Category: Class War

Indiana

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Courage is contagious, and the Democrats in Indiana are taking a page out of the Wisconsin playbook:

Republicans control every Statehouse power base — governor, Senate and House — but they remain virtually powerless to enact laws so long as 39 House Democrats remain holed up in an Urbana, Ill., hotel.
For now, at least, Indiana’s GOP majority has been outmaneuvered.

Those 39 Democrats managed to shut down the House for a month and win concessions from Republicans on labor and education bills — and they’re angling for more.

As long as they hang together — and thus far the House Democrats are withstanding fines, the threat of censure and blistering accusations that they are derelict in their duty — the legislature is at an impasse.

Without them, the House lacks the quorum it needs to do business. For now, at least, Indiana’s GOP majority has been outmaneuvered.

Those 39 Democrats managed to shut down the House for a month and win concessions from Republicans on labor and education bills — and they’re angling for more.

As long as they hang together — and thus far the House Democrats are withstanding fines, the threat of censure and blistering accusations that they are derelict in their duty — the legislature is at an impasse.

Without them, the House lacks the quorum it needs to do business.

It’s a pretty interesting article, explaining all the pros and cons.

Ayn rantings

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

Krugman (remember, your Times links are limited):

Greenspan writes in characteristic form: other people may have their models, but he’s the wise oracle who knows the deep mysteries of human behavior, who can discern patterns based on his ineffable knowledge of economic psychology and history.

Sorry, but he doesn’t get to do that any more. 2011 is not 2006. Greenspan is an ex-Maestro; his reputation is pushing up the daisies, it’s gone to meet its maker, it’s joined the choir invisible.

He’s no longer the Man Who Knows; he’s the man who presided over an economy careening to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — and who saw no evil, heard no evil, refused to do anything about subprime, insisted that derivatives made the financial system more stable, denied not only that there was a national housing bubble but that such a bubble was even possible.

If he wants to redeem himself through hard and serious reflection about how he got it so wrong, fine — and I’d be interested in listening. If he thinks he can still lecture us from his pedestal of wisdom, he’s wasting our time.

Welcome to the club

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

I wonder how many people drained their savings to cover COBRA payments because they thought they’d soon find a new job. That’s why the new healthcare law, as flawed as it is, is a big step toward building a safety net:

The millions of Americans who lost their jobs and their health benefits during the recession often had no way to regain affordable health coverage, leaving them and their families at risk of financial ruin, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund.

The spate of layoffs during the recession catapulted 9 million more Americans — or 57% of those who had had health insurance in a job that evaporated over the last two years — into the ranks of the millions already uninsured.
In addition, 19 million people anxiously seeking private coverage over the last three years were either turned down or could not find a plan that was affordable and met their needs, the report found.

The Biennial Health Insurance Survey also found a whopping 60% increase in skipped care due to cost in the past decade. The survey reported that medical debt problems and out-of-pocket spending costs were on the rise as well, with 29 million Americans using up their entire life savings to pay for medical bills and millions more unable to afford food, heat and rent due to medical payments.

“The report tells the story of the continuing deterioration of health care accessibility, efficiency, safety and affordability over the past decade,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis said during a noon press conference Tuesday. All this despite the fact that the United States spends more than any other country on health care, she added.

“Most recently it has failed the millions of Americans who lost their jobs during the recession and lost health benefits as well, leaving them with no place to turn for affordable health care coverage,” Davis said.

The Commonwealth Fund report focused on the struggles of the 43 million adults under 65 who have lost their health insurance along with their job over the past two years.

“The silver lining is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has already begun to bring relief to families,” Davis added. “Once the new law is fully implemented, we can be confident that no future recession will have the power to strip so many Americans of their health security.”

Civility

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

This cheered me up this morning:

Protesters interrupted a speech by Sunoco Inc. chairman and chief executive Lynn L. Elsenhans at a luncheon at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown on Thursday afternoon.

The head of the Philadelphia oil refiner and marketer was being honored by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce with its Paradigm Award, given to a businesswoman whose accomplishments are seen as a model of success.

It’s rare for protesters to crash usually staid chamber of commerce events. But then, few Paradigm Award winners have enacted such sweeping changes through their organizations as Elsenhans has since becoming CEO in August 2008. She sold its chemicals business, closed or sold three of its five refineries, laid off hundreds of workers, and announced plans to spin off its SunCoke Energy business.

As Elsenhans, 54, began her speech, several protesters who had been seated in the ballroom stood and walked toward the lectern, carrying a sign that read “Real Leaders Don’t Destroy Families.” Another addressed the audience of about 750 people by asking, “Does anyone see a leader here?”

Elsenhans remained silent as the protesters, who later identified themselves as being from Philadelphia Jobs With Justice, a group that advocates on behalf of workers’ rights, were escorted from the ballroom.

When she resumed, her remarks centered on the need for women in the workplace to identify mentors, embrace change, take risks, persevere, and give back to others. Her speech was interrupted several more times as individual protesters, usually women, stood and talked to the crowd about layoffs and the loss of health benefits at Sunoco.

Gwen Snyder, executive director of Philadelphia Jobs With Justice, said at least 13 activists with her organization as well as Student Labor Action Project members from Temple University and Swarthmore College paid $125 per ticket to attend the chamber lunch. “We respect female leadership,” she said. “She may be a leader, but not the right kind.”

Members of the unions representing Sunoco refinery workers in South Philadelphia and Marcus Hook demonstrated for an hour outside the Marriott. Jim Savage, president of United Steelworkers Local 10-1, said he found it outrageous that anybody would honor Elsenhans for actions that have led to longer unemployment lines and a diminished tax base.

[…]
Immediately after the speech, chamber president Rob Wonderling told the audience: “We believe in free enterprise. We believe in free speech when exercised with civility. In our 2011 Paradigm Award winner, you saw civility in action.”

Uh, Rob? There are Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, and if the Chamber continues to attack workers and destroys our lives, you should expect to hear a lot more free speech — civil or not.

Abortion audits

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

First of all, this particular bill will never pass. It’s just the kind of red meat that wingnuts like to throw to the wackiest members of their hungry base, and the Senate won’t pass it. But it’s important to understand the way their minds work: Namely, that it’s very, very important that men keep a very tight rein on women. And if they could pass a bill like this, of course they would!

Because, as PZ Myers recently wrote about Newt Gingrich and family values:

Our ideal is a community of equals, while theirs is a hierarchy of power, a relic of Old Testament values in which marrying a woman was like buying a camel, a certification of ownership, and nothing must compromise the Big Man’s possession of properties.

If we strip marriage of the asymmetry of power, as we must if we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, then we also strip away the man and wife, dominant and submissive, owner and owned, master and servant relationship that characterizes the conservative view of marriage. This is what they want to preserve, and this is what they are talking about when people like Gingrich echo those tired phrases about “Judeo-Christian values” and complain that their “civilization is under attack”. And it is, when we challenge their right to treat one partner, so-called, as chattel.

And once you look at it that way, you see no abuse of their values when Gingrich goes tomcatting around—he’s simply asserting his traditional privilege as the Man.

Paradoxically, though, it turns marriage into a brittle business where women are stressed by subservience and oppression (believe it or not, women are human beings who might resent being treated as servants), and men feel it is their right to possess any woman willing to surrender to them. It’s not surprising that their relationships break up in courtroom battles.

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans’ “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they’d have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

The proposed law, also known as H.R. 3, extends the reach of the Hyde Amendment—which bans federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake—into many parts of the federal tax code. In some cases, the law would forbid using tax benefits—like credits or deductions—to pay for abortions or health insurance that covers abortion. If an American who used such a benefit were to be audited, Barthold said, the burden of proof would lie with the taxpayer to provide documentation, for example, that her abortion fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.

“Were this to become law, people could end up in an audit, the subject of which could be abortion, rape, and incest,” says Christopher Bergin, the head of Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit tax policy group. “If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it.”

Yep. Aside from the sheer repressive evil of these laws, it’s illustrative of so much more. Women aren’t partners, they don’t have brains (or souls), and conservative men will continue to trade these compliant females in for newer, shiner models. See any connection there?