People Before Profit blog

Ending ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is the right thing to do

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:04:00 +0000

Gay rights activists welcome President Barack Obama's recent remarks calling for an end to the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Obama made the appeal at the end of his first State of the Union speech Wednesday.

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal that law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are," said Obama. "It's the right thing to do."

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay rights group said Obama's remarks are a step in the right direction.

Speaking to Reuters he said, "Our country simply cannot afford this discriminatory law that hurts military readiness by denying patriotic men and women the opportunity to serve."

Most gay rights activists are pleased to know a timeline has finally been issued on the matter. However more concrete actions and fewer promises, need to be taken, they say.

Obama should have addressed suspending the disheartening number of servicemen and women who have been dismissed for their sexual orientation, said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

"The time for broad statements is over," she told the Washington Post. "The time to get down to business is overdue. We wish we had heard him (Obama) speak of concrete steps," she said.

Critics say "don't ask, don't tell" is actively being used to drive gay men and lesbians out of the military. Reports estimate more than 13,500 have been dismissed from the military since 1994 and an estimated 644 people have been discharged under the law since Obama took office. According to the Washington Post between 1997 and 2008, the Defense Department fired more than 10,500 service members for violating the policy.

In a recent editorial the New York Times states, "The policy of drumming gay men and lesbians out of the military is based on prejudice, not performance." The law, says the Times, singles out a group of Americans for second-class treatment, forcing them to hide who they are and to live in fear of being found out and discharged. "The policy hurts the military by depriving it of the service of a large number of loyal and talented Americans."

Analysts note Obama is trying to make good on his campaign promise to end the Pentagon policy that began in the early 1990s, especially with his gay and lesbian supporters.

The policy was signed into law in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, as a compromise after the military objected to his calls to open doors to the gay and lesbian community.

The measure known as "don't ask, don't tell" stopped the government from asking recruits or anyone in the military if they were homosexual, provided they did not disclose their sexual orientation.

It's time to "end don't ask, don't tell," critics charge.

Repealing the law however faces resistance from Republicans in Congress, most notably from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said repealing the measure would be a mistake. McCain argues the policy has been "successful" for the last 15 years.

Republicans are pledging to block any legislative push for repeal. Democrats cite polls indicating 69 percent of voters support allowing gays to openly serve in the U.S. armed forces and are urging the White House to change the law.

In a recent statement House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "We look forward to working with [the president] on this issue of fundamental fairness and supporting the patriotic Americans who serve - and wish to serve - our country in uniform."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to unveil the Pentagon's plan to prepare for repealing the policy at a hearing Tuesday. According to a Pentagon spokesman, Gates along with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen will not lay out specific legislative proposals to repeal the law, but rather detail some preliminary steps that need to be taken inside the military in advance of formulating a legislative plan.

Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agrees it's time to repeal the controversial law.

"As a nation built on the principal of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger more cohesive military," he said on CNN.com.

Currently there is a bill in the House of Representatives, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which calls for undoing the current law. Rep. Patrick Murphy, an Iraq war veteran and Democrat of Pennsylvania, is leading the effort to get it passed. The measure has more than 180 co-sponsors. No similar Senate bill exists.

Meanwhile gay rights activists say some progress has been made by the Obama administration recently, most notably the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act, which makes hate crimes against gay people federal crimes.

However, they add much more needs to be done, including recognizing same-sex marriage at the national level and passing a federal law protecting gay workers from discrimination on the job.

Repealing "don't ask, don't tell" would be an important step forward, they say.

Photo: Iraq combat veteran Lt. Dan Choi, shown at a June 30, 2009 news conference, was discharged from the New York National Guard for violating the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Gloria Wright/AP

Audio: Communist Party responds to Obama's SOTU address

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:13:00 +0000

The following is an interview with Communist Party Executive Vice Chair Jarvis Tyner in response to President Obama's January 27th state of the union address. It was conducted Thursday January 28th.

Howard Zinn: people’s historian

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Howard Zinn died yesterday but he will live on, as future generations read his A Peoples History of the United States and say "Wow!" - comparing it to both the old and new conventional wisdoms that they are taught to accept.

I knew Howard Zinn, not well but enough to feel personally sad at his passing. His world view was that of the broad left ,what the sociologist C. Wright Mills in the 1950s called a "plain Marxist." He was both a scholar and an activist, an "organic intellectual," a "public intellectual," all sorts of things that others write about, build careers on, but rarely are. He was never an "end of ideology," "no value judgments" man in the 1950s and 1960s. Concepts like "post-modernism," post-Marxism, the new idealisms of subjectivity and identity, in their own way more difficult to challenge because of their slippery nature than the old dogmas, never had anything to do with his work.

Born into a working class Jewish family, Howard Zinn was a bombardier in World War II and experienced the horrors of war - horrors which never left him. The GI Bill enabled him to get a higher education, a Ph.D. in government. He came to teach at Spelman College, an African American college, in 1956 as the civil rights movement was beginning to advance. His support for radical students at Spelman cost him his job. In 1964 he became an associate professor at Boston University, where he would stay until his formal retirement.

There he began to write books and articles for people's movements, civil rights and anti-war, that establishment academics largely ignored and newspaper critics baited. But progressives realized that there was something special here, and young people, then energized by the civil rights and anti-war movements as many today still are by the Obama victory, read these books to give them intellectual nourishment against the processed and predictable intellectual junk food that they were expected to purchase and digest for the rest of their lives.

These works included SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1965), Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967), and Disobedience and Democracy (1968).

In 1980, Zinn published the first edition of A People's History of the United States, which has been read by millions throughout the world and has given people everywhere a history of social struggle in the U.S. against those who advanced slavery in the name of defending freedom, conquest of the West and destruction of native peoples in the name of manifest destiny, and exploitation of working people and the establishment of a global empire in the name of democracy.

Zinn earned handsome royalties from this work, which he needed, since John Silber, the tyrannical president of Boston University, himself a leading establishment figure, froze Zinn's salary, denied him teaching assistants for courses which students flocked to, and vilified him in public and private.

Among other things, Zinn had been active in trying to form a union at Boston University, which Silber successfully smashed. I remember being asked a few decades ago to go to Boston University and participate in a Ph.D. defense for a student. I did it gladly in part because Howard Zinn, along with a former professor I knew from my days at the University of Michigan, was on the committee. I was supposed to receive modest compensation for my trip (the cost of gas and the hotel) and the relevant documents were prepared for this. Later I was told that the history department couldn't process this because President Silber, learning that Zinn was on the committee, vetoed it.

Actually, I was a little flattered. It was perhaps the only time in my life, in the numerous situations where I have been denied something for political reasons, that I was merely an "innocent bystander"" to the events.

Silber, once the highest-paid college president in the U.S. is gone and fortunately forgotten, except as a bad memory to those he hurt Howard Zinn will never be forgotten thanks to his work.

Zinn retired from Boston University in 1988 but kept on writing and speaking. I would especially recommend You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994). You can also find him on YouTube declaiming against the U.S. empire, or read his later Terrorism and War (2002) on post 9/11. You can even read the silly red-baiting attacks on him by the pipsqueak pundits of the right, who come from Rupe Murdoch's central casting office at Fox. You can read and maybe see his play, Marx in Soho. Howard Zinn is here, there and everywhere.

Let me conclude this tribute to Howard with what are the last lines of an old edition of The People's History of the United States. Marlin Fitzwater, George H.W. Bush's press secretary, responds to reporters who question him about a presidential dinner where huge sums of money were paid by corporations for the "privilege" of attending. Fitzwater says honestly: "It's buying access to the system. Yes." When he is questioned about those who don't have money for that kind of access, Fitzwater replies, "They will have to demand access in other ways.

Zinn's final comments are: "That may have been a clue to most Americans wanting real change. They would have to demand access in their own way." And that today, in the face of the monopoly banks, the rapacious insurance companies and the still sacred cow of the military industrial complex, is exactly what they, with the help of the work of Howard Zinn, can and must do.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86886338@N00/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Officials covered up deaths of detained immigrants

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:41:00 +0000

The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act recently obtained documents, memos and videos suggesting government officials systematically covered up malicious abuses contributing to the deaths of 107 immigration detainees held in federal custody since 2003.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2008 demanding access to any and all documents and information in the government's possession related to the deaths of detainees at immigration detention centers.

"Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation's immigration jails," wrote Nina Bernstein in the Times. "For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record," she said.

Even in 2008 when the Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about these people and how they died, she writes.

"But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and Blackberry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry," says Bernstein.

According to Bernstein documents show how officials - some who still remain in key positions - used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.

For example in 2007 Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor had been left in an isolation cell at the privately run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. Bah had suffered a skull fracture and was left without treatment for more than 13 hours before an ambulance was finally called. It's unclear how he suffered the head trauma.

A video was obtained in the agency's confidential files showing Mr. Bah face down in the medical unit, hands cuffed behind his back, just before he was sent to a disciplinary cell. The tape shows him crying out repeatedly in his native language, "Help, they are killing me!"

A Times reporter had called an immigration spokesman to inquire about the dying man and was rebuffed after the official said that without a full name and alien registration number for the detainee, he could not check on the case.

However records show the spokesperson, Michael Gilhooly, had already filed a report warning top managers at the federal agency about the reporter's interest and sharing information about Bah.

While Bah lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail about how to avoid the cost of his care and the likelihood of "increased scrutiny and/or media exposure," according to a memo summarizing the discussion.

Officials were faced with paying $10,000 a month for Bah's nursing home care so they decided a "humanitarian release" to his cousins in New York was their best option. Bah's cousins protested the decision because they had no way to meet his medical needs.

Bah died days before the planned release.

The day after Bah died Scott Weber, director of the Newark field office of the immigration enforcement agency, recommended in a memo that the agency take the unusual step of paying to send his body to Guinea for burial in order to prevent his widow from showing up in the U.S. for a funeral and drawing news coverage.

In the memo Weber wrote, "I also don't want to stir up any media interest where none is warranted" and helping to bury Mr. Bah overseas "will go a long way to putting this matter to rest."

Bernstein highlights how an immigration spokesman, Marc Raimondi, in April 2007 warned top managers that a Washington Post reporter had asked about a list of 19 deaths that the civil liberties union had compiled. The list included a dying man whose penile cancer had spread after going undiagnosed in detention, despite numerous medical requests for a biopsy.

"These are quite horrible medical stories," wrote Raimondi, "and I think we'll need to have a pretty strong response to keep this from becoming a very damaging national story that takes on long legs."

Will Matthews, writing on the ACLU blog, notes these stories and the recent information obtained about the callousness of immigration officials underscores the urgent need for overhaul and reform.

"Among other things, the immigration detention system needs to be infused with far greater levels of independent oversight and transparency than which currently exists," says Matthews.

"Congress should pass immigration detention reform as part of any comprehensive immigration reform legislation. And our nation as a whole needs to divorce itself from its reliance on detention in the first place," he adds.

Matthews notes the vast majority of people the government has forced into detention didn't ever warrant being detained, but they nonetheless have been victimized by an unyielding commitment to detention and deportation without the kind of individualized determinations that are the essence of due process.

"The time for the kind of sweeping, systemic reform that is so desperately called for is now," writes Matthews.

Last year the Obama administration vowed to overhaul immigration detention.

Meanwhile civil rights groups and immigration reform advocates have long been concerned with the way immigration detention facilities are run and have called on Congress to pass reforms.

In a 2009 report the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center found that immigration detention centers - which are a combination of privately run jails, federal prisons, and county facilities - routinely violate detainees' basic rights, including the right to adequate access to mail and telephone, sanitary living conditions, and legal and personal visitation.

In December, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation to fix the nation's broken system. The measure calls for an overhaul of the immigration system and would require the Department of Homeland Security to:

- Ensure adequate medical care;
- Provide immigration council during hearings;
- Ensure an immigration judge review of all detention decisions; and
- Clarify that immigration enforcement authority belongs exclusively to the federal government.

Gutierrez's bill has attracted national support and many say the measure is the first comprehensive immigration reform bill that aims to rectify some of the egregious immigration practices set in place since 1996.

Rallies demand strong health care bill

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:36:00 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO - On the eve of President Obama's first State of the Union address, people in over 130 communities around the country rallied at Congressional offices Jan. 26, pressing the president and Congress to step up to the plate and pass a "strong health care reform bill" quickly. The gatherings were organized by MoveOn.org, Health Care for America Now and other groups, in response to pessimistic predictions that after last week's Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate election, chances for strong health care legislation had dwindled.

As commuters streamed home from work, over 200 people gathered on Market St., near Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein's downtown San Francisco office, calling on Congressional Democrats to "grow a spine," and "show some skill, pass the bill!"

Asked what a health care reform bill should contain to be meaningful, Oakland resident Harriet Johnson replied, "Some kind of health care for all, for everyone. Like single payer," she added. "Other countries have it."

Johnson said a more equitable tax structure, with corporations shouldering more of the burden, is key to funding health care and other social needs. An AT&T worker, Johnson has health coverage, but said she would also be willing to pay more in taxes so everyone could be covered. "Maybe we all need to pay something," she said, "but everyone should be covered."

Physical therapist Karen Ande works with frail elders in a program largely funded through Medical, the state's Medicaid program. Last spring, she said, Medical eliminated services including adult dental care and podiatry, as part of draconian cuts - mostly to human services - to meet a massive state budget gap.

Ande said she has worked with the Adult Day Health program for half a dozen years, but "it wasn't until this fall that we had three clients with dental abscesses, big swellings in their mouths." One woman, who had been living at home with her family, ended up with an infection in her bone and spent four months in a nursing home, receiving intravenous antibiotics. The experience deepened the woman's confusion, and she was unable to return home.

"So for want of $75 worth of preventive care, this woman is now permanently in a nursing home, funded by Medical," which also paid for her antibiotic therapy, Ande said.

Demonstrators in other cities heard similar stories.

At Senator Kristen Gillibrand's office in New York City, former CNN journalist Veronica De La Cruz told protesters that her brother, Eric, died in July from a heart condition, after he was denied coverage by a number of major insurers because of his pre-existing heart problems.

"I promised my brother that I will make sure nobody will suffer needlessly like he did," De La Cruz said. "I think the public doesn't know what health care reform is. What they do hear is a lot of the misinformation that is floating around out there."

MoveOn spokesperson David Greenson told the rally that many Massachusetts voters who supported Republican candidate Scott Brown felt health care legislation wasn't strong enough.

In Jeffersonville, Ind. - on the Ohio River across from Louisville, Ky. - psychologist Mary Ellen Peacock said many people with serious mental illness can't afford needed medications because they lack health coverage. Laid-off auto worker Phil Karshner said that after 31 years in the industry, "It was a cold wakeup call" to realize he could lose his coverage as he gets older. The federal subsidy that has enabled him to stay covered will end in May, Karshner said, and he and his wife can't afford the $1,800/month it would cost to stay in the health plan.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama promised he "would not walk away" from the millions of Americans who have lost, or will lose, their health coverage. After nearly a century of trying, he said, "we are closer than ever to bringing more security to the lives of so many Americans." He urged Congress, "Let's find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people."

Earlier in the day, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the House could pass the Senate health bill and use the "budget reconciliation" process to improve it as many legislators insist. Budget reconciliation requires a simple majority in the Senate, letting Democrats avoid a Republican filibuster.

Photo: Marilyn Bechtel

Rep. Larson's office greets emergency rally for health care

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:13:00 +0000

HARTFORD - Over 100 determined people attended an emergency rally Tuesday to save national health care reform. The gathering marched outside the office of Representative John Larson, expressing strong support with signs such as "Insurance Profits are bad for my health," "Insure People, not Profits," and "I want quality, affordable healthcare." The rally, one of many across the country, was sponsored by Health Care for America Now (HCAN) Connecticut and MoveOn.

John Rossi, a staff representative for John Larson, came out to greet the crowd and was presented with a list of concerns by Steve Karp, the Connecticut Director of the National Association of Social Workers. Steve, on behalf of the group, encouraged Rep. Larson to continue his fight for meaningful, affordable national health care reform. Rossi thanked the group for their efforts and assured the crowd that Rep. Larson is doing everything he can to promote health care reform.

Participants urged the public to join the fight and call members of Congress with the message to support their effort to get health care reform done right for the country. All members of the Connecticut Congressional delegation, with the exception of Sen. Joe Lieberman, have been in the forefront of this effort.

The Universal Healthcare Foundation in Connecticut led the successful fight in the state legislature to establish SustiNet which provides the framework for public option healthcare in the state. Campaign manager Lynne Ide e-mailed an appeal for calls to members of Congress.

"The national health care reform debate has dominated the headlines in the past month, playing on the hopes and fears everyone," she said. While the foundation keeps on top of developments in Washington, they are also moving forward to implement SustiNet, which she said is "the new law that establishes the nation's first statewide public health insurance option and addresses cost, quality and access." Information about SistiNet is available at www.healthcare4every1.org.

Photo: Tom Connolly

Lawsuit charges Border Patrol with harassing Latinos

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:54:00 +0000

The U.S. Border Patrol and local law enforcement agencies in northwest Ohio restrain and interrogate Latinos about their immigration status based solely on their Hispanic appearance, a federal lawsuit filed by the Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) charges.

One case cited in the lawsuit refers to a person who was pulled over because the light over his license plate was dim. When he presented his valid Ohio driver's license, the officer demanded proof of immigration status not only from him but also from each of his five passengers. All six were lawful permanent residents, but their brown skin seemed to be cause enough for the local enforcement agent to intrude upon their civil liberties, said FLOC spokesperson Beatriz Maya.

FLOC's suit argues that these practices violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process and equal protection of the law.

"I think it is imperative that we not only address this issue, but tell them to quit it," says Baldemar Velasquez, FLOC founder and president. "Stop spreading fear in the Latino community and start doing the serious police work."

Racial profiling in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan worsened after the Bush administration significantly increased the Border Patrol's budget, according to Maya. New offices opened along the border with Canada, affecting Michigan and Ohio residents. FLOC argues that the Border Patrol may have had difficulty justifying the increased budget and has tried to create numbers by going after farmworkers and other Latinos in the area.

Other parties in the class action law suit include several FLOC members, Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, the law firm of Murray and Murray, Co. L.P.A., and the Immigrant Worker Project.

"In some cases", says ABLE attorney Mark Heller, "the U.S. Border Patrol has offered to come and restrain and interrogate persons that the local law enforcement agencies have already seized, violating the 14th Amendment's guarantee for due process and equal protection of the law. There really is no legitimate defense to what they are doing."

Maya listed three ways supporters can help:

1. The lawsuit currently has 12 plaintiffs but FLOC is certain, says Maya, that there are hundreds more who have suffered this discriminatory practice. FLOC is appealing for help in locating these members in the community. Beatriz Maya can be reached at bmaya1@floc.com or 419-243-3456 ext 3.

2. Supporters should write or call the U.S. Border Patrol and demand an end to all racial profiling: Acting Chief Michael J. Fisher, Office of the Border Patrol, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington DC 20229, (202) 344-2050.

3. Supporters are also encouraged to contact members of Congress to ask them to scale back the bloated funding for the U.S. Border Patrol.

Photo: A FLOC rally in May 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/luckywhitegirl/ / CC BY 2.0

Teens testify ‘We want jobs’

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:09:00 +0000

CHICAGO, Ill.— According to 18-year-old African American Gabrielle Banks, having a job as a young person these days, is more than just an opportunity to gain experience in the workforce or build skills. A job is critical, right now, because it helps provide for the basic necessities at home, she said.

"I used my checks to help buy things for my house such as cleaning supplies and groceries, so that would be one less burden on my mom considering that she has the only household income," she adds.

Banks was speaking at a Youth Hearing on Education, Jobs and Justice here Jan. 26.

She and dozens of students from schools throughout the city testified before hundreds of their peers including a panel of national, state and local elected officials and community leaders. The students came to tell their personal stories about how the impact of rising joblessness among teens and young adults continues to plague their communities.

The youth along with local community groups and educators are urging lawmakers to support legislation that will allocate more federal funding toward summer and year-round employment opportunities for youth here and across the country.

"We want jobs - but jobs alone are not enough!" said Banks. "We need help... more help. We need leadership, job security and stability."

Young people need role models and trainers to help direct us and allow us the opportunities to gain the tools we need in order to become productive members of society, she said.

Banks held a summer job for the last two years, which she said has helped her grow as a young and healthy person.

"I loved my job!" she said. "And I loved getting checks!"

Banks continued, "If more students were able to get trained for jobs, work and maintain jobs - that alone would eliminate the need for kids to sell drugs and rely on the streets for other sources of income." The employment of teens is very important and should be widely offered, she said.

A new report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, commissioned by the Alternative Schools Network, was presented at the hearing. According to the report the number of U.S. and Illinois employment rates for teens and young adults are at historic lows.

Marking a new low for the state the employment rate for Illinois teens in 2009 was more than 20 percentage points below 2000. Experts say youth who spend substantial time away from school and work run a greater risk of being jobless, poor or incarcerated by their early and mid-20s.

Employment rates among teens dropped sharply across all gender, race, family-income groups and education levels in the state. Teens from low-income, minority families and high school dropouts fared the worst in the state and in Chicago.

Among African Americans, the number of working teens fell from 21 percent in 2000 to 18 percent in 2007. It plunged to 12 percent from January through November of last year.

Among Latinos, it dropped from 41 percent in 2000 to 27 percent in 2007 and stood at 30 percent last year.

Among whites, employment dropped from 57 percent in 2000 to 45 percent in 2007 and 33 percent last year.

Experts add, teens are competing with 20- to 24 year-olds who don't have four-year degrees and are holding onto jobs they had as teens mostly at retail stores, restaurants and in the leisure and hospital industries. And both groups are competing with adults 55 and over, they note. Employment among those 55 and older rose 5.4 percentage points from 2000 to 2009 - the only category to show an increase.

In 2008 in the city of Chicago, only 15 percent of Black teens were working compared to 30 percent of Latinos and 33 percent of whites. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 27 percent of Blacks and 17 percent of Latinos were out of school and work in 2008.

Among high school students, only 12 percent in Chicago and 27 percent statewide were working in 2008.

The report, "The Lost Decade for Teen and Young Adult Employment in Illinois: The Current Depression in the Labor Market for 16-24 Year Olds in the Nation and State," is based on analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau data.

The Chicago Urban League, the Alternative Schools Network and other advocates organized the hearing and are calling for the allocation of $1.5 billion in federal stimulus money for youth employment and re-enrollment programs across the nation. Such initiatives should include expanding state and federal government high school internship and school-to-career opportunities, they say.

They add lawmakers should support the "Youth Jobs Act of 2010" introduced by U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash. The bill would provide $1.5 billion through the Workforce Investment Act to stimulate local economies by building on and expanding the Recovery Act youth employment program.

"No other age group has experienced such steep employment declines in the current recession," said Herman Brewer, acting president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. "Low-income and minority youth who depended on part-time jobs as a significant stepping stone to future employment have been forced out of the job market and economically marginalized," he said.

Student after student told their personal stories about why young people need jobs to stay off the streets and help their families pay expenses. One student said some youth rely on prostitution, joining gangs, selling drugs or theft as their only option in order to make money. Others said city schools in general need better funding that incorporates new textbooks, computers, sports and recreational programs.

We're all in the same boat, said Mexican American student Diana Pilar.

"For young people like myself this is a big issue," she said. "People need to make money to survive and pay for college costs. And we can't depend on our parents because even they don't have jobs."

Roxanne Nava is the assistant director with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and said her group fully supports the demands presented at the hearing.

"Our number one goal is keeping and growing jobs and growing a world class workforce," said Nava. "A job gives you hope and direction and allows young people an opportunity to succeed. So many times we tell young people to study hard and get a good job but what's really at the end of that line." This issue is a bipartisan one and we need to support federal job programs for young people, she said.

Others said when young people are working it helps generate economic activity and community development. Some said putting teens and young adults back to work is really a matter of national security and will help provide kids with practical alternatives. Federal funding for national jobs programs is a great investment for young people and the future of America, they note.

"Youth are starving for job opportunities," said Miriam G. Martinez, youth innovation fund director with the Mikva Challenge.

"Some youth are the only financial providers for their families," she said. When youth are asked how they can improve their lives and their communities, more jobs are always at the top of their lists, she said.

"Our youth just want a chance and we are asking that the federal government invest in our youth," said Martinez. "If our federal government can invest billions in saving the banks and the financial institutions then they should also invest in the future of America's youth."

Executive Director of the Alternative Schools Network Jack Wuest said, "We need a broader stimulus plan to engage disconnected youth who are discouraged and dropping out of the job market."

Wuest continued, "The recent jobs bill, while a start, is unlikely to have a substantial affect on the record of youth joblessness. Job creation, particularly for teens and young adults, has to be a priority for 2010 if we are to prevent a second economic downturn."

Photo: Gabrielle Banks testifies for special legislative steps to create jobs for young people. Pepe Lozano/PW

In Obama’s hometown, people still believe

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:20:00 +0000

CHICAGO—It's just another cold day in the Windy City. People are going to work and school, picking up groceries, or putting in their application for help to pay their heating bill.

On South Halsted Street here car traffic seems lighter than usual. The neighborhood that was on the verge of becoming gentrified stands pockmarked with empty storefronts. As people carry on their daily life, the political media is all focused on President Obama's State of the Union speech slated for tonight. The speech comes at a time when there is a swell of anger and dissatisfaction among the public about the state of the economy. Unemployment still hovers at 10 percent, while banks bailed out at tax payer expense pull in record profits.

Plus coming off a major Republican upset in Massachusetts for the U.S. Senate and job approval ratings hovering at just below 50 percent, the pundits say the president is on the ropes.

But what do your neighbors say? Or the ordinary Jane, John or Jose?

It was a bit surprising, but the people I interviewed seemed supportive and even patient with the president.

OK. This is Chicago after all and there is a hometown love for the Obamas. And my sampling is rather small to draw too hard and fast conclusions. But the interviews did give me some pause: on how regular folks view the presidency and Washington politics. Both seemed pretty far removed from day-to-day working-class living.

Melissa Parks, a grandmother who lives in Wentworth Gardens housing development, near White Sox ballpark, urged patience with the president. "I feel like he's doing the work," she said. "We should be patient, and pitch in."

But she did warn that she felt he was "trying to please everybody. And there are some people you just can't please."

Issue number one for Parks? "Health care. I don't have any."

Lisa Martin was waiting in line to drop off her mother's application for help to pay the heating bill at the neighborhood CEDA program, the Cook County-run service that administers the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, LIHEAP.

Martin, a mom of one and pregnant with her second, is a childcare provider. She used to work part-time, so she could take care of her daughter and make some money. But lots of parents, she said, aren't working so that means not a lot of work for her.

Martin sees politics on a local level. She sees her alderman out and about. "He walks around the neighborhood. He's out there. A regular person." And Martin says all politicians, including the president, should keep their promises. "If they say they're going to do something then do it. Let us know you're making an effort."

Martin also reminded the president that a lot of people are hurting. (See video.) Family members and friends are truck drivers, she said, and they aren't getting work. Plus, some of her friends have immigration status issues, she said, which complicates their lives. "They lose their jobs, then they have to get one at a restaurant and make about 25% of what they were making before. They are trying to support their families too."

Progressive activists worry that the president will move too far to appease the GOP conservatives in his speech, alienating his base among union members, African American, Latino and young voters, who are more likely to stay home in mid-term elections if they don't see a reason to vote. Or, as in the case of Massachusetts, many either stayed home or voted for Republican Scott Brown because the current health care plan and the job-saving stimulus didn't go far enough. Obama's pre-speech messages about a spending freeze, deficit reduction and tax cut-only-method for job creation seem way too timid at a time when bold action on the economy is needed, progressives say.

Organizing For America, the grassroots group formed out of the army of Obama campaign volunteers, is hosting State of the Union Watch Parties across the country. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, fresh off his book tour and now back into campaign mode, will be addressing the gatherings before the speech. Plouffe is widely regarded as a political wunderkind who pulled together new technologies, strong grassroots mobilization and the message of "change" in 2008. He has just been hired as a consultant by the Obama administration to, perhaps, "rally the troops" and motivate the base for the November congressional and state elections.

Plouffe's recent e-mail message to OFA already goes in that direction. He called on Obama supporters to "regroup, refocus, and re-engage on the vital work ahead." Acknowledging the problems, including Massachusetts, Plouffe said, "We've hit some serious bumps in the road recently in our march toward change. We always knew it would be difficult, but this past week has definitely been a hard one, for all of us."

Chicagoan Barbara Becker is hosting a SOTU party. She supports Obama's campaign message about the people making change.

"He is balancing a multitude of challenges that he inherited, with unemployment, two wars and an unsupportive substantial minority in the legislative body and judicial bodies. The challenge of governing is not the easiest. We, the U.S. people, are not as fully informed and active as we need to be. Like Obama said, he was not the change, we the people are the guarantee for change," she said.

Photo: Mrs. Melissa Parks says the president shouldn't try to please everybody. Teresa Albano/PW

Senate defeats deficit commission

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:14:00 +0000

Labor and progressive groups scored a victory yesterday with the defeat of the undemocratic deficit commission in the Senate. The bill proposed by Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) would have trashed congressional rules and committees and allow right wingers to ram through cuts in Social Security and Medicare, opponents had warned.

The White House, in an expected move to mollify conservative Democrats, is expected to form its own deficit commission. That body, however, would not have the power to circumvent congressional committees, prevent introduction of amendments or squash debate.

"We still need to make sure any commission does not fire at the wrong targets of Social Security and Medicare, which are not causing any long-term fiscal threat," noted Bill Scher on OurFuture.org this morning. "The broader issue of skyrocketing health costs is the main concern."

He also warned that progressives will have to make sure the commission does not rush deficit reduction before there is a sustainable "robust recovery from one of the worst recessions in history."

Labor economists are unanimous in saying that it will take time to recover 7 million jobs, revitalize crumbling infrastructure, expand access to higher education, set up a clean energy economy and reposition the country to compete in the new global economy. All of these things will be required, they say, if long-term deficit reduction is to be achieved.
In that vein progressive and liberal lawmakers are also criticizing an expected call by the president in his speech tonight for a freeze on domestic spending.

The Hill reported this morning that "his (the president's) liberal base warned Tuesday the three-year cap on most non-defense discretionary spending could hamper an economic recovery."

Pro-labor columnists also continued to raise their objections yesterday. "Over the three years that the freeze is supposed to last," notes the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, "that's more than $100 billion that won't be spent. That's a lot of money. Then they can't also be telling people that this freeze will allow them to do everything worth doing, as if there was no freeze at all."

A labor movement pollster said the focus on deficit reduction amounts to a failure to correctly read the recent Massachusetts election results.
"Scott Brown won on our message and it is time to take it back," declared Celinda Lake who frequently gauges opinion for the AFL-CIO. "Pass financial reforms to win back angry independents," Lake said, adding, "Democrats must also pass and define health care reform."

Robert Borosage, co-chair of the Campaign for America's Future, called the focus on deficit reduction a program of "duck and cover."

Describing the president, Borosage said, "His clarity and vision can embolden the meek, calm the flighty, and inspire the young. Yet now, with his young administration facing its first significant political challenge, the president apparently plans in his State of the Union to offer not vision but distraction. Instead of taking off the gloves and challenging the lies and distortions of his opponents, he is choosing to duck and cover - which will only add to the public's confusion and his party's disarray."

Photo: AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels At a Sept. 24, 2009 rally by students, professors and employees from the University of California's 10 campuses protesting budget cuts that led to layoffs, furloughs, course reductions and higher fees.

(AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels)

At a Sept. 24, 2009 rally by students, professors and employees from the University of California's 10 campuses protesting budget cuts that led to layoffs, furloughs, course reductions and higher fees.

(AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels)

Oregon delivers ‘tax the rich’ message

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:56:00 +0000

Oregon voters delivered a "tax the rich" message yesterday, voting to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prevent cuts in public education and other social services.

The voters solidly approved two ballot measures: Measure 66 raises taxes on households with taxable income above $250,000 (less than 3 percent of the state's population), and Measure 67 raises the minimum tax on corporations from its current $10 (!) and increases the tax rate on upper-level profits.

The tax-the-rich measures passed easily, with late returns showing a 54 percent to 46 percent ratio, The Oregonian reported. They drew strong support throughout the state, including in areas considered more conservative. Turnout was estimated at a substantial 60 percent.

The vote is particularly significant because Oregon is known as an anti-tax state. It has capped property taxes and voters have rejected income tax increases twice in recent years, according to The Oregonian. It is one of only five states without a sales tax.

The state was facing an estimated $727 million shortfall with cuts especially hitting education and state services. Teachers and public worker unions had organized strongly for passage of the measures.

"We're absolutely ecstatic," Hanna Vaandering, a physical education teacher from Beaverton and vice president of the Oregon Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, told The Oregonian. "What Oregonians said today is they believe in public education and vital services."

OEA President Gail Rasmussen said on the union's web site, "Oregon voters took a stand against more four-day school weeks and bulging class sizes and said yes to corporations and the wealthy paying their fair share."

The teachers union credited the results to "the hard work of parents, educators, and thousands of Oregonians from every walk of life who stood up to protect our schools."

Campaign ads by supporters "highlighted banks and credit card companies and showed images of well-dressed people stepping off private jets," The Oregonian noted. "They also hammered on the $10 minimum tax that most corporations have paid since its inception in 1931."

Opposition to the tax-the-rich measures was led by a coalition of business groups funded by corporate CEOs like Nike's Phil Knight and Columbia Sportswear's Tim Boyle.

They tried to convince voters that taxing the rich would cause job losses and lead wealthy residents to move out of the state. But Tuesday's results indicate such appeals carried little weight.

The tax increases had been approved last year by the Democratic-led state Legislature, but big business and other right-wing interests organized a petition campaign that put the measures on the ballot for a public referendum.

The Legislature already put the $727 million for education and public services into the current budget. If the ballot measures had been rejected, lawmakers would have been forced to hold a special session to find other ways to reduce spending or raise revenue.

The voters' action on Tuesday "means the February session won't be focused on cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from schools, public safety and health care," said House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone.

Oregonian reporter Harry Esteves concluded that Tuesday's "strong support" for the tax measures "validated a strategy by Democratic lawmakers to single out the rich and corporations for targeted tax increases."

Photo: www.oregoned.org

Witness at equal marriage trial: Opposition ‘grounded in prejudice'

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:08:00 +0000

San Francisco's equal marriage trial, now in its third week, has been marked by moving testimony about the pain denial of marriage has inflicted on same-sex couples and their families and the discrimination and abuse gays and lesbians continue to experience in their everyday lives.

In the first-ever trial in federal court on marriage equality, plaintiffs Kristin Perry and Sandy Stier of Berkeley and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo of Burbank seek to overturn California's Prop. 8 on grounds it violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2008 defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

The plaintiffs rested their case Monday after introducing videos produced by Prop. 8 backers, claiming equal marriage would lead to pedophilia, polygamy, incest and bestiality. Attorneys for the two couples had earlier called as a hostile witness William Tam, director of the Traditional Family Coalition and one of five official proponents of the constitutional amendment. During the campaign, Tam wrote to supporters that "other states would fall into Satan's hands" if equal marriage prevailed in California.

Defense attorneys opened their testimony by calling Claremont McKenna College political science professor Kenneth Miller, who sought to counter earlier testimony by Stanford University academic Gary Segura that gays and lesbians lack "meaningful" political power despite some backing in high places.

Miller claimed anti-gay discrimination is declining, and said gays and lesbians have powerful political, corporate, union and media allies. Under cross-examination, however, Miller acknowledged the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, the federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, and the absence of openly gay elected officials in any California statewide office. He also acknowledged his testimony was partly based on information supplied by the defense attorneys.

A highlight of the trial's second week was the account by San Diego's Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders, of how his attitude toward equal marriage was transformed. As his daughter, a lesbian, and her wife watched from the gallery, Sanders said that though he and his wife wholeheartedly accepted their daughter's relationship, he had remained an opponent of same-sex marriage.

Sanders said he initially planned to veto a City Council resolution supporting a court challenge to the state same-sex marriage ban, and his daughter said she would support his decision. But after a discussion with gay and lesbian friends, he reached a different conclusion.

"About 15 people spoke that night," Sanders said. "But before the first one was finished, I shared their disappointment. It was then that I realized that all opposition to same-sex marriage, including my own opposition, was grounded in prejudice." Sanders signed the resolution, and despite predictions his political career would be ruined, he was re-elected mayor the next year.

Among other highlights of the trial's first two weeks:

• Gregory Herek, a psychology professor at the University of California-Davis, said the vast majority of self-identified gay men and lesbians believe they have little or no choice about their sexual identity, and that therapy to change sexual orientation has no scientific basis. He said "change therapies are especially harmful because they present the view that homosexuality is an illness or disorder," leading people to think they are personally and morally at fault when the therapy fails. His testimony was supported by that of a gay man who described his pain at being subjected to the therapy by his family.
Witnesses have also testified that gay and lesbian parents are just as qualified as "straight" parents to raise children, and that procreation is not central to marriage.

• San Francisco's chief economist, Edward Egan, told the court that legalizing same sex marriage would lower the city's health and welfare costs. "Married individuals are healthier, on average, and behave in healthier ways than single individuals," resulting in less absenteeism, more productivity, higher wages and payroll taxes, Egan told the court. He added that married people are more likely to have health insurance than are singles or domestic partners.

• Plaintiffs Perry, Stier, Katami and Zarrillo described in detail their feelings of discrimination over not being allowed to wed, and their outrage at the anti-gay slurs put forth by Prop. 8's supporters.

Defense attorneys dropped four witnesses they originally planned to call, after the witnesses made statements during deposition harming the case for Prop. 8. The defense claimed the witnesses feared harassment if their testimony was broadcast during the trial, but initial plans to stream video of the proceedings were nixed by the U.S. Supreme Court before the trial began.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in the non-jury trial is widely expected to be appealed, and ultimately to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jobless rate declared dire emergency

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:52:00 +0000

WASHINGTON—Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute told a Senate hearing Jan. 21 that unemployment is a "dire emergency" that requires federal action "on a scale that can make a difference."

Mishel urged the House and Senate to approve $400 billion to create millions of jobs in infrastructure building and repairs, extended unemployment compensation and subsidized COBRA health insurance.

His testimony came on the heels of the Democrats loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts and with clear signs that Democratic senators are in panicky retreat on any programs that increase federal deficits. Already, they have sharply scaled back to only $82.5 billion the $174 billion "Jobs for Main Street" bill approved by the House by a razor-thin margin of 217-212 last Dec. 16. Not a single Republican voted for it.

The House version would reprogram $75 billion in unspent TARP (Toxic Assets Recovery Program) to be used to pay for job creation programs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "This legislation brings jobs to Main Street by increasing credit for small businesses, rebuilding infrastructure and keeping police, and firemen, and teachers on the job ... these investments are fully paid for by redirecting TARP funds from Wall Street to Main Street."

The Senate, by contrast, simply rescinds $150 billion in unused Wall Street bailout money rather than reprogramming it to assist jobless workers.

Mishel is not alone in his warning against nickel and dime federal programs. Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs wrote last month in the Huffington Post, that "by any meaningful measure our economy is still in distress." She called on the Senate to approve "an even stronger bill" than the House version.

"One in four children in America is poor," she said. "Most of the unemployed are struggling to put food on the table and keep roofs over their heads. Foreclosure rates, food stamp enrollments, and the number of families that can't consistently afford enough nutritious food have all skyrocketed to record levels....The jobless rate will likely rise for another year."

The most effective way to counter the crisis is measures that target job creation to the hardest-hit communities, she said. "We need programs that will put people to work right now, like summer jobs for youth and short term school repair projects," Weinstein said. "For a sustained recovery we also need to continue work and learning so people earn while on a pathway to long-term jobs with career potential."

Federal program should target assistance to "families who are hurting the most by providing more supports such as unemployment benefits, food stamps and tax credits," she continued.

Another urgent need, she said, is federal assistance to state and local governments so hard-pressed they are expected to terminate 900,000 or more workers in the coming year to balance their budget, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Both EPI and CHN are member organizations of Jobs for America NOW, a coalition of 60 labor, civil rights, and community organizations that is mobilizing across the nation to demand that the Obama administration and Congress approve a massive federal program to create jobs and assist the unemployed.

The Obama administration too came in for criticism. Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich decried the administration's proposal for a three-year freeze on federal discretionary spending at a time when only massive federal spending on job creation can jump-start the economy. Reich writes that a spending freeze will delight Wall Street but wreak more havoc on Main Street.

Reich called for a "second stimulus" package focused on helping fiscally-strapped state and local governments avert massive layoffs. Reich also urged relief for millions of homeowners facing foreclosure on their homes.

EPI points out in an article posted on their web site that the nation's 10 percent jobless rate "does not capture the severity of the crisis for minority workers in many regions of the country."

In five states---Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and South Carolina---the unemployment rate for Black workers exceeds 20 percent. The highest is Michigan with 27 percent unemployment among African American workers. The Hispanic jobless rate is close behind exceeding 12 percent in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and New York.

EPI researcher Josh Bivens debunks rightwing ideology in a Jan. 10 article titled "Budgeting for Recovery-The Need to Increase the Federal Deficit to Revive a Weak Economy." He writes, "The notion that all deficits are bad is a simplistic political idea and flies in the face of sound economic theory and economic history."

He adds, "In an ailing economy, deficit spending is an essential tool for getting the economy off life-support and back to health." Right now, he said, "the greatest danger regarding deficits is that they will be too small to provide the public relief and investments the economy needs."

Bivens also refutes the argument that deficits will "burden future generations," a favorite right-wing canard. He writes, "Wise public investments made now to jump-start a recovery and build the infrastructure will benefit future generations while not crowding out any private investments that may benefit future generations."

He zeroed in on the real cause of inflation, most of it generated during the George W. Bush Administration: tax cuts for the rich, and the current recession, itself, that drove down tax revenues and drove up spending on safety net programs. Bivens does not mention the trillion dollar wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as a factor in the deficits.

Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

‘Tax the rich’ gaining support

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:54:00 +0000

The "tax the rich" idea is gaining in popularity.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last Thursday found that 73 percent of Americans would support "a special tax on bonuses over $1 million." That includes 85 percent of Democrats, but also an impressive 62 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of independents.

Voters in Oregon are deciding today whether to increase taxes on the rich in their state, which is being hit by cuts in education and other social programs. They are voting on two ballot measures: Measure 66 which would raise the state income tax on households earning more than $250,000, and Measure 67 which would increase corporate income taxes.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey also released last Thursday found 61 percent of the public favor the House health reform provision, which pays for reform by a tax surcharge on people with high incomes. Only 29 percent favor the Senate provision, which would tax some employee health insurance plans instead.

"A tax on the wealthy is obviously most popular with lower-income Americans, but it is also the preference of people making $100,000 a year or more," noted CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Meanwhile, in a CBS poll released Jan. 18, 7 in 10 Americans said they are "bothered" by the bonuses being handed out by banks that benefited from federal bailout money. By a 72 to 19 percent margin, they feel that the bailout has benefited "mostly just a few big investors and people who work on Wall Street."

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, in a report released earlier this month, calculates that in 2010, a little over 1 million U.S. taxpayers will report incomes over $500,000. "These 1 million top-earners will collect an astounding $241 billion more in income this year than the just under 80 million taxpayers who will take home less than $40,000," writes Sam Pizzigati at the Campaign for America's Future web site.

Pizzigati notes that Goldman Sachs is piously congratulating itself for paying its employees a smaller percent of its whopping revenues than it did last year.

"Goldman's chief financial officer, David Viniar, wants all of us to consider this smaller payout share a thoughtful, conscientious bank response to widespread public concern over excessive banker compensation," comments Pizzigati.

"Restraint? Even with the smaller share of bank revenue going to pay, the ‘average' Goldman employee will pocket $498,153 for the year," he says. Since, of course, the secretaries and such won't be getting anywhere close to that, that "average" means that the firm's top bankers and traders will be pocketing vastly more.

One important Goldman Sachs shareholder, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which operates public transit in the Philadelphia area, last week filed suit against Goldman executives, accusing them of greed.

"Goldman's employees are unreasonably overpaid for the management functions that they undertake, and shareholders are vastly underpaid for the risks taken with their equity," SEPTA's lawsuit charges.

SEPTA's pension fund has about $1 million in Goldman stock, according to SEPTA general counsel Nicholas J. Staffieri.

"The value of that stock dropped because of excessive fees that management took out," Staffieri said.

In the lawsuit, filed Jan. 20, SEPTA says that the bank was not acting in shareholders' best interests when it approved executive pay and bonuses amounting to almost half the bank's net revenue, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanorwood/ / CC BY 2.0

Finding that work-family balance

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:49:00 +0000

I'm always a sucker for certain headlines at the grocery store check out line. "Finding the right balance between work and family" is one of them. I leaf through the magazine pages searching for solutions. What tips can the wise editors give a working mom like me on how to keep getting a paycheck by working 40-50 hours a week, while making a decent home life for my two kids and husband? What's the secret?

As it turns out, the secret is ... politics. It's not just about me and my family. Nope. It's about millions of families searching for the same thing. Which means it's in the structure of society, and to change it leads you to politics.

Americans work longer hours than workers in Japan and most European countries, according to a new report, "The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict." The typical middle-income family works 11 hours more per week in 2006 than it did in 1979, the report authors Joan Williams and Heather Boushey say. More hours at work inevitably leads to fewer hours with family. The report puts work-family conflict at a much higher rate than elsewhere in the industrially-developed world, 90 percent of American mothers and 95 percent of American fathers say they have work-family conflict in their lives.

According to a Monster.com survey five years ago, 81 percent of the respondents said they were unhappy with their work/life balance. In the U.S., eighty percent of married couples are dual income earners. That's a lot of unhappiness.

According to "The Three Faces" report Americans lack less family-support laws than the rest of the industrially-developed world. So in France, for example, there are paid maternity-leave laws and paid sick days.

Plus, in France and other countries, child care is subsidized, thereby making it more affordable and better quality.

The report looks at families and moms across the income spectrum from professional/upper income women to middle income (they call the missing middle, some 50 percent of the workforce, which has not been studied) to poor women. The authors say each category experiences the family-work conflict, but they experience it differently.

And it's those differences that weaken a potential political coalition that could win more family-friendly laws, the authors say.

But, the report states, each group needs "four basic kinds of supports and protections":

• Short-term and extended leaves from work, including paid time off for family and medical leave and paid sick days.

• Workplace flexibility to allow families to plan their work lives and their family lives.

• High-quality and affordable childcare so that breadwinners can concentrate on work at work, and

• Freedom from discrimination based on family responsibilities.

The report, a collaboration between Center for American Progress and the Center for WorkLife Law at the UC Hastings College of the Law, urges progressives to build a coalition that can attract poor, professional and middle-income women despite the tensions and differences in needs between the groups.

Seems that high-quality and affordable childcare is key to any family-friendly policies, and perhaps economic growth. I remember hearing the stories about the 1940s, and when the U.S. entered WWII. Men, by the droves, entered the armed forces and women went into the factories to fill the labor shortage. Almost overnight, I was told, the government got day care centers up and running for these working women, the "We Can Do It" generation. And after the war, almost overnight, policies changed. Except for a brief period in the 1960s and programs like Head Start, or in 1993 with the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act, childcare has not been on the political agenda of this nation. So much for the much lauded "family values" rhetoric.

This report comes out at a time when a union, civil rights, community coalition is forming to demand massive job creation. Affordable and high quality child care and attention to the needs of families could help broaden and deepen the reach of this budding movement, and possibly help unite the three faces of family work conflict.

Photo: Milwaukee workers demand paid sick days. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vocesdelafrontera/ / CC BY 2.0

Obama deficit control plan draws fire

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:18:00 +0000

President Obama's plan to announce a spending freeze for some domestic programs during his State of the Union address tomorrow is drawing fire from pro-labor and progressive activists and economists.

The president is expected to call upon Congress to keep overall spending at $447 billion a year for agencies other than those charged with national security and mandatory-spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

The freeze would take effect with the 2011 fiscal year starting Oct. 1, and wouldn't affect the $787 billion economic stimulus plan already being implemented, administration officials say. It also wouldn't include a $154 billion jobs plan pending before Congress.

"The long-term budget problem," said Mark Thoma, writing in the "Economist View," is "due to primarily one thing, rising health care costs. Everything else is dwarfed by that problem. If we solve the health care cost problem, the rest is easy. Instead we get cheap political tricks that are likely to backfire."

Concern about how a freeze would effect needed job creation is also evident.

"A spending freeze will make it even harder to get jobs back because government is the last spender around," declared former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. "Consumers have pulled back, investors won't do much until they know consumers are out there, and exports are miniscule."

The Huffington Post responded by flagging a 2008 campaign video of Obama criticizing McCain's support at that time for a spending freeze. In the video Obama said "an across-the-board spending freeze is a hatchet when what we need is a scalpel."

"This is not a blunt, across-the-board freeze," the White House said in a rebuttal. "Some agencies will go up, others will go down; but in aggregate for those non-security agencies the total will remain intact."

White House economist Jared Bernstein defended the plan on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show last night. "There's also a bunch of emergency spending that's outside of this freeze. The Recovery Act will continue to create employment. New jobs initiatives that the president will be outlining in the State of the Union will also be accommodated under this program."

Remaining skeptical, Maddow shot back: "Not only are you not talking about a second stimulus, you're talking about trying to cut $250 billion out of the budget. I have to tell you it sounds completely, completely insane."

Some say the military budget would be a better place to look for areas in which wasteful spending can be eliminated and are looking forward to what the president has to say in the area of foreign policy tomorrow night.

Some see the freeze proposal as a political gambit that results in insignificant cuts but gives the president a talking point and a toe hold with which to co-opt his moderate antagonists. "But how does the president move from this to an important policy goal?," asks "The Economist," in an editorial. "What room does this leave him to deal with either the jobless recovery of the long-term budget deficit?"

The Republican leadership, of course, shows little inclination to change course as a result of moves by the administration to appease congressional moderates. "Given Washington Democrats' unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest," said House Minority Leader John Boehner."

Ezra Klein, the pro-labor Washington Post columnist, fears that there are dangers inherent in any type of "freeze" on domestic spending.

"The way this works is simple," Klein said. "The administration will target worthless programs, like agricultural subsidies, in order to preserve good programs. But the reason worthless programs live in budget after budget is they have powerful backers. Now you've removed some of the cuts, but you still want to hit the overall target. So the cuts get reapportioned to hit programs that lack powerful constituencies. Many of those programs help the poor."

The administration has also announced, in a separate move to allay the concerns of the "budget hawks," that it is supporting formation of a deficit commission proposed by Sens. Kent Conrad, D-ND, and Judd Gregg, R-NH.

The Senate is expected today to reject the measure which aims to create a commission that would draft deficit-cutting steps that Congress would have to vote on.

Both the administration and centrist Democrats are expected then to go for creation of the commission by executive order, a move the president might announce during his speech on Wednesday.

The Communist Party and the press: A glimpse at nine decades

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:56:00 +0000

Second in a series celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party USA.

Over the past 90 years the Communist Party USA has published a number of newspapers and magazines - from daily and weekly newspapers to monthly theoretical and cultural journals to internal organizational bulletins.

Additionally, if we include publications printed by party-affiliated unions, civil rights and youth organizations led by the party, and journals that relied heavily on party members as editorial board members or regular contributors, we find that the party and its leaders were responsible for literally hundreds of publications over the past 90 years.

In fact, from the Labor Defender (the publication of the International Labor Defense) to the New Masses and Masses and Mainstream (popular cultural magazines), to Political Affairs (the official theoretical journal of the CPUSA); from Labor Unity (the publication of the Trade Union Unity League) to the Marine Workers' Voice (the publication of the Marine Workers' Industrial Union); from the Mobilizer (the publication of the Harlem Prolets) to the Whitney-Cush-Bloor Organization Bulletin (one of many internal party bulletins); from the Organizer (the publication of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression) to Freedomways Magazine (a journal of black liberation); from Labor Today (the publication of Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy) to the Daily Worker (the daily newspaper of the CPUSA), the Daily World and the People's Weekly World, we find a red thread woven throughout the tapestry of the people's movement and the people's literature.

While telling the story of the party's leadership and participation in all of the publications listed above (as well as hundreds of others) is a key part of our history, we can only whet your appetite. Suffice it to say, this is a very short list of publications that relied heavily on the Communist Party and its writers.

Now we must move on to a much less ambitious goal: looking at what the Communist Party's newspapers wrote on January 21, 1935, 1955 and 1985. Again, unfortunately, we can only whet your appetite.

Daily Worker, January 21, 1935

On the front page of the January 21, 1935, issue of the Daily Worker we find a criticism of the Roosevelt administration's support for the Wagner-Lewis "Unemployment Reserves" bill. According to the editorial, the bill was "a fraud that grants not one penny to the present vast army of the unemployed." At this time the party supported the Workers' Unemployment, Old Age and Social Insurance Act, HR 2827, a more radical piece of legislation supported by the broad people's movement, the unemployment councils and most of the labor movement.

Also on the front page are articles dealing with the International Labor Defense gains in the Scottsboro Boys case; a textile workers' strike in Rossville, Ga.; and a 10,000 person Lenin memorial gathering in Philadelphia.

Inside the January 21, 1935, issue we find an article dealing with the Georgia Federal Emergency Relief Administration's cutting of relief jobs pay to 15 cents an hour; an article about William Randolph Hearst's "lies about the Communist Party"; and a "Little Lefty" cartoon, among other items.

Daily Worker, January 21, 1955

The front cover of the January 21, 1955, edition of the Daily Worker features an article on the Claude Lightfoot Smith Act trial. Claude Lightfoot was a prominent Chicago leader of the party; the Smith Act was used during the McCarthy era to outlaw the Communist Party and imprison its leaders. Lightfoot's defense attorney, John J. Abt, asked the presiding judge to dismiss the case since the government had produced "not a shred, not a word of direct evidence" concerning the defendant. Also on the front page is an article on the special convention of the International Fur and Leather Workers' Union, a party-led union.

Inside, we find an article on what the AFL-CIO merger means for labor. The editorial urges "ACTIVE interest of the rank and file in the CIO and AFL ... to prevent the talks from breaking up in disagreement." There is also an article on Anna Bary, another Smith Act victim, who was freed on bail; an advertisement for the Daily Worker's Anniversary Ball; Lester Rodney's regular sports column "On the Scoreboard"; and a Civil Rights Congress flier advertising a rally to free African American Communist Party leaders Benjamin Davis and William L. Patterson.

Daily World , January 22, 1985
(Note: the Daily World did not publish on Sunday or Monday during this period. January 21, 1985, was a Monday.)

The lead story for January 22, 1985, was, "Inauguration Day Protests: Give Us Jobs, Not Bombs." On page 2 is an article dealing with the arrest of four Chicago steelworkers union leaders during a jobs protest at the U.S. Steel South Works plant.

Also in this issue we find an article dealing with a plant shutdown in Gary, Ind. The article says in part, "The economic crisis that swept through the basic industrial sector left personal devastation in its wake." We also find an article from Connecticut dealing with Yale University's union vote on their first contract; an article urging "massive protests" against apartheid; an article commemorating the defeat of fascism in Poland; and an article critiquing network television, saying that "we deserve better."

As we can see, throughout its 90 years the Communist Party USA has not only been in the forefront of the struggles for workers' rights, peace, jobs, equality and socialism, it has also broken ground in its use of media to report on those struggles.

Marx wrote, "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is the change it." Through party publications and broad-based newspapers, magazines and journals published by party-led institutions, the Communist Party has left an undeniable mark on the American working class. Undoubtedly, we've changed the world.

Obama calls for economic boost for working families

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:20:00 +0000

The Obama administration continued to address economic issues with the announcement of several new proposals, Jan. 25, designed to help ease financial anxieties for working families. In a meeting with the White House Middle Class Task Force, President Obama outlined five new proposals with a pledge to fight "every single day to put Americans back to work, create good jobs, and strengthen our economy for the long-term."

The proposals included an expansion of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to double its current value for most families earning $85,000 or less annually. This includes an expansion of subsidies to low-income families to cover child care expenses, to help an additional 235,000 children.

In addition, the administration proposed an expansion of its already ambitious student loan reforms. The new plan would limit student loan re-payments to 10 percent of a person's income with possible debt forgiveness after 20 years. Currently, the federal student loan program requires a minimum 15 percent monthly repayment.

The new middle-class proposals also include the creation of an automatic workplace individual retirement account (IRA), which would require all employers to provide the option for employees to enroll in a direct deposit IRA. The President also wants to expand tax credits and enact tougher regulations to protect retirement savings from speculators or the vagaries of the financial markets.

"For a year, our Task Force has been hearing that they are struggling with soaring costs and squeezed family budgets. These common sense initiatives will help these families cope with these challenges," said Vice President Biden, who chairs the Middle Class Task Force.

In a press briefing, Jan. 25, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said, these "initiatives go directly to dealing with the challenges facing middle-class families, challenges that many of them have been dealing with for decades and that have been exacerbated by the financial crisis."

Vice President Biden's top economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, told reporters that these proposals are a piece of the administration's fight for economic recovery and new jobs. He described job creation as the administration's "most urgent and pressing" task. Initiatives such as those outlined by the President on Monday are designed to ease the financial "squeeze" working families have been experiencing for years now, Bernstein explained.

More direct assistance for working families should not wait until the unemployment rate has fallen to "acceptable level" before action on them is taken, he said.

Photo: Vice President Joe Biden convenes the White House Middle Class Task Force. (White House Photo)

Obama brings 'shot in the arm' to hard-hit Ohio

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:50:00 +0000

ELYRIA, Ohio - Lorain County, ravaged by closed plants, budget crises and double-digit unemployment, gave President Barack Obama an enthusiastic welcome Friday as he spoke at a town hall meeting and pledged to keep fighting "until we have an economy that works for everyone."

Union leaders here called it "a good shot in the arm" and the way for Obama to "reconnect with the people."

Speaking to some 1,500 workers, students and other residents in the field house at Lorain County Community College, Obama was relaxed and informal, expressing relief to get out of Washington and re-engage with ordinary people. The visit was the second leg of a "White House to Main Street Tour" following a trip to Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in December.

"These are difficult and unsettling times," Obama said. "We had to stabilize the financial system." Bailing out Wall Street was distasteful and unpopular, he said, but "we faced the possibility of a second Great Depression."

Because of federal assistance to General Motors and Chrysler, he said, vehicle production has rebounded. Because of other parts of the recovery program including aid to state budgets, reduced taxes on workers, extended unemployment benefits and "the largest investment in infrastructure since the interstate highway program," Obama said, "the worst of this economic storm has passed."

But, he added, the problems are far from over, and to repeated applause he pledged all-out efforts for a federal jobs bill, investment in clean energy, regulating financial institutions and credit cards, expanding access to health care and holding insurance companies accountable, adding that he was determined to get Wall Street to return every dollar it was loaned.

In response to audience questions, Obama said he was working to eliminate banks as middlemen in student loans, to guarantee the solvency of Social Security and to use a special White House office to revitalize manufacturing.

Obama acknowledged running into "a bit of a buzz saw this week," referring to the loss of a Senate seat to Republicans in Massachusetts.

But, he said, the fight must continue.

"This is not about me. This is about you," he said. "I win when you win."

And, Obama concluded, that means no let up in the fight for substantial reform of the health care system. The goal, he said, includes major controls on insurance companies regarding pre-existing conditions, ending lifetime caps on coverage and limiting out of pocket expenses. In addition, he said it means increasing access by reducing insurance costs through exchange pools for large companies and government bodies.

"Now is the best chance for reform," he said. "We can't put it off."

Obama blasted the scare tactics of those who claimed he was trying to cut Medicare, which he said will be broke in eight years if nothing is done. In fact, the cuts he advocates are in "the $17 billion in subsidies to insurance companies" that are draining Medicare and threatening its solvency.

Reaffirming his determination to win energy independence, Obama received a prolonged standing ovation.

"I was so thrilled to hear him speak," said Abigail Miller, 23, a dental technician student at the Community College "I feel very encouraged."

"This is how Obama can reconnect with the people," said Betty Thomas, Ohio state coordinator for AFSCME retirees. "This is the way to answer the lies and obstruction and re-energize everyone who worked so hard to elect him."

"The event was a good shot in the arm for our county," said Joe Thayer, president of the Lorain AFL-CIO, who, along with other area labor leaders and public officials, met with the president prior to the event. "I was really happy he was able to address local issues like the threat to our public transit system. He showed he is trying to do the right thing for us."

"He is very sincere," said Pat Gallagher, sub-district director of the United Steelworkers. "He is really trying to address our problems."

"He was terrific," said Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore AFL-CIO, " He was confident and glad to be here."

"After the setbacks on health care, Massachusetts and the Supreme Court, I was expecting to be gloomier, but I'm inspired," she said.

Photo: President Obama greets audience members at the town hall meeting at Lorain County Community College in Elyria. (AP/Charles Dharapak)

Don Belton: How homophobia turned love into death

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:09:00 +0000

The mutilated body of Don Belton, an African American English professor at Indiana University, was found in his Bloomington apartment three days after Christmas. Belton had been stabbed repeatedly in his back and sides.

For the purposes of this article several facts about Belton's life should be stated upfront.
A writer of fiction and an essayist, Belton had taught literature and creative writing at numerous institutions and he was, in the mid-1990's, the editor of "Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and the American Dream," a well known anthology published by Beacon Press.

Belton was also gay.

Police in Indiana were just beginning to try to put pieces together when they were contacted by the girlfriend of an ex-Marine named Michael Griffin who, she told them, was involved in Belton's death.

The police arrested Griffin and, according to a detective's affidavit available online, Griffin told them that Belton had sexually assaulted him on Christmas Day. Two days later, the affidavit said, Griffin went to Belton's apartment to have a "conversation" which turned into a "scuffle," ending up in the professor's death.

Striking about the way that part of the detective's affidavit is written is the mild language used to describe what had to have happened for the professor to end up dead. After all, the "scuffle" involved plunging a knife repeatedly into a man's back and sides, pulling the bloody instrument out of the punctured body and then back in and out again until the victim was more than dead.

But then again, why complain about the language used to describe things? The knife Griffin used, which he bought before he "served" in Iraq as a Marine, was called a "peacekeeper."

When Griffin went to have his "conversation" with Belton that day he was thoughtful enough to bring with him a change of clothes and a plastic trash bag. Who, after a good heart to heart conversation, doesn't need a bag for bloody clothes?

The affidavit says Griffin then "went about and ran several errands before he eventually discarded the bloody clothing into a dumpster and then returned home where he stated he told his girlfriend what he had done."

People in the academic community all over the country have been shocked and saddened by Belton's death. Professors at Temple University, where he worked for many years, describe him as a "sweet-natured" and "brilliant" colleague. Almost everyone who knew him, however, does not list physical strength as one of his attributes. Most say he was as frail as he was gentle and would never have made it as a weight lifter.

The idea that Belton, who was 53, could violate an ex-Marine who was 25, not once, but twice, if one were to believe statements by Griffin, would be laughable if it were not so sad and horrible.

The story is sad because apparently this was, at one time, a relationship that involved love and happiness.

The police detective said in his report that he had found a journal kept by Belton and in that journal Belton had written, in the week prior to Christmas, that he was very happy that an individual by the name of Michael had come into his life. The journal even reflected that Belton had spent Christmas with both Michael and his girlfriend.

The columnist Scott McLemee, writing about this case in "Views" on Jan. 13, says that with this information it is easy to speculate about what may have or may not have happened. He warns, however, that regardless of specific details, what he sees emerging here is a classic case of what he calls the "gay panic defense."

This defense rests on the idea that "the wave of disgust created in a heterosexual person at exposure to gay sexuality can create a state of temporary psychosis. The panic-stricken victim loses responsibility for his (for some reason, it always turns out to be ‘his') actions."

McLemee expects this line of defense because, despite his confession, Griffin has pleaded not-guilty to murder.

Griffin, it can also be noted, comes out of a military which has historically condoned and enforced homophobic rules.

The culture fostered in the United States military probably contributed to this tragedy. The Marines prize and value men who can be both manipulated and counted upon to carry out acts of violence.

In order to achieve these aims the Marines encourage a high degree of "male bonding" while simultaneously condemning homosexuality. The impact this has on young men is anything but positive.

In a hopeful sign-of-the times, however, Belton's death is not going unnoticed.
Hundreds turned out for a vigil on New Years Day and thousands are visiting a website called Justice for Don Belton. The chair of his English Department has published an open letter on the website.

Also on that website one of Belton's friends placed a quote from James Baldwin that, he says, best describes his friend:

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." Belton's friends say this was the essence of his writing and that Belton always wanted to go beyond and beneath prescribed roles and rules governing "identity."

"This is easier said than done. It is also dangerous, love can be dangerous," McLemee noted. "Belton wrote in his journal ‘that he is very happy that an individual by the name of Michael has come into his life.' It is not necessary to use pseudo-psychological terms like ‘gay panic' to describe the response this created. Keep in mind that the killer brought his own special knife and a change of clothes."

Photo: http://justicefordonbelton.com/?page_id=100