Archive for January 2009
Weekly Immigration Wire: A Cry for Change from Coast to Coast
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by Nezua
Media Consortium Blogger
All over the nation, communities are clamoring to be heard. In this worsening economic landscape, migrant communities are being terrorized by violent raids, families are destabilized, wage earners are jailed or detained, and xenophobic pundits continue to fuel a rising wave of hate crimes against Latinos. The stakes could not be any higher: Now is the time to make our voices heard, especially after being ignored for so long by those with the power to make a difference.
And so we are gathering in numbers in San Francisco and throughout California:
A coalition of groups that has been working with San Francisco’s supervisors, community leaders, social service providers, and faith groups is gathering at City Hall to call for a halt to the raids and for support of fair and humane immigration reform. We will be joining our voices with thousands of others across California and across our country who found hope in the words of our new President Barack Obama during his inauguration speech [...]
—Choosing Hope Over Fear in Immigration Policy Reform, New America Media, Jan. 21, 2009
And on the same day, marching on Washington, DC (with photos):
Over a thousand people are gathered in DC, a day after inaugurating our new president, to demand A New Day for Immigration.
—Immigrants March for Reform in DC, RaceWire, Jan. 21, 2009
Sending letters from Albequerque, New Mexico:
[C]oncerned New Mexico groups are among thousands of people signed on to a letter to President Obama asking for drastic alterations [in U.S. immigration enforcement policy]. Jo Ann Gutierrez Bejar with the Southwest Organizing Project says even families in Albuquerque neighborhoods feel intimidated by the presence of the Border Patrol.
—NM Groups Push Obama for Immigration Change: “End Worker Raids Now“, Public News Service, January 28, 2009
Immigrant rights groups are organizing across the nation:
On January 27, the National Network of Immigrant and Refugee Rights will be releasing an “Open Letter to President Barack Obama” to establish a new framework for addressing immigration policy. You can help by circulating it to your friends and by signing the petition[.]
—Time to Take Action towards Humane and Sane Immigration Policies, RaceWire
Suing President Obama for relief in Miami, Florida:
The lawyers for over 600 American born children filed a lawsuit against President Obama to suspend the deportation of their undocumented parents until there is immigration law reform.
—U.S. Born Children of Undocumented Parents Sue Obama, New America Media, January 28, 2009
And starting a 100-day Countdown Clock in Arizona:
Arizona activists rallied in Tucson yesterday urging President Obama to keep his campaign promise to address immigration reform in his first 100 days on the job. Immigration rights organization Border Action Network wants a plan that respects human rights and preserves families[...]
—100-Day Countdown Clock Started for Obama Border Reform, Public News Service, January 22, 2009
In essence,
The American people want real solutions, not divisive rhetoric. The new administration and new Congress hold great promise for progress on immigration reform. Now it is up to people of conscience to hold our elected representatives accountable and demand immigration reform that benefits the American people, America’s economic and homeland security, and moves us towards a new era of recognizing that immigration is not a source of weakness for America, it is a sign of our strength.
—Immigration Reform: Yes We Can?, New America Media, January 27, 2009
In the absence of national leadership, we end up with law enforcement so devoid of ethical guidance that it declares racial profiling an “important tool” and propaganda television that omits the horrors of the standing system. The fact is, fearful rhetoric has taken over what could be a sane dialogue and we are all suffering for it. Higher walls are not the solution. Letting our fellow humans move into caves is not the answer. And politicians who think only in terms of punishment and speak divisively will get us nowhere.
The People have spoken. And are speaking. And we will continue speak. Until we are heard.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Funding Birth Control? It’s the Economy, Stupid
The $825 billion economic stimulus package is finally taking shape as House committees finalize their contributions to the bill. The good news is that healthcare spending will be a major part of the stimulus: $87 billion has been set aside to help states pay for Medicaid alone.
But one health-related provision was sacrificed to political expediency on Tuesday in an attempt to wrangle Republican support for the stimulus package: Medicaid expansion for birth control.
Medicaid is already the single largest source of public funding for family planning nationwide, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The stimulus provision would have made it easier for states to cover family planning for low-income women who currently make slightly too much to qualify for regular Medicaid.
House Minority Leader John Boehner made political hay out of the provision, claiming that Dems were sneaking in millions for birth control for reasons that had nothing to do with stimulating the economy. He’s dead wrong, as Cory Richards points out at RH Reality Check: Healthcare spending is a tried and true method of economic stimulus and the current bill sets aside billions of dollars for that purpose.
The idea that birth control coverage is less important than any other kind of healthcare spending is absurd. Reproductive rights activists pushed hard for the provision because they believe it would give more women access to family planning.
By law, when states cover birth control through Medicaid, the federal government covers 90% of the cost. The birth control expansion would simply have simply made it easier for states to relax the eligibility criteria to cover more women. Providing more services, to more people, with more money supplied by the federal government is textbook economic stimulus.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama begged House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman to strike the birth control proviso. The expansion didn’t have a chance. By late afternoon, TPMDC was reporting that birth control was gone from the House bill and that the Senate Dems had signaled that it wasn’t coming back in their stimulus bill
Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality pegs the political dynamic as a farce in four acts: Democrats use their majorities to advance some popular policy, Republicans freak out, Democrats capitulate, elite pundits congratulate Democrats for shooting themselves in the foot with such grace and aplomb. In the American Prospect, Nick Beaudrot notes that Obama is unlikely to win any Republican votes by striking birth control from the stimulus.
Elsewhere, writers were wrestling with other health-related issues. Simon Maxwell Apter in the Nation argues that the time has come to recognize PTSD as a legitimate combat injury and award Purple Hearts accordingly. But Debra Dickerson of Mother Jones counters that the Purple Heart should be reserved for combat-related injuries. Dickerson’s rejoinder seems to beg the question: If someone gets PTSD from serving in a combat zone, is it a combat injury? And if so, why doesn’t this sacrifice merit a Purple Heart?
In the Nation Sarah Arnold argues that New York’s draconian Rockefeller drug laws are ripe for reform. Arnold argues that a perfect storm for drug reform might be brewing in the Empire State: Democratic governor, Democratic control of both statehouses, and a financial crisis that makes locking up drug offenders prohibitively expensive.
In the American Prospect, public health scholar Harold Pollack examines our society’s worst drug problem: alcoholism. He argues that our society focuses too much attention on treating alcoholism once it sets in and not enough on crafting public policies, such as legal drinking ages and liquor tax rates, to help prevent problem drinking.
The birth control stimulus skirmish marks a new twist in Obama’s relationship with women’s groups and reproductive rights activists. Last week, the new president elated women’s health groups by freezing Bush’s last-minute anti-abortion rules and reversing the Global Gag Order. Yesterday, many of these contingencies were shocked when he made a public show of killing the birth control provision. The costs and benefits of this particular tradeoff are sure to fuel much discussion in the Media Consortium and beyond.
Weekly Audit: Obama’s Stimulus Plan Signals End of Era
Since the U.S. is officially in a recession, and the Congressional Budget Office has predicted the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, just about everybody acknowledges that times are tough. Everybody, that is, except the National Republican Congressional Committee. Talking Points Memo’s David Kurtz caught the Republican fundraising operation spouting some embarrassing doubletalk on their website earlier this week, including the proud declaration that “the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong.”
In fact, job creation is non-existent. The U.S. economy is losing over half a million jobs every month and even optimistic Wall Street economists expect unemployment to keep rising for at least another year.
Tough times call for unity, and President Barack Obama dedicated much of his inauguration speech to working together to usher in a “new era of responsibility.” Obama’s sentiment is essential—there is no way we can limit the damage of this recession without a massive collective commitment. The problem is, we all know how we got here, as Jose Garcia points out at The Progressive. Reckless bank lending, lax government oversight and insufficient social safety nets combined to saddle consumers with unaffordable levels of debt and directed family savings into completely irrational home values.
“Yes, we all need to pitch in, but above all the private sector and government regulators need to act responsibly,” Garcia writes. The surge in U.S. consumer debt over the past twenty-five years has been accompanied by stagnant wages and deceptive loan contracts. People often rely on credit to meet basic needs, Garcia notes, and bankers routinely do not disclose how much those loans will cost borrowers. Banks rewarded loan officers and mortgage brokers for pushing unaffordable loans, and a recent study by the Center for Responsible Lending revealed that most people do not understand the fine print on their credit cards.
Let’s be clear, then: Collective responsibility means overhauling Wall Street regulations and not holding the plight of working Americans hostage to banker bonuses.
Collective responsibility also means making sure that everyone has an affordable place to live. The Bush administration supported unregulated subprime mortgages and a totally disregarded rental housing programs. That approach was misguided. Renting is the only realistic housing option for the least well-off swath of the U.S. population, and affordable housing is supposed to help that demographic. Inattention to the rental market has created serious imbalances for low-income Americans. Adam Doster highlights some frightening statistics in a piece for The Nation, noting that a full-time worker would have to earn $17.32 an hour to afford the average rent on a two-bedroom apartment, well over double the minimum wage.
But there is evidence that Obama’s economic recovery package signals an end to an era of neglect. Fresh from being named one of the 25 most influential liberal voices in U.S. media by Forbes Magazine (read: the bad guys are afraid of him), Kevin Drum emphasizes the important health care provisions and expanded unemployment benefits in stimulus bill in a blog for Mother Jones. Key measures in the plan include an immediate $450 increase in benefits for the blind, disabled and elderly, along with expanded Medicaid funding and more food stamps for the 30 million Americans currently receiving them.
“With this plan, the new government confirms that it has some responsibility for providing a safety net for its poor and disabled, its children and elderly,” Drum writes.
For those of you interested in tracking the stimulus plan as it develops, make sure to check out StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.Net, which features the best independent reporting and analysis of this bill.
Over at The American Prospect, Ezra Klein–another blogger whose name strikes terror in the hearts of Forbes editors everywhere–offers some insight on bank nationalization. Nationalization is a major step, but the terms of former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s bailout operation are actually more suspect. Paulson’s plan only nationalized private-sector losses, while allowing bank shareholders to enjoy any profits stemming from public help. The result? Backward incentives for bank executives and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Once the government allows banks—or any companies—to become too big to fail, incentives for excessive risk-taking become standard fare. Does anybody seriously believe that Bank of America would have gobbled up Merrill Lynch in weekend merger negotiation if it did not think that government support would always be available, even in a worst-case-scenario? If taxpayer largess is always on the table, then meaningful consequences should accompany it. If a bank would not be viable without the collective support of taxpayer, and it remains in the collective interest to keep the bank in operation, then the government should nationalize it, kick out the management team and wipe out the shareholders. Going halfway and simply nationalizing the losses does nothing to discourage bad management behavior.
Unfortunately, however good Obama’s recovery package may be, both his administration and Congressional leaders are sending signals that we will not see anything resembling reasonable financial policy in the near future. Truthdig posts some comments from Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicating that much more money than the original $700 billion bailout outlay could be coming down the pipe.
It is more important than ever to have a strong voice heading the Labor Department to make sure the administration does not lose focus on the nonfinancial economy. Hilda Solis, President Obama’s nomination for Labor Secretary, is just such a voice, as Kim Bobo argues in an op-ed for In These Times. She has been a staunch defender of organized labor throughout her political career. Senate Republicans are stalling her nomination citing her support for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would allow workers to unionize once a majority of employees at a workplace agree. The business exec lobby is already spending big bucks to spread misleading information about the legislation, saying it would mean an end to “secret ballots” in union elections, when in fact the bill would simply allow workers to enter a union without first holding an election.
Those elections are frequently subject to intimidation from employers. We are not taking collective responsibility when we allow our workers to be threatened by their bosses when they ask for decent pay and benefits.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit Economy.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: Marching Toward Justice!
By Nezua
Media Consortium Blogger
Welcome to the new White House administration, in which we move forward with purpose. On President Obama’s very first day in office, immigrants and allies marched on ICE headquarters to signify their desire for change. Racewire reports that yesterday, “hundreds gathered in DC, a day after inaugurating our new president, to demand A New Day for Immigration.”
George W. Bush waved goodbye by commuting the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former border guards who shot a man trying to escape arrest and then tried to cover their deed up. Bush claimed Ramos and Compean had “suffered enough” after serving a fifth of their sentence and set them free, though he did not pardon them. Air America reports on the controversial decision in Bush Commutes Border Agent Sentences (video).
I understand Bush’s reasoning for mercy. But I dare say that the only way you’ll see two Chicanos set free so dramatically is if they shoot a Mexican national. And a note: the victim was not an immigrant, as implied with articles that call him an “illegal alien,” but a smuggler. They are not the same thing. But never mind my cynical humor at a time like this. Let’s take a lesson from a Salvadoran immigrant, whose words about the new administration sparkle with beauty and optimism in New America Media’s Immigrant Worker at Latino Inaugural Ball Shares Hopes for Obama Era:
Maria Perez speaks little English. For more than 20 years now, she has worked as a cleaner at Union Station [in Washington, DC], six days a week, earning slightly more than the minimum wage. She is proud to be among the millions of Latinos who voted for Barack Obama and helped to make him the 44th U.S. president. [...]
“I am a Latino. My soul is a Latino, and I am happy I am support Barack,” Perez said in broken English. “Tonight I like it. All people here is happy and beautiful.”
Maria goes on to talk about specific issues such as health and education for her children, both areas that President Obama has pledged to devote attention to.
Many people are aware of how false the stereotypes concerning the undocumented population can be. But some might be surprised by the tenacity and work ethic of Maria, or the inspiring story of Prerna, a friend and colleague of mine whose recent organizing accomplishments are chronicled in New America Media’s Undocumented Students Raise Voices Online for DREAM Act.
Welcome to Web 2.0 undocumented student activism. Youth in the usually-somber waiting rooms of history are bustling with renewed enthusiasm and energy. Trapped in marginal status, ignored by the mainstream media, with their backs to the wall and everything to loose, undocumented youth are emerging as leaders in their own movement for passage of the DREAM Act.
Let me emphasize that: Anyone interested in the power of online organizing ought really read this article. And if you are interested in learning more about the DREAM Act. Change.org is a good place to get the specifics.
Jim Hightower serves up a spirited and informative rant on the “charm” of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Why The Homeland Security Department is so Beloved. Hightower defines DHS’s charm as “swaggering lunacy” and reveals plans for a 40 ft. high wall in the middle of a “unique 1,000-acre preserve along the Rio Grande.”
The most critical part of the wildlife habitat, and even the home of the preserve’s manager, would be cut off by the wall, effectively destroying the park, which is home to two kinds of endangered wildcats and a rare palm forest.
Read on. It gets worse.
I think we can agree that a 40 ft. tall fence is not going to fix the strained relationship between the US and Mexico. The Economic Populist veers from its normal reporting, alarmed by news of violence down south. In Trouble at the Mexican Border, we read about the possibility of Mexico as a failed state: “The violence, corruption and drug cartels are now so out of control in Mexico, analysts are saying, not only is Mexico one of the world’s security threats but Mexico itself might collapse.”
The drug cartels are, by and large, the focus of these types of discussions. But we have to examine how government oppression, corruption and laws that do not serve the greater population create systemic problems for a society.
The United States is completely ignoring what is going on in Mexico but if one compares the daily beheading stories, murder, kidnapping and corruption….if one didn’t know the story was about Mexico one would swear they were reading something about Iraq in 2003/2004 time frame.
I’ve been following news from Mexico for a few years now, and I agree that most US media ignores Mexico to our detriment. This is baffling to me because our cultures, our land, our labor, and our peoples are so intertwined as to be two parts of one whole. It is easy to forget this in the midst of much rigid talk of maps, borders, and walls. But reality is knocking at our door. President Obama has put Bush on notice. Change is at hand and a sizable portion of Obama’s constituency has made their needs clear, as New America Media reports in Immigrant Activists March on ICE on Day After Inauguration.
The post-inaugural march is only a beginning. [...] Across the country, advocates plan for more actions, coordinated through an increasingly sophisticated communications network, to build a groundswell in favor of reform.
Good morning, America!
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Obama Suspends All Last-Minute Bush Regulations, Pending Review
Within hours of taking the Oath of Office, President Barack Obama ordered all federal agencies to suspend all of Bush’s eleventh-hour rules changes, pending a full review. This means that Bush’s notorious “conscience clause” rules are on hold until Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services can review them. That would be Tom Daschle. It’s highly unlikely that Daschle would sign off on these rules, which would give government healthcare workers unprecedented latitude to refuse reproductive health services on religious grounds.
This isn’t just an abstract issue. A nurse in New Mexico is currently being sued for removing a patient’s IUD without her permission and refusing to put it back in because the nurse opposed IUDs on religious grounds, Jodi Jacobsen reports in RH Reality.
Obama is also planning to repeal the Global Gag Rule, which disqualifies international organizations from receiving any federal funding if they provide abortions or even inform women that abortion is an option. The flipping of the Global Gag Rule is becoming something of presidential tradition, Steve Benen notes in the Washington Monthly: Bill Clinton reversed it shortly after he took office and George W. Bush wasted no time in bringing it back when his turn came.
However, the new president is not expected to overturn the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research by executive order. Instead, Obama wants Congress to pass a law lifting the ban. Obama has said that he’d rather let Congress express its overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favor of stem cell research by passing a law, as opposed to overturning the ban by fiat.
Another controversial target for federal funds is needle exchange for intravenous drug users. Obama has said that he supports federal funding for needle exchange, but he sent a mixed message when he chose a Drug Czar who is opposed to the idea. In AlterNet, Alan Clear urges the president to include needle exchange as part of his drug control policy.
Looking at the bigger picture, Ezra Klein sits down with two policy experts to discuss the best road to universal healthcare for In These Times. On Air America, Thom Hartmann discusses the Campaign for America’s Future’s plan for universal healthcare (audio).
Healthcare reform can’t come soon enough for small business owners struggling to afford skyrocketing healthcare costs for their employees. Public News Service reports on the plight of small business owners in Oregon and Colorado.
Now that the inauguration is over, the real work is at hand. Obama has signaled that he will make healthcare reform a high priority in his administration. It remains to be seen whether his focus on the economic crisis will dilute his efforts in the healthcare arena. One hopes that these two projects will compliment one another and not conflict.
The Battle for Wall Street Begins
“I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans. I’m talking about a moral deficit . . . . We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can’t afford a doctor when their children get sick.”
-Sen. Barack Obama, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Jan. 20, 2008
We can drop the “elect” from his title. President Obama is official. Everyone take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. And now let’s focus on the work.
Even before he was sworn in this afternoon, parts of President Obama’s economic platform were already moving through Congress. Overall, the general public remained largely in the dark about his plans for rebuilding the decimated financial system. What needs to be considered as the economic stimulus plan moves forward?
The $350 billion public investment in banks and other finance firms has not spurred banks to make loans that can foster economic recovery, nor has it encouraged them to face up to the huge unrealized losses embedded in their balance sheets. Over at The Washington Independent, Mike Lillis
demonstrates how the current bailout program fails to offer meaningful incentives for banks to direct their public money toward the public good, much less require it.
Moreover, the rescue plan attempts to address a symptom of the U.S. economic malaise—financial turmoil—without directly fixing the bad mortgages that caused the disease. Last week, the Senate gave President Obama the all-clear to deploy another $350 billion for financial rescue purposes, again with no strings attached. Obama and the new National Economic Council Director Larry Summers have pledged to spend up to $100 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money to avert foreclosures. We should know very soon if they plan to live up to that promise.
For now, the financial system remains perilously close to where it was in September 2008, when a cascade of gigantic firms failed, inciting panic among investors and policymakers alike. The word “nationalization” has been mysteriously sidelined in the U.S. debate over what to do with our Wall Street financiers, despite a major taxpayer commitment of resources. If we want to change bank behavior, the best way to do it is through straightforward government takeovers, as William Greider explains in a piece for The Nation.
“Without such a move, the taxpayers will essentially be financing the slow death of failed institutions while getting nothing in return,” Greider writes.
Greider invokes problems at Citigroup, which inked an agreement to receive an additional $7 billion in taxpayer funds last week, on top of $45 billion it accepted in 2008. Based on the $3.50 closing price of Citi’s stock on January 16, the stock market values the entire company at roughly $19 billion. If any company is too big to fail, Citigroup certainly qualifies, but it is increasingly clear that Citi cannot keep pace with its losses– more than $8 billion in the fourth quarter alone. If we’re on the hook for the company’s collapse anyway, we might as well nationalize them to make sure they go down the right way, and end its predatory lending practices in the process.
Beyond matters of sheer practicality, it’s important to remember that these companies are being bailed out because they completely screwed up. Their errors were not restricted to bad bets on home values, either. Huge U.S. institutions undertook systematic efforts to fleece consumers for every penny they were worth on everything from credit cards to home purchases. In this video spot, Brave New Films details some of the abuses at Bank of America, which received another bailout of its own on Friday.
The Bush administration itself continued to encourage predatory, anti-borrower policies through to its final day in office, thanks to an almost surreal caveat for loan work-outs administered through mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This fall, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rolled out a loan modification effort at Fannie and Freddie, touting the plan as a major new effort to curb foreclosures. What he didn’t advertise was the fact that borrowers have to sign away all of their legal rights to contest any aspect of their mortgage to be eligible for lower monthly payments.
“In plain English, the waivers mean a borrower can’t sue the lender that originated the mortgage if the loan modification goes bad, or for any other lending abuses concerning their loan,” Mary Kane writes for The Colorado Independent, highlighting Congressional testimony on the program from Julia Gordon of the Center for Responsible Lending.
This legal absurdity is beyond reckless, given that Paulson was trying to solve a problem created by gouging consumers for the benefit of big finance companies.
But even if Obama rights the Bush administration’s bizarre programs and enforces corporate responsibility on Wall Street, a mountain of equally important economic work will still face Team Obama. Writing for AlterNet, Charlie Cray emphasizes that TARP and other salvage plans will not fix imbalances in the drastically insufficient financial regulatory structure. A sweeping overhaul of the nation’s regulatory architecture is absolutely necessary, but will face much stiffer opposition from the bank lobby than, say, a $350 billion giveaway.
While Obama’s economic stimulus proposal enjoys broad public support and will likely be enacted—Steve Benen presents some persuasive statistics on that topic at The Washington Monthly—it will be harder to garner up public support for technical and complex regulatory issues. When was the last time you heard anybody get riled up about how the Federal Reserve is funded?
Fortunately, the stimulus package offers a major opportunity to enact other badly neglected, longer-term projects to update the U.S. economy. OneWorld.net highlights analyses from leading think-tanks revealing that investments in renewable energy create far more jobs than pouring money into environmentally destructive coal-fired power plants, and leave future generations with a stronger social infrastructure.
There is room for hope. Amid a barrage of increasingly grim economic figures, Obama appears to understand what needs to be fixed and how much is at stake. He is certainly aware of the dangers posed by drastic economic inequality. Danny Schechter’s News Dissector blog features a post of Obama’s speech one year ago on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the quest for economic justice. It’s inspirational stuff, particularly on the day the first black U.S. president is being sworn into office.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit Economy.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: Trapped Behind a Mesh of Broken Law
by Nezua
Media Consortium Blogger
As we are days away from ushering in a new president, hopes are high that relief can be had in federal immigration law. Yet, the Bush administration has made last minute changes to immigration law, reminding us once more of the incompetence in which we have been living for eight years.
New America Media’s highlights the gross willful negligence that is Bush’s trademark in Immigration Contradiction.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey determined that those [immigrants] tried in immigration courts had no right to challenge the outcome of their cases based on their lawyers’ performance. At the same time, the attorney general defended the policy of not guaranteeing legal representation to those appearing before immigration judges since these are civil cases and the Constitution does not consider this right under such circumstances.
In short, those detained for immigration violations are treated as criminal when it comes to invading their privacy by obtaining their genetic material. Yet, their cases are considered civil when arguing that they have no right to counsel.
When we answer genuine human need and national crisis with antics like this, we are in serious danger of losing our national soul. Or maybe just faith in our government. After all, as Feministing.com reports in Unions Win at North Carolina Plant, the workers seem to have retained both their souls and their faith, if only in each other:
When immigration agents raided Smithfield Food’s huge North Carolina slaughterhouse two years ago, union organizer Eduardo Peña compared the impact to a “nuclear bomb.” The day after, people were so scared that most of the plant’s 5,000 employees didn’t show up for work. The lines where they kill and cut apart 32,000 hogs every day were motionless. “Workers think it’s happening because people were getting organized,” said Vargas at the time.
If you do harbor hope that more people will wake up to the critical need for humane immigration reform, it can be daunting to read through too much of the mainstream reporting on the issue. Everyday, the undocumented are met with legal manipulation and sly criminalization. And many media outlets focus on punishment and sensationalize fear and danger. And of course, the ABC network is craven enough to make a reality show out of it.
New America Media reports on the new television show called “Homeland Security USA and the Facebook Group called “Take ‘Homeland Security USA’ reality show off the Air!” that rose up to protest the show. (Disclosure: I belong to this group.) And Raj Jayadev doesn’t mince words in Homeland Security Show Misses the Real Drama.
The program “Homeland Security USA” fails because it only shows part of the reality. Why not give a camera to a family crossing the border, to capture the horror of being chased down in the desert, surviving only through the desperation of an imagined American life? Or a workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in the Midwest, where workers flee agents who are armed like they are entering a war zone? Why not go to Eloy, Ariz., where sprung up out of the dirt in the middle of nowhere, like a mirage, is one the largest detention centers in the country –where detainees ask for deportation because the conditions are subhuman, and elderly men die of dehydration? [...]
While the program clearly shows the enormity and omnipresence of the mega-security agency, all this does is beg the more interesting question: How do ordinary civilians stay out of their clutches? How does an undocumented immigrant carve out an American life – work, go to school, build a family, plant roots – all while this multi-million dollar machinery called Homeland Security is stalking them every moment of the day? Drama is with the rebels, not the empire.
In Wiretap online magazine’s Advocating for an Identity, we get a closer look at one of these “rebels.” If you are imagining a wild-eyed Zapatista behind a bandanna, I’ll have to disappoint. For most of Stephanie’s 22 years, she had no idea that she fit into the often-despised category of “Illegal.”
Coming up on her eighteenth birthday, Stephanie pestered her mom to go with her to the DMV to finally get her California ID as an adult.
For the first 18 years of her life, Stephanie had no idea she was in the United States illegally, and she finally found out as she stood at the brink of adulthood.
In the same article, 25-yea-old Tam Tran pleads for the public to understand the importance of passing the DREAM Act:
“Without the DREAM Act, I have no prospect of overcoming my state of immigration limbo,” Tran said in her testimony. “I’ll forever be a perpetual foreigner in a country where I’ve always considered myself an American.”
She also talked about her experiences as an undocumented student a few months later in an October 2007 USA Today article. Later that month at work, Tran received a collect call from her mother.
Her family had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
And that is the very fear that is haunting Yolanda Guevera, a United States citizen and member of the Army Reserve. You see, her husband is undocumented. In Deployed And Deported — Immigration law hurts military families, New America Media reports on Yolanda’s predicament.
Guevara is a rear detachment commander for her Army Reserve unit, which has already been deployed to Kuwait. It’s a matter of time before she would have to leave her husband and three children in North Carolina to join her unit. [...]
“He works part time but whenever I have to go out … he’s there for me,” Yolanda says. “I don’t think I could be in the military without him.” [...]
When Guevara explained her situation to the immigration officer, the response was less than helpful. “I told him, ‘My unit is going to be deployed, so I’m afraid— what if I’m gone and I’m stationed over in Iraq or Kuwait, and my husband’s [status] expires?’” she says. “What’s going to happen to my kids?”
She says the officer responded, “You worry about that when that happens.”
Without the dreams, hard work, risks, and ingenuity of immigrants, we would not be here. I know I would not. Nor would so many of our massive institutions of commerce, which began as nothing more than a humble and small business. It is as if we get comfortable and forget our own histories. The tales of struggle and dreaming and working and persecution—is this not America? Are these not our stories? Would we throw our own past into prison?
Let us hope for real change and more than that, let us keep working and fighting for it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Are We There Yet?
This week in healthcare, the Pulse adopts what doctors call a “watchful waiting stance.” So much is happening, yet so little has actually happened.
A spokesman for Rep. Pete Stark, chair of a powerful subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee, told Elana Schor of TPM Election Central that healthcare reform could happen this year–and between Congress and the White House, there is every reason to be optimistic.
Barring unforeseen disaster Democratic Congress will score an early victory and pass the renewal and expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a popular program that funds health insurance for the children of the working poor. The Bush administration twice vetoed this critical program. The expansion would cover 4 million new kids and be paid for by an increase in cigarette taxes. The Washington Independent reports that Big Tobacco is fighting a lonely battle against this plan, foresaken by Big Pharma, the health insurance lobby, and even moderate Republicans. The House is expected to vote on a bill today or tomorrow.
Tobacco is on the losing end of the battle again, as Kevin Drum of Mother Jones writes approvingly of William Corr, Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Corr’s the executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (as opposed to a Bush-era tobacco industry flunky) and has extensive experience with healthcare policy.
“Corr started his career running nonprofit health clinics in Appalachia, and, in a major departure from the last eight years, he has actually worked inside the agency he’s been chosen to run,” Drum says.
Other appointments aren’t getting such glowing responses. Despite initial guarded optimism, doubts about the qualifications of CNN medical reporter Sanjay Gupta to be Surgeon General have emerged among reporters. Chris Hayes of The Nation made an appearance on Keith Olbermann’s show to discuss the prospective appointment. Gupta is vaunted as a great medical communicator, but reporters are concerned about Dr. Gupta’s willingness to speak frankly on sex ed or accurately about marijunana. Rep. John Conyers, the House’s most prominent advocate of single-payer healthcare, has written to President-elect Obama protesting the Gupta pick.
Ezra Klein notes in The American Prospect that Gupta may be Obama’s ace in the hole when it comes to actually passing a healthcare reform plan. He thinks Hillary Clinton’s plan failed because she didn’t have an effective media strategy. Now that it’s Obama’s turn, Gupta might be just the man for the job.
With the new adminstration in the wings, progressives are starting to hope that issues that were ignored during the Bush years might get fresh attention.
For example, debate over the so-called “War on Drugs” is expected to intensify in the Obama administration. Drug policy has taken a back seat to counter-terrorism in recent years. But with police departments are strapped for cash, prisons overflowing with non-violent drug offenders, the American military is stretched thin with regular wars, and world scientific opinion in coalescing around tested strategies like needle exchange and other forms of harm reduction, we may be due for another national conversation. To get the ball rolling, Tony Newman of AlterNet outlines five key steps to transforming America’s failed drug policy.
“Wellness has to be cool. And prevention has to be a hot thing. And we’ve got to make prevention hot and wellness cool,” Tom Daschle told Congress last week. Let’s hope that philosophy extends to truly public prevention strategies, like cleaning up the environment and the workplance, not just to tweaks to the lifestyles of individuals. Terry Allen of In These Times notes that we spend billions of dollars seeking cures and treatments for cancers that could be prevented by controlling people’s exposure to known carcinogens:
Humanitarians and scoundrels alike at hospitals, pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, university and private research programs, and government bureaucracies have stakes in the treatment industry. Not only is prevention less lucrative, but it is also likely to cost industries vast profits if they stop using, discharging or cleaning up known carcinogens — or compensating those who fall ill.
Speaking of cancer prevention, Vanessa of Feministing.com notes that the FDA rejected Merck’s request to market Gardasil to women between the ages of 27 and 45. The vaccine has been shown to be effective against the viruses that cause the majority of cervical cancer, when administered to women in their teens and early twenties. There are reasons to question whether the vaccine will be as effective in older women, who may already have been infected with the virus.
Debbie Nathan of RH Reality follows up on a New York Times story on the complications of DIY abortions.
The Bush administration’s eleventh-hour attempts to cement its social agenda may hurt terminally ill patients as well as women seeking reproductive healthcare. Barbara Coombs Lee notes in RH Reality that the same “conscience” regulations that would allow federal employees to deny birth control or abortions based on religion would also empower them to refuse pain relief to dying patients if the side effects of the pain control could hasten their deaths.
The Bush administration can’t end fast enough.
Weekly Audit: Filling FDR’s shoes
The Great Depression permanently changed the government’s role in the U.S economy, and it appears increasingly plausible that the current recession will have an equally lasting policy legacy. The bailouts orchestrated by the Bush administration have been an absolute mess, but they present an opportunity to create new consumer protection-oriented economic programs the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
As Mark Schmitt explains in a piece for The American Prospect, establishing a government entity in any sector—banking, health care, education, etc.—that serves as a gold standard for consumer protection will force the private sector to offer similar services to compete with the attractive government program.
In essence, the goal is to align private sector profits with public benefits, not unlike what FDR did with housing during the Great Depression, when the government started offering people radical new 30-year mortgages at affordable interest rates. In short order, banks switched from five-year loans to long-term loans, and a new class of homeowners was created.
President-elect Barack Obama’s economic stimulus legislation looks to make the same kind of bold economic overhaul, and while the proposal has some real problems, it seems clear that Obama is going to take serious action to reverse the economic slide.
Writing for The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild applauds virtually every policy point Obama has presented in making the case for his first major piece of legislation, from financial regulation to expanded broadband access.
This is not to say that significant hurdles are not ahead. Rothschild echoes economists of varying ideological stripes by expressing concerns that the bill is too small and will not be enacted fast enough. Congressional Democrats are already voicing uneasiness over the potential effectiveness of some of Obama’s proposed tax cuts, and the stimulus bill itself is not likely to tackle every policy priority Obama has advocated (Congress is likely to tackle regulatory affairs in separate legislation, for instance).
But as Steve Benen articulates for The Washington Monthly, the current policy debate is very different from the political bed-wetting among Democrats that we have grown accustomed to over the past eight years. Democrats are actually governing.
“It’s important for policy makers to act as quickly and effectively as possible, but there’s nothing wrong with a collaborative process in which an administration and leading lawmakers engage in some back-and-forth,” Benen writes.
In at least one sense, the stimulus bill has already notched a meaningful victory. Namely, everyone from CNBC to The American Prospect is talking about economics as a realm in which the government can play a constructive role. The victory is not total: there are still nay-sayers on spending over at the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and members of the reality-proof economics department at George Mason University will be quoted extensively in AP-style newspaper reports for the next few weeks to give stories illusory ideological “balance.” Nevertheless, there is a general consensus for aggressive government action the economic front, and the public discourse is now focused on which courses of action are appropriate.
Josh Marshall offers one such critique over at Talking Points Memo. Marshall notes that while the debate between Congress and the Obama administration has been constructive in some ways, the negotiating strategy remains something of a gamble. Obama is starting small—Paul Krugman, for instance, believes Obama’s proposed $775 billion bill will only close about one-third of the economy’s output gap. Obama may be hoping to allow the legislative process to build the bill into something large enough to withstand the current economic headwinds. But if that is the case, Marshall contends, Obama also risks loading the package down with politically damaging and economically unproductive pet projects.
“If you get deep into a lot of bidding and horse-trading you get more parochial interests in the mix,” Marshall writes.
Over at The Washington Independent, Mike Lillis details problems with various tax cuts Obama has rolled out for the stimulus. Major losers include a $3,000 incentive for companies not to lay off current employees, which appears unlikely to change any HR habits, and a corporate “net operating loss carryback” extension, which results in a huge giveaway for companies that take losses this year—notably banks who have already been bailed out (at least) once in recent months.
There can be no doubt that the economy is getting worse. The U.S. lost 524,000 jobs in December, bringing total yearly job losses to 3.6 million, and boosting the unemployment rate to 7.2%. New America Media highlights a report by Hispanic Business detailing how minorities have been disproportionately affected by the downturn. The unemployment rate among blacks soared to 11.9% in December, while 9.2% of Hispanics looking for a job didn’t have one.
The unemployment rate covers one of the most damaging aspects of the recession, but it’s also important to remember that Wall Street’s success in pushing workers into the sham 401(k) industry has also decimated the retirement savings of millions of Americans who were about to leave the workforce voluntarily.
In a 401(k) account, a worker pledges a certain amount of his wages every paycheck to a fund managed by an investment manager. Over time, these investment experts are supposed to maximize the returns in this fund, to provide better-than-market growth in the employee’s retirement account.
But 401(k) plans almost never actually work like that–they consistently score lower returns than broad market indexes like the S&P 500. You’d be better off in many cases just betting on the Dow than turning over your money to these guys. What’s worse, you pay them a fee to screw you over. As Dan Solin puts it for The Huffington Post:
“The 401(k) system is a disgrace. Employers get paid off in the form of subsidies to select brokers and advisors who control the investment options in the plan. They, in turn, get paid off by fund families and insurance companies which limit employees’ investment options to costly, under-performing funds.”
None of the major 401(k) managers saw this year’s stock declines coming, and as a result, most people whose retirement is bundled into a 401(k) plan can’t retire any time soon.
The current economic climate leaves very little room for forgiveness on almost any policy, which makes living up to FDR’s economic standard an extremely difficult task. Fortunately, Obama seems to recognize there is no other choice.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit Economy.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Immigration Wire: 2009 is Make or Break Year for Immigration Reform
By Nezua
Media Consortium Mediawire Blogger
The new year rushes upon us with momentum born of crisis and necessity. In every direction one looks, change is needed—and not cosmetic alteration, but deep, structural repair. The issue of immigration is no exception.
As New America Media reports in Immigration Demands Heat Up Before Obama Takes Over, Latino/a communities are not alone in speaking out.”Lawmakers, academics, immigration advocates and newspaper editorials” are making noise and “demanding that early attention to be paid to the immigration issue.” The clamor is not just about ending politicization and criminalization of an issue. It’s a matter of who we are as a nation.
There should be a plan that would first allow most of the undocumented to become legal residents, the supporters said. The next step would be eligibility for a green card and ultimately citizenship, a process that could take between seven to 10 years.
Greater emphasis is on family re-unification and less on enforcement by the Department of Homeland Security that controls immigration, and an end to the unconscionable nighttime raids conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), arm of the Department of Homeland Security. [...]
Dr. Marco Mason, [a political science professor at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, and one of the most vocal immigration advocates in Brooklyn] couldn’t agree more. “President Obama would be telling the world that humanity has returned to U.S. immigration policies,” he said.
Poring over the Immigration Newsladder, one can make out the tensions at play as we, as a People, attempt to answer the question What kind of nation is the UNITED STATES? One approach to the immigration question is through punitive and aggressive means. On that end of the continuum are harsh laws, S.W.A.T.-style raids, mass jailings, a detention center industry, and inevitably, shattered families. The other side of the continuum offers a more humanitarian lens. This view recognizes the interconnected quality of all our struggles, hungers, and pains—and most importantly, that knows neglecting another is a detriment to the whole.
Public News Service reports on how we all benefit from understanding in New Medical Technology Helps CA Immigrants Bridge The Language Gap.
Rancho Los Amigos in Southern California is the first rehabilitation hospital in the world to implement a wireless Video Medical Interpreter system. VMI allows non-English-speaking patients to communicate with their doctors through an on-screen interpreter.
Roland Palencia, director of Community Benefit Programs with L.A. Care Health Plan, says the system improves communication, increases quality of care and reduces medical errors. [...]
“There is definitely a medical benefit to it, but also a psychological one: The patient really feels a lot more at ease that the provider actually understands what he or she is going through.”
Who doesn’t want that? Who ought to be denied such a thing? To some these answers are very clear cut, and even at a young age. Twenty-four year old Sophya Chum is one of those people. Sophya has been active in her community and working hard for change for almost half her life, and today is program coordinator for Khmer Girls in Action (KGA), “a Long Beach-based community organization for young Southeast Asian women,” as The Nation reports in Youth in Action: Sophya Chum, Immigrant Rights Activist. For Sophya, the fight is political and it is personal, and she has some very practical and uncluttered advice to those who want to do more to affect change in the world.
For people interested in advocating for the rights of immigrants and refugees, Sophya suggests starting simple. “Find a community [you're] interested in learning about and creating change in,” she says. “And begin to volunteer.”
Immigration is the quintessential American Story. And this story and its arc, ever repeating itself, is hardly limited to the Latino/a community or the Asian American community.
In Colorado playwright explores cultural conflicts of immigration, religion, the Colorado Independent tells the story of Don Fried, a respected author who began altering his book-in-progress when the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa was raided on May 12, 2008.
Fried is currently toying with the idea of having one of the play’s discontented locals, a character who has not been happy about Jewish people coming to town and building a kosher meatpacking plant there, tip off the federal authorities and spark the immigration raid.
“But then, as the town starts to crater, that person and all the others begin to wonder what has been done — they’ve killed the goose that laid the golden egg,” he said.
There’s that interconnectedness again, and this time through an economic lens.
And so these borders and boundaries, designed to separate us, also thread us together through our lived experiences interacting with them. The Latina/o community, the Jewish community, the Asian American community, the Irish community—and the Polish community, as New America Media reports in Polish Community Shocked by Treatment of Polish Citizens at U.S. Border.
This year ends with an unpleasant intervention by Poland’s diplomatic staff at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. At issue are recent cases of Poles who were denied entry to the U.S. at the New York area airports.
While no one questions the right of the U.S to bar certain individuals from entering the country, the treatment of Polish citizens was shocking to many, especially since most of those stopped at the border were older women in their 60s and 70s. Many of them were coming to visit their families and friends for Christmas, but instead ended up being interrogated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and transported in handcuffs to a detention center.
And we have to ask ourselves again, What Kind of Nation Are We? What do we lose in a situation like that? Does it balance against any measurable gain? Or is there another way to go about reaching our goal?
Are we the kind of nation that turns 12 million members of our standing society into “dangerous aliens” undeserving of common rights? Is that what kind of nation we will remain in 2009? Public News Service sounds a clear warning in Immigration Policy Blamed for Latino Deaths in NY and Nation.
Are we going to continue to be the kind of nation that makes immigrant women pay, with their bodies, for laws that deprive them of a safe and accessible avenue to rights other women possess? Feministing tells of Latinas and self-induced abortions and the growing use of the drug for self-induced abortions. “The story is the same; immigrant women choose these do-it-yourself abortions for financial reasons, or out of fear of telling their family members, over safer procedures in clinics and hospitals.”
Time and time again, wielding such a heavy hand in response to immigrant issues involves losing touch with the basic humanity a situation requires. You make things worse. Things get out of control. People suffer very real consequences.
In 2009, let’s be a nation of those who help each other; who learn from each other; who stop tearing at our own roots so we can grow together.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration. Visit Immigration.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on immigration, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy and health issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net and Healthcare.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.