "evidence continues to cast doubt over the case."

They cite:

• Four witnesses admitted in court that they lied at trial when they implicated Troy Davis and that they did not know who shot Officer Mark MacPhail.

• Four witnesses implicated another man as the one who killed the officer - including a man who says he saw the shooting and could clearly identify the alternative suspect - who is a family member.

Davis's case has attracted worldwide attention and calls for a new trial and commuting have come from diverse quarters, including former President Jimmy Carter, South Africa's Desmond Tutu and Pope Benedict XVI.

The NAACP and Amnesty International along with others have been leading the fight to free Davis. The NAACP launched an "I am Troy Campaign."

A petition to free him can be signed here.

The death row inmate was convicted 20 years ago for the slaying of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer. He has maintained his innocence from the beginning.

Davis's attorney's pledge to continue fighting to free him.

Photo: (Gribiche/CC)

Boehner speech offers return to Bush policies

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:38:00 +0000

Speaker of the House-hopeful John Boehner, now the GOP minority leader, attacked President Obama's handling of the economy yesterday and offered as the alternative a return to Republican policies under George Bush.

He called for fewer regulations on big business, continuing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, a freeze on government pay and hiring, trade deals with countries that violate human rights, an end to the extensions of unemployment benefits and an end to federal aid that is going to states to save the jobs of teachers, police officers and firefighters.

Democrats hit back immediately after his speech this week to the City Club of Cleveland. They blamed the GOP for creating the economic disaster Obama inherited in January 2009, for opposing policies that have begun to reverse it, and for blocking proposals to help small business.

"There are millions of Americans who saw their savings, their paychecks shrink, and who lost their jobs and their homes," Vice President Biden said in Washington. "Mr. Boehner is nostalgic for those good old days, but the American people are not."

Time Magazine's Michael Crowley decried what he called the "lack of leadership" in the Boehner proposals. "Republicans are hammering Barack Obama and the Democrats over the budget deficit, but Boehner's most detailed solution was to call for a return to 2008 discretionary spending levels - a move that would exact painful short-term cuts while bringing a negligible effect on America's medium and long-term budget crisis."

Campaign for America's Future co-chair Robert Borosage called the Boehner proposals "half-baked."

"The Boehner response is to keep tax rates where they are for the rich," he said, "and cut all recovery spending, slashing 25 percent from domestic discretionary spending. We know two things about this program: It will kill more jobs than it creates; and it will add to, not subtract, from projected deficits."

Boehner, who has apparently been chosen to be the public face of the Republican Party over people like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, needed to put forward some type of economic plan. He first became a You-Tube celebrity for his negative "hell-no-you-can't" rant on health care. A policy speech, his handlers hope, will give him more substance.

"But as a plan to get the country going, a plan to put people to work," said Borosage, "or as a plan even to break the ongoing economic uncertainty, this is just silly. The time would have been better spent working on his tan."

Some commentators who were critical of Democrats for running against Bush economic policies again in the current mid-term election cycle had second thoughts about their criticisms after the Boehner speech.

"I've been skeptical that Democrats would get much political traction with their argument that the Republican agenda is just George W. Bush recycled," said the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, "but speeches like Boehner's make me rethink."

OurFuture.org's Bill Scher said the Boehner speech contained "little policy but many lies." Referring to Boehner's speech, Scher said, "He used the phrase 'job killing' to describe the President's economic strategy a dozen times. Yet he embraced a position that would literally kill hundreds of thousands of jobs."

The Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo documented some of the "lies" he found in the minority leader's speech:

Boehner said he had told the president that ongoing uncertainty is hurting small businesses and preventing the creation of private sector jobs. Garofalo noted that, according to the latest National Federation of Independent Business small business survey, nearly half of small businesses cite lack of sales prospects (not enough money in the hands of consumers) as the reason for not hiring: just 12 percent cite "political conditions."

In one part of his speech Boehner attacked the Employee Free Choice Act, calling it a "top priority for public-sector unions that provide the money and foot soldiers for Democratic campaigns. It eliminates a worker's right to a secret ballot in union elections, making it easier for unions to organize while putting employers at a firm disadvantage. Card check is essentially a 'how to' guide for destroying small business jobs."

Garofalo noted that "card check, or majority sign-up, already exists and has been used by more than half a million workers to unionize since 2003 but only because their employers allowed it. Retail employers with sales under $500,000 annually and non-retail employers with sales under $50,000 annually would also be exempt from the bill Boehner is about."

Photo: House Minority Leader John Boehner,R-Ohio, speaks on jobs and the economy at the City Club of Cleveland, Aug. 24. (Mark Duncan/AP)

In rural Ashtabula, Ohio, rally calls for GOP defeat

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:56:00 +0000

ASHTABULA, Ohio -- Labor, civil rights, family farm and community allies rallied here Aug. 21 to kick off the campaign to elect Democrats in November.

The occasion was the opening of the county Democratic headquarters, but the event had been initiated by a grassroots progressive coalition.

Wally Kaufman, vice president of the AFL-CIO Retirees Council, said he and activists from the NAACP, the Farmers Union and other groups had planned a picnic to mobilize for the elections, but at the request of the Democrats, agreed to combine the event with the opening of the party's headquarters.

"We plan to set up an Ashtabula Progressive Forum to hear speakers and discuss issues, especially in relation to the elections," he said.

Kim Parker, president of the Democratic Women's Caucus welcomed about 50 people in attendance to the brightly lit storefront stressing the critical battle shaping up. George Williams, president of the NAACP, also gave words of greetings and an invocation.

Ray Gruber, president of the Ashtabula AFL-CIO, said labor was already making 20,000 calls a week, on behalf of its endorsed candidates, out of phone banks throughout the state.

He said the race for the U.S. Senate seat left open by the retirement of Republican Senator George Voinovich was critical. There could not be a clearer choice, he said, than between Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, the Democrat, and Rob Portman, the Republican, who served as trade representative and budget director under President George W. Bush.

"Portman was the architect of the Free Trade Agreements and budget policies that have cost Ohio hundreds of thousands of jobs," he said.

Diana Sowry, secretary of the AFL-CIO, warned about the intense anger felt by many young people in the community.

"They feel they have no future. We need to hit the streets and fight back against the dark force," she said, referring to the Republicans. She urged people to take part in the national march on Washington for jobs, peace, education and justice set for Oct. 2.

Bill O'Neill, Democratic candidate for Congress, said there is deep-seated anger about the bailout of the banks and the unfunded wars.

"Now there is also growing fear," he said. "Young people are in debt. The dreams of a safe, secure retirement are disappearing. Home values are gone."

He called for efforts to stop the continuing loss of jobs by ending tax breaks for corporations that go overseas and insisting that wind turbines and other equipment in new green energy industries be manufactured in the United States. He also called for tax incentives for small business to create jobs.

Kevin Boyce, candidate for state Treasurer, stressed the importance of re-electing Gov. Ted Strickland and the Democratic slate of statewide candidates.

Strickland, he said, a "people's candidate, you can trust." His opponent, John Kasich, however, was an executive with Lehman Brothers, the giant Wall St. bank that collapsed last September. Kasich is calling for privatizing the state's department of economic development, which would end transparency and open the door to corruption.

Photo: Ohio Treasurer Kevin Boyce, right, files petitions to be on the 2010 ballot. (ProgressOhio/CC)

Guess where BP is dumping its oil-spill waste?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:46:00 +0000

Sixty one percent of the British Petroleum oil-spill waste - that's 24,071 tons out of 39,448 tons -- is being dumped in communities largely made up of people of color, according to Robert D. Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.

For the last three months most of the news coverage on the oil spill has been how and when the well would be capped; how much oil was spilling into the Gulf; what the overall economic damage would be to Gulf Coast communities; and how BP would be held accountable.

Yet these days less attention is being paid to how waste is being disposed. That means thousands of trash bags with tar balls, disposable oil-soaked booms, the oil-stained sand; the oil-soaked sea grass, medical waste used for wildlife rehabilitation, and the tons of oil-contaminated rags, gloves, protective gear and now-toxic clothing used by clean-up workers.

The BP oil spill is the biggest environmental disaster in American history. Government officials estimate the well leaked between 94 million and 184 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Environmental activists say the situation has become a toxic nightmare.

Writing on Dissidentvoice.org last month, Bullard notes more than 39,448 tons of oil garbage had been disposed of at nine approved landfills in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi as of July 15. More than half (five out of nine) of the landfills receiving BP waste are located in communities where people of color comprise a majority of residents, he writes.

African Americans make up just 22 percent of the coastal counties in those four states, while people of color comprise about 26 percent of the population in coastal counties.

"Clearly, the flow of BP oil-spill waste to Gulf Coast communities is not random," says Bullard.

According to Color Lines magazine, the only place that has successfully halted dumping at their landfill is Harrison County, Miss., where 71 percent of residents are white.

In Florida, white residents were incredulous that their town of Spring Hill was picked for dumping oil waste - until they realized the Environmental Protection Agency had printed a typo. The federal agency didn't mean Spring Hill, where whites make up 94 percent of the town. They meant the Springhill Regional Landfill in Campbellton, a town of just 221 people, where 60 percent of residents are African American.

"Black communities too often have been on the receiving end of polluting industries without the benefits of jobs and have been used as a repository for other people's rubbish," charges Bullard.

For decades, African American and Latino communities in the South became the dumping grounds for all kind of wastes - making them "sacrifice zones," he adds.

The largest amount of BP waste (14,228 tons) was sent to a landfill in a Florida community where three-fourths of the nearby residents are people of color.

Although African Americans make up about 32 percent of Louisiana's population, 60 percent of the approved landfills in the state receiving BP waste are located in majority Black communities.

Black communities in Louisiana's Gulf Coast were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and continue to experience the toughest challenges in rebuilding and recovery after five years.

"Dumping more disaster waste on them is not a pathway to recovery and long-term sustainability," writes Bullard.

He continues, "Allowing BP, Gulf Coast states, and the private disposal industry to select where the oil-spill waste is dumped only adds to the legacy of environmental racism and unequal protection."

Others say the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should serve as a wake-up call for the entire country and BP's waste dumping in majority minority areas is a dirty secret.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO of Green For All, recently wrote on Alternet.org that the disproportionate amount of toxic waste near communities of color has historically been linked to high cancer rates, asthma rates, and other environmental health problems that follow.

"Still, the racial disparity in toxic dumping continues, and federal regulators have not done enough to stop it," she writes.

Aspects of recovery from environmental and economic mishaps of a pollution-based economy must be fair and equitable, she notes, adding such burdens from the last centuries shouldn't continue.

"We must build the next century in the image of tomorrow's triumphs, not yesterday's failures," she said.

Photo: Steve Gardner of Mobile, Ala., scrapes oil from the sand along a 700-yard long strip of oil that washed up on the Alabama's beaches from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Dave Martin/AP)

Chamber of Commerce vows to elect best Congress its money can buy

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:12:00 +0000

Corporate America, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is spending huge sums of money on this fall's elections, giving fresh meaning to Will Roger's quip that "We have the best Congress money can buy."

The Chamber of Commerce alone has pledged to raise and spend $75 million in this election cycle to elect Republican big business advocates.

The Associated Press writes "That's on top of a lobbying effort that already has cost the organization nearly $190 million since Barack Obama became president in January 2009."

The capitalist lobby has been aggressively campaigning against health care, finance and labor law reform, losing in the first two instances with the jury still being out on pending labor law, Employee Free Choice Act.

The AP contends the new financial muscle of the Chamber of Commerce gives it the status of a third political party.

The surge in corporate spending comes in the wake of the body blow recently struck by the Supreme Court to free and fair elections in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case. The court in a split decision granted unlimited spending in election contests.

President Obama vocally criticized the ruling both in the State of the Union and most recently in last Saturday's weekly address. The president said, "They can buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads - and worst of all, they don't even have to reveal who is actually paying for them."

He continued, "A group can hide behind a phony name like 'Citizens for a Better Future,' even if a more accurate name would be 'Corporations for Weaker Oversight.'"

Over 80 percent of the American people disagree with the Supreme Court ruling, which allows not only unlimited spending, but also allows corporate board of directors to lobby employees in support of their preferred candidates. Mother Jones magazine reports, "They'll be able to tell employees exactly, and in detail, which politicians their bosses favor-in effect, campaigning directly in the workplace."

Mother Jones points to the Business Industry Political Action Committee composed of corporations ranging from "Lockheed Martin to the American Petroleum Institute and the Financial Services Roundtable" as one of the most active beneficiaries of the new rules.

Awash in cash new players, are being set in motion by GOP business and political operatives, like Karl Rove, who was instrumental in setting up Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads, which have been actively buying ads in key House and Senate races.

"Crossroads GPS, which has a brother 527 arm known as American Crossroads, ... announced last week that it was launching nearly $1 million worth of ads in the Colorado and Ohio Senate races and spending $2 million in the Nevada and Missouri Senate races," according to reports. All told, the two groups had raised more than $17 million as of mid-August.

The new flow of corporate cash apparently has not gone to the Republican National Committee, which is showing anemic funding raising compared to its Democratic counterparts. "The Democratic Party reported $10.8 million in the bank and $3.5 million in debts; Republicans showed $5.3 million in the banks and $2.2 million in debts," says the Washington Post. Some analysts say this is due to GOP insiders growing dislike for RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

The situation however is more complex than appears at first glance. "The National Republican Congressional Committee raised $8.5 million to help House candidates, surpassing the $6.2 million raised by its Democratic counterpart. But the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee showed $35.8 million in the bank compared to $22 million for the NRCC," reports ABC.

In an attempt to counter these efforts, the AFL-CIO has pledged to raise $53 million to support candidates favoring working-class families.

Photo: (stuff_and_nonsense/CC)

GOP candidate Dino Rossi wins "crooked" listing

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:56:00 +0000

For his shady business dealings and efforts to bypass campaign laws, the Republican Senate candidate in Washington state, Dino Rossi, has been listed as one of 12 "crooked candidates" in 2010 by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

According to CREW research, Rossi's relationship with lobbyists David and Richard Ducharme and real estate mogul Michael Mastro deserves investigation. In the 1990s, as a state senator, Rossi and the Ducharmes accepted a $2 million loan from Mastro to buy a property. Rossi failed to report a separate $50,000 portion of the deal on his campaign financial disclosure forms. It was a similar reporting failure that caused ethics problems for now-troubled Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Mastro, who donated thousands to Rossi's failed campaign for Washington state governor, subsequently filed for bankruptcy as his investment schemes collapsed in 2009. At the time of the failure of his real estate empire, Mastro's dealings with investors came under investigation by the Washington Department of Financial Institutions, after he created a scheme that, according to descriptions of the deal on CREW's website, seemed not unlike the Bernie Madoff affair.

Because such ethics violations are not investigated after five years, the details of Rossi's relationship with Mastro have not been fully revealed. In fact, some in Washington state are demanding a more careful scrutiny of Rossi's income tax filings and business dealings after Rossi and the Ducharmes made $600,000 on the real estate deal with Mastro. Some media accounts raised questions about Rossi's failure to pay thousands in back taxes.

While Mastro's motives for providing then-state-senator Rossi with such a lucrative deal and his subsequent campaign donations are unclear, Rossi's political positions seem to be based on his personal ambitions and financial dealings. According to one Seattle Times report archived on the CREW website, Rossi has complained about state regulations that govern health and safety in apartment buildings he owned. The news report also uncovered complaints by tenants in Rossi-owned buildings about a "mold problem." If elected, Rossi has promised to fight state and federal regulation of industries he holds investments in.

Rossi's get-rich-quick schemes weren't confined to real estate. According to the CREW analysis, he also talked the Ducharmes into investing thousands in the Eastside Commercial Bank, installing David Ducharme as CEO. As of 2007, when he prepared to launch his second failed bid for governor, Rossi claimed to hold only $75,000 worth of investments in the bank on his financial disclosure forms.

Rossi's bank then undertook the sort of deals and practices that most observers blame for the collapse of the U.S. financial sector in 2008. In 2009, federal investigators declared the bank to be "engaged in unsafe and unsound banking practices relating to its strategic and capital planning, credit underwriting, credit administration, concentration risk management, and liquidity management." They demanded the bank owners inject $3 million into the bank to make it sound. As of May 2010, Rossi's group has not fully complied.

Apart from his shady business dealings and failure to fully report them on campaign disclosure documents, CREW also described how Rossi created a foundation with obvious ambitions for political office that helped him further avoid full transparency. He used his foundation, called Forward Washington, to pay himself an annual salary of $75,000 and to use its resources like a campaign fund without abiding "by campaign contribution limits or disclosure laws," CREW stated.

Only when state investigators looked into the matter did Rossi step down as president of the foundation.

In 2008, watchdog groups filed a 180-page complaint against Rossi for accepting almost $7 million in campaign funds from the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) and allegedly coordinating campaign activities without that group, for which Richard Ducharme has been a lobbyist. While state investigators cleared Rossi of technical violations of the law, CREW maintained that Rossi and BIAW "skirted the law in promoting his candidacy" and attacking Rossi's Democratic opponents.

If Rossi succeeds in his bid for the U.S. Senate, it is likely that he will face immediate ethics problems. But it his ideological positions that anger working families most, according to analysis of his voting record by the Washington State Labor Council.

While in the state legislature, Rossi voted to cut benefits for unemployed workers, to gut laws that provide overtime pay to workers, to kill collective bargaining rights for workers, and to block protections for victims of domestic abuse. Worst of all Rossi voted to give legal immunity to employers that intentionally harm workers and to weaken state laws that protect workers, notably in the building industry with which he has strong business ties.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoller/2984389321/ cc 2.0

Corporate agribusiness threatens Ohio’s lakes

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:27:00 +0000

ATHENS, Ohio— While vacationing in the beautiful Hocking Hills region of Ohio we hiked the breath-taking, tree-shaded, ancient gorges cut from Blackhand sandstone. To escape the oppressive 90-degree heat we hoped to take a dip in nearby Lake Hope. But the lake, like 16 other Ohio state park lakes and countless private lakes, was closed because of a toxic blue-green algae bloom.

The algae blooms are a serious environmental and public health crisis, which has grown in the last few decades. Most environmentalists see the situation getting worse because at its root is the state's multi-billion dollar, agribusiness industry and the rapid growth of factory farming methods.

Nowhere is this more sharply seen than in the closure of the largest inland lake in the state, Grand Lake St. Marys. Situated in the western central part of Ohio, Grand Lake St. Marys has been deteriorating for decades.

The last few years have seen the appearance of new more toxic blue-green algae, which produces a neurotoxin called microcystin and an ugly blue surface scum. Signs warn visitors not to touch the water. In 2009, microcystin were at levels 82 times as high as the standard for safe drinking water.

"The clock is ticking. This lake is dying," Sean Logan, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) told the Dayton Daily News.

"Residents are furious. They are scared and worried about the water supply. Many want to move but they can't sell their homes," Virginia Burroughs of Celina told the People's World. Burroughs, a photojournalist, has been documenting the crisis and dead water fowl.

Burroughs fears a wider public health crisis. Over 100 people have been hospitalized and residents complain of horrible smell, scratchy throats, respiratory problems and raspy voices.

Burroughs has "seen ducks emerge from the water, stagger and then die. The ODNR won't test them. At some point you say, wait this could be happening to me. It's a warning. We don't know the implications."

Residents recently confronted Republican Minority Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, to demand action. Boehner, whose district encompasses part of the lake, has opposed regulation of factory farms, and is among the top recipients of agribusiness campaign donations.

Boehner also opposes funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. But he said he would get "existing government programs" to come to the aid of the lake, although wouldn't request any special "earmarks." (Article continues underneath the slideshow.)

The culprit behind this crisis is the growth of factory or mega farms or CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) in Ohio in every area of livestock raising. Ohio has some 30 million chickens, making it the second leading egg producing state after Iowa, and is the 7th leading pork producer.

Mercer County, in which part of the lake sits, is the number one agricultural producing county in the state. Forty percent of the state's CAFOs are in Mercer and Darke Counties.

The 58,000-acre watershed around the lake is home to some 3 million egg producing chickens (or layers) in CAFOs. Some estimate another 3 million layers in non-CAFO farms.

Mercer County also has the largest number of hog farms in Ohio and the second largest number of cattle and calf farms.

According to Ohioans for Humane Farms, factory farms generate more waste in Ohio than humans do and much of its treatment is unregulated. Some factory farms create 100 tons of fecal matter a day. Ninety percent of the manure produced on these factory farms never leaves the area.

In the case of Grand Lake St. Marys, 85% of the excess nutrients from manure and chemical fertilizers that end up in the lake come from factory farm runoff.

Huffington Post blogger David Kirby says the factory farms generate far more animal waste "than the surrounding land can absorb." The manure is sometimes liquefied and sprayed from giant sprinklers that spew brownish-yellow water onto cropland, which - too often - runs off into streams and ditches that feed into rivers and lakes, including Grand Lake St. Marys.

The OEPA has approved new sites on watershed lands on the western side of the lake to spread treated human sewage sludge. Add this to the excess phosphorus and nitrogen used to industrially grow the corn and soybeans, plus the pesticides, herbicides and heavy metals, and you have one big mess.

The blue-green algae crisis has hit Lake Erie as well. The huge amounts of farm runoff and rising temperatures are responsible for forms of algae never seen before according to Matt Trokan, Conservation Coordinator of the Ohio Sierra Club.

The Maumee and Sandusky River watersheds lie in the heart of Ohio's western agricultural lands and empty massive amounts of nutrients into the Great Lake. Algae blooms seen from space are extending near Cleveland and creating a 6,300 square mile dead zone.

"The algae blooms are actually beginning in April now in the farm drainage ditches. Rainstorms wash the water into the creeks and eventually the lakes," Trokan told the People's World.

In 2002, authority to regulate factory farms was passed from the Ohio EPA to the Department of Agriculture because the agribusiness industry "sought a more reliably friendly oversight agency," according to the Dayton Daily News. After a well-funded and deceptive campaign by agribusiness interests, voters passed a ballot measure in 2009, which essentially allows the factory farms to self-regulate by establishing an industry dominated Livestock Care Standards Board.

"Whatever regulations exist are a mere narrative and not enforceable," said Trokan.

The movement to end the factory farm system continues to grow. It encompasses environmentalists, small farmers, unions, consumers, restaurants and municipalities.

Under threat of passage of a sweeping anti-factory farm election ballot measure in November, an agreement was reached with agribusiness that begins to set standards for some of the factory farm operations. New construction of farms packing egg layers in cages will be barred along with phasing out tight caging of pregnant sows.

However, the same Livestock Care Standards Board dominated by industry appointees will set future standards. It's only a beginning.

Photo: Dead fish and ducks can be seen floating on top of the polluted Grand Lake St. Mary's in Ohio. (All photos by Virginia Burroughs/©)

Ohio’s Fisher slams Senate opponent on jobs

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:42:00 +0000

In a blistering attack, Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate said Rob Portman, his Republican opponent, had "sold out American workers" and was the "chief architect" of trade and budget policies that cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

Speaking to leaders of the Cleveland labor movement at a breakfast fund raiser Tuesday, Fisher blasted Portman for television ads blaming the administration of Gov. Ted Strickland for the loss of 400,000 jobs during the current recession.

"Everyone knows that this is not a state recession," Fisher said. "It's a national recession caused by the misguided policies of the Bush administration."

Portman served as National Budget Director and chief trade policy advisor to President Bush.

"He did not just support those policies," Fisher said. "He wrote them."

Fisher said that despite the crisis, Ohio had won the coveted Governor's Cup Award for the past three years given to the state with the most new or expanded capital projects by Site Selection Magazine, a corporate economic development publication. Fisher served as state director of economic development as well as Lt. Governor.

"If you want to see the jobs we created, you can go to any part of Ohio," he said. "If you want to see the jobs Portman created, you will have to go to China."

Portman's policies, he said, included tax incentives for overseas investment and budget plans that included massive tax cuts for the wealthiest two per cent of Americans.

"This is the clearest choice of U.S. Senate race in the country," he said.

Portman is the top recipient of contributions from Washington lobbyists of all candidates in the U.S., Fisher said, and the second highest recipient of funds from Wall St.

"Winning this seat is the top priority for the Republicans," he said. "They hope Portman will prove the people have forgot about Bush. They know how important Ohio is for the presidential election."

Portman has been running television ads for eight weeks, but the ads are paid for by American Crossroads, the right wing group set up by Karl Rove, "George Bush's top political hit man," Fisher said.

Nonetheless, Fisher said, the polls show the race is a dead heat.

"We have to get our message out," Fisher said, calling for tax credits to corporations that create domestic jobs. "We can't match the Republican money, but if we get our message out and conduct a door to door grassroots effort, we will win."

Photo: U.S. Senate candidate Lee Fisher, Democrat, right, speaks on the campaign trail. (FisherForOhio)

Latino civil rights pioneer Mario G. Obledo dies at 78

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:33:00 +0000

Mario Guerra Obledo, a son of Mexican immigrants who became a champion of civil rights and the first Latino official to head a California state agency, died Aug. 18 at age 78.

Born on April 9, 1932, Obledo was one of 13 children raised by a single mother in San Antonio, Texas. His father died when he was five.

Obledo is remembered as the "godfather" of the Latino civil rights movement for his tireless efforts in standing up for social justice and advancing Latino empowerment. He was a pioneer activist that fought to uplift the Latino community in the U.S. as a major political force.

As a youth Obledo served in the Navy during the Korean War. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in pharmacy in 1957 and earned a law degree from St. Mary's University of San Antonio in 1960.

Obledo was currently serving as the president of the National Coalition of Hispanic Organizations. He also co-founded the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in the late 1960s and served as its first general counsel. Under Obledo, MALDEF expanded nationwide to become one of the most active and well-recognized Mexican American legal organizations.

"Mario Obledo lived a life of ingenuity, wisdom and strategic brilliance," said Thomas Saenz, MALDEF's current president and general counsel. "He tirelessly and passionately put these skills to use in serving the cause of human and civil rights. Every Latino living in this country owes Mario Obledo a tremendous debt of gratitude."

As a lawyer Obledo fought discrimination against Latinos and minorities at the workplace, in public schools and elsewhere.

Early on Obledo fought against employment discrimination taking on a local public utilities company in San Antonio, which was known for prohibiting the hiring of anyone who had an accent or was shorter than 5-foot-10.

In 1970, Obledo filed suit against a public swimming pool in Texas on behalf of Latino children who were banned from entering and he won.

In 1975, Obledo was appointed secretary of California's Health and Welfare Agency by then Gov. Edmund "Jerry" Brown Jr. He served as secretary until 1982 and is credited with opening up doors for countless Latinos and other minorities in state government.

Later, Obledo unsuccessfully ran for governor of California in the early 1980s.

Obledo also co-founded the Hispanic National Bar Association and served as national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens during the 1980s.

From 1988 to 1993, Obledo served as chairman of the National Rainbow Coalition.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Obledo the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award, the nation's highest civilian award.

Obledo "created a powerful chorus for justice and equality," Clinton said, citing his efforts to fight for Latino children to swim in a public pool in Texas.

Obledo drove 200 miles to the pool and was told he couldn't enter so he bought suit. And when he won, "even the joy in the courthouse could not match that of Mexican American children whose civil rights had been defended, as finally they had a chance to jump into that public pool," Clinton said.

In his later years, Obledo vowed to personally destroy a billboard that had been erected in Blythe, Calif., near the border with Arizona.

"Welcome to California, the Illegal Immigration State," the sign said. "Don't let this happen to your state."

Calling the sign racist Obledo promised to burn it down saying it was an action that needed to be taken.

The billboard was eventually removed.

Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza said throughout history Obledo was one of those giants that we all stand on the shoulders of.

"He was a man of great principle and a compassionate, thoughtful leader," she said. "He was also a visionary who early on in his career worked to bring communities of color together."

Wade Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Obledo "was a truly inspiring individual and fierce advocate for Latinos in the United States and in Mexico."

Henderson added, "He didn't just lead, he pulled people up with him."

Cheers for Anne Feeney, jeers to Chamber of Commerce

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:34:00 +0000

CHEERS for troubadour Anne Feeney, who has sung her lungs out to help America's workers.

JEERS to news that she is seriously ill. (from Anne Feeney's blog)

JEERS to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for approving a statement against equal pay for women. It seems that "obsession with income equality" gives us workers a "Scrooge-like fetish for money!" (from AFL-CIO blog)

CHEERS to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's great speech at NetRoots Nation. (from AFL-CIO blog)

JEERS to bigots who want to turn the 9/11 tragedy into an excuse for religious intolerance. (from NY Times)

CHEERS to the enduring benefits after 20 years of the Americans with Disabilities Act. (from PR NewsWire)

CHEERS to the celebrations all over everywhere during the 75th anniversary of Social Security (from Alliance for Retired Americans)

CHEERS to theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking's warning that humanity faces extinction within 200 years if we don't get off this planet. Or maybe we should change it? (from Christian Science Monitor)

CHEERS to the celebrations of the "I have a Dream" speech. Detroit plans a march! (from UAW)

CHEERS to Working America for organizing the unemployed to vote for jobs this year. (from AFL-CIO blog)