Support the Employee Free Choice Act

From Jobs with Justice:

As this Labor Day approaches, quality employment opportunities and paychecks are shrinking, the cost of fuel and health care continue to skyrocket, and working families are struggling to make ends meet. In these tough times, workers and our communities need fair opportunities to get ahead.

It's no coincidence that as union membership has declined, the gap between rich and poor has widened. Workers in unions earn 28% higher wages, and are 62 percent more likely to have employer-covered health coverage, and they are 386% more likely to have guaranteed pensions. Allowing more workers to freely join unions and bargain with their employers will help rebuild
the middle class by expanding health care, improving retirement security, and raising the standard of living for all working families.

Sign up to support the Employee Free Choice Act: http://www.unionvoice.org/ct/c11zzQE15cHw/

Income, life expectancy gap

By Joel Wendland

The Economic Policy Institute reported today that the growing income gap over the last three decades corresponds to the life expectancy gap.

According to today's "snapshot" the wealthiest ten percent of Americans saw their life expectancy grow from 75.8 years in 1980 to 79.2 years in 200o. Meanwhile, the poorest ten percent of Americans saw a mere 1.7 years growth in their life expectancy, falling 4.5 years short of the richest Americans.

Proof in the pudding. Poverty kills. Class is very real.

UN Millennium Development Goals Review

by Mike Tolochko

The Millennium Development Goals [MDGs]
Third World Summit

Monday, May 19, 2008
Location, Conference Room 2
United Nations, USA

A brief report.

It was not clear who was in charge of this important meeting where Kofi Anan's epic initiative on the MDGs would be discussed and possibly evaluated. The three-hour meeting was brought to order by the head of the powerful UN Department on Economic and Social Affairs, ECOSOC. But, then in her introductory remarks she drew attention to the Virtue Foundation and a group called, Women Together as the launchers of the meeting. It was hard to figure out what was going on.

The Virtue Foundation was established and is essentially run by a NYC dental philanthropist and Women Together is a NGO working mostly out of Barcelona, Spain.

At the outset it was clear that this would not be what many had hoped for, i.e., an evaluation of the progress being made by each of the 8 MDGs. The MDGs were launched about 8 years ago and there are just 7 more years to go.

It turned out that those reporting on the goals would be showing some examples, very limited examples, of how each of the Goals could be achieved. They did not seem to be charged with evaluating progress on that Goal.

Goal #1 Ending Poverty

A leader from an international credit agency called, Microcredit Summit Campaign, showed how lending a few dollars to people in dire poverty significantly help elevated that person out of poverty. The solution was clearly a market solution and not one that would be government driven.

The role of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization were not even mentioned.

While this report, probably the most important of the MDG, was clearly not getting very far, the representative of the group stepped out her role as a banker. She made it clear to everyone in the room that the recent skyrocketing cost of food is setting back all efforts to move toward the elimination of poverty by 2015. She said the cost of food is up 30% and rice is up 50%. This is very bad for the most impoverished countries. She said that, for example, in Sri Lanka where 80% of income is spent on food; the percent is now far higher. In developed countries, the percent is in single digits. The year of 2007 up to present is a food crisis period that must be addressed.

Goal #2 Primary School Education

This report focused only on limited progress in a few Central America countries. The educational conditions in Nicaragua were reported as being very poor. They reported that for this Goal Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras are doing pretty good.

Goal #3 Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women

This reporter focused on Brazil where she said progress was being made, but a backlash was taking place against the progress. She called for help there. The reporter was very distressed at these developments.

Goal #4 Child Mortality

The example here was pediatric hospital in Barcelona where administrators made the atmosphere a better place to delivery services. Barcelona is a very advanced developed country with resources far greater than the countries that are receiving MDG attention. Somehow, this example bore little resembles the tremendous problems of child mortality in developing and exploited countries.

Goals #5 & #6 Maternal Death and HIV/AIDS

The physician, from a major NYC academic medical center, delivering this case example spoke about the value of drugs to curb the HIV/AIDS crisis. The report was more pure research and clinical rather a policy driven. That was about it.

Goal #7 Environmental Sustainability

A corporate representative gave this very brief presentation. No mention was made of the UN's concentration around Climate Change and other environmental problems.

Goal #8 Global Partnership for Development

The only reporter to actually deliver a policy approach to the MDGs and one, which former UN Secretary-General would have been proud of, was Mireia Belil, from Barcelona and head of a group called Forum de las Culturas Foundation. Her brief comments were right to the point. She quoted Albert Einstein in regard to how to achieve the MDGs by the year 2015, "No problem can be solved from the same level that created it." This is probably her version that if your part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.

She showed a lot of fire by her very aggressively stating that, "Money is NO excuse for not achieving the goals." She added, "The money is there; redistribution is the issue." She received strong applause.

NGOs Speak UP

During the very brief question and answer part of the day, each NGO representative expressed frustration at the day's reports. One representative was particularly angry that there was not even one mention of the Goals and African and Southern Asia.

Whither the MDGs?

Given the nature of the Reports and the very poor turnout, less than 100 were in the large room, the future of the MDGs doesn't look good. The three-hour meeting was extremely disappointing.

Food Stamps, Wall Street, and Corruption

by Norman Markowitz

A few quick comments on the news of the day. First, the number of people receiving food stamps has risen to twenty-eight million, which goes up and down with the number of jobs in the economy.

Now the Food Stamp Plan is something that I know a great deal about as a scholar. It was created in the Department of Agriculture under Henry Wallace's leadership in 1939 and then eliminated by the conservative coalition in Congress during WWII (conservatives always despised all New Deal social programs and used the fact that the war had produced a full employment economy to eliminate the program).

The Food Stamp Plan was revived in the 1960s and has had its ups and downs since then, as the terms which make people eligible have changed over and over again. But Food Stamps was the kind of reform that the New Deal government was famous for. The program helped the poor directly, helped merchants who could retrieve the coupons or stamps from the government for money, and helped move foodstuffs, which helped farmers also. It was a social subsidy program that benefited those in need. The rightwing has not been able to abolish it over the last forty years, even though it has crusaded to eliminate all New Deal and Great Society programs that it could.

The Republican Right also pledged to eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and failed. But here the story is a little different. Here, Bush's HUD Secretary, Donald Jackson, is resigning as stories mount of a major scandal. Jackson is accused of giving big HUD contracts for projects in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands to big developer friends. He is also accused of threatening the Philadelphia Housing Authority with a withdrawal of HUD aid unless it turned over a two million dollar public property to a developer associate. What is alleged here is exactly the sort of thing that rightwing Republicans did in the 1920s, that is, privatize for a price, as a sinister alliance of rightwing ideologues and simple crooks ran wild. The Reagan administration in the 1980s launched a policy of massive reductions of HUD aid for public housing and housing authorities. Using HUD as a shill for private developers stimulates this kind of corruption. Using HUD as an instrument to provide federal support for public housing and rent controls so as to reduce the overall cost of housing to the general population and also eliminate the super-exploitation of both small homeowners and rents who find themselves paying more than half of there incomes in many cases for housing plus utilities costs should be a high priority for the next administration.

Meanwhile, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded is now $3.27, suggesting the need for both re regulation and a national energy policy (in that area, Senator Obama especially has come forward with important suggestions and McCain with nothing. Lehman Brothers, caught in the mortgage debacle, is raising three billion through stock sales and issuing statements that the fact that it could borrow from the Federal Reserve is evidence that it is in decent shape(as against the fact that it had to borrow from the Fed is an example of the opposite).

Finally, the Bush administration's Treasury Secretary has come forward with a comically phony plan to "expand" the Federal Reserves Regulatory powers by reducing the SEC's regulatory power over Wall Street even more, turning credit unions into banks, and give state regulated insurance companies the "choice" of either continuing to be regulated by states or taking on a federal regulator (a bit like economic HMO choices). It is doubtful that any of this will be enacted and even the Treasury Department understands that but the fact that they would even put forward such a "regulatory reform" shows either how disconnected from reality they are or how contemptuous they are of the public. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, mentioning that this plan was introduced on the first day of the baseball season, called it a "wild pitch," which was charitable. For those suffering the effects of the escalating mortgage scandal it is, along with the HUD scandal, more like a bean ball.

All of this shows the need for real re regulation in the interests of wage earners and consumers and public sector revitalization in the interests of all people in the next administration. The present administration and those who seek to continue it through the McCain campaign haven't a clue about what is to be done to deal with the U.S. economic crisis.

Thoughts on Veterans Day

Today, hundreds of events around the country honor military veterans. Politicians will give speeches, smile, and congratulate themselves on their patriotism.

Right-wing pundits and supporters of Bush's war will use the day to push their pro-war agenda. From their air-conditioned offices, they will urge the continued sacrifice of those who serve and their families.

But what of America's veterans? According to a recent study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 195,827 veterans were homeless on a given night in 2006, and almost twice that number of veterans went without a home at some point in 2006.

The scandal at Walter Reed hospital showed the impact of privatization (and the right-wing ideology of the free market at all costs) on the declining care provided veterans. Thousands wait for months at a time for needed care. A Bush administration policy of raising fees for services and of simply not telling vets about their eligibility for various programs may have saved money but it has hit veterans hard.

Poverty among vets is on the rise as well. Almost half a million vets pay more than half their income in housing costs. Most of these fall below the federal poverty line, and more than 4 in 10 survive on food stamps.

Veterans returning home from Bush's war are finding it hard to get their old jobs. Many suffer from unemployment or are forced into lower-paying positions.

A Harvard study finds that 1.8 million vets lack health care insurance and close to four million members of veterans families also lack coverage.

It is good that the Democrats in Congress have begun the fight to change this situation by passing laws the expand eligibility and help cover more health problems of returning vets. More funding has been found to improve hospital care.

But until there is an administration that actually cares for people and cares to fund services to protect the health and well-being of those people who selflessly sacrificed their lives, fortunes, and the well-being of their families – even if it was for a lie in Iraq – veterans will get the short end of the stick.

It is utterly offensive that the Bush administration – full of men and women who refused to serve when they were called upon to do so – now demands the continued sacrifice of the men and women who didn't shrink from what they saw as their duty.

On this Veterans Day, let's remember the people who served. Let's remember their needs. Forget smiling politicians with their cynical agendas.

Real Life in the USA

The US ranks 49th in the world in literacy.

According to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37th in the world in health care, and 54th in fairness of its health care system.

The US is one of only two industrialized countries that does not provide universal health care. (The other being South Africa.)

18,000 people die in the US unnecessarily each year due to the lack of health care.

Among the wealthiest developed countries, the US ranks second to last in childhood poverty.

12 million families have difficulty feeding themselves.

The US ranks 41st among all countries for infant mortality.

900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year the data for this statistic was collected.

For other equally disturbing data about life in the USA, see: www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp

So what are you going to do about it?