Weekly Audit: Are Handouts For Billionaires More Important Than Feeding Children?
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
The crazy conservative assault on government spending has become one of the most irrational economic policy debates in recent years.
The Republican Party is trying to maintain the fiction that direct economic relief for millions of working Americans is a fiscally irresponsible splurge, while simultaneously backing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of economically useless tax cuts for the wealthy. The demands are staggering: cut food stamps for the poor, but preserve perks for billionaires.
As Tim Fernholz notes for The American Prospect, serious economists do not believe that President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich are an effective way to stimulate the economy. Rich people don’t spend money, they save it. We need lots of consumer spending to reinvigorate economic growth and put people back to work.
If we want to create jobs, we need to put money in the hands of people who will spend it. At minimum, that means directing aid to the unemployed and providing federal assistance to states, so that local governments don’t lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers and cops. This is not only the decent, humane thing to do when the economy is struggling, it actually helps. Money the government spends to save a teacher’s job goes out into the economy to pay bills and buy products. For states, this also means that basic public infrastructure is preserved—kids learn and the streets stay safe.
Stonewalling aid
But as the editors of The Nation highlight, Republican politicians have made it nearly impossible to get that critical aid out to American families. They’ve demanded strict measures for these benefits, forcing Democrats to cut food stamps—that’s right, food stamps—in order to keep teachers in school and cops on the street.
Millions of families all over the country depend on food stamps. In the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, Republican politicians took a stand to take food from the mouths of children—and they did it while supporting a $300 billion a year in handouts for the rich.
There is no immediate budget crisis. The government can borrow money at record low interest rates, meaning that investors don’t believe the federal budget deficit is too big. But if conservatives were really serious about shrinking the deficit, they’d be encouraging economic growth, not backing billionaire giveaways.
Banking on predation
Our perverse economic policy preferences aren’t limited to budget priorities. As Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez emphasize in a segment for Democracy Now!, inadequate rules governing bank lending practices were a fundamental cause of the recession, and are actively hampering the economy’s recovery today.
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) required banks to make good loans to credit-worthy borrowers in the bank’s community. The idea was simple: If a bank wants to benefit from a community’s resources, it has to give something back and help strengthen the local economy.
Conservatives have lashed out at CRA, blaming it for the mortgage crisis, but the truth is that CRA loans had almost nothing to do with the subprime disaster. CRA loans are affordable loans to creditworthy borrowers—the whole point of subprime lending was to charge outrageously high rates to borrowers with poor credit.
In reality, policymakers’ refusal to expand CRA exacerbated the crisis. Only traditional banks are subject to CRA guidelines, and during the past two decades a host of independent mortgage companies have taken over large swaths of the mortgage market. These unregulated firms issued a lot of lousy loans, often working under direct, explicit instructions from bigger banks, who outsourced their lending in order to get around CRA rules and rip off whole neighborhoods.
Lending is critical to moving the economy out of the recession, and CRA provides reliable, proven rules to get banks back in the business of helping our communities and our economy.
Overdrafting the banks
But a host of other banking policies are also making the recession worse. One of the most egregious is the overdraft fee, which, as Annie Lowrey notes for The Washington Independent, scored banks over $38 billion in 2009 alone. To put that in perspective, the entire banking industry earned a combined profit of $12.5 billion last year, which means that the banks are making their money from gotcha fees, not from productive lending.
Banks have spent years charging overdraft fees without telling their customers that they’re subject to such gouging. Lowrey notes that the average fee is $35 on an average charge of $17. But they also have engaged in a backdating scam, rearranging the order of their customers’ purchases in order to charge more overdraft fees. As I explain for AlterNet:
“Say you’ve got $80 in your checking account, and you decide to pay some bills and run some errands. You spend $30 on gas and another $20 on your water bill. Later, you head to the grocery store and spend $81—oops!—on groceries. To reasonable people, it looks like you’re going to get hit with an overdraft fee. That last purchase put you over the line. But instead, the banks reorder your transactions, processing the groceries first. Now you’re below zero, and they can charge additional fees for your gas and water bills. Wells Fargo charged up to $39 per overdraft. This one mistake cost you $117, and nobody even bothered to tell you it was going to happen.”
Fortunately, a federal judge in California just ruled that this backdating scam was grossly illegal, and ordered megabank Wells Fargo to pay back every penny that it swindled from its California customers with the practice since 2004. But Wells Fargo was not alone—every large bank in the United States does the exact same thing, and it’s allowed them to score billions in deceptive profits. A similar ruling in a larger case against all of the big banks could end a transparent outrage, and restore an enormous amount of unfairly seized wealth to citizens all over the country.
We don’t need to be pushing policies that benefit billionaires at the expense of everyone else. The Bush tax cuts are an unnecessary economic waste. Financial policy that puts the interests of a few giant predatory banks above those of the entire citizenry makes no economic sense.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Mulch: Dispersants Harm Gulf Spill Workers
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
BP’s relief wells are just short of sealing off the Macondo well, the epicenter of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For the Gulf community, this milestone might herald a sigh of mental relief. But clean-up workers are feeling the after-effects of working with oil and the chemical dispersants used to dispel it, and physical relief is still a ways off.
Symptoms include…
There are plenty of reports about the toll relief work is taking on Gulf Coast residents who stepped in to clean the oil off sea waters and beaches. Many of these workers, idled from their regular gigs by the BP spill, had little choice about taking on these jobs. Inter Press Service has a particularly wrenching description:
“I was with my friend Albert, and we were both slammed with exposure,” Donny Mastler, a commercial fisherman told IPS. Mastler inhaled toxic chemicals he identified as dispersants, bubbling up white on the water’s surface.
Mastler’s symptoms began with watery eyes and a burning in his throat, he told IPS, but they worsened from there and included vomiting, discolored urine, sweating, and diarrhea.
As IPS reports, those are just some possible symptoms of exposure. Others include: “headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, dizziness, chest pains and tightness, irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs, difficulty breathing, respiratory system damage, skin irrigation and sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic damage and mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage.”
Health problems under-reported?
Reports of health problems began seeping out within the first weeks of the clean-up effort’s start. In some cases, BP has pushed back against the claim that these symptoms are tied to the oil or dispersants.
As Ms. Magazine reports, some workers, at least, feel they can’t speak up about the problems they’re encountering. Wilma Subra, a chemist, has been working on this issues, and as Ms. writes:
When Subra meets with the workers and their wives, they report health symptoms such as severe headaches, nausea, difficulty breathing and dizziness—but they are reluctant to report their symptoms to BP for fear that they will lose their jobs.
The lack of protection extends to the entire gulf. Subra explains how the dispersants spread the oil out over a much broader and deeper area. BP has not provided nearly enough protection from the toxic soup for marshes, wetlands and shores.
Holding BP accountable
How is this allowed? Mother Jones‘ Kate Sheppard writes that “the answer lies, in part, in the Toxic Substances Control Act, the 34-year-old law that governs the use of tens of thousands of hazardous chemicals. Under the act, companies don’t have to prove that substances they release into the air or water are safe—or in most cases even reveal what’s in their products.”
As Sheppard explains, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has some authority over the use of dispersant, but the criteria they use to judge the chemical focus on their effectiveness at dealing with oil and do not account for environmental or health effects. Ultimately, even the EPA doesn’t know much about the contents of the chemicals or their potential harmful effects. Sheppard continues:
The manufacturer insists that the products are no more dangerous than common household cleaners such as dish soap—little consolation given that many of the chemicals in those cleaners haven’t been tested for safety, either. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged that the impacts of using dispersants underwater and in large volume are largely unknown—”I’m amazed by how little science there is on the issue,” she told senators in May.
(Sheppard’s story is just one in an entire package from Mother Jones on the BP spill that’s worth checking out in its entirety.)
Going forward
It’ll be better for everyone if people with symptoms like Mastler’s recover quickly. But as Raj Patel writes for The Nation, the “happily-ever-after stage of the gulf-spill story” is not to be believed:
Sadly, “if you can’t see it, it’s not there” isn’t sound environmental science. Oil enters the food system far more rapidly as an invisible emulsion than as a rainbow slick. Scientists have already discovered the spill’s signature inside crab larvae, though the consequences of mixing oil and dispersant with the gulf ecology is uncertain, and won’t be fully known for generations.
And while the dispersants may be be damaging the health of Gulf Coast residents, they’re a boon to BP’s health as a company, particularly its fiscal health. Patel, again:
By introducing Corexit [a dispersant] into the gulf, BP not only hid its mess, but sowed doubt over the full extent and effects of the damage. This ignorance is no accident—for BP, it’s bliss. It makes it possible for BP to argue that it cannot be held accountable for those damages that were not directly related to the spill.
Happily ever after may still be years away for Gulf Coast residents. BP should not be allowed to escape to a fairy-tale land where it’s no longer responsible for the damage it caused.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Will $600 Million Border Security Bill Target Innocents?
by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Anti-immigrant forces have adeptly shaped the ongoing immigration debate into an issue of crime and punishment. Now, the pending passage of a $600 million border security bill could breathe new life into the narrative of the criminal immigrant – despite the increasing safety of our border communities.
The sentiment is familiar, if false: Crime in Mexico fuels migration, which breeds violence on the border, which must then be combated within our cities. The undocumented must be punished for stealing our jobs, stealing our services and ruining our neighborhoods. In Arizona, lawmakers like state senator Russell Pearce (who claims that his ring finger was shot off by a Latino gang member) used just that rhetoric to justify the passage of SB 1070 and other anti-immigrant laws.
The reality is far different. Not only do Mexicans and immigrants experience the worst of drug-related border violence, immigration enforcement programs have shifted their resources from combating trafficking to deporting non-criminal immigrants.
Securing the border against non-criminals
At ColorLines, Julianne Hing reports that a border security bill passed by the Senate last Friday would provide $600 million in funding for unmanned aerial drones, communications equipment and 1,500 new enforcement agents on the U.S.-Mexico border. The sum is in addition to $701 million recently approved by the House for similar militarization efforts at the border.
The Obama administration quickly affirmed its support of the bill, which was re-introduced in the House and will go before the Senate for another vote today. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano reiterated the president’s assurances that the new resources would primarily target “transnational criminal organizations” in an effort to reduce “the illicit trafficking of people, drugs, currency and weapons.”
Experts argue that this renewed emphasis on border security may encourage Republicans to cooperate in passing comprehensive immigration reform – a suggestion that some lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have been quick to endorse.
The government’s demonstrated border policing priorities don’t gel with the administration’s assurances that increases in border security will solely focus on organizing crime and trafficking. As the Immigration Policy Institute points out, federal prosecutions of smugglers and drug traffickers have gone down significantly as resources have shifted to the prosecution of non-criminal immigrants crossing the border illegally.
Policing the innocent instead of the criminal
As Elise Foley reports at the Washington Independent, newly released records show that a significant portion of those deported through the Secure Communities program — which requires local law enforcement to share fingerprints with federal authorities — had no criminal records.
That number constitutes one-fourth of deportees nationally, but the proportions are much higher county-to-county. In Maricopa county, Arizona — the home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio — 54 percent of deportees were non-criminals, while in Travis county, Texas, the figure was 80 percent.
Immigration advocacy groups argue that the new data defies DHS’s stated commitment to prioritizing dangerous illegal immigrants over non-criminals. “ICE has blatantly misrepresented the program by saying it focuses on high-risk illegal immigrants,” Sarahi Uribe, an organizer with National Day Laborer’s Organizers Network, told Foley.
Given ICE’s admitted lack of resources and the inhumane conditions documented in many detention centers, prioritization of non-criminal immigrants is a troubling reminder that the anti-crime rhetoric of the anti-immigrant Right is nothing more than a ruse.
U.S. border communities are safer than ever
Yet, despite the ugly picture painted by mass deportations and massively-funded border security bills, communities along the U.S.-Mexico border are actually quite safe.
As Elena Shore reports at New America Media, a new poll commissioned by the Border Network for Human Rights found that 87 percent of people living in 10 different U.S. border towns feel safe in their communities— a finding supported by other statistics:
An FBI report obtained by the Associated Press found that the four big U.S. cities with the lowest rates of violent crime are all along the border: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection report obtained by AP also found that being a Border Patrol agent is much less dangerous than being a street cop in most cities.
No asylum for Mexicans fleeing cartel violence
The relative safety of U.S. border communities stands in stark contrast, however, to that of their Mexican neighbors. While Americans live comfortably on the north side of the border, places like Ciudad Juarez (El Paso’s seedy sister city) are wracked by cartel violence.
At the Texas Observer, Susana Hayward examines the strained relationship between the two cities: one threatened by escalating drug violence, the other a gateway to largest drug market in the world. Chronicling the stories of Mexicans affected by the drug war, Hayward reminds us that while the U.S. repeatedly reaffirms its commitment to combating drug trafficking and to keeping the border safe, it offers no recourse to the scores of Mexicans who seek refuge from the violence.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Pulse: Killer Summer Heatwaves, Air Pollution and Winger Docs
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
“The average death rate in the city during normal times is between 360 to 380 people a day. Today, we have around 700. This is no secret. Everyone thinks we are trying to keep it secret. Look, it is 40 degrees Celsius on the street,” Andrei Seltsovsky, head of Moscow’s public health department, quoted on Democracy Now!
Russia is in the grip of the worst heatwave in its history. The country hasn’t seen temperatures like this since record-keeping began 130 years ago. Months of drought have turned the countryside into a tinderbox and wildfires are burning out of control. Moscow is besieged by acrid smoke and soaring temperatures.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters tells Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that the heat wave could kill tens of thousands of Russians. A similar smoky heat wave in France in 2003 killed 40,000 people, most of them elderly. Even in the U.S., heatwaves kill more people than hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined.
Killer coal
The U.S. is feeling the health effects of summer pollution, too. In AlterNet, Bruce Nilles notes that Monday and Tuesday were Code Orange unhealthy air alert days in Washington, D.C. When the air gets that bad, children aren’t supposed to be outdoors.
We’re all familiar with the link between car exhaust and air pollution, but Nilles draws our attention to the impact of burning coal on air quality. Coal-fired air pollution is especially noxious to human health. Research shows that the tiny particles of coal soot can burrow deep into the lungs and even work their way into the bloodstream, causing permanent damage to the heart.
The coal industry is still fighting to strip the EPA of enforcement powers that might cut into profits. “We are literally killing ourselves by burning coal, and yet the coal industry continues to fight against the Clean Air Act and any safeguards that might prevent them from spewing their pollutants into the air,” Nilles writes.
The Doctors’ Tea Party
The long, hot political summer drags on. Nick Baumann of Mother Jones notes that two GOP Senate candidates, Dr. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sharron Angle of Nevada, are linked to “a radical group of right-wing, conspiracy-theorist doctors, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons” (AAPS).
Angle was headlined an AAPS rally in San Diego this week. Eric Kleefeld of TPM Muckraker notes that Rand Paul is a full-fledged member of the group. The AAPS party line states that it is “evil and immoral” for doctors to participate in Medicare or Medicaid. An article on the AAPS website speculated that President Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing the electorate. Documents from famous tobacco lawsuits reveal that AAPS provided methodologically dubious “scientific” cover for Philip Morris when the company sought to fight indoor smoking bans and tobacco taxes.
Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones has more about this “Doctors’ Tea Party.”
Cycling Conspiracies
You probably think that bicycling is a healthy transportation alternative. Good for your heart and lungs, good for the atmosphere. Win win, right? You see fun and fitness, but Colorado gubernatorial hopeful Dan Maes (R) sees an internationalist plot. Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly describes one of the most bizarre campaign attacks of the silly season. Maes blasted his opponent, Denver mayor John Hinckenlooper (D) for promoting cycling in the city.
While bicycling may conjure up “warm fuzzy feelings” in the weak minded, Maes contents that the pro-cycling agenda is closely orchestrated by the United Nations as part of a plot to impinge upon our personal freedoms.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Audit: Foreclosure Mills, Social Security and the Fed’s Failures
by Amanda Anderson, Media Consortium blogger
Editor’s Note: Zach Carter is out this week, but we’ve compiled a rundown of the biggest economy-related stories, including the rise of foreclosure mills and why social security isn’t in jeopardy. Zach will be back next Tuesday, so stay tuned!
Who needs ethics when you’ve got foreclosure mills?
Want to make money quickly, but don’t want ethics to get in the way? Big banks are outsourcing their foreclosure duties to fraudulent law firms, known as foreclosure mills, and getting away with it. Zach Carter explains the latest get rich quick scheme for AlterNet. Foreclosure mills are ethically questionable law firms that process legal documents for foreclosures. They tend to have an emphasis on quantity, not quality. Carter writes:
Big banks are not outsourcing their foreclosure processing to shady law firms with a history of breaking the law for a quick buck. These foreclosure scammers forge documents, backdate signatures, slap families with thousands of dollars in illegal fees and even foreclosure on borrowers who haven’t missed a payment.
Andy Kroll chronicles the evolution of foreclosure mills for Mother Jones. Kroll also exposes a notorious Floridian law firm founded by David J. Stern that is using every trick in the book—including backdating documents and illegally charging clients massive fees—to profit from the foreclosure crisis:
While rushing foreclosures isn’t illegal, Stern’s fledgling firm was promptly accused of something that is: gouging people who are trying to get out of default. In October 1998, Tallahassee attorney Claude Walker filed a class-action lawsuit involving tens of thousands of claimants, alleging that Stern had piled excessive fees on families fighting to keep their homes. (Walker, who visited Stern’s offices in 1999 to collect depositions, described the place as “a big warehouse” where hordes of attorneys holed up in tiny, crowded offices “like hamsters in a cage.”)
Don’t blame Social Security for the deficit
Fact: Social Security benefits will be able to be paid, in full, through 2037.
Fact: 75% of Social Security benefits will be able to be paid thought 2084.
Fact: There is a huge surplus in Social Security trust fund- $2.5 trillion. So why the big push to trim the program? In an interview with The American Prospect, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) explains his proposed legislation that will actually expand benefits:
Ninety-five percent of the people in our country [already] pay Social Security tax on 100 percent of their income. The bill provides both contribution and benefit fairness: Even as people are going to be paying in more, they’re going to receive more benefits. Doing that, by the way, will also ensure the solvency of Social Security, which is terribly important.
The Fed’s failure and the AIG Bailout: A brief history
In The Nation, William Greider explains how the Federal Reserve Board gambled with American taxpayers’ money by not considering alternatives to the AIG bailout. Grieder highlights a report from the Congressional Oversight Panel, which “provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences.”
In short, the Fed acted “under the business-as-usual expectations of the private financial system, while skipping lightly over the public consequences.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Mulch: BP Spill Plugged, But What About Michigan?
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP is on the verge of escaping headlines, and if you’re ready to forget about the oil spill, fine. But disasters just like the Gulf spill are playing out across the country.
Yesterday, BP cemented the well that has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico shut. The Obama administration is saying that the majority of the oil released is no longer a problem. The spill was supposed to drive the Senate to finally pass a bill touching on energy issues and taking the oil industry to task, but this week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pushed back work on his minimalist energy bill until the fall.
But in states like Michigan and New York, similar stories are developing on smaller scales. For-profit companies, unburdened by strong regulations, are taking what they want, regardless of the consequences for the environment or for communities that depend on having clean soil, air, and water.
The last of the BP oil spill?
One hundred and eight days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, it looks like oil will finally stop flowing into the Gulf. On Wednesday, the Obama administration released a report showing that much of the 5 million barrels of the spilled oil — three-fourths, even — had been collected, dispersed or evaporated.
By Thursday morning, those claims were already on thin ice, with some scientists saying the administration had rested its analysis on assumptions that would help them paint a rosy picture.
At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard was skeptical from the get-go: “There’s still a lot of oil out there—about nine and a half Exxon Valdez spills in total,” she wrote. And much less than from three-quarters of the oil has disappeared. According to Sheppard’s reporting, “It’s actually closer to half. And, most importantly, the impacts of dispersing so much of that oil throughout the water column are still not well understood.”
Where did it all go?
In at least one case, it is painfully clear where the leftover oil has gone: Into communities populated by people of color. Michelle Chen reports at Colorlines:
“We do know the destination of around 40,000 tons of the spill waste: it’s headed for the families that have been getting dumped on for years. In what may be yet another calm before the storm, BP’s colorfully advertised waste management plan appears to follow a haunting pattern of environmental racism.”
Chen gets her information from an analysis conducted by the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. In essence, the study says, the dumping grounds to which BP is sending 61% of disposable oil spill waste are located in places where people of color make up the majority of the surrounding community.
Hullabaloo on the Kalamazoo
The repercussions of the BP spill may linger, but similar stories are playing out all the time. The clearest example right now comes from Michigan, where a faulty pipeline let almost one million gallons of oil spill into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.
The spill may be the biggest in Midwest history, and at the Michigan Messenger, Eartha Jane Melzer is reporting that the company at fault, Enbridge Energy, has offered to buy houses along the affected stretch of river.
In Washington, a couple of Congressmen have begun sniffing around Enbridge’s practices. The Washington Independent’s Andrew Restuccia found that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which is charged with overseeing the integrity of the pipelines carrying oil from place to place, is riddled with familiar rot. According to his report, the agency boasts both leaders who’ve been through the revolving door and a willingness to grant safety waivers that could put normal people in harm’s way.
The Kalamazoo spill has garnered additional attention due to the larger BP spill. But so far it looks like the company at fault will not have to face major consequences for its errors.
Frack that
Another example: The push for natural gas drilling is creeping eastward from Colorado and Wyoming to Pennsylvania and New York. As National Radio Project’s Making Contact explains, “While the BP oil spill has increased calls to use natural gas as a so-called ‘clean energy’ alternative, activists are sounding the alarm bell about this controversial gas drilling technique – hydraulic fracturing.”
In some places, “local groups aren’t waiting for federal regulation,” host Andrew Stelzer reports. “New York in particular is a hotbed of opposition.”
And indeed, AlterNet writes, the state senate in New York voted this week to wait on natural gas drilling. The state’s assembly must approve it, too, however. Like the oil spill in Michigan, like the BP oil spill, natural gas drilling is one more case where big energy companies are more concerned with profit than people—or the planet on which we live.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Diaspora: Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Crusade Continues
by Catherine Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Though Arizona’s SB 1070 went into effect without its most controversial provisions, the legislation’s stated intent
—attrition through enforcement—is nevertheless gaining traction among anti-immigrant legislators across the nation. In the wake of the law’s enactment, other states are coming out in support of Arizona, some developing policy modeled after SB 1070. Others even hope to alter the U.S. constitution to deny “birthright citizenship” to children of undocumented immigrants.
Arizona stands firm against injunction
After federal judge Susan Bolton blocked numerous elements of SB 1070, Arizona governor Jan Brewer wasted no time and swiftly filed an appeal against the injunction.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for his part, has assured the public that he intends to continue enforcing state and federal immigration laws through “crime sweeps” and immigration status checks. After Arizona’s 287(g) agreement expired last year, effectively stripping local law enforcement of the right to detain individuals on suspicion of their immigration status, Arpaio similarly refused to comply, brazenly maintaining his immigration enforcement campaign.
Jamilah King of ColorLines reports that on the day that SB 1070 went into effect, Arpaio and hundreds of deputies arrested 50 protesters before completing their 17th immigration raid. Those arrested included clergy, journalists, and attorneys. Local civil rights leader Salvador Reza – a particularly outspoken critic of Arpaio’s contentious enforcement tactics, was also taken into custody, as was former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez.
No citizenship to “anchor babies”
Meanwhile, Arizona legislators are taking anti-immigrant sentiment to a new level and coming out in favor of potentially repealing the 14th amendment, which grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States.
At the Washington Independent, Elise Foley reports that Arizona senators Jon Kyl and John McCain are the latest to join the radical faction of Republican Party politicians calling for congressional hearings to reconsider the amendment. McCain’s new position is particularly curious given his historical support of comprehensive immigration reform, and past advocacy of deportees’ American children.
McCain’s about-face may be prompted by the impending election and, in particular, the considerable popularity of his Republican opponent J. D. Hayworth, who is running on a firm anti-immigrant platform.
Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive argues that the Republican focus on birthright citizenship is a malicious attempt to visit the sins of the father onto the children. Rothschild also calls attention to the fact that a whopping 94 Republicans in the House support the extremist effort.
SB 1070 paves the way
Arizona has long been a testing ground for anti-immigrant measures in the U.S. and SB 1070 is no exception. Now that the new law has gained traction, other states are following suit.
At Talking Points Memo, Christina Bellantoni reports that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) issued an opinion stating that Virginia law enforcement, including state park personnel, have the same authority to investigate immigration status as Arizona police officers.
Written as an advisory letter to state Delegate Bob Marshall, the opinion has garnered intense opposition – in part because Virginia considers official opinions of the attorney general to be laws. Cuccinelli reinforced his opinion by filing an amicus brief to stand in solidarity with Arizona in its fight against the federal government.
He’s not alone, either. Going back to the Washington Independent Foley reports that three other attorney generals and nine states have filed amicus briefs in support of Arizona’s new immigration law.
Who profits when immigrants go to jail?
While SB 1070 is argued in the courts and debated in the media, Yana Kuchinoff at Truthout reminds us that 300,000 immigrants are languishing in detention centers under notoriously poor conditions. More than 100 deaths have been reported in immigration detention since 2003, sparking investigations by Human Rights Watch, Detention Watch, and even the Department of Homeland Security.
Moreover, private companies contracted to handle the rising number of detentions are making a fortune on the nation’s broken immigration system. Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private immigration detainer in the country, has made record profits since 2003 by billing the federal government an estimated $11 million per month and cutting costs at the expense of detainees’ health and well-being. Telecommunications companies like EverCom are also profiting from detention, charging immigrants in detention as much as $17.34 for a 15-minute phone call.
The irony of our dysfunctional immigration system, Kuchinoff concludes, is that the people who end up spending the most time in detention, are those with the strongest claims for staying in the U.S.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Pulse: GOP Kills Health Care for 9/11 Workers, Rails at “Ground Zero Mosque”
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Last Thursday, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) launched into a righteous tirade against the GOP’s attempts to derail a health care package for 9/11 first responders. His House floor antics became an instant viral video classic. Weiner and the House Dems were trying to pass a $7 billion health care assistance package for first responders, cleanup workers and others injured at Ground Zero in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many of whom developed chronic and poorly-understood health problems as a result of their service.
The gentleman will sit down!
The original bill would have paid for the fund through a tax on foreign owned businesses operating in the United States. The Democrats were seeking a two thirds majority in House to prevent the Republicans from tacking on an amendment to pay for the package with money set aside for health care reform. Weiner exploded at his GOP colleagues for paying lip service to 9/11 heroes while refusing to pass the bill. The bill died, of course, and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) went back to rabble rousing about the proposed Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero.
Suspiciously, in the days leading up to the showdown in Congress, someone decided to open an investigation into a 9/11 firefighter who went on to compete in Mixed Martial Arts after being granted a disability pension in 2003 for asthma and PTSD. The New York Post whipped up a frenzy of outrage on the eve of the vote, painting a 9/11 firefighter as a malingerer, prior to any investigation.
As I reported for Working In These Times, it is entirely possible for elite athletes to suffer from asthma. Being a firefighter with smoke-triggered asthma is a whole different scenario. Try using a puffer in full turnout gear. It was almost as if someone was trying to provide political cover for the Republicans to vote against the bill.
Missouri attempts to block health care reform
Nick Baumann of Mother Jones reports that 70% of voters in Missouri’s heavily Republican primary voted for Proposition C, a resolution that purports to block the federal government’s ability to force individuals to carry health insurance. As Baumann explains, it’s a symbolic victory as The Affordable Care Act is federal law, and Missouri has no more right to opt out of the individual mandate than it does to print its own money. If Missouri tries to flout the individual mandate, it will face a quixotic constitutional battle.
This type of political theater is a hot new trend at the state level. Demagogues have discovered that passing state laws that blatantly contradict federal law is a great way to get publicity for for their views on health care and immigration (e.g. Arizona’s SB 1070). It’s like a 2-year-old discovering the word “no.” These laws will get struck down, at considerable expense to state and federal governments, but the ideologues will have made their point.
Combating misinformation from crisis pregnancy centers
Alexandra Tweten of the Ms. Magazine blog reviews the new documentary 12th and Delaware, by the makers of Jesus Camp. The new film profiles an abortion clinic across the street from a crisis pregnancy center (CPC). Staffers from the Woman’s World Medical Center square off daily against anti-choice volunteers from the Pregnancy Care Center.
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the anti-choice playbook. CPCs mimic real clinics in order to confuse women seeking abortions long enough to talk them out of it.
Charlotte Taft writes in RH Reality Check about the time an anti-choice group called White Rose set up shop across the breezeway from the abortion clinic she was running in Texas in the 1980s. The operatives liked to bombard the women with images of mutilated fetuses:
I could always tell when a woman had just come into our clinic from the White Rose because she would be standing at our front desk crying and shaking. She would have been waylaid there, sometimes for hours, before she finally figured out she was in the wrong place and had the courage to get up and leave. In nearly 40 years of working in the field of abortion I never got over seeing that kind of trauma and I never have. I was furious and literally could not believe that this fraud was allowed.
12th and Delaware
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews 12th and Delaware filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing. In the course of the interview Goodman plays a strikingly candid quote from the movie in which the head of the CPC, Anne Lotierzo, explaining how she tricks women seeking abortions into coming to her “clinic”:
“When she calls, and she says, ‘Do you do abortions?’ I say, ‘Are you calling for yourself, or are you calling for your friend?’ She says, ‘I’m calling for myself.’ I say, ‘Well, when did you have a pregnancy test?’ And we engage in conversation, because if she calls and says, ‘Do you do abortions?’ and I say, ‘No’—click.”
The CPC bait-and-switch
The stalemate at 12th & Delaware isn’t an isolated situation. There are more than 4000 CPCs nationwide, compared to just 2000 freestanding abortion clinics. Not all CPCs are across the street from clinics, but they all carry on the same bait-and-switch tactic promising health care and delivering propaganda. Shockingly, some CPCs even receive public funding, even though federal funding is blocked for most real abortion care.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Audit: Silencing Conservative Deficit Hawks
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
The same conservatives who spent the past year senselessly screaming about the U.S. budget deficit are now demanding an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. The extension simply doesn’t make sense, and the policies implied are a recipe for massive job loss in the middle of the worst employment crisis in 75 years.
Deflation nation
As William Greider explains for The Nation, the major problem facing the U.S. economy is not the budget deficit, but the prospect of deflation. Deflation was one of the driving forces behind the Great Depression. Under deflation, the value of money increases, which drives prices down. When millions of Americans are deep in debt, deflation makes those debts much larger. It also creates total economic paralysis, as Greider explains:
Deflation essentially tells everyone to hunker down and wait. Instead of buying big-ticket items, consumers wait for prices to fall further. Instead of investing in new production, companies wait for cheaper opportunities, cheaper labor.
In other words, nothing happens. And when nothing happens, the economy falls apart. Instead of spending money now while it’s still valuable, everybody just waits for it to accumulate value. Businesses lay off workers and workers don’t spend money, creating a vicious cycle in which prices fall further because nobody has any money to buy anything with.
Deflation over deficit
There are time-tested ways to fend off deflation. The Fed can cut interest rates, and the federal government can spend money—lots of money—putting people to work. But instead, conservative politicians are emphasizing the budget deficit, claiming that without immediate action to cut the deficit, the U.S. economy will collapse.
As I note for AlterNet, the deficit is only a problem if it creates very high interest rates (our current rates are at record lows) or if it leads to severe inflation, as governments print loads of money to pay off their debts. But we aren’t seeing inflation—instead, we’re getting dangerously close to deflation.
Spending cuts kill jobs
As David Moberg observes for In These Times, massive spending cuts in the middle of a recession don’t reduce the deficit. Those cuts create layoffs and reduce economic growth, which results in lower tax returns for the federal government. They make the deficit worse. We’ve just watched several nations attempt to counter their budget deficit woes with “austerity”—cutting back on jobs and social services—and the result has been disastrous. Here’s Moberg:
Government austerity and cuts in workers’ wages will simply reduce demand, slowing recovery from the Great Recession or even creating a second downturn. And weak recovery will bring lower tax revenues, continued pressure for austerity and difficulty repaying debts. In short, the medicine the financial markets and their political allies prescribe will make the global economy sicker.
Spending money to make jobs
In a pair of posts for The Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes that conservative politicians can’t even make sense when they talk about the deficit. They’re demanding action on the deficit, while also demanding an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts make the deficit bigger, something Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) acknowledged in a recent interview. Cantor’s justification? We need jobs right now, and it’s okay to inflate the deficit in the pursuit of jobs.
That justification is right—but Cantor’s policies are wrong. Tax cuts for the rich don’t create jobs, because rich people just hold onto the money. The fact is, government spending is a much more effective way of creating jobs than cutting taxes. If jobs are the priority in a deep recession, Benen argues, then, we should be spending to create jobs, not funneling economically useless money to the wealthy.
The corporate agenda after Citizens United
Much of the deficit and tax-cut hysteria is being pushed by corporate executives that are looking to score tax breaks for themselves and their shareholders. So it’s profoundly disconcerting to see corporations begin pouring money into elections in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United ruling.
As Suzy Khimm emphasizes for Mother Jones, corporations have started spending like crazy on advertising in support of conservative causes. Prior to Citizens United, corporations were banned from conducting such direct electoral advocacy, but as Khimm notes, now major retailers like Target and Best Buy are jumping into the fray.
Spending big bucks to derail the economy for profit is not okay. The best way for policymakers to fight this corporate assault is to make a strong push to actually repair the economy. Self-interested executives and corrupted politicians will make all kinds of convoluted economic arguments to enrich themselves and their backers. They’ll use the recession as an excuse. But if lawmakers actually fight the recession successfully, they can’t listen to deep-pocketed corporate miscreants.
President Barack Obama and Congress should ignore the phony deficit hysteria and push for a strong jobs agenda, filled with lots and lots of government spending to put people back to work. Creating jobs is not just an economic priority, it’s a key tool to defanging disingenuous political attacks.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Mulch: Despite Senate Inaction, Clean Energy Economy Thriving
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released an energy and oil spill bill this week that has no carbon cap, no renewable energy standard, and no chance of changing the course of America’s energy future. And yet, despite Senate setbacks, the clean energy economy is growing.
A new report, funded in part by the State Department, says that renewable energy use worldwide is at a “clear tipping point,”as Yes! Magazine’s Brooke Jarvis writes. That growth comes despite inaction in Washington. Around the world, electric companies are drawing power from sources like wind and solar, entrepreneurs are building new renewable energy generators, and governments are pushing for renewable energy use.
Congressional inaction
Over the course of 2010, the Senate’s ambitions for climate legislation have dwindled to almost nothing. A session that began with the Kerry-Boxer bill—a close-enough approximation of the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act—ended with Reid’s energy bill, which drops all efforts to cap carbon.
Reid’s bill would hold oil companies accountable for spills by lifting a liability cap. It also includes incentives for home energy efficiency. The bill leaves out provisions that could have made a difference to America’s energy future: It does not require states to tap renewables for a portion of their electricity generation, and it does not limit carbon generation in any sector of the economy.
At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard recalls Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) tough fight to get the House measure passed, and reports that the House Speaker is still willing to push forward on this issue:
Pelosi has tried to remain positive. “This is an issue the Senate can’t walk away from,” Pelosi told the crowd of liberal activists at Netroots Nation last Saturday. Even if the Senate has, for now, Pelosi is optimistic. “It cannot be ignored,” she tells Mother Jones. “I have confidence in the issue.”
Alternative alternatives
Not everyone is mourning the death of cap-and-trade legislation. At The Nation, Charles Komanoff, an environmental economist, argues for an alternative method of tamping down carbon use and promoting alternative fuels.
“Virtually everyone who truly desires emissions reductions agrees that putting a (rising) price on carbon is essential,” Komanoff writes. “But there’s another, better way to do that, one that also would deliver an economic bonus to a majority of Americans.”
The fee-and-dividend system Komanoff is promoting increases the price of emitting carbon, but instead of leaving it up to companies to manage costs through carbon permits—as in a cap-and-trade system—this program sends checks to consumers, who make their own choices about energy use.
Komanoff focuses on a bill drafted by Rep. John Larson (D-CT) as a good example of this type of system; Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) also have a bill floating around that relies on fee-and-dividend. It seems unlikely, but perhaps interest in fee-and-dividend will revive now that the Senate has dropped carbon cap-and-trade programs.
International implications
With all the back and forth in Washington, it’s easy to forget that the decisions our Senators from South Carolina or Nevada make affect the entire world. The Senate’s failure is also holding back the entire international negotiation process on curbing global carbon levels.
Inter Press Service’s Eli Clifton reports: “Already, the upcoming meeting of international negotiators in Cancun, in November, is being described as an increasingly unlikely venue for the signing of an international climate agreement.”
Outside the political arena, however, the world’s consumers are signaling that they’re ready to embrace renewable energy. Going back to Yes! Magazine, Jarvis digs into the report on global energy use:
In Europe and the U.S., renewable energy grew faster than fossil fuel energy in 2009—for the second year in a row. Sixty percent of new electricity generation in Europe and more than half of new energy in the U.S. came from renewable sources. China built more than 37 gigawatts of renewable power generation capacity, more than any other country. “If this trend continues,” the report notes, “then 2010 or 2011 could be the first year that new capacity added in low-carbon power exceeds that in fossil-fuel stations.”
Clean energy at home
Even in the politically backward United States, clean energy projects are humming along. In Albuquerque, for instance, scientists are working to create “solar cells that are much smaller, cheaper and more efficient than the current technology,” as Public News Service reports. (They’re also bendable!)
“The new technology is also less picky about needing direct sunlight without any shading,” reporter Eric Mack writes. “That means it could perform better in mobile applications, such as on the exterior of a car, because orientation towards the sun would be less of a concern.”
And in Iowa, a program to fund alternative energy projects has started to move. “Program manager Bill Haman says it was a slow-go at first,” according to another piece from Public News Service’s Tom Joseph. “But things have picked up in recent years, and the applicants are pursuing just about any alternate energy venture under the sun.”
Indeed, environmentalists’ last-ditch effort to get some half-useful provision into the Reid energy bill centered on a renewable energy standard that would, in theory, increase clean energy use. But as Andrew Restuccia of the Washington Independent reports, the limited standard favored in the last days of negotiation may not have pushed clean energy use to grow any faster. And stripping the standard out of the bill may not have even helped Reid: Restuccia also reports that Republicans won’t vote for the bill anyway. Even some Democrats are turning away.
In other words, for now, clean energy will have to make its own way.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.