The Sudden Death of the Living Wage: Republican Class Warfare 2/3

by Nomad

Conservative View: A Threat to Health

The Republican party has had a long-held  opposition toward any talk of a living wage. This latest crop has their own ideas about how to deal with the poor. Rick Santorum, for example, seems to think that marriage is the solution to poverty.

What two things, that if you do, will guarantee that you will not be in poverty in America?” he asked the crowd.
“Number one, graduate from high school. Number two, get married. Before you have children,” he said. “If you do those two things, you will be successful economically. 

Michele Bachmann, who recently claimed she had been the “perfect’ candidate for president, had announced her intention to do away with any sort of minimum wage limit in order to stimulate the economy. Newt Gingrich called child labor laws “stupid” and Herman Cain told unemployed OWS protesters that

“ If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself ... It is not a person's fault if they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed." 

This attitude is fairly common with Fox-News-watching public. Reagan played that mish-mash of religion, patriotism and the much-touted work ethic very convincingly. The logical runs like this:

America is the land of opportunity. 

We, as a nation, are blessed by God. 

Wealth and success is a sign of God's blessing. 

Every man's success and failure depends on the his individual attributes. 

Therefore, government has no responsibility in the matter.

It is linked with the delusion that that the United States of America is a meritocracy where everyone is treated fairly and anyone can pull himself up by his bootstraps if he or she just works hard enough, pays their dues and keeps their nose to the grindstone.

The only problem is that for millions of Americans, it just not true.
The living wage, the Republicans generally say, is a denial of one of the fundamentals of the American economy, namely, the free market principle approach to labor, hiring and wages. This view is expressed by Steven Malanga, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.

The living wage poses a big threat to their economic health, because the costs and restrictions it imposes on the private sector will destroy jobs—especially low-wage jobs—and send businesses fleeing to other locales. Worse still, the living-wage movement’s agenda doesn’t end with forcing private employers to increase wages. It includes opposing privatization schemes, strong-arming companies into unionizing, and other economic policies equally harmful to urban health.

Incidentally, The Manhattan Institute, founded in 1978 by William J. Casey, who later became President Ronald Reagan's CIA director, is by no means the impartial think-tank it pretends to be. Wikipedia has this to say:

The Manhattan Institute received $19,470,416 in grants from 1985–2005, from foundations such as the Koch Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. The Manhattan Institute does not disclose its corporate funding, but the Capital Research Center listed its contributors as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, CIGNA, Sprint, Reliant Energy, Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and Merrill Lynch.

So much for its understanding about poverty and the needs of low-income Americans. And Sourcewatch adds some icing to the cake with this:

"The Manhattan Institute concerns itself with such things as 'welfare reform' (dismantling social programs), 'faith-based initiatives' (blurring the distinction between church and state), and 'education reform' (destroying public education)," Kurt Nimmo wrote October 10, 2002, in CounterPunch.

According to Malanga, the free market principles in which the wages are set by the employer and not by any kind of government regulation is the only solution.

(I)f living-wage advocates truly understood the free market, they’d know that it ultimately is far more moral than the centrally controlled economic system they endorse. If there is one thing that the last 50 years tell us, it is that the free market provides far greater economic opportunity and a decent standard of living for far more people than government-controlled markets.

And yet, that’s not what has actually happened at all. The free market approach to wages has encouraged a race to the bottom in living standards, pitting non-unionized dirt-cheap labor in developing nations against a highly productive but wage-protected labor in the US and Europe.
In fact, if this graph is anything to go by, the poverty levels in America didn’t begin to climb until after the conservative Republicans began their much-celebrated exercise in free market principles.

Starting from the 1980s and continuing through to the last Republican administration, the poverty rates have climbed and remained high. The free-market solution was no solution at all, as far as the poor were concerned. 

According to Richard Caputo, writing in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, the Reagan years resulted in a higher percentage of both individual and family poverty. Forty percent of the nation’s personal net worth was possessed by 2.4 million people out of a population of 240 million. And look how that trend has been allowed to continue. 

And yet according to the Malanga , the opposite is true.

What was remarkable about the American economy during the 1990s, when about 13 million low-skilled, low-wage immigrants arrived, is that poverty rates didn’t soar, and actually declined slightly—showing the muscularity of our economy in lifting even many of these newcomers out of poverty.

This kind of spurious arguing shouldn’t surprise anybody. As we have seen in earlier reports, misrepresenting the Reagan years (and the years since) is practically an art with the conservatives. Like the “trickle-down” theory, the real life experiment failed to live up to promise. No matter, the conservatives said, we will repeat the miracle story over and over until it becomes accepted as fact. To paraphrase Reagan, the trouble with our conservative friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't true. 

In a typical effort to misrepresent the living wage movement, Malanga resorts to the usual disinformation campaign found in most ALEC-friendly right wing organizations. 

Providing the intellectual muscle (such as it is) for the living-wage movement is a small group of Marxoid economists, led by University of Massachusetts–Amherst professor Robert Pollin, a longtime board member of the Union of Radical Political Economists, founded in the 1960s to bring Marxist economics to American universities.

As a matter of fact, the Far Right is now engaging in the same methods of academic deception that it accuses the opposition of. Utilizing a myriad of university studies financed by powerful corporate interests or dubious polls from organizations created solely for the purpose of muddying the debate, conservatives have continued to repeat the same dogma year after year. Whether true or not, in the long or in the short term, for most members of the Far Right, minimum wage limits have a negative effect on the economy. End of discussion.

However, some dared to question that line.

The tenor of this debate began to change in the mid-1990's following some work done by two Princeton economists, David Card (now at the University of California, Berkeley) and Alan B. Krueger. In 1992, New Jersey increased the state minimum wage to $5.05 an hour (applicable to both the public and the private sectors), which gave the two young professors an opportunity to study the comparative effects of that raise on fast-food restaurants and low-wage employment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage remained at the federal level of $4.25 an hour. Card and Krueger agreed that the hypothesis that a rise in wages would destroy jobs was "one of the clearest and most widely appreciated in the field of economics." 

Both told me they believed, at the start, that their work would reinforce that hypothesis. But in 1995, and again in 2000, the two academics effectively shredded the conventional wisdom. Their data demonstrated that a modest increase in wages did not appear to cause any significant harm to employment; in some cases, a rise in the minimum wage even resulted in a slight increase in employment.

The staunchest Conservatives, like the people of the Manhattan Institute, would like to portray the living wage movement as some kind of New Left socialist / anarchist /Marxist concept that spilled out of the turmoil of civil rights movement. According to Far Right sources, the movement began in 1994, as some kind of attempt to corrupt the "miracle" of Reaganomics, plotted by liberal professors and un-American leftists, those dreaded hangovers from the civil rights era. 

In fact, its philosophical roots go back much further. Nearly a hundred years before, to be precise and is not a new thing at all.

Of New and Not So New Things

One of the seminal works on the subject of fair wages came not from the civil right movements of the mid- 20th century but from much earlier. On May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued an open letter, passed to all his bishops, that addressed the conditions of the working classes and of the poor. It was called Rerum Novarum (Latin for Of New Things).

It is, in fact, a remarkable document, and which elevated the Church from the promotion of a single faith to an ethical code for the advocacy of world social justice. This original papal document would be the source for a series of other social teachings by later popes, all of which related to the morality of fair treatment for the poor.

In the declaration, poverty in itself, Pope Leo explained, is no disgrace. It was unavoidable and part of the human condition. In an effort to maintain social harmony between the classes, he advised workers of the world that damaging or stealing of property of their employers was unacceptable. Had he stopped there, his message would have been nothing more than a carte blanche for exploitation. As one source explains:

But there was something else that concerned him very much: the material well-being of the working poor. He told them in no uncertain terms that they should receive what will enable them to be housed, clothed, secure, and to live without hardship. He made it clear that they were not to accept unjust treatment as though it were inevitable, and that they were to stand up for their rights at the same time that they helped to preserve good order in society. Protect your own interests, but refrain from violence and never riot ; your demands should be reasonable ; press your claims with reason ; form unions but do not strike. The message about preserving good order is clear and unmistakable, but so is the message about standing up for rights.

Leo XIII wanted the working poor to protect their interests, to make demands, to press their claims, and the principal means for doing this was the formation of unions. In their efforts to claim their rights, the working poor should find in the government an ally, and Leo made it clear that the working poor should be given special consideration by the government.

He also spoke directly to employers.

For Leo, employers have clear moral obligations: workers are not to be treated as slaves; the dignity of your workers' human personality must be respected; do not use people as things for gain; do not oppress the needy and wretched for your own profit. The approach to employers is on a high moral plane, but it is also very practical: you need your poor worker, so work with him harmoniously. It is immoral to treat workers unjustly, and it is also not in the best interest of ownership and management.

It was not a call for communism nor socialist but for an ethical re-examination of a capitalist system. According to the Pope, it was a government’s obligation to take a role in protecting workers’ rights and in keeping the peace. Fair wages are defined in Rerum Novarum as at least a living wage, but Leo recommended paying more than that: enough to support the worker, his wife and family, with a little savings left over so that the worker can improve his condition over time.

To a Right Wing conservative, that statement (for Newt and Rick it's an infallible source, by the way) is tantamount to heresy. It's hard to reconcile the statements made by the candidates- who have professed to be Catholic when it comes to abortion and homosexuality- with the official position of the Church on the poor. Why, you can ask, would the GOP be waging a war on religion?

In any case, the Pope’s letter would later have a profound effect on a leading moral theologian, priest, professor, author, and social justice advocate, Monsignor John Augustine Ryan. In 1906, published the book, A Living Wage.

While at St. Paul Seminary in 1894, Ryan read Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and it was to form the basis for Ryan’s socio-economic views. As he saw it, the separation of economic thought from religious and ethical rules were the cause of social injustice brought about by the industrial revolution. The failure of employers to pay a sufficient wage would, in his eyes, inevitably damage the fabric of all society.

The living wage movement was not confined to the religious sphere. Around the turn of the last century, the fascinating English husband and wife reformers, Martha Beatrice Webb and Sidney James Webb wrote a good deal about the necessity of social and economic reform. They advocated the idea that the State should enforce a national minimum of wages which would provide the laborer with "the food, clothing and shelter physiologically necessary, according to national habit and custom, to prevent bodily deterioration."

They considered the industries that took more than they gave back to be little better than parasites on the community. The Modern Conservative has declared it is the poor who are the parasites. And, apparently their only solution to poverty is blame the victims, to remove their government safety nets and to force them to have more babies they cannot afford. All in the name of their professed morality .

In 1919 The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America drafted a program of social reconstruction back which included in its demands “a Living Wage enforced by the State,” and “declared that “this Living Wage should be made the first charge upon industry, before dividends are considered." 

Finally, perhaps a more unexpected proponent of the Living Wage concept, was none of than the arch-capitalist Henry Ford. On Jan. 5, 1914, Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day, more than doubling the wages for most employees.

James Couzens, the Ford treasurer, said: “It is our belief that social justice begins at home. We want those who have helped us to produce this great institution and are helping to maintain it to share our prosperity. We want them to have present profits and future prospects. … Believing as we do, that a division of our earnings between capital and labor is unequal, we have sought a plan of relief suitable for our business.”

The Wall Street Journal accused him of injecting "Biblical or spiritual principles into a field where they do not belong." The New York Times correspondent who traveled to Detroit to interview him that week asked him if he was a socialist but also added that his decision as “one of the most remarkable business moves of his entire remarkable career.”

Despite his what was claimed, his main reason for the unprecedented wage increase was more likely to be economic rather than humanitarian. With its high turnover, the motor company faced a constant retraining of new workers. By the keeping and rewarding the best workers, the wage increase was offset by increased production and smaller training programs. Additionally, the wage increase provided Ford employees with enough money to purchase Ford automobiles, which further increased the company’s sales. In the end, through his ostensively labor-friendly policy, Ford’s business goals were realized and his wage increase had its intended effect: turnover declined sharply, and profits doubled to $60 million from $30 million from 1914 to 1916.

One further example of the long pedigree of the living wage movement: in 1917, The Interdenominational Conference of Social Service Unions, comprising ten religious bodies, including Catholics (like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum), spent more than a year formulating a statement of social reconstruction. They issued this statement: 

"In an industrial system such as ours, the right to life practically resolves itself into the right to a Living Wage, by which we mean not a mere subsistence wage but a wage sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of life."

Despite what the conservatives would like everybody to believe, the history of the living wage movement is extensive and historical and it should be a source of pride for any progressive.

The twentieth century was, in fact, one long struggle between the capitalist on one hand who felt that labor was a resource to exploit and progressive social reformers who demanded a fair living wage of labor.

______________

In the final installment, I will take a look at the last great attempt to address the problem of the living wage, the remarkable success of this movement and its catastrophic downfall. 

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=======UPDATE======

Listen to this incredible emotional speech by Maureen Walsh. A Republican. Miracles never cease, I suppose. By the way, I was also a little worried when she started talking about sex.

The Sudden Death of the Living Wage : Mitt Romney Flip-Flop 1/3

by Nomad

Romney’s Double Back Flip

Last week Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney somehow managed to flip-flop from the frying pan into the political fire when he told reporters that he didn't fret about the poor because of the social safety net. He explained to a CNN reporter:

“I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it.”

President as handy-man?
Naturally, like every politician who finds himself in a pickle, he blamed the media for taking his statement out of context. Like his “corporations are people too” remark, Romney once again seemed unable to hear how out of touch he actually sounds. Until everybody else notices. Coming from one of the richest candidates in American history, it gave the (probably accurate) impression that he has no real understanding or sensitivity for the poor. After all, how much more 1% can Mitt Romney be? How can a person like that really represent all of the people?

But then, in order to rectify the gaffe, Romney immediately followed that up with a new problematic statement which had his corporate backers falling out of their cushy chairs. By Wednesday he underlined his commitment to address the problems of the poor by mentioning his support for automatic increases in the federal minimum wage to keep pace with inflation. 

"I haven't changed my thoughts on that," the former Massachusetts governor told reporters aboard his chartered campaign plane, referring to a stand he has held for a decade.

You could almost hear the gasp of a million CEOs and the moan and groan of a thousand Republican Party elites. In that one sentence he confirmed the Right Wing’s darkest suspicions about this candidate. Namely, he is not committed to their agenda after all. Good God, he might even be a moderate, which is next door to a liberal, which is just around the corner from a socialist which is on the same street as a Communist!

Romney’s gaffe has underlined one of the problems facing the Republican party, namely, its inability to deal with poverty except through finger-wagging and starvation. In order to win support, Romney has had to appeal to pro-business groups like the National Federation of Independent Business and the US Chamber of Commerce, both of which reject the idea of any sort of raise in the minimum wage. They have long argued that increased wages are detrimental to economic growth. Both sides of the debate can point to numerous studies to support their respective claims. and economists disagree about the effects of a higher minimum wage on growth and job creation.

A Wage for Living

The birth of the minimum wage law- a landmark of its day- was an agonizing one for President Franklin Roosevelt and it very nearly didn’t occur at all.. After a protracted battle the Supreme court, the president finally succeeded in getting a watered version of his proposal on his desk.. As one source tells us:

In its final form, the act applied to industries whose combined employment represented only about one-fifth of the labor force. In these industries, it banned oppressive child labor and set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and the maximum workweek at 44 hours.

He told the public that America should be able to give "all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day's pay for a fair day's work."

It was hardly what one would call a success story for the president. In order to gain approval in both houses of Congress, numerous compromises, amendments, exemptions and narrowed coverage limits had been added to the original draft. The result was that, in its final form, the act wasn't much of an improvement in the conditions of the working man.  

Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938 and has voted for raises since, but has never linked it to inflation. Over the years Congress revised the FLSA several times, broadening the coverage to include retail establishments in 1961, hospitals, nursing homes, schools and colleges and laundries in 1966 as well as domestic, state and local government workers in 1974. 

The value of the minimum wage and the types of workers it covered have always been widely debated. Despite unwavering public support for regular increases to the federal minimum wage, employer lobbyists, particularly from low-wage industries like restaurants and hotels, have been loud and unyielding opponents. Although the real value of the minimum wage (the value adjusted for inflation) rose consistently from 1938 to 1968, the trend has been reversed ever since. By the end of the 1980s, under a more conservative political climate, the real value had been in decline until 2007.

One thing that many politicians seem unwilling to admit is that minimum wage is actually below the minimum for most people. In many areas of the country, the cost of living (which includes housing, utilities, food, health costs and the bare necessities) exceeds the minimum wage limits and these wage standards only represent the needs of an individual, not those of a family. A minimum wage is merely the amount a money need to survive with the essential items. Often a minimum wage is set so low that it requires some kind of borrowing, like purchases on credit. It may require that the head of the household take on multiple forms of employment or that both parents work.

A minimum wage is not, therefore, a living wage.

To understand the difference, it’s important to remember that a minimum wage is the lowest wage that employers may legally pay to workers and conversely, it’s the lowest rate that a worker can sell his labor. The entire law is designed to represent the employer's interests and not the worker's. (Ideally for the employers, of course, would be a minimum wage set at zero but the Emancipation Proclamation has poo-pooed that idea.) Whether or not a worker (and his dependents) can actually survive on the specified minimum wage is another matter.

For a closer look at a comparison between the living wage and the minimum wage, and to find out what is required to make a living wage in your community, I invite you to visit the Living Wage Calculator.

If we take a random area, Beaufort County, North Carolina. Since the latest increase in the minimum wage, the figures actually look good for a single adult. The minimum wage is $7.25 and that's well above the poverty level at $5.04 and the living wage is $7.14. All very good except when you add a child to equation, the living wage requirement suddenly jumps to $13.98! 

Another example, Indianapolis: again, minimum wage is $7.25 and the poverty level is $5.04. However, the living wage is $8.06 an hour and with one child, that increases to $15.53.

Finally, a major metropolitan area, Boston. There, the situation is intolerable even without a child. Minimum wage is higher than the federal limit at $8.00 an hour and the poverty level is a mere $5.04. That’s a fairly promising start but then look at the living wage. $12.17. That’s how much you must make an hour in order to live with even the barest essentials. With a child in your lap and you suddenly find you’ll need $20.75 an hour, just to make ends meet. It’s no surprise, then, that people are making use of their credit cards and working two and sometime three jobs. If that becomes impossible, then the only recourse is to become a dependent on the government. 

That’s the safety net that Mitt Romney regales. It's important to remember all this the next time you hear a conservative politician complaining about "class warfare."  There may be class warfare in the America, but it's not the poor who are waging it.

Living wage

Presentation by Trudi Renwick, Senior Economist, Fiscal Policy Institute

The Invisible Poor

To learn the truth behind American poverty, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by a former New York Times reporter and a Pulitzer Prize winner, David Shipler, is a “must read.” He examines the problem, not of the unemployed, the so-called welfare queens, the parasites of the free-market economy, but of the gainfully employed labor force who are simply unable to survive on their wages. Moreover, these low-wage jobs that he discusses often don’t provide health insurance coverage, and past medical bills (due to the lack of insurance) often mean low-income families have a substantial debt burden. For the working poor, it's not about saving for a rainy day. Every day is rainy. It's more about just keeping your head above water.
Shipler explains:

Business executives have the skill but certainly not the will to compress salary differentials by raising the bottom and making sacrifices at the top. Revised tax structures could induce such policy. Government has the skill to legislate a big boost in the minimum wage, but it lacks the political will, largely because most low-income Americans don’t vote their interests or don’t vote at all, and can’t compete with private industry’s sophisticated lobbying and campaign contributions. Furthermore, the minimum wage is a blunt instrument, and the skill to use it is not perfected.

One idea for making the tool more refined is to set different minimums for different parts of the country based on regional costs of living. Another approach is the “living wage” law…. We have learned other ways to address the discrepancy between what people can earn in the market and what they need for comfortable living.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, discontent is the want of self-reliance. How can one be genuinely self-reliant without being able to afford the bare essentials of subsistence? How can a citizen be fairly represented in government when Congress is (or appears to be) beholden special interests and the demands of the 1%? Above all, it is important that everybody understands that the right to a fair and sustaining wage is a  problem of values.

Not merely because it revolves around the quality of existence or the standard of living but because a fair wage is the key to dignity. And when you rob a person of their dignity, the denial of a life-sustaining wage becomes more than an ethical or even an economic problem,  but a hazard for all of society because a population without dignity, reduced to form of discontented slavery, is an invitation to revolution and to catastrophe.

________________

 In the next post in this series, we will be taking a brief look at that history of the idea of the living wage and what its opponents say about it. 

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Santorum's Win in Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado. Spread Santorum All Over Town

By Kathleen

Picture from Daily Kos. Hat-tip to BfromC

It seems that Rick Santorum will pull a hat-trick tonight and win all three of that polls that took place earlier. Huffington Post has declared that Rick is on fire -- I presume they mean literally and not metaphorically. Only Joking! Still one can dream.

As in previous states the numbers of voters in these caucus and primary polls is extremely low. I would say that Santorum's win tonight merely adds up to a hill of beans.

Here is the best comment at Huffington Post on the subject:

3 states have gone S_A_N_I_T_­A_R_I_U_M!   
Indeed!

Fortunately for you, I have been saving the following videos for a night like this. Enjoy. hat-tip to spreadingsantorum.com

 

The ‘Father of Black History Month’

by Sunnyjane

If you can make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it on his own.   Carter Godwin Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro

In the early decades of the nineteen hundreds, it was generally accepted that African Americans had little history other than their suppression under slavery.  My own American History classes, served up “Southern style,” mentioned nothing about Negro accomplishments and contributions other than those of George Washington Carver, who developed hundreds of highly beneficial uses for the common peanut.  (His achievements were no doubt considered significant for a Southerner’s education because of their agricultural orgins.) 

By the end of the twentieth century, however, it was clear that blacks have had a significant impact on the development of the social, political, and economic composition of the United States – and, perhaps, the world.  Credit for that evolution of consciousness must be attributed to Carter G. Woodson.  

A Man Seeks an Education

The son of former slaves, Woodson was born in Buckingham County, Virginia on December 19, 1875.  The elder Woodson moved his large family to West Virginia when he learned that Huntington was building a high school for blacks.  Due to the family’s impoverished situation, however, his children could not attend school on a regular basis.   It would take until he was twenty-two years old for young Carter to earn a diploma from Douglass High School.    He went on to teach in Fayette County for three years, and was then selected as the principal at Douglass. 

   
The Educated Man Becomes an Educator – and a Student

During 1901 and 1903, Woodson took classes on a part-time basis at Berea College in Kentucky, where he earned a Bachelor of Literature degree.  Berea was the first college in the south to be coeducational and racially integrated.  

From 1903 to 1907, Woodson was a school supervisor in the Philippines, and later attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Arts in 1908.   He became a member of the first African American Greek-lettered organization, Sigma Pi Phi, and a member of Omega Psi Phi.  He completed his PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was the second African American (W.E.B. DuBois was the first) to earn a doctorate.  He researched and wrote his doctoral dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia, while teaching high school in Washington, D.C.  After earning his doctoral degree, he continued teaching in the public schools and later joined the faculty at Howard University as a professor and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

  

The Father of Negro History

His many years of research and teaching had made Dr. Woodson recognize that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars and how vital was the need to remedy a situation that had disregarded the narrative of African Americans. He would spend the rest of his life researching, writing, publishing, and amassing histories to help African Americans understand their own cultural backgrounds and reputable achievements.  His believe that, Before we can ask a white man to understand and accept the Negro’s history, we must ensure that the Negro himself understands and accepts his history, led Dr. Woodson in 1926 to establish Negro History Week, a time in February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln;  in 1976, this important recognition event became Black History Month.

End Note

In 1984, the history of Dr. Carter G. Woodson took its rightful place as one of the Black Heritage Series  of United States Postal Service stamps, which recognized the achievements of thirty-one prominent African Americans.

                          
                      

Weekly Roundup, January 30-February 5, 2012

By Blueberry T


For those interested in learning more about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig, click here; there are also many resources on the right-hand sidebar.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Dusty’s Corner

Dusty takes a closer look at Mitt Rom[o]ney and Newt Gingrich. Mitt will say anything to be elected, and has reached absolute zero on the empathy scale. While he has mastered the art of smiling and saying what he thinks people want to hear, his recent gaffes, along with the Seamus story that won’t go away and revelations about his wealth and taxes (or lack thereof) paint a less flattering portrait. He really is not worried about the very poor, nor about sick dogs on the roof, nor about the truth about how we got into the economic mess, nor about a fair tax code, nor about firing workers. What about Newt? The height of the current GOP absurdity is that Newt Gingrich can run on “family values” or not being a Washington insider or being the one to clean up the economy. But he is able to tap into the Great White Fear and attracts “bully” and “pulpit” voters (nice one, Dusty!). BONUS: the Game Change trailer at the end of the post will bring a smile to many faces… enjoy!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

There’s Gold in Them Thar Prisons

This is Part 3 of Nomad’s brilliant series on the scandal-ridden Texas Youth Commission; here are Parts 1 and 2. This part ties together and explains the dreadful situation that juvenile inmates have endured in Texas. Fortunately, justice was partially served for some of the victims, and there were some heroes; but others got off and the terrible conditions and abuse of juveniles is not solved.

This is also a hugely important post regarding privatization of prisons and public policy about crime. Some key points: the “tough on crime” mantra of George W. Bush’s tenure as TX Governor led to an explosion in the prison population, pushing the system beyond the limits. This set the stage for profit-making by the GEO Group, which despite its poor reputation and due to its lobbying, was able to secure major contracts to run prison facilities. Sending people to prison is big business in Texas and elsewhere, and industry lobbyists have a growing influence on public policy about crime. Governors Perry, Brewer, Scott, Kasich and others are closely linked to companies that are privatizing prisons.

This post includes much eye-opening information; here is some. If Texas were a country, it would have the highest prison population in the world; its prison population increased sixfold from 1980 to 2006. One in 20 adult Texans are incarcerated/on probation/parole (2007). Despite a much higher incarceration rate in TX compared to New York, NY saw a greater decrease in crime and its rates of crime and murder are much lower than in Texas. More: nationwide, crime and violent crime are steeply declining, yet incarceration is going upward. I can’t do justice to the entire post: you really must read it to learn how profits are being made from the privatization of prisons and how detention of youths and immigrants are big profit centers. Kudos to Nomad for another tremendous job illuminating a very difficult subject.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

A historical lesson that we can’t afford to ignore

As we witness increasing efforts of the ultra-right to roll back women’s rights, sunnyjane reminds us of a terrible historical precedent that occurred in Romania forty-five years ago. In the post WWII period, Romanian women had access to safe, legal abortions, but that access was denied under the Ceausescu dictatorship. The government issued Decree 770, severely limiting access to contraception and abortion, to force women to bear more children. The results were disastrous. The mortality rate for pregnant and delivering women skyrocketed, and infant mortality and childhood malnutrition increased dramatically as well. Only with the fall of communism did abortion and contraception become legal again. The horrific conditions in Romanian orphanages, which came to world attention around 1990, should serve as a reminder of the terrible results of these policies to restrict women’s access to contraception and safe, legal abortion. Let’s hope (let’s vote) that America will not repeat these mistakes. The choice about this issue could not be more stark: the far-right continues to introduce anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation, while the Obama Administration has issued rules requiring that contraception must be provided at no cost under the Affordable Care Act.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Equal Rights – Free Exercise of Religious Beliefs: Is it Either/Or?

Dusty offers an excellent segue from sunnyjane’s post, looking at the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that require coverage for contraception as part of “wellness care” that does not require a copayment. She considers this issue in light of the constitutional protection of freedom of religion. There is a lot of hyperbole coming from the Catholic Church and others who are fighting this requirement, suggesting that it somehow infringes on their religious freedom. But as Dusty shows, the regulations allow for religious exemptions and do not force contraceptive services on anyone who does not want them, nor do they force anyone to provide services that may violate their religious beliefs. This is an excellent post that debunks a lot of the misinformation and clarifies some of the points that have been misinterpreted.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

What Politicalgates Means to Us

Maelewis has a gift for putting in words what many of us are thinking, so it is appropriate that mae was the winner of Politicalgates first anniversary contest – well done! As she said so beautifully, we truly have become a community of friends. Leadfoot_LA also has a gift – she offers her “pictorial ode to Levi” (H/T Kathleen)… well, ahem, not much left to our imaginations here! I know that’s how you roll, Leadfoot, but I’m beginning to think you may need an intervention!! After maelewis generously donated back her prize, Kathleen put the cherry on the cake by “regifting” it from Politicalgates to Planned Parenthood – Perfect! (That’s a lot of P’s.)

In the midst of Susan B. Komen’s self-inflicted fiasco, I want to send ((((♥♥♥)))) to our readers who shared stories of living with cancer – their own or that of a loved one. Hugs from all of us to you and a deep bow of gratitude for sharing your personal lives with us; we are the richer for it and hope that our friendship gives you comfort and support (and a good laugh now and again, too).

Some Comments and Links:

Leadfoot (on Trump’s endorsement of Romney): Not surprising. They both like to fire people.

JulaUSA: …we all know that if men got pregnant abortion would be in the Bill of Rights.

Cackling Rad spoke for a lot of us: I've had friends in the health care industry complain to me that SGK siphons off a HUGE percentage of the money that is given every year to help fight cancer, to the point that other cancers aren't receiving anywhere near the same attention. But when you realize that most of that money is going to sell pink merchandise and organize flashy walks and races, and pay fat salaries, and pay lawyers to sue other charities, and fund lobbyists fighting national health care... Well, to say I am infuriated is an understatement.

Bandit Basheert: They don't care about a cure. They found the goose that lays their golden egg.

Yknott found this on HuffPo by Lilly Ledbetter.

Bluerinse pointed out this brilliant Colbert piece on learning from history.

Cheeriogirl and mmboucher linked to littlegreenfootballs on the ties between Susan B. Komen and Koch Industries.

Dusty highlighted this excellent post by margaretandhelen. Later Dusty and juicyfruityy linked to this amazing statement by a woman with breast cancer. DO NOT MISS THIS.

Alwaysthink linked to DailyKos on commercialization of cancer by Komen and others.

Mmboucher linked to politicususa on Rom[o]ney’s lies; this seems to go with Dusty’s first post this week.

Here is Jon Stewart on Mitt not being concerned about the very poor.

ProChoiceGrandma pointed out this from Alternet on Komen/Planned Parenthood controversy.

HonestyinGov and sunnyjane pointed out maps so that people can track KeystoneXL. HIG also found this excellent piece by Barbara Ehrenreich on “Cancerland.”

Rick Santorum Progresses the War Against Women - PLUS: Sarah Palin Newsweek Article - The Myth of Trig, and the Lies of Sarah Palin

By Kathleen

In a barely disguised contempt for the intelligence of women, Rick Santorum, who finished last in the 2012 Nevada caucus yesterday, repeated the anti choice lie that abortion causes cancer. This is a blatant attack by Santorum on the organisation of Planned Parenthood and a good old boy pat on the back for Komen. 

In an interview with Fox News Sunday Santorum whined:

"I don't believe breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization that does abortions where you've seen ties to cancer and abortions."

As the Huffington Post article points out a 2007 study revealed that there is no link between breast cancer and abortion and Planned Parenthood spends a mere 3 percent of its funds on abortion services whilst 16 per cent is allocated for cancer screening and prevention. Obviously Santorum is a member of the school of thought that believes if you repeat a lie often enough it will soon become true.

********


Sarah Palin and the Myth of Trig

Several weeks after Sarah Palin sounded off against Newsweek Magazine and Andrew Sullivan in the following tweet:

@Newsweek: know what's truly "dumb"? Giving a cover story to the TrigTruther conspiracy kook writer who thinks I didn't give birth to my son
— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) January 17, 2012

she has (ghost) written an article for Newsweek in which she portrays herself as a dutiful mother who has "periodically put her family first" and is worried about Trig's "health and social challenges" that he may face.
 

In the article Palin wants people to believe that she and Todd, like other parents who have to care for Special Needs children, understand the "unique" challenges and rewards of caring for such a child. The reality as the above photo proves is somewhat different. Palin had no hesitation whatsover in dragging her clearly just wakened and undressed child then parading him in front of flashing cameras and a loud crowd. Where is her concern for Trig in this picture and what sacrifices has Palin really made on behalf of her family? Especially for her children who were often employed as shields from the press with their pesky questions. Her children who went on to grow up considering themselves as celebrities or just that so much better than others and who have no hesitation to use homophobic slurs against their critics.

It's also a pity that Palin used the worn out "Trig applauds the world" meme again as it is one that she has repeated many times already.

Trig is almost 4 years old now, and every morning when he wakes up, he pulls himself up, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, looks around, and then starts applauding! He welcomes each day with thunderous applause and laughter. He looks around at creation and claps as if to say, “OK, world, what do you have for me today?”

The fact that she yet again churns out the same anecdote about him prove to me that she is not that involved in his life. Surely if she spent more time with him she would have many other stories to relate rather than an observation made way back in May 2011 and which now appears to be part of the Trig story. The story as Palin tells it.

And that is what this article is. This is Palin's telling of the Trig myth. This is her response to those of us who do not accept that she gave birth to Trig because the evidence and facts suggest otherwise. It's easy Sarah. Release the medical records and the birth certificate proving that you are Trig's mother and we can start talking from there. 

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Note by Patrick:


The Lies of Sarah Palin - Her faked pregnancy:

I left a shorter version of the following comment on Huffington Post - hopefully, it will be approved:

In this new Newsweek article, Sarah Palin talks about her "doctor's appointments." Fact is, the Palin's official schedule from late 2007/early 2008 doesn't show ANY doctor appointments (the schedule was released already in 2009 through a FOIA request). In addition, Sarah Palin's doctor Cathy Bandwin-Johnson who gave the mysterious "OK to fly" to Alaska on April 17, 2008 after Sarah Palin's water broke in Texas (official story!), lived HUNDREDS of miles away. 

Sarah Palin spent January to mid-April 2008 in Alaska's capital Juneau, due to the legislative session. Cathy Baldwin-Johnson, however, lived and worked in Anchorage - which is in fact 849 miles away, according to Google maps. Even the closest staff members of Palin were completely surprised when she announced the pregnancy on March 5, 2008. Even her closest aides had no knowledge of any doctor's appointments.

On our "Politicalgates" blog, you will find all the relevant information regarding Sarah Palin's "pregnancy" through the links which are being mentioned in the sidebar. There is also a link to a "box net" folder with lots of various documents, including Sarah Palin's official schedule from early 2008, which I mentioned above.

We collected a huge amount of damning "circumstantial evidence" regarding Sarah Palin's pregnancy, including photos, video clips and documents. Apart from that, we received excellent inside info from Alaska already about three years ago, when very knowledgeable people from the "upper echolons of society" told us that Palin's pregnancy was faked - and that high-ranking Republicans knew about it.

If you search on youtube for "Michael Carey Palin" you will also see that the faked pregnancy was basically an open secret in Alaska in 2008 (TV-interview with ADN-journalist Michael Carey from September 2, 2008). Sarah Palin herself was confronted with the "fake pregnancy allegations" already in March and April 2008, as Frank Bailey reveals in his book "Blind Allegiance." Even then, when she was still supposedly "highly pregnant" (officially giving birth to a baby weighing more than six pounds on April 18, 2008), Palin was very upset about the allegations - but had no way to refute them! On the contrary, she asked her staff whether the Anchorage Daily News was "suspecting" anything and desperately tried to find ways to "squelch" the rumours, as she called it herself.

I explained this in great detail in a post from February 2011 about "Blind Allegiance", which can be found in the "popular posts" in the sidebar on our blog.

Sarah Palin's article in Newsweek is another "pre-emptive" strike regarding her pregnancy with Trig. Several of those "pre-emptive" strikes happened in the past, or at least were attempted. On one occasion, Sarah Palin even flat out lied about having shown Trig's birth certificate, so desperate was she to get the "rumours" out of the way.

Unfortunately, the media has failed badly in investigating Palin's pregnancy, causing the ridiculous situation that Andrew Sullivan especially is now somewhat "tainted" as being a "Trig Truther" - despite the fact that he asked exactly the right questions, and was one of the very few people who was not fooled - and he should have some received awards for his courage! However, I still have hope that the full truth about Sarah Palin's “pregnancy” will finally be revealed - with evidence which will be impossible to ignore, even for the unwilling media.

While I was the editor of Palingates, one of your readers. Lidia17, created an excellent three part documentary about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy with Trig.


First part:

  Second part:

  Third part (the "wild ride"):

There is more. It wasn't Andrew Sullivan or some blogger from the "Daily Kos" who started the rumour that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy with Trig. In fact, it was an open secret amongst "knowledgeable people" in Alaska, as we know from our own sources from Alaska, and as Anchorage Daily News columnist Michael Carey confirmed on tape in an interview at the Republican National Convention on September 2, 2008:

However, it's even "worse." The rumours that Sarah Palin faked the pregnancy did in fact already emerge in March and April 2008 while Sarah Palin was still officially pregnant! The proof can be found in Sarah Palin's own emails from these months, which have been published by her former top-aide Frank Bailey in his book "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin." I wrote a detailed post about this in February 2011, quoting extensively from Sarah Palin's emails.

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UPDATE:


For those wondering as to whether there is a recent picture of Trig in Newsweek magazine my very reliable sources tell me that the answer to that is a resounding no.

This is the most recent photo that I have seen of Trig. It was posted on January 21st, 2012 on Bristol's public facebook. Here he is with Bristol and Tripp. Bristol writes "Love these boys." h/t to hopeforamerica.