On ABC’s This Week, Newt Gingrich and I debated whether House Republicans should be able to repeal a law — in this case, the Affordable Care Act — by de-funding it. Here’s the essence:
GINGRICH: Under our constitutional system, going all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215, the people’s house is allowed to say to the king we ain’t giving you money.
REICH: Sorry, under our constitutional system you’re not allowed to risk the entire system of government to get your way.
Had we had more time I would have explained to the former Speaker something he surely already knows: The Affordable Care Act was duly enacted by a majority of both houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, and even upheld by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution of the United States does not allow a majority of the House of Representatives to repeal the law of the land by de-funding it (and threatening to close the entire government,
» Read more about: GOP’s Defunding Mania: Instant Constitutional Crisis »
Negotiating a fair contract is a complex process that involves hard work and commitment from both labor and management. When both sides bargain in good faith and share a goal of securing a deal, a deal eventually gets done. I’ve personally been involved in many tough negotiations that ended with a fair deal that both parties could live with. It takes patience and willingness from both sides to compromise.
In the BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] negotiations, unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. BART management paid Thomas Hock, an out-of-state lawyer with a history of driving disputes to a strike, nearly $400,000 to lead negotiations. Hock and his company have been responsible for seven strikes, 47 unfair labor practice charges and nine discrimination lawsuits. Not exactly a history of committing to compromise in order to secure a deal.
True to form, Hock hasn’t been serious about negotiating a resolution at BART that would spare the Bay Area a strike.
California’s relationship with redevelopment just got more complicated, now that state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) has temporarily withdrawn SB 1.
Steinberg had fought hard for his personally authored bill, which would have replaced California’s old system of community redevelopment agencies (CRAs), which were dissolved in 2011, with Sustainable Community Investment Authorities. Yet as the legislature’s fall session began, he calculated there was a strong possibility of Governor Jerry Brown vetoing the measure. (Last year Brown vetoed SB 1156, an earlier incarnation of Steinberg’s legislation.)
Steinberg withdrew the bill September 12, just as SB 1 was headed back to the Assembly for further discussion.
SB 1’s tactical withdrawal puts on hold the hopes of cities to build healthy, sustainable economies. Despite occasional planning mistakes made by some CRAs in the past, there is still an urgent need for rational urban planning that benefits all communities,
» Read more about: Redevelopment Measure SB 1 Temporarily Withdrawn »
When Kentucky’s legislature adopted a bill intended to transform the Bluegrass State’s troubled pension system last spring, state officials were ecstatic. Signing the bill into law on April 4, Democratic governor Steve Beshear hailed it as groundbreaking legislation that would “solve the most pressing financial problem facing our state – our monstrous unfunded pension liability and the financial instability of our pension fund.”
Not everyone was convinced.
Critics, who include pension-fund experts, lawmakers and AARP Kentucky, claim the new law will hurt workers, taxpayers and retirees. What’s more, they say the law was largely crafted behind the scenes by an unusual alliance between two out-of-state organizations: the Pew Center on the States and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Some detractors go further and assert that the Arnold Foundation is using Pew’s sterling reputation for academic integrity as a fig leaf to hide its own free-market agenda.
» Read more about: Promise Breakers: How Pew Trusts Is Helping to Gut Public Employee Pensions »
for at least an hour. Maybe longer. It was longer.
No one spoke, looked away, or drew attention
with their hands. A few of us opened our mouths,
a few always do. We didn’t know we’d done it.
No one saw. Like losing a button. We were busy
not speaking. We had drinks, a few snacks, watched
TV with the sound off. A few of us thought about
the button, the one that says MUTE, how common
it is now. We tried to imagine it on other things,
things that don’t speak but are loud: lamps, guns,
a fire truck with MUTE painted on it. It would’ve
looked good on us, stenciled white across our chests.
We wore dark colors, earth tones. No one calls them
dirt tones or soil.
It’s been 100 years since ideological conservatives joined with doctors and insurance companies to kill the first movement in the United States for what was then called “compulsory health care.” Now, on the eve of their epic loss, those who deeply hate the idea that we have a collective responsibility to care for each other are desperately trying to stop history’s clock.
Beneath the tested rhetoric from opponents like the Heritage Foundation and Texas Senator Ted Cruz about a government takeover or Obamacare killing jobs and the economy, we can find expressions of the driving force behind the right’s obsession. One telling quote is from Missouri State Senator Rob Schaaf, who declared, “We can’t afford everything we do now, let alone provide free medical care to able-bodied adults.” Another is the proud statement from Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, who told me in a debate on Obamacare at the FDR Library,
» Read more about: In Sickness and In Health: Defending Obamacare »
My name is Dana Wilson and I am a professional dancer. Whether I am performing with a major recording artist, or busting a move in television and film, it is my job to entertain and evoke emotion through movement. It is also my job to make it look easy.
The reality is, dancers train tirelessly, sacrifice our bodies and dedicate our lives to our work, and sometimes all we get in return is “the experience.” Most of us are young (twenty-somethings) and female. We are all are eager to work and it has taken a long time to gain respect as a work force. We have unions that represent us when we work on television shows and movies, but much of our work is still nonunion and many of us are without health insurance. Meanwhile, our bodies are taking a beating and we are always one injury away from unemployment.
Dancers’ Alliance is an organization formed by dancers and run by dancers to unite us and improve our working conditions.
Social justice activists often think that when things are terrible, people will rise up and protest those conditions until they see significant change, and sometimes they do. But usually, especially in recent decades in this country, they don’t. My friends, as well as other readers of the Frying Pan, often ask, Why not?
I always return to one of the classic analyses of dramatic social change, Crane Brinton’s Anatomy of Revolution. The book follows the trajectory of four historic revolutions: England, France, America and Russia. In each, he argues, regime change did not happen because conditions were at their worst. Instead they occurred when the circumstances of everyday life were actually getting better but did not match the hopes of people. Revolution happened, Brinton says, in the widening gap between expectation and reality.
That explanation probably clarifies why demonstrations in Greece and Spain have met with frustration,
Out of 300 million Americans, a few thousand wield disproportionate economic and political influence because of their positions at the pinnacle of America’s corporate and media establishments or their roles as political allies (or puppets) of the corporate ruling class. C. Wright Mills described this group in his 1956 book, The Power Elite; G. William Domhoff has updated this analysis in his book, Who Rules America? (now in its seventh edition), and Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have described how the power elite wields its influence in Winner-Take-All Politics.
Many of them have overlapping memberships on the boards of the largest corporations, business lobby groups, universities and think tanks, foundations and media conglomerates. They are not part of a conspiracy. They do not meet secretly to plot America’s future. And they do disagree with each other on some issues,
» Read more about: Dinner for 20 Schmucks: An Elite Hall of Shame »
Recovery?
What recovery? The economic outlook may have picked up for some Americans, but not for those in the bottom income brackets – and especially children — according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.
In fact, there were nearly seven million more people living in poverty in 2012 than there were in 2008, the beginning of the Great Recession.
Overall, 46.5 million people were living at or below the poverty line last year, according to the agency’s major annual report on the issue, the Current Population Survey. And more than one-fifth of children, or 16 million youth, were living in poverty, the survey showed.
“They are still the age group suffering the most poverty,” Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, said in a statement.
It was the 11th year in the last 12 that poverty “worsened or failed to improve,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.