People Before Profit blog

NBC's "Obama knew" charge on health care problem doesn't hold up

Tue, 29 Oct 2013 12:48:00 +0000

The NBC News investigations unit is reporting that "50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a 'cancellation' letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don't meet the standards mandated by the new health care law" - a fact administration officials knew but kept from the public.

The cancellations are a result of so-called grandfather rules promulgated by President Obama's Health and Human Services. The rule exempts health insurance plans in existence before March 23, 2010 - the day the Affordable Care Act became law - from many of the new regulations, benefits standards and consumer protections that new plans now have to abide by, but says that policies could lose their designation if they make major changes.

From NBC:

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, "40 to 67 percent" of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, "the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range."

What NBC is saying is: that means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

This all sounds very ominous until you consider that the naturally high turnover rate associated with the individual market means that it's highly unlikely that individuals would still be enrolled in plans from 2010 in 2014. In fact, the Obama administration publicly admitted this when it issued the regulations in 2010, leading Republicans like Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) to seize on the story in order to push for repeal of the grandfather regulations.

The debate was widely covered in the press as early as 2010, so it's unclear what exactly the NBC investigation unit has uncovered.

The goal of grandfather regulations is to allow a consumer to keep their existing policies, while also ensuring that there are some basic patient protections built into these plans. If insurers make changes that significantly burden enrollees with lower benefits and increased costs they have to come into compliance with all consumer protections. Therefore, policies lose their grandfathered status if insurers cancel coverage when a person becomes ill, impose lifetime limits on benefits, eliminate all benefits for a particular condition and reduce the cap for covered services each year, among other changes. (In fact, in November of 2010, the federal government loosened some of these standards.)

So yes, individuals can keep the plans they have if those plans remain largely the same. But individuals receiving cancellation notices will have a choice of enrolling in subsidized insurance in the exchanges and will probably end up paying less for more coverage. Those who don't qualify for the tax credits will be paying more for comprehensive insurance that will be there for them when they become sick (and could actually end up spending less for health care since more services will now be covered). They will also no longer be part of a system in which the young and healthy are offered cheap insurance premiums because their sick neighbors are priced out or denied coverage. That, after all, is the whole point of reform.

The above article in Think Progress was emailed to peoplesworld.org by Americans United for Change.

Now is the time for action

Tue, 29 Oct 2013 11:51:00 +0000

A victory was won by the President when right-wing extremists in Congress were forced to back down and allow a vote to raise the debt ceiling and re-open government. However, this is an ongoing battle. A conference committee has been established as part of the compromise, with a December 13 report back date to propose a new budget. Republican Cong. Paul Ryan is already discussing cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the great defenders of democracy and the people, is also on the conference committee. His tour of the South has exposed the fact that these programs have support in the heart of districts where members of Congress threaten to cut them.

Mass action and millions of voices are needed now to demand: end the sequester; protect and expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid; pass the People's Budget submitted by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Another top issue before Congress is comprehensive immigration reform with legalization, a path to citizenship and workers' rights. As Rep Grijalva says, "we cannot kick the can down the road anymore. We're making things worse by doing nothing."

Here are some things you can do:

Call the White House (202-456-1111). Leave a message for President Obama: Thank you for standing firm against the tea party. No grand bargains that cut Social Security.

Ask your local elected officials to compile a list of how people are being hurt by the sequester and make it public, as a pressure on Congress and as an organizing tool.

Help build support for the Sanchez (HR 3118) and Harkin (S 567) bills to strengthen Social Security by increasing benefits and the cost-of-living adjustment. Learn more about the Strengthening Social Security Act here.

To ask your Representative to co-sponsor the bill, go here.

Sign the AFL CIO petition for a roadmap to citizenship here.

Photo: At a recent event, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke about the budget and how Congress should not balance it on the backs of seniors and the poor. National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Facebook page.

$5.2 billion McDonald's CEO has $8.25 per hour mom arrested

Thu, 24 Oct 2013 11:53:00 +0000

Give McDonald's honcho Jeff Stratton the "Petulant Plutocrat Of The Week" award. He couldn't stop grinning last December when he became the top exec for the U.S. side of the McDonald's fast food empire. But Stratton wasn't smiling earlier in October when McDonald's worker Nancy Salgado stood up from a hotel ballroom audience during one of his talks to protest Mickey D's notorious poverty wages.

Called out Salgado, "It's really hard for me to feed my two kids and struggle day to day. Do you think this is fair that I have to be making $8.25 when I have worked for McDonald's for 10 years?" Stratton's retort: "I've been there 40 years." Security staff had Salgado arrested, and she must appear in court in Chicago on November 1. Meanwhile, the video of the encounter went viral online and figures to bolster the ongoing campaign nationwide for a $15 fast food minimum wage.

That's one of many examples of how the gap between the rich and the rest of us isn't just a modern phenomenon; these days it's grown into a chasm. Nowhere is that more evident than in a comparison between - we kid you not - old Rome and modern Mexico.

Marcus Crassus, the wealthiest single individual in ancient Rome, had an annual income that equaled the take-home of 32,000 average Romans. Carlos Slim, the world's richest single individual today, has an annual return on his fortune that equals the average annual wage of 400,000 of his fellow Mexican nationals.

Slim isn't alone. A new report shows just 110 Russian oligarchs control half of that country's wealth. These are the cronies who made out like bandits when they grabbed, at rock-bottom prices, state-run industries after the USSR collapsed 22 years ago. Here are other nuggets from the world of the rich, in contrast to the rest of us:

If you added up all the wealth in the world, as of this past June, and gave an equal share to every adult on the planet, what would your share be? Researchers at the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse have an answer for you. Average global wealth per adult now equals over $51,000, they report, up 4.9 percent over 2012. In the real world, of course, the vast majority of the world's people hold next to no wealth at all. Over two-thirds of the world's adults, 68.7 percent, have less than $10,000 to their names.

Together these 3.2 billion people own just three percent of the world's wealth. Those global adults sitting on over $1 million each in personal net worth, on the other hand, make up just 0.7 percent of the world's adult population. They hold 41 percent of the world's wealth. Sounds like Russia; also the U.S.

Early on in the federal government shutdown - a move he helped engineer - right-wing Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, announced he would give up to charity his entire House paycheck for the duration of the unpleasantness.

McCaul might have some trouble noticing that any of his income has gone missing. He and his colleague, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., each have more than twice as much personal wealth as any other lawmaker. The Center for Responsive Politics puts McCaul's fortune at $501 million, Issa's at $480 million. Members of Congress get $5,400 every two weeks in salary. If McCaul nets a three percent return on his investments this year, he'll take in over $7,200 every working hour.

Corporate execs are scrambling for new reasons to stall the three-year-old Dodd-Frank Act mandate that requires companies annually disclose the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay. The median is the point where half the workers earn more and the other half earn less. Corporate flacks had first argued that having to tally up all their worker pay stubs and compute a median would impose much too heavy a burden upon them.

But the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month proposed regulations to let corporations use statistical sampling to compute their medians. Now a new poll of 375 corporate power suits shows execs are kvetching that, determining the best sampling approach "will be no easy task." The SEC will accept public comment on the new proposed ratio disclosure rules through December 2.

What every billionaire now seems to not-so-secretly desire: A little place in Italy's Tuscany. Over the past eight months alone, four Tuscan vineyards have sold for between $34 million and $48 million. The deep-pocket set, explains the Financial Times, has come to appreciate "the Italian lifestyle, not to mention the government's more lenient approach to individual wealth."

Sam Pizzigati, a veteran labor journalist, edits Too Much, an online journal of wealth and inequality sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies.

Photo: Salgado's protest over unlivable wages helped fuel the "Fight for 15" campaign (pictured), which demands a $15 fast food minimum wage. AP

Living wage or wage slavery: de Blasio vs. Lhota on the dignity of labor

Wed, 23 Oct 2013 12:29:00 +0000

The election for mayor of New York is less that a month away and Bill de Blasio's lead in the polls appears insurmountable. Joe Lhota has now come out against de Blasio's plan for a living wage to New Yorkers working at projects that are subsidized by the city. This proposal has aroused the ire of the business and real estate interests and Lhota has jumped on their bandwagon.

The minimum wage is set by law, in the U.S. and New York State it is $7.25 per hour. The living wage is supposed to meet the basic needs of a worker. In New York City a living wage of $12.75 an hour would supposedly cover these needs according to a recent study by MIT. Actually, a living wage of at least $15.00 an hour is what the fast food workers have been striking for and should be a minimum for all workers.

Who is supposed to make up the difference of $7.75 between the legal minimum and the amount needed for the basics? This is what the "safety net" is for, i.e. food stamps (SNAP), Medicare, WIC and other state sponsored programs. The general tax revenues of the state provide the money to the working poor that business would have to provide in higher wages. This is about five percent of total federal government spending (individual state funding has been excluded). Contrast this with the almost 7.5 percent of the federal budget that went as direct subsidies and other forms of welfare to the American business community.

Republicans should be very happy to vote for a living wage as one of their heroes, Adam Smith, would have supported it since he wrote in The Wealth of Nations:

"Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be ﬂourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged." (from Book 1 Chapter 8 "The Wages of Labour.")

I don't think there are many who would accuse Adam Smith of being a "socialist."

The U.S. is a member of the United Nations and so subject to Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says:

"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work."

"Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."

"Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests."

De Blasio is supporting a living wage of $11.75 per hour ( $3.25 lower than the $15.00 currently demanded) and this only for workers employed by those companies getting tax subsidies and/or other forms of welfare from the city. The City Council has already passed a $10.00 per hour fair wage for such workers - over the veto of billionaire Mayor Bloomberg (who won't ever have to worry about a living wage), so de Blasio wants to throw in another $1.75 (should be $5.00, I think).

Joe Lhota, the one-percenters' candidate, is opposed to any living wage increase for workers but favors big subsidies to private businesses - such as Fresh Direct the grocery delivery company (as an incentive to stay in New York.) The Wall Street Journal ("Living-Wage Fight Seen With de Blasio"- 10-7-2013) quotes the Republican candidate as saying, about the living wage, "Bill and I really disagree about that. I think jobs are very important. I think we need to get as many people employed as possible. By putting a restriction on that how does anybody possibly win?"

The point of the living wage is, in the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to ensure "an existence worthy of human dignity." The question to Joe Lhota and all his Republican and conservative buddies is "By putting a restriction on that how does anybody possibly win?"

If Joe Lhota is New York, New York is in a lot of trouble.

Photo: Joe Lhota. Seth Wenig/AP

In New York, Lhota leans right

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 14:36:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Republicans will be going all out to defeat Bill de Blasio in the general election for mayor of New York City on November 5. Their candidate, Joe Lhota, thinks he can defeat de Blasio in "Joe McCarthy-style" by calling him a "Marxist". But this redbaiting didn't pay off; de Blasio went up in the polls and Lhota went down. Lhota knows that after 12 years of Bloomberg's pro Wall Street policies the majority of New York's democratic electorate has shifted to the left.

While his real estate, insurance and financial speculating millionaire friends made out like bandits, public schools fell deeper into crisis, rents doubled and tripled, as did homelessness and hunger.

While Bloomberg's billionaire capitalist friends stuffed their pockets, poverty grew dramatically. Bloomberg's answer to the economic hardship his policies caused, was no contracts, plus layoffs for pubic employees. His answer was jails, not jobs; it was "stop and frisk" racial profiling for communities of color. The basic economic problems got worse.

Lhota has a big problem: he wants to continue those same pro Wall Street policies but to get votes he must paint himself as a liberal.

It appears that tactic is not going to fly either. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows de Blasio with 79 percent of the Latino vote; black voters with 90 percent favoring de Blasio and among white voters, Lhota is behind de Blasio by double digits.

Lhota is desperately reaching out to public figures like the Rev. Al Sharpton and other black and brown leaders; trying to make some inroads into the two powerful voting blocks. In the meantime he is making the not-so-subtle Republican appeals to whites like his former boss Giuliani did. The Lhota campaign is putting together a multi million dollar red baiting blitz on the media to paint himself as the brilliant administrator and de Blasio as an inexperienced even a naive, misguided "Marxist." Even de Blasio's modest proposal to increase taxes on Wall Street to pay for pre-kindergarten for all children is treated almost like it's treason.

But New Yorkers are asking: what about the children? What about the rents and the public schools? What about the massive gap between the rich and working class? What about police brutality? The packing of city jails with youth of color over repressive marijuana laws?

Make no mistake, in spite of his criticism of the tea party in Congress Lhota's solutions to these huge problems are Republican and right wing. The priority of making the rich richer is not the solution, it is the basic problem. All Lhota's talk about his modest background is just talk, his policies when he worked under Mayor Giuliani as the head of the MTA speak volumes about the real Joe Lhota.

Responding to a question during a New York Times interview, Tamra Lhota, the wife of the mayoral hopeful, said, "I think the City desperately needs Joe to be its leader for the next eight years." She said her husband would be the city's best hope of preserving its quality of life. Working families are no doubt asking "quality of life for whom?" She mentions clean parks and safe streets, when the youth unemployment rate in some communities is over 50 percent - how meaningful is that goal? And considering Lhota's connection with law and order Giuliani - shouldn't one assume that safe and clean parks means open season on the jobless and homeless?

The truth is that Lhota comes out of Wall Street; he worked for Paine Webber and ran the housing group for the firm. Both he and his wife Tamra - a successful fundraiser for the GOP - worked for Giuliani on his first run against David Dinkins. Giuliani lost that election; and lest we forgot, in 1993, Giuliani the candidate spoke before and cheered on, a racially charged rally of 10,000 police officers in City Hall Park that had all the earmarks of racism. Giuliani appeared in ads supporting Lhota during the Republican primary but it seems is playing no role in his campaign now.

When asked in an interview while he was First Deputy Mayor under Giuliani about the role of the mayor, Mr. Lhota replied, "New York is like a company, and a mayor is its CEO. The CEO's job is to ensure the education, employment and well being of his share-holders, the residents of New York." If you look at it that way, the big problem here is that working families don't have enough "shares" to override the developers, Wall Street and insurance companies. And health care, housing and education should not and cannot be run like a company.

It's revealing to look at some of Lhota's contributors: James Dolan, President and CEO of anti-union Cablevision (where Lhota was executive vice president for several years); non-union Home Depot founder Ken Langone; former Citigroup and Time Warner CEO Richard Parson, and Emma Bloomberg, the current mayor's daughter.

After Hurricane Sandy hit, much was said of Lhota's leadership by the corporate press. However, TWU Local 100 spokesperson Jim Gannon said, "The MTA has extensive systems in place to handle these situations. If anyone is to be credited, it is Lhota's top management teams who have years of experience and have been involved in developing these systems for many years as well as the workers on the ground who spent months on the cleanup".

Trying to capitalize on the information that has been written about de Blasio's background, e.g., his working with the Sandinista peace and justice movement seems to have backfired. De Blasio is ahead in most polls by 50 percent or more. The New York Post painted him as a guerrilla fighter the likes of Che Guevara, but when the polls shot that down the Post switched to having him courting the 1 percent.

Why is de Blasio so far ahead in the polls? Because he appealed to the real pain, the real hopes and dreams for a more just NY and the people responded.

Not all supporters agree fully with de Blasio, but he has taken up the mantle of the candidate of the 99 percent and he is for taking the city in a more progressive direction. This will benefit the working class majority of the city. It will not be an easy task. He will need the full weight of New York City's labor and people's movements behind him if he is to succeed.

Despite these favorable numbers, progressives cannot sit back on this very, very important race. Lhota and his big financial backers will use any and every possible means to undermine the candidate of the 99 percent, because that's really what this race is about.

The Republicans probably can't win, but if they could make the vote close they could force de Blasio to change his policies. If they could split his coalition, they would be in a stronger position to defeat him in the post election work. This struggle will begin again on the day after Election Day.

We in New York City are a microcosm of what is happening around the country. Witness the government shut down by the ultra right in DC. When the New York Times asked New Yorkers what they want of the next mayor, they replied "A mayor who will be sensitive, and responsive to ordinary New Yorkers". In short a mayor with a heart.

Photo: Bill de Blasio joined doctors, nurses, health care workers and activists at a major rally to protest the closure of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) and Interfaith Medical Center, July 24. Wikimedia Commons.

ALEC tries new gerrymandering efforts in Ohio counties

Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:31:00 +0000

Our United States of America is the richest country in the history of the world. Yet, millions of our fellow citizens are struggling, and for too long failing, to maintain a minimum standard of living, with far too many falling below the poverty level. 46.2 million don't know where they are going to eat next.

The productivity of American workers has skyrocketed and is among the highest in the world. Should they not be enjoying a high standard of living? Yet, the total income of American workers today is the smallest share of national income in our history.

How can this be? The problem we face is the largest portion of the unprecedented wealth created in our industrial, financial, commercial, agricultural, and overall economy goes into the coffers of the tiniest fraction of our population. The giant corporations that control our economy have record profits and hoard $1.7 trillion in liquid assets, which rises to $ 5.1 trillion if overseas holdings are included.

Contrasted to this growing wealth accumulation by the 'one percent', the wages and benefits of millions of working Americans keeps going down as the cost of living goes up, and additional millions try to survive with no jobs.

A rash of legislation at federal, state, and local levels has contributed to this downward slide in living standards for workers, retirees, and youth. In the year 2013 alone, 117 bills have fueled a "race to the bottom" for working people, with many passed into law, especially at the state level. The laws passed have enforced suppression of working peoples voting rights; turning our public services, schools, and prisons over to private, for-profit corporations. Added to the list are attacks on collective bargaining rights for public workers and those employed in private industry along with reduced, and sometimes outright abolition of pensions for both public and private industry workers.

These bills are in fact written and pushed forward into law by an organized group of owners of some of the richest corporations which control our economy, known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC's "modus operandi" is to bring aspiring politicians into meetings with think tank operators such as The Heritage Foundation, corporate CEO's such as the Koch Brothers, lavish them with high entertainment and perks, then hand them written bills which they are to take back to their communities and present as their own bills. They have had considerable success at the state level, with Ohio and many other industrial states being subjected to a rash of ALEC written bills.

Not content with what has been done on the state level, and determined that Ohio will never be able to repeat the 2012 Democratic Party election victories, the ALEC forces are now subjecting Ohio counties with a strong Democratic Party and organized labor base, to an onslaught of proposed changes in county government which, if passed, will abolish countywide election of county leaders. They seek to accomplish this by dividing up the counties into gerrymandered districts which will guarantee Republican majorities in as many districts as possible, as has been done at the state level.

The Democratic Party and organized labor are aware that both are being targeted by the right-wing corporate and financial barons, and have united in a campaign to defeat the county charters. VOTE NO on the CHARTER is being highlighted with handbills, lawn signs, and mailings, and will be followed up with phone calls and door-to-door visits.

The coming November elections will be critical in determining Ohio's role in 2014. The fight-back continues.

Photo: Oct. 29, 2011, union and community members rally before canvass on SB5. Tim Wheeler/PeoplesWorld.org

Shutdown: New phase in a very American coup

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 11:30:00 +0000

They didn't wear jackboots, but the shutdown of government by an extremist faction of the Republican Party can only be described as a new phase in a very American coup. The barbarians of the far right are at the gates. Our democracy, I would say with no hint of dramatization, is under siege.

The immediate trigger of this assault was this faction's out-of-control obsession to defund the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans earlier had hoped that they could repeal this signature legislative achievement of President Obama in the wake of a sweeping GOP victory at the polls in 2010. But when voters, much to the Republicans' surprise and consternation, gave Barack Obama a second term and left Democrats in control of the Senate, that option evaporated.

With this turn of events, the most extreme faction in the Republican Party went back to the drawing board, where they concluded that they could not wait til 2016, the next presidential cycle, to bury Obamacare. By that time, they worried, it might have become so popular that any attempt to repeal it would prove futile, and even damaging to their political standing.

Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's running mate and a part of this faction of roughly 90 House members (it goes beyond the tea party caucus), echoed this sentiment recently. "The reason this debt limit fight is so different is we don't have an election where we feel we are going to fix it [the Affordable Care Act] ourselves," he said at the end of September. "We are stuck with this government another three years."

Faced with this reality, a new tactical pathway to undo the Affordable Care Act became a hot topic of debate in the extremist wing of the Republican Party.

That it might entail violating the core democratic principle of majority rule, nullifying the last election, courting economic disaster in the midst of an already anemic recovery, and bringing on a political crisis of first rate proportions, didn't seem to bother these firebrands of the right. They were prepared to roll the dice.

What followed was predictable. Dialogue with counterparts across the aisle and the president yielded to brinksmanship. Obstruction gave way to reckless adventurism. Discussion grounded in at least semi-reality turned into non-stop demagogy, apocalyptic fantasies, and Orwellian doublespeak. And normal procedures like funding basic government operations and lifting the debt limit so that the federal government can pay its financial obligations became "forcing events," as we are now witnessing, to extract major concessions from the Obama administration, regardless of the economic and social harm they cause to tens of millions.

This wasn't a seat-of-the-pants, improvisational decision by an addled group of tea party House members a week or two ago. It is traceable to a meeting held earlier this year and reported by the New York Times.

A chilling report tells us that Ed Meese, zealous former Reagan administration attorney general and right-wing operative, and "a loose knit coalition of conservatives activists," some of whom have substantial holdings in oil and gas, met not long after the president's reelection and decided then that the only way to defund Obamacare was to shut down government this fall.

That plan found an eager audience and shock troops in the right-wing extremist members in the House of Representatives, and Ted Cruz and a few others in the Senate. They were ready to "burn the village down in order to save it."

This should surprise no one who is at all familiar with what has been going on in Washington since the 2010 mid-term elections.

This gang of wreckers doesn't fit on what might be considered the normal spectrum of U.S. politics. By temperament, outlook, and practice they are authoritarian, racist, male supremacist, xenophobic, and misogynist. They despise labor and are committed to restoration of the "White Republic" which would put people of color into a new caste system, not identical to Jim Crow but every bit as racialized, exploitive, and oppressive.

Some of them believe in millenarianist "end times." Most come from the South, but they also hail from the Plains and Rocky Mountains states. They consider their opponents illegitimate and un-American. And paranoia and panic, ramped up to the extreme by the inexorable trend toward a majority minority population, explain in no small measure their readiness to pursue politics by anti-democratic and unconstitutional means.

While its current reckless tactics have nothing close to the full blessing of Wall Street and Main Street, this rogue gang seems undeterred; in fact it appears to relish the opportunity to press its campaign to defund the health care law, challenge the president, and reverse the results of last year's election.

With the debt limit fast approaching it is anybody's guess if this right-wing extremist group and the leadership of the Republican Party will push the country over the brink and into an abyss in which no one quite knows what will happen.

If you listen to tea party zealots in the House, as well as Republican House leader John Boehner, you hear them claim that they are for negotiations, compromise, even re-funding nearly every government operation, except - and this is a big except - for the Affordable Care Act. In recent days, as a fall-back, they are adding demands for cuts in Medicare and Medicaid - steps toward achieving their long-cherished goal of eliminating these core programs.

So far the Obama administration has refused to accede to such "offers," knowing full well that to do so would only invite more extremist demands and actions in the future. It would effectively end his presidency, cripple our democracy, and legitimize the rule of an anti-democratic, anti-labor, militarist minded, racist clique.

President Obama has said he is ready to sit down with his Republican adversaries, but not with a gun to his head, not with threats of defunding Obamacare, blocking the normal operations of government, and refusing to lift the debt ceiling framing the discussion.

Any other position would be suicidal. It would only invite more "forcing events" from the Republicans to force down living standards, eviscerate rights, poison the environment, widen inequality in its many forms, and give a green light to Big Oil to continue to warm the planet's atmosphere.

When combined with the 25 states or so where right-wing Republican governments rule, display a secessionist mentality worthy of segregationists and slaveholders in earlier eras, evince contempt for every social gain and right secured in the 20th century, and run roughshod over democratic norms, structures, and values, it is fair to say that the nation faces threats to its democratic character that make Watergate, Irangate, and even McCarthyism pale in comparison.

The president, in taking a firm stance against the tea party/right-wing extremist crowd, including its band of reactionary financial backers, deserves the full support of every decent-minded American. And a loud voice needs to insist on no cuts to Medicare and Medicaid as part of a resolution to the crisis. The high-stakes drama playing out in Washington is the front line in the struggle to preserve and expand democracy.

Photo: U.S. Capitol building. Kevin Burkett CC 2.0

Clear-cut progressive victory in New York City public advocate race

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 15:08:00 +0000

NEW YORK-A progressive trend already quite pronounced in the New York City elections for mayor, comptroller, borough offices and city council became even more clear-cut in the runoff Democratic Party primary for the third city-wide office: public advocate.

City councilwoman Letitia (Tish) James beat state Sen. Daniel Squadron by a healthy margin, 60 - 40 percent, in the Oct. 1 runoff election. This was a battle between the state Democratic leadership, closely connected to some of the developers, Wall Street and the wealthy and an outspoken champion of working people and labor, the racially and nationally oppressed, women's rights, peace and all progressive causes - a consistent progressive.

A very broad people's democratic coalition formed around Tish James. Nearly the entire labor movement supported her, and not only with paper endorsements but with real work that pulled out union members for the vote.

Her good relations with labor started years ago when she battled against the outsourcing of city work to non-union employers. In this electoral cycle she is the only candidate for citywide election who supports the pubic workers' demand for retroactive pay for all the years Mayor Michael Bloomberg denied them a contract.

James was endorsed almost unanimously by the leaders and elected officials of the African American, Latino and Asian communities, representing a majority of registered voters and 70 percent of the population of the city. All the major organizations of women, environmental organizations and good-government organizations supported her. Even some of the Hassidic Jews and the Democratic Party Committees of Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens, supported her.

Squadron had no endorsements from labor or any of its allies. His main support came from a handful of politicians connected to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

Squadron, a protégée of Schumer, sent out mailers, the first nine of which made it appear that Schumer was the one running for the position.

The public advocate is supposed to replace a mayor who becomes unable to serve. The advocate provides a place for individuals and groups who feel wronged by city action or inaction to find help in correcting the wrong, and the advocate is supposed to help see to it that the elected officials carry out their promises. The advocate may also introduce legislation in the city council.

The victory for James is being attributed to the fact that survival in the city is becoming increasingly difficult for the vast majority while for Wall Street, the developers and the rich things are getting better and better.

While Bloomberg occasionally made minor concessions to the people's forces he generally supported Wall Street and the developers over the interests of working people. The unemployment and poverty figures for NYC were significantly worse than the country as a whole.

More than 45 percent of the people are living at, below or barely above the official poverty standard. Especially victimized are the masses of the racially oppressed.

These threads, constituting the vast majority, found in the Democratic Party some candidates who championed their demands to turn the direction of the city around. These included Bill de Blasio, Bill Thompson and John Liu for mayor, Scott Stringer for comptroller and James for public advocate.

James had a 10-year history of providing very effective constituent services on problems of everyday living. She was widely known, appreciated and even loved by large numbers who received her help in her district that covered a significant part of Central Brooklyn, the largest African American community in the country, and some in mixed neighborhoods adjoining.

She is known as a stalwart fighter against the developers and for affordable housing. She fought in the City Council and won a bill to help protect tenants from landlord abuses, supported all of labor's campaigns including the bills for sick leave and for a living wage.

She fought the "stop and frisk" racial profiling policy of the Bloomberg administration and recently has been fighting the efforts to close libraries, hospitals and other public facilities for the benefit of the developers. She says she comes by her staunch views in favor of working people against the rich ad powerful naturally, as a result of her "humble beginnings."

Squadron began campaigning as the "me too" candidate, though he had supported Bloomberg most of the way. His campaign was responsible for a flood of mailers aimed at personally smearing James before white audiences in particular sections of the city.

He avoided large-scale television advertising, however, in order to keep the size of the vote down - the less people that know about an election - that thinking goes - the better.

Although the James campaign was based in the African American community it had hundreds of volunteers also in mixed and white communities.

Volunteers went to subway stops and the other places big crowds can be found but also used "dear friend" letters in which supporters tell in their own words why others (neighbors, co-workers, co-activists) should support the candidate. The letters went out to thousands of people by e-mail and through the social media.

The strategy paid off.

James carried white neighborhoods that Squadron was expected to win. And in the African American neighborhoods she racked up over 90 percent of the vote. The Latino vote went better than 70 percent for James.

James had a big "ground game" of volunteers, while Squadron had none. His campaign finished with a big mailing of a letter from Sen. Schumer sent to his preferred demographics. The James campaign benefited in a decisive way from the big unions with large memberships in Central Brooklyn and other such communities who turned out their membership.

So far, despite a red-baiting attempt, de Blasio leads the Republican disciple of Giuliani, Joe Lhota, by 50 percentage points in this city where the Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1.

Undoubtedly, the city with a Mayor de Blasio will face great resistance from the world's center of finance capital and developers as it fights to change direction at the expense of those on Wall Street and the developers. A unity similar to that achieved in the Tish James election will be needed to win.

Photo: Letitia "Tish" James with members of DC37 in New York, NY.

Is right-wing extremism the new norm?

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 11:55:00 +0000

If you live in upstate New York or similar communities you've probably seen or heard of protests and rallies: against the affordable health care act, against raising taxes on the extremely wealthy, against raising the minimum wage, against marriage equality, and more than anything against stronger gun laws. These are the voices of the ultra-right, as of 2008, with the election of the first African American president. Neo-Nazi, tea party, Ku Klux Klan and militia groups have multiplied since then and exist in many small communities, across the Internet, on radio talk shows and even in Congress.

Much of the rhetoric varies from group to group however it is consistently anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker, anti-reproductive rights, and radically pro-gun. These groups have become more vocal and in many cases more violent.

Galway is the smallest incorporated village in New York State with a proportionally small surrounding town, in Saratoga County. Of Galway's 2,000 residents most know one another. Galway is home to a few local businesses, an animal hospital, three churches, a small public library and a small school whose senior class usually contains an average of 100 students.

Glendon Scott Crawford, a General Electric employee, was a prominent member of the community. He was married to the local high school's librarian and taught Sunday school in a local church. But Crawford was also a member of a radically right-wing tea party/militia group called "Americans Demanding Liberty and Freedom" as well as a self-proclaimed (but unconfirmed) member of the KKK.

On June 20, 2013, Crawford was arrested on charges connected with domestic terrorism. He had been attempting to build a truck-mounted radiation gun that he believed could be used to poison people from a distance. His targets included Muslims and leftists. According to members of the community Crawford was outspoken against Islam, women's rights, immigrants' rights, the presidency of Barack Obama and New York's SAFE Act, a state gun control law passed in January.

One girl, a Galway High School graduate, told me in an interview, that Crawford "was just really against Obama and really obsessed with guns, but that's normal around here. I never thought he'd try to kill anyone, I mean he was my Sunday school teacher." A student at Galway High told me, "Yeah, I talked to him a couple times, He just really hated Obama and it seemed like all he'd talk about."

Another disturbingly similar incident took place earlier this year, in another small town, Clarkstown, N.Y. Forty-nine-year-old Larry Mulqueen, another seemingly normal man also affiliated with a local tea party group, was arrested after his landlady alerted police to threats he made against local politicians via Facebook. When police went to Mulqueen's apartment they found a "liberal hit list," several rifles and bladed weapons. Mulqueen posted on a fake Facebook account: "I cannot wait to start killing the scum. I want these scumbags DEAD!!! That traitor scum. Obama subservient eunuchs, F***k them and death to them."

Again in 2013, a Minnesota man, 24-year-old Buford Rogers, a member of a far-right group called the Black Snake Militia, was arrested in connection with domestic terrorism. In his mobile home the FBI found Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs and multiple firearms including an AKM assault rifle.

There is no doubt that right-wing domestic terrorism has become a trend in the United States, seemingly in reaction to the election of our first African American president.

Some may think that the actions of men like Crawford and Mulqueen, despite becoming the new norm in the U.S., are of little significance politically, that people like them are "isolated incidents" which have no effect on the political mainstream. But this is sadly far from the truth.

In January 2013 Washington state Rep. Sherry Appleton was forced to withdraw legislation she had introduced to repeal her state's "stand your ground" law - similar to the Florida law which resulted in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager. Appleton received threatening phone calls and emails stating, "We will be watching you" and "You will be sorry." Appleton withdrew the legislation, saying, "These people, when it comes to guns, they can be really threatening. People like that, you can't talk to. I mean it was shocking to me".

Republican/"libertarians" Ron Paul and his son Rand have achieved a new level of popularity, especially across the Internet and amongst young people. What many of the Pauls' supporters may not know about their candidates is that Ron Paul has a history with white supremacists and right-wing extremist groups and ideology.

In the late 1980s and early '90s Ron Paul published a newsletter that contained many racist and anti-Semitic remarks and often talked about the "upcoming race war." Years after these were published Paul denied having any knowledge or control over what was published in a newsletter with his name on it. But the full extent of Ron Paul's relationship with white supremacists came to light recently in emails leaked by the hacktivist collective "Anonymous." These reveal that Ron Paul and his son Rand exchanged emails with and regularly met with the American Third Position (A3P) - now called the American Freedom Party - a neo-Nazi group started by violent white power skinheads from southern California. According to these emails the A3P supported Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign financially and by organizing events.

Jamie Kelso, the A3P webmaster, has been very open about his support for Ron and Rand Paul, writing in 2009, "My own opinion is that the White revolution has already begun, and that the good White folks like Quinn [a member of A3P] that fills these Ron Paul crowds and marching armies ARE the start of the revolution."

Ron Paul has a long history with other white supremacists such as Don Black, the owner of a "white nationalist" message board called Stormfront, who also funded his presidential campaign.

The events cited here, as shocking as they may seem, have been happening more frequently every year since 2008. Not only do radical right-wing groups have record numbers of groups, demonstrations, mainstream news pundits and even politicians who represent their ideology in the Republican Party, but they also have Democratic politicians afraid of them - a fear that poses a threat to our democracy.

Photo: Screenshot of a 2013 New York State NRA rally video.

Vietnamese leader Vo Nguyen Giap dies at 102

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 12:28:00 +0000

General Vo Nguyen Giap has died at age 102, according to Vietnamese official sources. He passed away from old age on Friday October 4 at Military Hospital 108, where he had been living for several years. He is survived by his second wife, Dang Bich Ha, and four children.

Vo Nguyen Giap was born on August 25, 1911 in An Xa village, Quang Binh province, in central Vietnam. He studied law in college, then worked as a professor and journalist. He was already involved in revolutionary activity against the French colonial regime at age 15. In 1931, influenced by the Marxist leader Troung Chinh, he joined the Indochina Communist Party, which worked for socialism and the expulsion of the brutal French colonial regime from what are now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

In 1939, he was forced by a colonial government crackdown to move to China, where he met Ho Chi Minh. He had to leave his wife, Dang Thi Quang, a newborn child and other relatives behind, and the French regime took revenge on them, executing his sister-in law, murdering the baby and causing his wife's death due to horrible prison conditions.

When Japan invaded Vietnam in 1941, Giap, Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese patriots of the Viet Minh liberation organization, moved into the North of Vietnam, whence they carried out effective guerilla warfare. Giap's army was recruited from peasants and other humble folk, and was famous for its political will and military discipline and skill.

When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of Vietnam. However, the French government did not accept the loss of its lucrative colony, and, with help from the United States, tried to suppress the new state. Giap, in command of all Viet Minh forces, ran rings around some of France's best generals, defeating them and sealing the end of French colonialism in Southeast Asia at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, on May 7, 1954.

But U.S. imperialism engineered the splitting of Vietnam into two pieces, North and South, to avoid what otherwise would have been the inevitable election of Ho Chi Minh as president of the whole country. There followed Vietnam War, in which the United States and its allies unleashed every conceivable horror of modern warfare, from napalm to high level bombing to the machine gunning of villagers.

Though more than 3 million Vietnamese were killed and much infrastructure was destroyed, it was all in vain: Vo Nguyen Giap's concept of a "people's war" in which the whole population, civil and military, is mobilized, defeated the B 52's. Such a mobilization was only possible because of the Marxist roots of Ho's and Giap's strategic thinking.

The United States pulled out in 1973, and Giap's army took Saigon and united Vietnam under socialist leadership two years later.

After the war Giap continued in his post as Defense Minister until 1980 and as member of the leadership of the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party until 1982.

Afterwards, he headed the government's Commission on Science and Technology.

His works on people's war, especially his 1961 book "People's War, People's Army" are of lasting value.

Giap had no formal military training and, far from having the mentality of a militarist, he deplored war and told interviewers that after every battle, he shed tears for the dead. Into his 90s, he was still engaged in efforts to help his country's development and improve the life of the people.

On international developments, he told a reporter from L'Humanite, the newspaper of the French Communist Party in 2004: "We are facing a difficult international situation in which we do not know how things will develop. There is talk of preventive war, of the happiness of the peoples imposed by arms or by the laws of the market. Above all there is a push by certain governments to impose their hegemony. Everywhere, there is the law of the jungle. One cannot tell what is going to happen, but I can say that the third millennium should be one of peace. That is what is most important. We have seen huge demonstrations to proclaim it. Youth should learn to appreciate peace. It is everything to live and to live together...all the nations should have their sovereignty, and everyone should have the right to live in dignity".

Vo Nguyen Giap's fame will never die; his strength of character, integrity and skill as a military leader led the Vietnamese people to victory over the Japanese, French and American empires, and freed their country.

We in the United States are still drawing lessons from his life and the tragedy of the war.

Photo: Giap in 2008. Wikipedia

Government shutdown to crash into debt ceiling crisis?

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 15:40:00 +0000

It looks like the federal government shutdown is going to crash right into the debt ceiling crisis.

First, Republicans won't fund the government unless a law they promised to pay for, but do not have the votes to repeal, is "defunded". They say people "won't like the train wreck called Obamacare". Of course, the seven million people that jammed the healthcare.gov website and phone lines before eight A.M. on Tuesday are a potent rebuttal to that lie.

(Who really believes the Republicans leaders and paymasters were ever motivated by any other fear than that working people, denied affordable, usable coverage for decades, will NOW be able to cover their families, will LOVE the new opportunity, and will punish the Cruz puppets now exposed completely for standing in their way!!??).

But the so-called tea party clique in the House of Representatives, a billionaire funded, fascist grouping of scoundrels, are leading Speaker John Boehner around like a pet in a clown suit. All he needs to do is put the Senate continuing resolution (same as House version but no "defunding" of Obamacare) to a simple up or down vote. Half the Republicans will join the Democrats and approve the resolution, and end the shutdown.

But the Republicans have a rule: allow no votes that do not have unanimous support in the Republican caucus -- so 30 Koch Brothers flunkeys are set to hold the whole nation hostage. Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma attacked the Tea Party, saying "no one takes a hostage they are not planning on shooting". My question is: Who says the nuts running the tea party aren't planning on "shooting the hostage"?

Given that the Republicans are now effectively led by fanatics, nothing is likely to happen until another debt crisis rises up in next week. On Oct 17 the U.S. will default on interest payments to holders of U.S, Treasury securities if the debt ceiling is not raised. It does not apparently matter to tea partiers that the debt is for bills and promises Congress has, again, already promised to pay!

Most contracts in world securities markets use the reliability of Treasury notes as a baseline for their own risk (interest) levels. The selling of Treasury securities is the main means by which the U.S. borrows money -- at near zero interest rates, by the way, currently. Partial, even short-term, default on debt payments will result in --- the truth is no one knows, nor does any sane person want to find out! Another dip down into the troughs of this depression -- for sure.

But we now have seriously entwined economic AND political crises. We will soon find out if the tea party game is only for infantile fools, drawn in by racism, homophobia, by politicians disguised as preachers, or other well-funded "wedge" issues; or if there is a deeper game. The social democrats, and the communists, in 1930 Germany also faced a minority Nazi party devoted to chaos, reaction, racism, and arrogance. They underestimated the danger, then, and failed to unite before it was too late.

Way over a million workers are immediately affected --- "indefinitely furloughed" -- by the shutdown. Will they get back pay once the government starts up again? With this Congress, who knows? Some military families will be compensated with "vouchers". I wonder how that exchange will go at the grocery store checkout? Or, if landlords or banks will accept vouchers in lieu of money for rent or mortgages? Federal workers are expressing every emotion from fear to rage to utter astonishment at the disrespect Republican bomb throwers show their public service.

Personally, since my family is directly affected by the shutdown, I have sent an invoice to my Republican Congresswoman Shelly Moore Capito for the anticipated lost income from her vote to shut down the government because she wants the health care offered to 230,000 uninsured and underinsured West Virginians under the Affordable Care Act to be "defunded." I plan to update this invoice for each day's lost time. She will have my vote as soon as I get paid.

Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP

What does Obamacare mean for young people?

Wed, 02 Oct 2013 13:15:00 +0000

As this article is being written, the U.S. is currently experiencing a government shutdown. What happened? The official line is that the House and the Senate couldn't agree on a bill to fund the government, and time has run out. Depending on who you ask, or what you read, this all boiled down to the fight over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has come to be known as Obamacare.

Of course, in looking closer at this situation, we know that other elements were at play. For example demands like defunding Planned Parenthood, expanding drilling on federal lands, and other "compromises" that the GOP wanted passed in order to implement the Affordable Care Act. Needless to say, a compromise was not reached and we are now in a government shutdown - the first one in 17 years. This means a whole new generation of youth are getting a first hand experience of our government at work.

Funny thing is, the Affordable Care Act is still happening. It began October 1. The ACA bill is long and it can be very daunting to read and understand how it will affect certain parts of the population, or the working people as a whole. In this technological age, most young people want the facts, in bullet point form if you please, so that we know what exactly we can expect. So, how will the ACA affect young people? Here are some key points and ways in looking at it:

At this point in time, there are about 47 million people in the U.S. without health insurance. This includes a good amount of young people. The ACA won't greatly affect those that already have coverage through employers or government sponsored health care such as Medicaid or Medicare. So that leaves about 15 percent of the population not covered. With the ACA, they will be able to find affordable coverage. Some of the highlights of that and other changes to existing health coverage would be as follows:

Young people would be able to stay on their parents insurance until the age of 26. Before, most insurers cut off the coverage at 21. Because of this provision, more than three million young people have gained coverage since approved. This works well in an economy when many young people are finding it hard to land full-time jobs that would give them the health coverage needed right out of college, high school, or post-graduate school.
Everyone is entitled to free preventative care. This works well for young women seeking birth control and other contraceptives. They do not have to be charged extra for seeking birth control. Not to mention the population as a whole doesn't have to pay extra for important health screenings such as for diabetes and HIV.
With the health exchange you can see what you're in for and you may even be eligible for a government discount. The websites provide a calculation of how much you will be paying based on your income. The lower your income the higher the tax credit you may be entitled to will be.
Young women can't be charged more than men. There's a little (re: sexist) thing that insurance companies in some states do, where women are charged more than men for individual coverage. This practice will now be outlawed beginning in the new year.
You cannot be charged for pre-existing conditions. This was another thing insurance companies were doing. Either they would reject people because of pre-existing health conditions or they would charge them more for it. Starting in the new year this will be illegal as well.
In some states, if you make less that $16,000 a year, you may be eligible for Medicaid. This can come in handy for many young people who are having to settle for part-time work or lower wages in the current economy.

Overall, many of these benefits and changes don't just apply to young people. Then again, young people aren't some separate and apart species from the rest of the human race. What's going on in government doesn't just affect our parents or older loved ones, or older people in general. And even if it doesn't affect us directly, it affects many people we know.

Photo: AP

Your mailman's diary: I called him Glovebox

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:25:00 +0000

ROYAL OAK, Mich. - His name was Gregg. Gregg Glowacz, and his nickname was "Glovebox" because that is what it kinda sounded like to say his last name in the Polish enclave called Hamtramck, Mich., where he grew up. I called him Dickbro Glovebox because he became my friend and I call all my friends Dickbros. That's what my daddy did with his friends and that is what I do with my friends. This feller changed the way I look at life and I'm gonna tell you all about it.

I met Gregg for the first time as I walking down his street. Orchard Grove is a pretty little street in my town, and when I glanced sideways one day I see this dude polishing his Harley; rag in one hand and a can of beer in the other. "Nice looking scooter," I holler over the fence to him. He leans on the gate and I could see the cockiness beaming out from behind his dark sunglasses. "It's brand new but it don't go fast enough. I'm gonna put a bigger motor and a six speed tranny in this piece of junk. Then it will be a real motorcycle." I knew right then that this was a unique individual. And that was the day our six-year friendship began.

Vicki, his wife, was a real pistol as well. You could tell they had a good thing going. I invited them over to my house for our annual Run to Hell (it's a real town!) and we had a real blast with all the Dickbros. They fit right in and that's when I started calling him Dickbro Glovebox. The backslapping tomfoolery between us went on for another year until Fate invited himself into our party. Mr. Fate walked into the room and refused to excuse himself.

As I was doing my usual walk down Orchard Grove one sunny afternoon I see a disturbing sight coming in my direction. A stiff figure taking tiny, almost zombielike steps, raises his hand to wave hello. " Gregg, are you alright?" I query through stunned lips. He shakes his head and answers, "I don't know what's going on. I've had two seizures in the last few days. I've been to the emergency room twice. They are doing a lot of tests. I really don't feel too good. Will you walk home with me?" Of course I got my friend home. Then, one week later, I see him outside in the yard again. "They found an aneurism in my brain. The doctors want to do a risky surgery before the thing pops and kills me. They're gonna cut my skull open!" I assure him that the doctors know what they are doing and not to worry. And, "with it being just before Halloween, have them sew a couple of bolts into your neck to finish out the Frankenstein effect. You're gonna be alright and you will have the best Halloween costume," I nervously joked with a tightness in my gut. It did not turn out alright.

Immediately after the surgery the doctors told Vicki that everything had gone well. She was relieved and hopeful. Then the next day tragedy struck. For some unexplained reason Gregg suffered two strokes that left him immobilized. He was now and would remain a quadriplegic. The doctors were mystified and Vicki was devastated. When I heard the news I had one thought. I must visit my friend.

The first visit was unsettling to say the least. He could only move his eyebrows up and down to signal yes or no. Tubes were everywhere, nurses were everywhere, and the only tool I had to make us both comfortable was the sense of humor that we both shared. That was how we survived that first encounter with his new reality. It was cold in his hospital room, so on my second visit I packed a gag gift and I had one of the nurses open it up for him. It was a knitted sweater for a certain part of the male anatomy and I told him that my mother had knitted it for me when I was five and that I'd since outgrown it, so I was passing it along to him. The nurse didn't know what to do with the thing in her hand and we both laughed like a couple of juvenile delinquents. Mr. Fate had opened up a special door for me. It was my time to confront my fears and either go big with this friendship thing or go home. Gregg and Vicki didn't give me an option.

For the next five years it was a rollercoaster ride. In and out of the hospitals with various infections and complications, therapies that promised more mobility and a chance for recovery, twenty-four hour care from some real life angels in the form of home health care workers; these were all part of Gregg's daily routine. I would continue to visit him, and I learned to become more comfortable in his reality. His mind was always as sharp as it ever was, just trapped in an immovable shell. We learned to communicate quite well. He would use a pair of reading glasses with a laser light attached to point to a chart of letters that I would hold to spell out words. With enough practice I usually knew what he was trying to say before he finished spelling. Online he used emails and Facebook to communicate and you would never know he was disabled. Our sense of humor was always the thread of any conversation. We did a Halloween pub crawl one year and he decided to be Stephen Hawking. It was phenomenal!

Our friendship grew throughout those years. It blossomed. I still wonder how that could be. Mr. Fate was rubbing his chin and nodding his head at us. One day, Gregg says to me, "Let's plan a poker run together, I miss my motorcycle and want to see some Harleys!" And so we did. We spent six months grinding out the details. We mapped out a route, picked out the bars, lined up a band, and gaggled up a group of volunteers to do the dirty work. September 9^th, 2012, exactly one year ago was our big day. Gregg wanted to ride along with the rest of us, so I lined up a sidecar with a rider named "Reddog" to bring Gregg along for the journey. I had never seen him so happy, thinking about that ride. We got his leather adorned with all his patches and even put a fresh shine on his cowboy boots. One week before the big run, Mr. Fate shook his finger at us. Gregg ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and missed the big poker run.

That was the last straw for my friend. He told Vicki to take him home and take him off the feeding tube. He was ready to make his peace. Five years was enough. Vicki announced to all friends and family that Gregg was home and time was short. Gregg wanted a party and he was gonna have a damn party. And party we did. Gregg liked his Patron tequila and I had gotten pretty adept at learning how to administer shots for him. Hell, what are friends for? He's the only guy I know that got to go to his own wake. On the second day of this ruckus, Vicki tells me Gregg still wants his ride. He still is dreaming of that sidecar. But we gotta do it quick. Like tomorrow quick. I called Reddog. "Can you be here tomorrow with that sidecar?" "You bet, partner," was the reply. The following night, Orchard Grove was abuzz. Friends, family, and neighbors all gathered around as Gregg was lifted into that sidecar. They witnessed what everyone knew was to be a most memorable motorcycle ride. Afterwards, some called it the "Last Ride." I said no way. We just call it "The Ride." We cruised into downtown, cruised up Woodward Avenue into Birmingham, then headed back to Orchard Grove. We pulled into Gregg's driveway to thunderous applause. He sat in that sidecar with his shades and leather on for the next hour partyin' like a rock star. I wish I could have bottled that joy on his face so I could pour a shot of it right now. That would be priceless elixir.

He didn't last much longer after that. My last visit with him he asked me to do one more thing for him. "Make sure I get a motorcycle escort for my funeral." "You got it Dickbro Glovebox," I believe were my last words to him. We escorted his cremated remains to the church via a motorcycle brigade in a chrome and leather urn. I was asked by his widow to carry his cowboy boots up to the altar as one of the pallbearers. I wrote and read a poem for my dear friend as part of the ceremony. And the amazing thing to me about this whole saga is how I met this special man. I walked the street called Orchard Grove every day. I was his letter carrier.

Here's the poem

Gregg's Ride

We planned a ride, a ride to remember,
We met on a cool fall eve.
Friends, family, and neighbors, gathered together,
Finding a reason to believe.
We hoisted you into that sidecar so tight,
Gotta take off them boots.
After five long years, man, you get to ride;
We're getting you back on a scoot.
The look on your face, so full of delight,
You were grinning from ear to ear.

We roared down Main Street with our shining parade,
All that's missing was a case of cold beer.
We cruised up Woodward, you told us "Go faster,"
Always having that need for speed.
Hell, I know if you could, and you certainly would,
Have passed us and taken the lead.
When we got back to the house, cheers and clapping erupted.
We successfully completed that ride.
You stayed in that sidecar, drinking Patron with your buds,
So much happiness no one could hide.
With your lid and leather on, sitting in that sidecar,
I saw you look at your bride.
It was plain to see, for even a blind guy,
To know your love would always abide.

Don't know if there are Harleys in Heaven,
But that's something us scooter tramps like to believe.
When a dear Bro' passes, imagining you on a Hog in the clouds,
It's that thought that helps us bereave.
Dickbro Glovebox, I'm gonna miss ya man,
Life without you I still cannot see.
So down here and right here, it's perfectly clear,
You'll always be riding with me.

Photo: Gregg Glowacz and author John Dick take "The Ride." Photo by Beverly Roberts.

Canadian town hosts conference on utopian socialist colonies

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:30:00 +0000

SOINTULA, British Columbia -- This Canadian fishing village lived up to its name, which means "place of harmony" in Finnish, hosting more than 100 visitors Sept. 20-22 for a conference on utopian socialist colonies in the Pacific Northwest.

Sointula, itself was the center of attention for the conference titled "Culture Shock: Utopian Dreams, Hard Realities."

Attendance was standing room only in both plenary and breakout sessions. Participants traveled from across British Columbia and from Washington State, Oregon and California. Several historians gave lectures including keynote speaker, Dr. Edward S. Dutton from Oulu University in Finland. Over two dozen members of the Masala Youth Theatre flew in from Finland to perform their original play, "Sointula" a three-hour production, all in Finnish. It was the premiere performance in North America of the play by Tuomo Aitta.

Anne Marie Koch, who presided over the conference, welcomed the crowd to Finnish Organization Hall, an old clapboard building extensively renovated in recent years. The people, she said, still live by the egalitarian principles of the original socialist colony established in 1901 and have not lost their never-give-up spirit expressed in the Finnish word, "sisu."

Koch told this reporter that 100 volunteers worked tirelessly, cooking delicious meals, providing housing, decorating, organizing the program. Saturday night, they grilled fresh sockeye salmon caught in Broughton Strait just offshore by Sointula fishermen.

In his keynote, Dutton told the crowd that the late Dr. Kalervo Oberg an eminent Canadian anthropologist born in Nanaimo was brought to Sointula as an infant by his parents, August and Hilma Oberg. The father was a Nanaimo coalminer so dedicated to the teachings of the socialist founder, Matti Kurikka, that he became the treasurer of the colony.

A disastrous fire in 1903 destroyed the community hall, killing 11 residents. August Oberg's two young daughters -- Kalervo's sisters -- were among the seven children who died.

Dutton argued that the tragedy, coupled with other traumas, was central to Kalervo Oberg's theory of "Culture Shock" now widely accepted in anthropology to explain the roller coaster emotions experienced by newcomers forced to adapt to a new culture.

Although Oberg never mentioned the personal basis of his theory, "we can understand why Kalervo Oberg chose to write his 1928 undergraduate dissertation at the University of British Columbia about Sointula and we can see why culture shock might have fascinated him," Dutton said. "Sointula was culture shock."

He added, "Oberg's culture shock bears Kurikka's stamp. It implies that all cultures are equal -- just another way of living ... it implies that you can change how you feel just by thinking differently and Kurikka believed in the power of mind over matter."

"And it implies that we are free. We can overcome our culture shock just as Kurikka believed we could improve humanity. We are not limited by some inherited human nature."

Historian, Charles Pierce LeWarne, author of "Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915," spoke about several utopian colonies in Washington State including the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony in Port Angeles, Equality near Bellingham, and Home, on the Kitsap Peninsula. LeWarne challenged the idea that these utopian experiments can be dismissed since they died so quickly. "I think it's a mistake to judge them on how long they survived," he said, arguing that the colonies promoted concepts of equality and solidarity that led to victories long after they were gone.

"I would like to write another book about the children of the colonists," he said. "There was a woman born in the Home Colony who came close to winning a Nobel Prize for her medical research. I can't remember her name."

I was sitting at the other side of the room and said under my breath, "Violet Russell's sister."

LeWarne overheard me. "That's right! Russell was the name I was trying to remember."

Rose Payne, born Rose Russell, in the Home Colony, was a research biologist at Stanford University who broke new ground on tissue compatibility, knowledge vital to organ transplants. She died in 1999. Her sister, Violet Russell, also born in Home, was a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Washington State.

Sointula was founded by a band of Finnish coal miners from Nanaimo about 200 miles south. The miners were so desperate to escape the brutal exploitation of mine owner, Robert Dunsmuir, that they formed a collective, Kalevan Kansa, (Socialist Pioneers). They contacted Kurikka and convinced him to come and lead the colony.

The 200 men and women rowed to remote Malcolm Island. They cleared the forest, set up a sawmill, constructed the wooden town, built a fleet of fishing boats. The town stand stands today, dominated by the Sointula Coop, the first cooperative general store in western Canada, still providing groceries and other necessities.

Just before we boarded the ferry back to Port McNeill, we walked down Sointula's main street to the cemetery and found an old weather-worn marble headstone with the epitaph, "Maria Hantula and her children, Herman, Ilmari, Aili. Died in the Sointula fire Jan. 29, 1903."

conference photo by Tim Wheeler/PW