Name the President–The Winners! Name the President–The Winners!
The votes are in, and one entry has come out on top in the contest to give George W. Bush a suitable descriptive name.
May 3, 2001 / Editorial / The Editors
Take Back the Courts Take Back the Courts
President Bush's power to appoint judges is one he hardly deserves because of the way he achieved his office.
May 3, 2001 / Editorial / The Editors
The Parallel President The Parallel President
We're sorry, but Jules Fieffer's two-page editorial-cartoon spread can be seen only in our print edition, as it is not technically feasible at this time to post them on our website...
May 3, 2001 / Editorial / Jules Feiffer
In Fact… In Fact…
. MAY DAY, MAY DAY May 1 was a warm spring day in Connecticut, but 8,000 nursing home employees braved the icy winds of the Bush-era labor climate when they walked out on strike. At issue are shamefully low staff-to-patient ratios, which rank thirty-third nationally in 200 nursing homes in the country's richest state, as well as wages and benefits. Republican Governor John Rowland has gone to extraordinary (and possibly illegal) lengths to crush the union, New England Health Care Employees District 1199, publicly calling for members, who are mostly women of color, to break ranks and stay on the job. Rowland also promised to pony up millions to pay for strikebreakers, a reprise of his response to the union's one-day walkout in March, when he authorized $4.6 million in Medicaid spending on out-of-state replacement workers. Because Medicaid funds account for three-quarters of the income stream to the state's nursing homes, the state government is a key player in contract negotiations. Rowland has pledged to cover strike costs of nursing home operators for thirty days; to keep workers in the fight the union needs to raise $1.2 million from nonunion sources. Make checks payable to the District 1199NE Strike Fund, 77 Huyshoppe Street, Hartford, CT 06106. UNEMPLOYMENT ASSURANCE A staple statistic in the financial news these days is the number of unemployment insurance claims for the month. But what the statistics don't tell you is how many out-on-the-street workers actually collect. A new study by Marc Baldwin for the National Employment Law Project finds that while only about 40 percent of the unemployed receive benefits nationwide, unemployment taxes are lower than any time in history. Baldwin estimates that twenty-two states lack sufficient reserves to cope with a recession. To read the report go to www.nelp.org. PROGRESSIVE HEALTHCARE IDEAS Kathryn Lewis writes: At a recent Capitol Hill conference sponsored by the Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses a grim picture emerged of healthcare in America. The United States spends more on healthcare than any other nation in the developed world, yet thirty-six countries receive better services, according to the World Health Organization. Some 42 million Americans have no insurance, and 83,000 die each year because they can't afford a doctor. The caucuses are urging the creation of a comprehensive national health insurance program, an expanded version of Medicare that covers every American. Legislators talked up several pieces of legislation, including Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.'s bill to add a constitutional amendment guaranteeing healthcare for all, Pete Stark's measure to establish a health insurance program for all children and John Tierney's legislation allowing states to create their own universal health insurance programs. The consensus was to push reform one step at a time. NEWS OF THE WEAK IN REVIEW Asked four years ago if he would televise the execution of Timothy McVeigh, Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes, said, "Over my dead body." In a recent interview, Hewitt allowed that he would show it. After all, he said, viewers see people strapped down on a gurney and knocked out every week on ER.
May 3, 2001 / Editorial / The Editors
Harvard’s Shame Harvard’s Shame
A sit-in at the university highlights the gulf between a great educational institution and the unconscionable working conditions many of its employees experience there.
May 3, 2001 / Editorial / Benjamin L. McKean
War and Accountability War and Accountability
What exactly Bob Kerrey did one night in a Vietnamese community should concern every citizen.
May 3, 2001 / Editorial / Jonathan Schell
No FTAA, No Fast Track No FTAA, No Fast Track
With NAFTA as an ugly precedent, the proposed trade pact is generating serious opposition from a number of social and economic sources.
Apr 26, 2001 / Editorial / The Editors
The Worst 100 Days The Worst 100 Days
It's back to the future with the George W. Bush who is leading the nation--in the hard-edged style of the recent fiasco in Florida.
Apr 26, 2001 / Editorial / The Editors
AIDS: The New Apartheid AIDS: The New Apartheid
A campaign to help sick people in need of unaffordable medicines is clashing with forces in the global pharmaceutical industry.
Apr 26, 2001 / Editorial / Mark Gevisser
In Fact… In Fact…
UNFAIR HARVARD Timothy Patrick McCarthy, who teaches history and literature at Harvard, writes: On April 18, forty-six members of Harvard's Living Wage Campaign took over Massachusetts Hall, one of Harvard's main administrative buildings, to demand a living wage for all Harvard workers. In addition to the sit-in, hundreds of other protesters and sympathizers have marched outside, fasted, slept in tents in Harvard Yard, held panel discussions and rallies and launched an impressive outreach and petition campaign. The Living Wage Campaign is demanding that all Harvard workers, whether directly employed by the university or hired through outside firms, be paid a living wage of at least $10.25 per hour, adjusted annually for inflation and with basic health benefits. According to the administration's own figures, more than a thousand full-time and part-time, or "casual," employees are paid less than $10 per hour for their work. Dining-hall workers at Harvard Law School currently earn as little as $6.50 per hour, and most janitors receive less than $9 per hour. As the university celebrates a transition in presidential leadership from Neil Rudenstine, a humanist, to Lawrence Summers, an economist, it must have the courage to do what is humane and economically just: Provide a living wage to all its workers. CASUALTIES OF THE DRUG WAR When the single-engine plane carrying missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter, Charity, was shot down on April 20 by a Peruvian fighter jet, killing mother and daughter, they became the latest victims of an ever more irrational US-backed drug war. The missionary plane, tracked by a CIA surveillance aircraft, was mistaken for a drug flight and blown out of the sky by a Peruvian crew. The US claims that the CIA operatives in the surveillance plane tried to dissuade the Peruvian pilot from shooting, but both planes were there because of the antidrug crusade. How many innocent Peruvians have been aboard the other planes shot down in this campaign? The surveillance flights are temporarily suspended, but the Bush Administration is going ahead with plans to more deeply embroil a growing list of Latin American nations in the crusade. Colombia's internal war, fueled by stepped-up US antidrug dollars, already threatens to spread to neighboring countries. In the United States the thousands of mostly poor, nonviolent drug users who fill the prisons are forgotten victims of the drug crusade. Perhaps the barbaric killing of the missionary and her baby will prick the American conscience as past tragedies have not. DRUGGED OUT Intern Kathryn Lewis writes: Thanks to a 1998 amendment to the Higher Education Act, college students convicted of drug-related charges are barred from receiving federal aid for a year or more from the date of conviction. To gain access to assistance, they must complete an approved rehab program. Nearly 10 million students who can't afford higher education without government aid are potential victims of this selective targeting. (No other class of offender, including convicted rapists, is disqualified from receiving aid.) How many students who require financial assistance are going to be able to pay for an expensive treatment program? Last year 9,215 students were denied aid as a result of the provision. More than 800,000 federal aid applicants did not answer the application question asking if they had been convicted of a drug charge. The Education Department decided not to disqualify those who left the question blank, but this year, students who don't answer will be ineligible, so the number denied aid might skyrocket. Congressman Barney Frank has introduced legislation repealing the provision, and sixty student governments have endorsed it. (For information: Drug Reform Coordination Network at www.drcnet.org.) WHITE TRASH For six years the Missouri branch of the Ku Klux Klan demanded that it be allowed to participate in the Adopt-a-Highway program, which gives it the privilege of picking up trash and posting a self-congratulatory sign along a stretch of I-55. The state didn't want the KKK sign littering its roadside, and a legal battle ensued, culminating in a March ruling by the US Supreme Court supporting the Klan's right to promote itself on the highway. Meanwhile, the state had renamed the Klan's stretch the Rosa Parks Highway. Whether that reduced Klan members' work ethic we know not, but the stretch of road became so trashy that the state expelled the KKK from the Adopt-a-Highway program. JEFF DAVIS'S REVENGE In voting for a state flag bearing the Confederate battle emblem, the people of Mississippi seem to have followed, in a perverse way, native son William Faulkner's dictum: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The pro-flag vote was made easier by the myth that the Confederacy had nothing to do with slavery or white supremacy. Here's what Faulkner thought about white supremacy: "They [African-Americans] will endure. They are better than we are." In Montgomery, Alabama, 150 Dixie die-hards protested plans to erect a monument to the Selma voting rights march on the state capitol grounds. They regard the monument to civil rights heroes as a desecration of the site where the Confederate States of America was formed in 1861. NEWS OF THE WEAK IN REVIEW Al Kamen reported in the Washington Post that Assistant US Attorney Janet Rehnquist is about to be named inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. That's right. She is the daughter of the Chief Justice. Kamen also said that Eugene Scalia, son of Justice Antonin, and Virginia Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence, were being considered for Labor Department solicitor and a "top spot" at OMB, respectively. Political payoff? We prefer to think of it as affirmative action.
Apr 26, 2001 / Editorial / The Editors