The U.S. Census Bureau released figures [September 17] revealing 46.5 million people were living at or below the poverty line — a near-record in the last two decades.
Two days later, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 217-210 to cut food stamps, thinning the rolls by four million people next year and millions more after that. It was a dramatic juxtaposition, made all the more striking because of the heated rhetoric. No Democrat supported the cuts.
Why cut this program now?
Equal Voice News took a look at the arguments, dug up key food stamp facts and found plenty to chew on:
1. Supporters of the cuts say the program, which has been around since the Great Depression, has grown out of control.
True, the program has grown exponentially, from serving 28 million people in 2008 to 47 million last year.
» Read more about: Why Food Stamps Are a Safety Net, Not a “Hammock” »
Currently a Research Professor of Education at New York University, Diane Ravitch served as the Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration and later worked for Bill Clinton’s White House. A tireless critic of the public school testing standards she once endorsed, the 75-year-old Ravitch remains a clear voice against the stampede into publicly funded charter schools and other right-leaning education “reforms,” including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
Her newest book is Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. Tonight and tomorrow night she will speak at two Southland colleges as part of her book tour.
Tuesday, October 1, 7 p.m.
Thorne Hall. Occidental College
1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles
(323) 259-2991
Free.
Wednesday, October 2, 7 p.m.
Student Union,California State University
18111 Nordhoff St.,
» Read more about: Diane Ravitch Speaks at Two Southland Colleges »
Union organizing could suffer a devastating blow by the U.S. Supreme Court this term.
In November, justices hear a case on labor-management “neutrality pacts” — agreements which spell out each side’s role in organizing. Usually, this means employers are barred from engaging in overt anti-union practices and accept some form of “card check” certification.
Unions use neutrality pacts to reduce the legal entanglements and employer intimidation that have become widespread in National Labor Relations Board-supervised elections.
After years of struggle, UNITE HERE, for example, recently pressured Hyatt Hotels to accept neutrality terms. And unions in Los Angeles, when possible, make such deals in return for support of large development projects.
It’s been a bad decade (and a bad half-century) for the American labor movement:
Union membership percentages continuing to slide, states restrict public sector bargaining and right-to-work laws have spread.
“Will Work for Food.” How many times do we see these signs at most every street corner? For those of who are federal employees and who are also union representatives and officers, the time seems to be right for us to get out our Sharpies and make our own signs.
The last several years have seen my sisters and brothers in Social Security and other agencies continually being threatened with shutdowns and furloughs as a result of the lack of federal budgets or continuing resolutions, failure to raise the debt ceiling as well as the fiscal cliff. Now as of October 1, 2013 we are going to be shut down again.
In 1995, Social Security employees such as myself were called “non-essential” and sent home. After a press blitz, we were called at home told we were essential and should come back to work —
Those of us who grew up in public school systems were taught two indelible but contradictory lessons. One, from civics classes, was that laws are created (and government run) according to the necessities of compromise. (The reason politics is called the art of the possible.) The other, drilled into us by history instructors, reminded us of the evils of compromising with fanatics. (The endless Sudetenland analogies we sat through.)
But these two lessons never held equivalent weight because while we could see compromise all around us, history was for other countries. The Atlantic’s James Fallows, happily, has pointed out the error of that thinking in a couple of recent online pieces about the pending government shutdown. His thesis, basically, is that the media have it all wrong in their reporting on the shutdown (which could come tomorrow, October 1) and the even more troubling likelihood of a debt default (see how much your 401(k) is worth in two weeks).
» Read more about: Tea Party Over Country: Why the Shutdown Is Coming »
With the release of the documentary Inequality for All, the core progressive story about what is wrong with the economy is now on the silver screen. For those of us who have been working to articulate what we call a progressive economic narrative, it is a major milestone.
The right spent decades projecting their view that prosperity is created through limited government and free markets, concepts that still dominate most Americans’ thinking, even as the American dream is becoming a nightmare for more and more families. The new movie provides a powerful way to popularize a very different story.
Inequality for All is based around a big lecture course that Robert Reich gives at the University of California Berkeley. Reich and the film’s director, Jacob Kornbluth, mix facts, infographics, documentary footage and profiles of families whose lives have been scarred by the new economy with the personal story of Reich’s lifelong work to push for a just economy,
At the 1992 Republican National Convention, then Vice Presidential nominee Dan Quayle summed up his thoughts on taxing those with greatest wealth at higher rates with the line, “Why should the best people be punished?” This rare candor spotlights the beliefs still central in today’s economic policymaking.
Last week, House member Kevin Cramer (R-ND) invoked scripture to justify taking food from the mouths of babes, saying “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” His colleague, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL) similarly declared, “work is a blessing.” Clearly, the economy is intended as far more than an aggregation of what we produce, purchase, consume and invest. We’re meant to see it as an instrument to impose a particular morality: to reward the good and punish the naughty.
Republicans would go further and have us believe the economy is an angry and vengeful God.
» Read more about: Holy Hypocrites: Why Conservatives Punish the Poor »
Domestic workers in California — and groups and people who support better employment conditions for them nationwide — are hailing a new bill of labor rights signed into law Thursday in Sacramento.
The signing of AB 241 ensures that domestic workers in private homes are paid overtime for the hours they work.
The law goes into effect on January 1, a year before similar but federal regulations announced this month begin, California state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano said in a statement. He is the main author of the bill.
“This is a big step for respecting and recognizing domestic work as real work, and the fight doesn’t stop here,” Marcela Escamilla, a San Francisco domestic worker, said in a statement released by Mujeres Unidas y Activas.
“The fire for this movement will now burn brighter for domestic workers across the country fighting for the same recognition.”
Mujeres Unidas y Activas,
» Read more about: State’s Domestic Workers Celebrate O.T. Law »
As anyone thinking about enrolling in a college or university knows, tuition is not cheap. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) notes that since the early 1980s, tuition has risen by approximately seven percent a year, causing two-thirds of students to borrow to complete their degrees. Although grants and outright scholarships exist, part of the problem, NASFAA’s website explains, is that “in 1975 the states picked up 60 percent of the tab while families shouldered 33 percent” and the federal government picked up the balance. Thirty-eight years later, the states pay approximately 34 percent and the feds pay 16 percent, leaving students and their families to shell out – often through loans – the remaining half.
And it’s getting worse. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, since the start of the recession in 2008, “cuts to higher education have been severe and almost universal.”
» Read more about: Tuition Woes Hurting Women Students More »