Weekly Pulse: Will the Feds Dare Call It Terrorism?
The fallout from the assassination of women’s healthcare provider Dr. George Tiller continues. As Zack Roth of Talking Points Memo reports, the Justice Department will investigate whether Tiller’s shooter, an anti-choice zealot, violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act or any other federal statutes. But little has been said about investigating the killing as an act of terrorism, a federal crime. The Oklahoma City bombers were investigated by the FBI and tried under a 1994 federal anti-terrorism statute, and that was before the PATRIOT ACT, which presumably makes it even easier to prosecute terrorism as a federal crime today.
Tiller’s murder was terrorism by any reasonable definition of the term. It was a politically-motivated act of conspicuous brutality, designed to suppress abortions through fear. The feds will probably stop short of investigating Tiller’s murder as a terrorist attack. That designation would unleash vast federal powers to investigate large swathes of the radical anti-choice movement and hold accountable anyone who gives them the slightest aid and comfort. The feds are simply not prepared for the political fallout that would ensue if, say, Operation Rescue were officially designated as a terrorist organization.
But Tiller’s assassination seems to be working as an intimidation tactic. On Tuesday, Dr. Tiller’s family announced that his clinic, one of only three facilities of its kind in the country, will close its doors forever. Tracy Clark-Flory writes in Salon that the terrorist got exactly what he wanted:
A lesson in the effectiveness of terrorism: Dr. George Tiller’s Kansas clinic is closing permanently, according to his family’s lawyers. In a statement Tuesday, the family said: “We are proud of the service and courage shown by our husband and father and know that women’s healthcare needs have been met because of his dedication and service.” They will continue to honor his memory “through private charitable activities” — in other words, the type of activism that is less likely to get a person killed.
Of course, the intimidation won’t stop at a single act. As James Ridgeway notes in Mother Jones, the alleged assassin is inciting further violence from his jail cell:
The fact that the family made clear that it would not be involved “in any other similar clinic” suggests that they are traumatized and fearful–in a word, terrorized. And no wonder, since Roeder, as I detailed yesterday, has issued warnings from his jail cell of further attacks on abortion providers–an act which, coming from just about any other comparable source, would certainly be deemed terrorism, and treated accordingly.
Making explict the link between Tiller’s murder and larger political goals, the Associated Press headline calls the closing a “tainted victory” for the larger anti-choice movement.
Professional anti-choicer Ross Douthat sparked controversy in an op/ed for the New York Times, insinuating that Dr. Tiller might still be alive if pro-choicers didn’t make such a big deal about protecting late-term abortions. Hilzoy of the Washington Monthly tackles some Douthat’s errors, starting with his misleading implication that third trimester abortions are unregulated. Without that premise, Douthat’s argument falls apart, since he’s arguing in effect that pro-choicers have created a free-for-all in which anyone can get a late term abortion for any reason.
Amanda Marcotte of RH Reality does a great job exposing the misogyny behind the anti-choice myth of frivolous late-term abortions. If you think that women are flighty, irrational, fundamentally unserious beings, you expect them to opt out of pregnancy on a whim after months of gestation. The imagined problem of casual late-term abortions reveals what anti-choicers really think of women, that they are lesser beings who need to be controlled by the state. Dr. Tiller’s motto was the exact opposite: Trust women.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit
Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Audit: Ending the Economic Status Quo
Filed under: Barack Obama, Economy, MediaWire, NewsLadder by Zach Carter, TMC MediaWire Blogger
The banking lobby still holds enough sway inside the Beltway to torpedo sensible consumer protection rules, even after releasing a flood of predatory mortgages that kicked off the current economic crisis. On issues ranging from payday loans to subprime mortgages, the banking industry continues to successfully defend itself against new regulations that would protect the consumer. As if that weren’t outrage enough, the finance lobby has also joined other corporate interest groups to fund misinformation campaigns that smear unions and block wage growth.
As Mary Kane explains for The Colorado Independent, the push to rein in predatory mortgage lending appears to be losing steam on Capitol Hill. An extremely complex mortgage reform bill that is conciliatory to the finance lobby passed the House last month, angering consumer advocacy groups. Among the problems: the bill pre-empts many stronger state predatory lending laws and protects the Wall Street investment banks that gorged themselves on mortgage-backed securities.
Consumer protection shortfalls are not limited to messy mortgages. Lagan Sebert and David Murdoch detail the payday loan industry’s continued assault on U.S. consumers for the American News Project. By offering small loans, typically in amounts ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, payday lenders target consumers who need money for basic necessities, then charge them outrageous interest rates (as in, above 700%).
For years, newspaper editorials have denounced payday lenders for systematically exploiting the most vulnerable members of society, including members of the U.S. military, who are often targeted as a result of their reliable paychecks. The solution to the problem is as simple as the business is repulsive: Capping annual interest rates on all consumer credit products at 36% would make this kind of predation impossible.
Nevertheless, the payday loan industry has been able to escape a regulatory crackdown via an intense and sustained lobbying effort. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is now parroting payday lending lobbyists. Since payday loans are supposedly paid back within a matter of weeks, Dodd and the payday lending lobby say that it’s unfair to hold them subject to the same standards as a 30-year mortgage.
The argument is insane. No bank would ever get away with charging a 36% interest rate on a mortgage. Even the most predatory subprime mortgages didn’t have interest rates anywhere near that high. But Sebert and Murdoch go further, highlighting a report from the Center for Responsible Lending which found that payday lenders make 90% of their revenue from borrowers who do not pay their loans off on time. The loans are structured to be so expensive that consumers become trapped into making payments for the long-term, often spending thousands of dollars over multiple years to get out from under an initial loan of just a few hundred dollars.
Dodd has received major campaign contributions from the banking industry, but sometimes the lobbying effort is much more subtle. Several major corporate lobby groups have united under the misleading moniker of “Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs” to finance shoddily researched projects that defend the interests of the executive class in economic policy. An Alliance for Main Street Jobs report written by Anne Layne-Farrar has received quite a bit of attention for its claim that the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would kill 600,000 jobs by making it easier for employees to organize. Several major news outlets have cited the allegation, including Fox News, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and CBS News. As Art Levine reveals for In These Times, however, this research relies on completely meaningless statistical trends and disingenuous research design that render its findings utterly hollow.
Corporate executives are not afraid of EFCA because they think it will kill jobs or disenfranchise workers. They are afraid because it will empower workers to fight for living wages and provide safe working conditions—things that leave less money around for big executive bonuses at the end of the year and give workers a greater say in how companies operate.
In some respects, EFCA also represents the other side of the predatory lending problem. It is important to ban abusive loans, but it is just as important to make sure people are paid fairly for their work to ensure they don’t need to seek out shady credit just to make ends meet.
When so many brewing legislative battles relate to the economy, it’s easy to forget about the programs that have already been enacted. Some of the tax cuts included in the economic stimulus package were aimed at fostering investment in low-income and minority neighborhoods—a worthy goal. But as Michelle Chen notes for ColorLines, the program has some significant flaws. Chen highlights a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found that minority-owned community development entities are largely being excluded from the program, with approval rates about 67% lower than other applicants. The GAO could find no reasonable explanation for why minorities were not making the cut, especially when some recipients of the tax credits have a history of consumer exploitation. Capital One Bank, for instance, is receiving $90 million of these tax credits, despite its long history of abusive subprime credit card lending.
There have been some successes this year in the push for an economy that answers to workers and consumers. Much of the stimulus bill is designed to make sure important jobs don’t disappear during the recession, and Sen. Dodd’s credit card reform bill passed both chambers of Congress by comfortable margins and included some very strong improvements. But we know what caused the economic crisis: stagnant wages and predatory lending. A true recovery will have to empower workers and protect consumers, both of which will require breaking with the corporate status quo.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists 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: Modern Day Slave Trade Uncovered
The Wire will be brief this week, as I’m attending New America Media’s Expo and Awards at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. I’ll be speaking about New Media and accepting an award on the behalf of the Sanctuary group at ProMigrant.Org.
But the situation on the ground doesn’t pause for conventions or award ceremonies. So, in lieu of a full post, here are a few important stories from the Immigration Ladder this week that are worth checking out. We’ll be back in full force next week.
In the American Prospect, Renee Felts and Stokely Baksh examine the Obama administration’s Secure Communities initiative, which “supporters say will be more focused in its pursuit of undocumented immigrants with felony records” than Bush-era immigration measures, which indiscriminately corral immigrants and Latinos alike. Felts and Baksh offer a wary admonition to the White House: Trying to draw a line between those who cry for harsher enforcement and “comprehensive reform advocates” might result in further racial and ethnic profiling, which has bloomed since the implementation of programs like the 287(g) agreement.
On Monday, the “Reform Immigration for America Campaign” launched in over 35 cities and Mary Kuhlman reports on the local event in Chicago, Ill. for Public News Service. “Community, faith, labor, and business leaders” met to begin the campaign designed to “build momentum” for the immigration reform that so many hope to see in 2009. “We hope people will join us in fighting for sensible solutions,” Kuhlman quotes Joshua Hoyt, the executive director for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
OneWorld reveals that while the U.S. military recruits non-citizens by offering them “expedited citizenship” for enlisting, “loopholes in immigration policy are preventing military personnel from becoming citizens even after years of service to the country.” One soldier is still in limbo, even after eight years of service as a Marine. This is yet another example of immigration policy that badly need fixing: Sometimes the families of these soldiers are deported. This is horrific treatment for those who offer their lives in a bargain for inclusion.
Finally, RaceWire’s Michelle Chen reports on the discovery of a “modern-day” slavery operation based in the U.S. Any involved in the struggle for human rights must read this article. A group of “Missouri-based employers” now face allegations of running an international operation that solicited, transported, and housed foreign nationals so they could enter the U.S. workforce. The ring was a grossly exploitative scam in which humans were “essentially held captive, crammed into substandard housing, and charged huge fees.” Worse, yet, the threat of deportation was leveraged against them when they dared seek better living arrangements.
We must change how we handle those who offer their lives for our nation’s well-being, reshape the entire conversation on immigration, and recognize the great value in accepting those who work to make their dreams come true and keep their families safe. These changes are essential to our country’s well-being and future health. Let’s make big changes this year. Especially in light of the newest supreme court nominee, made by a President who hails from Hawaii and Kenya, let’s live up to our potential and remember what it means to be a “nation of immigrants.”
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: Anti-Choice Terror in the Heartland
Dr. George Tiller, one of the few physicians in the country who performed second and third trimester abortions, was fatally shot in church on Sunday. It seems that Tiller was marked for death because of his work. The man charged with murdering Tiller, 51-year-old Scott Roeder, has a 20-year history of anti-choice and anti-government extremism.
Tiller’s compassion for his patients was legendary. Even during his lifetime, many referred to him as a saint for risking his own life to perform abortions that few other doctors would provide, irrespective of his patients’ ability to pay. The American Prospect features a moving tribute to Dr. Tiller by Michelle Goldberg, who relates a life story that’s equal parts John Irving and John Grisham:
Nation columnist Katha Pollitt attended a vigil for Dr. Tiller in New York’s Union Square. Pollitt reports that, compared a similar vigil she attended in 1998, the crowd was younger, angrier, and larger. She says that, over a decade after the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, people are finally fed up with anti-choice terrorism:
Going back to the Prospect, Ann Friedman argues that Tiller’s murder, and the years of violence and intimidation that led up to his assassination show that the United States’ current protections for abortion providers are not working:
While we wait for reform, Attorney General Eric Holder is doing his best to protect abortion providers in the wake of Tiller’s murder. The Colorado Independent’s Ernest Luning reports that Holder has ordered U.S. Marshals to step up security for a late-term abortion provider in Boulder.
A 360-degree harassment of doctors and their staff is part of a deliberate, anti-choice extremist strategy. Josh Harkinson looks back on the time he spent reporting on anti-choice activists in Wichita, the home of Dr. Tiller’s clinic, for Mother Jones. The groups often targeted people at home. “People have a public identity that they like to keep separate from their private identity,” one anti-abortion activist told Harkinson, “but we believe you can’t separate the two when you are talking about killing babies. And people are more likely to listen to what you say and be influenced when you bring the issue home to where they work and live.”
In other reproductive health news, Rachel K. Jones, a co-author of a controversial paper arguing that sex educators should present withdrawal as a legitimate method of birth control, defends her study by questioning the motives of her critics in the blogosphere:
I would argue that, on the contrary, Jones’ study has been criticized for its shoddy evidence. The authors admit at the outset that there’s very little research on withdrawal and that the practice has not been systematically tested in clinical trials, unlike other forms of birth control. Most of what we know about the practice comes from small studies, and/or studies that weren’t designed to measure the efficacy of withdrawal as it is actually used. (For more discussion of the study, see last week’s Pulse.) The evidence the authors present barely supports the contention that withdrawal deserves more study. However, they go much further, suggesting that sex educators change their curricula to present withdrawal in a more favorable light. Many of Jones’ critics found that suggestion irresponsible. Before lecturing her critics about their receptiveness to evidence, Jones should take a hard look at the gap between her evidence and her recommendations.
Recent events have pushed reproductive choice to the forefront of national consciousness. For the latest on healthcare controversies, big and small, stay tuned to the Weekly Pulse.
Weekly Audit: EFCA Vital for Recovery
Filed under: Barack Obama, Economy, MediaWire, NewsLadder It’s official: The U.S. economy has been in a recession for a year and a half and many of the economic troubles worrying progressives in 2007 have yet to be addressed. While the Obama administration has taken steps to relieve some problems, a series of counterproductive bailouts, woefully inadequate labor laws and rampant inequality are still in urgent need of attention.
Severe economic inequality has persisted for decades in the U.S., but the current crisis is bringing things into focus. Unfortunately, while Wall Street excess and the corporate jet-setting of Detroit executives have dominated headlines and garnered plenty of justified outrage, the other side of the inequality coin has been largely neglected. As Katrina vanden Heuvel explains in The Nation, the routine exploitation of day laborers and domestic workers has grown even more pervasive since the recession began. Workers who managed to survive by laboring for predatory wages under abusive conditions now see those wages stolen with increasing regularity, as contractors simply refuse to pay up when the work is done. Huge portions of domestic workers are not only living below the poverty line, but subject to verbal and physical abuse. And as jobs have grown increasingly scarce, vanden Heuvel writes, speaking out against employer mistreatment has become a thoroughly daunting prospect for workers with no savings to help them endure unemployment. For the millions undocumented workers who are not protected by U.S. labor laws, an abusive work situation leaves them without any legal recourse.
Our labor laws desperately need to be revamped. Currently, Capitol Hill’s biggest battle for workers rights is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier for workers to form a union without fear of employer reprisals or intimidation. The corporate executive class is lobbying hard against EFCA by claiming it revokes workers’ rights to a secret ballot in union elections, but the bill would do no such thing. As the law currently stands, employers can force workers who want to unionize to hold an election in order to actually establish a union. EFCA would require that a union be legally recognized as soon as a majority of workers sign cards saying they want to unionize. Union leaders are still elected by a secret ballot, but the election is permitted to take place later on, preventing employers from using the election period to bully their workers out of unionizing at all.
Writing for In These Times, David Moberg illustrates the commonplace peril of employer intimidation under the current organizing process:
“In 2005 [electrician Dan Luevano] and most of his fellow workers at Ries Electric near Denver asked their boss to recognize the Electrical Workers as their union to help resolve problems. The boss called everyone in and threatened to fire them if they voted for a union. Luevano said he would, and the next workday he was fired. Though the National Labor Relations Board reinstated him, his boss isolated him and cut his hours while continuing to violate labor laws by fighting the union.”
Workers and unions have pushed for EFCA for years, but when it comes to the economy, the federal government reacts fastest to problems on Wall Street. In Salon, Andy Kroll outlines the generous subsidies the government has paid to companies that drove themselves into the ground, effectively rewarding the economically destructive behaviors that caused the current crisis, while neglecting the workers whose hours and wages have been slashed as business credit tightens ups.
The bailout isn’t just unfair—it seriously risks delaying economic recovery. If the government refuses to take over failed institutions, wipe out their shareholders and fire their executives, the U.S. economy will likely be burdened with a constantly faltering financial sector for years. The Wall Street CEOs who caused the problem have every incentive to cover up for their mistakes and resort to complex accounting tricks to hide losses. But until those bank losses are recognized, the government will not be able to fill the hole and get credit flowing again. As Robert Kuttner argues in a column for The American Prospect, “We still face a prolonged Great Stagnation, one that could be far worse than necessary because of the administration’s circuitous, Wall Street–friendly approach to reviving the banks.”
Just as bad, whenever the economy actually recovers, executives at the surviving banks will have learned that they can score huge bonuses virtually risk-free by gorging themselves on risky loans and letting taxpayers clean up after them. This sets the stage for another catastrophe. So far, Obama’s decision to extend the bank bailout plan enacted under George W. Bush is the single greatest single blunder of his presidency, and as Kuttner argues, it’s a mistake that jeopardizes both the economy and the political sustainability of progressive ideas.
Beyond Wall Street, the administration has also faltered with it’s handling of General Motors, which finally filed for bankruptcy Monday morning after steadily disintegrating since the 1980s. After pouring in money to keep the ailing car manufacturer afloat, the government watched the company lay off tens of thousands of workers without overhauling its failed business model. Under the bankruptcy arrangement, U.S. taxpayers will emerge with a 60% stake in the company, but rehabilitating the company remains an enormous task. GM’s primary business is making cars that people do not want to buy. Without GM, the U.S. manufacturing sector would all but disappear, but turning the company around will require a huge long-term investment. So far, the government has settled for keeping the company on life support. Kevin Drum puts it succinctly for Mother Jones: “This whole deal just keeps getting worse and worse.”
The U.S. economy broke down for a reason: It was heavily dependent on a booming financial sector and failed to adequately protect or reward the workers who actually built the economy up. Both Congress and Obama have the power to give workers families the same economic leverage that corporate executives currently enjoy. It’s up to progressives to convince them to take action.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists 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: Child of Immigrants Nominated to Supreme Court
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
On Tuesday, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sotomayor could be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. Predictably, attacks and slurs from the Right are already flying. Regardless, Sotomayor would be an excellent choice for the Supreme Court, signaling to Latino/as that the White House is aware of our need for more representation in government.
Reporting on Sotomayor’s nomination, the Washington Independent’s Daphne Eviatar notes that, while the choice doesn’t push the envelope in terms of liberalness, it does indicate that Obama was “willing to stand up to unfounded criticism of Sotomayor as a far-left liberal.” Interestingly enough, President George H. W. Bush originally nominated Sotomayor for the district court, and her life reads like Many GOP-adored tales of hard work leading to success.
Which leads one to wonder why are they attacking Sotomayor’s nomination with such vitriol, by painting her as a “radical, judicial activist/scary Latina feminist/underqualified diversity pick“? As Michelle Chen reports for RaceWire, Sotomayor has a reputation for “principled independence suffused with real-world experience” and the GOP’s squawking is a typical barrage of “hypocrisy, shrill animosity and racist code words.”
Sotomayor describes herself as a “Newyorican,” which is someone who has been born in New York City from parents hailing from Puerto Rico. While her nomination sparked controversy as to whether or not one can technically “immigrate” from Puerto Rico, there is no denying the country’s colonial history. Many see Sotomayor’s nomination as a success story for immigrants. She certainly does.
New America Media’s Roberto Lovato writes that despite the GOP’s desire to overlook Sotomayor’s uplifting and quintessentially “American” story, the Republican party would do well to use this opportunity very carefully. Sotomayor’s nomination provides an opportunity to draw a line between the GOP that bled Latino/a votes due to their immigration stance and what they hope to become. According to Lovato, Sotomayor—and we—should view the confirmation hearings as “nothing less than a trial to determine whether the GOP is ready to make restitution for its role in a number of judicial and political wrongdoings perpetrated in the Bush era.”
But it doesn’t seem that the Republican party is very concerned with the Latino/Hispanic vote, let alone common decency, judging by the desperate moves of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, an immigrant himself. In an attempt to clean up the state deficit, Schwarzenegger would “eliminate four programs that provide money and food to more than 100,000 legal immigrants,” many “elderly and disabled.” This action will hurt many people who are a vital part of our social fabric.
Daphne Eviatar, writing for the Center for Independent Media, reports on the perversely-named “Secure Communities” initiative, in which ICE officals are quoted defending a program that aims to deport those ticketed for so much as a red light. Under this soon to be expanded program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to deport “tens of thousands” of immigrants in 2010. Under the Secure Communities initiative, even a legal immigrant could be deported if accused and not able to hire or enlist legal representation.
Secure Communities “represents a new comprehensive approach to remove all criminal aliens held in the United States prisons and jails.” Even the phrase “criminal aliens” conjures up visions of hooded creatures with sinister intent…and maybe dangling antennae. Little is required to sweep an immigrant into the detention system and classify them as “criminal.” It can be nothing more than an overstayed visa, or being profiled at a 7-11 by ICE officials looking to make quota. It’s all part of a thriving detention industry: DHS projects a budget for new detention centers, including the needed number of arrests (400,000 are planned for next year) to fund and staff said centers. As a result, arrests are made for any infraction, imagined or real, the beds are filled, the lawyers can’t be afforded and aren’t provided, workers and family members are deported, the budgets justified, the checks cut, and the detention center industry looms larger every day.
In Deportation While U Wait, RaceWire’s Michelle Chen reports that ICE has found a way to further expedite the process. “At one downtown Los Angeles courthouse,” Chen writes, “Officials have found an efficient way to cut through the red tape: kicking people out of the country without waiting for a decision from the judge.” If there is a previous deportation order in their records, ICE rules on their own and deports the man or woman. But we should be careful to rush to judgment as often, “what looks on paper like a justifiable deportation often masks the nuances of individual hardships and structural problems that limit immigrants’ ability to press their legal cases.”
In the Colorado Independent, Erin Rosa reports that the Obama Administration is moving forward with plans to end the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which funds local jails and state prisons to house undocumented immigrants. Rosa notes that Colorado “netted $3.1 million from the program last year, and $3.3 million in 2007.” The White House defends the move by saying the resources can “better be used to enhance federal enforcement efforts.”
There are many people waiting to see those “enhanced” efforts in the shape of legislation. There is hope these efforts will improve the quality of peoples’ lives, not DHS’s budget. Many people who harbor those hopes demonstrated in Postville, Iowa in memory of the ICE raid that shattered the community a year ago. Lynda Waddington writes of this year’s difference in attitude for the Iowa Independent. In 2008, emotions were raw and more anger was expressed, but this year, there was “a specific focus and call for comprehensive immigration reform.”
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: Sotomayor an enigma on abortion?
Filed under: Barack Obama, MediaWire, healthcare Yesterday, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina and the third woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is currently a federal judge on New York’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents and raised by her mother in the housing projects of the South Bronx, Sotomayor went on to attend college at Princeton and law school at Yale. George H.W. Bush appointed her to the U.S. District Court in 1991 and Bill Clinton “promoted” her to the 2nd Circuit in 1998.
Political Scientist Scott Lemieux writes for TAPPED that, in light of her distinguished resume and inspiring biography, Sotomayor’s confirmation is all but assured:
[...] Obama cited three criteria in choosing Sotomayor: 1) her intellectual capacity (as demonstrated in her sterling academic record, her success as an assistant district attorney, and her distinguished service as a federal judge); 2) her approach to judging based on her opinions, which represent a high level of craftsmanship and attention to detail; and 3) her compelling personal story, rising from poverty in the Bronx to Princeton to being an editor at the Yale Law Journal. This combination of factors will, I think, make her confirmation inevitable.
In the Nation, John Nichols says that the Sotomayor pick “reflects America”. Within hours of the announcement of Souter’s resignation, conventional wisdom had pegged Sotomayor as the odds-on favorite for the nomination. There were a few bumps along the way, though. Brian Beutler of TPM reports on the anatomy of a preemptive whispering capaign starring anonymous law clerks quoted in the New Republic questioning Sotomayor’s intelligence and temperament.
While Sotomayor has a reputation for being a liberal jurist, her record contains few hints about her views on abortion. Attorney and feminist writer Jill Filipovic reviews Sotomayor’s record on abortion for RH Reality Check. Sotomayor has only ruled on one major abortion-related case in her time as a judge, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, and as Filipovic says, Sotomayor’s conclusion “isn’t going to warm the hearts of reproductive rights activists.”
But, as Filipovic explains, abortion wasn’t the issue at stake in this case. Rather, the question was whether the Bush administration’s Global Gag Rule was violating the constitutional rights of American NGOs. The gag rule threatened to revoke their federal funding for working with foreign NGOs that discussed abortion. For various technical reasons, Sotomayor concluded that the rule was constitutional after all. Filipovic continues:
If anything, CRLP v. Bush highlights precisely why Sotomayor should, in a sane world, be an easy confirmation: She sticks to the rule of law, respects precedent and writes thoughtful and reasoned opinions. She was nominated to the federal district court by George H.W. Bush. Her decisions are left-leaning insofar as she generally seeks to protect Constitutional rights by supporting religious freedom and free speech, and she often sides with the plaintiffs in discrimination cases - hardly “activist” material.
Emily Douglas, also of RH Reality Check, notes that the conservatives aren’t buying the “common ground” abortion rhetoric the White House has been pushing. Even if the White House has the votes to confirm Sotomayor, and everyone knows it, a Supreme Court nomination battle is a golden fundraising opportunity for the right wing, so expect a lot of sound and fury from that quarter. It makes them feel relevant.
In other reproductive health news, Dana Goldstein discusses a recent literature review by the Guttmacher Institute arguing that coitus interruptus is an under-studied and possibly underappreciated form of birth control. The paper got a lot of discussion because the conventional wisdom is that withdrawal is ineffective. The study cites a figure that couples who use withdrawal perfectly have a 4% yearly chance of getting pregnant vs. 2% for couples who use condoms perfectly. However, the study doesn’t compare what percentage of couples who try to use withdrawal actually achieve perfect use compared to couples attempting to use condoms or other methods. Sex educators’ main concern, apart from the fact that withdrawal doesn’t protect against STDs, is that an unusually large number of people attempting it fail to achieve the desired results. If you only count the efficacy for successes, you get a distorted picture. In a follow-up post, Goldstein asks whether doctors might be biased against non-hormonal birth control.
It’s not just big businesses like GM that shoulder the burden of expensive private health insurance. In a special issue of the Washington Monthly, Jonathan Gruber argues that a universal healthcare program could increase American competitiveness by giving people the security they need to start their own businesses without having to worry about whether they can afford health insurance for themselves or their workers.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net andImmigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Audit: Why Accountability Matters
by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger
With workers all over the globe trudging through a catastrophic recession, it’s almost a given that governments will be battling the economic slide for a long time. Part of the effort to rebuild must involve new rules and regulations, but meaningful systems for economic accountability will be just as essential. If we do not hold the reckless executives who caused this crisis accountable for their actions, we risk regressing into similar turmoil in the near future.
We all know that times are tough, and almost all of us agree on the cause: A massive Wall Street risk-binge combined with an almost total failure of regulatory oversight. It’s surprising that few meaningful criminal charges have been filed amid what may very well be the worst financial crisis in history. Bernie Madoff will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars, but the subprime mortgage brokers who specialized in predatory loans–and the Wall Street banks that bought them–have yet to face consequences in court.
In The American Prospect, Tim Fernholz details the efforts of some state-level officials to investigate and punish white-collar crime at the nation’s largest financial firms. Much of the problem, Fernholz explains, results from an insane legal landscape at the federal level. Active deregulation of the financial sector, which began in the 1980s, is shielding the irresponsible risk-taking that caused the current crisis from legal penalties.
Despite these obstacles, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and other key officials are going after some of the worst offenders, and have successfully taken action against some of the predatory profiteers, including subprime mortgage lender Fremont Investment & Loan and Wall Street icon Goldman Sachs. Coakley secured an injunction against Fremont to prevent the company from foreclosing on its borrowers, and Goldman agreed to modify $50 million in predatory mortgages.
But while Coakley’s investigations may bring some much-needed relief to troubled homeowners, they’re only part of the solution. If executives that approved their companies’ subprime policies go through this crisis unscathed, it will be difficult to deter similar behavior in the future.
Fremont had to be sold off last year at fire-sale prices to avoid bankruptcy, but Goldman has weathered the economic downturn better than many of its Wall Street brethren. Much of the company’s resiliency, however, stems from its ability to secure billions upon billions of dollars of bailout financing from the U.S. government. Over at AlterNet, Jim Hightower blasts Goldman for its multiple avenues of taxpayer support and emphasizes that only the notorious Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) comes with any strings attached whatsoever. While Congress attached some very modest restrictions on executive compensation to the TARP bailout, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve have provided big banks with trillions in loans and guarantees completely free of restrictions on how these perks are deployed.
Goldman received $10 billion under TARP, which the company hopes to repay soon to shrug off those CEO pay limits. When the government bailed out AIG, $12 billion of the funds were directed Goldman’s way. But perhaps the greatest and lowest-profile outrage comes in the form of the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. Hightower notes that the FDIC has guaranteed $28 billion of Goldman’s recently issued corporate debt without imposing any restrictions on the Wall Street giant. In short, if Goldman were to default, the government would pay off its investors. This taxpayer guarantee has allowed Goldman and many of its banking peers to secure capital at exceptionally low rates, helping the firms survive during a time when any financing is hard to come by.
Even if Goldman is able to repay its TARP money, the company remains thoroughly dependent on taxpayer assistance. Once the TARP funds are paid off, Goldman will be free to pay its executives whatever it wants—even when that salary is subsidized by American tax dollars. That’s a pretty perverse definition of accountability.
Of course, botched bailouts are not unique to the financial sector. As John Nichols explains in The Nation, the terms of automaker Chrysler’s bankruptcy proceeding include plans to close down manufacturing plants across the Midwest, a strategy that undermines the entire economic justification for bailout: Sparing investors pain in order to save jobs.
“Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars are being poured into Chrysler and General Motors, ostensibly to ’save’ the U.S. auto industry,” Nichols writes. “Yet, the companies have acknowledged that they plan to use the money to shutter factories, lay-off tens of thousands of factory workers and dramatically downsize dealership networks–at the cost of as many as 100,000 additional jobs.”
Still worse, it appears that both Chrysler executives and officials from the Obama administration mislead Congress on the implications of the bankruptcy. Nichols cites a letter from Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, in which the lawmaker says Congress was told there would be no permanent job losses a result of the Chrysler bankruptcy filing. The very next day, plant closings were announced in Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Ohio.
Even the economic stimulus package rewarded companies with a history of recklessness. In a piece for Salon, ProPublica journalists Michael Grabell and David Epstein reveal how contractors that have paid substantial fines for violating environmental regulations, federal safety rules and laws against racism have been able to score new business with the federal government. The worst offender? A contractor known as CACI International, which has been awarded three contracts worth $1.5 million under the stimulus package, despite ties to abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
CACI helped hire interrogators at Abu Ghraib, but an Army investigation found that the contractor ended up employing people with “little or no interrogator experience.” Abuses committed by CACI employees included dragging a handcuffed prisoner on the ground, placing a prisoner in an “unauthorized stress position,” dressing a prisoner in women’s underwear and lying to investigators about using dogs in interrogations, according to Grabell and Epstein.
If the government relies on criminals to build the recovery, the public is not going to get the results it needs. But the recovery is only part of the solution to the current economic crisis. If we fail to prosecute executives whose active scheming and criminal negligence brought down the global economy, we are inviting more of the same behavior in the future.
Weekly Immigration Wire: Women Central to Immigration Story
by Nezua, TMC MediaWire Blogger
Celebrated stories of early American pioneers, explorers, and immigrants typically center around men of fortitude and bravery. Depictions of modern-day migrants are still very male-centric, and this cultural lens is a default in most cases. But women play a central and overlooked role in today’s immigration story. Even when not directly highlighted, women often bear the weight of keeping families together and helping them grow stronger.
New America Media has just released the results of a poll titled “Women Immigrants: Stewards of the 21st Century.” NAM surveyed 1,002 female immigrants from Latin American, Asian, African, and Arab countries. According to Sandy Close and Richard Rodriguez, “The story that has not been told is the story of the woman immigrant. This poll is an effort to capture her narrative, and what becomes clear in the responses–many to questions that seemed on their face to have nothing to do with family per se–is that the gold thread giving meaning to her life is family stewardship.”
The poll reveals that the typical model of migration, in which the man left to find work and send home money, has changed. Women are assuming head of the household duties, even if in their prior situation they were in less of a leadership role. The women interviewed for the poll named “securing family stability” as the most important motivator for seeking U.S. citizenship.
NAM also features a number of articles that break down the poll’s findings, all available on the Immigration Ladder. Some feature short videos such as the one below, titled Family, Work and Progress — Latina Immigrants Speak. In this video, Latinas talk about why they came to the U.S. The reasons range from political asylum to simply being able to raise and feed their children. These are hard-hitting pieces because we can see and hear people tell their own story in their own words.
A common line spouted by those in favor of a strong enforcement agenda is that immigrants come here to ’steal’ or ‘take’ our jobs. The focus is on an abstract, shadowy fence-hopper from Latin America who encroaches on turf and swipes resources. Ironically, there is never a mention of NAFTA and the effect it has had on the Latin American economy in these particular discussions! Perhaps no families would need to migrate north if unfair economic practices hadn’t taken so many jobs from Mexico, Guatemala, and the rest of Latin America.
Quite different than recycled stock footage of a man sliding over a busted-up border fence, NAM’s poll and videos present the truth in its plain and sorry reality. While it may make for less thrilling copy, it’s important to hear a mother talk about leaving a child behind so that she can forge a better path for them both, or about being alone in a strange place with nobody to help; about spending as much on long-distance phone calls to your children as you would on bringing them across the border.
These stories are important. Watching and reading human dramas that demand emotional engagement combat the anti-immigration punditry’s characterization of immigrants. As a result, a question forms that won’t go away: Why are these women alone in their struggle? If they were perceived as U.S. citizens, we would move mountains to come to their aid. It isn’t surprising that some Feminists strongly support immigration, though there is an ongoing debate.
Enforcement tactics are also devastating on a large scale. Writing for the American Forum, Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas paints a clear picture of how the tactics deployed supposedly in the name of U.S. “security” do nothing to secure either happiness, safety, or a sound economy.
In Wiretap, 15-year-old Lupe Carreno tells about the day ICE took her father from her own home, and what that means to her life today: “When they began to walk down the stairs with my dad, it hit me. This could be the last time I see him for a long time. I looked away. I didn’t want to see them take my dad. When I looked down the stairs and didn’t see them anymore, I cried. My mom and my aunt told me not to cry, but this made me cry even more. The whole event only took 15 minutes.”
Lupe’s family has medical problems, but her father’s insurance is no longer there. The enforcement agenda has transformed a happy, cohesive family unit into a fractured cluster of pain and fear. Lupe lives in uncertainty now and worries her mother may be deported any day.
As in Lupe’s case, there are weaknesses in the system that do not provide for those with medical needs. Such as in the case of Xiu Ping Jiang, a Chinese immigrant who fled to the U.S. after being forcibly sterilized for having a second child. In Immigration Limbo for the Mentally Ill, Wiretap’s Brittany Shoot tells how Jiang was separated from her children by immigration officers, and shortly after, fell into a depression. Being an immigrant, she had no state-funded legal counsel to represent her. “This has caused her case to be drawn out for more than a year while she languishes in a detention center,” Shoot writes. “With a history of attempted suicide, her family members in the States grow increasingly fearful that they will lose their fragile sister inside the system.”
Will telling Xiu Ping Jiang’s story produce more than “[o]ne day of frenzied blogging” following the original reportage? Shoot seems to doubt it.
Returning to New America Media, we have the story What Am I Without My Leg? Eglis, an undocumented immigrant, lost her leg to an uninsured driver and is struggling to live with the consequences. Eglis’ story is a brutal example of the healthcare gap for immigrant women.
Finally, the Colorado Independent reports on a bill sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein D-Calif. that would create “a special ‘blue card’ status for undocumented immigrants who’ve worked a minimum number of hours in the agriculture sector in the past two years.” Some immigration advocates would call this a success. But true progress includes acknowledging in law and public dialogue what such a move truly indicates: That immigrants are not a threat to our nation, but in fact, a crucial and needed part of our way of life. Without them, we fall apart. This is what happens when you remove a mother from a family. This is what happens when you remove a workforce from a factory in Postville, Iowa. And this is what will happen if we continue to punish or forcibly remove immigrants from our nation.
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: Healthcare industry already wavering on savings
Filed under: Barack Obama, Immigration, MediaWire, Syndicated Reporting Project, healthcare That was quick: It took just three days for the titans of the healthcare industry to reveal the emptiness of their pledge to the Obama administration to save $2 trillion in healthcare costs over the next 10 years.
Last week, The New York Times proclaimed that Obama scored a “political coup” just by getting the industry groups and SEIU to the table. Maybe so, but writers featured in last week’s Pulse remained skeptical that the industry would make good on its unenforceable cost-cutting promises. Skepticism was the healthy response.
Three days after the promise, industry groups started accusing Obama of overstating their commitment. Health Czar Nancy Ann DeParle confirmed that the president garbled the stats slightly when he said that the groups had pledged to cut the rate of growth in healthcare costs by 1.5 percentage points per year. However, the outcry over the slipup is revealing. The groups are now scrambling to reassure their members that they never promised to reduce costs by any specific amount in any given year. Of course they didn’t. In order to keep that promise, they’d have to act right away–which they clearly have no intention of doing.
So, it comes as little surprise when Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly reports that Blue Cross/Blue Shield is crafting a PR campaign to trash the whole idea of a public plan, a key element of Obama’s healthcare reform agenda. One of the industry groups that signed off on the aforementioned $2 trillion pledge was America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). Several members of AHIP’s board of directors work for Blue Cross or Blue Shield.
In The American Prospect, Paul Waldman notes that the same coalition of Republicans and big business that opposed President Clinton’s healthcare reforms 15 years ago are gearing up for a rematch. These folks, who might as well be called Americans for the status quo are trying to own the word “reform” under the tutelage of GOP message master Frank Luntz, according to Waldman.
Some people oppose healthcare reform because they fear a tax increase. That’s not a foregone conclusion, but healthcare is so expensive that reform could be a bargain even if we had to raise taxes to pay for it. In AlterNet, Dean Baker asks why his fellow economists are so complacent about the status quo where healthcare is twice as expensive and not quite as beneficial as it is in other developed countries. Baker argues that the extra costs are tantamount to a huge tax on the entire economy:
This is a tax that Americans pay without realizing it. Money that could be going towards pay raises is going to support ever-increasing insurance premiums, for those who are lucky enough to have health coverage through their jobs. It’s a tax that employers have to take into account when they decide whether to build a plant in the United States, or across the border in Canada where the government takes care of health insurance.
And last but not least, while you can’t get blood from a stone, you can get plasma from an overextended American consumer. Credit Solutions of America, a credit counselling service advised clients to sell their blood plasma to make ends meet, Moe Tkacik reports in Talking Points Memo. That’s especially ironic when you consider that medical bills cause over half of personal bankruptcies, according to a 2005 survey by Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor who went on to become Obama’s the chief financial industry bailout overseer.
