We're not broke

Hat tip to Mike Hall at the AFL-CIO NOW BLOG for posting a link to this eye-opening position paper from the Economic Policy Institute. According to the paper's author, EPI President Larry Mishel

To fully understand the growth trends in income and wealth in recent decades, one must recognize that the growth has been very unequal: households at the top of the scale have seen much faster growth in their incomes and wealth accumulation than have those in the middle or bottom of the distribution. For instance, the top 10% of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gains in income since 1979, with the top 1% alone claiming 38.7% of those overall gains. Moreover, the wealth of the median (or ‘typical’) household was lower in 2009 than in 1983, in spite of the 40.3% growth in the average household’s wealth.4 When the median is substantially lower than the average, it indicates very lopsided growth, which has been the case for the past 30 years: there was no growth in wealth for the bottom 80% of households, while those in the top fifth enjoyed a 50% increase.

So if the private sector has grown for the past 30 years (albeit very lopsidedly), and the projections for the next 30 years indicate comparable total income growth for the economy, then what is the story for the public sector?

It is true that all levels of government are facing budget difficulties as a result of falling revenues during the recession. Higher unemployment and depressed economic activity have certainly depressed tax revenues, and past tax cuts at all levels of government have seriously eroded revenues as well. But some policymakers and pundits want to have it both
ways: choke off the revenue stream to governments while slashing budget expenditures. For instance, the current domestic spending cuts proposed by the House of Representatives for this year were smaller than the revenues lost from extending the upper-income Bush tax cuts and the inheritance tax cut legislated last December

In other words, the extremely rich have benefited much more than everybody else from the nation's increase in productivity over the past 30 years. The extremely rich have also enjoyed huge tax cuts. If the rich paid a bit more in taxes, we could afford government programs that help poor and middle-class people. Choosing not to raise taxes on the rich is just that--a choice.

The full EPI report is easy to read and fairly brief. You can see it (and download it) here.

The real apocalypse is unfolding slowly

Just as everyone was about to forget last week's Rapture hoax, here in Oklahoma we saw genuine apocalyptic forces at work yesterday afternoon. At least 13 people died in tornadoes that roared across the Midwest and South on May 24. This followed a tornado that killed more than a hundred people in Joplin, Missouri the day before.

Mother Jones environmental blogger Julia Whitty makes a convincing case that this month's dramatic increase in killer tornadoes has been fueled by a warming ocean:

Unusually warm surface waters in the Gulf of Mexico—about 2 degrees Fahrenheit/3.6 degrees Celsius warmer than normal—may be a factor in this season's tornado frequency and strength, according to National Weather Service director Jack Hayes.

Add that to an uncommonly southward jet stream track, reports Scientific American, and you've got a recipe for the kinds of disasters we've been seeing so far this year.

Her entire post, which includes many useful links and graphics, is well worth reading.

Targeting Justice for Workers

Thanks to the Facebook page of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, I've learned that workers at Target Stores in the New York City area are trying to form a union. The UFCW provides several links to sources of information about this effort.

First, here's an article in the New York Times. Second, here is a post on Gawker. Finally, here is coverage of a controversy over CBS refusing to rent the union billboard space in Times Square to spread their message.

The Times reports that major issues for the workers are low pay and schedules that offer very few hours of work each week. Employees at a Target store in Valley Stream, N.Y. said that they rely on Medicaid and food stamps in order to support their families.

Predictably, a Target vice president told the Times that the company has “great benefits, flexible scheduling and great career opportunities for workers in all stages of life,”and that bringing in a union would wreck this lovely state of affairs.

Writing at Truthout, Mark Provost gives an eloquent explanation of why this argument doesn't hold water. Provost wasn't writing about Target specifically, but his argument certainly applies to the situation of the Target workers:

In the boardrooms of corporate America, profits aren't everything - they are the only thing. A JPMorgan research report concludes that the current corporate profit recovery is more dependent on falling unit-labor costs than during any previous expansion. At some level, corporate executives are aware that they are lowering workers' living standards, but their decisions are neither coordinated nor intentionally harmful. Call it the "paradox of profitability." Executives are acting in their own and their shareholders' best interest: maximizing profit margins in the face of weak demand by extensive layoffs and pay cuts. But what has been good for every company's income statement has been a disaster for working families and their communities.

I agree with Provost almost entirely. Corporate executives must be in really deep denial about what they're doing to their workers, or they wouldn't be able to live with themselves. But the bosses are going to hurt themselves in the long run if they keep shafting their employees. Workers who are badly paid and badly treated are workers who find it harder and harder to give a damn about doing a good job.

We can't count on corporations to have enough enlightened self-interest to know this. Workers need to be able to look out for their own needs. Individual workers do not have the power to defend themselves against corporate employers. This is why workers need the organized power of unions. When workers have what they need to provide a decent life for themselves and their loved ones, everyone benefits.

The end of the world? Been there, done that.

Harold Camping is old enough to know better. Relying on a combination of complicated arithmetic and the interpretation of Biblical prophecies, the 89-year-old California engineer predicted that the world would end today, May 21, 2011. As Chris McGreal of The Guardian explains, one of the signs that the world was nearing its end was (you knew it) the growing acceptability of gay marriage:

Camping has also said that "gay pride" and same-sex marriage are "a sign from God that judgment day is very near". "No sign is as dramatic and clear as the phenomenal worldwide success of the Gay Pride movement. In the Bible God describes His involvement with this dramatic movement … We will learn that the Gay Pride movement would successfully develop as a sign to the world that Judgement Day was about to occur," he writes.

Camping predicted that the apocalypse would begin at six p.m. sharp in each time zone and proceed around the globe, with the saved rising up to heaven and the damned being destroyed by earthquake and fire. Predictably, he was wrong. (I'm no prophet, but my hunch is that God is not nearly so interested in enforcing patriarchal sexual standards as Camping thinks She is.)

Our friend Harold could have saved himself a fair amount of  trouble and embarrassment if he'd read some history. One famous example is that of the Millerites in the 1840s. William Miller analyzed the Book of Daniel, chapters 8 and 9, and

counted 2300 years from the time Ezra was told he could return to Jerusalem to reestablish the Temple. The date of this event was calculated to be 457 B.C. Thus, 1843 became the date of Christ's return. As the appointed year grew closer, Miller specified 21 March 1843 to 21 March 1844 as his predicted climax of the age. The date was revised and set as 22 October 1844.

The resulting failure of the world to end became known as The Great Disappointment. This reminds one of  the famous words of Jesus, that "no one knows the day or the hour" when the end will occur. But the idea of all the troubles of the world ending in an instant, the righteous receiving their just reward, and the evildoers going straight to hell appears to be irresistible to many. Harold Camping is the latest, but he won't be the last.

Back in 1998, PBS's Frontline produced a show called Apocalypse! The show's web page has an analysis of  "apocalyptism" by University of Texas Professor L. Michael White and a historical timeline of the apocalyptic world view, up through 1999. It's too late for Harold Camping, but I hope the rest of you pay attention.

Pink Wave at the Oklahoma State Capitol, May 12

This is what pro-choice activism looks like:

The Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma were among the sponsors of The Pink Wave.

Dollars & Sense on the budget deficit

As I was working on my term paper about the federal deficit, I came across this article on the Web site of the progressive magazine Dollars & Sense. I may or may not use it in my paper, but it's a good read, and author Marty Wolfson manages to take on some common misperceptions. In the current economic situation, in which ordinary people are still suffering, massive government spending would be very useful. But we're not likely to get it. Wolfson explains why:

The ideological opposition to government spending remains a major obstacle. There are those who see an increase in the role of government as something to be avoided at all costs—even if the cost is the jobs of the unemployed.

Even among those who are not subject to such ideological blinders, there is still a political argument that resonates strongly. The argument is that government spending to create jobs will create large budget deficits, which will have terrible consequences for the American people. Politicians, pundits, and other commentators—in a frenzied drumbeat of speeches, op-eds, and articles—have asserted that the most urgent priority now is to reduce the budget deficit.

It is important to note that this argument is focused on current policy, not just the long-term budgetary situation. There is room for debate about long-term budget deficits, but these are affected more by the explosive growth of health-care costs than by government discretionary spending to create jobs.

For more information, read the rest of the article.

An interesting post on deficits and health care...

...which I found on Health Beat while working on my term paper on the national debt. Here is a representative paragraph:

For the GOP, this goal of de-funding the health reform law has been increasingly intertwined with efforts to cut the federal deficit. The most recent conflation was House passage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan that included privatizing Medicare and turning Medicaid into a block-grant program—ideas that provoked outcry among seniors and others in town hall meetings around the country. Yesterday, Rep. Dave Camp, (R-MI) who is chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, said that in the face of opposition from Democrats, he will not push forward with the Medicare privatization proposal.

Vermont passes health insurance reform

Something I found while working on my term paper on the national debt: Vermont is "getting closer and closer to enacting a bill that’ll move the state toward a single-payer health-care system," according to blogger Ezra Klein.

Klein links to The Incidental Economist, who plans to summarize that bill next week. (Gotta love a blog with a name like "The Incidental Economist.")

Good news and bad news

Bad news first. The National Partnership for Women and Families reports that the US House has passed a draconian piece of legislation to drastically reduce both public and private insurance for abortion.Among other things, the report says that HR 3 would make permanent the Hyde Amendment prohibition on public abortion funding for poor women and prohibit the District of Columbia from using local funds to pay for abortions. Up until this time, the Hyde Amendment has faced renewal each year.

The good news is that House Republicans seem to have backed off on their plan to privatize Medicare. Thanks to Women's eNews on Twitter for pointing me towards that news item.

Mother Jones Speaks

Hat tip to the AFL-CIO blog for posting this YouTube video of the marvelous labor organizer Mother Jones, reportedly recorded on her 100th birthday:

What is so disturbing about the killing of Bin Laden

Naomi Klein on Facebook posted a link to this useful and disturbing article at thenation.com. Jeremy Scahill reports that Osama bin Laden was killed by sailors from the Joint Special Operations Command. To me, here is the most important part of Scahill's report:

Both President Bush and President Obama have reserved the right for US forces to operate lethally and unilaterally in any country across the globe in pursuit of alleged high value terrorists. The Obama administration's expansion of US Special Operations activities globally has been authorized under a classified order dating back to the Bush administration. Originally signed in early 2004 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, it is known as the “AQN ExOrd," or Al Qaeda Network Execute Order. The AQN ExOrd was intended to cut through bureaucratic and legal processes, allowing US special forces to move into denied areas or countries beyond the official battle zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, who is poised to become director of the CIA, expanded and updated that order in late 2009. "JSOC has been more empowered more under this administration than any other in recent history," a Special Ops source told The Nation. "No question."

If elements in the US executive branch, intelligence services, and military think that they have the right to take out bad guys without any kind of international due process, aren't they operating under the same ethical model that the terrorists are?

Things a person finds out late at night in the library

Really and truly, I was looking for something for a school assignment when I found a blog post by Tom Hayden at thenation.com, commenting on the reported death of Osama bin Laden. Hayden has some interesting things to say:

If bin Laden is gone, and his network heavily damaged, what is left of the terrorist threat to our national security that justifies so many trillions of dollars and costs in thousands of lives? Because of a fabricated fear of bin Laden, we invaded Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan was to deny sanctuaries to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. In response, Al Qaeda moved into Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed tonight. So why are the Taliban in Afghanistan a threat to the security of the United States with bin Laden gone? Surely there are terrorist cells with lethal capacity scattered around the world, surely there might be revenge attacks, but there is hardly a centralized conspiratorial threat that justifies the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American troops.

Hayden goes on to compare bin Laden to Che Guevara, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. Sometime after school lets out, I'm going to have to research this a little bit better, but there is something about this comparison that makes me uneasy. I think all three of those other guys, were, well. freedom fighters. And as best I've been able to tell, bin Laden was an advocate of an oppressive and thoroughly sexist world view. I'm not comfortable with the foreign policy that resulted in his death, but I still don't think that he was an admirable person.

So, Hayden is a regular commentator at The Nation, and I would like to think that he wouldn't act like some bad stereotype of a 1960s male radical and make a hero out of bin Laden because bin Laden was a macho guy who opposed the US. But he's been known to write blatantly sexist diatribes in the past. Maybe someone ought to clue him in that clinging to outdated macho posturing undermines his credibility.

What do you think?

Pornography, abuse, and free speech

This started out as a post for my online library school class, but it got way too long. So I'm going to use it for a blog post:

Principles are always difficult to follow in real life, because principles are abstractions, and real life is messy and complicated. It’s not possible to draw up a principle that will account for all situations. That being said, my ethical approach to free speech has to do with the distinction between ideas and actions. Ideas that are “offensive” should be protected. Actions that harm actual people should not be protected, even if those actions are connected to the creation of ideas. (This standard certainly isn’t original with me, but I can’t remember the Supreme Court case that established it.) I’m going to limit my discussion to the subject of pornography and sexual abuse.

When Wendy Kaminer argues that simulations of child sexual abuse should be permitted, darn it, I’m gagging as I say this, but I think she’s right. (Now, I have to tell you that I have no idea how realistic these simulations are. If there’s any question, I think the burden of proof should fall on the defendant to prove that no actual children were harmed in the making of the film.)  If I’m reading Kaminer correctly, when she defends portrayals of cruelty to animals, she doesn’t differentiate between simulations and the use of real animals. In that case, I disagree with her. Animal abuse that would be illegal if you did it in your back yard shouldn’t be protected just because you made a movie out of it.

            This article about banning sexual offenders from the library has similar gray areas. It’s not clear how, in Attleboro, Mass., a Class II or Class III sexual offender is determined. But I think it’s defensible to ban people from the library who’ve been convicted of sexual or physical assault. The library needs to be a place where patrons can be physically safe. If I have a reasonable fear that my physical safety is endangered when I enter the library, my freedom to access information has been compromised. The nature of libraries is to have lots of secluded nooks and crannies (think rows of book stacks) that could be dangerous. Banning people who have committed assaults seems like less of a civil liberties encroachment than installing surveillance cameras.

            Back in the 1980s when Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin proposed a model anti-pornography law, I thought they were taking the wrong approach. Pornography, I said, is a form of hate speech, and as such is constitutionally protected. (I was using the particular radical feminist approach that erotica is egalitarian, and pornography is sexist.) In retrospect, I think my condemnation of the model ordinance might have been too simplistic. The law didn’t create any criminal penalties for producing pornography, but allowed people who had been harmed by pornography to sue its creators. It’s similar to laws which allow someone who has been shot by a criminal to sue the gun manufacturer. In theory, the pornography industry could be using consenting adults to create sexually explicit videos for consenting adults, but the reality is much different.

This is a test...

...in which I am demonstrating to a friend how to take a picture from her camera, put it on her computer, and upload it to a web site...

This was more fun than a trip to the vet.

A poor standard

Yesterday, the rating agency Standard and Poor's issued a warning about a possible future downgrade of the US government's credit rating. This was meant to underscore the supposedly precarious position our federal debt and deficit put us in. Dave Lindorff at This Can't Be Happening  has a useful analysis of this announcement and the debt situation in general:

At least one economist burst out laughing on hearing about the S&P announcement. “They did what?” exclaimed James Galbraith, a professor of economics at the University of Texas in Austin, who formerly served as executive director of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. “This is remarkable! It certainly will confirm the suspicions of those who have questioned S&P’s competence after its performance on the mortgage debacle.”

S&P, as well as the other two big ratings firms, all notoriously failed completely to spot the looming disaster of the banking collapse and financial crisis, and famously issued A ratings to mortgage-backed securities that later proved to be virtually worthless paper, as well as to the banks that had loaded up on the financial dreck.

As Galbraith explains it, “US debt consists of bonds issued in US dollars, which I assume the S&P analysts know. How can the US possibly default on its own currency? The obligation is in nominal dollars, which is to say when the bond retires, the US issues a check in dollars to cover it.”

Since the US prints its own currency (or actually just issues electronic payments to create new money) whenever it needs it, as Galbraith puts it, “As long as there is diesel fuel to power up the back-up generators that run the government’s computers, they will have the money to back their own bonds.”

Hat tip to Common Dreams, where I first found this article.

Deficit attention disorder

Over on AlterNet, Joshua Holland calls out President Obama for giving a deficit speech that was long on "flowery talk" and short on substance:

The reality is that while our private profit-driven health-care system is unsustainably expensive, the U.S. spends less on the public sector than almost every other developed country. We're running large deficits because we're maintaining costly military operations in several countries and the federal government collected less tax revenue in 2010 than in any year since 1961.

Progressives will no doubt celebrate Obama's deft dissection of the GOP's budget gimmicks and his full-throated defense of the welfare state. But it was ultimately some thin political gruel with unemployment remaining at 9 percent and the foreclosure crisis continuing unabated. When Obama's on, as he was today, it's easy to forget that our biggest national debate is little more than a distraction from the real issues plaguing our economy.

The big question on my mind is, how much, in the end, will Obama going to cave in to the extreme budget agenda of House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan. Dean Baker explains exactly how bad Ryan's budget proposal is. It will "leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030." Baker also notes that:

he ostensible rationale for this attack is the country's huge budget deficit. This is garbage. As all the pundits know, the country has a huge deficit today because the Wall Street boys drove the economy off a cliff. If the government deficit were not propping up the economy, we would be looking at 11 or 12 percent unemployment, rather than 8.9 percent. Spending creates jobs, and at this point, it is not coming from the private sector, so the government must fill the hole.

Over the longer term, the projections of huge deficits are driven by the projected explosion in health care costs. President Obama's health care reform took steps toward constraining these costs, although probably not enough. Remarkably, Ryan's plan abandons these cost control measures, virtually guaranteeing that quality health care becomes unaffordable for all but a small elite.

Finally, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich points out how expanding Medicare could actually lower both health care costs and the federal deficit:

For starters, allow anyone at any age to join Medicare. Medicare’s administrative costs are in the range of 3 percent. That’s well below the 5 to 10 percent costs borne by large companies that self-insure. It’s even further below the administrative costs of companies in the small-group market (amounting to 25 to 27 percent of premiums). And it’s way, way lower than the administrative costs of individual insurance (40 percent). It’s even far below the 11 percent costs of private plans under Medicare Advantage, the current private-insurance option under Medicare.

In addition, allow Medicare – and its poor cousin Medicaid – to use their huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower rates with hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies. This would help move health care from a fee-for-the-most-costly-service system into one designed to get the highest-quality outcomes most cheaply.

Estimates of how much would be saved by extending Medicare to cover the entire population range from $58 billion to $400 billion a year. More Americans would get quality health care, and the long-term budget crisis would be sharply reduced.

Home and Garden TV...

...sounds like the place to find a surprising amount of diversity on television. Or that's what they say on NPR.

Last week...

...was not a quiet week in Oklahoma City.

First, populist candidate Ed Shadid defeated bank officer Charlie Swinton in the runoff election for the Ward 2 City Council seat.Doug Dawgz Blog has the complete story.

Then there were the fires out by Spencer. Sadly, several peoples lost homes due to these blazes. Happily, no one got hurt seriously. I have some good friends who live out there who came through okay with their house and outbuildings intact. But it was a stressful and exhausting few days for them.

On Thursday night I took off my eyeglasses, picked up a shovel and a bucket, and did my best to help out by mopping up some hot spots. (I can sort of see without glasses, and fine ash can destroy a pair of plastic lenses very fast.) The shovel did a pretty good job, but I kept wishing for something to cut branches out of my way and something to break apart burning logs. In other words, I kept wishing I had a pulaski. When I described this to my friends afterward, they were baffled. You might have thought I was asking for a mythical contraption like a left-handed smoke shifter. But no, it's a wildland firefighting tool invented by the renowned fire boss Ed Pulaski, whose experiences in the great 1910 fire also brought about worker's compensation insurance. The firefighting tool he invented combines an axe with a grubbing hoe. You can see a picture here.

Being not only a former wildland firefighter, but also a former Girl Scout, I decided I wanted to be prepared for future occasions. After much searching, I was able to find what I needed at a chain home improvement store. They called it a "landscape axe." I would like to hope that this purchase would work to prevent my needing to use this tool in the future--a form of magic sort of like rolling down the car windows to bring on a rain storm. But I'm not optimistic. Maybe one dry spring doesn't prove anything, but I'm thinking this climate change thing is for real.

Below is a photo from back in the day. That's me on the right:

High technology reconsidered in a leisurely way

A while back--on April 1, to be exact--National Public Radio inspired much interest and controversy with a story about the Slow Internet Movement. The idea was presented as being similar to the Slow Food Movement. Going back to dial-up Internet access could have as many positive effects as going back to preparing and eating food in a leisurely fashion.

Yes, of course it was an April Fool's joke. But at least one blogger confessed to wishing that the movement was real. In a way, the proprietor of Joy and Wonder might have her wish. Blogging pioneer Rebecca Blood discussed the concept in a post in June 2010. The idea is not to use slower technology (like dial-up modems) to access the Web. The idea is for bloggers to create posts in a slower and more thoughtful fashion:

The Slow Web would be more like a book, retaining many of the elements of the Popular Web, but unhurried, re-considered, additive. Research would no longer be restricted to rapid responders. Conclusions would be intentionally postponed until sufficiently noodled-with. Writers could budget sufficient dream-time before setting pixel to page. Fresh thinking would no longer have to happen in real time.

I love the Fast Web, and I value the work that is done there. But no matter how informed, intelligent, and talented a writer may be, an idea that has been returned to and then turned away from, repeatedly, is simply different from one that is formed in a few hours, based on that afternoon's best available facts. (via @ebertchigago)

Of course, anyone who has broadband Internet access knows that it isn't always fast. And dial-up Internet access was not always slow. The trick to making it work at an acceptable speed was to use text-based tools such as the Lynx web browser. Ten years ago, a very large part of the Web was still mostly text. Using the Internet has indeed become a richer experience because of the widespread sharing of audio and video files. But for someone who is in love with the written word, the text-based Internet had its virtues.

The newest and fastest technology isn't necessarily the best. Which reminds me of the original reason for this post, which was a story from April 7 that I found on Foreign Policy in Focus. Mark Engler contemplates the history of the Luddites. Engler notes that those who demonstrate in favor of global economic justice are often accused of being "Luddites," of wishing to destroy beneficial new technology in order to bring back a bygone day. But that's not what the global justice movement is trying to do, and it's not what the Luddites were trying to do, either:

This argument was ridiculous from the start. Global justice protesters never opposed modernity; they merely had the gall to ask whether a global society should be managed by and for multinational corporations. As part of a fundamentally transnational movement—linking environmentalists, unionists, indigenous rights, and other activists across borders—they proposed a very different type of internationalism than the one favored by the U.S. Treasury Department and the International Monetary Fund.

As the historians among us will already know, the Luddites have been similarly slandered. They did not oppose technology per se, but rather asked some important questions about the ends to which new technological discoveries were being used and who in society would benefit from them.

Engler's entire post is well worth reading. And it's worth remembering that while the conventional wisdom is indeed conventional, it isn't always wise.

Is this typical springtime in Oklahoma?

It seems a bit extreme to me. Wildfire Forces Evacuation Order In Spencer - News9.com

Why federal budget cuts will hurt women most

Katha Pollit of I The Nation explains why women will be hurt the most by proposed cuts to the federal budget. I thought her analysis of the differential treatment by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker of predominately male and predominately female public employees union was especially insightful:

Governor Scott Walker sparked widespread outrage for limiting the bargaining rights of public sector unions to wages. Less noted was the curious fact that public safety workers—cops, firefighters and security officers—were exempted from his ire. The obvious, cynical reason is that unions representing teachers, nurses and social workers tend to support Democrats, while public safety workers are solid for Republicans. (That also explains why right-wingers like Walker feel free to bash teachers as incompetent, lazy freeloaders but never allude to the well-known romance between cops and doughnuts, let alone their generous retirement packages.) But is it entirely an accident that the workers deemed unworthy of full bargaining rights are overwhelmingly women, engaged in stereotypically female caring work, and that those whose rights are sacrosanct are men? In a statement on the budget, the University of Wisconsin System women’s studies consortium notes that union membership is crucial for a working woman’s advancement: it not only raises her wages by as much as a year of college but improves her chances of having healthcare even more than earning a college degree would have done, and gives her a measure of job security and a voice in the conditions of her work. Apparently Governor Walker thinks only men deserve those things. After all, this is a man who wants to repeal the state law requiring health insurers to cover birth control, eliminate the Title V family planning program, cut funding for sexual assault victims services and even reduce funding for a pregnant women’s smoking cessation program—oh, and eliminate Badgercare, the state healthcare plan, for 55,000 families a bit over the poverty line.

Meanwhile, Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research explains some of the other shortcomings of the House Republicans budget cutting plan, which steals from the poor and gives to the rich. And this CEPR report gives a brief but cogent analysis of the budget deficit issue.

Anti-choice bills advance in Oklahoma, other states

The National Partnership for Women & Families: has the sad details.

Malalai Joya allowed visa, calls for US withdrawal

Recently, the US government refused a visa to Afghan activist Malalai Joya for a trip to the US to promote the sescond edition of her autobiography, A Woman Among Warlords. Following a public outcry, the Obama administration has relented and allowed Joya into our country. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed Joya on Monday morning. Part I of the interview describes the recent situation in Afghanistan and why the US government initially denied Joya entrance into the US. In Part II of the interview, Joya calls for the end of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Even abortion rights opponents agree THIS is unconstitutional...

...according to the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Egypt faces possible counter-revolution

Blogger Mark Levine on Opinion - Al Jazeera English interviews Egyptian pro-democracy activists who fear for the future of their revolution. One of these activists, Ramy Essam, was arrested and tortured by Egyptian security forces last week.

Ramy: What most people who have heard of what happened to me do not realise is that I was not there protesting that day. I was actually on my way to a concert downtown, but while I was on my way, I heard sounds and attacks coming from Tahrir, so I rushed there to see what is going on. I saw the army attacking the people on one hand, and on the other hand there was that group of thugs, pointing out certain people to the army officers so they would arrest them, and they pointed me out too, so I got arrested.

I decided to stay calm and not react in any violent way and see what happens when I meet the higher rank officers and talk to them to see what is going on. But as soon as we entered the museum, for 4 hours they kept beating us constantly, stripped us, shocked us with teaser guns, and even cut my pony tail. They were beating me so hard; at one point they held me on the floor and one of the officers jumped up in the air and then landed with his both feet right on my face.

Supporting one dictator while bombing another

Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman discusses the US government's covert support for the dictatorship in Yemen with author and journalist Jeremy Scahill. On Friday, the forces of President Ali Abudullah Saleh killed 45 people and wounded 350 when they fired into a peaceful demonstration in the capital of Sana’a. This massacre prompted the resignation of a dozen of Yemen's top military leaders on Monday. Jeremy Scahill describes how President Saleh, a master manipulator, cooperated with the US "War on Terror" in order to defuse the hostility of George W. Bush--and used US aid to attack his own internal opponents. The clip takes about nine minutes to watch, and it's fascinating:

Look at this way cool Web site

I'm talking about the Web site of MADRE :: Demanding Rights, Resources & Results for Women Worldwide. When I visited the site, they had excellent analyses of the US war in Afghanistan, a shelter for rape survivors in Haiti, the situation of women in Guatemala, the pro-democracy movement in Iraq, and the work of the Zenab women's organization in Sudan.

I discovered this website by following a link to this thoughtful post about the situation in Libya, posted on Facebook by Feminist Peace Network.

The Libya Dilemma

Once again, a US president has launched military action against a brutal tyrant that our government previously courted as a friend. The contradictory history of the US government's relationship with Libya raises serious questions about whether the US can be trusted to intervene in Libya in a helpful way. As a feminist, I wonder why macho strategies involving missiles and bombs are promoted as the most effective way of dealing with foreign dictatorships?

The editors of The Nation pointed out recently that creating a "no-fly zone" is far from a foolproof plan for helping Libya's pro-democracy rebels. There is a serious risk of civilian casualties, and military action can divert attention from other, more effective means of pressure:

Financially strangling the regime by cutting off all sources of money from abroad, sharing real-time intelligence with the rebels, working with others to facilitate the flow of assistance to them while stopping the flow of pro-Qaddafi mercenaries into the country, if done in cooperation with the Arab League, all have as much or more promise with less risk than does the far more dramatic gesture of a no-fly zone.

Veteran journalist Robert Fisk argues that the motive for these military strikes is racist and imperialist rather than benevolent:

Yes, Gaddafi is completely bonkers, flaky, a crackpot on the level of Ahmadinejad of Iran and Lieberman of Israel – who once, by the way, drivelled on about how Mubarak could "go to hell" yet quaked with fear when Mubarak was indeed hurtled in that direction. And there is a racist element in all this.

The Middle East seems to produce these ravers – as opposed to Europe, which in the past 100 years has only produced Berlusconi, Mussolini, Stalin and the little chap who used to be a corporal in the 16th List Bavarian reserve infantry, but who went really crackers when he got elected in 1933 – but now we are cleaning up the Middle East again and can forget our own colonial past in this sandpit. And why not, when Gaddafi tells the people of Benghazi that "we will come, 'zenga, zenga' (alley by alley), house by house, room by room." Surely this is a humanitarian intervention that really, really, really is a good idea. After all, there will be no "boots on the ground".

Of course, if this revolution was being violently suppressed in, say, Mauritania, I don't think we would be demanding no-fly zones. Nor in Ivory Coast, come to think of it. Nor anywhere else in Africa that didn't have oil, gas or mineral deposits or wasn't of importance in our protection of Israel, the latter being the real reason we care so much about Egypt.

Fisk's analysis rings true to me. As horrified as I am by Qaddafi's atrocities, when I think back over the history of US military intervention in my lifetime, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan (to mention a very few instances), it has not gone well. Before this weekend, my country was already immersed in two undeclared wars. Now, as John Nichols points out, we've got a third. Nichols says that the results are as corrosive to our own democracy as they are destructive to the people we are purporting to help. I agree with him.

Finally, this morning Democracy Now! broadcast an interesting analysis of how the US government has orchestrated the war against Qaddafi under the cloak of a UN Security Council Resolution.

US government censors Afghan woman activist

Can it happen here? reports that the US government has refused to allow Afghani feminist and peace activist Malalai Joya to enter the US to promote her book A Woman among Warlords. As blogger Janinsanfran notes:

Apparently the current State Department doesn't want people in this country to hear from a distinctive Afghan voice -- a woman's voice at that -- opposing our war in Afghanistan. Several Congress members are pushing for a reversal of the denial of Joya's visa.

Now that we live in age of YouTube, visa deniers have a harder time keeping us from hearing people they wish they could silence. Here's a clip of Malalai Joya taking on some folks who are a lot more dangerous than the average US consular flunky. At Afghanistan's Constitutional Assembly nearly a decade ago, she denounced war lords who intended to keep their power by becoming politicians under the newly imposed regime. Her daring act was electrifying; the response was ugly.

Here is the video Janinsanfran posted so you can judge for yourself:

Who's afraid of radical feminism?

Jonathan Dean has an interesting analysis of radical feminism in the context of the case of Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who faces sexual assault charges in Sweden. Dean questions the idea that Assange couldn't get a fair trial because Sweden's chief prosecutor is allegedly a "malicious radical feminist."

So what is radical feminism? Historically, radical feminism was a specific strand of the feminist movement that emerged in Europe and North America in the late 1960s. Distinctive to this strand was its emphasis on the role of male violence against women in the creation and maintenance of gender inequality (as argued by the likes of Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon). And while a minority of radical feminists – most infamously Valerie Solanas – were hostile to men, radical feminism was much more instrumental in generating widespread support for campaigns around issues such as rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment.

However, in Britain at least, radical feminism has never been particularly dominant, partly because – in the eyes of many socialist and postcolonial feminists – it has been insufficiently attentive to the intersections between gender inequality and other categories, such as race and class. So Rod Liddle's peddling of the tiresome rightwing idea that radical feminism has destroyed the family, along with Dominic Raab's assault on "feminist bigotry" and the Vatican's efforts to address "distortions" caused by radical feminism, rest on at least two implausible assumptions. First, they reduce feminism to a horrifying caricature that never really existed and second, they make the frankly bizarre suggestion that radical feminism is the dominant ideology of our times. It would seem that not only do these radical feminists commit the outrage of not wearing makeup, but they use the time this frees up to consolidate their world domination. Or an alternative explanation might be that these are the paranoid anxieties of fearful anti-feminists.

Iowa woman jailed for thinking about abortion

Thanks to Feminist Peace Network for a link to this story about an Iowa woman who was thrown in jail after confiding some of her thoughts and fears about her pregnancy to an emergency room nurse. Christine Taylor had become light-headed and fallen down a flight of stairs in her home. As blogger fiver explains:

Yes, as if Ms. Taylor's existing problems weren't enough, the anti-choice zealots got her jailed for 2 days for thinking of having an abortion, even though she voluntarily went to the ER to assure the health of her fetus. Funny how "pro-lifers" have never met a victim they don't want to punish. After three weeks, the District Attorney declined to prosecute, but not because of the obvious encroachment on a woman's right to choose (similar laws for which this woman was held exist in 37 states), but because she was only in her second trimester, and not third when she fell.

Fiver provides a link to the original story on change.org.

Register NOW to vote in OKC council runoff April 5

If you live in Oklahoma City Council Ward 2, you'll have the opportunity to vote in a runoff election April 5. The candidates will be BancFirst Senior Vice President Charlie Swinton and Dr. Ed Shadid. If you're not already registered to vote, you need to have your voter registration form postmarked by tomorrow, March 11, if you want to vote in this run-off.  According to the Oklahoma Elections Board "Voter registration applications are available at your County Election Board, post offices, tag agencies, libraries and many other public locations."  Or you can download a voter registration form right here.

How can you tell if you're in Ward 2?  In general, Ward 2 is bounded on the north by Northwest 122nd Street, on the south by Northwest 23rd Street. For the most part, the eastern boundary is I-235, and the western boundary is Portland Avenue. If you want to be sure, you can consult this handy map.

Why does OKC have so little citizen involvement?

Last week's Oklahoma City election for city council members was, by local standards, a high-profile event. The Sooner Tea Party and the firefighter's union jointly supported two candidates. The local business elite had its own de facto slate of candidates, funded in part by the shadowy Committee for Oklahoma City Momentum.

All this excitement drew droves of voters to the polls March 1, according to NewsOK.com. In this case, "droves of voters" translates into oh, eleven or twelve percent of registered voters.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Oklahoma City has less citizen involvement in local government than any place I've ever lived. Is it because ordinary people who want to be politically involved use their limited time to work on state and national issues? It is because of a lack of high-quality journalism covering local political issues?

I moved here from western Oregon nine years ago, and frankly, I don't get nostalgic for the place very often. It rained eight months out of the year, and despite its liberal reputation, it was infested with neo-Nazis and the anti-gay, anti-woman Oregon Citizens Alliance. But one thing Oregon did have--at least in Eugene, where I lived--was widespread citizen involvement in local issues. The business elite usually triumphed in the end, but at least we put up a fight.

As far as I can tell, there were two concrete differences between Oklahoma City and Eugene.

First, in Eugene, city council meetings were held in the evening. When controversial issues came up, those meetings were sometimes very well attended. In Oklahoma City, by contrast, city council meetings take place on Tuesday mornings. In all the years I've been here, I've never been to a city council meeting. Have you?

Second, in Eugene, city council elections are held in even years, when voters are also voting for statewide and national elected offices. In Oklahoma City, city council members are elected in off-year elections when fewer voters are likely to head to the polls.

But are these two things causes of low citizen participation, or are they an effect?  I would sure appreciate any comments from anyone who has some insight into this situation.

Mainstream Politics 101

Rachel Maddow actually makes a good case that the two mainstream political parties are not exactly like. Who would have thunk it?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Economic Justice 101

I like this post that commondreams.org picked up from the Guardian. Richard D. Wolff, an emeritus economics professor form the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, explains how lower taxes on the ultra-rich have made life worse for the rest of us. For instance:

the richest Americans take the money they don't pay in taxes and invest it in hedge funds and with stockbrokers to make profitable investments. These days, that often means speculating in oil and food, which drives up their prices, undermines economic recovery for the mass of Americans, and produces acute suffering around the globe. Those hedge funds and brokers likewise use part of the money rich people save from taxes to speculate in the US stock markets. That has recently driven stock prices higher: hence, the stock market recovery. And that mostly helps – you guessed it – the richest Americans who own most of the stocks.

The one kind of significant wealth average Americans own, if they own any, is their individual home. And home values remain deeply depressed: no recovery there.

Cutting the taxes on the rich in no way guarantees social benefits from what they may choose to do with their money. Indeed, their choices can worsen economic conditions for the mass of people. These days, that is exactly what they are doing.

The whole post is well worth reading. Professor Wolff also has an interesting web site.

In midst of OKC council election weirdness, I'm voting for Ed Shadid

Time flies when you're trying to get used to grad school, so I almost forgot that the Oklahoma City Council election is coming up on Tuesday. Council races come on a rotating schedule. This year seats are up for grabs in Wards 2, 5, 6, and 8. You can find a ward map here.

This year's city council race is bizarre, even by Oklahoma standards. In most of the races, voters are getting the moral equivalent of a choice between Lord Voldemort and Count Dracula.

Fortunately, in Ward 2 I've got a better choice. I'll be voting for Ed Shadid. Last fall, Shadid was an independent candidate for the Oklahoma State legislature, running with the endorsement of the Green Party. While Shadid isn't playing up his Green Party ties in the nonpartisan Oklahoma City Council election, I expect him to follow a similar progressive agenda. One or two of the other candidates in the crowded Ward 2 race also seem appealing, but Shadid seems to have the most resources and the best chance of defeating corporate candidate Charlie Swinton.

Meanwhile, in Wards 6 and 8, Sooner Tea Party supporters Adrian Van Manen and Cliff Hearron from Windsor Hills Baptist Church are challenging the incumbents. In Ward 5, incumbent Brian Walters is also an ultraconservative with Tea Party sympathies.(You may remember Walters's vote last year to oppose granting a permit for the gay pride parade.) According to newsok.com, the right-wing candidates in Wards 6 and 8 are supported by a PAC that was established by Oklahoma City firefighters. Is anyone else having a WTF moment here? The firefighters union is apparently supporting these guys because of their opposition to MAPS3. Okay, but the Tea Party isn't exactly a pro-union organization. Haven't the firefighters kept track of what's going on in Wisconsin?

So on one side, you have the populist right wing trying to win control of the City Council, and on the other side, you've got the the city's business elite lining up behind its own slate of candidates. This would be BancFirst Senior Vice President Charlie Swinton in Ward 2,  accountant David Greenwell in Ward 5, employment agency owner Meg Salyer in Ward 6 and retired OG&E Vice Chairman Pat Ryan in Ward 8. According to the Oklahoma Gazette (see ward links in this paragraph), all four of these candidates have received $5,000 donations from Chesapeake Energy's PAC and Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon. There is also a shadowy PAC called Committee for Oklahoma City Momentum that is sending out campaign materials supporting the election of all four candidates. The Chamber of Commerce has denied contributing money to Oklahoma City Momentum. I finally found the group's web site, but two days before the election it is still "under construction." You can see ads the group has placed on newsok.com here and here.

If I lived in Ward 6, I would most likely vote for Jessica Holstein, who unfortunately doesn't seem to be running a very well-organized campaign. The big news of  her campaign is that the Gazette decided to post some old and embarrassing photos of the candidate. Just when I thought the Gazette was trying to be an actual newspaper.

A great reason to get out on Saturday night

 It's been fun, but Snowpocalypse 2011 seems to be almost over. By Saturday, roads should be open and life should be almost back to normal (at least for a little while). If you're in Oklahoma City, or can get to Oklahoma City, here's a great way to celebrate: OKC's own Lauren Zuniga will be the featured performer at a poetry cafe at Church of the Open Arms on Saturday night (that's Feb. 5th) from 7-9 p.m. The poetry cafe is a benefit for the Oklahoma Coalition For Reproductive Justice.

January 22nd marked the 38th anniversary of the 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which for the first time guaranteed women in the early months of pregnancy the right to obtain an abortion. Both nationally and in Oklahoma, that right is under increasing attack. In 2010, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice formed to defend abortion rights, and met with a surprising degree of success. The poetry cafe is free, (and there will be refreshments), but if you can make a donation, 100 percent of all money collected will go to support the work of OCRJ.

In the interests of full disclosure, I ought to say that I am one of the poets who will be reading that evening.

Hope to see you there.

Thoughts on WikiLeaks

This started out as something I did for an online class assignment, and with some minor modifications, I thought it was worth re-posting:

As citizens of a democracy, we have responsibility to supervise the government bodies that act in our name. One of the major difficulties with official secrecy is that it transforms the relationship between citizens and government. When the government keeps secrets, I am no longer able to fulfill my responsibility as a citizen. Secrecy might allow government officials to perform necessary tasks -- but it might also allow them to support foreign dictatorships or collude in the murder of civilians. Without transparency, I simply have to trust them to do the right thing. Secrecy allows the government to become my master rather than my servant.

But it seems to me that this is a question of fact as well as of theory. In other words, what are the actual effects of the WikiLeaks disclosure?  Have catastrophes resulted from this release of classified information, or has it enhanced the functioning of democracy? I suspect that some of you will disagree with me, but so far I think the results have been encouraging.

For instance, documents found on Wikileaks may have helped inspire the overthrow of the corrupt and authoritarian government of Tunisia. In a sort of chain reaction, the uprising in Tunisia seems to have inspired pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt. It looks to me as if the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks inspired the Guardian in the UK to collaborate with al Jazeera TV to release the Palestine Papers. (Controversy is good business for journalists. It increases readership.) The Palestine Papers, in turn, have offered important new information about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and inspired new hope for resolution of that conflict. Finally, the WikiLeaks controversy has opened up much needed discussion of the issue of government secrecy, as evidenced by this Time magazine article and also by this thoughtful post.

Julian Assange may not be an admirable person, (and I think that the rape charges against him are worthy of investigation) but on the whole, it seems to me that WikiLeaks has done good work.

Unions help counter corporate power

Ellen Dannin persuasively demonstrates the need for workers to have unions in this post on Truthout. Dannin points out that

Today, we are reliving the dynamics of unchecked corporate power that led to the Great Depression. The Great Recession could not have been a surprise to anyone who was paying attention to the erosion of pay and working conditions and to the steady increase in poverty and unemployment.

We make a grave mistake when we blame unions for doing their job - for being a counterbalance to corporate power. Unions have a legal obligation to be the disloyal opposition. When there is no check on the steady growth of corporate power, we lose the balance and equality necessary to democracy. In fact, unions promote citizenship in the workplace and in their communities. Unions give workers rights of due process and equal protection in their workplaces.

The whole post is well worth reading.

Think globally, act locally March 1

 Some of my best friends don't vote as a matter of principle. They say they that voting merely decorates an oppressive system with the illusion of popular consent. If you have a philosophical objection to voting, well then, don't vote. I have no argument with you. In fact, about 47 percent of the time, I'm inclined to agree with you.

On the other hand, I have other friends who would read the paragraph above and disagree with it so strongly that they would jump up and down in frustration. They would cite the history of people of color and women who fought difficult and dangerous battles to gain the right to cast a ballot. Friends, I have no argument with you, either. In fact, if you live in Oklahoma City, I am writing this post specifically for you, to let you know about the City Council elections scheduled for March 1.

If elections really are important, local elections are possibly the most important elections we have. City governments deal with issues that affect the lives of ordinary people on a day-to-day basis. City governments are potentially easier to reach and to influence than governmental bodies on a state or national level. And in Oklahoma it seems--at least in Oklahoma City--the city government attracts very little attention and draws very little participation. For instance, the vote on the MAPS III tax proposal--which taxed the city's poorest citizens to benefit the most affluent citizens--drew 31 percent of the vote, according to NewsOk.com. This was about twice the usual turnout for a city election.

Business as usual in city government means government by the rich, for the rich. If we want that to change, we need to participate. And given the abysmally low number of people who vote in city elections, if progressives were to educate ourselves about local candidates and issues and make an effort to get ourselves to the polls, we would have a chance of creating real change.

So, here's a little bit of information to start out with. As I said, the next City Council election is March 1, with seats from wards 2, 5, 6, and 8 up for grabs. If you need to know which ward you live in, you can check out this handy ward map. If you would like to find out who your current City Council member is, you can check this page. If you think you might like to run for the City Council yourself, you can find the information about how to do so here. But you need to get cracking. The deadline is coming up very soon.

If you aren't already registered to vote at your current address, you will need to register by 24 days before the election. If I counted right, the deadline would be February 4. But don't trust my ability to count. Get it done as soon as you can. You can download a registration form here. If you're planning to be out of town on March 1, you can sign up for an absentee ballot.

I'll try to write more about this issue as the time approaches. But don't wait for me. Go find some stuff out and report back.

Thank you, and good night.

Is this 2011 or 1984?

The rulers of the dystopian society portrayed in George Orwell's 1984 had a talent for using language that turned reality on its head. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery, and so forth. We know that such unfortunate manipulation of meaning is not confined to the world of fiction. Today's electronic news brings two examples:

Spinifex Press has discovered an alarming blog post suggesting that Pope Benedict considers child sexual abuse to be "normal." The blog reposted a December 21 article from the Belfast Telegraph. “In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said, according to the Telegraph. “It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.” The Telegraph further reports that victims of sexual abuse by priests were outraged by these remarks. One can only imagine.

Meanwhile, the National Partnership for Women and Families reports that US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn't believe that the 14th Amendment prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. At least, that's what Scalia told California Lawyer magazine:

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?
Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

The NPWF notes that the New York Times found this view "jarring." The Times went on to note that

No less dismaying is his notion that women, gays and other emerging minorities should be left at the mercy of the prevailing political majority when it comes to ensuring fair treatment. It is an “originalist” approach wholly antithetical to the framers’ understanding that vital questions of people’s rights should not be left solely to the political process. It also disrespects the wording of the Equal Protection Clause, which is intentionally broad, and its purpose of ensuring a fairer society.

On the other hand, should Scalia's strange view of the 14th Amendment prevail, it would all of a sudden become crystal clear that we really do need the Equal Rights Amendment.

The down side to DADT repeal

This post on Truthout just brightened my morning. Blogger Jess Guh gives a cogent analysis of the drawbacks of  the recent repeal of the US military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy for gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members. As Guh observes, "yet another oppressed minority group has been pulled into being exploited by the American military-industrial complex."

Guh asks whether she is the "only queer person in the country that is sad about the repeal of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'?" I would like to assure her that she is not. Whether she knows it or not, Guh's principled criticism of the US military is not something new. Once upon a time, there was a radical lesbian feminist movement that worked to make the world very, very different.

Like most stories that begin "once upon a time," this one is an oversimplification. For one thing, that movement isn't really gone. (That's a blog post for another time.) For another thing, it wasn't just one movement, it was at least 30 of them. We argued about sexuality, about the best way to get rid of racism, about whether to work with male allies, about dozens of other things. But we were clear that we wanted the world to change in fundamental ways. We didn't just want a piece of the pie, we wanted a whole new recipe. We wanted to get rid of patriarchy, capitalism, US imperialism, and to create an egalitarian world. (I pause after writing that sentence. My Facebook friends--some of whom don't know me very well--are going to see this post. Okay friends, if you didn't know about my radical past, I suppose it's time you found out.)

Sometime during the early 1990s, something shifted. As I recall, it started with the first Gulf War, which, if nothing else, was a great propaganda victory for then-President George H.W. Bush. Or maybe the change was inspired a rash of anti-gay ballot measures in places like Colorado and Oregon. All of a sudden, it seemed that instead of working for radical change, everyone wanted to join the army and get married. In such dangerous and rightward drifting times, I suppose it was a natural response for many activists to try not to appear too subversive to the established order.

But the established order has some fundamental problems of injustice and unfairness, and now new generations of activists are discovering this. As Jess Guh writes:

The American military's track record of inclusion is poor by even the lowest of standards. Black Americans were first allowed to serve in the military during the Revolutionary War, when Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, promised freedom to any runaway slave that fought for the British army. George Washington, needing more soldiers, followed suit. I'll let you guess how many of them actually received their promised freedom. Due to fears of giving Black folks weapons and racist doubts that they were mentally capable of being good soldiers, they were not even allowed to officially serve and enlist until 1862 during the Civil War, despite having fought courageously since the revolutionary war. During WWI, US military leaders decided they would rather use black units for suicide missions where they would likely die, instead of sending their white counterparts. For their valiant efforts, no awards or citations would be given to those soldiers of color until 1996, nearly 80 years later.

This philosophy of contempt and "we'll let you serve, but only on our terms" is not limited to race. Women, even those who meet the physical ability requirements, are officially banned from ground combat. But once again, when bodies are needed, the military conveniently changes its mind. In Iraq and Afghanistan, it's been well known that due to manpower shortages,women have been serving in front-line positions identical to those of men, yet there has been no budge in the official policy. And lest you even entertain the notion that the ban represents some sort of arcane but well-intended form of chivalry, consider that a 2003 survey of female veterans found that 30 percent reported being raped while in the military (women serving in Iraq were reportedly being hospitalized for and even dying of dehydration because they would avoid drinking water in order not to have to make runs to the lavatory alone at night). That's not even counting cases of sexual assault and harassment. In 2007, only 181 out of 2,212 reported sexual assaults were referred to courts martial. The equivalent arrest rate for these charges among civilians is five times that.

It's well worth your while to read Guh's entire post, and then to visit her blog.

Time to stop History from repeating himself

Nearly 100 years ago, 146 garment workers, mostly women, burned to death at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Workers could not escape because the fire escape doors to this sweatshop were locked. This catastrophe inspired a memorable speech by labor activist Rose Schneiderman.and served as a symbol of the dangers and indignities suffered by workers. According to Wikipedia, the fire also galvanized the International Ladies Garment Workers Union which,

(w)orking with local Tammany Hall officials such as Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner, and progressive reformers such as Frances Perkins, the future Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt administration, who had witnessed the fire from the street below, pushed for comprehensive safety and workers’ compensation laws. The ILGWU leadership formed bonds with those reformers and politicians that would continue for another forty years, through the New Deal and beyond. As a result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Engineers was founded soon after in New York City, October 14, 1911.

Although unions have been under attack and workers' rights and protections have eroded during the right-wing backlash of the last 30 years, I'd like to think that a catastrophe such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire would not occur again. I'd like to think that this fire would be replayed only as a historical exhibit, as part of a work of literature such as Beyond the Pale, by Elana Dykewomon or as the occasion for a commemorative event.

But no. Events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire are still taking place today. We know that US manufacturing jobs have been moved to places where workers have even fewer protections than we do in the United States. The results are predictable. According to this post on change.org, those of us who are busily purchasing fashionable clothing as holiday gifts do not know that

the young, destitute women in Bangladesh who produce those clothes in almost slave-like conditions aren’t feeling the holiday spirit after more than two dozen of them were burned to death last week.

28 workers were killed when a massive blaze broke out in an unsafe, multi-story sweatshop known as the "That's It Sportswear" factory in the Ashulia industrial park just north the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka. With a number of the exits blocked, most of the victims were burned to death, some trampled to death, some killed by suffocation and others jumped from the flames to their death. Several dozen more suffered severe burns.

According to post author Benjamin Joffe-Walt, the factory, owned by the Ha-Meem group, supplies clothing to more than a dozen US clothing companies and retail stores. The December 14 fire was the latest in "a series of deadly incidents in clothing factories in Bangladesh." For instance, a similar incident in February took the lives of 21 workers. Joffee-Walt also reports that:

Last week's fire also came just days after deadly protests over clothing manufacturers' failure to implement a required 80 percent increase in the minimum wage to 3,000 taka a month (about $42). That's right folks, the workers who were burned alive while making $25 T-Shirts were likely being paid some $24 a month, less than $1 a day.

To sign an online petition calling on US clothing companies and retailers to demand better conditions for the workers, follow this link. More suggestions for activism can be found here. One Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was too many. We don't need any more.

Bernie Sanders is right

Social media and mainstream news sources have been all a-twitter about Senator Bernie Sanders’s long speech on the floor of the US Senate on Friday against the flawed tax cut deal worked out between Republicans and President Obama.

I haven't been able to find a good summary of the major points made by Sanders in a speech that lasted more than eight hours. But there was a link to this Rachel Maddow commentary on Sanders's Facebook page, and here is a link to the transcript of the entire speech. Here's a brief sample from close to the beginning:

Economists on both ends of the political spectrum believe that if we are serious about addressing the horrendous economic crisis we are in now, 9.8 percent unemployment, there are far more effective ways of creating the jobs we have to create than those tax proposals. With corporate America already sitting on close to $2 trillion cash on hand, it is not that our friends in corporate America don't have any money, we have to help them. They have $2 trillion cash on hand. The problem is not in my view that corporate taxes are too high; it is that the middle class simply doesn't have the money to purchase the goods and products that make our economy go and create jobs.

I think if our goal is to create the millions and millions of jobs we need, and if our goal is to make our country stronger internationally in a very tough global economy, I would much prefer, and I think most economists would agree with me that a better way to do that, to create the millions of jobs we have to create, is to invest heavily in our infrastructure.

If you would like to tell your own US senators and representative how you feel about the tax cut deal, you can do that via usa.gov.