People Before Profit blog

White House Regulation Review Not Fueled by Deregulation Ideology

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:45:00 +0000

As part of an unprecedented White House-ordered regulatory review process, the federal government has undertaken a "look back" process to identify and eliminate anachronistic, redundant or unwarranted regulations. Obama administration officials say the move is not about ideologically motivated deregulation but about streamlining agencies and eliminating waste.

Federal agencies must use a transparent process of rule-making that uses the best available science, a cost-benefit analysis, must be accessible and the least burdensome, according to an Executive Order issued by President Obama earlier this year.

Overseeing the effort is Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein.

Since the President's order, 30 federal agencies and cabinet-level departments have scoured tens of thousands of pages of regulations. These agencies turned in hundreds of ideas for rule changes, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The process included a period of public comment.

According to Sunstein, the process expects to save billions for both taxpayers and businesses. He cited an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule created decades ago that includes milk and dairy containers in a federal regulation that protects Americans from the hazards of oil spills. According to the the EPA website, the new rule, which has been approved as a result of this process, will exempt dairy containers and focus only on oil and gas company containers. The rule will save dairy farmers $140 million each year.

The EPA will also revise old rules that require gas stations to purchase air pollution vapor recovery systems because modern cars already have equally effective pollution control systems. This revision should save business owners about $670 million over the next 10 years.

Among other rules that have been identified for elimination or revision include a set Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employer reporting rules. According to the Sunstein's office, the elimination of these redundant rules and reporting procedures will save $40 million and 1.9 million work hours. Another new OSHA rule that will streamline hazards classification and labels will save business owners close to $600 million every year.

"This rule is going to save lives," Sunstien told reporters on a conference call, May 26. "But it will also save millions of dollars."

A streamlined Department of Transportation railroad safety equipment rule "would maintain robust railroad safety standards while saving up to $400 million up front and up to $1 billion over 20 years," Sunstein's office reported.

"This change will continue to protect safety," Sunstein said. "That's a top priority."

The Department of Health and Human Services has also proposed eliminating redundant reporting by doctors. According to Sunstein, the current requirements do not provide an additional protections for patients but do add unnecessarily to the workload of workers in doctors' offices.

While some of the ideas have already been put into place, most of the proposals will be posted on a White House website for continued public comment.

"The President's Executive Order contains a number of principles and directives in it that are designed to go beyond the polarizing, anachronistic, decades-old debate over regulation," Sunstein added.

The financial and labor benefits of the new regulatory process is expected to far outweigh the benefits of regulatory changes in the first two years of the Bush administration, which favored indiscriminate deregulation for its campaign supporters.

While labor and cost-saving rules changes will earn some praise from the business community, the aim of the process, as the White House repeatedly pointed out, isn't to appease or appeal to any special interest groups. Rather, the goal is efficiency and the protection of public health and safety.

Sunstein pointed to new regulations by the Food and Drug Administration to protect consumers from salmonella poisoning, new EPA regulations on pollution and fuel economy, and new healthcare regulations to point out that the administrations's review process isn't an ideologically motivated move.

Sunstein could have also mentioned recent EPA steps to strengthen regulations on carbon and mercury emissions, its plan to boost CAFE standards later this year or its tougher requirements on mountaintop mining to show that the administration's goal in this process isn't standard "deregulation" as favored by conservative administrations and the business community.

"What we're determined to do here is to change the regulatory culture in a way that will get beyond polarized debate between those who celebrate regulation and those who decry regulation," Sunstein explained. The plan is to ensure that regulations, or the lack thereof, are based on empirical evidence, science, practical needs, and qualitative and quantitative cost-benefit analysis. This will sometimes mean new rules for certain situations and revision or elimination of rules in others.

While the next step is to open the proposals up to public comment, some media reports indicate that special business interest groups have formed innocuous sounding front groups to manipulate the public comment process.

A safeguard against this, Sunstein said, was that all public comments are a matter of public record and can be tracked. Another protection against cheating on the public comment process will be scrutiny of the the proposed ideas based not on who wants it but on whether or not it is a good idea.

Photo by Chas Redmond/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Prison Lobbyists Help Spread Anti-Immigrant Laws to U.S. South

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:27:00 +0000

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News

ATLANTA, Georgia, May 26, 2011 (IPS) - Earlier this month, Georgia became the third state to enact some of the most anti-immigrant legislation in recent U.S. history, when Governor Nathan Deal, a Republican, signed the bill, HB 87.

Among other things, the bill allows law enforcement officials to ask suspicious individuals to prove that they are U.S. citizens. In practice, critics say, "suspicious looking" is another way of saying "Hispanic", raising concerns that the law encourages racial profiling.

The law is modeled on Arizona's anti-immigrant law, passed last summer. Utah became the second state earlier this year. Both state's laws are currently held up in the courts, where federal judicial circuits in the Western U.S. have not been favourable on the grounds that the laws are state or local interference with federal immigration policy.

The laws have already led to statewide boycotts in Georgia and are expected to bring legal challenges as well. In part, national lobbyists targeted Georgia because they wanted to set up a court battle in a more conservative eastern U.S. federal judicial circuit.

Meanwhile, supporters of the bill are celebrating, including the right-wing Republican base that supported the bill, as well as the for-profit prison corporations which stand to profit from the massive influx of suspected undocumented immigrants through the private prison system.

"Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), we know they have lobbyists here [at the legislature]," said Larry Pellegrini of Georgia Rural Urban Summit. CCA is one of the largest for-profit prison corporations in the U.S.

"They [CCA] will benefit by the legislation. They have a corporate stake in it around the country," Pellegrini told IPS.

Pellegrini also noted that the lobbying effort to pass anti- immigration laws in Georgia was part of a national effort.

One national lobbying group that was instrumental in bringing together business interests and lawmakers was the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

It was an ALEC task force, which included a representative from a private prison - along with lawmakers from Arizona and other states - who helped draft Arizona's immigration bill, which became a template for Georgia's law as well.

According to CCA reports obtained by National Public Radio, the corporation believes that immigration detention is its next big growth market.

CCA's earnings were up 15 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period a year ago.

CCA reported earnings of 40.3 million dollars, or 37 cents per share, on revenue of 428 million dollars in first quarter of 2011, according to the Nashville Business Journal newspaper. CCA's revenue for 2009 was 1.7 billion dollars.

The federal government pays over 60 dollars per detainee per day to house men at CCA's Stewart Detention Center, the largest immigration detention centre in the U.S., located in Lumpkin, Georgia.

CCA's top management in Tennessee contributed the largest block of out-of-state campaign contributions received by Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer. Brewer employs two former CCA lobbyists as aides who assisted with signing Arizona's SB 1070 into law.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, CCA spent 770,000 dollars lobbying at the federal level in 2009 and has spent as much as 3.4 million since 2005.

Georgia State Sen. Donald Balfour, a key Republican supporter of Georgia's HB 87, in 2006, 2007, and 2008 received 2,000 dollars each year in donations from CCA; in 2009 he received 1,000; and in 2010, 750.

Governor Deal received from CCA 5,000 dollars in 2010 for the General Election. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has received at least 7,000 dollars from CCA since 2006.

Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers has received at least 3,500 dollars from CCA since 2008.

When recently asked about the Georgia bill, U.S. President Barack Obama said, "It is a mistake for states to try to do this piecemeal. We can't have 50 different immigration laws around the country. Arizona tried this and a federal court already struck them down."

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia are "seriously considering a legal challenge," Azadeh Shahshahani, National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project Director at the Georgia ACLU told IPS.

"We believe the law is unconstitutional," she said. "It encourages racial profiling and interferes with federal authority to enforce federal immigration laws."

Meanwhile, key Republican legislators remain undaunted.

"I applaud Governor Deal's signing of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011, which includes numerous common-sense reforms aimed at addressing the social and economic consequences in Georgia resulting from the federal government's inability to secure our nation's borders," State Rep. Matt Ramsey said in a statement.

"HB 87 is a comprehensive and necessary effort to enforce the rule of law and protect the taxpayers of Georgia from being forced to subsidize the presence of nearly 500,000 illegal aliens in our state. Current economic conditions have made it painfully obvious that the state of Georgia literally cannot afford to continue this broken system," Ramsey said.

But not all Republicans were thrilled about the new laws, particularly Republican legislators representing rural Georgia districts. Many Georgia farmers are believed to rely upon low-cost immigrant labour to perform tasks like picking onions and plucking chickens.

Time will tell how the new immigration laws - even the very passage of them, whether the courts uphold them or not - will impact immigrants and their families living in Georgia - that is, whether they will stay here or decide to take their chances in another U.S. state.

End Oil Subsidies to Help Fight Deficits

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:19:00 +0000

In mid-May, the Senate considered a proposal to end some of the subsidies for oil and gas companies that cost taxpayers $4 billion a year. Though a majority of the Senate voted to support this idea, it failed to get the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. But ending these subsidies should still be a part of our drive to rein in the budget deficit.

If oil and gas companies were struggling, if jobs were at risk, if ending these subsidies threatened to increase the price families have to pay for gasoline or fuel oil, if it would create a drag on our fragile economic recovery – if any of those things were true, this might be a closer call.

But large oil companies, far from struggling, are massively profitable. Experts – and the oil companies’ own lobbyists – tell us that this proposal will not affect gas prices. Struggling families and small businesses will not pay more because we end these subsidies. Oil production, and therefore the jobs it creates, will not decline. And by ending them, we can help close a budget deficit we all agree is a significant problem.

Let’s look at gas prices first. Prices at the pump are hurting Michigan families. Ending these subsidies won’t alter the economics of oil prices. I and many of my colleagues fear that speculation in oil markets is boosting the price of oil, and subsidies have nothing to do with that. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, and even the chief tax expert for the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group for the oil industry, have said that ending these subsidies would not affect the global economics of oil. That’s because, while $4 billion a year in subsidies sounds like a lot to you and me, it’s small relative to the massive global marketplace for oil.

It is also small relative to the profits oil companies have reaped. The five companies that would be affected by the proposal to end these handouts made a combined $76 billion in profit in 2010. From 2001 to 2010, their combined profit approaches $1 trillion. With oil prices sky-high for the foreseeable future, these record profits are likely to continue. These companies do not need taxpayer assistance.

And at the same time, the money we spend helping them is increasing the budget deficit – a deficit that some of my colleagues say is such a severe problem that we must make dramatic reductions in health care for our seniors, support for our college students, Head Start for our youngest students and other draconian cuts. We can’t continue tax handouts to hugely profitable companies, on one hand, while threatening big cuts to important programs on the other.

We must address our deficit problem. But if we’re to get serious about it, we need to eliminate unnecessary tax breaks, and if we can’t tackle such an obvious example of wasteful spending as this one, further reform is unlikely.

When the CEOs of major oil companies testified recently before the Senate Finance Committee, they said they want to be treated just like everybody else. I say, fine, let’s do that. Let’s expect massively profitable oil companies to pay the taxes they fairly owe. And let’s expect those companies to give a little bit as we address the budget deficit, just as we ask middle-class American families to give a little bit.

The Senate failed, for the moment, to end these subsidies. But the debate over the deficit is far from over. In the coming weeks, we will continue to seek solutions that bring down the deficit without doing grave damage to programs that working families depend on. And putting an end to oil and gas subsidies should be one of those solutions.

We often hear that our deficits are unsustainable. I agree. We hear that the problem is urgent. I agree. We can act, and we can end these subsidies. Now is the time for all of us to act, to end billions of dollars in handouts to massively profitable corporations and use that money to help put our fiscal house in order.

Photo by futureatlas.org/ cc by 2.0/Flickr

Run Sarah, Run

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:03:00 +0000

As media reports suggest former reality TV star and Fox News personality Sarah Palin may be gearing up for a run at the Republican Party's presidential nomination (or at least another publicity tour), new polls show her public approval ratings in the tank.

A recent Quinnipiac poll showed that in the field of potential and extremely dull Republican nominees, Palin polls well – double digits, probably in the top three. However, almost six in ten Republicans – that's Republicans – said they would never vote for her.

In a recent Sachs/Mason-Dixon poll, a majority of Americans said they would choose to have lunch with President Obama, while a mere 16 percent said Palin was their preferred lunch date. Only about one in four Republicans – that's Republicans – liked the idea of eating a meal with her.

“Overwhelmingly, Americans find President Barack Obama to be the most likable and lunch-worthy date compared to any of those hoping take his job in the 2012 election,” said Ron Sachs, president of Ron Sachs Communications. “There is no baloney in this simple truth: the ‘lunch pal’ poll very likely reflects the significant advantage President Obama enjoys heading into his re-election against a party that has no ‘candidate du jour.’”

Palin has done nothing to distinguish herself in the four years since her disastrous run as the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008. Apart from quitting the governorship of Alaska, a ghost-written book that reads like her version of the blame game, a TV reality show that exploited her family, and frequent snarky and inconsequential commentary on Fox News, Palin may be the most famous Republican politician known for accomplishing nothing.

One can see the campaign commercials now. While President Obama was stopping Somali pirates, killing OBL, stopping oil spills, turning economic recession into recovery, stopping the swine flu, and providing healthcare to 31 million uninsured Americans, Sarah Palin quit her job as governor because the pressure was too great. While Palin was exploiting her family on a TV reality show, President Obama was fighting to make the economy work for working families. As President Obama tackled Wall Street, credit card, and student loan reforms, Sarah Palin was busy advocating the end of Medicare. While she was house shopping in Arizona, President Obama was reducing nuclear weapons and trying to forge Middle East peace.

Further, her old stand-by attacks on President Obama simply don't work well anymore. She can't believably challenge his religious background or his citizenship as she likely would as a real candidate. As a presidential candidate, she will try to paint President Obama as the friend of Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, gays (and other constituencies that Republicans tend to either ignore or actively despise) at the expense of whites, straights, and men. The point will be to try to increase the number of the latter who support her ticket.

But as immoral and despicable as racially-driven or hate-driven divisiveness is and as much as all working-class people, regardless of race, sexuality or national origin, may feel that reelection of the President is vital to their interests, the last election showed that President Obama can earn less than a majority of these majority populations and still win the presidency. Only 45 percent or so of whites gave their votes to the President in 2008. This statistic was driven by racially coded messages about "Joe the Plumber" and about the President's racial, national and religious background. As noted before, this rhetoric carries little weight anymore.

Still, as commentator Bill Fletcher noted recently, racism stands as the final campaign card Republicans have. It motivates much of their antipathy for the president and will drive their campaign against him in the next 18 months. As Fletcher notes, "The white nationalist backlash is using Obama as the target but they are attempting to create a white united front to, in their minds, take back the United States."

He adds, "The racist attacks on Obama, then, fuse with the larger right-wing narrative: the United States of America is being lost to white people."

Fletcher points to the drive to disfranchise vulnerable populations in states with strong Republican majorities. "The objective is to reduce the potential anti-Republican electorate. This is being done by demagogically and inaccurately crowing about alleged voter fraud. But this happens through the Right racializing alleged voter fraud."

Splitting this "white nationalist united front" – not just to win an election but to deliver a meaningful blow against white supremacy – will require an even stronger coalition of the forces that supported the President in 2008, and that will take work. Shoe leather and phone lines will have to be worn thin bringing the forces together needed to make this happen. Of course, the President himself still has plenty of time to advance policies, or at least policy positions, that help to bring those forces together, including job-creating economic action, immigration reform, protection of Medicare and Social Security, and speedier closure in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

We know that Sarah Palin seeks leadership of the "white nationalist united front." We know that her resumé in the past four years is a thin compilation of minor feats of celebrity without serious leadership or contributions. We know that Republicans are seriously doubtful and unenthusiastic about her candidacy. But we also know that as a successful nominee she would immediately galvanize major sections of the base that supports President Obama.

So, run Sarah, run.

Illustration by DonkeyHotey/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Why Have Women Been Excluded from Economic and Budget Talks?

Thu, 26 May 2011 09:10:00 +0000

Women were disproportionately impacted by the recession and have regained fewer jobs during the recovery than men. Women are also the most likely to be impacted by proposed cuts to social programs now being considered in Congress. Unfortunately women policy makers, elected officials, and experts seem to have been excluded from the policy-making talks on these matters.

As Congress and the President continue to discuss economic and social policy through their negotiations over the federal budget, women are demanding a seat at what appears to be a boys-only table. In a joint letter to President Obama, the leaders of several major national women's organizations characterized the negotiations over the budget as "the old boys club."

According to the letter, all of the people appointed to participate in the negotiations are men: Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., Senators John Kyl, R-Ariz., Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, Max Baucus, D-Mont., Reps. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Vice President Biden, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Budget Director Jack Lew and economic adviser Gene Sperling.

The budget cuts proposed by Republicans, especially to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and other social programs, will, like the economic crisis, disproportionately impact women. Women are needed in the budget talks to ensure that women again do not feel the biggest brunt of economic and social policy, the organizations' leaders explained.

On a press teleconference call earlier this week, Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women told reporters, "We're concerned that an understanding of the disproportionate impact on women from both the anemic recovery that we're experiencing now and the budget cuts is not at the center of the analysis and must be at the center of the analysis."

Cynthia Harrison, vice-chair of the Women's Committee of 100, described the impact of the recession and the economic policies that have propelled the recession. "Men have gained 81 percent of the new jobs, whereas only 19 percent of those jobs have gone to women," she said.

"As a result, men have recovered 21 percent of their lost jobs, and women have gained back only one-tenth of the jobs they lost during the recession," Harrison added. Economic crises are typically defined as a problem in male unemployment and recovery efforts tend to focus on industries that are typically dominated by men, such as construction and related industries.

In addition, O'Neill explained that retiring or retired women, because of gender- and race-based income gaps, face disparities in retirement security that should be part of the consideration of issues like Republican proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare. "That needs to be part of the consideration when deciding which programs to cut and which people are going to get tax benefits," she said, apparently referring to new proposals by the Republicans to pass trillions in new tax cuts for the richest Americans.

Because women make up a disproportionate minority of federal elected and appointed officials, "it is always important to make a special effort to include the issues and concerns of those excluded from the political process," O'Neill added. "We've got a systemic issue here," she said, referring both to the marginalization of women in the political establishment and the unequal impact of the economic crisis on them.

O'Neill said that she believes there are good people in the administration who are aware of the problem, but steps need to be taken quickly to include women and women's issues in the discussions on the budget. Otherwise, "we're going to go down the road in planning the federal budget that hurts women more and more and more."

Bobbie Brinegar, executive director of the Older Women’s League, re-emphasized how women make up the majority of Medicare and Medicaid recipients, two of the main social programs on the Republican Party's chopping block. In addition, retired and retiring women are less likely to have a pension and more likely to have smaller retirement savings than men, and will rely more heavily on Social Security incomes after leaving the workforce.

"Cuts to these programs would be devastating and place an enormous burden on senior women," Brinegar said.

Changes in the Social Security program should first focus on lifting the cap on payroll taxes on the richest Americans in order to strengthen the program. She said that while Social Security has no impact on the federal deficit, such a reform would stabilize the program for 75 years, longer than any other public or private entity.

Efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit should focus first on down-sizing military spending and raising taxes on the rich, the leaders of these organizations agreed.

So where are women in Washington's budget negotiations?

On the Republican side, they seem to be missing in action. Republican woman members of the House voted unanimously for the Republican plan, known as the Ryan plan, to end Medicare, to slash Medicaid and to gut many major social programs cited as vital to women. Media reports indicate that Republican leaders arm-twisted members of their caucus who rightly feared a backlash by voters against the plan.

After voters organized protests at Republican congressional town halls and the victory by a Democrat in the special election in New York's 26th congressional district, some Senate Republicans became squeamish. Five Republican Senators voted against the Ryan plan, widely seen as the Republican ideological base line plan, while two others did not appear for the May 25th vote.

Only one Republican woman, Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who closely associated herself with the Tea Party, voted for the Ryan plan to end Medicare and provide trillions in new tax cuts for the rich.

Of the four remaining Republican women Senators, three voted no, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison did not vote. None of the Republican women Senators have been apparently involved in high-profile budget talks such as the widely publicized "Gang of Six," and none have been appointed by their party to a new round of talks.

On the other side of the political spectrum, no women congressional Democrats voted for the Ryan plan that would end Medicare and severely slash Madicaid and other programs in order to pay for more tax cuts for the richest Americans. Still, none apparently have been appointed to participate in talks over budget issues.

Brinegar listed four widely recognized women experts on the financial system that could be considered as possible advisors to the President on budget and economic policy:

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair Sheila Bair, the first government regulator to sound the alarm about the financial crisis,
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Schapiro, who was appointed to the commission in 2009,
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Special Advisor Elizabeth Warren, who also served as Congress' top investigator into the collapse of the financial system, and
Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (While Lincoln earned the ire of the labor and civil rights movements for her refusal to support the Employee Free Choice Act, she won praise among progressives generally for a strong proposal to halt Wall Street speculation.)

The organizations who joined the call to bring experienced women leaders and policymakers into the negotiations included the National Organization for Women, the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation, Dialogue on Diversity, the Older Women’s League, U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, Women’s Committee of 100, Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, the Women’s Research and Education Institute, and the YWCA USA.

O'Neill explained that their entreaties to the White House have been heard and it has agreed to meet with leaders of these organizations to discuss these matters further.

Notably, former top White House economic advisor, Christina Romer, left public service last year to return to the academy. While she publicly cited personal issues, insiders suggested that her positions on economic policy were sidelined by another top advisor, Lawrence Summers, who had previously earned sharp criticism for sexist comments as Harvard University President. Some accounts indicated that Summers deliberately sidelined her within White House circles and that his actions may have reflected a sexist attitude. Summers also left the administration late last year.

Romer had pressed for a significantly higher stimulus package at $1.2 trillion and consistently argued that political responses to the economic crisis should focus in no small part on those parts of the workforce with large female components, such as healthcare and education.

Photo by Marilyn Bechtel/PW/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Ideological Hegemony and the Education System

Wed, 25 May 2011 10:52:00 +0000

Original source: Diary of a Heartland Radical

I have been thinking a lot about “ideological hegemony;” how and why we think about the political world in the ways we do. I do so not to add another layer of theory to an already complex set of arguments about economics and politics. Nor am I interested in immobilizing political activists. Rather, I think progressives need to think about how to challenge the ideas that most of us are supposed to accept and believe.

Of course, the primary public institutions that transmit ideas and ways of thinking to people, from the start to the end of their educational careers, are schools. Our friends on the Right know how important it is to shape schools at all levels. Early in this century I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh say on one of his radio programs that “the only institutions we do not yet control are the schools.”

With this as a goal, just the other day we read stories about Koch brothers’ money financing faculty positions at Florida State University in economics (presumably Marxist or structural economists need not apply). Just a week earlier a story broke about rightwing efforts to cut and splice public recordings of lectures in a labor studies class at the University of Missouri to leave the impression that the instructors are advocates for labor violence. Using the methods of vilification and distortions that worked successfully against green jobs advocate Van Jones, community action group ACORN, and Shirley Sherrod, an African American employee of the Department of Agriculture, attacks on education are growing. The use of more sophisticated technologies than in the days of McCarthy or David Horowitz’s print crusades against “dangerous professors” are becoming common.

In addition to smear campaigns and using money to shape hiring practices at universities, access to varieties of knowledge remains very much constrained by institutional and political pressures, from kindergarten through high school and college. For example, we can talk about two subject areas, militarism and economic orthodoxy. Both subjects were prominently featured at an elementary school, Mayflower Mill Elementary School in Lafayette, Indiana.

As the local newspaper, the Journal & Courier reported approvingly on May 12, 2011:

“When Mayflower Mill Elementary students were told they would be able to hear the approaching helicopter that would land behind the school before they saw it, their ears perked up.” Although the noise they first heard was only a delivery truck, soon a Bell UH-1H Huey helicopter which was used in Vietnam, and piloted by a group of veterans, arrived. The pilots were part of an organization committed to maintaining a positive public image of the helicopter.

The helicopter and its veteran pilots spent the day at the elementary school, called by the school “Operation American Pride,”

“After Wednesday’s landing, students broke into groups…..including lessons on flag etiquette and the life of the soldier.” Kids got to go in the helicopter, sit behind a Humvee, and a military truck. The whole day was a celebration of the military, military values, super-patriotism. One student referred to experiencing the helicopter as “cool” and “exhilarating.”

Organizing the day’s activities took combined efforts of members of military families, community donations, support from the Army National Guard and members of Purdue University’s ROTC. Of course, the activities required the full cooperation of teachers, the principal, and members of the school board.

I wonder what would have happened if a parent or brave teacher had proposed that “Operation American Pride” include an historical discussion of the millions of Vietnamese people who died in the U.S. war in that country; or perhaps, if course material include reference to the 57,000 American soldiers who died in the war or the lingering effects of Agent Orange on subsequent generations of Vietnamese and U.S. veterans.

In addition the J & C reported on May 16, that fourth and fifth graders at the same school recently completed a class project simulating commerce and manufacturing. Students designed and sold products to their school mates (and the money earned went to recognized charities such as the American Heart Association and the local fire department). Kids produced “slime,” decorated pencils, and chocolate coated plastic spoons. Students designed their products, shopped for supplies, and produced and sold them. The teacher, it was reported, has done a similar project every year because she said about students that “they need to understand finance.”

The newspaper reported that the project was supported by long-time economics education lobbyist and think tank, the Indiana Center for Economic Education. An ICEE spokesperson, who offered a program that the teacher had taken years ago, spoke about the lessons kids learned: “The basics of operating their own business, the fact you’ve got to produce a product customers want and counter the cost of resources you need.” The spokesperson claimed the exercises such as at Mayflower Mill highlight real issues which sometimes get lost in teaching more dominant subjects.

I wonder if students learned anything about the historic role of organized labor in the state, high unemployment in Indiana, growing economic inequality, the forty year deindustrialization of the state economy, and the differences in economic opportunity between African Americans, other minorities, and whites, and between men and women.

Almost accidentally, I accessed stories about political struggles from 2004 until today at my old high school, Senn High School, in Chicago. It seems that the high school which over forty years ago was white and middle class was now populated by young people from working class and poor African American, Latino, and immigrant families.

By the new century it was experiencing problems in reference to academics and social order. The authorities, the City alderwoman, the head of the Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan, Mayor Daley, and the military came up with a “great” idea. They created in 2005, over the objections of students, teachers, and community activists, the Hyman Rickover Naval Academy which occupies a large physical space in the high school and has enrolled at least 25 per cent of the student population.

Meanwhile programs to teach English as a second language and advanced placement courses for college preparation were reduced. The teaching staff in the non-military portion of Senn High School was cut by 33 per cent. CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) continues to challenge the militarization of the Chicago school system.

In our communities we need to work in solidarity with those immediately involved in educational institutions. Where issues of militarism and economic orthodoxy shape school curricula our voices need to be heard. Our political agenda, in sum, needs to address as best our resources allow what we learn, how we learn it, and who controls the institutions that shape our thinking and the thinking of young people.

EPA Seeks Reversal of Bush Era Pollution Policy

Wed, 25 May 2011 09:43:00 +0000

This week the Environmental Protection Agency is holding public hearings on a new proposed rule that would require steep reductions in the emission of mercury, arsenic, and other toxic air pollution from coal-fire power plants.

The hearings are a part of a mandated public comment period scheduled to end July 2.

According to the Center for American Progress, the rule would limit hazardous pollutants that enter the air and water supply through emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.

The Union for Concerned Scientists says one of the deadliest emissions in the air now is mercury. According to that organization's website, "Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage and harm reproduction in women and wildlife; coal-fired power plants are the nation's largest source of mercury air emissions, emitting about 48 tons annually."

In 2000, the EPA under the Clinton administration used such scientific conclusions to determine that regulation of mercury and other toxins emitted from power plants was "appropriate and necessary."

In 2002 and 2003 the Bush administration reversed this ruling by interfering with ongoing EPA studies of mercury pollution, begun by the Clinton administration. The Bush administration aimed to block EPA efforts to regulate the toxin.

In the wake of this interference, whistleblowers in the EPA said that Bush administration loyalists suppressed reports on the harmful effects of mercury because the administration wanted to allow the industry to regulate itself and have few restrictions on mercury pollution.

According to the EPA staff in the Bush years, White House loyalists eliminated information from public reports on the dangers of mercury when it adopted rules allowing dangerous levels of mercury emissions. Instead, language authored by the industry was included in the report in order to push the rule through.

Subsequent media investigations, an EPA Inspector General's report, and a Government Accountability Office study showed the Bush administration's actions violated procedures on the rule and that scientifically collected information had been suppressed or distorted.

Nevertheless, in 2005, the controversial rule was adopted by the Bush-controlled EPA.

A subsequent federal court decision in 2008 found the rule had violated the Clean Air Act, and essentially ordered the EPA to rewrite its rules on mercury emissions.

This latest EPA rule is the result of that process.

A newly released EPA fact sheet detailed the dangers of mercury emissions and the need for the new rule. More than 500 power plants nationally emit harmful pollutants such as mercury and other poisons. Currently, medical waste incinerators and municipal waste combusts are regulated on mercury emissions and have eliminated some 95 percent of those pollutants using available technology.

Only power plants have been exempted, the EPA pointed out. Power plants emit half of all mercury pollution and acid gases. The new rule could eliminate as much as 91 percent of current mercury emissions.

Because mercury pollution definitely causes adverse health impacts, the elimination of this pollutant would prevent serious illness and premature deaths. The EPA believes as many as 17,000 premature death, 11,000 heart attacks, 120,000 asthma attacks, 12,2000 hospital and emergency room visits, 4,500 cases of chronic bronchitis, 850,000 sick days and between $59 billion and $140 billion in health care costs each year could be eliminated by regulating mercury emissions.

"When corporations choose not to remove as much mercury as is humanly possible from the exhausts of their power plants, they are damaging the environment, which in turns harms and poisons children and adults with needless amounts of mercury," said Dr. Jerome Paulson, medical director of the Children's National Medical Center, on a conference call will reporters this week.

Photo by Seth Anderson/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Ban Racial Profiling in Patriot Act Renewal, Groups Say

Wed, 25 May 2011 09:30:00 +0000

The Senate voted Monday, May 23, to go forward with debate on reauthorization of several provisions of the Patriot Act. Media reports indicated that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., reached agreement last week on reauthorization of the controversial law.

The agreement would reauthorize parts of the law that allow federal authorities to perform roving wiretaps, examine personal records (such as library records), and a so-called lone wolf provisions that allows the government to apply these provisions to individual terrorist suspects who aren't connected to terrorist organizations. Each provision requires judicial warrants from secret federal courts to be used by law enforcement authorities.

Still, the move prompted a strong reaction from the civil rights and civil liberties community. In a statement, the Rights Working Group (RWG), a coalition of dozens of local and national civil rights organizations, described the deal as a failure to take steps to protect privacy rights.

“The Patriot Act grants the government unfettered surveillance authority. Congress must seize the opportunity to reform this overbroad legislation that has repeatedly been misused by federal law enforcement to engage in racial profiling of American citizens and residents,” said Margaret Huang, executive director of RWG.

Federal authorities have "repeatedly" abused the roving wiretaps and library records provisions, RWG charged. Because the lone wolf provision has never been used and no authorities have made the case for its continued use, the RWG statement added, it should not be reauthorized.

As a remedy, RWG is seeking three major reforms to the law before reauthorization. Amendments to the reauthorization bill should rein in the nearly unfettered surveillance authority currently allowed under the Patriot act in order to protect civil rights and liberties.

Reauthorization should only occur with the inclusion of the "End Racial Profiling Act," which prohibits profiling based on race, religion, national origin and ethnicity by law enforcement authorities on all government levels.

In addition, the Department of Justice should strengthen its Guidance on the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies. This guidance should bolster enforceability of the DOJ's prohibitions on racial profiling and should include religion and national origin in its guidelines, RWG said.

Racial profiling reduces security and violates Constitutionally protected and internationally protected equal protection and due process rights, RWG explained. According to a fact sheet on the RWG website, racial profiling increase mistrust for law enforcement authorities in targeted populations. This mistrust leads members of those communities to refuse to report other crimes or to come forward as witnesses. Communities are made less safe, RWG reported, citing a 2006 Department of Justice study on the matter.

“The Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, significantly curtailed civil liberties and rights that historically have been protected by the U.S. Constitution,” said Huang. “Instead of reauthorizing the law’s troublesome provisions until 2015, Congress should take the time it needs to amend the law and restore civil rights and civil liberties to all Americans.”

Photo by Daniel Lobo/cc by 2.0/Flickr

China: Time to start restoring equality in the economy

Tue, 24 May 2011 14:47:00 +0000

Original source: Shanghai Daily http://china-wire.org/?p=13164

Researchers attending a recent seminar voiced their concerns over growing income disparities, particularly in emerging economies, and prescribed a number of remedies for the problem.

The seminar, held May 10-11 in Shanghai, was titled “Redistribution for Growth? Income Inequality and Demand-led Economic Growth in Emerging Economies.” It was sponsored by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

Experts in the field made a penetrating analysis of worsening inequalities in China that have arisen from decades of soaring growth.

In his address, professor Li Shi concluded that growth alone failed to explain the wider inequality and that there was an urgency to address structural imbalances.

Li, director of the Center for Research on Income Distribution and Poverty at Beijing Normal University, said income gaps are widening in both rural and urban areas across the nation.

Measuring the gap with the Gini coefficient, Li found that in rural areas, the coefficient soared from 0.22 in the late 1970s to 0.38 in 2007.

A figure of 0 represents total equality while 1 means maximum inequality in incomes.

In cities, it rose from 0.15 in the early 1980s to 0.36 in 2007. The 0.36 figure is generally believed to be underestimated as it is difficult to identify the high-income segment of the population in China, let alone measure their real wealth with any accuracy.

When adjusted for statistical deviations, the figure is likely to be close to 0.42.

The Gini coefficient nationwide now is a staggering 0.48, according to Li.

The professor said the income gap cannot be explained in terms of growth, as some economists suggest.

The late economist Simon Kuznets believed that economic inequality increased over time as a country developed, and then after a certain average income was attained, inequality would begin to decrease.

Li’s findings suggest this hypothesis is wrong when applied to China. In other words, the income gap is widening, not narrowing.

A number of disturbing facts, however, do shed light on China’s unique reality.

Urban rural divide

For instance since the 1990s, the urban-rural income gap, whether in real or nominal terms, has continued to increase. Li’s studies suggest this gap accounts for half of the inequality nationwide.

The income gap is also growing fast between monopoly and competitive sectors.

In the early 1990s, people working in monopolistic sectors such as power, telecommunications, finance, petroleum and petrochemicals were making about 30 percent more than those in manufacturing.

In 2008, this was 200 to 300 percent more. The latest study put the figure at 450 to 480 percent.

Using Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, Li found 64 percent of the wage differentials can be explained only in terms of monopoly.

The situation is worsened by the current tax system, which imposes a greater burden on the poor than on the rich. The after tax Gini coefficients were generally higher than the pretax figures.

Research has confirmed that a better education tends to correlate more with greater future earning power. Where there are equal education opportunities, the urban-rural divide is expected to narrow.

But studies find that the difference in average years of education received by urban and rural residents in 2002 was virtually the same compared to 1995, suggesting that sending children to schools have not become easier for peasants.

Meanwhile, urban children are receiving much better education in terms of quality, meaning it is getting more difficult for village children to go to college or university.

As a result inequality in education tends to perpetuate or worsen inequality already significant in the previous generation.

Studies in income growth over different groups also confirm that if you are poor now, the possibility is growing that you will remain so 10 years from now.

Costs of growth

Given these tendencies, and how these tendencies are fueling higher growth, it will be difficult for the government to fully embrace measures intended to narrow the income gap.

Pure economic policy adjustments must be matched with political will.

Progress is long overdue in, for instance, making officials declare their family assets to the public, repricing natural resources and making governments less dependent on land sales – initiatives destined to be met with strong resistance.

In his speech at the seminar, Chi Fulin, director of the China Institute for Reform and Development, Hainan, identified the transition to growth driven by domestic demand as “tough,” but vital to short-term economic stability and long-term sustainability.

The crucial period to watch for this to happen would be the next five years.

The past decade has seen explosive growth in government investment and exports. But people’s willingness to spend has dropped to an all-time low.

In terms of GDP, China is now ranked as the second largest economy in the world, while its per capita GDP ranks about 99th. The country’s per capita income is near the bottom.

Soaring growth has other costs.

It led to the dominance of heavy manufacturing, causing irreparable damage to the environment and people’s health.

The export-led growth is also triggering global imbalances.

As pointed out by Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Mellichamp, professor of global studies and sociology, University of California, both the US model of import and borrow and the Chinese model of export and lend are unsustainable.

He suggested that credit expansion in import dependent countries fed financialization, deepened inequality and precipitated the 2007-08 crisis. The surplus and savings in exporting countries also feed financialization.

Given the general consensus on the urgency of rebalancing the economy, and the many recipes proffered, the real difficulty seems to be getting the process started.

Michigan and the 2012 Elections

Tue, 24 May 2011 14:23:00 +0000

Because of Citizens United, a Supreme Court decision that basically eliminated disclosure laws and limits on much campaign spending, the Republicans are going to have an almost bottomless well of money during the 2012 election campaign for misleading TV attack ads through shady front groups.

But a well-organized people-to-people campaign can definitely beat big money TV ads.

And the goal for the next few months will be to rebuild the broad labor-led coalition of communities and social movements that brought Barack Obama to the White House in 2008.

The presidential election holds special implications for working families in Michigan. Michigan is a key state for the electoral college vote tally. Barring a mathematical anomaly, no presidential candidate can lose it and seriously expect to win the election.

The President's economic recovery act – through aid for education, healthcare, clean energy investments, and infrastructure investments – and the auto bailout have had no small impact on Michigan, helping to reverse the state's unemployment rate by about five percentage points in the past 18 months.

In addition to the Presidential election, the Republicans are making the Senate races key to this election. They are targeting Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the state's junior Senator, in their quest for a filibuster-beating 60 votes. They cannot get to 60 without winning Stabenow's.

Unfortunately for them, her popularity and leadership have proven to be a huge obstacle for even finding a worthy Republican opponent. After expressing some interest, a small army of prominent Republicans have dropped out. So far Tea Party-type candidates seem most interested in sticking to it, making Stabenow's reelection a stronger possibility.

In addition, only nine seats are needed to flip the state house of representatives to Democratic control to check the current unfettered power of the GOP in the state. (Neither the governorship nor the state senate are up for election in 2012.)

That unchecked power includes Republican partisan control of the Michigan Supreme Court. The state supreme court elections will be important because lawsuits challenging the Republican governor's controversial "emergency financial managers" (EFM), which he gave new powers to throw out the results of local elections and to take over cities and towns, will likely be argued there. The current Republican majority will vote with their party. (It is important to note that Gov. Rick Snyder has only appointed EFM's in localities with majority Democratic voters and African American populations.)

Anxiety and hardship due to the economic crisis in Michigan and over confidence about the 2008 election probably suppressed the vote there, leading to very odd electoral outcomes in 2010. One such outcome was the election of a far-right, libertarian Tea Party-type in the 3rd congressional district in Western Michigan, Justin Amash. Amash has proven the rule about the hard right: cut, cut, cut any and all government. He has plenty of money and power, so he could care less about Michigan working families.

Fortunately, his career in Congress could be cut short by his own far-right politics. He voted to kill Medicare, repeal health reform, to end funding for Planned Parenthood, to gut public education resources, and to raise taxes on small business owners (he wants to eliminate the tax credits provided in the health reform law). He favors more cuts in these social programs to pay for more tax cuts for the rich.

His views are out of step with Michigan residents. For instance, though most voters in West Michigan want Congress to strengthen the hand of the Environmental Protection Agency, Amash joined with House Republicans to try take away its power. He voted to protect Big Oil's tax breaks.

Amash basically believes that the only thing government should do is the military – and most of that should also be privatized.

But the tide in Michigan is turning. People are fed up with the right-wing agenda. That isn't what they voted for in 2010. They voted for a speedier economic recovery. Unfortunately, the Republicans are less interested in creating jobs than they are with abortion, attacking gay people, and cutting resources for the poor, for public education, for healthcare, for Medicare and for Social Security in order to pay for more tax cuts for the rich and for oil companies.

People in Michigan are tired of the attacks on working families, on the right to organize unions, on public education, on health care, and on environmental protections.

Only the latest attack comes from the Republicans in control of the state government. Gov. Rick Snyder, in order to pay for a new round of corporate tax breaks, is proposing a cut of almost $500 per student for the state's public schools. In a time when Michigan's unemployment rate stands at over 10 percent, such a plan will only make things worse.

Tax breaks for big businesses have become so numerous under Republican governors – without a subsequent economic boost – that soon taxpayers will be giving them cash to be here.

Meanwhile, Snyder has proposed a new tax on pensions and the elimination of the state's earned income tax credit for the poorest taxpayers.

Republican-controlled governments in Michigan cut taxes 32 times from the early 1990s to 2002 when Democrat Jennifer Granholm was elected.

The argument was that lower taxes would entice business growth and create jobs. Instead, Michigan suffers with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and a crumbling school system.

The unemployment rate jumped to the highest in the country in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It has fallen five points since the recovery act passed and the Obama administration-organized auto bailout. No single Republican tax cuts, let alone all of them combined, has had a similar impact in this state.

Michigan residents are making a stand, however. Thousands descended on the capitol in April to demand an end to the Republican agenda.

This past weekend, several thousand people organized by the labor movement gathered again to protest Snyder's massive cuts to education.

A campaign is underway to recall Snyder. Hundreds of volunteers across the state are collecting the required 800,000 signatures to force another gubernatorial election.

Resisting Republican policies now is important, but because the GOP controls the state government, working families' demands will likely go unheeded. Therefore, harnessing this anger to mobilize a big electoral victory in 2012, including the reelection of the President in 2012, a progressive majority in Congress, and key state and local level candidates and issues will be just as important.

Photo by RickRoll'd/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Best Way To Save Medicare, Offer It To Everyone

Mon, 23 May 2011 15:55:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Medicare is arguably one of the nation’s most successful and cherished public insurance programs. The program covers approximately 47 million elderly and disabled Americans, and helps pay for hospital, physician visits, and prescription drugs. It is truly hard to argue with success.

The traditional Medicare program, coupled with a supplemental private insurance policy, covers most of our seniors’ medical bills, with far less co-pays and out-of- pocket costs than private insurance.

Therefore, proposals to privatize Medicare — like Rep. Paul Ryan’s — have been met with such fierce opposition, because it was revealed in the national media that privatization meant much higher out-of-pocket costs for seniors. National polls have shown strong general support for maintaining Medicare or even increasing funding for it.

However, Medicare costs are projected to increase from $519 billion per year in 2010 to $929 billion in 2020.

The simplistic argument we often hear from conservatives is that Medicare is a costly federal government program because all federal government programs are inefficient and therefore costly. According to their line of reasoning, privatization is the only way to save money.

The truth is that there are several other ways to strengthen Medicare, but there has been a false debate in the nation regarding the rising costs of Medicare.

This may be partly due to not understanding a fundamentally key concept regarding current healthcare policy — there are no effective cost-containment mechanisms in place to control the private market costs of prescription drug costs, corporate hospitals and medical technology which are the main drivers of Medicare costs.

Research by respected nationally renowned economist Dean Baker shows that the federal government and Medicare beneficiaries would save $600 billion dollars between 2006 and 2013 if Medicare were allowed to directly negotiate prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers.

One study by Families USA found that the Veterans Administration was able to negotiate substantially lower prices for the top 20 drugs used by seniors, compared to private Medicare part D plans.

It would only make sense for there to be bipartisan support for Medicare to be able to use the full faith and credit of the federal government and be able to negotiate down the rising costs of prescription drugs.

According to Forbes magazine, hospital charges represent about one third of total healthcare spending — $718 billion altogether. Twenty four hospitals in this country with over 200 beds make an operating margin of 25 percent or more — a profit margin that compares favorably to drug giants like Pfizer, and easily beats the operating profit margin that General Electric reported in 2009.

We can no longer continue to have America’s hospitals make these kinds of large profit margins, when the health of our senior citizens and the fiscal health of our nation are at stake. It will take much needed political courage to address the root causes of rising Medicare costs — a Wall Street-dominated healthcare system.

America must transition to a non-profit improved Medicare-For-All program, if we are to have any chance of realistically containing over-all healthcare costs. That’ s why I have reintroduced H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act, that would provide for a single-payer healthcare system, providing all Americans with healthcare coverage.

Countries in Europe, Japan, and Taiwan have been able to effectively contain their healthcare costs for decades through their very successful universal healthcare systems — without waiting lines, rationed care, and out of control taxes.

America can learn invaluable lessons from other nations on how to control healthcare costs, and the time has come to be open minded about their success and honest about our need to change course from our corporate-dominated and inefficient healthcare system.

City Worker Bargaining Rights Under Seige in Silicon Valley

Mon, 23 May 2011 11:45:00 +0000

Original source: Truthout.org

SAN JOSE, CA 5/17/11) -- Members of the city workers union in San Jose, the capital of California's Silicon Valley, marched Tuesday to City Hall and packed the council chambers, in a growing confrontation with Mayor Chuck Reed over proposed budget cuts. Yolanda Cruz, president of Local 101 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, spoke to a rally of hundreds of union members in a church behind City Hall. The union will fight, she said, not just the imposition of drastic service reductions, but also the Mayor's threat to go to the ballot with a measure to require an election every time city workers want a raise or benefit increase.

"We will not be forced to pay for the city's economic crisis with our bargaining rights," she declared. Cruz was supported by the union's national secretary treasurer, Lee Saunders. He compared Reed to Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, who rammed a measure through that state's legislature drastically curtailing public worker union rights. "They think they can bring Wisconsin to California," Saunders thundered to an angry crowd. "That's just not going to happen." The church exploded in cheers.

Later union members marched to City Hall for a second rally with community supporters. Cindy Chavez, former city council member and now executive secretary of the South Bay Labor Council, told union members that the rest of Silicon Valley's labor movement would give them the same support public workers in Wisconsin received from unions throughout the country.

Local labor and community groups have backed Local 101 in previous conflicts with the city. In 1981 the union struck for nine days, and won the nation's first contract provision guaranteeing women equal pay for work of comparable worth. At the time, women earned 18% less than men in sex-segregated jobs. The strike challenged sex discrimination that was pervasive throughout city employment. But even more, it was an indictment of the low wages and inequality suffered by hundreds of thousands of women who make up the vast majority on the production lines in Silicon Valley's huge electronics plants. That fight earned the union respect from working women in the valley that has lasted 30 years.

Mayor Chuck Reed intends to put that loyalty to the test. San Jose has a projected budget deficit of $115 million for next year. He has announced drastic service cuts, including the elimination of over 400 city jobs. Citing a "fiscal emergency," his threatened initiative on the November ballot would raise the city's retirement age and cut the pensions of retirees.

Although a Democrat, Reed and Silicon Valley unions have had a rocky relationship for years. He was a member of the city planning commission and its business-oriented Downtown Association before being elected to city council. Then, in 2006, he ran for mayor against Cindy Chavez, who was strongly supported by city workers and other unions. He won the election, and has since boasted of "moving at the speed of business."

The city workers union has offered to take a 10% cut and make other sacrifices, according to Cruz, but she accuses Reed of promoting hysteria and blaming city worker pensions for causing the current budget crisis. "Reed has again chosen to blame workers in order to deflect attention away years of mismanaged spending by city leadership - decisions that occurred both while he served on the city council for years and continue today under his watch as mayor," she said.

Many union members held signs during the protest that said "Stop the Lies!" Cruz condemned Reed's declaration of a state of emergency, the pretext for going to the ballot with his initiative, calling it "scare tactics and a campaign of misinformation about city worker retirement."

In a pension analysis for Local 101's members, Cruz explained that the pension "crisis" cited by Reed is not caused by excessive retirement benefits. "The major driver of current pension shortfalls is the stock market crash in 2007-09," she said. "This flies in the face of those who would suggest that it is caused by ever-increasing or overpromised benefits to employees." The city's pension fund, she explained, had an unfunded liability of $1.13 billion in 2009, but because of the recovery of the stock market, a year later it had dropped to $998 million. "Since then, the S&P 500 index has increased 30 percent. We estimate that recovering markets will eliminate nearly half of the unfunded liability during this fiscal year," she predicted.

The city is also trying to prefund the costs of health benefits for retirees, and Reed has said that this will cost $400 million by 2015. "Few governments prefund retiree health care, and even fewer companies do," Cruz explained. "This is akin to paying for two generations of retiree health care now, and doing so during the worst economic climate in 80 years. The city has lumped in these costs in a deliberate attempt to drive up the numbers and further alarm the public."

Luis Matos, a city worker, expressed the anger of many workers at the rally over media reports that have alleged that municipal employees are overpaid, and unwilling to make sacrifices to solve the city's budget crisis. "As a worker in City Hall, let me assure the mayor and the public that we do understand - times are tough and there are many reasonable areas of reform that employees are willing to accept," he said. ?We have agreed to give up raises in recent years and have seen more than 200 of our co-workers get laid off. But lower-level city workers - the people who provide services directly to citizens in our community centers, 911 dispatch center, libraries and city hall - are not the ones who are making the kinds of salaries and benefits that have been in the headlines."

Drastic cuts, Matos charged, "will mean trouble paying the rent and putting food on the table."

Presbyterians Embrace LGBT People

Mon, 23 May 2011 10:44:00 +0000

On Tuesday May 10, The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) joined the ranks of a number of Christian denominations who are shedding their age-old prejudice against the LGBT community by removing from their constitution the requirement of "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness." (Christianity Today, May 12, 2011). This change, which will go into effect in July will open the door for local Presbyterian Church councils called Presbyteries to ordain LGBT clergy.

With this move, the PCUSA joins the ranks other so-called “Affirming Churches” such as the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

This is a tremendous step forward in the reformation of Christianity’s views toward the LGBT community, unfortunately it has met with a great deal of resistance, even amongst those described as “Progressive” Christians advocating for social justice, as many of these have opposed the move.

Currently the Sojourners, led by Rev. Jim Wallis, a progressive Christian organization has refused to allow an ad on its website depicting a Lesbian couple and their son entering a church (InsideOut May 8, 2011). That this move by the Sojourners comes merely days from the historic announcement by the PCUSA is no mere coincidence in the mind of this author.

There is also a great deal of resistance from within the PCUSA; over the last four years, sensing that this move would come eventually, over 120 PCUSA congregations have defected to more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian organizations, and several more PCUSA congregations are expected to leave the church in protest of the move (Christianity Today, May 12, 2011).

While most so-called Conservative Evangelical Christians remain overwhelmingly homophobic, the debate over the inclusion of the LGBT community in the so-called “Mainstream-Liberal” Church continues to rage, and no consensus amongst progressive Christians has been reached.

This issue is important to the Party because I believe, as a Christian and a Marxist, that both are perfectly compatible, as I have previously written for Political Affairs, and that our efforts to include Christians and people of other major religious faiths will be of tremendous value in building a mass-people’s movement.

In terms of how we are to move forward on the issue of Christian inclusion and affirmation of the LGBT community, there are many arguments that “affirming” progressive Christians have made. Many of which try to denigrate the absolute authority and verbal inspiration of Scripture, but as one who considers himself somewhat more conservative, and yet LGBT Affirming, I find these types of arguments unsatisfying.

In my estimation, the Scriptures never condemn homosexuality as we encounter it at all. There are three passages in question: The first being Leviticus 18:22, but in context I think it clear that Israelites are being instructed to refrain from certain Canaanite rituals which included homosexuality, not homosexuality as such (NISB Commentary 172-173). The second passage is Romans 1:26-27, but this is actually not a condemnation of anything, rather it is a statement that God, in response to idolatry, allowed people to indulge in what is not natural to them. For some homosexuality is certainly not natural, but this passage allows for the possibility that for others who are by nature homosexual, heterosexuality is not natural either. The point here is that each person has a certain independent essence or nature to which they must be loyal, not that homosexuality as such is sinful. Finally we have 1 Corinthians 6:9, but the word sometimes translated “homosexuals” is better translated “Male Prostitutes” or “Sodomites.” In context this passage is probably referring to the practice of exploitative homosexual relations between men and young boys (NISB Commentary 2045).

It’s important for us, even those of us who are secular or atheists to understand these passages and these arguments so that we can dialogue with Christians and Religionists who may be potential comrades. Again, until we can learn to relate to the religious majority, we cannot build a mass-people’s movement.

At any rate, we Progressive Christians have a long way to go on the issue of LGBT inclusion and affirmation, but the PCUSA’s recent move is a positive step.

References

Hayes, John H. “Commentary on Leviticus,” The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.

Sampley, J. Paul. “Commentary on 1 Corinthians,” The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003.

Coming to America: Tar sands oil from Canada?

Sun, 22 May 2011 10:32:00 +0000

EarthTalk®
E - The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: What is “tar sands oil” and what is the controversy over possibly building a pipeline for it from Canada into the United States? -- Bill Berkley, Omaha, NE

Tar sands oil (or “tar sands”) is slang for bituminous sand, a mixture of sand, clay, water and an extremely gooey form of petroleum known as bitumen, which resembles tar in appearance. Extracting commercially viable crude oil from tar sands is especially difficult because the thick and sticky mixture won’t flow unless it is heated or diluted with other hydrocarbons. Turning the extracted bitumen into liquid fuel requires large inputs of energy; the process also uses, pollutes and wastes large amounts of fresh water.

Research has shown that these processes alone generate as much as four times the amount of greenhouse gases per barrel of final product as the post-extraction production of conventional oil. Taking the entire life cycle of both final products into account, the extracting, processing and burning of liquid fuel from tar sands emits between 10 and 45 percent more greenhouse gases overall than conventional crude. Extraction of oil from tar sands also damages land to the point where it can no longer sustain forestry or farming.

Despite the environmental pitfalls of harvesting oil from tar sands, those countries that have them are making the most of them. More than half of Canada’s relative sizable oil production comes from the tar sands of Alberta and other areas, while Venezuela is also a big producer of tar sands oil.

Tar sands have been in the news of late because green groups and many U.S. public officials are worried that the construction of a new pipeline to transport tar sands crude from northeastern Alberta into the U.S. —TransCanada’s Keystone XL project—would greatly increase American consumption of this carbon-intensive fuel and jeopardize U.S. efforts to reduce its oil consumption and overall carbon footprint.

Plans call for running the 2,000-mile-long pipeline all the way from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. On the way it will carry as much as 900,000 barrels of oil per day, passing through six U.S. states and possibly jeopardizing the integrity of farmland, public water sources and wildlife habitat.

In June 2010, 50 members of Congress signed a letter asking Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to block approval of Keystone XL because it would “undermine America's clean energy future and international leadership on climate change.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency subsequently announced that the State Department’s draft environmental impact study for Keystone XL was in need of revision because it didn’t sufficiently take into account oil spill response plans, safety issues and greenhouse gas concerns.

In December 2010, several concerned U.S. nonprofits—including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club—launched the No Tar Sands Oil campaign to urge President Obama to halt Keystone XL, which is scheduled for completion by 2013. In March 2011 some two dozen U.S. mayors got into the act, asking Secretary Clinton to stop approval on Keystone XL as it could “undermine the good work being done in local communities across the country to fight climate change and reduce our dependence on oil.”

CONTACTS: TransCanada’s Keystone Project, www.transcanada.com/keystone.html; No Tar Sands Oil, www.dirtyoilsands.org.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Photo by Rainforest Action Network.

Labor's Political Independence and the Stakes in the 2012 Election

Sat, 21 May 2011 12:04:00 +0000

Remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, National Press Club, Washington, DC
May 20, 2011

Good morning. Thank you all for joining me here, and thank you to the National Press Club for inviting me to speak.

Friends, how can we make sense of the spectacle that's been unfolding across the American political landscape?

Politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio and a dozen other states are trying to take away workers' right to organize and bargain for a better life.

But that's not all. In state after state, politicians are attacking voting rights by imposing ID requirements, shortening early voting periods, blocking young people from voting because they're too "liberal" and even levying criminal penalties and fines for breaking arbitrary rules in the voter registration process. So it will be harder for people to vote—especially the least privileged among us. Just in Wisconsin, listen to the list of who doesn't have state-issued photo IDs that will be needed to cast a ballot under legislation that Gov. Scott Walker will sign next week: 23 percent of elderly Wisconsinites; 59 percent of Latina women; 55 percent of African American men overall; and 78 percent of African American men who are 18 to 24 years old.

Budget proposals unveiled in Washington and state capitals across our country this year revealed a despicable canvas of cruelty. In Michigan, a state senator thinks foster children should be required by law to purchase second-hand clothes. In Maine, the governor thinks more children should go to work. In North Carolina, the legislature thinks we should balance the state budget on the backs of autistic children. In Arizona, the state Senate president floats the idea of locking up protesting public employees in desert tent city jails. In New York, a billionaire mayor proposes to fire 5,000 teachers rather than tax the bonuses of the Wall Street executives who brought down the American economy.

And not just meanness. Destructiveness. A willful desire to block the road to the future. How else can you explain governors of states with mass unemployment refusing to allow high-speed rail lines to be built in their states? How else can you explain these same governors' plans to defund higher education, close schools and fire teachers, when we know that without an educated America, we have no future?

Here in Washington, the Republicans in Congress have defunded housing counselors and fuel aid for the poor, and they are blocking worker training and transportation infrastructure.

But the final outrage of these budgets is hidden in the fine print. In state after state and here in Washington, these so called fiscal hawks are actually doing almost nothing to cut the deficit. The federal budget embraced by House Republicans, for example, cuts $4.3 trillion in spending, but gives out $4.2 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy individuals and corporations. Florida is gutting aid for jobless workers and using the money saved to cut already-low business taxes. At the end of the day, our governments will be in no better fiscal shape than when we started—they are just being used as a pass-through to enrich the already rich—at a time when inequality stands at historic levels.

Think about the message these budgets send: Sacrifice is for the weak. The powerful and well-connected get tax cuts.

All these incredible events should be understood as part of a single challenge. It is not just a political challenge—it's a moral challenge. Because these events signal a new and dangerous phase of a concerted effort to change the very nature of America—to turn this into an "I've got mine" nation and replace the land of liberty and justice for all with the land of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.

You see, I believe the United States is not a place as much as it is an idea. For working people, the United States of America has offered, from its foundation, a promise that everyone can be full participants in national life. A promise that we the people make the rules so that hard work is rewarded with economic security and a fair share in the wealth we all help create. That promise has always been a work in progress. This year we commemorate the 150th anniversary of our bloodiest war – a war that resulted in the extension of the American promise to the African Americans who did so much of the work of creating the United States.

We were the first country in the history of the world to embrace the idea that you don't have to own land to vote—that citizenship comes from where you live, not what you own or who your parents were. We were the first country to make land available to those who would work the land—in the Homestead Act. And in the modern era, when giant corporations dominated our economy, we pioneered the idea that we had a right to a voice on the job—a right made real when we came together to form unions and bargain collectively. And while Boeing and the Chamber of Commerce may not like it, the law of the land protects working people who exercise that right against any retaliation by their employers.

In the 1960s, public employees won those same rights. Working people remember that these rights were not easily won.   The pivotal 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike began with two men crushed to death in a garbage truck, and ended with Martin Luther King giving his life for the cause of public workers' right to organize together.

From the beginning of this country, through our efforts and our ideas, working people have made the American Dream real. And what is that dream? It is the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules you will enjoy economic security and build a better future for your children. It is not that a few of us will be rich, but that all of us will be treated fairly, that we will look after each other, and that we will all have a share in the wealth we create together.

This spring working people are engaged in a great struggle to defend their dream. In Green Bay and Indianapolis, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and in Columbus, Ohio. And not just in the Midwest. In New York and Los Angeles, in Florida and Texas—in every corner of our nation.

This struggle began after last November's elections brought to power politicians in state capitals across the heartland who had a hidden agenda. An agenda worked out at posh resorts with the Koch Brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council and other shadowy groups. Politicians like John Kasich and Scott Walker campaigned promising to do something about jobs, only to reveal when they took office that their jobs agenda was to make them disappear. But their real passion was for eliminating the rights of working people and destroying their unions—who are standing in the way of their agenda.

In response, working people took to the streets. On April 4th, under the banner, "We are One," we came together all across America, and then we did so again on May 1st when we stood together with our immigrant brothers and sisters saying again that we truly are one.

In signs all across the rotunda in the Wisconsin state house, we proclaimed we were there to defend the principle that in America, we look after each other. One of the people who was there is here with us today, and I'd like to introduce him. Alex Hanna is a Graduate Assistant at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a co-president of the Teaching Assistants Associates of the American Federation of Teachers. Alex stood up for teachers and other public workers in Madison over the last couple of months, even as he built solidarity with workers in the Middle East. His family comes from Egypt and he strengthened links between movements for change around the world.

Thank you, Alex, for your inspiration.

Alex embodies the fact that we are not a nation of isolated individuals, we are a land of communities, of families. Our republic, our democracy, is an expression of our solidarity, our common values and our common life as a nation.

In America, firefighters rush into burning buildings every day, risking their lives to save people they have never met. Social workers care for other people's abused children, and home health workers provide care and companionship to those who need it. Every day you and I pay our Social Security taxes and Medicare, and that same money is sent out again to provide comfort and security to other people's parents and grandparents.

This is not just a matter of morality – but it also makes economic sense. And never more so than today.   It will simply not be enough to beat back the Scott Walkers, the John Kasichs, and the Koch Brothers. America's economic fate depends on us coming together to educate our children, to invest in our infrastructure, to face the threat of climate change and to reverse the yawning economic inequality that threatens our future.

Let me be specific. Unemployment stands at 9%. Underemployment is at 16%. Housing prices are falling, and foreclosures remain at historic highs. Economic growth is hovering at around 2% annually—not enough to put a dent in unemployment, especially as tax cuts expire, as the Recovery Act winds down -- and state and local governments gear up for more deep cuts.

Yet instead of having a national conversation about putting America back to work to build our future, the debate here in Washington is about how fast we can destroy the fabric of our country, about breaking the promises we made to our parents and grandparents. Understand, the Ryan budget destroys jobs—it destroys almost all the jobs created during this recovery. It guts Medicare. It attacks Social Security, the one piece of our retirement security system that actually works. And now we see Speaker Boehner and his colleagues engaged in a new round of blackmail—with a ransom note that reads: "Cut Medicare, dismantle the government, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs to fund more tax cuts for the rich, or we will cause the United States to default on its debts.

" Why is our national conversation in such a destructive place? Not because we are impoverished. We have never been richer. The American economy has never produced as much wealth as it does today. But we feel poor because the wealth in our society has flowed to a handful among us, and they and the politicians who pander to the worst instincts of the wealthy would rather break promises to our parents and grandparents and deny our children a future than pay their fair share of taxes.

America's real deficit is a moral deficit—where political choices come down to forcing foster children to wear hand-me-downs while cutting taxes for profitable corporations.

Powerful political forces are seeking to silence working people—to drive us out of the national conversation. I can think of no greater proof of the moral decay in our public life than that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would dare give a Martin Luther King Day speech hailing Dr. King at the same time that he drafted a bill to take away collective bargaining rights from sanitation workers in Wisconsin.

The ultimate goal of those who blame workers for Wall Street's economic crisis is to unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and power.

In this environment, working people and our unions must do more than just protect our own right to a voice in the life of our nation. We must raise our voice to win a better future for all working families here in America and around the globe.

Here's what we are going to do. First, we are going to use that voice to end the Scott Walker agenda as a viable political strategy by winning recall elections in Wisconsin and citizen vetoes of destructive legislation in other states and retaking state houses.

Then we will spend the summer holding elected leaders in Congress as well as the states accountable on one measure: Are they improving or degrading life for working families?

And moving forward, we are looking hard at how we work in the nation's political arena. We have listened hard, and what workers want is an independent labor movement that builds the power of working people—in the workplace and in political life.

Working people want a labor movement strong enough to help return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation. Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country.

It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside—the outcome is the same either way. If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be—now, in 2012 and beyond.

We will uphold the dignity of work and restore respect for working people. In this season's political battles, teachers, nurses and firefighters have been vilified. Decent jobs with economic security have been cast as more than America's workers deserve. Low-wage, part-time, temporary, no-benefit work is being sold as the "new normal" for our economy.

We know that only a dynamic, effective movement of working people working together can reclaim the value of work. Our unions must reach out to every working person in America—to those whose jobs have been outsourced and down-sized, to carwash workers in Los Angeles, to domestic workers who have few legal rights, to freelancers and young people who have "gigs" rather than jobs. And together with the AFL-CIO's construction and manufacturing workers, pilots and painters, plumbers and public employees, bakers and others, we will be heard.

The stakes are so high, for working families, for America. Will we be a country ruled by greed, by people who would cut or take pensions away from first responders, people who would take away the fundamental human rights of our workers, who would choose tax breaks for the richest among us over a future for all of us? Or will we be a country where we choose the future, where we look out for each other, where all of us have a voice?

We'll only win investments in our future if we again embrace the idea that we are one national community. That our very identity is bound up with the promise that all of us have a voice—in the workplace, at the ballot box—and that we are responsible in a deep sense for each other. The fabric of our government, our democratic republic, is about making that responsibility for each other real.

This is the message working people have always brought to our national conversation. It is the message Alex Hanna and hundreds of thousands of others took to the streets of the Midwest this spring and that we will take to the polling places of the heartland in recall elections and in citizen veto campaigns in the coming months. And it is the message we will continue to shout this year, and next, and the next, until we are heard.

The moral character of America is worth fighting for, and that is exactly what working people are going to do in the days and months to come. Thank you.

Photo by Teresa Albano/PeoplesWorld.org/cc by 2.0/Flickr

The ILO Must Condemn U.S. Anti-Union Legislation

Fri, 20 May 2011 15:30:00 +0000

In the United States, we take for granted that private-sector employers welcome unions like they welcome an outbreak of the Black Death. And they act accordingly. A recent survey of recruitment ads run by U.S.corporations found dozens seeking HR managers with a demonstrated commitment to a “union free environment.”

After the November 2010 elections – in which Tea Party Republicans won control of many traditionally Democratic states – that anti-union fervor has spread to the public sector. In the wake of new laws in Wisconsin and Ohio stripping half a million public employees of their collective bargaining rights, the National Conference of State Legislatures has identified 744 bills in virtually every state in the country that mostly target public sector bargaining. Even in Detroit, in many respects the birthplace of the 20th century U.S. labor movement, the Mayor is waging war against public sector unions.

Much of this anti-union legislation violates fundamental labor rights and International Labor Organization – a tripartite organization composed of representatives from governments, employers and unions -- must condemn it.

The anti-union bills in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere almost by definition violate the ILO’s “Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work” that states countries will work to "promote and to realize fundamental rights," the first of which is "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining." After its adoption in 1998, the Clinton Administration lauded the Declaration as a “historic step” towards linking trade liberalization with the promotion of fundamental labor rights.

Most advanced countries take seriously their obligations under international labor rights conventions. In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered British Columbia to restore collective bargaining agreements nullified by the provincial government. The following year, the European Court of Human Rights found that Turkey's restrictions on public sector bargaining rights violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

And just as U.S. States are stripping teachers of their collective bargaining rights, Canada is moving in the opposite direction. On April 13, 2011, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled unconstitutional legislation nullifying teacher collective bargaining.

Most advanced countries have a good record ratifying fundamental labor rights conventions. All 27 members of the European Union have ratified two of the ILO’s key conventions -- which have influenced the European Social Charter, European Convention on Human Rights and EU Charter on Fundamental Rights -- convention 98 on the promotion of collective bargaining and convention 87 on freedom of association. Over 90% of the 183 ILO Member states have ratified these two conventions.

The U.S., in contrast, has a poor record on ratification of the most important ILO conventions. Because of opposition from the U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB), the U.S. has ratified neither convention 87 or 98, even though, as a member of the ILO, it is bound by their principals. When the ILO incorporated freedom of association and the right of collective bargaining into its “Fundamental Principals,” USCIB predicted that the U.S. would never ratify conventions 87 & 98.

This aversion to the ILO’s core conventions did not stop the U.S. from criticizing the Soviet bloc’s violation of fundamental rights during the Cold War. In the late 1970s the U.S. withdrew from the ILO for several years in protest at its failure to stand up to the suppression of independent unions in Eastern Europe. And attacking Communist tyranny, Ronald Reagan famously equated collective bargaining with freedom. Shortly before he broke a strike by federal air traffic controller, Reagan stated, “Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.”

Republicans’ hypocrisy on labor rights has not gone unnoticed. In response to legislation stripping 350,000 Ohio public sector employees of their collective bargaining rights – currently the subject of a repeal petition -- Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown stated: “Don’t tell me you support unions internationally but you don’t support unions here. Don’t tell me you support collective bargaining in Poland but you oppose collective bargaining in Dayton, Ohio.”

In the U.S. private sector, the systematic violation of labor rights is a hidden crisis that few notice and fewer still care about. But now, led by Tea Party Republicans in Wisconsin, Ohio, and elsewhere, that same anti-union fervor has now spilled over into the public sector. Republican governors, it seems, are proud to adopt the behavior that their hero Ronald Reagan once condemned in the Eastern bloc.

This anti-union legislation clearly violates fundamental labor rights.

What is much less clear is whether the tripartite ILO is prepared to take a firm stance against it.

Photo by Art Perlo/PW/cc by 2.0/Flickr

Obama’s Middle East Policy: Something Old, Something New

Fri, 20 May 2011 15:16:00 +0000

On this episode we analyze and respond to the President's speech on the Middle East this week.

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See the President's speech here:

The following statement was issued by the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, Russian Federation, United States, and European Union):

The Members of the Quartet are in full agreement about the urgent need to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. To that effect, the Quartet expressed its strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by U.S. President Barack Obama on May 19, 2011. The Quartet agrees that moving forward on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation for Israelis and Palestinians to reach a final resolution of the conflict through serious and substantive negotiations and mutual agreement on all core issues.

The Quartet reiterates its strong appeal to the parties to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral negotiations without delay or preconditions. The Quartet further recommits itself to its previous statements and principles.

Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and Capitalism

Fri, 20 May 2011 09:47:00 +0000

Original source: Japan Press Service

Fuwa Tetsuzo, director of the Japanese Communist Party Social Sciences Institute, said on May 10 that the nuclear accident in Fukushima has clearly illustrated two fundamental problems of capitalism. The following is Fuwa’s speech at the JCP head office:

Threat of profit-first principle

We can nowadays easily recognize the threat of the profit-first principle of capitalism by reading the newspapers.

Media question why TEPCO did not immediately inject seawater into the reactors in order to try to cool them. They blame the delay of the utility’s response for worsening the situation. Some reports say that TEPCO could not make an immediate decision since it knew that once seawater was poured into the reactors they could no longer be used. This illustrates the profit-first principle, the intention to keep using the reactors even after the serious accident occurred.

Also in Japan, why are many nuclear reactors located in the same place? Since it costs a lot of money and time to obtain land for a nuclear power plant, they want to build as many reactors as possible once the land is secured. So the answer is simple: to cut costs.

However, earthquakes frequently occur in Japan. It would be disastrous if a major quake hits in an area where nuclear reactors are concentrated. Of course nuclear plant promoters are aware of this, but they continue to build nuclear facilities even in earthquake zones just because they can save money that way.

Moreover, our nuclear reactors are very old. Out of the 54 reactors in this nation, 20 were built over 30 years ago. There is no set life span internationally recognized for nuclear plants, but of course, the longer they are in operation the more they are weakened by age.

One thing we know for sure is that property taxes levied on nuclear plants for their depreciation period of 16 years. In other words, utilities do not have to pay property taxes after the 16 years of their plants’ operation. That is why they want to continue to use their facilities for as long as they can. Although all six reactors at the Fukushima No.1 plant are old, operating since the 1970s, TEPCO still hesitated to inject seawater into them. This shows how deep seated the profit-first principle is.

‘Ruleless capitalism’ in nuclear power generation and successive gov’ts

This profit-first policy is driving the present nuclear power industry. Successive governments have also left the entire question of people’s safety up to industry, thus what we are witnessing now in the Fukushima accident is the worst-ever case of “capitalism without rules.” We need to think about whether we can afford to keep the situation as it is or not.

The LDP is now eagerly challenging the DPJ. It is true that the Kan Cabinet is guilty of unreliable politics, but who is really to blame for the present situation? When I was a Dietmember, I took up the question of nuclear power risks several times in Diet deliberations with the Miki, Ohira, Suzuki, and Obuchi cabinets. They were LDP governments. In the 2000s, JCP representative Yoshii Hidekatsu pointed out the concrete risks by predicting what disaster could occur at Fukushima’s nuclear reactors in the event of a major earthquake and tsunami. In his Diet questions, he called for certain measures to be taken, stating that the Fukushima plant is highly vulnerable to a disaster. However, all the cabinets, from LDP’s Koizumi and Abe to DPJ’s Hatoyama, ignored his warning. Although the LDP is the party that had promoted the nuclear energy policy and is to blame for the present catastrophe, it is forgetting its own role and pointing their finger at the DPJ. Of course, the DPJ is irresponsible as a governing party, but the LDP should also be held responsible for the ongoing crisis.

Withdraw from nuclear power generation and create safety-first structure to control nuclear energy

The JCP will try its best to make a success of the current major efforts to constrain the nuclear disaster and revive the stricken area by demanding that the DPJ-led government do what we think is necessary and pointing out its neglectful and irresponsible behavior.

Together with reconstruction -related issues, the Japanese people now have to consider other major questions.

That is, the Japanese people should squarely address the issues on how to address the issue of nuclear energy and what energy policy to choose, and find a reasonable solution with bright prospects for a sustainable future.

In this effort the following two points are significant.

(1) As a strategic approach, we should decide to withdraw from Japan’s present energy policy dependent on nuclear power. Of course it will take a certain period of time to achieve this change. But what we need is to implement the decision now and establish a national strategy for achieving it.

(2) As an urgent near-term approach, it is essential to establish a structure to control and inspect nuclear facilities with priority on safety by clearly breaking away from “capitalism without rules” scheme created in the nuclear energy field based on the nuclear “safety myth.” In Japan, we have plenty of nuclear scientists and engineers with no direct relations with electric power companies. We also have the Science Council of Japan, a public organization of socially-responsible scientists. In addition, some people once involved in nuclear energy projects have recognized the collapse of the “safety myth” and are beginning to raise their voices against the blind promotion of nuclear energy. Utilizing the expertise of these people, we should establish the best safety system for nuclear energy in the world to control nuclear facilities with safety truly prioritized while at the same time decommissioning the plants.

Without this system, withdrawal from nuclear power will fail to be achieved because abolishing nuclear plants involves a number of stages. After operations come to halt, spent nuclear fuel should be taken out from reactors and disposed. Since reactors without the spent fuel still give off a significant amount of radiation, this radiation should be removed. Then the reactors have to be dismantled. Measures are also needed to dispose decommissioned reactors and their nuclear waste. In addition, we should consider how to use the sites after the reactors are removed. These processes will take at least 20 years. And all the stages should be carried out under the strict control system placing priority on safety.

These two points—strategically deciding to break away from nuclear power generation and urgently creating a framework to control and regulate nuclear energy with a mandate and responsibility putting great significance on safety—should be discussed nationwide. In the national political arena, these two issues will probably become major topics of discussion. I hope you can use what I talked about tonight as useful tips in this debate.

Photo: TEPCO nuclear power plant at Fukushima after the destruction of the recent tsunami. (Derek Visser/cc by 2.0/Flickr)

The IMF Revisits Capital Controls

Fri, 20 May 2011 09:40:00 +0000

Original source: People's Democracy

In the many belated shifts in its policy recommendations made by the IMF, the most recent has been its position on the wisdom of imposing controls on foreign capital inflows in developing countries. Even after the Southeast Asian crisis of 1997, which pointed to the possibility of boom-bust cycles driven by volatile capital movements, the IMF stuck by its preference for capital controls. So when quite recently, the IMF revised its position on the use of capital controls and made a case for them in special circumstances, it took many by surprise. But the Fund wants to make it clear that this was no inadvertent statement, and has put out an analysis of capital flows to developing countries, which also explains its partial rethink.

A striking feature of the recent global financial crisis and its aftermath is the behavior of private international capital flows, especially to emerging markets. Prior to the crisis, in the years after 2003, a number of analysts had noted that the world was witnessing a surge in capital flows to emerging markets. These flows, relative to GDP, were comparable in magnitude to levels recorded in the period immediately preceding the financial crisis in Southeast Asia in 1997. They were also focused on a few developing countries, which were facing difficulties managing these flows so as to stabilize exchange rates and retain control over monetary policy. They also included a significant volume of debt-creating flows, besides other forms of portfolio flows.

Interestingly, these developments did not, as in 1997, lead up to widespread financial and currency crisis originating in emerging markets, as happened in 1997. However, the risks involved in attracting these kinds of flows were reflected in the way the financial crisis of 2008 in the developed countries affected emerging markets. Financial firms from the developed word, incurring huge losses during the crisis in their countries of origin, chose to book profits and exit from the emerging markets, in order to cover losses and/or meet commitments at home. In the event, the crisis led to a transition from a situation of large inflows to emerging markets to one of large outflows, reducing reserves, adversely affecting currency values and creating in some contexts a liquidity crunch.

Given the legacy of inflows and the consequent reserve accumulation, this, however, was to be expected. What has been surprising is the speed with which this scenario once again transformed itself, with developing countries very quickly finding themselves the target of capital inflows of magnitudes that are quickly approaching those observed during the capital surge. As the IMF noted in the latest (April 2011) edition of its World Economic Outlook: “For many EMEs, net flows in the first three quarters of 2010 had already outstripped the averages reached during 2004–07,” though they were still below their pre-crisis highs.

Substantial volatility

One implication of the quick restoration of the capital inflow surge is the fact that, in the medium-term, net capital inflows into developing countries in general, and emerging markets in particular, has become much more volatile. Net capital flows which were small through the 1980s, rose significantly during 1991-96, only to decline after the 1997 crisis to touch close to early-1990s levels by the end of the decade. But the amplitude of these fluctuations in capital inflows was small when compared with what has followed since, with the surge between 2002 and 2007 being substantially greater, the collapse in 2008 much sharper and the recovery in 2010 much quicker and stronger.

When we examine the composition of flows we find that volatility is substantial in two kinds of capital flows: “private portfolio flows” and “other private” flows, with the latter including debt. There has been much less volatility in the case of direct investment flows. However, in recent years the size of non-direct investment flows has been substantial enough to provide much cause for concern. Further, besides the fact that direct investment flows are differentially distributed across countries (with China taking a large share), the definition of direct investment is such that the figure includes a large chunk of portfolio flows. The magnitude of the problem is, therefore, still large.

Does this increase in volatility during the decade of the 2000s speak of changes in the factors driving and motivating capital flows to emerging markets? The IMF in its World Economic Outlook does seem to think so, though the argument is not formulated explicitly. In its analysis of long-term trends in capital flows, the IMF does link the volatility in flows to the role of monetary conditions (and by implication monetary policy) in the developed countries, especially the US, in influencing those flows.

As the WEO puts it, “Historically, net flows to EMEs have tended to be higher under low global interest rates, (and) low global risk aversion,” though this assessment is tempered with references to the importance of domestic factors. Shorn of jargon, there appears to be two arguments being advanced here. The first is that capital flows to emerging markets are largely influenced by factors from the supply-side, facilitated no doubt by easy entry conditions into these economies resulting from financial liberalization. The second is that easy monetary policies in the developed countries has encouraged and driven capital flows to developing countries. This is because easy and larger access to liquidity encourages investment abroad, while lower interest rates promote the “carry-trade,” where investors borrow in dollars to invest in emerging markets and earn higher financial returns, based on the expectation that exchange rate changes would not reduce or neutralize the differential in returns. Needless to say, when monetary policy in the developed countries is tightened, the differential falls and capital flows can slow down and even reverse themselves.

The evidence clearly supports such a view. The period of the capital surge prior to 2007 was one where the Federal Reserve in the US, for example, adopted an easy money policy, involving large infusion of liquidity and low interest rates. While this was aimed at spurring credit-financed domestic demand, especially for housing, so as to sustain growth, it also encouraged financial firms to invest in lucrative markets abroad. Flows reversed themselves when the losses and the uncertainty resulting from the sub-prime crisis and its aftermath resulted in a credit crunch. Finally, flows resumed and rose sharply when the US government responded to the crisis with huge infusions of cheap liquidity into the system, aimed at relaxing the liquidity crunch. A substantial part of the so-called stimulus consisted of periodic resort to “quantitative easing” or the loosening of monetary controls.

This close link between monetary policy in the developed countries and capital flows to emerging markets is of particular significance because, with the turn to fiscal conservatism, the monetary lever has become the principal instrument for macroeconomic management. Since that lever can be moved in either direction (monetary easing or stringency), net flows can move either into or out of emerging markets. As a corollary, the consequence of monetary policy being in ascendance is a high degree of volatility and lowered persistence of capital inflows to these countries.

Grave implications

From the point of view of developing countries, the implications are indeed grave. When global conditions are favorable for an inflow of capital to the developing countries, these countries experience a capital surge. This creates problems for the simultaneous management of the exchange rate and monetary policy in these countries, and leads to the costly accumulation of excess of foreign exchange reserves. Costly because the return earned from investing accumulated reserves is a fraction of that earned by investors who bring this capital to the developing economy. Moreover, when global conditions turn unfavorable for capital flows, capital flows out, reserves are quickly depleted and there is much uncertainty in currency and financial markets.

The problem is particularly acute for countries that are more integrated with U.S. financial markets, since dependence on the monetary level is far greater in that country, partly because of the advantages derived from the dollar being the world’s reserve currency. The IMF’s WEO, therefore, predicts: “economies with greater direct financial exposure to the United States will experience greater additional declines in net flows because of U.S. monetary tightening, compared with economies with lesser U.S. financial exposure.” This tallies with the evidence. Overall, “event studies demonstrate an inverted V-shaped pattern of net capital flows to EMEs around events outside the policymakers’ control, underscoring the fickle nature of capital flows from the perspective of the recipient economy.”

This increase in externally driven vulnerability explains the IMF’s recent rethink on the use of capital controls by developing countries. Having strongly dissuaded countries from opting for such controls in the past, the IMF now seems to have veered around to the view that they may not be all bad. However, its endorsement of such measures has been grudging and partial. In a report prepared in the run up to this year’s spring meetings of the Fund and the World Bank, the IMF makes a case for what it terms capital flow management measures, but recommends them as a last resort and as temporary measures, to be adopted only when a country has accumulated sufficient reserves and experienced currency appreciation, despite having experimented with interest rate policies. This may be too little, too late. But, fortunately, many developing countries have gone much further. Only a few like India, which is also the target of a capital surge, seem still ideologically disinclined.

China: Industry Uses Sea as Giant "Trash Can"

Fri, 20 May 2011 09:36:00 +0000

Original source: China Daily

Pollution has further damaged China’s coastal waters through oxygen depletion caused by excessive growth of algae and waste discharge, according to a report released by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) on Friday.

Oil spills, pollutants carried by rivers into the sea, marine environmental disasters and ecological and environmental deterioration also threaten China’s oceans, said the 2010 China Ocean Environment Report.

Although 94 percent of the waters under China’s jurisdiction meet the country’s first standard level for seawater quality, about 48,000 square kilometers of coastal areas still fail to meet the fourth level, the worst standard, said the report, which was based on more than 2.5 million items of data collected in 2010 from 9,800 ocean-monitoring stations.

“Pollutants coming from the land, including industrial wastewater, sewage and chemicals used in agriculture, contribute the most to coastal water pollution,” said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a non-governmental organization.

“We have noticed that many heavy-polluting enterprises in China have moved to coastal areas to avoid residents’ complaints and government punishment,” Ma said.

The contaminated sea areas in China are mainly distributed in coastal waters surrounding large and medium-sized cities, the report said.

The ecological functions of some regional ecosystems have been damaged. But in general, the overall coastal ecosystem is healthy, or in a state of sub-health, according to the report.

Statistics from the SOA also showed that the influence of red tides and green tides, caused mainly by the proliferation of chlorophyta, has been alleviated. But the risks of being affected by oil spills have increased sharply.

For example, an oil spill in Dalian, Liaoning province, on July 16, 2010, that occurred after a pipeline explosion had serious consequences.

“It will take the ocean more than 10 years to eliminate the harm caused by that oil leak,” said Zhao Zhangyuan, former researcher from the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences.

“People should stop using the ocean as the biggest trash can,” Zhao said.