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Sweet Victory: Arkansas Gets a Raise, Who's Next?
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen.
The evidence is mounting: there is perhaps no issue that transcends ideology like increasing the minimum wage. 86 percent of America supports boosting the federal minimum wage, deeply frustrated that the rate hasn't budged since 1997. Even in the so-called red states, the minimum wage movement is gaining serious traction.
On April 10th, in Arknasas, Republican Governor Mike Huckabee signed a massive $1.10 state minimum wage increase into law. Arkansas was desperately in need of a wage hike; it currently ranks at the bottom of the nation in median income. But the bill, which takes effect on October 1, will dramatically improve conditions for 127,000 Arkansans, whose wages had long languished at the pathetic federal standard of $5.15 per hour. And contrary to right-wing nonsense, the law won't just help teenagers working at burger joints; approximately 80% of those affected are over 20 years old.
(47) CommentsApril 28, 2006
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Reconstruction Watch Part V: We Deserve Answers
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
In the Washington Post last week, Griff Witte reported that American businessman Philip Bloom--whose companies were awarded $8.6 million in Iraq reconstruction contracts--pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe US officials with more than $2 million in cash and gifts in exchange for the reconstruction deals.
Three officials of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority have already been implicated and more arrests are expected.
According to Stuart W. Bowen Jr., Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (and former Associate Counsel to the Bush White House), "This shows oversight is working. It will send a message to those involved in similar schemes that we are on the case."
(14) CommentsApril 27, 2006
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White House Shuffle
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
After a week spent manhandling the Chinese President and kicking Scott McClellan to the curb, The Decider finally got around to downsizing his brain. Karl Rove is giving up his policy role to focus on politics, a distinction without a difference in this White House.
With even Fox News reporting Bush's poll numbers (33 percent) threatening to fall below the Nixon line (28 percent), the best thing Bush could do for his beloved Republican majority is decide to resign. Or failing that, since he fails at almost everything he tries to do, Bush could simply fire Rove the way the CIA fired Mary McCarthy. After all if Ms. McCarthy was fired for a 'pattern' of inappropriate contact with reporters, then surely Rove deserves the boot. Everything he does is inappropriate.
Instead we've learned that the Bolten recovery plan to bump up Bush's numbers includes extending the tax cut for capital gains and stock dividends and more tours of the country to "brag" about the strength of the economy. This makes a certain amount of sense, since the only Americans who will be able to afford a tank of gas to go see the president will be those who are rich enough to be affected by the tax cut on stocks.
(33) CommentsApril 25, 2006
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Sweet Victory: Top Five Environmental Wins
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen.
Of all of the disastrous hallmarks of the Bush presidency, Bush's darkest legacy in the long run may be his unmitigated assault on the environment and his deliberate campaign to cover up the immediate threat of global warming.
The Bush Administration has undermined the Environmental Protection Agency, appointed corporate cronies in the oil industry to critical environmental posts, and muzzled top scientists from warning the public about the imminent climate crisis. It was no exaggeration when Al Gore said "George W. Bush has by all odds been by far the worst president for the environment in the entire history of the United States of America -- bar none."
(53) CommentsApril 21, 2006
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Death and Taxes
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Those inveterate whiners in the White House are now complaining that the president's poll numbers should be much higher given the strong economic indicators at the moment. Their problem may lie in the fact that average Americans--the vast majority of the population--aren't the ones enjoying the benefits of Bush's trickle down tax policies.
The New York Times recently analyzed IRS data on the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains. Here is the money quote: "Taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income."
To find an individual example, one needs look no further than the Cheneys. In 2005, Dick and Lynne received a huge tax rebate on their $8.8 million income, largely because most of that money was the result of exercising Halliburton stock options.
(126) CommentsApril 19, 2006
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Sweet Victory: WiFi For All
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Co-written by Sam Graham-Felsen.
As corporate telecommunications giants accelerate their efforts to create a two-tiered Internet, one of our greatest tools for democracy and equality is under assault. America already lags far behind other industrialized nations in Net access--paying "two to three times as much for slower and poorer quality service than countries like South Korea or Japan"--and if big telecom succeeds, the Internet may be slower and more costly than ever.
Fortunatrely, media rights activists are fighting--and winning--battles to ensure that more, not fewer, are given access to the web. One of the major fronts in the fight to equalize Internet access has been the effort to provide universal wireless service, and cities across the nation are rapidly embracing WiFi-for-all initiatives.
(39) CommentsApril 17, 2006
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The Generals Revolt
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Batiste. Eaton. Newbold. Riggs. Zinni….Is there a retired general left in the States who hasn't called on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to fall on his sword? While The Nation suggested he resign in April, 2003, an unanticipated and unprecedented cast of characters has joined the growing chorus.
Maj. Gen. John Batiste (US Army, Ret.) is the latest in a line of top military brass to ask the embattled Rumsfeld to step down. As the Washington Post reported Thursday, Batiste said, "It speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense."
Volumes indeed. Batiste commanded an army division in Iraq and was offered three-stars as well as the No. 2 position there. He chose instead to retire rather than continuing to serve under Rumsfeld. Batiste believes "… the administration's handling of the Iraq war has violated fundamental military principles…." And, as he told The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, "…the strategic underpinnings of this war can be traced back in policy to the secretary of defense. He built it the way he wanted it."
(169) CommentsApril 14, 2006
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Haditha, Iraq
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
As the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday, this much is known to be true: On November 19, after a roadside bomb killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 15 Iraqi civilians – including seven women and three children – were allegedly shot and killed by a unit of US Marines operating in Haditha, Iraq. Then, this past Friday, a battalion commander and two company commanders from the same unit were relieved of their duties.
We also know that the Marine Corps initially claimed that the 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. But in January, after Time magazine presented the military with Iraqi accounts and video proof of the attack's aftermath, officials acknowledged that the civilians were killed by Marines but blamed insurgents nonetheless who had "placed noncombatants in the line of fire."
However, video evidence shows that women and children were shot in their homes while still wearing nightclothes. And while there are no bullet holes outside the houses to support the military's assertion of a firefight with insurgents, "inside the houses…the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood."
(88) CommentsApril 12, 2006
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It's the Cover-Up
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
After all the breathless suspense, after all the effort federal agents spent trying to seal a national security breach, after all the fingers were pointed directly at the Vice-President, last week it was revealed that the President of the United States, who everyone had previously thought was way too clueless to be involved, was behind the scandal the entire time. Yes, I'm talking about President Logan on Fox's long-running hit show 24.
How life imitates art.
In the long-running Washington DC tragicomic reality show The Bushies, it was also revealed last week that it was President George W. Bush who was behind the leak that led to the uncovering of CIA agent Valerie Plame's undercover identity.
(130) CommentsApril 11, 2006
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$13,700 an Hour
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
Last Sunday, the New York Times reported that--for the first time--a full-time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in America at market rates. That means more and more people like Michelle Kennedy--a former Senate page and author of Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America--are finding themselves homeless and living out of their cars.
At a town hall meeting in Ohio last Saturday, Representative Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a staunch advocate for social and economic rights--he and Bernie Sanders are the two best candidates running for Senate in 2006--railed against stagnant wages' contribution to economic hardship. "It is unacceptable that someone can work full-time--and work hard--and not be able to lift their family out of poverty." He blasted a system where a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $10,500 annually, while "last year the CEO of Wal-Mart earned $3,500 an hour. The CEO of Halliburton earned about $8,300 an hour. And the CEO of ExxonMobil earned about $13,700 an hour."
This past weekend Robert Kuttner argued in the Boston Globe that while people are blaming undocumented workers for driving down wages, the real villains are "the people running the government, who have made sure that the lions' share of the productivity gains go to the richest 1 percent of Americans. With different tax, labor, health, and housing policies, native-born workers and immigrants alike could get a fairer share of our productive economy."
(188) CommentsApril 6, 2006
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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