Why I'm voting "no" on MAPS 3

On Tuesday, I'm voting against Oklahoma City's MAPS 3 proposal because the tax used to fund it -- the sales tax -- falls hardest on poor and working class people, who will benefit least from the projects that the tax will pay for.

MAPS stands for Metropolitan Area Projects.  The Oklahoma Gazette has a summary of the current proposal. MAPS 3 is a big, $777 million Christmas tree with something for everyone. It seems to have been constructed with the obvious hope of  getting people who have different beliefs about which projects are appropriate to vote for the whole proposal in order to get the parts they like.

Some of the proposed projects include a downtown park, a downtown streetcar system, bicycling and walking trails, 70 miles of sidewalks throughout the city, and aquatics centers for senior citizens. Other projects include improvements to the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds and new boating and recreational facilities on the Oklahoma River. I would be inclined to vote for many of those projects -- although I'd rather see public transit dollars spent on improving the transit system citywide, which is currently almost unusable.

But in order to get any of those projects, I would also have to vote to fund a new $280 convention center, which I consider a silly and offensive waste of money. It's a gift to wealthy downtown business owners from the rest of us, who can't really afford it. In the short term, this project would create some construction jobs. In the long term, it would create low-end minimum wage jobs with few or no benefits. And this one project would take up more than a third of the entire amount of money raised by the proposal.

I'm figuring that any one who is reading this blog post probably cares what I think about this topic, but I'm also figuring that you might like other sources of information. Here are some sources that I checked out:

About.com has an interesting history of MAPS, which began in 1993 with a "temporary" one-cent sales tax. The tax has never expired, because voters have repeatedly approved extensions of the tax for new projects.The first set of  MAPS projects has often been credited with revitalizing Oklahoma City's downtown in the 1990s. MAPS for Kids was approved in 2001, and the sales tax collected under that proposal for seven years seems to be funding much needed capital improvements for metropolitan area schools. Most recently the tax has gone for renovations to the Ford Center in order to draw a professional basketball team to town.

To read arguments in favor of MAPS3, you can go to yesformaps.com or mapsfacts.com. Propents have also produced a fairly tedious YouTube video.

Several groups oppose the extension of the one cent sales tax. There is the Campaign Against MAPS, which links to a website called Kill the Maps Tax. There is a Facebook page for Not This MAPS. Some opponents of MAPS seem to come from the extreme-right "teabagger" perspective. The blog for Kill the Maps Tax links to the site of radio talk show host Mike Shannon, who also seems to represent a hard right-wing perspective.

One piece of information that made a big impression on me was something not directly related to the MAPS controversy at all. This report from the OK Policy Blog, describes the way taxes in the state of Oklahoma affect different groups of people. That blog post links to an article from the Tulsa World, which shows that poor people are the ones who pay the highest percentage of their income in sales taxes, while better off people pay a higher percentage of their income in income taxes.

I do have a small amount of ambivalence about my "no" vote on Tuesday. Some of the projects are worthwhile. I don't trust the organized opposition to the tax extension, much of which is based on a far-right political perspective that I don't want to support. But the Christmas-tree approach to the sales tax measure is bad public policy. And the sales tax used to fund the proposal would force poor people buying the necessities of life to subsidize wealthy developers.

I would be willing to vote "yes" on a property tax or a graduated city wage tax to fund projects that benefited the entire population, but I'm voting "no" on MAPS 3.

UN treaty proves powerful force for women's rights

Inter Press Service describes how the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has become "an increasingly successful tool for challenging discriminatory laws and battling violence against women and girls." CEDAW was adopted 30 years ago this month by the UN General Assembly.

The 186 countries that that have both signed and ratified the Convention pledge to ensure equal recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights by women without discrimination. Only the Holy See, Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga and the United States have not signed and ratified the Convention.

Mammography not always a smashing success

Thanks to FeministPeaceNetwork on Facebook for a link to a commentary on the breast cancer screening controversy by the ever-wonderful Barbara Ehrenreich.

A federal government advisory panel recently proposed that women not receive routine mammograms before age 50, and to receive mammograms only every other year after that. These new proposals quickly became controversial, with many people, including feminist activists, charging that they were an effort to save money at the expense of women's lives. Ehrenreich argues that feminists should embrace the new guidelines, using her own experience as a cancer survivor to illustrate:

One response to the new guidelines has been that numbers don’t matter -- only individuals do -- and if just one life is saved, that’s good enough. So OK, let me cite my own individual experience. In 2000, at the age of 59, I was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer on the basis of one dubious mammogram followed by a really bad one, followed by a biopsy. Maybe I should be grateful that the cancer was detected in time, but the truth is, I’m not sure whether these mammograms detected the tumor or, along with many earlier ones, contributed to it: One known environmental cause of breast cancer is radiation, in amounts easily accumulated through regular mammography.

And why was I bothering with this mammogram in the first place? I had long ago made the decision not to spend my golden years undergoing cancer surveillance, but I wanted to get my Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) prescription renewed, and the nurse practitioner wouldn’t do that without a fresh mammogram.

As for the HRT, I was taking it because I had been convinced, by the prevailing medical propaganda, that HRT helps prevent heart disease and Alzheimer’s. In 2002, we found out that HRT is itself a risk factor for breast cancer (as well as being ineffective at warding off heart disease and Alzheimer’s), but we didn’t know that in 2000. So did I get breast cancer because of the HRT -- and possibly because of the mammograms themselves -- or did HRT lead to the detection of a cancer I would have gotten anyway?

Ehrenreich also links to a post by noted breast cancer specialist Dr. Susan Love, explaining the new guidelines. Love notes that the guidelines don't say that no women under 50 should receive mammograms, but that the test shouldn't be done routinely. It should be an individual decision made by a woman and her doctor with an understanding of both the benefits and risks:

One key shift has been in our understanding of the biology of breast cancer. We used to think there was just one kind of cancer that grew at a steady pace; that when it reached a certain size, it spread to the rest of the body. As a result, it seemed to make sense that we could save lives if a screening test could identify the cancer while it was still "early," before it had spread. That's how we developed the notion of early detection. And it works, sometimes.

In the best of hands, mammographic screening in women over 50 will reduce a woman's risk of dying from breast cancer by 30%. That is a lot, but it is not 100%. Why? It turns out that breast cancers are not all the same. There are at least five kinds, with different growth rates and levels of aggression. Some are so aggressive that they will have spread before they are visible on a mammogram or form a lump. Some are very slow growing or may not even have the ability to spread, so there is no benefit from finding them early. This is because of the biology of the disease, not the limitations of screening.

One of the reasons that mammography is a less effective tool in young women is that they have a higher rate of these aggressive tumors. Younger women also have breast tissue that is more sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of low-dose radiation. Calculations by a research team in Britain published in the British Journal of Cancer in 2005 suggest that it is possible for women to develop cancer because of the cumulative radiation from yearly mammograms starting at 40 or younger. Finally, mammograms are generally less accurate in younger women who have dense breast tissue, which can mask a cancer. Thus the balance of risk versus benefit is not as clear.

Ehrenreich says, at the end of her post, that what we really need is a new women's health movement that is willing and able to ask hard questions about the causes and treatments of breast cancer, and not falling for the propaganda of what she calls "the cancer industrial complex." I wholeheartedly agree.

Empire assimilates Obama

One of my favorite blogs, Can it happen here? has an excellent analysis.

Troop surge will "magnify the crime against Afghanistan"

CommonDreams.org has reposted an eloquent opinion piece from The Guardian/UK by Malalai Joya, a feminist activist and former member of the Afghan Parliament. Joya says:

After months of waiting, President Obama is about to announce the new US strategy for Afghanistan. His speech may be long awaited, but few are expecting any surprise: it seems clear he will herald a major escalation of the war. In doing so he will be making something worse than a mistake. It is a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country.

I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.

Do yourself a favor. Read the whole thing.

An anniversary to celebrate

On Facebook, I'm a fan of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that is how I found out that this week is the anniversary of the first sex discrimination case against the federal government, filed by the SPLC back in 1972. In Frontiero v. Richardson, the SPLC successfully challenged an Air Force policy that automatically granted medical, dental, and housing benefits to the wives of married servicemen -- but required servicewomen to prove their husbands relied on them for more than half of their support.

Soon to return to our regularly unscheduled programing

The rough draft of my novel, Sisters from Another Planet, has been completed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end -- and 70,575 words.

I will soon be posting more frequently on this blog, with maybe a little bit of time off to let my hands and elbows heal.

Progressive senators push back on public option

CommonDreams.org has the details.

Reid Bill rejects Stupak Amendment language

John Nichols at thenation.com reports that the Senate Health Bill Rejects Anti-Choice Extremes.

House health bill shortchanges women in many areas

As the Senate begins debate over Majority Leader Harry Reid's version of the health insurance reform bill RHRealityCheck.org reminds us that the House bill fails to cover many items necessary to women's health. In addition to the notorious Stupak Amendment limiting abortion coverage, the House bill also fails to cover such items as contraception, pelvic exams, and STD counseling.

As RHRealityCheck columnist Amanda Marcotte says:

I’m forced to suggest that the major factor is that our government is still mainly run by a bunch of middle-aged men who’ve been shielded from having to deal honestly and empathetically with women’s lives their whole lives, and therefore are prone to seeing women’s concerns as disposable at best, and at worst, as frighteningly alien and needing to be controlled. When you have that attitude, it’s easy to push aside all the ways you’ve personally benefited from contraception and abortion, and just assume the only women who need assistance in those areas are wayward sluts who need to be slapped down instead of given a hand. After all, I’m sure most of these men have had the benefit of women who quietly make sure that fertility control is taken care of, without bothering the over-privileged men in their lives.

Government task force changes mammography recommendations

Feminist Peace Network has the details.

Durbin releases poll results

Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who also serves as the Democratic whip in the Senate, has released his Public Option Poll Results. Durbin's poll showed 80 percent of respondents supporting a public option.

Respondents to the poll were self-selected, so this may not be a representative sample of the US public. But because of Durbin's position as the one who "gathers votes on major issues," this poll may indicate that Durbin is willing to use his position to push the public option through the Senate.

My mother called it Armistice Day

My father was a veteran of the Second World War. My mother and father both were civilian employees of the US Army at Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia. I always thought of my mother as being conservative, as supporting US military efforts overseas that I considered unwise at best, but several times she expressed her regret to me at having helped to make armaments for a living. She felt this was something she had to do to support two young children, one of them disabled, after my father died.

My mother was five years old when the First World War ended, and she used to tell a story about how she fell down and skinned her nose on the pavement, and a returning veteran gave her a quarter to get her to stop crying, and called her his "rose of no-man's land." The holiday that we in the United States celebrate every November 11 is now called Veterans Day. But it began as a celebration of the end of the First World War on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918. My mother always called the day by its original name -- Armistice Day. Other nations still celebrate Armistice Day -- or Remembrance Day -- on this day.

There are only a handful of veterans of this horrific conflict who are yet living, and not very many others who remember that time. I've heard World War One described as the first modern war, but maybe in some ways the US Civil War was that -- war in which modern technology created effective machines of killing that efficiently slaughtered millions of people quickly. At any rate, the First World War was horrifying and hideously destructive, shattering dreams that technological and economic "progress" were creating a peaceful and prosperous world. Woodrow Wilson sold this mess to the US public as a "the war to end all wars" and a war to "make the world safe for democracy." (Wilson is often portrayed as a progressive idealist, but he was also a notorious racist, and pursued many anti-democratic policies.)

Even today in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government promotes the polite fiction that its military interventions are designed to make the world safe for democracy.  But we have lost even the hoped for ideal of ending all wars, and I think you can see that in the change from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Armistice Day celebrated the end of what people were hoping and trying to make the last war. Veterans Day assumes that we will always have wars, that there will always be a justification for the United States to invade some other nation and make it right. On Veterans Day, we are supposed to thank military veterans for their service to their country. Especially on Veterans Day, if we question US military intervention in other countries, we are accused of dishonoring the brave men and women who wear our country's uniform. Heaven forfend that we might stop invading far-off places and use all that money and person power to make our own country right.

Meaning no disrespect to anyone who now is in the US military, or who has been in the military, I am not celebrating Veterans Day today. Today I am celebrating Armistice Day, when the guns fell silent to end the First World War, and when we can hope and dream and commit ourselves toward working for a day when all of the guns in all of the wars will fall silent.

And today, I would like to thank some other people for their service to our country. First of all, I would like to thank the activists who work for peace, for women's rights, for civil rights for people of color, for health care reform, for an end to poverty, for the preservation of our natural world. I want to thank the poets and the artists and the singer-songwriters. I want to thank the school teachers and the day care workers, and the people who labor in hospitals and nursing homes. I want to thank the librarians, and the historians, and the civil libertarians. I want to thank the people who volunteer for food banks, and food co-ops, and the people who tend community gardens. I want to thank the bloggers. I want to thank the bicycle mechanics and the drivers for public transport. I am sure I am forgetting someone, but I think you get the idea. I want to thank the people whose work and whose quiet courage make the possibility of peace more real. To all of you, I want to say, thank you for your service to your country, and to the entire world.

And now I think I'm going to get back to work on that anti-war novel of mine.

On the fall of the Berlin Wall

Today, many news reports celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The events of 1989, which culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, are celebrated as some sort of final victory of capitalism over socialism. I wish I had the time for a full discussion of whether what was going on in the Soviet bloc countries deserved the name of socialism -- or whether what goes on in the United States deserves the name of democracy. But, ironically, I am in the midst of writing a novel about a character who has time traveled to the present from 1989, and I need to finish 50,000 words by the end of the month.

I did notice that CommonDreams.org cross-posted an interesting article from Reuters writer Anna Mudeva that points out that In Eastern Europe, People Pine for Socialism. Memories of atrocities committed by the old regimes have faded, Mudeva writes.

Capitalism's failure to lift living standards, impose the rule of law and tame flourishing corruption and nepotism have given way to fond memories of the times when the jobless rate was zero, food was cheap and social safety was high.

Furthermore, Common Dreams also reports that a recent global poll shows that most people are dissatisfied with free-market capitalism.

But certainly, advanced capitalist countries such as ours don't build walls defended with barbed wire and armed guards to keep people in. No, of course not. We build walls to keep people out.

Congresswomen speak out for reproductive freedom

Thanks to FeministPeaceNetwork for a link to this post from Spare Candy that shows five Congresswomen speaking out against the Stupak amendment, to the House's health care bill. The Stupak Amendment prevents women who sign up for the public option, or who get assistance to buy insurance from the exchanges, from getting health insurance that covers abortions.

Kucinich votes against house health insurance bill

Thanks to Whole Foods Boycott Action for their link to Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich's explanation of his vote against the health insurance bill.

Here'a an interesting anaylsis of the Stupak Amendment...

...from the always perceptive Feminist Peace Network.

A bittersweet victory on healthcare reform

Our Bodies Our Blog reports that the US House of Representatives has passed the the health care reform bill.

But first, they passed the Stupak Amendment, limiting women's access to abortion. This amendment passed with the support of 64 Democrats. More explanation of the Stupak Amendment can be found here.

Counting all the dead

Thanks to CommonDreams.org for reposting this commentary on the Fort Hood massacre from New American Media. Author Aaron Glantz identifies the victims of yesterday's violence as casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It seems clear that the violence that we as a nation have been perpetrating on other nations is coming back to haunt us.

How would space aliens understand our analysis of violence?

ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES has an interesting post on the violence at Ft. Hood. Her main point is that news commentators spend endless hours analyzing the causes of some sorts of violence, while violence against women is accepted as an ordinary part of life, not requiring much thought.

Ironically, the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre is coming up in about a month.