More Tea Party Racism?

Lately, I've been browsing some conservative discussion threads collecting some information on how U.S. conservatives use the term "cockroach" to describe liberals. The topic is interesting to me personally, as I've done a fair amount of research on the Rwandan genocide, where talk radio and the "cockroach" metephor went hand in hand.

Tonight, I had an insighful find on the Tea Party Patriots feed posts, where someone was acussing Obama of "invading" his "television with messages that made [his] daughter pregnant with a Puerto Rican Negro baby".

Another post is just as vitriol: "Liberal cockroaches are knocking up our virginal white daughters by advertising on Craigslist. That's how my daughter came to bear a Puerto Rican baby. I blame communist Obama and the permissiv for my daughter's failure to keep her legs closedeness of this liberal government".

Wow! I wish I were suprised by this find. I'm really not sure if these posts are a joke. I'm afraid I'd actually have to sign up as a Tea Party Patriot member to find more details. :-(

Here's a link to the page. Scroll down to the bottom to find all the posts. http://www.teapartypatriots.org/Members/VoiceOReason

Join World's Longest Toilet Queue and Ask Alyssa Milano to do the Same

A few days ago, I wrote an Act.ly petition, asking Alyssa Milano to stand against sanitation poverty by joining the World's Longest Toilet Queue. Needless to say, we're still waiting for her to join. Below is a copy of the petition, which describes why the Toilet Queue is important. Please, make sure you join the Queue here: http://www.worldtoiletqueue.org/eng

Also, ask Alyssa to do the same by

• tweeting this: petition @Alyssa_Milano to Stand with Us in World's Longest Toilet Queue http://act.ly/1ph RT 2 sign #actly #WaterWednesday
• Or clicking here: http://act.ly/1ph

Summary

Some 2.5 Billion people around the globe lack access to improved sanitation. This petition asks Alyssa Milano to please stand with us in demanding world leaders to take action against sanitation poverty by standing with us in the World’s Longest Toilet Queue.

If you have not yet joined the Queue, take 5 minutes now and stand with us. Join the Queue! >>> http://www.worldtoiletqueue.org/eng

Petition

Dear Alyssa Milano;

We admire your unwavering commitment to helping people throughout the global find access to clean water. As you are undoubtedly aware, access to clean water and access to proper sanitation are deeply connected development issues. Unimproved sanitation, such as pit latrines, hanging latrines, bucket latrines, and open defecation, often results in the contamination of water supplies vital for washing, bathing, and drinking. As described vividly by the World Health Organization, “Without improved sanitation, people suffer from ill health, lost income, inconvenience and indignity.”

The figures on the breadth and consequences of unimproved sanitation are shocking. According to UNICEF, nearly 50% of the developing world’s population, or 2.5 billion people, lack improved sanitation facilities. According to the World Health Organization, some 18% of the global population practice open defecation. UNICEF reports that globally each week about 42 thousand people die from diseases as a product of low quality drinking water and poor sanitation. UNICEF also reports that 4000 children die every day from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.

Moved by the hope of ending sanitation poverty, End Water Poverty (EndWaterPoverty.org) is organizing a series of events in the lead up to World Water Day (March 22, 2010) and the High Level Meeting on sanitation and water (April 23, 2010). Those events include The World’s Longest Toilet Queue, a virtual place for folks like us to demand our world leaders to help end unsafe sanitation. Therefore, we kindly ask you Alyssa Milano, to take 5 minutes and join stand with us in the World’s Longest Toilet Queue, because 2.5 billion people can’t wait any longer.

>>>>>Join the Queue!>>>>> http://www.worldtoiletqueue.org/eng

More information, visit www.endwaterpoverty.org

Footage from 22 Bahman

Today marked the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, an event which overthrew the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Over the past 31 years however, rule under an Islamic Republic has revealed patterns of brutality not unknown during the Pahlavi days. This has been especially true since the 2005 election of hardliner conservative Mahmoud Amandinejad. This brutality, along with his rigged re-election in 2009, served as the flash point for the Green Movement and the countless masses of Iranians that rose to the occasion today to protest the regime. This article, entitled Iranian Opposition in Standoff with Regime, provides a nice analysis of what was at stake today.

Personally, I have nothing at stake in these protests. I'm not Iranian, nor do I have family and friends living in Iran. However, I believe that human rights, including the right to protest, the right to vote, the right to speak, and a list of other rights, are universal. In other words, the sanctity of these rights are not halted by state boarders, nor are they to be allocated according to race, religion, or creed. To honor that belief, and to those brave Iranians that put their lives on the line for citizen empowerment, I thought I'd post links to some of the most notable video footage to arise thus far out of Bahman 22, or literally the 22nd day of the 11th month of the Persian calender. Later today, I'll be tweeting each of these videos. While not all of the videos are of great quality, all capture a slice of the atmosphere that transpired today. Please watch and remember that a human rights violation in Iran is a human rights violation against us all.

Please, if there are any videos you think are missing from this list, post a comment or drop DM me on twitter @stunetii.

Vid 1: Tehran Protesters throw rocks
Vid 2: Plain clothes police among Protest
Vid 3: Protesting in Tehran Metro Station
Vid 4: Protesting Inside Tehran Metro
Vid 5: (CNN) Iranian Demonstrator Unafraid
Vid 6: Propaganda Machine-Western Leaders are Stupid
Vid 7: Gas and Copters
Vid 8: Chanting down the Regime
Vid 9: Crowds and Copter
Vid 10: Patrons & Clients-Regime Supporters Getting Food
Vid 11: Ripping down Khamenei/Khomeini
Vid 12: Violence-The Regime's Recipe 4 Rule (good quality)
Vid 13: Riot Police Enter the Sadeghyeh Sq.
Vid 14: Karroubi among Protesters
Vid 15: Security Forces Throwing Tear Gas
Vid 16: Free Political Prisoners

Warning Workers: Corrupt Thugs want Your Wages

This article was originally written for the United Progressives.

As a hard-working employee, would you not want the capacity to shape the conditions you work under? More pointedly, would you not want a workplace governed by institutions with some democratic qualities, especially qualities that include unionization elections free from intimidation and harassment? As an employee, you should be aware that there are powerful interests wanting to deny you democratic unionization elections so as to steal some of your wages for their own personal enrichment. Who are these perpetrators? The answer will not surprise you.

As one well-known analysis points out, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), more popularly referred to as card check, is an eminent threat to your wages and workplace democracy because it allows employees rather than employers to decide on whether or not to allow majority (50 percent) sign-up to go from the initial unionization petition to immediate unionization, thus potentially bypassing a secret ballot election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). What’s so threatening about this, you might ask? Well, as the story goes, card check is actually backed by those intimidating and wildly violent union thugs bent on lining their own pockets and funding their mafia patrons with union dues, or your wages. These nefarious thugs are so willing to push card check since, without a secret ballot, it will make it easier for union conspirators to identify and discipline union pessimists among the working rank and file. It will make unionization more probably and, consequently make revenues from dues more lucrative sources of income for union thugs. In short order, the struggle over card check is part and parcel of the timeless American struggle between ordinary hard working folk and those repressive union criminals bent on profiting for doing nothing.

Amazingly, this analysis sells to so many people! The fact that the title and opening paragraphs sound like familiar anti-Union diatribes generally, or anti-EFCA diatribes particularly, speaks to the enormous success that business interests, most notably the Chamber of Commerce, has had in defining the stakes behind any attempts toward strengthening America’s unions and worker remuneration. To be sure, political action committees like The Employee Freedom Action Committee and Freedom’s Watch PAC, business associations like the Chamber of Commerce and Associated Builders and Contractors, and retailers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, have pulled together a formidable network of financial and cultural resources to help ensure that the dominant framing of EFCA would be cast as a battle between decent hard-working laborers and repressive union bosses rather than a battle between employees trying to earn a reasonable living and employers wanting to maximize profits. Incredibly, this definition allows the Chamber of Commerce to stake out a position as a defender of the rights of workers against their nefarious would be union bosses. And who says reality for many is not a complete fabrication?

There is nothing more real than the reality that the struggle over EFCA is a plain and simple struggle between labor and capital. Recognizing this reality does not make you a Marxist anymore than driving a red car makes you a Maoist. There is also nothing more real than the fact that few things emanating from the Chamber, from its ridiculous position on Climate Change to its baseless scare tactics against EFCA, are actually true. For example, the argument that the EFCA will destroy the secret ballot is simply wrong. In no way does card check legislate away the secret ballot. Instead, pending legislation allows workers a choice of whether or not to have a majority sign up (card check) or an extended NLRB supervised election period. The problem with the current arrangement lies in the fact that it is the company which decides on the sign-up method. Most elect the latter method, which gives the companies the period of several weeks to intimidate and harass employees into not voting to unionize.

A correlated argument constantly paraded by the Chamber describes the EFCA as a threat to work place democracy. At this point, one must wonder on which side of the moon Chamber leaders live. If by democracy we mean freedom of choice, then card check is actually more democratic. Why? Since the legislation allows workers rather than managers to select the method (majority sign-up or ballot) for deciding whether or not to unionize, EFCA can remove the prolonged period between the initial petition and the election. This period is more often than not characterized by managers intimidating and, sometime firing those who are known to be union supporters. If employees decide to skip the secret ballot, it is because they want to bypass the completely undemocratic environment associated with those weeks prior to the NLRB supervised election. In other words, the biggest threat to the secret ballot are the managers and employers, whose hostility toward unions and union supports make EFCA the most efficacious and rational course of action for strengthening worker representation in the workplace.

Finally, nothing captures the contradictions and hypocrisy of the anti-EFCA logic more than the constant portrayal of union leaders as “corrupt thugs” bent on pushing EFCA as a means for extracting more membership dues for personal financial gain. To be sure, this imagery draws from a rich American cultural narrative that depicts unions as run by violent men involved with urban party machines and the mafia (think Tammany Hall, Richard Daley, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Teamsters). Of course, in some cases, this stereotype was not without a certain grain of truth. However, as widely cited in a 1963 study by Robert Doherty, the singular focus that American education has historically placed on the violence of the Molly Maguire riots or the Pullman strike, at the expense of a parallel focus on some of the more positive contributes made by labor, has done much to damage the image of unions. More recent work by David Witwer, a 2003 book entitled “Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union”, points to the fact that early in the 20^th century, business leaders attacked growing labor power by leveling corruption and criminality charges on the doorstep of Union leaders, thus weakening the capacity of strikes to draw public sympathy.

Today, these stereotypes are still strongly reproduced in popular discourse, making the Chamber’s arguments an easy sell. For example, a study by researchers at the University of Chicago, entitled “Evidence of Class Anxiety in the Chicago Tribune Coverage of Organized Labor”, found that union coverage in the Tribute was overwhelmingly negative and tended to focus on issues like labor disputes and labor politics, rather than working conditions and union impacts.

While these depictions make for great bumper sticker phrases, they impart nothing characteristic to labor leadership. Think about the term "thug" for example, which describes a “thief” who resorts to “brutal” and “violent” means. By that definition I could readily include business executives who manage to sap every last penny out of the wages paid to workers in order to maximize profits for people who want 2 expensive cars, a 6 bedroom house, and a boat, while at the same time, workers go without access to health care.

The same line of argument can be made about the term “corrupt”, which describes practices that are ‘dishonest’ and ‘immoral’. Nearly any modern organization can be accused of this, and in some cases rightfully so. But, corruption can be more easily applied to the practices of business rather than labor. Witwer makes this point quite central to his analysis when he points out that, while the Teamsters certainly had notable problems of corruption, the level of corruption within the trucking industry itself is always left out of the narrative. Again, this bias is reproduced today. For example, the Chamber of Commerce is fond of citing the $400 million “labor racketeering fines and restitution” figure as evidence of union leaders plundering the “pensions and welfare benefits” of union members. However, a Semi-Annual Report to Congress Inspector General of the Labor Department actually cites that most of money racketeering was actually cases of businesses rather than unions ripping off workers. This says nothing of the broader and frequent instances of corporate tax evasion, bribery, and anti-trust violations made by company managers.

In fact, each of the charges commonly leveled against the Employee Free Choice Act and union leadership more appropriate captures the political position and actions of the Chamber of Commerce and its ‘cronies’. It is the Chamber’s willingness to continue to support current practices that allow managers to dominate the NLRB supervised vote that constitutes the single biggest threat to workplace democracy. It is also the perpetrations of the Chamber’s patrons that most appropriately fit into its own narrative of corrupt thugs wanting to extract as much from labor for personal material gain. In reality, it is this last point which constitutes the principle reality behind opposing the EFCA. It’s a reality characterized by a struggle between workers wanting livable remuneration on one hand, and employers want to maximize returns on the other hand. So don’t be fooled!

A Petition to Sen Ben Nelson: Back Climate Change Legislation

If you want to sign the following petition, click here or tweet the following:

petition @SenBenNelson to Support #ClimateChange Legislation http://act.ly/1li RT to sign #actly #p2 #cop15

Synopsis: A Petition to United States Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The World Calls on You to Support Meaningful Climate Change Legislation.

Dear Honorable Ben Nelson;

Following the horrors we experienced on September 11, 2001, the United States asked the rest of the world to stand together by taking terrorism seriously. Throughout the weeks following the terrorist attacks, world leaders repeatedly denounced terrorism and moved to pass sweeping anti-terrorism measures, as demonstrated by the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1373.

Since that tragic day when the lives of 2,973 people were swept away by the attacks, the visible effects of climate change have continued to wrecked the lives of millions of people and threaten millions more, not to mention the future of humanity. In 2008, an astonishing 99% of the natural disasters world-wide were climate related. During the same year, climate-related disasters displaced some 20 million people. These human casualties will only worsen in the future, unless we act. By 2050, 25 million more will go hungry due to the impacts of climate change. Depending on the rate of change, some 25 million to 1 billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 40 years. Like our pleas for help following September 11, now the rest of the world is asking us to take climate change seriously. It’s about time we do.

We also understand, Honorable Ben Nelson, the importance that energy concerns are for your constituents. But, climate change is more than the interests of particular constituents and the corresponding re-election of one individual. Given this, we should be less concerned about the potential price tag that climate change legislation will have for utilities, manufacturers and consumers, and should instead be thinking about the price tag we are asking the rest of the world to pay for our unwillingness to deal with climate change. After all, as the recent terrorist attempt shows, we will be again asking the rest of the world to continue taking terrorism seriously. Yet, why should they if we are not willing to take global concerns about climate change seriously?

Please, take time to consider the multiple implications of not supporting meaningful climate change legislation. We ask you to put the country and the future humanity as we know it first, and then move to back climate change legislation. To be meaningful, legislation must commit to significant emission cuts in the near future and assistance to helping poor countries adjust to climate change. These times demand public servants willing to take political risks in order to do the right thing. Honorable Nelson, what kind of servant are you?

My Views on Health Care Reform

I've had quite a few people asking me how I feel about the direction that health care reform has taken since Lieberman outright screwed any chance for a public option or expansion of medicare. While I am in the middle of several time consuming job related deadlines, let me just say a few words which I am sure fellow progressives might not like to hear.

First, the term dissappointment best characterizes my feelings about the current health care reform proposals in the House and Senate. The House has a public option, but is weak on other cost control mechanisms and imposes undue restrictions on womens' privacy rights. The Senate bill has no public option, but does contain a variety of other measures that reduce health care costs. The big dissapointment for me is that, when all is said and done, there will be no public option and no expanded Medicare. At this point, that's a fact and there's nothing that can be done about it.

Secondly, the term "perplexed" best characterized by reaction to Howard Dean's call to kill the bill and start anew. The following statements by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones is illustrative of my curiosity towards Dean's position.

Here's what I want to know: which one of us is living in dreamland? If you don't like the Senate bill, fine. Don't support it. But in what universe will healthcare reform get revived anytime soon if it dies this year? 2010? With the legislative plate already jammed, healthcare reform probably polling in the mid 30s, and midterms coming up? 2011? After Republicans have gained a bunch of seats in both the House and Senate thanks to public disgust with Democratic disarray? 2012? A presidential election year? 2013? 2014?

Well said. What's more, anyone ever involved in things like NGO work or politics will always say that "sometimes small wins matter". Again, Kevin Drum:

But if it passes, here's what we get:

• Insurers have to take all comers. They can't turn you down for a preexisting condition or cut you off after you get sick.
• Community rating. Within a few broad classes, everyone gets charged the same amount for insurance.
• Individual mandate. I know a lot of liberals hate this, but how is it different from a tax? And its purpose is sound: it keeps the insurance pool broad and insurance rates down.
• A significant expansion of Medicaid.
• Subsidies for low and middle income workers that keeps premium costs under 10% of income.
• Limits on ER charges to low-income uninsured emergency patients.
• Caps on out-of-pocket expenses.
• A broad range of cost-containment measures.
• A dedicated revenue stream to support all this.

As you read this post, you may know that I spent considerable energies here on Twitter and Facebook, trying to help energize the push for public option. But, I am never one to say that the best way to go down is to go down swinging. At heart, I am a pragmatist and know when tactical retreats are needed. AND RIGHT NOW, A TACTICAL RETREAT IS NEEDED.

What we have is a health care bill that is an utter mess, but better than nothing. In the short run, we no longer have the choice between public option or no public option. Our choice is between failing to pass some needed health care reform measures and hoping to solidify progressive majorities in the next Congress, versus killing health care legislation and...well then what?

I know some of you reading this have worked with me tweeting and retweeting health care stats and calls to action. And we should continue to do this. But, we also need to know what realistic options we have at this moment. Taking Dean's course of action is not one of them. Instead, lets get this needed reform passed, regroup, and focus on getting progressives in Congress in 2010. Then we can give a single-payer a serious push and expect to at least get something akin to a public option.

As an additional note: I think this petition is still worth signing. I still believe we need to make it clear that we object to having the public option sidelined. http://is.gd/5rzwR

Health Insurance and Mortality Rates: Who Lies?

This article is also posted at Unitedprogressives.org

Once again, willful ignorance about health care facts crawled out of the heads of conservative pundits in the weeks following the September release of a peer reviewed study entitled “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults.” To be sure, ignorance was perhaps the only advantageous reaction by those more concerned about ensuring the buoyancy of media ratings or the failure of the Obama administration. After all, when discounting for education, income, smoking, drinking, and obesity, this study asserted that some 45 thousand deaths per year are associated with the lack of health insurance. Opposing health care changes would look profoundly immoral if opponents simultaneously admitted that 45 thousand people a year do in fact die due to lack of health insurance.

Unable to give credit to the idea that people do die because they don't have access to health insurance, conservative pundits resorted to those tactics that are typically found together with willful ignorance. Yes, through metaphors and analogies proven so useful for scaring the conservative base into social action, pundits simply assaulted the character of those who conducted the study. When you can't challenge the message, just kill the messenger. The assault included the familiar recitations about the “socialist” nexus between Harvard, science, and Obama, and quickly colored broader conservative discourses about health care reform. The evidence of this conspiratorial triad pointed toward the fact that two of the study's authors, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, were also co-founders of a single-payer advocacy group called Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). The researchers were quickly cast as the malicious “political doctors” or “left-wing fanatics” preaching a science “infused with left-wing politics”.

With the invention of this epic challenge, the potential for meaningful health care reform debate or respected scientific research was once again sacrificed on the alter for personal and political gain. The study was flawed not because of proof of poor research methods or biased data, but because the authors had well established political opinions supported by the conclusion of the study. That's right, according to conservative pundits, researchers are not supposed to have political views, or if we do, our views have to contradict our research findings in order to be constructively valid and unbiased. Forget the fact that scientists often chose research questions or topics that interest them, which explains why conservative organizations like the Center for Policy Analysis or the Heritage Foundation never thought to ask about the number of people that die a year due to lack of health insurance.

But, for a moment, let's assume that the 45,000 estimate for some reason is higher than actual number of deaths. What might a more orthodox estimate look like? Well, the answer is not hard to find, assuming that one is actually interested in estimating the number of deaths due to lack of health insurance. A study conducted by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002 for example, reported 18,000 deaths in 2000 due to lack of health insurance. Stan Dorn, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute, updated the data linking health insurance to mortality risks. Dorn's results were shocking. Using the IOM's methodology, the report demonstrated that, in 2006, some 22,000 Americans died because they lacked health insurance. Moreover, when Dorn refined the methodology by rejecting the IOM's assumption that all people between the ages of 25-64 faced the same mortality benefits from health insurance, the numbers take a change for the worse. Now, instead of 18,000 deaths in 2000, Dorn's approach pointed to 20,000. Instead of 22,000 deaths in 2006, that number stood at 27,000 deaths. These numbers are hardly a cause for suggesting that health care in the U.S. is just fine as is. Remember, we waged two costly wars in a response to the tragic death of 4,000 people on American soil on September 11, 2001. Imagine if we would deploy a proportionate response to the tragic death of the tens of thousand of Americans who die each year because they lack access to health care.

There are a wide number of other studies pointing to a clear relationship between higher mortality and the lack of health insurance. A 2008 study conducted by researchers at the Sunnybrook Health Center at the University of Toronto found that, when compared to those with health insurance, uninsured breast cancer patients had significantly higher levels of disease severity and larger tumors, along with lower rates of operations and breast reconstructions. Another 2008 research report, conducted by researchers at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, found that, in Virginia, the insured are 2 times more likely to report being screened for colorectal cancer versus the uninsured. Controlling for a host of possible factors, such as sex, race, age, injury and trauma, a 2009 study, entitled “Downwardly Mobile: The Accidental Costs of Being Uninsured,” found higher rates of mortality among the uninsured. Another 2009 study, entitled “America's Uninsured Crisis: Consequences for Health and Health Care,” found that uninsured children were 20% to 30% more likely to lack needed dental care, immunizations and medicine. The study also found uninsured children to be 6 to 8 times more likely to have unmet asthma and diabetes needs. At the same time, uninsured adults with at least one chronic condition were 40% to 50% more likely to die prematurely.

In fact, the 45 thousand deaths per year due to lack of health insurance should not seem shocking nor unrealistic. When considering that there are currently 47 million uninsured Americans, paired with a demonstrated relationship between having health insurance and lower mortality, 45 thousand deaths a year is only as absurd as the system that allows it to continue. In their rejection of this figure, do conservative skeptics deny a relationship between health insurance and mortality? If so, maybe we all need to drop our health insurance because we're simply wasting our money on a service that apparently does nothing to prolong life.

Whether the number Americans that pay with their lives due to an inefficient health care system is 20 thousand, 30 thousand, or 45 thousand per year should be irrelevant. Any of these figures is alarmingly high. But, the reaction from health care reform opponents is no more about numbers and mortality than it is about offering up viable solutions to a real health care crisis. The reaction is instead based on the fact that the research question itself violates a diverse array of conservative political interests. Rather than seeing an opportunity for escaping from the dark ages of conservative health care reform rhetoric, the study was willfully used as chance for television and radio hosts, along with Republican politicians, to raise their ratings. Science, knowledge, and everyone else has to pay the price.