Friday, March 4, 2011

Clinton media criticism buoys Al-Jazeera

Mar. 4, 2011 7:10 PM ET

NEW YORK (AP) — A decade ago the U.S. government attacked Al-Jazeera as a propagator of anti-American propaganda. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is citing the network for fine news coverage — and tweaking the U.S. media in the process.

The Arab broadcaster says it's ready to take advantage of what it considers a major boost in its acceptance in the United States.

Clinton, on the week many U.S. television outlets were preoccupied by the spectacle of actor Charlie Sheen, suggested during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American networks were falling behind in the competition for information.

Al-Jazeera has been a leader in changing people's minds and attitudes, Clinton told lawmakers Wednesday.

"Like it or hate it, it is really effective," Clinton said. "In fact, viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it is real news."

"You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information to us, let alone foreigners."

In fact, Al-Jazeera's television viewership hasn't gone up much in the U.S. because it is still not widely available, seen only on scattered cable systems in Vermont, Ohio and Washington, D.C.

But online viewership of Al-Jazeera English spiked during the demonstrations in Egypt — up 2,500 percent at its peak, with nearly half of the followers from the United States, the network said.

Al-Jazeera has taken advantage of the moment, asking visitors to its website to click a tab that automatically generates a letter to the users' local cable system encouraging them to add the network. More than 40,000 e-mails have been generated, spokeswoman Molly Conroy said.

The network's leaders in the past two weeks have also visited with Time Warner, Comcast and Cablevision executives to seek space on their systems, she said.

"The events in Egypt have convinced an increasing number of Americans, the secretary of state included, that the coverage Al-Jazeera has provided for these events is something that is seen as a dramatic shift in perception of the network," said Abderrahim Foukara, Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau chief.

Fox News Channel's Michael Clemente said he was "surprised and kind of curious" by Clinton's remarks.

"We've got leadership issues there, the safety of people, the safety of our own people," said Clemente, senior vice president for news. "Some big issues. All of a sudden there are headlines about Al-Jazeera versus the news in this country? It's just surprising. Curious more than surprising."

Representatives from CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC news all declined comment Friday on what Clinton said.

But former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno agreed with her assessment.

"She's right," said Sesno, who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

"Cable news has become cable noise. It was intended to be an opportunity to inform people, and instead it has become an opportunity to inflame people."

The cable news shift toward opinion has paid off handsomely for ratings leader Fox News Channel and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC.

CNN has resisted a partisan drift to concentrate more on news and has suffered in the ratings the past couple of years. With budget cuts, the influence of the major broadcast news divisions has been waning.

Even with the move toward opinion, the news networks often provide informative coverage when there is breaking news, such as the Egyptian revolution, Sesno said.

What's lacking is an attention span — a willingness to stick with stories and provide context. There's an addiction to "this just in," he said.

Clinton's complimentary assessment of the Arab broadcaster is an about-face from just a decade ago, when the Bush administration complained that Al-Jazeera promoted those who opposed the United States. Former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld calling it "inexcusably biased."

That hostility played a big role in the network failing to get any traction with U.S. cable systems.

Al-Jazeera's Foukara said that with overseas audiences, particularly in the Arab world, the broadcaster finds a hunger for news.

"You can stay focused on a story for hours or days or even weeks on end," he said, "while in the U.S., the assumption is that people are not as interested in news, particularly news outside of the United States."

Sesno said the unrest in the Arab world could prove as important to Al-Jazeera as the first Gulf War was for establishing CNN in the United States.

http://hosted2.ap.org/APDefault/*/Article_2011-03-04-Clinton%20Media/id-db197bbf548d41d1b0ca35d1410e2d5d

Don’t Believe the (Union-Busting) Hype

Posted on Mar 3, 2011
By Joe Conason

If you are a normal, trusting consumer of American journalism, you might well have gotten the impression by now that the current attempt to break public-sector unions—with its epicenter in Wisconsin—is overwhelmingly supported by the nation’s voters.

You need not be a devotee of Fox News Channel or Rush Limbaugh to believe that Americans despise the unions that represent cops, teachers (especially teachers!) and firefighters. You might reasonably believe that simply because far more authoritative news sources have repeatedly suggested it.

You might think so, for example, because the New York Times Sunday magazine told you so in a cover story written by one of the newspaper of record’s top political analysts last week, or because the Wall Street Journal editorial page said the same thing a few days ago.

But if you believe that the American people are now eager to follow Gov. Scott Walker’s example, in Wisconsin or across the nation, it turns out that you (and those who have misinformed you) are unmistakably and profoundly wrong. For as one poll after another has indicated over the past two weeks, Americans soundly reject Walker’s union-busting gambit.

The polling organizations span the political and journalistic spectrum, from Republican-leaning Gallup and Rasmussen to the Pew Research Center, NBC News/Wall Street Journal and CBS News/New York Times, yet their results are remarkably consistent. While many voters surveyed in all of the polls say that it is fair to require public employees to contribute more to their health and retirement benefits, a clear majority object to any attempt to curtail their collective bargaining rights.

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Asking about the struggle in Wisconsin, the Pew researchers found that 42 percent stood with the unions versus only 31 percent who sided with Walker. The CBS News/New York Times poll was considerably stronger, with 60 percent supporting the right of public employees to bargain collectively and only 33 percent in opposition; those numbers closely matched an earlier Gallup Poll that showed 61 percent supporting labor against the governor.

And again, in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 33 percent say that it is “acceptable” to abolish those rights as a supposed way to address state and local budget deficits. Just under twice as many—62 percent—say that eliminating those rights is “unacceptable.”

That finding coincided embarrassingly with a Journal editorial assuring its readers that Walker and his allies are prevailing because “the public in Wisconsin and around the U.S. seems to be listening and absorbing his message. The cause has been helped by the sit-ins and shouting of union members, the threats toward politicians who disagree with them, and by the flight of Democratic state senators to undisclosed locations in Illinois.”

Actually, the vigorous resistance to Walker appears not to have damaged the union cause at all, but to have drawn attention to the gross partisan overreaching of the Republican governor and his corporate friends. In Wisconsin, many voters are now expressing buyer’s remorse over their choice of Walker, and tell pollsters they are evenly divided over whether to recall him.

The ruckus in Madison, which he brought upon himself, has called attention to his budget’s favoritism toward upper-income taxpayers and its destructive impact on educational standards and public safety. Naturally, the good people of the Badger State are starting to wonder whether they cannot do better.

The battle over the rights of public employees—and labor’s future in this country—is far from decided. Indeed, the debate over how to restore the middle class and the prospect of a better future is about to begin again. But the next time a blustering pundit tries to persuade you that some right-wing crusade is trendy or popular, just remember Wisconsin.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dont_believe_the_union-busting_hype_20110303/

Poll: Americans Love Teachers, Support Teachers Unions (Even If Fox News Does Not)

March 04, 2011 1:34 pm ET by Eric Boehlert

This nugget was buried in the recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll: When asked how they viewed teachers, an overwhelming 73 percent of respondents had an either positive or very positive opinion of teachers. Asked how they felt about teachers unions, a strong plurality supported them: 47 percent viewed the unions positively, 30 percent did not. 


Note to Fox News: Your accelerated attempt in recent weeks to demonize teachers, and specifically teachers unions, is not working. 


Previously:


Fox's Byrnes Suggests Wisconsin Teacher Protests Against Gov. Walker's Anti-Union Bill Could "Borderline ... Get Violent"


Right-Wing Media Freak Out Over Union Protests In Wisconsin


Fox Slams WI Protests But Cheered Tea Party Protests


Conservative Media Use Cropped Video To Vilify NEA


Right-Wing Media Push "Bogus" Argument That Collective Bargaining Correlates With State Deficits


Glenn Beck Demeans Protesters As "Useful Idiots" Being "Played"


"Fox News Lies" While Covering Pro-Labor Protests In Wisconsin


Hypocritical Fox News Millionaires Attack "Six Figure" Union Salaries


http://mediamatters.org/blog/201103040024

Scott Walker and Wisconsin GOP Continue Lockdown in Contempt of Court; Issue Unconstitutional 'Arrest Warrants' for 14 Democratic Lawmakers

By Mary Bottari, PR Watch
Posted on March 4, 2011, Printed on March 4, 2011

The Wisconsin State Capitol has erupted in a torrent of lawlessness this week that schoolchildren will be reading about for years. No, I don't mean rowdy protests resulting in mass arrests. Even though some 300,000 people have visited the capitol in the last two weeks, the crowds have been peaceful and fun; no arrests have been reported. I mean the convulsion of lawlessness that has seized Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican leadership -- a track record that would make Richard Nixon proud.



Republic Senate Passes Unconstitutional Measures to Rein In Wisconsin 14


As the Wisconsin Capitol remained in almost complete lockdown Thursday in violation of a standing court order, senate Republican leadership turned up the heat on the missing 14 Democratic legislators with an unprecedented series of new rules, some of which were quickly assessed by lawyers as flatly unconstitutional. On Thursday, 19 Republican senators passed a resolution authorizing the missing Senate Democrats to be taken into custody by any Wisconsin law enforcement officer for "contempt of the Senate." Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said the actions were justified because the 14 "have pushed us to the edge of a constitutional crisis."

The latest legal ploy comes in the context of news reports that the Wisconsin 14, who left the state to delay Governor Walker's bill to eviscerate 50 years of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public employees, were preparing to come back under their own steam to fight the battle of the budget. One senate staffer explained that it would be impossible for the 14 to remain out when budget bill deliberations actually get underway because they were needed to defend school children, the poor and the elderly against draconian cuts in the bill.

The unprecedented “arrest warrant” was taken as a preemptive strike. As the senators were meeting, a Dane County Court Judge was poised to rule the capitol lockdown unconstitutional. The Republicans hoped to shift the focus of the TV news that night and the next day to their missing Democratic colleagues. But the prominent law firm of Cullen, Weston, Pines threw a wrench into these plans when it quickly reminded the public that "the Wisconsin Constitution absolutely prohibits members of the Wisconsin Senate from being arrested for non-criminal offense. The Wisconsin Senate' action today ... has no basis in the law of this state." Further, the firm argued that if the orders of the Republican legislators were carried out, they themselves could be subject to a contempt ruling under a Wisconsin statute that protects public officials from just this type of chicanery.


Late in the afternoon, the head of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, James Palmer,  pleaded for sanity in the State Capitol: "The thought of using law enforcement officers to exercise force in order to achieve a political objective is insanely wrong, and Wisconsin sorely needs reasonable solutions and not potentially dangerous political theatrics.”


Legal Chicanery and Petty Politics


Republican senators had been ramping up the pressure on Democrats all week, passing a resolution Wednesday that fines the absent fourteen $100 for every day they are absent. Lawyers point out that the $100 fine is likely also unconstitutional under Wisconsin law. They passed a resolution to allow the senate Sergeant at Arms to request the assistance of any law enforcement officer in the state to find and return any senator who is absent without leave. The Republican senators needed the extra help, since no local law enforcement agency was treating the political brouhaha as a serious police matter. It is likely the Wisconsin's State Patrol will be suborned into the hunt. The State Patrol is headed by recently-appointed Stephen Fitzgerald, father of both the Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald and State Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald.

The Senate also assigned Republican "supervisors" to the staff of he missing senators. For instance, Republican Senator Cowles is assigned to supervise the staff of Democratic Senator Hansen. Many saw this as preparation to fire Democratic staff members, or the ultimate move to expel Democratic senators, which would indeed cause a constitutional crisis, beyond the one precipitated by Walker's unilateral dictates.


"Palace Guard" Maintains Capitol Lockdown In Defiance of a Court Order


Since Monday, March 1, the Capitol building has been in an unprecedented lockdown as the governor attempted to clear the building in advance of his Tuesday budget address. Protesters, Capitol workers, legislators, Congressmen and others were shut out. Windows were sealed shut. The lockdown continued in contempt of court, because a Dane County judge ordered the Capitol to open on Tuesday. When firefighters responding to an emergency call at the Capitol Tuesday, even they were turned away (firefighters have stood with the protesters since the start of the frackass.) Although they were eventually allowed in to rescue a police officer from an elevator, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney said enough was enough. He withdrew his men from the capitol, saying they were not hired to act as a "Palace Guard."

Faced with the problem of getting his supporters in to the Assembly Chamber on Tuesday, the governor and his guard escorted a cadre of lobbyists and well-heeled friends through a utility tunnel that runs from a parking lot across the street, under the Capitol grounds to the building's basement. Madison City Councilwoman Shiva Bidar-Sielaff heard that the tunnel might be being used for this purpose and went to check it out. She found about a dozen police officers guarding the tunnel entrance, some from Milwaukee, some in suits with unknown insignias. She witnessed an unmarked police vehicle screech into the garage. Out stepped Wisconsin's First Lady, Tonnett Walker, who was hustled into the tunnel as if the parking garage was under attack. "It was all very 'Men in Black,'” the Councilwoman said with a laugh, as she watched with a handful of other observers. Other Walker supporters had been bused in earlier; the bus signs and arrows were still up on the walls. 



Not surprisingly, the Governor's plans to cut $1 billion dollars from public education and cap property taxes to force localitiess to balance their budget shortfalls on the backs of teachers and other public workers was greeted with wild cheers. Only about 20 protesters were allowed in, and they were quickly escorted out when one upstart let lose a single “boo.” The Governor's private address took place in definance of a standing court order to open the Capitol to protesters, prompting Democratic assembly leader Peter Barca to question the legality of the whole event under the state's strong open meetings laws.


Desks on the Capitol Lawn


On Wednesday, Assembly Democratic representatives couldn’t get their work done with the Capitol in a virtual lockdown, so they took their desks out on the lawn for office hours. Democratic Rep. Nick Milroy spoke with constituents standing in the freezing cold -- the Wednesday low for Madison was minus 6 degrees, not including wind chill. Milroy relocated his desk, complete with family pictures and trinkets onto the muddy lawn. On Thursday night, Milroy was wrestled to the ground by police trying to prevent him from getting inside the building to his office.



Representative Marc Pocan was so irate with ever-shifting rules and the open access Republican legislators seemed to enjoy, that he issued an “Open Letter to Whoever is Calling the Shots on the Lockdown at the State Capitol,” demanding to know who was in charge and asking for a measure of fairness for the constituents of Democratic legislators.


On Thursday, a lone protestor stood in front of the parking lot which holds the Capitol utility tunnel entrance with a sign "Rat Hole to Walker's Palace."


Court Rules Capitol Shutdown Unconstitutional (Again), Protesters March Out in Victory


In the early evening on Thursday, a Dane County Court judge ruled for the second time that Walker's virtual shut down of the Capitol was an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of the protesters. An agreement was reached to return the Capitol to normal business operations by Monday. After talking to former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, Capitol Police Chief Tubbs and Sheriff Mahoney who explained the terms of the agreement, remaining protesters agreed to leave the building for cleaning. The 100 or so remaining protesters, who had stayed in the  building in an effort to keep it open, packed up their gear and left to the applause of Democratic Assembly members and countless other supporters who had been blocked from entering these past few days.



Lautenschlager summed up the two day-long court battle: "This is an important determination by the courts. First it says that actions of the state government officials are unconstitutional, and it also affords average citizens the right to be in their Capitol on Monday to lobby their legislators and conduct normal business. It is a huge plus in terms of access, and a huge plus in terms of signaling to Governor Walker and his colleagues that they will not be allowed to tread on people's constitutional rights.”


Protesters Having a Big Impact, Walker's Poll Numbers Tanking


All that drumming from the Wisconsin State Capitol is having a big impact. The governor's poll numbers are tanking, and even the Republican-friendly polling firm Rasmussen shows that only 41% support the governor's propsal to gut collective bargaining in the state, while 56% support the workers. Another poll shows that if the election were held today, Walker would lose in a rematch 52%-45%. 


There are many shoes yet to drop in this dramatic battle in Wisconsin. Will the Republicans attempt to enforce their illegal warrant against the missing 14? Will Papa Fitzgerald show for work in epaulettes? Will the governor start laying off 13,000 workers as promised, using real people with real lives as pawns in his political game?


Stay tuned, politics in Wisconsin have never been this wild.



Mary Bottari is the Director of the Center for Media and Democracy’s Real Economy Project and editor of the www.BanksterUSA.org site for bank busting activists.


http://www.alternet.org/story/150128/

Connecticut Informed That Private Insurance Exchanges Are Bad Deals for Consumers, Taxpayers

By: Jon Walker Wednesday January 5, 2011 2:21 pm

The subsidized private health insurance exchanges created by the new health care law are going to do a very poor job of providing affordable health care to the low income Americans they are meant to serve, according to a new draft report to the Connecticut General Assembly from the Sustinet Health Partnership Board of Directors. From the report (PDF):


However, we were troubled by the limits on ACA subsidies for adults with incomes above 138 percent FPL, who fall outside the legislation’s increase in required Medicaid eligibility. Subsidies for coverage in the exchange will leave these adults facing significant costs [...]


Considerable evidence suggests that cost-sharing imposed on low-income households can deter enrollment into coverage and prevent utilization of essential services, with potentially significant adverse effects on patient health. We were thus concerned about the impact of cost-sharing on two groups: 16,000 HUSKY parents with incomes between 138 and 185 percent FPL, who today receive comprehensive benefits and are not charged premiums or copayments; and 41,000 other low-income adults with incomes between 138 and 200 FPL, many of whom will be unable to afford what they will be charged in the exchange.


While the new law uses a mandate to require low income individuals to spend their money to buy something labeled “health insurance”, the small subsidies, lack of tough cost control, and the allowed level of cost sharing will make getting necessary health care unaffordable.


Fortunately, thanks to an amendment from Sen. Marie Cantwell (D-WA), states can instead created a “basic health plan” program for these people. The state would get 95% of the money the government would otherwise use on subsidies to finance this program. The Board is recommending Connecticut pursue this alternative. From the report (PDF):


To be clear, we would not recommend implementing the Basic Health option if the state provided no more than the minimum level of coverage required by federal law. Rather, the purpose of our proposed BH implementation is two-fold: to preserve, for populations covered by current law, HUSKY’s existing affordability and comprehensiveness of coverage, so that, from the member’s perspective, benefits would be exactly what Medicaid now provides; and to extend that same level of assistance to other low-income, uninsured adults.


One disadvantage of providing HUSKY rather than subsidies in the exchange is that provider payment rates are now much lower in HUSKY than in the kind of commercial coverage likely to be offered in the exchange. While we believe that, for this particular population, access to care is typically impaired more by cost-sharing than by HUSKY’s provider participation limits, the BH option allows a modest improvement of provider payment rates at no cost to the General Fund. According to Dr. Gruber’s modeling, federal BH payments will exceed HUSKY costs for low-income adults by at least 7 to 13 percent. Accordingly, as the state uses BH to extend HUSKY, in its current configuration of covered benefits, cost-sharing rules, and consumer safeguards, to adults with incomes up to 200 percent FPL, the excess of federal BH payments over baseline HUSKY costs should be used to raise reimbursement rates for adults with incomes above 138 percent FPL.


Not only would this approach make coverage and care more affordable for low-income adults, it would also save money for the state General Fund.


This report demonstrates what a horrible deal the system of subsidized, loosely-regulated private health insurance exchanges is for both the uninsured and the taxpayers. Using a public health insurance program, the state of Connecticut will be able to provide low income Americans a higher level of coverage at lower personal cost and it will still have a lower overall price tag for the government.


The only entities for whom the design of private exchanges is a good deal are the drug companies, hospitals, and private insurance companies. The exchanges assure customers for the unnecessary private insurance middlemen. Loose regulation of the exchanges prevents the government from using the market power of a large pool to negotiate with the drug companies and hospitals for lower prices, and so they get higher reimbursement fees.


Hopefully, Connecticut will adopt the suggestion to use a publicly run insurance version of the Basic Health Program and other states will follow their lead.



http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/01/05/connecticut-informed-that-private-insurance-exchanges-are-bad-deals-for-consumers-taxpayers/

The Commonwealth Health Care Reform Implementation Advisory Committee created by out-going Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell recently submitted its rep

By: Jon Walker Tuesday January 18, 2011 2:30 pm

The Commonwealth Health Care Reform Implementation Advisory Committee created by out-going Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell recently submitted its report on implementing the new health care law. The committee recommended the state strongly consider covering people making between 133-200% of FPL (Federal Poverty Level) with the optional “Basic Health Plan” program added to the bill by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), instead of forcing residents to buy more costly individual private health insurance on the new exchange. From the report (PDF):


Pennsylvania should carefully consider establishing a Basic Health Program for individuals with income up to 200% of the FPL, rather than offering coverage through the exchange.


[...]


HealthChoices Medicaid managed care plans, CHIP insurers, and current adultBasic insurers might be interested in contracting for the new population using the same provider networks and similar contract terms. If a managed care approach is desired, Pennsylvania would need to expand managed care to all regions of the state. This would enhance continuity of care for a group of beneficiaries who experience frequent income fluctuations.


The Urban Institute estimates that for most states, the economies of purchasing coverage for this large new group with the basic health plan approach could have important benefits to consumers. First, this approach could achieve lower out-of-pocket costs for consumers – economies of scale achieved could make it possible to offer the essential benefits package with lower premiums and cost-sharing to participants. In addition, states may be able to negotiate extra services to improve health care quality outcomes, such as care coordination and care management for enrollees with chronic conditions and incentives for use of preventive services. Furthermore, this approach could enhance the continuity of care for a group of consumers that is prone to frequent income fluctuations. Other states that have purchased services for Medicaid expansion groups have achieved lower costs and enhanced quality through this approach.


Like the SustiNet Board in Connecticut, the Commonwealth Advisory Committee suggests against forcing this population to use the new exchanges for basically the same reason–the private insurance exchanges will likely result in worse coverage at a greater cost to both the customers and the government.



Compared to direct public insurance, like Medicare, or even a program where the government collectively negotiates with private insurance companies on behalf of a population, like the advisory board is suggesting with the “Basic Health Plan,” the new private exchanges are clearly a very bad deal. Except for the private insurance companies, that is.



http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/01/18/pennsylvania-board-recommends-basic-health-plan-over-exchanges-in-new-law/

Rasmussen puts Walker approval at 43 percent

Friday, March 04, 2011

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey pegs Gov. Scott Walker's approval rating at 43 percent, while 57 percent disapproved of his job performance.

Within those numbers, 34 percent strongly approve of Walker's performance, while 48 percent strongly disapprove.

The survey found Walker doing particularly poorly with those who have a public employee in their household (19 percent approval) and those with a child in public school (32 percent). He does better with those from a private sector union household (46 percent) and all non-union households (49 percent).

Respondents also gave President Obama an approval rating of 55 percent.

The telephone survey of 800 likely voters was conducted March 2 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Dems typically dismiss Rasmussen as biased toward Republicans.

See the poll.

-- By JR Ross

http://budget.wispolitics.com/2011/03/rasmussen-puts-walker-approval-at-43.html

As Labor Goes, So Goes the Nation

By Melvyn Dubofsky
February 25, 2011

It is easy to lament President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party's compromises over their first two years in power, especially their failure to do as much for unemployed workers and foreclosed homeowners as they did for bankrupted and indebted financiers. Yet there are explanations for why Obama and the Democrats have behaved as they have. To understand them, we must analyze the deeper forces behind the political dynamics of the past 30 years.

What we know of as modern American liberalism, or what is more fashionably characterized today as progressive politics, is largely the result of the rise of organized labor. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, a still-divided labor movement represented the largest single electoral bloc in the nation, and it would remain that through the 1960s. The votes of union members and the lobbying of their representatives in Washington and in state capitals expanded the ranks of workers covered by minimum wage and hours laws, and raised that wage repeatedly. They helped bring millions of previously excluded employees into the Social Security system and improved the system's benefits for retirees, their survivors and the disabled. However much many white union members and their leaders remained racist and misogynist, labor's political influence proved decisive during the 1960s in the enactment of civil rights legislation.

Labor exerted such influence because at its peak it represented a third of the non-agricultural labor force. Even after its density began to slip in the late 1950s, absolute membership rose, however erratically, for two more decades. Almost all unions (other than the white male bastions that were the building and construction trades) acted as a place where working people who otherwise lived in separate neighborhoods, worshipped in different churches and temples, patronized different taverns, and even belonged to ethnically or racially-based local political clubs, met together to discuss work issues, union matters and politics.

Blue Collar Community, William Kornblum's sociological study of Chicago steel workers in the early 1960s, shows how unionism brought together white, black and brown members. In those sectors of the economy where women entered the labor force in substantial numbers, and especially in the rapidly expanding public employees' unions, organized labor united women and minorities along with dwindling numbers of white males. Over time, minorities and women rose to leadership positions in public employee and service industry unions.

Not only did unions serve to unite workers across gender and racial boundaries, they also provided a counter-narrative to what their members heard and saw in various media. Progressives suffer today not because they lack attractive narratives but rather because their opponents have grander platforms from which to narrate their political tales. In the United States, money continues to speak (and we all know how five Republican justices on the Supreme Court validated that truism in Citizens United). The more you have of it, the louder you can speak. On talk radio, television news and in most daily newspapers, capital and its conservative admirers speak far louder than labor and progressives.

That--combined with labor's declining size and influence­--explains why the Democrats behave as they do, and how their behavior is part of a process that has unfolded continuously since the administration of Jimmy Carter. When inflation and deficits raged, Democrats found it as easy as Republicans to blame union power for economic misery and to assure white nonunion workers that their real incomes would rise and tax rates would diminish if union monopolies were curbed (part of the rationale for deregulation of the airlines and trucking). During the Carter years and the Clinton years, Democrats refused to provide unions and their members labor law reform or expansive employment programs. Such policies would worsen inflation and deepen the national debt, according to party economic gurus and senators whose victories derived from suburban voters.

Instead, what the Democrats offered minorities and women (who continued to vote Democratic in greater numbers than white men) were symbolic but insubstantial victories in the form of affirmative action laws and regulations. Look, for example, at the recent lame-duck congressional session. Obama used his influence and power to obtain passage of repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, yet when it came to tax cuts for the rich, he and fellow Democrats chose to compromise in perhaps the worst way. Even Obama's most notable early legislative triumph, "Obamacare," was sold to equivocating Democrats and moderate Republicans on the basis that it would reduce the federal deficit.

So, how do we change a reality in which fewer than seven percent of private-sector workers belong to unions and in which the majority of union members, who are today public employees, face unremitting attacks on their salaries and benefits?

Union power today remains limited to no more than eight states in which union density and influence remain formidable (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and in relative terms, if not absolute numbers, Alaska and Hawaii). Yet the recent 2010 census indicates that the population continues to move to and grow in precisely those states with low union density and dominant anti-labor forces. Even in the remaining union bastions, labor and workers are under attack. Look at New Jersey under Gov. Chris Christie; Ohio, Wisconsin (see "What's the Matter with Wisconsin," p.24), and Michigan with their newly elected Republican governors and legislatures. Even in New York, new Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo's first executive action was to freeze wages and salaries for state employees.

How do we convince the majority of white male workers who today vote Republican to change their political preferences?

We won't do it with better narratives--creating and telling more attractive stories that they are unlikely ever to hear. And we won't do it by stressing identity issues (no matter how worthy) that cut two or more ways. For example, for every LGBT vote that might be won by repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell or the elimination of bans on same-sex marriage, there is a vote to be lost among older white workers, including union members who identify as devout Roman Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants or conservative Muslims.

We need to devise both a coherent strategy and tactics to change our current political dynamics. I am at a loss, however, as to what that strategy and those tactics would be. Given a first-past-the-gate electoral voting system in which third-party and independent candidates have scant chance to defeat major party candidates, and legislative structures that offer disproportionate political voice to representatives from less populous places, it is nearly impossible to conceive of a popular, left political movement that might replicate the successful founding of the Republican Party 157 years ago. The best we can hope for is that insurgent movements inside the Democratic Party can influence those who hold power as the Populists did between 1892 and 1896 or as labor and the left influenced New Dealers between 1934 and 1937.

It is an ugly fact, but in the short term, our best hope seems to be that the newly installed Republican majorities in the House and in a majority of states will fail even more miserably than the Democrats in reducing unemployment and bettering the material circumstances of working people. That failure might provide a political space for those movements that want to make life more stable and secure for working people. 

Melvyn Dubofsky is a Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology Emeritus at Binghamton University, SUNY, and the author/editor of numerous books, essays, and reviews in working-class and modern U.S. history. He is a member of the In These Times Board of Editors.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/print/6950/

YOU INSPIRE US - Erpenbach to the People #8

BP directors take bonuses for year of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

By Rowena Mason
6:22AM GMT 03 Mar 2011

Two of BP’s most senior directors have taken bonus payments for their work in the year of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, although new chief executive Bob Dudley waived his reward.

Byron Grote, finance director, and Iain Conn, head of downstream, had their £800,000 and £724,000 salaries and benefits topped up with rewards of £380,000 and £310,500 respectively. The bonuses amounted to 30pc of the full potential payout.

BP’s annual report also revealed that Tony Hayward, the former chief executive who left the company after the worst of the crisis, will get almost £100,000 a year for his work as a non-executive of BP’s Russian joint venture TNK-BP. He left the board in October with £2m in salary and severance payments, plus a £600,000-a-year pension.

According to the report, Mr Dudley denied himself a bonus in what was a “painful year” for BP. In October, Mr Dudley insisted that incentive payments would in future be linked to safety performance.

Despite forgoing his bonus, Mr Dudley is still potentially eligible for up to 581,084 shares, currently worth £2.8m, on top of a £1m salary. The shares will vest according to BP’s performance over the next few years.

Andy Inglis, the head of exploration and production who left following the crisis, was given a £690,000 pay-off and the report reveals that he was also handed an extra £200,000 for “repatriation costs” on top of his £745,000 salary and benefits. Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of BP criticised for his handling of the disaster, took home a £750,000 package, plus £90,000 in relocation costs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8358531/BP-directors-take-bonuses-for-year-of-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill.html

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Republicans target federal pollution regulations

By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 -- 8:31 pm

Republicans introduced legislation to the House of Representatives and Senate on Thursday that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Rep Fred Upton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, introduced the House version of the bill, called the Energy Tax Prevention Act. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced the legislation to the Senate.

"The EPA's rush to regulate greenhouse gases is nothing more than a national energy tax, and the effects will be far-reaching to businesses, consumers, and even more so to rural America," said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK).

The EPA has begun implementing new greenhouse gas regulations and is drafting additional regulations for electric power plants and refineries.

Republicans claimed the emission regulations were nothing but a "backdoor cap-and-trade energy tax."

"As the Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee that will review this bill in the House, I look forward to working with Chairman Upton and Senator Inhofe to move this legislation forward to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, something the Clean Air Act was never intended to do," Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK) added.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled the EPA had the power to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Section 202 of the act requires the agency to set emission standards for "any air pollutant."

The Energy Tax Prevention Act, which has been praised by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, would prevent the EPA from regulating emissions that are blamed for global warming.

"This House bill is yet another Dirty Air Act intended to give the nation's biggest polluters a way out of limits to their carbon dioxide—pollution that’s likely to exacerbate asthma and lung diseases by worsening smog, and increase deadly heat waves and extreme weather conditions," Earthjustice senior legislative representative Sarah Saylor said. "But climate change isn't just threatening Americans' health; It is also threatening our well-being and ability to prosper now and into the future."

"It's time for our elected representatives to stop acting on behalf of major polluting industries that would like to spew out their carbon dioxide pollution totally unrestrained, harming the rest of us," Earthjustice associate legislative counsel Stephanie Maddin added. "It's time for these polluters and their friends in Congress to get out of the way of clean air and a secure future for America."

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/03/republicans-push-to-eliminate-federal-pollution-regulations/

Republican Pollster: GOP Is Jumping Off a Cliff, Chased By Tea Party "Tiger"

By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on March 3, 2011, Printed on March 4, 2011

If there's any good news for Republicans in the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, it's hiding well.


Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, says these results are a "cautionary sign" for a Republican Party pursuing deep budget cuts.


He points out that the Americans who are most concerned about spending cuts are core Republicans and Tea Party supporters, not independents and swing voters.


"It may be hard to understand why a person might jump off a cliff, unless you understand they're being chased by a tiger," he said. "That tiger is the Tea Party."


Literally every day for the last few months, GOP officials have argued, ad nauseum, that "the American people" want and expect Republicans to pursue their far-right agenda. The public wants deep spending cuts, they say. Voters are demanding austerity measures, they insist.


And yet, the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming -- the party's agenda is appealing to its far-right base, not the American mainstream.


On the party's union-busting efforts, for example, a 62% majority believe it's unacceptable to eliminate public workers' collective-bargaining rights as way to deal with state budget deficits. Only 33% think it's acceptable.


On national priorities, most Americans believe job creation and economic growth -- not deficit reduction -- should be policymakers' top issue. Similarly, a 52% majority of Americans believe GOP budget tactics "go too far" in "cutting programs and reducing federal spending."


But the results that should cause Republican leaders to break out in a cold sweat were the ones on how Americans would like to see policymakers reduce the deficit.


The most popular: placing a surtax on federal income taxes for those who make more than $1 million per year (81 percent said that was acceptable), eliminating spending on earmarks (78 percent), eliminating funding for weapons systems the Defense Department says aren't necessary (76 percent) and eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries (74 percent).


The least popular: cutting funding for Medicaid, the federal government health-care program for the poor (32 percent said that was acceptable); cutting funding for Medicare, the federal government health-care program for seniors (23 percent); cutting funding for K-12 education (22 percent); and cutting funding for Social Security (22 percent).


In other words, the most popular ideas are the one Republicans refuse to even consider, while the least popular ideas are Republican favorites.


GOP pollster McInturff added that the numbers should "serve as a huge flashing yellow sign to Republicans."


Of course, Republicans aren't likely to see that huge flashing yellow sign if they're busy running from a tiger that's chasing them off a cliff.



For the full results from the poll, the 20-page pdf is online here.



http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150117/republican_pollster:_gop_is_jumping_off_a_cliff,_chased_by_tea_party_%22tiger%22/

With All Eyes on the States, GOP Quietly Pushes Ridiculous Anti-Labor Bill Through Congress

Joshua Holland |
Posted at March 3, 2011, 2:44 pm

While we've seen unprecedented attention on workers' struggles in Wisconsin, Ohio and other state capitols, the GOP is pushing a bill through Congress that would make organizing transportation workers all-but-impossible. It was sponsored by House Transportation Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) who, as you might expect, is "a major recipient of campaign contributions from the airline industry, totaling more than $620,000 in his career," according to Sam Stein and Laura Bassett reporting for the Huffpo.

The controversial provision states if an eligible voter fails to vote for union representation, he or she will be tallied as an active vote against representation.

Such a policy, which puts an extra burden on union organizers to round up all voters, rather than a simple majority, existed up until last July, when the federal National Mediation Board, which adjudicates labor-management disputes, ruled that absent votes ought not be counted against unionization. Labor officials hailed that decision as one of their signature victories last year, and the proposal to strip it away has sparked an equally emotional reaction.

"This was the one advancement that you had seen in organizing rights and here they have launched an all-out effort in the House to go after unions again," said Shane Larson, the legislative director for the Communications Workers of America. "Currently, this is the biggest issue federally right now in terms of organizing rights. There is nothing else that is on the table."

Just to highlight how undemocratic this is, consider that 41.6 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in last November's midterms, and imagine a law that tallied all of those who didn't go to the polls as votes for the GOP.

This is one of those things that's bad in isolation, but utterly ridiculous when you consider some context.

First, it's being pushed by the same union-busting conservatives who have waged a highly effective campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act based on the Big Lie that the "card-check" provision -- which would make it much easier to organize -- is undemocratic. As I wrote back in 2008:

[Union-busters seized] on a compelling talking point tailored to America's political culture: that the "card-check" provision of the EFCA does away with the secret ballots that Americans have come to expect when casting their votes.

... the strategy is to depict management's assault on the ability to organize as protecting "workers' rights." Seven out of 10 respondents said they'd be less likely to vote for a member of Congress "who voted in favor of taking away a worker's right to have a federally supervised secret ballot election to decide whether to organize a union."

Armed with their push-poll, the Right's noise machine has been typically disciplined; all corners of the conservative movement are on message: Big Labor wants to do away with secret ballots, and it's pulling the Democrats' strings to make it happen.

But as Stalin said, "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." More importantly, it's how the votes are counted and whether voters are being coerced. The secret-ballot election process is almost impossible in today's anti-union environment, with a National Labor Relations Board -- the body that's supposed to protect workers' rights -- hopelessly stacked with anti-union appointees.

As journalist Jordan Barab noted, as a result of an elections process that disenfranchises millions of working people, "card-check campaigns -- instead of secret ballot elections -- have become labor's main tool for organizing the unorganized." According to AFL-CIO statistics cited by Barab, card checks were used to "sign up roughly 70 percent of the private-sector workers who joined unions (in 2006), compared with less than 5 percent two decades ago."

So, they're awfully concerned with the democratic process as long as it doesn't lead to democratic workplaces. 

The second bit of context relates to corporate governance. This proposal would impose on transportation unions the same undemocratic system that currently obtains with shareholders' votes. If you own a few shares of stock in, say, AT & T, they'll send you a proxy ballot to return by mail. Many small investors don't bother sending those ballots back to the company, and their votes are automatically counted as siding with management. 

So we have corporations holding shareholder "votes" that are rigged to come out on management's side every time, and now they're pushing a law that would rig transportation workers' union elections to come out on management's side every time and they're screaming bloody murder about how card-check infringes on our sacred right to have a secret ballot.

In my book, I cite a poll conducted in 2005 which found that 53 percent of all American wage-earners would like to belong to a labor union. The union density that year was around 12 percent. That's a result of systemic union-busting.



http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/511581/with_all_eyes_on_the_states,_gop_quietly_pushes_ridiculous_anti-labor_bill_through_congress/

The Afghan War is Brutal, Expensive, Unpopular, and Ineffective – So Why Are We Spending Billions on It?

By Sonali Kolhatkar, AlterNet
Posted on March 3, 2011, Printed on March 4, 2011

"The sad truth is that Obama’s war policies have turned out to be even more of a nightmare than I expected.” – Malalai Joya, A Woman Among Warlords

While millions of Americans are experiencing unemployment, wage stagnation, rising tuition, dwindling social services, and poverty at levels not seen since the Great Depression, an unjustifiably large proportion of our taxes are being used to cause death and destruction in Afghanistan. With Afghanistan being the longest war the U.S. has ever officially waged, we should carefully examine the costs of the war - financial and otherwise - and ask ourselves, is it really worth it?


The war costs taxpayers between $500,000 to $1 million per soldier in Afghanistan every year. Since President Obama deployed thousands of more troops than Bush, the escalating war has come with a bloated price tag. So far, we have spent $336 billion on the war, and if Congress approves a request for additional funding, that number will go up to $455.4 billion – nearly half a trillion dollars. According to CostofWar.com, just the $120 billion in additional funding could fund 1.6 million elementary school teachers for a year, 1.9 million firefighters for a year, or $5,550 Pell Grants for 19.3 million students. A single month’s expenses on the Afghanistan war could pay for 46.9 billion meals for the hungry each month. Six months’ worth of Afghanistan war expenses could pay for school supplies for every single child in the world.

In addition to its financial price, the Afghanistan war is costing real human lives. Over the course of the entire war, at least 1,400 U.S. troops have been killed and over 10,000 wounded. The rate of deaths is also increasing, as more than a third of the total troops killed (499) died just during the past year. The price paid by ordinary Afghans is even greater. Not counting so-called insurgents, at least 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 were wounded in just the first 10 months of last year – these are most likely conservative estimates. The rate of Afghan civilian deaths is up 20 percent compared to the year before, directly corresponding to the increased troop levels under President Obama. In fact, over the course of the war, U.S.-led military actions have resulted in more direct civilian deaths (5,791 - 9,060) than “insurgent”-led actions (4,949 - 6,499).

Meanwhile, the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan has no more legitimacy than Egypt’s embattled Mubarak regime. The 2009 elections in which President Hamid Karzai claimed victory were condemned internationally as fraudulent. Released documents showed that 100% of votes from dozens of polling places in provinces like Kandahar were for Karzai. Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaints Commission received thousands of complaints of fraud. Journalists easily purchased voter registration cards on the black market. Despite documentary evidence of criminal activity implicating top government officials and Karzai himself, the U.S. continues to legitimize the central government as the only alternative to the Taliban. There is also little criticism beyond vague assertions of “corruption” of members of the Afghan Parliament. Many Afghan MPs have a history of bloody war crimes, particularly during the post-Soviet era of the early 1990’s when tens of thousands of civilians were maimed, raped, and killed often with U.S.-supplied weapons. Today, those same men, considered the Taliban’s ideological brethren, control private militias, suck up millions of dollars of aid for their private gain, terrorize civilians, and are neck-deep in the drug trade.

It is no wonder then that leading Afghan activist and former Member of Parliament, Malalai Joya, wants the U.S. and NATO out of her country. Having come face-to-face with the brutality of war and the power that U.S.-backed war criminals wield, Joya has been demanding an end to the occupation for years. In her book, A Woman Among Warlords, just out in paperback, Joya explains the situation of ordinary Afghans: “[w]e are caught between two enemies – the Taliban on one side and the U.S./NATO forces and their warlord allies on the other.” She goes on to say that “for our people, Obama is a warmonger, like Bush. He follows the same disastrous policies, only with much more determination and force.”

Joya is the most outspoken Afghan to have been elected to Afghanistan’s Parliament. She is beloved by her people for daring to speak out against U.S.-backed war criminals that dominate the government and is targeted by those very warlords. In fact, Joya has survived at least 4 assassination attempts. She represents a majority of Afghans that want neither a foreign occupation with its fundamentalist lackeys in government nor their enemies the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Despite this, her opinions are rarely reflected in U.S. media.

By most accounts, violence is increasing. According to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), attacks in Helmand and Kandahar rose by 124% and 20% last year compared to 2009. Furthermore, the violence has now spread to parts of the previously more peaceful North and East, but the U.S. military and its spokespeople continue to cast their failures as successes. For example, in a recent letter to U.S. troops, General David Petraeus said, “Throughout the past year, you and our Afghan partners worked together to halt a downward security spiral in much of the country and to reverse it in some areas of great importance.” He went on to cite specific progress in the Afghan capital Kabul as well as the traditional Taliban strongholds of the Helmand and Kandahar provinces, ignoring the fact that the number of attacks there are increasing. The ANSO, which provides security advice for organizations operating on the ground in Afghanistan, said in its quarterly report, “No matter how authoritative the source of any such claim [of progress], messages of this nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion.” As Malalai Joya says in her book, “It is all a lie – dust in the eyes of the world.”

Like Malalai Joya, most Afghans are painfully aware of the war’s spiral into violence and mayhem: a November 2010 survey by the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research found that favorable opinions of the U.S. have hit an all-time low of 43% among Afghans. More than twice as many Afghans now blame the U.S. and NATO for violence compared to a year ago. Afghans are also less optimistic about the availability of jobs and economic opportunities, freedom of movement, and the rights of women compared to a year earlier. Americans share the Afghan opinion that the troops should leave. A CNN Opinion Research poll last December found that 63% now oppose the war.

In the last chapter of her book, Joya details her recommendations on how the world can really help Afghans, the first of which is to the end the U.S.-NATO war. She also explains the real humanitarian needs of the Afghan people that the international community could fulfill, and how this would have to go hand-in-hand with disarmament, especially of the warlords that have enjoyed foreign support for so long. Finally, Joya ardently demands all foreign troops to withdraw from her country, making a strong case for how any outbreak of civil war could be minimized through responsible international diplomacy.

According to Joya, “the truth about Afghanistan has been hidden behind a smoke screen of words and images carefully crafted by the United States and its NATO allies and repeated without question by the Western media.” Joya will speak directly to American audiences this spring in a nationwide tour intended to expose the brutality and futility of the war and clear the smoke screen. Her speaking tour comes ahead of a major push by antiwar activists to organize bi-coastal events protesting the Afghanistan war on April 9th and 10th 2011. Starting in mid-March, Joya will begin her tour in New York. From there, she heads to New Jersey, Washington D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington state, and California. Joya’s tour will culminate with her participation in San Francisco’s April 10th Antiwar Demonstration. Details of Malalai Joya’s Spring 2011 tour are online at www.afghanwomensmission.org.

Joya’s words can help Americans clear the “dust from our eyes” and face the reality that for all our sakes, the Afghanistan war must end sooner rather than later.



Sonali Kolhatkar is Co-Director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based non-profit that funds health, educational, and training projects for Afghan women. She is also the host and producer of Uprising Radio, a daily morning radio program at KPFK, Pacifica in Los Angeles.


http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150123

Illinois Also Concludes Private Health Exchanges Provide Worse, More Expensive Insurance

By: Jon Walker Thursday March 3, 2011 12:29 pm

The Illinois’s health care reform implementation panel has released its initial recommendations. They concluded that the private insurer exchanges created by the new health care law are likely to be a relatively bad deal for low-income residents, and that the state would be able to provide them better and cheaper coverage through a new public Basic Health Plan, at less cost to the federal government. From the initial report (PDF):


The ACA allows states to contract for a coverage program for individuals and families with incomes between 133 percent and 200 percent of the poverty line. The state would receive federal funds to operate this Basic Health Plan equal to 95 percent of the cost of the premium, plus cost-sharing subsidies that would have gone to providing coverage for this group in the Exchange.


Because the Basic Health Plan would be operated under the same rules as Medicaid, the state would be able to maintain continuity of care across Medicaid and non-Medicaid programs. If properly designed, a Basic Health Plan could provide more affordable and comprehensive coverage than the Exchange. In addition, a state could provide Medicaid, CHIP, and Basic Health Plan coverage for working families, allowing them to keep the same medical providers if their income changes.


Private health insurance in American is extremely inefficient and more costly that public insurance. Basic logic dictates that a single public program directly collectively bargaining with providers for thousands of individuals is going to get a much better deal than one low-income individual with no market power and limited knowledge buying a product from a middleman.


Given this fact it is not surprising that this panel in Illinois came to the same basic conclusion as did the state boards in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. A government program can collectively provide these low-income people with better coverage that is cheaper for both them and the government than they would ever get if forced to use the new private exchanges.


The whole concept of the Obama health care law, relying on exchanges of exclusively private insurers, is extraordinarily wasteful. As a result, the people using it will end up paying more money for worse coverage at greater expense to the taxpayers. Hopefully a few states will use the Basic Health Plan waiver to protect at least some of their lower income residents from the huge rip-off these exchanges will be.



http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/03/03/illinois-also-concludes-private-health-exchanges-provide-worse-more-expensive-insurance/

Raw Video: 12 News Camera Captures Lawmaker Being Tackled By Police

http://www.wisn.com/video/27074185/detail.html

Need versus greed

The global economy is growing quickly, but too much wealth is siphoned off by well connected billionaires.

Jeffrey D. Sachs Last Modified: 04 Mar 2011 08:55 GMT

India's great moral leader Mohandas Gandhi famously said that there is enough on Earth for everybody's need, but not enough for everybody's greed. Today, Gandhi's insight is being put to the test as never before.

The world is hitting global limits in its use of resources. We are feeling the shocks each day in catastrophic floods, droughts, and storms – and in the resulting surge in prices in the marketplace. Our fate now depends on whether we cooperate or fall victim to self-defeating greed.

The limits to the global economy are new, resulting from the unprecedented size of the world's population and the unprecedented spread of economic growth to nearly the entire world. There are now seven billion people on the planet, compared to just three billion a half-century ago. Today, average per capita income is $10,000, with the rich world averaging around $40,000 and the developing world around $4,000. That means that the world economy is now producing around $70 trillion in total annual output, compared to around $10 trillion in 1960.

China's economy is growing at around 10 per cent annually. India's is growing at nearly the same rate. Africa, long the world’s slowest-growing region, is now averaging roughly 5 per cent annual GDP growth. Overall, the developing countries are growing at around seven per cent per year, and the developed economies at around 2 per cent, yielding a global average of around 4.5 per cent.

Greed for growth

This is very good news in many ways. Rapid economic growth in developing countries is helping to alleviate poverty. In China, for example, extreme poverty has been cut from well over half of the population 30 years ago to around 10 per cent or less today.

Yet there is another side to the global growth story that we must understand clearly. With the world economy growing at 4-5 per cent per year, it will be on a path to double in size in less than 20 years. Today’s $70 trillion world economy will be at $140 trillion before 2030, and $280 trillion before 2050 if we extrapolate from today’s growth rate.

Our planet will not physically support this exponential economic growth if we let greed take the upper hand. Even today, the weight of the world economy is already crushing nature, rapidly depleting the supplies of fossil-fuel energy resources that nature created over millions of years, while the resulting climate change has led to massive instabilities in terms of rainfall, temperature, and extreme storms.

We see these pressures every day in the marketplace. Oil prices have surged to more than $100 per barrel, as China, India, and other oil-importing countries join the United States in a massive scramble to buy up supplies, especially from the Middle East. Food prices, too, are at historical highs, contributing to poverty and political unrest.

Environmental stress

On the one hand, there are more mouths to feed, and with greater purchasing power on average. On the other hand, heat waves, droughts, floods, and other disasters induced by climate change are destroying crops and reducing the supplies of grains on world markets. In recent months, massive droughts have struck the grain-producing regions of Russia and Ukraine, and enormous floods have hit Brazil and Australia; now, another drought is menacing northern China's grain belt.

There is something else hidden from view that is very dangerous. In many populous parts of the world, including the grain-growing regions of northern India, northern China, and the American Midwest, farmers are tapping into groundwater to irrigate their crops.

The great aquifers that supply water for irrigation are being depleted. In some places in India, the water table has been falling by several meters annually in recent years. Some deep wells are approaching the point of exhaustion, with salinity set to rise as ocean water infiltrates the aquifer.

A calamity is inevitable unless we change. And here is where Gandhi comes in. If our societies are run according to the greed principle, with the rich doing everything to get richer, the growing resource crisis will lead to a widening divide between the rich and the poor – and quite possibly to an increasingly violent struggle for survival.

Class conflict

The rich will try to use their power to commandeer more land, more water, and more energy for themselves, and many will support violent means to do so, if necessary. The US has already followed a strategy of militarisation in the Middle East in the naïve hope that such an approach can ensure secure energy supplies. Now competition for those supplies is intensifying, as China, India, and others bid for the same (depleting) resources.

An analogous power grab is being attempted in Africa. The rise in food prices is leading to a land grab, as powerful politicians sell foreign investors massive tracts of farmland, brushing aside the traditional land rights of poor smallholders. Foreign investors hope to use large mechanised farms to produce output for export, leaving little or nothing for the local populations.

Everywhere in the leading countries – the US, the United Kingdom, China, India, and elsewhere – the rich have enjoyed soaring incomes and growing political power. The US economy has been taken over by billionaires, the oil industry, and other key sectors. The same trends threaten the emerging economies, where wealth and corruption are on the rise.

If greed dominates, the engine of economic growth will deplete our resources, push the poor aside, and drive us into a deep social, political, and economic crisis. The alternative is a path of political and social cooperation, both within countries and internationally. There will be enough resources and prosperity to go around if we convert our economies to renewable energy sources, sustainable agricultural practices, and reasonable taxation of the rich. This is the path to shared prosperity through improved technologies, political fairness, and ethical awareness.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20113313330192433.html