The Nation
Tell Eric Holder: Ban the Solitary Confinement of Youth
Every day in the United States, young people under the age of eighteen are held in solitary confinement, a form of punishment in which inmates are placed alone in a cell for 22 to 24 hours a day with little or no human contact. The practice of solitary confinement is associated with high rates of severe mental illness and suicide and the effects are compounded in young people, who are still developing emotionally, physically and psychologically. While the growing use of the practice in our prisons is cruel and unjust for all inmates, the need to end its use among youth is particularly urgent.
TO DO TO READThis ACLU report is based on interviews and correspondence with more than 125 young people in 19 states who spent time in solitary confinement while under age 18 as well as with jail and/or prison officials in 10 states.
TO WATCHYoung people are held in solitary confinement in jails and prisons across the US, often for weeks or months at a time. The isolation of solitary confinement causes anguish, provokes serious mental and physical health problems, and works against rehabilitation for teenagers.
Guns Are a Right, Yes—but Do They Have to Be?
Protesters, some armed (L), attend a pro-gun rally as part of the National Day of Resistance at the state Capitol in Salt Lake City, Utah, February 23, 2013. (REUTERS/Jim Urquhart)
We are at a point in the debate over gun control where these are dueling headlines: “At Least 71 Kids Have Been Killed With Guns Since Newtown” versus “A march on Washington with loaded rifles.” Given the status of gun control legislation in Congress, they’re equally infuriating, but one gives insight into why this debate is stalled.
Libertarian radio host Adam Kokesh is planning a gathering of gun owners and gun rights activist where they will…maybe it’s best to read him in his words. From the Facebook page:
On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.
Currently, 3400+ people on Facebook have stated their intention of participating (an admittedly shoddy means by which to gauge likely attendance), but it makes me wonder if anyone involved is reading the same news that I am.
What’s telling is the language used to promote this action. On May 3, Kokesh tweeted: “When the government comes to take your guns, you can shoot government agents, or submit to slavery.”
It’s not that he doesn’t know the horrors of guns, but that he views his right to own guns as integral to his freedom as an American. That’s the strain of thinking among pro-gun folks that’s difficult to defeat.
It’s why Glenn Beck doesn’t flinch when co-opting the message and symbolism of Martin Luther King Jr., to promote a pro-gun rights agenda. King’s nonviolent philosophy isn’t as important to Beck as the fact that his life represents a fight for freedom and Beck sees his crusade in the same light.
Here’s a thought this group may want to consider: the rights we have can, and do, have and will continue to change.
Slavery was once a right. Now-outdated notions of privacy and property allowed marital rape as a right. But the costs of those rights were the violation of others’ rights, and we reached a point as a society (through much debate, struggle, blood, sweat, tears and more) where we decided that protecting rights like slavery and marital rape was no longer worth the damage they inflicted. Alcohol was a right, then it wasn’t, and then it was again because prohibiting drinking caused more trouble than we were able to tolerate. However, when the right returned it did not go unchecked. This is how we negotiate rights in a democracy.
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But on guns, we seem unwilling to even consider the idea that a citizenry free to bear arms may impose more of a threat to freedom than it guarantees. I understand why that is, as guns are tied into our national identity, our sense of masculinity, our desire for power, and it frightens some of us to think who we would be without that. And then more headlines read “13-year-old Florida boy shoots 6-year-old with handgun at home” and I just want us to pause to consider: Is the right to bear arms worth the deaths of our children?
We may well decide that it is, but a debate about guns that is afraid of that core question isn’t one worth having.
Assata Shakur is a black woman who dared to fight an unfair conviction—so the US government labeled her one of its “Most Wanted Terrorists,” Mychal Denzel Smith writes.
Was My Hat Made in a Factory Like Rana Plaza?
A Bangladeshi woman looks at portraits of missing persons near the site of the recent disaster in Savar. (AP Photo/Ashraful Alam Tito)
In the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster—the garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed in late April, leaving 1,000 dead, as of today—consumers are left with some troubling questions: Can we trust any item of clothing that’s made in Bangladesh… or anywhere else, for that matter? Are all garment factories “bad”? Is there any real way to tell if something we buy in a chain store was made under safe, ethical conditions?
Last week, a reader of The Nation wrote in asking these very questions. She recently purchased a large number of caps from a clothing brand called Port Authority and, after noticing the caps’ made-in labels read “Bangladesh,” went searching for information about the factory they came from and the conditions under which the hats were made. She came up largely empty-handed.
I did my own investigation into the reader’s hats. Port Authority is owned by a larger entity, called SanMar. A SanMar customer server representative told me that SanMar has been working with the same factories in Bangladesh “for years” and that those factories are accredited by the Fair Labor Association. You can read more about SanMar’s social responsibility efforts here.
The FLA is an auditing group hired by a number of major brands (H&M, American Eagle, Hanes, and Adidas are among them) to conduct unannounced inspections of factories and then work with the factories and the brands to improve conditions. On the FLA website, there is a factory inspection report for one of SanMar’s hat factories in Bangladesh. You can read it here.
It’s actually quite rare to be able to get even this amount of information about a clothing factory used by a major brand and even rarer to be able trace a specific item (a hat) back to a specific factory, one that might have actually created that hat. But, even then, the report does little to inspire consumer confidence. It does not disclose the name of the factory or the address nor does it give any real sense of what the factory is like. It also reveals a string of noncompliance issues, among them wage violations, a lack of accurate payroll records, a handful of faulty smoke detectors and fire extinguishers that were partially blocked by embroidery machines. And there is no public record of when and if these issues were resolved.
I don’t want to single out SanMar. A minimal level of transparency is typical across the entire fashion industry. And to answer the reader’s question: Is there any way to know with confidence that our clothes purchased from large fashion brands are being made in safe factories? The answer, currently, is not really.
Even before the Rana Plaza tragedy, the auditing system used by major clothing companies was under fire. Last year, labor leaders criticized the FLA for having too cozy a relationhip with Apple after it claimed to observe improvements in the notorious Foxconn factory. The baseline, minimum-effort logic of the clothing industry is no longer enough. Consumers no longer accept it when companies take so little responsibility for what happens in their factories. Nor do they accept slow, incremental improvements in working conditions.
More than that, consumers shouldn’t have to call a customer service line or dig up a factory auditing report to know where their cap was made and if it was fairly made or not. Consumers are really looking for total transparency and easy-to-trace supply chains for their clothing, similar to what we’ve seen with food. Or, as a New York Times story on fair-trade clothing put it this week, “origins matter” now.
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As I mentioned in a video for The New York Times, there needs to be a simple and honest labeling system for clothes similar to what we’ve seen with organic and fair-trade foods. In the meantime, brands can also use their websites to give detailed and clear information about what their factories are like. As was mentioned in the Times article, online retailer Everlane includes a photo gallery of its Los Angeles-based T-shirt supplier and anecdotes about the people who work there.
Sweatfree clothing was the mentality of the ’90s. The bar is much higher now. Consumers want a good and honest story about how something is made. And it’s up to brands not only to create healthy working conditions but to meet consumer’s heightened expectations.
Today, the fast food strike wave hit Detroit. Read Josh Eidelson’s report.
From Philadelphia to Raleigh, Students Resist Racism and Austerity
North Carolina activists protest Republican policies. (Credit: The Daily Courier)
E-mail questions, tips or proposals to studentmovement@thenation.com. For earlier dispatches, check out posts from January 18, February 1, February 15, March 1, March 15, April 2, April 15 and April 26.
1. North Carolina Students Blockade State Republicans
The North Carolina General Assembly is passing an avalanche of regressive policies, including deep cuts to unemployment insurance and public education, restrictions to Medicaid eligibility, racist voter suppression laws and raising taxes on 900,000 working North Carolinians while cutting taxes for the richest twenty-three families. Now, students are standing in resistance with people from across the state. On April 29, seventeen people were arrested for blocking the doors to the State Senate, including two students from NC Student Power Union. On May Day, 350 students from ten different campuses marched to the General Assembly, and five students were arrested for trying to enter the building. On May 6, another group of thirty-one people were arrested—including grandmothers, students, professors and preachers. Mobilizations are planned each Monday until the end of the legislative session.
—NC Student Power Union
2. Florida Youth Rise Up to Defend Pushed-Out High Schooler
On April 22, 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot was arrested at her Polk County high school for conducting an explosive science experiment. The teen, who has no criminal history and maintained good grades, suddenly found herself trapped in Florida’s insidious school-to-prison pipeline, which has continually funneled mostly youth of color out of Florida’s schools and into the criminal justice system. Polk County Superintendent John Stewart has made the decision to place Kiera in an “alternative school” as he considers expulsion proceedings. Dream Defenders finds these actions by Superintendent Stewart reprehensible. We demand that Stewart drop all expulsion proceedings against Kiera Wilmot and allow her to return to her enrollment at Bartow High School. We are calling on concerned individuals to sign this petition, organizations in solidarity to sign this organizational petition and for everyone to contact Polk County Superintendent directly at 863-534-0521 to let him know we will not stand for this in Kiera’s case—or for this kind of treatment for youth in any case.
—Dream Defenders
3. At Dartmouth, It Gets Real
RealTalk Dartmouth is a growing movement of students, faculty, alumni and public supporters that seek to contest a deeply entrenched culture of hate that affects the lives of Dartmouth College students. On April 19, the first of several direct student actions took place to make visible the foundation of our mission—Dartmouth has a problem—at the annual show put on for prospective students. Following the protests, the College announced a day of cancelled classes for students to partake in small group meetings and discuss the campus climate—which many students, faculty, alumni and RealTalk members felt was simply an image-saving move. This is only the most recent and highly publicized example of student dissent. Every year, the college stands witness to sexual assault, racism, homophobia, transphobia and elitism enacted by students who, in turn, face little to no disciplinary action. Through nonviolent protest, RealTalk signals to the administration and to the community that we’ll no longer tolerate this vicious cycle of systematic dehumanization.
—RealTalk Dartmouth
4. In Philadelphia, Hundreds Walk Out Against Budget Cuts
The Philadelphia Student Union is a founding member of the Philly Coalition Advocating for Public Schools. We've joined together with teachers, parents and community members to advocate for keeping our schools open and making them better. This year, the School Reform Commission voted to close twenty-three schools in Philadelphia. At the meeting where they voted, nineteen people, including our Executive Director, Hiram, and a PSU alum, Azeem, were arrested. This is just the first phase of a five-year plan to close schools in Philadelphia. Right now, we’re preparing to fight back against the next round of school closures; working with students and staff in schools to ease the transitions when students whose schools closed move into our schools; and, as part of the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools, working with principals and the SRC to get restorative practices in our schools. On May 9, students from across the city walked out and rallied at City Hall to protest the district’s deep budget cuts—which include arts, sports, counselors, nurses and much more.
—Philadelphia Student Union
5. In Chicago, Lincoln Parkers Walk Out for Their Teachers' Jobs
On May 2 at Chicago’s Lincoln Park High School, there were many whispers about “the walkout,” how no one was going to show up and how those who did show up would get suspended. When the bell rang at the end of second period, hundreds of students walked outside, and whispers subsided to cheers of teacher-student solidarity. Students were protesting the firing of eight teachers as part of the school's recent implementation of a “Wall-to-Wall” International Baccalaureate program. The walkout started as a series of rumors the afternoon before, a Facebook event was made that night and the walkout happened just twelve hours later. The students staged a peaceful protest, and were not punished.
—Melody DeRogatis
6. Providence Students Reject the State Rap
The Providence Student Union has been fighting for months against Rhode Island’s adoption of the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP test, as a make-or-break graduation requirement. Students have held creative demonstrations such as a zombie protest and an event where successful adults took (and mostly failed) the test themselves. On April 30, the Providence Student Union staged its own State of the Student Address outside the Rhode Island Commissioner of Education's annual State of Education speech, where students offered their own list of recommendations for transforming their schools. After the event, a group of PSU leaders marched into the State House and delivered their policy recommendations to the Commissioner of Education, the Chair of theBoard of Education, the Senate President and the Speaker of the House.
—Providence Student Union
7. Louisana Students Ward Off the Data Thiefs
In Mandeville, Louisiana, people are angry about the state’s move to hand confidential student information to inBloom, a private data management company. In April, a classmate and I attended an emergency meeting in Baton Rouge on student data sharing. In my testimony I asked, "How would you feel if your personal belongings were stolen and sold to the highest bidder?" We were bullied by Superintendent John White for questioning his motives in selling our information to anyone who wants it without our consent. A few of us will be missing final exams to speak up again at the next board meeting—and we'll continue to educate our peers.
—Rachael Sachs
8. Making Space for All Students at Rowan
Project 3 was started by students at New Jersey’s Rowan University who are frustrated with the extreme lack of inclusiveness on campus. Self-segregation is highly prevalent, and students do not feel the university is committed to creating more understanding of historically marginalized communities. Students are proposing the creation of a Multicultural, LGBTQ and Women's Center to provide safe spaces for these communities. A one-person Office of Multicultural Affairs on a campus of over 12,000 students is indicative of our university’s insufficient commitment to inclusion. Students have not been involved nor asked to help create any new initiatives that would establish permanent change. Project 3 looks forward to bringing all interested parties together to establish a new center here.
—Jenna Siegel
9. When Will Pomona Workers Get a Break?
On April 30, dining hall workers at Pomona College in California voted 57-26 to form a union with UNITE HERE Local 11. This marked the final victory for workers after more than three years of fighting for respect in their workplace and a voice within the college community. Since this campaign first went public in Spring 2010, workers have spoken out about undervalued work, injuries in the workplace and unjust firings. In December 2011, students, alumni, faculty and clergy stood in solidarity with workers after seventeen people were fired following a document check of the college's employees. After a strong push from the community, the college finally agreed to rehire workers if they returned to the college with a work authorization permit. Now that the union has been certified, this growing community will support workers as the negotiations for a contract begin.
—Isabel Juarez
10. What Would Bucky Badger Do?
After organizing for dignity in the workplace in response to unsafe working conditions and discrimination, 105 workers from Palermo Villa, Inc., were fired in May 2012. Students, faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been pressuring Chancellor David Ward to cut the $217,000 contract with Palermo that allows the company to brand its pizza as "the official pizza of Bucky Badger." The campaign escalated from caroling outside the Chancellor's house, a 10,000 signature petition and letter deliveries to a full-blown sit-in at the Chancellor's office on April 29. Twelve students were arrested and subsequently released. Now, Chancellor Ward is calling on the National Labor Relations Board, Palermo and the developing Palermo's Workers Union to rehire eleven workers who were fired illegally—but they still haven't been rehired.
—UWMAD@Palermo’s
Attention College Students: Get six months of The Nation’s digital editorial absolutely free!
Why Does the Press Still Take the Heritage Foundation Seriously?
My new “Think Again” column on Niall Ferguson’s ridiculous apology and the issues it raises is here.
My new Nation column advises that regarding the Tribune papers, we worry about Murdoch, not Koch, here.
Alter-Reviews (These are pretty long, but take heart, Reed is below):
Crosby, Stills & Nash with Jazz@Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Steve Tyrell singing Sammy Cahn at the Café Carlyle.
The final weekend of Jazzfest.
I must have done something nice for someone at some point in my life because fate rewarded me with a last minute ticket to the annual benefit show presented at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center featuring the complete orchestra together with Crosby, Stills and Nash.
The old guys were thrilled by the experience, which David Crosby likened to “getting to play with the bigger kids.” They even dressed up in Brooks Brothers suits, like the rest of the band and wore shoes with laces. The show consisted of CSN songs re-imagined with jazz arrangements by members of the orchestra. It was rarely a complete success, but always an audacious and welcome experiment. I say “audacious” because unlike previous participants in these benefit/collaborations, Eric Clapton and Paul Simon or even Willie Nelson, one cannot easily the jazz, or even blues elements of the CSN catalogue.
I particularly liked the latin vibe attached to “Long Time Coming,” the big-band swing of “Military Madness” and back and forth dueling in “Marrakesh Express.” The deserved crowd-pleasers were a wonderful “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” with an impressive Steve Stills solo that mimicked “Within You Without You” and a lovely Crosby/Nash duet on “Guinnevere,” with Wynton Marsalis perched between them playing a quiet trumpet accompaniment.
As it ended, and Nash announced that “I think we have time for one more song before Brooks Brothers takes the suits back,” they ended as do all CSN shows: with a sing-along “Teach Your Children.” But this time the crowd wouldn’t leave and so they formed a second line and danced and chanted around the stage for another ten minutes, with everybody (I imagine) thinking how lucky they were to be there. J@LC has a Chick Corea and a Bobby Short tribute coming up next week so you should be able to find me there too. More here.
I also caught a wonderfully up-tempo show by the great Steve Tyrell who has developed into a kind of latter-day Tony Bennett but with a touch of Tom Waits in his voice. He’s doing a run at the Café Carlyle through May 18 in celebration of his brand new 10th album, It’s Magic: The Songs of Sammy Cahn. It is also Cahn’s centennial year. I had a wonderful time, as Tyrell is a charming storyteller and an almost irresistible interpreter of the classics to which he devotes himself, pretty much exclusively. (I did get him to give the crowd about a half of “Spinning Wheel” in honor of his B,S& T days and the fact that its original trumpeter Lew Soloff is in the band.)
Anyway, the album was a marvelous idea. Cahn’s songs are quite well known, but their composer is not. Tyrell told the crowd that he was drawn to the material because of the moment in American popular culture when, just before the Beatles, “the old-world thinking ran into the sexual revolution. That’s around 1958. Before that, everybody was ‘goody two-shoes,’ sleeping in twin beds on TV. Then all of sudden, there was the Rat Pack, Las Vegas, James Bond, and Playboy magazine. Things started getting sexy,” Tyrell explains. This is the period most revered by this current generation as witnessed by the success of Mad Men, the remakes of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, and this year’s salute to James Bond at the 2013 Oscars. And then there’s Diddy with his Rat Pack Vodka commercials.” (Actually Mad Men’s a little later, but still…) The songs--“Ain’t That a Kick in the Head”--“Come Fly with Me-- “All the Way,” etc, are often associated with Sinatra. Nobody can compete with that and Tyrell doesn’t try. He’s not new arrangements and a different approach.“
You can’t have a bad time at a Steve Tyrell show, but you can spend a great deal of money. The cover at the Carlyle runs between $60 and $160. My intrepid reporting discovered that a Gray Goose martini will set you back $22.00 plus tax and tip. That’s what I call a kick in the head….
More than 425,000 fans attended the 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage
Festival. Here’s a report on the final weekend by one of them:
New Orleans Jazz Festival
by Katelyn Belyus
SATURDAY
The rain was gone, and with the sun came droves of people, which is to be expected for the last Saturday of Jazz Fest. After marveling at my stuffed artichoke (and the idea that each year, there must be thousands of artichokes plucked, trimmed, cleaned, and stuffed for the masses), I checked out Robert Mirabal. He's pretty much a jack-of-all-trades from Taos, where he lives a traditional Pueblo lifestyle. In addition to writing poetry and making music (for which he's won two Grammys), he paints, acts, farms, and is known for his work on the Native American flute. From far away, his sputtering movements reminded me of Iggy Pop, and his flute-playing floated through the crowd. “It's the music where the ceremony begins... it's the dance where the ceremony begins... it's the blood where the ceremony begins... demand that! Demand that! Demand that!” He commanded the crowd, and they answered by dipping their hands in some sort of ceremonial bowl that was passed around the first few rows of people. “Your prayers will go to my river,” he promised.
I needed a break from the seriousness, and Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band (also a Grammy winner) was just that. “I wanna thank my granddaddy for introducing me to Zydeco music,” Carrier said before going into the jumpy, accordion-driven “Jalapena Lena.” A blend of Cajun, blues, and rhythm and blues music, Zydeco is a uniquely American, and many a Fest-er celebrated by cheering on the guy playing his washboard and by dancing in the mud, clad in white shrimping boots, their bellies proudly exposed.
Next up: The Little Willies, also known as “Norah Jones' country band.” Of course, they're much more than Jones on the piano and vocals, but it's worth noting that her voice is so well-suited for country, and especially for their vocal harmonies. Their music is a little country, a little bluegrass, marked by the molasses in Jones' voice. It wasn't immediate get-up-and-dance music, but by the time they launched into their cover of Johnny Cash's “Tennessee Stud,” people were moving. Word on the street was they did a stand-out cover of Dolly Parton's heartbreaking “Jolene,” perhaps the finest example of a successful pop song written in a minor key.
I was torn between the two major acts of the night--Fleetwood Mac and Frank Ocean--and I decided on Fleetwood first and Ocean to follow. Of course, FM came out to “The Chain,” and then rolled right into “Dreams,” which, though predictable, did not make it any less awesome. I'm a huge FM fan, but have never seen them live, and I was struck by how effortlessly they come together, even after all these years (or perhaps because of all these years?). And yet they still know how to write solid songs, especially crowd-pleasers, as they revealed with “Sad Angel,” an upbeat song recently released in April that literally asks the crowd to “call out for more.” I danced as best I could, which was no minor feat considering I was up to my ankles in mud, with my boat shoes struggling to stay on my feet. They went into “Rhiannon” and everyone around me-- college guys, hippie gals, parents, kids-- sung along with Stevie, wearing her signature long black sleeves on the hottest day of the weekend. Before going into a few songs off “Tusk,” including the title track and “Sara,” Lindsay Buckingham noted how the album was famously not wanted by record execs but seemed vindicated in its popular appeal that has grown over time. “Time has revealed the reason that was done,” he said about the album before launching into “Not That Funny” and practically shouting at the record label. As they began “Looking Out for Love,” (Buckingham pointed out that he was “defending [love]”), I trudged over to Frank Ocean's stage, my current love whose music I would defend with my life.
I joined the crowd towards the end of “Super Rich Kids,” a cutting critique of said subject matter, with lines like “Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends/ super rich kids with nothing but fake friends.” For those of you unfamiliar with Frank Ocean, I implore you to check him out. A native of New Orleans, he's young, vibrant, and black, and his music is lyrically eloquent and technically lush. He's a cross between hip-hop and R&B, but with intensely personal lyrics. He gained press last summer with the arrival of his Channel: Orange album that coincided with his coming out-- how far out, people tend to disagree-- but he has spoken and written openly about loving another man, and it's both amazing and incredibly sad that it's become such a topic of conversation-- the “out” black R&B kid. Not surprisingly, other artists seem split on the idea-- some embrace him, some question its validity, and some hate him for it, as Chris Brown (who nauseates me to begin with) demonstrated after a very public physical altercation (or were there two?). Ocean, for what it's worth, maintains a very strong sense of privacy, but still remains very public-- he's a perfect example of personal curation in the Twitter age.
I'd heard mixed reviews about his live performances and the sound quality, but when I arrived, his voice was crystal clear, his falsetto mesmerizing, and he was smiling. My heart leapt. The crowd was mixed and knew most of his lyrics, and it was nice to be nestled among so many young people, gay and straight, of all racial backgrounds, who could throw up their hands to “Thinkin Bout You” (featuring an electric cello and Ocean's crisp vocals) and not care who the song was about. There's something about Ocean that crosses racial and gender boundaries and touches people at their core, because of the honest mix of pleasure and pain in his lyrics. I first heard “Bad Religion” last year on an alt-rock station in Philly, and I stopped everything and sat down slowly. I had never heard anything like it-- a love song for a man by a man, as told in this century's confessional: inside a cab, with a non-English-speaking driver who can't judge, with incredible lines about what it is to live disguised, “Taxi driver, I swear I got three lives/balanced on my head like steak knives.” The first time I heard it, I had chills. Hearing it again live was perfect-- aside from his having to stop and re-start because he hadn't been counted in correctly-- and human, and I became untethered as I watched the crowd's wants and needs collide.
SUNDAY
I woke up exhausted from a night of dancing to Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots, a happy, upbeat mix of blues, Caribbean, funk and Zydeco fronted by Sunpie Barnes on the accordion and vocals. I’d missed him at the fest, so I caught him at Dos Jefes Cigar Bar on the West Riverside. As I walked in, Sunpie was in the middle of an original that sounded like a funky accordion take on “You Sexy Thing,” and he was surrounded by Fest-ers, their shoes caked with mud a telltale giveaway.
Sunday at the Jazz Fest was glorious—less heat, no mud, and a smaller crowd. I’d come to specifically to see the Black Keys, but had a few stops beforehand.
First up were the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, another brass band with some heavy, sophisticated trumpet work and typically energetic call and response from the crowd. They hit the classic “I’ll Fly Away,” eliciting the most cheers so far from a local band, and the musicians were joined on stage by a pair of kids, one wearing a fake mustache, presumably related to a band member.
I promised my brother I’d check out the Pine Leaf Boys, a Cajun band from South Louisiana he fell in love with around the same time he took an interest in grilling and noodling, a form of bare-fisted catfishing (it’s as painful as it sounds). “Prepare for your mind to be blown,” he texted me. The Pine Leaf Boys were a great, even mix of fiddles, guitars, drums, and accordions. They’ve been nominated for four Grammys but are still waiting for a win. Their energy was contagious, and they played through a whirlwind of Cajun and Creole dancehall hits.
Finally, it was time for the Black Keys, a bluesy indie rock band formed back in the early ‘00s but whose popularity has grown exponentially in recent years (they landed a coveted music spot on SNL in 2011). They started as a garage rock duo—yes, like the White Stripes, Local H, and the Kills—with Dan Auerbach on guitar and vocals and Patrick Carney on drums. For the past few years, they’ve been touring with a full band, which sort of cheapened the duo aesthetic for me, but I was open to hear them. Caveat: I was open to rock out with them. Remember “Heavy Soul?” I firmly believe that song was made for shaking. Even the more recent—and more pop—“Lonely Boy” crushes as a rock song. I last rocked out to it in a room full of 30-somethings at a wedding in upstate New York, and I figured Jazz Fest would be similar. I was wrong.
It’s not that they didn’t play a solid set—they had a diverse mix of old and new tunes, and they kicked off the rest of the band and did the duo thing for a while, too. On “Little Black Submarines” (one of the best songs of 2011, if you want my truth), Auerbach rocked a steel guitar that glinted gold in the sunlight. But the wind was a little too strong, the music was a little too soft, and the crowd just a little too young. The sound was muddied. But really, the crowd was the worst part—they just weren’t into it. Sure, they sang along with the more recent “Gold on the Ceiling,” and a bunch of tracks off of Brothers, including their openers “Howlin’ for You” and “Next Girl,” but the crowd never really got lifted. I was all rubber legs and hair in my face, but next to me was a gym rat tossing beers on the ground, and a couple of pre-teens with their parents. It was crowded, but not too crowded not to dance, and I was mystified. The guys started late, ended early, and did a two-song encore (“Lonely Boy” and “I Got Mine”). It was a good set; it just felt wan.
Luckily, I recovered by hitting the Blues Tent for Taj Mahal, who earned his Grammys that day. He’s about seventy and hails from Harlem; and he does some wickedly good work on harmonica and guitar, among other instruments. The tent was jam-packed, and he opened with “Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue,” a harmonica-fronted ode to an exodus from the city life. He switched to guitar and was joined by The Real Thing Tuba Band. The man is a true blues musician, mouthing along with his guitar as he played, as if his lips were doing the work, not his fingers. His voice is muscle and sinew. His hands play with purpose. He said, “It’s Sunday, so you know you gotta do a piece of church music,” and went into “You’re Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond,” the old Blind Willie Johnson tune. I left right after he finished “Chevrolet” searching for one final act.
The Fais Do Do stage was where the believers were. Del McCoury’s band was playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Apologies: Del McCoury’s band was battling the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It was a full-on bluegrass country folk outlet battling one of the most famous brass bands in New Orleans. Del McCoury is seventy-four and looks about that. He hails from Pennsylvania and has been playing bluegrass guitar and banjo since the ‘60s. He even started an annual bluegrass festival called DelFest. His band members are seasoned professionals, and they went head to head with members of the Preservation Hall Band. The crowd was wild and exuberant; it was the perfect merging of bluegrass and jazz, with a fiddler battling a trumpeter (I called a draw). It was the perfect finale. Indeed, this pairing was exactly what I’d come for, without having known it, and both bands were triumphant.
A final note: That night I caught the Brass-A-Holics on Frenchman, and they were awesome—a different kind of brass band, doing pop covers and their own songs, with a nice blend of kitsch and funk. They mashed up Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” hit a high note with the “Rocky” theme, and even went Jersey Strong with Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer.” What was most interesting is that they feature female keyboardist and electric guitarist, doing massive licks atop a speaker, and they were racially mixed. Definitely worth checking out.
Why Does the Press Still Take the Heritage Foundation Seriously?
by Reed Richardson
Around Washington, and even inside the organization itself, it’s not uncommon to hear the Heritage Foundation referred to as “the Beast.” This is no surprise, since Heritage, founded forty years ago by frustrated right-wingers Paul Weyrich and Ed Feulner, has grown to become perhaps the largest, most lavishly funded conservative advocacy group in the country. Funded by corporations like ExxonMobil, non-profits run by the Kochs and numerous secret individual donors, Heritage currently boasts a staff of 275, an annual budget of $82.4 million, and the ear of nearly every Republican in Congress.
Its massive footprint doesn’t stop there, however. When it comes to influence, Heritage routinely ranks as the single-most popular right-wing think tank in the country among the media. In its annual 2012 think tank survey, media watchdog FAIR found Heritage topped the partisan ranks again with 1,540 press citations, a figure, it should be noted, that outnumbered the combined citations of the top two most-cited left-wing groups. For those of us who beat back ceaselessly against the tide of phony “liberal media bias” claims, this reality is galling. But not nearly as much as the reality that, for a long time now, the Heritage Foundation has done less and less of what might be called honest thinking, and more and more of what could accurately be called intellectual tanking.
Fresh evidence of their analytical posing arrived this past Monday, when Heritage unveiled a patently dishonest report on immigration reform, which pegged the policy’s potential economic cost to the nation at a whopping $6.3 trillion. How dishonest was it? By ignoring any benefits of reform, Heritage overlooked other studies that found a net gain of $300 million to Social Security and Medicare and as much as $1.4 trillion to the national economy over the next decade. In fact, Heritage co-author Robert Rector, at a Monday press conference, openly acknowledged: “It is not an analysis of the entire immigration reform bill.” Of course, he knew that this nuance would be lost in the media scrum that followed its release and, sure enough, many of the usual media suspects quickly conflated Heritage’s one-sided focus on the supposed costs of “amnesty” with that of the entire “immigration reform bill.” In short, Heritage’s report, though utterly worthless as a work of policy analysis, had already begun to succeed at its true goal—handing right-wing opponents of immigration reform a pseudo-economic talking point with which to brandish in the press.
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In what passes for good news these days, Monday’s Heritage report did ignite some noticeable pushback among pundits, mostly on the left but, surprisingly, a few on the right as well. For example, Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin and longtime GOP politico Haley Barbour, who normally carry more water for the latest right-wing meme than the capacity of the California aqueduct system, both lambasted it. Rubin said it was an "embarrassment," Barbour labeled it "a political document" and "not serious analysis." Bracingly good candor, to be sure, but let’s temper our celebrating a bit, shall we. After all, Heritage’s latest immigration reform report was essentially the equivalent of giving the Washington chattering classes a do-over from 2007, when the pundits readily swallowed a similarly transparent ideological attack (that one had a $2.6 trillion price tag). And while calling out Heritage’s latest analysis as flawed is a start, it’s a far cry from what those in the media should be doing—courageously outing the entire organization as unworthy of media attention.
If you think that’s a bit harsh, don’t just take my word for it. Listen to current Heritage president, and former Tea Party senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint last December: “If ever you compromise your research, one time, then no one ever believes you again…My goal is to protect the research and policy people from the politics.” That DeMint would even dare to utter such a statement speaks volumes about the press’s incestuous relationship with Heritage. Why? Because time and again, his organization has either compromised its integrity or pulled its intellectual punches in pursuit of political goals:
– First and foremost are the legendary contortions Heritage has engaged in regarding the individual mandate for healthcare, which it helped pioneer nearly twenty-five years ago. The same mandate it raged against last year as “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional” now that the provision had become a key part of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
– Earlier this year, Heritage went and hired chief Cheney lieutenant David Addington to take over its legal division and, ironically, be a watchdog against "executive overreach" by Obama. The same Addington who argued the vice president wasn’t part of the executive branch and who participated in discussions about destroying CIA videotapes of torture.
– In 2012, one Heritage scholar, so incensed that people might disagree with his organization’s austerity agenda, decided to go from think tank to fight club on a protestor in Seattle.
– What about that time in 2011 when Heritage was caught red-handed arbitrarily swapping out unemployment figures to make its analysis of the House GOP budget appear more plausible?
– Then there was the 2010 fiasco where Heritage flagrantly cut ten pages from a British environmental analysis in a shameless attempt to introduce doubt about climate change, conflicting the actual report’s conclusion.
– Let’s not forget the Heritage blog post from 2008 that subtly warned a United Nations Green Economy Initiative was merely a first step on the road to Nazi/Soviet collectivism and oppression of freedom.
– And then there’s my personal favorite, this 2012 Election Day video-cum-summer-blockbuster-
trailer from Heritage Action, the foundation’s political campaign advocacy arm. In it, the group’s leader dramatically declares that his group is fighting nothing less than “a war to save this nation” from Obama’s policies.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Whatever intellectual legitimacy the Heritage Foundation once had, it should have long ago been exhausted in the legislative corridors of Washington, and along with it the patience and credulousness of the media. Nevertheless, Heritage’s recent immigration reform rollout was accompanied not just by a friendly reception in so-called straight news stories, but a welcoming hand on the nation’s op-ed pages, too. In recent weeks, both USA Today and The Washington Post have given over to DeMint a full column to push Heritage’s anti-immigration reform “research.” Now, it’s one thing to cite Heritage in a news story, where presumably (although, admittedly, not always) opposing viewpoints will also be aired. But it’s quite another to give an extreme right-wing group like Heritage the imprimatur of your news organization by letting them author an opinion piece that will showcase their ideas unchallenged.
This editorial malleability can lead to almost comic consequences. The Post, for instance, perhaps sensing trouble, made a point of running a simultaneous rebuttal editorial this past Monday that accused Heritage of “distort[ing]” the immigration debate. To which one might respond, well yes it is, but guess who else is damn well helping them?
Indeed, the Post seems to have a bit of a soft spot for Heritage as they gave DeMint an op-ed platform right after he was hired back in November to discuss the “new message” he was bringing to the foundation. DeMint repaid this editorial generosity by repeating the same old fully debunked lie about President Obama having “disabled welfare reform last year.” But that isn’t even the most sadly ironic part—to substantiate his charge about welfare reform, DeMint linked to a scurrilous op-ed piece by Heritage fellow Rector that was published, you guessed it, in THe Washington Post.
In the past few days, the Post, among others in the media, very publicly learned an embarrassing lesson about the company one keeps when it came to light that the Heritage report’s co-author, Jason Richwine, harbored some disturbing racial stereotypes. In his recent Harvard dissertation, for example, Richwine wrote: “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.” Faster than you can say “The Bell Curve,” both the media and even the Heritage Foundation dumped Richwine over the side. But notably, Heritage stuck by their “amnesty” report, even though, in various parts, it echoes Richwine’s pessimistic dissertation about the potential educational progress of a mostly Hispanic immigrant pool.
This shocking level of intellectual intransigence is something of a double-edged sword for the media, however. In such an egregious case like this, the press doesn’t have to exercise much in the way of editorial judgment to see the politicized deception that colors the entire Heritage “amnesty” report. But until the press figures out, once and for all, that reverse engineering policy analysis to satisfy ideological dogma is what Heritage does every day, then it’s liable to keep on sullying its reputation by giving journalistic oxygen to the foundation’s incendiary goals. For the sake of better, more honest discourse in our democracy, it’s the time for the media to finally start treating the Heritage Foundation like the permanent political campaign shop that it is. That means far more skepticism of its actions and far less interest in its obvious ploys for attention. In other words, it’s long past time to start starving “the Beast.”
Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com.
Also, I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.
Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form.
This Week in Poverty: Twelve Things You Can Do To Fight Poverty Now
Farmworkers pick tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
This is a tough moment in the fight against poverty.
The sequester is the latest chapter in a time-honored tradition of kicking the poor when they are down. A do-nothing Congress certainly isn’t going to do something about poverty without pressure from the grassroots. And it seems that the only way most of the mainstream media will pay attention to the more than one in three Americans living below twice the poverty line—on less than $36,000 for a family of three—is if their lives make good fodder for tabloid television or play out in a courtroom drama.
That said, there are still plenty of people and groups fighting for real change, and plenty of ways you can get involved or stay engaged. I reached out to a handful of folks who dedicate their lives to fighting poverty in different ways. Here is what they asked people to do:
1) From Sister Simone Campbell, Sisters of Social Service, executive director of NETWORK: “Support an increase in the minimum wage to more than $11 per hour.”
What people don’t know is that a large percentage of people living in poverty are workers who support their families on very small salaries. In fact, 57 percent of individuals and family members below the official poverty line either worked or lived with a working family member in 2011.
Pope Francis said on May 1, 2013, that all workers should make wages that allow them to live with their families in dignity. Contact your Senators and Representative to urge them to vote for a minimum wage (one that’s more than $11 an hour) and tipped minimum wage that reflect the dignity of all people.
2) From the Coalition of Immokalee Workers: “Tell Publix: Help end sexual harassment, wage theft, and forced labor in the fields—join the Fair Food Program today.”
Until very recently, Florida’s fields were as famous for producing human rights violations—with countless workers suffering daily humiliation and abuse ranging from wage theft to sexual harassment and even forced labor—as they were for growing oranges and tomatoes.
Today, however, there is a new day dawning for farmworkers in Florida’s tomato fields. The CIW’s Fair Food Program is demanding a policy of zero tolerance for human rights abuses on tomato farms, and it’s working. The program sets the highest human rights standards in the fields today, including: worker-to-worker education on rights, a twenty-four-hour complaint line and an effective complaint investigation and resolution process—all backed by market consequences for employers who refuse to respect their workers’ rights.
The White House recently called the exciting new program "one of the most successful and innovative programs” in the world today in the fight to uncover—and prevent—modern-day slavery; and just last week United Nations investigators called it “impressive” and praised its ”independent and robust enforcement mechanism.”
As the veteran food writer Barry Estabrook put it, thanks to the Fair Food Program, the Florida tomato industry is on the path “from being one of the most repressive employers in the country…to becoming the most progressive group in the fruit and vegetable industry” today.
But we need your help to complete this transformation.
One of the country’s largest supermarket chains, Publix Super Markets, is refusing to support the Fair Food Program. Publix continues to buy tomatoes from growers in the old way, where workers have no access to the Fair Food Program’s proven protections. Rather than step up to the highest human rights standards, Publix continues to turn its back on the workers whose poverty helps fuel its record profits.
3) From Ralph da Costa Nunez, president and CEO, Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness: “Make a Personal Commitment to Helping Homeless Families.”
More than one-third of Americans who use shelters annually are parents and their children. In 2011, that added up to more than 500,000 people. Since 2007, family homelessness has increased by more than 13 percent. Indeed, there is a growing prevalence of child and family homelessness across America.
While it is important to track the federal, state and local policies that impact homelessness, we can’t forget about getting involved on a personal level with the growing numbers of families that are struggling since the Great Recession.
You can visit a local shelter, meet a homeless family and see first hand the damage poverty is doing to young mothers and children. Then, become a big brother or sister, a role model for these young families to help them dream again. You are meeting an immediate need while also helping to stem generational poverty.
You can also contact your local department of social services, United Way or religious organization to find out where the need is in your community. Also, speak with the homeless liaison at your local school to see what needs they have identified in your neighborhood. There are many ways that you (and your children) can help families right in your community. Here are a few other ideas.
4) From Dr. Deborah Frank, founder and principal investigator, Children’s Healthwatch: “Fund the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) at the maximum authorized level.”
Research by Children’s HealthWatch has shown that energy insecurity is associated with poor health, increased hospitalizations and risk of developmental delays in very young children, and that energy assistance can be effective in protecting children’s health. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) provides low-income households with assistance in paying their utility bills—particularly those that must spend higher proportions of their income on home energy. To be eligible for LIHEAP, families must have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—less than $35,000 annually for a family of four.
When Children’s HealthWatch compared children in families that do and do not receive LIHEAP assistance—after controlling for participation in SNAP and WIC—we found that children in families that received LIHEAP were less likely to be at risk of growth problems, more likely to have healthier weights for their age and less likely to be hospitalized when seeking care for acute medical problems.
As pediatricians and public health researchers, we at Children’s HealthWatch know that LIHEAP matters for the bodies and minds of young children. Even in these tough economic times, we believe it is critical that President Obama and Congress make a funding commitment that meets the heating and cooling needs of America’s youngest children.
But the President has proposed reducing funding for LIHEAP to $2.970 billion in his FY 2014 budget, down from $3.5 billion for the current fiscal year. (Even funding at the current level has left millions of households without the aid they need to cope with their home energy costs.) Please join the National Fuel Fund’s call to fund LIHEAP at $4.7 billion in FY2014. Although that level is insufficient to meet the full needs of vulnerable households, it will enable states to end a trend over the last few years of needing to reduce the number of households served, cut benefits or both. Contact the President and your members of Congress today.
5) Sarita Gupta, executive director, Jobs with Justice/American Rights at Work and Co-Director, Caring Across Generations: “Support of a living wage and basic labor protections for home care workers.”
Caring Across Generations is a campaign that unites people to change the long-term care system that supports each of us, our family members and our neighbors, to live and age in our own homes and communities. One of the key ways we can strengthen this system is to protect the 2.5 million people working as care givers in the United States. With a projected future demand for an additional 1.3 million workers over the next decade, homecare workers make up one of the largest occupations in the nation, yet many of them make below minimum wage.
In December 2011, at a White House ceremony surrounded by homecare workers, employers and people who rely on personal care services, President Obama announced plans for new regulations that would at long last guarantee federal minimum wage and overtime protections for most homecare aides. The moment capped decades of effort by advocates to revise the “companionship exemption,” which lumps professional care workers with teenage babysitters, excluding most homecare aides from the basic labor protections that nearly all other American workers receive.
Following the White House announcement, the US Department of Labor published draft regulations in the Federal Register. During the public comment period, the proposed rule received 26,000 comments with almost 80 percent in favor of providing homecare workers with basic labor protections like minimum wage and overtime pay. But today, over a year after the public comment period closed, we are still waiting for a final rule to be announced.
Join Caring Across Generations and all of our partner organizations in the effort to push for basic minimum wage and overtime protections for care workers, and help us in our final push to ensure that the Obama Administration issues this long-awaited regulation to give 2.5 million care workers a path out of poverty. Visit www.caringacross.org to get involved with the campaign.
6) From Judith Lichtman, senior adviser, National Partnership for Women & Families: “Urge Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1286/S.631) and a national paid leave program”
More than 40 million workers in this country—and more than 80 percent of the lowest-wage workers—cannot earn a single paid sick day to use when they get the flu or other common illnesses. Millions more cannot earn paid sick days to use when a child is sick.
For these workers and families, paid sick days can mean the difference between keeping a job and losing it, or keeping food on the table and going hungry. Nearly one-quarter of adults say they have lost a job or been threatened with job loss for needing a sick day. And, for the average worker without paid sick days, taking just 3.5 unpaid days off is equivalent to losing a month’s worth of groceries for their family. To make matters worse, the majority of new parents cannot take any form of paid leave of any length to care for a child, pushing many into debt and poverty. The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does not have a national paid leave standard of some kind.
In a nation that claims to value families, no worker should have to lose critical income or be pushed into poverty because illness strikes or a child or family member needs care.
Urge members of Congress to support the Healthy Families Act, legislation that would guarantee workers the right to earn paid sick days. And sign this petition calling on Congress to take up the national paid leave program workers and families urgently need.
7) From Tiffany Loftin, president, United States Student Association (USSA): “Increase regulation of private student loans and hold Sallie Mae accountable for its role in the student debt crisis.”
Throughout the Great Recession, only one type of household debt grew: student debt.
In April 2012, student debt surpassed the $1 trillion mark, and now students owe on average nearly $27,000 by the time they graduate. As student debt and student loan defaults escalate at an unsustainable pace, private student loan lenders continue to increase their profit margins.
Sallie Mae is the largest private student loan lender and one of the chief profiteers off student debt, yet it faces minimal public scrutiny and accountability. With their sky-high interest rates, highly profitable government loan servicing contracts and predatory lending practices, they play a major role in keeping the American Dream out of reach for millions of borrowers.
Join USSA, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), Jobs with Justice/American Rights at Work, Common Cause, the American Federation of Teachers and others at the Sallie Mae shareholder meeting on May 30 in Newark, Delaware.
We’ll introduce a shareholder resolution asking Sallie Mae to be more transparent and accountable about its lobbying efforts, affiliations and executive bonus structure—all part of a corporate strategy to increase their bottom line at the financial expense of borrowers. Sign up to attend the join the shareholder action here.
8) From Elizabeth Lower-Basch, policy coordinator, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP): “Support Pathways Back to Work”
Even as the economy recovers, too many unemployed workers and individuals with low education and skill levels face a difficult job market. Nearly two in five unemployed workers have been jobless for six months or more; 6.7 million youth are both out of work and out of school.
Subsidized and transitional jobs are a proven way to give unemployed workers the opportunity to earn wages, build skills and connect to the labor market, while also giving businesses an incentive to hire new employees when they might not be able to do so otherwise.
President Obama’s FY14 budget blueprint calls for the creation of a $12.5 billion Pathways Back to Work Fund that includes: investments in subsidized employment opportunities, support services for the unemployed and low-income adults, summer and year-round employment opportunities for low-income youth and other work-based employment strategies with demonstrated effectiveness.
Please share this letter with nonprofits, businesses or other organizations and ask them to sign on to join us in thanking President Obama for his support of subsidized and transitional jobs in the FY2014 budget, and asking the President and Congress to work together to ensure that the Pathways Back to Work Fund becomes law! (This sign-on letter is only for organizations, but individuals are also encouraged to ask their members of Congress to support the Pathways Back to Work Fund—click the “reintroduce” buttons here and here.)
9) From Marci Phillips, director of public policy and advocacy, National Council on Aging: “Invest in the Older Americans Act.”
The Older Americans Act encompasses a range of programs that enable seniors to remain healthy and independent, in their own homes and communities and out of costly institutions. Services include healthy meals, in-home care, transportation, benefits access, caregiver support, chronic disease self-management, job training and placement and elder abuse prevention.
Funding has not kept pace with the growth in need or numbers, and recent cuts before the sequester hit have further eroded investments in key services. About 10,000 people turn 65 each day, and those over 85 are the fastest growing segment of the aging population.
One in three seniors is economically insecure. Social Security accounts for at least 90 percent of the income of more than one-third of older adults, and there has been a 79 percent increase in the threat of hunger among seniors over the past decade. The average duration of unemployment for people 55 and older is almost fifty weeks—longer than any other age group. Over 75 percent of all older adults have at least two chronic conditions, and the average Medicare household spends $4,500 on out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
There is a real need to increase funding for Older Americans Act programs like Meals on Wheels and in-home care. Please share your stories of cuts affecting seniors, so we can share them with Congress and the Administration and protect investments in the Older Americans Act.
10) From Rebecca Vallas, staff attorney/policy advocate, Community Legal Services: “Tell Congress no cuts to Social Security and SSI through the Chained CPI.”
While the “chained CPI” is often referred to as just a technical change, in truth it’s a benefit cut for millions of seniors, people with disabilities and their families who rely on the Social Security system to meet their basic needs. Social Security retirement, disability and survivors benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) serve as a vital lifeline, making up a significant percentage of total family income for many workers and families.
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The average yearly benefit for the lowest quintile of earners receiving retirement benefits in 2010 was $10,206—and that represented 94 percent of their family income. Social Security Disability and SSI benefits are incredibly modest as well. The average SSDI benefit is about $1,100 per month in 2013, and the average SSI benefit is less than $550 per month. And for most disabled workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), their benefits make up most or all of their income. Even the maximum SSI benefit ($710 in 2013) is just three-fourths of the federal poverty level for a single person, and a quarter of SSDI beneficiaries live in poverty.
The amount a person gets in Social Security or SSI benefits is adjusted annually based on the Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA). The chained CPI would slow the increase in the Social Security COLA, cutting benefits and eroding the purchasing power of seniors, people with disabilities and their families. Cuts under the chained CPI add up significantly over time. Since the effect of the chained CPI is cumulative, it would be especially hard on people with disabilities, since they typically begin receiving benefits at a younger age than retirees.
The chained CPI is not a more accurate measure of inflation for seniors and people with disabilities. It is based on a concept called the “substitution effect”—which assumes that when the price of one good goes up, a consumer will substitute a lower-cost alternative in its place (e.g., when the price of steak goes up, a person will buy hamburger instead). For Social Security and SSI beneficiaries who are struggling to make ends meet as it is, there’s no room for substitution—and no room for benefit cuts. Benefit cuts under the chained CPI would push beneficiaries to make impossible choices such as not paying the gas bill to afford the water bill, taking half a pill instead of a whole pill or eating two meals per day instead of three to afford the cost of a copay on a needed medication.
Low-income seniors and people with severe disabilities are already struggling and can’t afford cuts. Send this e-mail to Congress to tell them NO on the chained CPI, and to keep Social Security cuts out of any budget plan. For AARP’s chained CPI calculator, click here.
11) From Jim Weill, President, Food Research and Action Center: “Tell Congress: Increase, Don’t Cut SNAP (Food Stamp) Benefits.”
SNAP is a great program—boosting food security, health and nutrition and lifting millions out of poverty and millions of others out of deep poverty. But as a National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine expert committee just found, for most families benefits simply aren’t enough to afford a healthy diet for the month. This means that the program isn’t doing as much for food security, poverty reduction, child development, disease prevention and healthcare cost containment as it could. And despite a series of Pinocchio-inspired political attacks on the program in the 2012 election season and in this year’s run-up to SNAP reauthorization as part of the Farm Bill, public support for the program is high: 73 percent of voters believe the program is important to the country; 70 percent say cutting it is the wrong way to reduce government spending; and 77 percent say the government should be spending more (43 percent) or the same (34 percent) on SNAP. This support crosses parties, demographic groups, and rural, urban and suburban lines.
Here’s what you can do: Tell your Representatives and Senators that the right course for the nation is to improve food stamp benefits (and support at least the temporary benefit boost the President has proposed) and that they must oppose any SNAP cuts being considered by the Agriculture Committees in the “Farm Bill.”
12) From Debbie Weinstein, executive director, Coalition on Human Needs: “Tell Congress to stop harmful cuts to anti-poverty programs now.”
Across the country, federal “sequestration” cuts (aka mindless automatic reductions) are closing Head Start programs weeks early and canceling summer programs for poor 3-to-5-year-old children; some Head Start centers are closing altogether or dropping children. Seniors are losing home-delivered meals or homemaker services that allow them to remain at home instead of being pushed into nursing homes. The long-term jobless are losing 10 to 20 percent of their meager benefits; in Maine, they decided to cut all unemployed people off of assistance nine weeks early. One hundred forty thousand fewer families will get rental housing vouchers, despite waiting for help for years, which will contribute to rising family homelessness. Education is being cut, from pre-school to the Federal Work-Study Program (formerly “College Work-Study”) that helps students finance college through part-time employment. In Michigan, they are eliminating a $137 back-to-school clothing allowance for 21,000 poor children.
These cuts are wrong and foolish any way you slice it—they keep people poor, cost jobs and stall economic growth for everyone.
Send this e-mail to your Representative and Senators and join hundreds of thousands who are fed up that Congress would ignore these problems while fixing just one thing—inconvenient delays at airports. Also, for weekly summaries of the impact of these sequester cuts, click here.
Standing for Communities: ‘The Power of Collective’ (from the Marguerite Casey Foundation via Equal Voice News)
Clips and other resources (compiled with James Cersonsky)
“Prenatal Care from Midwives May Lead to Healthier Babies, Healthier Moms,” Sarah Benatar
“Occupy Protesters Shut Down Wells Fargo Over ‘Fraudulent Foreclosures,’” Dan Bluemel
“Is segregation really bad for everyone?” Steve Bogira
“The Communities of Climate Change Are Leading the Charge,” Center for Social Inclusion
“That Unemployment Form Might Violate Your Civil Rights,” Michelle Chen
“Sequestration Cuts Strapped Domestic Violence Services Amid Increased Need,” Bryce Covert
“A Giveaway to D.C. United Won’t Benefit the District’s Urban Fabric,” Brady Dale
“SNAP Will Take a Hit Even Before the Farm Bill Battle Begins,” Stacy Dean
“Playing ‘chicken’ against city’s students,” Eileen McCafferty DiFranco
“Surprise fast food strike…in St. Louis,” Josh Eidelson
“Fast Food Strike Wave Spreads to Detroit,” Josh Eidelson
“Documenting Discrimination in Local Rental Markets,” Hannah Emple
“Americans Continue to Voice Strong Support for SNAP and Strong Opposition to Cuts,” Food Research and Action Center
“Critics decry Pennsylvania’s revived asset test on food stamps,” Kate Giammarise
“Disconnected Mothers Need Help in More Than One Way,” Olivia Golden, Marla McDaniel and Pam Loprest
“In Support of the Indian Child Welfare Act,” LaDonna Harris
“House SNAP Proposal Threatens Grave Harm to Poor Single Parent Families,” Legal Momentum
“Child Benefits in the Tax Code: Does the current system make sense?” Elaine Maag
“America Needs to Put its Families First,” Jennifer Martinez
“How People Power Generates Change,” Moyers & Company [VIDEO]
“Fannie and Freddie Should be Making Statutorily Required Contributions to the National Housing Trust Fund,” National Low Income Housing Coalition
“NYC Announces Pilot Expansion of EITC,” New York City
“How the Maximum Family Grant rule hurts families,” Melissa Ortiz
“Mothers Cry for Justice,” Peter Rothberg [VIDEO]
“3 Ways Sequestration Is Taking a Toll on Struggling Americans,” Lauren Santa Cruz and Erik Stegman [VIDEO]
“Fast Food Workers Strike in St. Louis,” Annie Shields
“Sequester Cuts to Emergency Unemployment Insurance Compensation will likely cost around 30,000 jobs,” Heidi Shierholz
“Oregon Medicaid Study Strengthens—Not Weakens—Case to Expand Medicaid,” Judy Solomon
“The Ties that Bind: Helping Mothers Behind Bars,” Nancy La Vigne
Studies/Briefs (summaries written by James Cersonsky)
“Underwriting Bad Jobs: How Our Tax Dollars are Funding Low-Wage Work and Fueling Inequality,” Amy Traub and Robert Hiltonsmith, Demos. The largest employer of low-wage workers isn’t McDonalds or Macy’s—but the federal government. In a report on job standards for federal contractors and federally subsidized jobs, Demos examines the many ways that taxpayer dollars are helping to keep people in poverty through low-wage work. The quantitative analysis covers a subset of private sector contracts, grants, loans, concession agreements and property leases: government contracts, federal healthcare imbursements, Small Business Administration loans, federal construction grants and maintenance of buildings leased by the federal government. Among these jobs, nearly two million pay $12 or less per hour—more than the number of Walmart and McDonalds workers making that amount combined. The largest numbers come from Medicaid-supported jobs (759,000) and direct federal contracts (560,000). Meanwhile, CEOs of government contractors are getting richer—as their maximum salaries are pegged to exorbitant private sector standards. The report calls for an executive order requiring federal agencies to raise workplace standards and ensure compliance with labor law, and oversight over private sector beneficiaries—including evaluation of whether the labor they employ should be through private contractors or moved to the public sector.
“Latinas and Sexual Assault,” Neusa Gaytan and Maralá Goode, Mujeres Latinas en Acción. Though sexual assault affects everyone everywhere, Latinas confront particular challenges. This report gives a Chicago-area profile of the crisis. The numbers tell some of the story: nationally, 11.2 percent of Latina high schoolers are reported to have been physically forced to have sex, compared to 8 percent of all high school students; in 2012, 21 percent of survivors who received services from Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault centers are Hispanic. Of thirteen service providers analyzed in the report, all identified a gap in services for adolescent survivors—a particularly acute problem for Latino/as. In all age groups, Latinas face systemic barriers in accessing services: discrimination and racism from law enforcement and social service staff; unfamiliarity, among some, with legal procedures; and a lack of Spanish-speaking staff providing services for survivors. The report lays out steps for strengthening the legal process, youth outreach and bilingual, culturally-specific service training.
“Preventable Deaths: The Tragedy of Workplace Fatalities,” National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. In 2011, 4,609 workers were killed on the job in the US—and yet the federal government can only levy $7,000 in fines for “serious” workplace safety violations, and the average fine in these cases is only $1,680. What results is a perverse incentive structure for employers not to improve conditions for workers, who may lack knowledge of safety laws or leverage to speak up. This report lays out the conditions faced by the most vulnerable classes of workers, and what local and federal government can do to fix them. Temp workers, for example, tend to be younger, less educated, less likely to be US citizens and more likely to be employed in hazardous jobs like waste management and construction. Model remedies include Cal/OSHA’s robust inspection system for companies that use temp work and Massachusetts’s Temporary Worker Right to Know Law. Immigrant workers face language barriers, service providers and workplace personnel with insufficient knowledge of their legal rights and outright discrimination. Undocumented workers in particular need whistleblower protections for reporting employer abuses. Another class of workers, especially in retail and public services, face workplace violence, including from those they serve. For these workers, the report recommends strengthening on-site security and prevention standards.
More Actions
DC/MD: Labor Picket Outside of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee Spring Ball
Vital Statistics
US poverty (less than $17,916 for a family of three): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent.
Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of all children, including 39 percent of African-American children and 34 percent of Latino children. Poorest age group in country.
Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including more than 15 million women and children.
People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2011: 67.6 million (program kept 21.4 million people out of poverty).
People in the US experiencing poverty by age 65: Roughly half.
Gender gap, 2011: Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men.
Gender gap, 2010: Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men.
Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, more than 1 in 3 Americans.
Jobs in the US paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent.
Jobs in the US paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent.
Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers.
Percentage of individuals and family members in poverty who either worked or lived with a working family member, 2011: 57 percent.
Low-income families that were working in 2011: More than 70 percent.
Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty.
Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty.
Impact of public policy, 2010: without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high—nearly 30 percent of population.
Percentage of entitlement benefits going to elderly, disabled, or working households: over 90 percent.
Food stamp recipients with no other cash income: 6.5 million people.
Number of homeless children in US public schools: 1,065,794.
Annual cost of child poverty nationwide: $550 billion.
Mothers who are homeless as a direct result of domestic violence: 1 in 4.
Homeless mothers who will experience domestic violence at some point: over 90 percent.
Federal expenditures on home ownership mortgage deductions, 2012: $131 billion.
Federal funding for low-income housing assistance programs, 2012: less than $50 billion.
Quote of the Week
“If the state is serious about improving the educational results of low income children, then more must be done to reduce child poverty.”
—from California Assembly Democrats’ “Blueprint for a Responsible Budget”
James Cersonsky wrote the “Studies/Briefs” and co-wrote the “Clips and other resources” sections in this blog.
This Week in Poverty posts here on Friday mornings, and again at Moyers & Company. You can e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com and follow me on Twitter.
Overlooked Story of the Week: 'Rot' and 'Crisis' for Nuclear Missile Launch Crews
A Titan II ICBM in an underground silo. (Steve Jurvetson/Flickr, CC 2.0.)
It’s been a wild news week, what with Israel’s attack on Syria, the gruesome kidnap/rape tragedy emerging from Cleveland and then the circus surroundiing the Benghazi hearings. We won’t even mention Jodi Arias, whoever that is. Sadly overlooked, however, was an exclusive from the Associated Press. Oh, no big deal. Just “rot” and “crisis” and a wave of firings in one program you especially don’t want to witness this in: our nuclear missle launch program.
At Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota the commander confirmed, as the story put it, “the willful violation of safety rules—including a possible compromise of launch codes—was tolerated.” Seventeen members of launch crews have been fired, an unprecedented action in its scope.
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Lt. Col. Jay Folds, deputy commander of the 91st Operations Group, responsible for Minuteman 3 missile launch crews at Minot, cited disturbingly poor reviews that they received in a March inspection. “We are, in fact, in a crisis right now,” Folds wrote in the e-mail to his subordinates. Yet beyond routine publishing for the AP scoop, little media attention followed.
Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel demanded an explanation. Senator Dick Durbin said the issue “could not be more troubling.” The Air Force, perhaps trying to calm fears but only stoking them, revealed that the missiles were still on war footing.
As I’ve done for, oh, the past thirty years, in numeous articles and three books, this is where I remind readers that the US still has a first-strike nuclear policy, and thousands of nuclear weapons, more than two decades after the end of the Cold War—and that we have used nuclear weapons before, setting (and for most Americans, defending) a precedent.
Greg Mitchell’s new book is Hollywood Bomb. His previous books on this subject were Atomic Cover-up and, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America.
The New York Times is again pushing for war in the Middle East, while McClatchy news outlets are again advising caution, Greg Mitchell writes.
Against Connecting Terrorist 'Dots'
Suspected Boston bombers the Tsarnaev brothers. (Courtesy of Wikimedia.)
Can we stop talking about “connecting dots”?
I’m all for investigating and catching terrorists, especially before they do their evil deeds. At the same time, however—as the latest reports about the bombings at the Boston Marathon show—“connecting dots” can often be a euphemism for overly intrusive, civil liberties-violating snooping, spying, and deployment of government and FBI infiltrators, provocateurs, and worse.
The New York Times reports today that the FBI “did not tell the Boston police about the 2011 warning from Russia about Tamerlan Tsarnaev,” and it adds:
Had [the Boston police department] learned about the tip, in which Russian officials said that Mr. Tsarnaev had embraced radical Islam and intended to travel to Russia to connect with underground groups, “we would certainly look at the individual,” [Police] Commissioner [Edward] Davis told the House Homeland Security Committee.
Wow. Let’s unpack that for a second.
First of all, since 9/11 there has been a huge and unprecedented expansion of city and state police intelligence units, many of which engage in something close to outright spying. The idea that the Boston police department ought to be shadowing every person who has committed no crime, merely on the basis of tip from the notoriously excessive and unreliable Russian secret service—especially after the FBI, which investigated Tsarnaev and questioned him and his family—is scary. In addition, so far at least, we have no idea just how many potential “terrorists” the Russians have warned us about. It can’t be only the Tsarnaevs. Dozens? Hundreds? No other bombs have gone off since 9/11. Do we want police departments tracking innocent people?
Second, at least some of this is driven by politics. The very committee that Commissioner David testified in front of is controlled by radical-right Republican extremists who can’t wait to find some flaw in the administration’s handling of the Tsarnaev case so they can use it against the president. These are the same bizarre, obsessive Republicans who have sunk their teeth into a utter non-scandal over the September 11, 2012, assault on a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, and won’t let go. The Times quotes Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican on the committee, who says:
We learned over a decade ago the danger of failing to connect the dots. My fear is that the Boston bombers may have succeeded because our system failed.
Maybe, but the fact is that we don’t want to live in a country where we have 100-percent effectiveness against terrorism, because that would be a police state.
Third, let’s stop talking about close cooperation with the Russian secret police. I don’t trust Russia’s oppressive secret services one bit, certainly far less than I trust the FBI and the CIA, and that isn’t very much. It is true that Moscow is battling an incipient Islamist revolt in the Caucasus region of southern Russia, in Chechnya, Dagestan and elsewhere. However, their version of how to fight that insurgency is akin to Bashar al-Assad’s version, namely, kill anything that moves. And in many ways, the insurgency in southern Russia, to the extent that it has migrated from nationalism and separatism to some version of radical Islamism a la Al Qaeda, is Russia’s doing. But engaging in ethnic cleaning and destruction of whole cities and towns in Chechnya and elsewhere since 1994, the Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin did a lot to create the vary radicalism that Putin is now fighting. Let’s give the FBI credit, perhaps, for trying to distinguish between a real tip from the Russians and a spurious one.
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At yesterday’s dog-and-pony show in Congress, the Republicans—backed by an old ally, neoconservative former Senator Joe Lieberman—tried to wave the bloody Boston shirt about “stove-piping” and the FBI’s alleged failure to alert the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston to the Tsarnaevs. Never mind that the FBI, after looking into Tsarnaev, found nothing. Said Lieberman, in typical high dudgeon, finger-wagging:
The fact that neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security notified the local members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force is really a serious and aggravating omission.
Well, no, it’s not.
In addition, as more information begins to emerge about Tsarnaev’s 2012 visit to Russia, it appears as if the radical Islamists that he came into contact didn’t try to radicalize him but the reverse. Reports The Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Tsarnaev … got a cool reception from some of the Islamists he hoped to bond with. … While Mr. Tsarnaev did find a circle of friends, some congregants at the Salafist mosque dismissed him as strange. Others said they feared his brashness would attract even more attention to them from Russian authorities.
And the Times adds:
On Sunday agents from the Federal Security Service [FSB], the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, interrogated Mr. Tsarnaev’s cousin, who is in police custody, asking if he impressed the young man with “extremist” views, his lawyer said.
But the cousin, Magomed Kartashov, told them it was the other way around. In interviews, several young men here agreed, saying that Mr. Kartashov spent hours trying to stop Mr. Tsarnaev from “going to the forest,” or joining one of the militant cells scattered throughout the volatile region, locked in low-level guerrilla warfare with the police.
Meanwhile, the Russian security services apparently killed several of the people that Tsarnaev had contact with. Whether they were actual terrorists or just radical Islamists with anti-Moscow (and anti-Washington, perhaps) views can’t be known. Like those killed by American drones, who are often mere radicals who may or may not hate the United States, those killed by the Russians may or may not be guilty of anything other than crossing the FSB.
So, yes, let’s collect and connect the dots. Just not every dot, everywhere, all the time.
Rather than help the Russians track people who have committed to crime, we should engage with them on finding a diplomatic solution to the Syrian conflict, Robert Dreyfuss writes.
Fast Food Strike Wave Spreads to Detroit
Credit: Detroit15.org.
Four updates appear below.
Hundreds of Detroit fast food workers plan to walk off the job beginning at 6 am today, making the motor city the fourth in five weeks to see such strikes. Organizers expect participants from at least sixty stores, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Subway, Little Caesar’s, and Popeye’s locations. Like this week’s strike in St. Louis, and last month’s in New York and Chicago, today’s work stoppage is backed by a local coalition including the Service Employees International Union, and the participants are demanding a raise to $15 an hour and the chance to form a union without intimidation.
Organizers say that over a hundred workers joined the St. Louis strike between Wednesday and Thursday. That included a group of Jimmy John’s workers who alleged that management humiliated them by requiring them to hold up signs in public with messages including “I made 3 wrong sandwiches today” and “I was more than 13 seconds in the drive thru.” “Sometimes I walk for more than an hour just to save my train fare so I can spend it on Ramen noodles,” St. Louis Chipotle worker Patrick Leeper said in an e-mailed statement Thursday. “I can’t even think about groceries.”
A spokesperson for Jimmy John’s declined to comment on Thursday’s strike. McDonald’s did not respond to a Tuesday inquiry about the fast food campaign; Wendy’s did not respond to an inquiry last night.
As I’ve written elsewhere, the fate of the fast food strike wave carries far-reaching implications: Fast food jobs are a growing portion of our economy, and fast food–like conditions are proliferating in other sectors as well. Organizers say the fast food industry now employs twice as many Detroit-area workers as the city’s iconic auto industry. These strikes also come at a moment of existential crisis for the labor movement, a sobering reality that was brought into sharp relief in December when Michigan, arguably the birthplace of modern US private sector unionism, became the country’s latest “right to work” state.
Along with a shared significant supporter—SEIU—the campaigns in New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit have apparent strategies in common. Rather than waiting until they’ve built support from a majority of a store’s or company’s workers, they stage actions by a minority of the workforce designed to inspire their co-workers. Rather than publicly identifying the campaign and its organizers with a single international union, these union-funded efforts turn to allied community groups to spearhead organizing. Rather than training all their resources on a single company, they organize against all of the industry’s players at once. And—faced with legal and economic assaults that have weakened the strike weapon—these campaigns mount one-day work stoppages that are carefully tailored to maximize attention and minimize, but not eliminate, the risk that workers will lose their jobs.
Whether these strategies can ever compel a fast food giant to negotiate with its employees remains to be seen.
“After what I would consider well over three decades of wage suppression, workers in this particular industry—and then I think it’ll go to others—are realizing that their only way up the wage ladder is through their own organizations,” CUNY labor studies lecturer Ed Ott said Wednesday. Ott, a board member of the community organizing group that spearheaded the New York fast food strike, added, “The only way these workers are going to be able to advance these jobs is through unionization. And I think that idea has finally gotten traction.”
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Update (9:15 am Friday): According to the campaign, a walkout by twenty workers at Detroit’s 10400 Gratiot Avenue McDonald’s prevented the store from operating. Some workers brought in as strikebreakers to replace those striking workers chose to join the strike instead.
Organizers say that by day’s end, today’s strike could be the largest fast food work stoppage yet, topping last month’s 400-strong strike in New York.
Update (11:50 am): Along with the Gratiot Avenue McDonald’s, organizers say that strikes shut down at least three others stores: a McDonald’s on Van Dyke; a Long John Silver’s on 8 Mile; and a Popeye’s on Grand River, where strikers were joined by US Congressman John Conyers. Strikers plan to converge for rallies at 1 and 4 this afternoon.
McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Chipotle, and Long John Silver’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment this morning.
Update (2:05 pm Friday): The campaign now says there are over 400 workers on strike in Detroit, making today’s action the largest fast food strike in US history. That figure includes workers who woke up today planning to work and then changed their mind; at one McDonald’s store, the campaign says eight workers decided at the last minute to join the strike after watching four of their co-workers walk off the job.
In an e-mailed statement, McDonald’s worker Nathaniel Gaines said that after management called him into work early to break the strike, he decided upon arrival to join the work stoppage instead. “I am constantly training new workers, while working the grill at the same time, all at minimum wage,” said Gaines. “Management always changes my hours, so I never have a consistent paycheck…The strike made me feel empowered to do the right thing for myself and my son.”
Update (3:30 pm Friday): In an e-mailed statement, McDonald’s said, “We value and respect all the employees who work at McDonald’s restaurants. The majority of McDonald’s restaurants across the country are owned and operated by independent business men and women where employees are paid competitive wages, and have access to flexible schedules and quality, affordable benefits.” The statement, which also touts “training and professional development opportunities” for workers who want to advance to management, is the same one provided by the company regarding protests in New York and Chicago last month. A McDonald’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Nation’s follow-up inquiry regarding the company’s stance on the strikers’ demands; whether management would meet with the striking workers; and whether any strikers would be punished or “permanently replaced.”
For more on this week’s strike in St. Louis, read Annie Shields’s report.
A Petition That Just Might Save the Post Office
Peter DeFazio (Flickr/Oregon DOT)
Congressman Peter DeFazio has always been a stalwart defender of the United States Postal Service. As a veteran lawmaker and one of its most determined advocates for public services in the House, he knows that the postal service is an essential asset. But he also knows that the USPS “is in a financial death spiral, caused largely by congressional and bureaucratic ineptitude and inaction.”
“Over 70 percent of USPS financial losses are due to a Congressional mandate to prefund retiree healthcare for future employees for the next 75 years. This requires the post office to prefund the healthcare of future employees that have not yet been born. This is stupid and unacceptable,” explains DeFazio .“Rather than avoiding this financial crisis they face, USPS bureaucrats have only offered short-sighted proposals that fail to address their long-term issues and would accelerate the demise of the Postal Service.”
The congressman has battled the bureaucrats with some success. Along with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan, DeFazio was in the forefront of the successful fight to block the postmaster general’s wrongheaded proposal to end Saturday mail delivery. He even found some rural Republican allies for that skirmish.
But the Oregon Democrat knows it’s going to take more than defensive moves by Congress to save the USPS.
To that end, DeFazio has introduced the Postal Service Protection Act, a detailed proposal to “sustain the postal service, avoid unnecessary closures that hurt rural communities, and save American jobs.”
Now, he wants to up the ante by enlisting President Obama in the struggle—or, to be more precise, he’s come up with a strategy to get the president more engaged with saving the postal service.
Obama has sent some good signals; indeed, his budget borrows ideas advanced by Sanders and DeFazio for making the USPS more competitive.
But the congressman is right to want the president to play a more pivotal role in saving post offices and sorting centers, rural routes and urban facilities, from a death by slow cuts. The stronger and louder the support from Obama, the greater the likelihood that the Postal Service Protection Act—which has the potential to gain support from disengaged Democrats and reluctant Republicans—could be enacted.
So DeFazio has taken the rare step—as a congressman—of posting a petition on the Obama administration’s “We the People” website.
DeFazio’s “Save the Postal Service-Save American Jobs” petition reads:
About 80% of USPS financial losses since 2007 are due to a Congressional mandate to prefund 75 years of future retiree health benefits over 10 years. In 2012 USPS lost a record $15.9 billion, but $11.1 billion of that loss went to prefund healthcare. This must change.
USPS shouldn’t move to 5-day delivery. This would only save 3%, risk further revenue losses, and slow mail delivery.
USPS needs to re-establish overnight delivery standards to ensure the timely delivery of mail and prevent the closure of mail plants.
USPS needs to generate more revenue by ending a 2006 ban prohibiting USPS from offering new products and services.
Does the Administration support HR 630 and S 316 to make these changes, save American jobs, and allow USPS to remain competitive?
To get a formal response from the White House, the petition must gather 100,000 signatures by May 23.
Almost 20,000 people have already signed. But now it’s crunch time.
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“If you support the postal service and want Congress and the White House to consider legislation that would fix the serious financial challenges it faces,” says DeFazio, “please sign the petition and tell your friends to as well.”
President Obama faces plenty of pressures these days, but this is one intervention he can and should make on behalf of American workers and communities.
The USPS cannot take many more cuts. Nor can it shoulder the financial burden that’s been imposed on it. This is a time for urgency. And Peter DeFazio, with his White House petition, has figured out how to focus the energy that is needed to beat the proponents of privatization and to save an essential public service.
Lobbyists are snagging top jobs in Congress—a boon for their former employers. Read Lee Fang’s report.
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