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Thursday, December 31
Happily Ever After Still Possible in 2010
by
Trish Nelson
on Thu 31 Dec 2009 05:00 AM CST
Happily Ever After Still Possible in 2010
 Editor's note: Whenever I need to find someone who says what everyone else is trying to say, better than anyone else, I always turn to Donald Kaul and have never been disappointed. We at BFIA remain hopeful that happily ever after - for peace, justice, equality and a healthy planet - is still a possibility. Onward to 2010!
No Happily Ever After: Taking Stock of 2009
by Donald Kaul
As the year lurches to its close, perhaps it’s time to take stock of where we’ve been. At the dawn of 2009 we found ourselves tied to the railroad tracks with the Train of Financial Ruin bearing down upon us, at which point a handsome stranger came along and rescued us. And we lived happily ever after.
Not really. It wasn’t that kind of year.
It was the kind of year when a president could save the economy, get an international agreement on global warming (sort of), push through the most far-reaching health care legislation since Medicare, win the Nobel Peace Prize and still be widely reviled as an alien creature out to reduce the nation to serfdom.
It was a year when the No. 1 American sports hero, bar none, could suffer an instant fall from grace when he is found to be augmenting his quiet, sedate family life with a private, secret life that Bill Clinton would envy.
A year when the first Hispanic woman is named to the Supreme Court, only to be called a racist. That kind of year: a sour kind of year.
Still, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, sometimes you have to go to press with the year you’ve got rather than the one you would prefer, so here are some of the major figures of the year that is about to leave the station:
Barack Obama: He, of course, is the fellow who untied us from the railroad tracks (thereby saving what was left in our IRAs after George W. Bush got through with them, I might add) and immediately plunged in the polls.
Faced with a Republican opposition impervious to reason, logic or facts, he did the best he could on health care and global warming, but it wasn’t enough. He kept sinking in the polls.
If he found a cure for cancer, his enemies would accuse him of trying to put radiologists out of business.
He’s my Person of the Year, barely beating out:
Tiger Woods: One moment it was all “Be like Tiger, kids,” and “Buy this, buy that, Tiger does,” and the next he had a popularity rating usually reserved for war criminals. You would think he was the first good-looking famous multimillionaire who was found to like other women, even while married.
Still, I must confess to being amused at the thought of his wife chasing him out of the house with a golf club in the middle of the night, like some 1930s comic-strip character. He’s living proof of the axiom: To be very unpopular, one must first be very popular. To his former fans I would say: “You mean you actually went out and bought a Buick because you thought he was a good husband?”
Say what you will of him, at least he hasn’t said the experience has caused him to find God. Yet.
Other notables:
Sarah Palin: Returned to the scene by throwing aside her day job as the Governor of the Very Important State of Alaska and writing a book: “How I Almost Saved the Republican Party but Those Moosebutts in the McCain Campaign Wouldn’t Let Me.” Good to have her back; we missed her.
Bernie Madoff: Proved that while you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, if you fool enough of them for long enough you can really make a bundle.
Mark Sanford: The South Carolina governor who made a wrong turn on the Appalachian Trail and would up in a lady’s bed in Argentina. It could have happened to anyone. Well, maybe not anyone, but it could have happened to Tiger Woods.
General Motors: At this writing it’s on the brink of killing off Saab, an eccentric Swedish auto brand that it recently bought. Saab now joins Saturn, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and LaSalle as car companies GM has run into the ground.
It may not longer be the largest car company in the world, but it certainly is the biggest auto graveyard.
Have a happy New Year anyway.
Former Des Moines Register columnist columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can find his column at MinutemanMedia.org.
Wednesday, December 30
Iowa Book Blogger Makes 2009 Tweet for Literacy Campaign a Big Success
by
Linda Thieman
on Wed 30 Dec 2009 05:00 AM CST
Iowa Book Blogger Makes 2009 Tweet for Literacy Campaign a Big Success
 by Linda Thieman
The First Annual Tweet for Literacy campaign took place in November, 2009, during National Family Literacy Month. Four authors and three mom/book bloggers got together for a month-long Twitter-based event to shine a light on the importance of family reading time together.
One of the bloggers who participated was April Pohren of SE Iowa. April is a popular blogger who runs the book review website Café of Dreams. The authors and bloggers who sponsored Tweet for Literacy blogged in support of the campaign and also contributed prizes of their own work or that of others for the giveaways. Having an experienced book blogger involved was crucial as April was able to round up donations from authors and publishers that covered close to a third of the $2000 worth of literacy giveaways that Tweet4Lit handed out to entrants to help get more books into the hands of parents and children.
But the good works just keep coming. Here on Blog for Iowa, in reporting on this contribution to literacy made by an Iowa book blogger, we were able to raise $100 through MAT@USC: Masters in Teaching Hope for the Holidays event. One Iowa elementary school has received $100 in gift cards to help them purchase books. Known only as Mrs. K’s class, this Iowa school is a high-poverty school and is sorely in need of help with supplies and materials. You can donate, too, through this link or through the program below by blogging about a literacy event in 2009. The gift cards expire on January 1, so do it now!
This post is part of the MAT@USC: Masters in Teaching Hope for the Holidays event. Did you have an experience or witness something in 2009 which gave you hope for the future of American education? If so, please see this post for more information on how to share it.
Tuesday, December 29
Health Care Reform Update: Good or Bad? You Decide!
by
Alta Price
on Tue 29 Dec 2009 05:00 AM CST
Health
Care Reform Update: Good or Bad? You Decide!
 by Alta Price, M.D.
I had thought about writing an article on conference committee procedures, since that is the next step in the health care reform bill process. After reading a front page story about it at DailyKos, I discovered it is incredibly complex and confusing, the leadership has many different approaches they could choose, and I don’t think it is worth deciphering at this point. (If you want to try to figure it out, be my guest: “More details on what’s next for health insurance reform”.)
Speaking of confusing, I read convincing articles about how bad this health care reform bill is for the future of our democracy (and this from progressives!), only to read other articles with equally cogent arguments that the bill is a great first step on the road to quality affordable health care for all.
Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. No doubt part of the problem is this bill is big and ambitious and no one really knows how it will play out over the coming years. Until we have more to go on, the best we can do is to consider thoughtfully different viewpoints. So this week I decided to offer a few interesting takes for you to read on your own.
The piece I found most fascinating is a diary posted at DailyKos by someone living in France (French Imp) - “HCR Bill – a Frenchman’s Viewpoint”. I don’t know about you, but after seeing Sicko I decided the French have to have the best health care system in the world. But really, I only had the vaguest notion of how it really works.
First the author talks about how the system was set up at the end of World War II by an influential organization that grew out of the French resistance movement. Health care is paid for by “La Sécurité Sociale”. It did not start life as a universal system:
La Sécurité sociale was not created by one single piece of legislation. It was a very protracted process. Initially it concerned only employees in the private sector (1945)), civil servants (1947), agricultural workers (1961), other workers (1966). It became universal only in 1999 (until then part of the population and notably the homeless were not covered). There was a gradual shift as initially, the aim was to protect ‘workers and their families’, whereas today healthcare is considered as a human right rather than a worker’s right.
I knew on some level that the French system is not run by their government, although apparently La Sécurité Sociale is subsidized by the government (which is in arrears on what it owes). I certainly didn’t understand who does run it!
La Sécurité Social is not government-run.
It has its own budget and is managed jointly (on a 50-50 basis) by trade unions and employer’s organizations. In fact the employers are united and the trade unions are divided so that for all practical purposes the employers prevail, but they can’t do exactly what they would like to do.
And it is paid for by “social contributions” from the employers that go directly to La Sécurité Social:
The algorithm for computing social contributions is complicated but roughly speaking, half of what an employer pays goes to the employee and the other half is the social contribution. That is, the social contribution is hardly progressive (meaning the ratio contribution/salary is roughly constant, unlike the ratio revenue tax/revenue).
Although the article is long, it is worth reading in its entirety. The author makes a strong case for our own health insurance expansion bill being an important step on the road to a better system.
For a good read on why the Senate bill is a disaster for our democracy, I would suggest reading “Health Care on the Road to Neo-Feudalism” by Marcy Wheeler at empytwheel.
For an insightful view on the reasons for the vastly divergent opinions in progressive circles on the health care reform bill, as well as other issues, read “The underlying divisions in the healthcare debate” by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.
Even if you are in the “kill the bill” crowd, when you contact your legislators you can also ask them to make the bill better (increased subsidies for the middle class, tougher insurance regulations, and not taking away reproductive services from women) as the bill will probably become law. I think it is still important to push for a public option to be brought forward as a separate bill under the reconciliation process (i.e., only needing 51 votes to pass). And we can work on reforming the Senate to modify the filibuster if we want to accomplish anything progressive in the future.
Alta
Price is a physician practicing Pathology in Davenport, Iowa. One of
the original Deaniacs, she stays involved with Democracy for America,
Iowa, and the Quad Cities. She advocates for quality, affordable health
care for all, primarily as a volunteer with Progressive Action for the
Common Good (Health Care Reform Issue Forum). Watch for Dr. Price's Health Care Reform Update every Tuesday here on Blog for Iowa. E-Mail Alta Price
Monday, December 28
Obama Administration Looking Out for Labor in 2010
by
Tracy Kurowski
on Mon 28 Dec 2009 05:00 AM CST
Obama Administration Looking Out for Labor in 2010
 On December 7, 2009, the Department of Labor released its annual Statement of Regulatory and Deregulatory Priorities. Don’t feel left out if you didn’t read about this in your newspaper or see it covered by cable news. Google search the report and you’ll find only a handful written about it.
But however dismissive mainstream media feels about the direction being taken in the Department of Labor, workers will be glad to know that, under the leadership of Secretary Hilda Solis, the Obama Labor Department is getting back to the business of looking out for labor rather than commerce.
click here to read the full report
“Good jobs for everyone” is the mantra running through the document. Among the new regulatory items, here are the highlights:
* Companies would be required to file financial disclosures on their union-busting activity. Through a decades-old loophole, the Wal-Marts of the World have avoided reporting how much they spend to intimidate and harass workers trying to form a union by claiming the firms hired are only “advising” the employer and in no way deal with workers.
* A rule change to allow third parties to report Wage and Hour violations. This is huge. As the DOL themselves put it, “because workers are fearful of losing their jobs in this economy and therefore less likely to file complaints when they are cheated,” a third party which has sufficient information to indicate a probable violation may report the abuse. It’s as easy as calling 866-4US-WAGE.
* Companies would be required to document a separate ergonomic job injury log in their Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports. No more dismissing carpel-tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries.
* Regulations are words on paper unless there are actual people to administrate, so the Wage and Hour Division will hire 250 new investigators – not nearly enough, but a major departure from a decade of attrition and a fox-watching-the-henhouse regulatory culture. The division will focus on industries with high violation rates including agriculture, restaurants, janitorial, construction and car washes.
* Advancing safety standards to protect workers from combustible dust – diacetyl, the artificial butter flavoring used in microwave popcorn and the source of the potentially deadly disease – of grave concern to Iowa’s popcorn workers in Hamburg, Sioux City, Manson, or Sac City, Iowa.
* Also better regulation of exposure to crystalline silica dust which causes debilitating respiratory disease which ultimately may be fatal.
* Requiring pay stubs to break down how pay is computed to guard against wage theft.
* In the age of contractors, workers’ rights are often the first sacrifice to maximizing profits. Now all government contractors are required to post notices of their workers’ rights under federal labor laws — a move that will better inform a fifth of the private sector workforce of their rights. It seems ridiculous that employers have to be forced to do something so simple.
* Strengthening the restrictions of how much coal dust workers are allowed to inhale. Again, this seems so simple, yet the present rule of 2mg per cubic meter of air was set in 1972, and federal studies conducted over a decade ago had advised lowering the limits substantially – a piece of advice the Bush administration conveniently ignored.
Additionally, programs like Youth Build and Trade Adjustment Assistance for dislocated workers will also get revamping so they encompass more workers. The nineteen items described are listed below. Though they are not the concrete legislative acts that organized labor would like to see made part of our nation’s laws, these rules and administrative changes are indeed a blessing for the new year.
YouthBuild Program Regulation
Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers Program; Regulations
Equal Employment Opportunity in Apprenticeship and Training, Amendment of Regulations
Temporary Agricultural Employment of H-2A Aliens in the United States
Lifetime Income Options for Participants and Beneficiaries in Retirement Plans
Definition of "Fiduciary" - Investment Advice
Health Care Arrangements Established by State and Local Governments for Non-Governmental Employees
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination
Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, as Amended
Records To Be Kept by Employers Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
Interpretation of the "Advice" Exemption of Section 203(c) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act
Child Labor Regulations, Orders, and Statements of Interpretation
Occupational Exposure to Crystalline Silica
Hazard Communication
Cranes and Derricks in Construction
Metal and Nonmetal Impoundments
Respirable Crystalline Silica Standard
Occupational Exposure to Coal Mine Dust (Lowering Exposure)
Sunday, December 27
Obama Signs Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment into Law/GOP Shocked at Backlash
by
Trish Nelson
on Sun 27 Dec 2009 08:52 PM CST
Obama Signs Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment into Law/GOP Shocked (Shocked!) at Backlash
 BFIA got a little behind in the news, what with the health care drama, Christmas and all. This completely escaped us last week.
Not bad for a freshman senator. ThinkProgress.org
The White House Press Office sent out a statement last week announcing that President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 into law last Saturday:
H.R. 3326, the “Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010,” which provides FY 2010 appropriations for Department of Defense (DOD) military programs including funding for Overseas Contingency Operations, and extends various expiring authorities and other non-defense FY 2010 appropriations.
Republicans Are Shocked The Public Is Mad At Them For Voting Against Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment
Last month, 30 Republican senators voted against Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) amendment that would punish defense contractors “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” His amendment was inspired by Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad in 2005, and then had to fight her employer for justice.
The GOP senators who sided with defense contractors at the expense of women — such as John Thune (SD) — have been facing an intense backlash. David Vitter (LA) refused to give a rape victim a straight answer when she confronted him about his vote, claiming that he is “absolutely supportive of any [rape] case like that being prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law.”
Politico reports that Republicans are now scratching their heads at why the public is so incensed about their “no” votes:
Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism.
How Iowans Can Help: Tell the EPA to Use Clean Air Act to Regulate Coal-Fired Power Plants
by
Trish Nelson
on Sun 27 Dec 2009 01:18 PM CST
How Iowans Can Help: Tell the EPA to Use Clean Air Act to Regulate Coal-Fired Power Plants
 Credoaction.com
December 28 DEADLINE
Earlier this month, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency issued a formal declaration that global warming pollution is a threat to public health and welfare — something that the rest of us have known for a long, long time.
The way is cleared for the Clean Air Act to become a crucial weapon in our fight to stop climate change. The Obama administration is now in a position to regulate global warming pollution without having to wait for Congress (which has been lured into writing weak climate policies by industry lobbyists with deep pockets).
Stand up for strong regulation of greenhouse gases before the deadline on Monday, Dec. 28.
Coal-fired power plants are by far the largest producer of global warming pollution in the U.S., and Obama's EPA is now considering a rule that would finally allow these pollution-belching smoke stacks to be regulated. This is one of the President's best opportunities to ensure we pass on a safer planet to the next generation, but we know that Big Coal is going to fight us at every turn.
The EPA is accepting public comments on Obama's plan to regulate greenhouse gases from coal-fired plants and other big polluters under the Clean Air Act. But the public comment period ends at the end of the day on Monday. We only have a short amount of time to show much needed support and counter the powerful coal industry lobby.
This is urgent. Take action by 6:00pm Eastern time on Monday, Dec. 28th, and we will deliver your name along with our petition as a public comment to the EPA. Just click here to automatically add your name to our petition.
Saturday, December 26
Loebsack Asks FCC to Intervene in Sinclair-Mediacom Dispute
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 26 Dec 2009 09:25 AM CST
Iowa's Congressman Loebsack Asks FCC to Intervene in Sinclair-Mediacom Dispute - Orange Bowl Broadcast at Stake
 Broadcasting&Cable.com
Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Iowa) called FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Dec. 22 to encourage him to step in to keep Sinclair Broadcast Group's signals on Mediacom systems if the two do not resolve their retransmission consent dispute by Dec. 31.
In particular, Loebsack is concerned that his constituents with cable could lose access to Sinclair CBS affiliate KGAN, which is carrying the Orange Bowl Jan. 5 between the Iowa Hawkeyes and Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
According to a statement from the Congressman's office, Loebsack encouraged Genachowski "to help protect the interests of Iowans." The FCC has yet to act on an emergency petition filed by Mediacom for interim carriage while the FCC considers its retransmission consent complaint against Sinclair for allegedly not negotiating in good faith.
Loebsack wrote the commission last month as part of the Iowa congressional delegation saying that up to 1 million Iowans would "lose access" to key stations, though there is still the option of over-the-air reception.
Click here to see the entire article at Broadcasting & Cable
AND: Mediacom placed a full page ad in Wednesday's Iowa City Press-Citizen. The ad was signed by the entire Iowa congressional delegation, including both senators, Gov. Culver, several state senators and state reps, UI President Sally Mason, Free Press, Rainbow Push Coalition, and other groups and elected officials. Here is an excerpt of the ad:
Sinclair Broadcast Group:
STOP TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IOWANS
"Enough is enough. Sinclair Broadcast Group is the owner of the FOX (KFXA) station and the CBS (KGAN) station in Cedar Rapids. Three years ago, following a very nasty public dispute, Mediacom reluctantly agreed to pay Sinclair an exorbitant amount for the right to carry KGAN.
Unfortunately, greed is alive and well and the executives at Sinclair are once again trying to take advantage of everyday people right here in Iowa. Sinclair is using deplorable scare tactics to force Mediacom, and you, our customers, to pay over 50% more in 2010 than we paid Sinclair in 2009..."
**BFIA ACTION ALERT**
Now would be a very good time to write to the FCC and complain about this and all of the other things Sinclair Broasting has done to subvert the public interest (see last night's KCRG story), that in our view are way worse than merely holding a football game hostage for money. (Even though the staff here at BFIA are definitely rabid Hawkeye fans...Go, Hawks!)
Friday, December 25
An Iowa Response to a Nuclear Holiday Greeting
by
paul deaton
on Fri 25 Dec 2009 05:00 AM CST
An Iowa Response to a Nuclear Holiday Greeting
 by Paul Deaton
"Despite politics as usual in Washington, we may still be able to celebrate the holidays with our friends and family, cocooned for a while, using the energy we find there to prepare for the work ahead to bring a sustainable peace to the earth."
~ When Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” I am not sure he had the current Senate’s Republican caucus in mind. Compared to the society in which the framers lived, the bluster and moral outrage of today’s Republican caucus seems small minded and trivial. The Republican caucus has done a good job of hanging together, and this is true in the Iowa legislature as well as in Washington. I am confident that today’s politicians don’t view the threat of being hanged as a motivator behind their actions. It is not only Republicans that have lost the sense of high moral purpose that is evident in the writings of Franklin and other framers of our independence from Great Britain.
Former Ambassador Linton Brooks is a veteran nuclear negotiator who was responsible for final preparation of both Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1991 and between the U.S. and Russia in 1993. Brooks favors nuclear disarmament and has now changed his view to become a supporter of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He said, "I think we have an unfortunate habit in the United States, especially over the past few years, of demonizing those who disagree with us," he said. "On complicated national security issues, people who are on the other side of you are not wrong or evil. They simply read things differently." He also said, "The only time you get everything you want on a treaty is when it's a surrender document." The Republican caucus has made clear how they read the national security issue of nuclear disarmament and related treaties.
The Republican caucus plus one independent senator had this holiday greeting for Iowans and all Americans: According to the Washington Times, “All 40 Republican senators and one independent wrote to President Obama on Wednesday reminding him that the current defense authorization law links modernization of the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal to further U.S.-Russian arms reductions.” Those of us who follow the nuclear disarmament community in Washington knew this was coming, that the Republicans would attempt to affix conditions to the ratification of the new START treaty with Russia. START negotiations are not finished, but the conditions for President Obama have little to do with the actual treaty. It is about the Republicans exercising power where they can, and for ratification of a treaty it takes 67 votes, so some Republican votes are needed. The Republican idea of a holiday message is the refurbishing of our nuclear weapons arsenal. Knowing this was coming didn’t help make the season any brighter.
In Iowa, we currently have a U. S. Senator who is part of the Republican caucus and a signer of this nuclear holiday greeting. It seems unlikely that Senator Grassley will break the caucus and speak out for nuclear disarmament, for ratification of START, or the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty any time soon. Even if it represented an opportunity for him to re-establish his moderate credentials with independent voters, he is unlikely to break the caucus. The right wing of his party already believes he is too liberal. If we thought his views were moderate, then we were mistaken. Franklin also wrote, “No man’s life, liberty or fortune is safe while our legislature is in session.” It is sad to say that this still holds true.
I was disappointed that the Republican caucus took this approach to reducing nuclear weapons between the U.S. and Russia and sent their note to the President. I expressed as much to some of my colleagues in an e-mail. An answer from an Iowa physician brought this, “I have to agree it is a rather strange note to get on the eve of our most ‘peaceful’ holiday time of the year. Given how many people all around the world celebrate life and peace in various ways during the darkest days of the year, it is astonishing how equally we have all positioned ourselves on the brink of extinction.... in so many ways! I guess we have to use such reminders as the reason we all work so hard. However, I do hope everyone can take a little time to give thanks for all the wonderful friends, families, and opportunities each of us enjoys each and every day. Be well and warm and peaceful, one and all. I give thanks regularly for the great privilege of knowing and working with each of you.”
Despite politics as usual in Washington, we may still be able to celebrate the holidays with our friends and family, cocooned for a while, using the energy we find there to prepare for the work ahead to bring a sustainable peace to the earth.
~Paul Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County. Check
out his blog, Big Grove Garden.
E-mail Paul Deaton
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