In part 1 of a New Deal for California, I discussed why any effort to rebuild the state must begin with a frontal assault on high unemployment as the only reliable means of achieving budget stability - as opposed to self-defeating quests for balance via austerity. In part 2, I studied how the quest for a more perfect democracy is inextricably linked to a renewal of democratic control over the state's own revenues.
Today, I want to discuss two areas of policy that are among the largest spending categories in the California state budget, but which also represent two faces of the state, and two approaches to developing its youth, and two sets of values - namely, education and prisons.
Arnold's recent proposal to put a floor under higher education at 10% of the state budget and a ceiling over prisons at 7% of the state budget is only the most recent example of a long trend of discussing the two in the same breath. As I discussed in the linked article, Schwarzenegger's approach is fundamentally flawed, a mirage of egalitarianism masking a reality of utter callousness. A moral society cannot pay for the future of its most talented youth through the deliberate immiseration of its least advantaged.
However, a New Deal for California will have to grapple with the reality that California will either educate or incarcerate its young, and that the power to choose lies with us.
The results of tonight's primaries set in motion a battle for the soul of California. It's Main Street vs. Wall Street, with the winner having an opportunity to shape California's future for decades to come.
After months of obscene campaign spending, billionaire CEO Meg Whitman will use her seemingly unlimited fortune to try to stage a hostile takeover of our state. She's made clear that, if elected, she plans to bring a Wall Street agenda to California. What that means for working families is more massive tax giveaways for corporations and the wealthy, and wholesale cuts to education, public safety and programs that our state's most vulnerable rely upon. Whitman's economic philosophy, which she honed as a corporate executive and director in places like Goldman Sachs, is simple: What's good for Wall Street and the wealthy is good for everyone. California families know all too well just how flawed that philosophy is.
The contrast between the candidates couldn't be starker. Jerry Brown shares the Main Street values that built this state's economy into a global powerhouse and expanded our middle class. Brown has a spent a lifetime fighting for working families. He presided over the creation of nearly 2 million jobs as Governor. He fought the exploitation of workers by large corporations as Attorney General. His experience, values and leadership are exactly what this state needs to get back on track.
It's equally critical that Sen. Barbara Boxer is sent back to Washington to continue to fight for working families on key issues like financial reform, health care and workers' freedom to join unions. Boxer is a champion for working families. Californians can't afford to have a Senator like failed CEO Carly Fiorina, who joins Whitman on the "Wall Street Express" ticket.
With record unemployment, a huge budget gap and a rapidly shrinking middle class, the challenges California faces in the next four years are epic in proportion. Because the stakes are so high, the California labor movement intends on engaging like never before. We'll counter Whitman's massive spending with an unprecedented grassroots campaign to reach voters on the issues they care about: jobs, health care, retirement security and rebuilding the middle class. We'll work harder than ever to re-elect Sen. Boxer to the US Senate and send more worker-friendly candidates to Sacramento.
The battle for California's future begins tonight. Workers look forward to meeting the challenges that face our state and using this election as the springboard for California's economic rebirth.
Art Pulaski is executive secretary-treasurer at the California Labor Federation, which represents more than 2 million workers in 1,200 unions throughout the state.
In the wake of the passage of the Affordable Choices Act into law, there are a lot of questions about how we go on from here. Obviously, one line of activism focuses on ways to improve the health care reform act. To some progressives so morally outraged at the defeat of the public option that they’ve given up on the Congress as hopelessly wedded to corporate interests, obviously, this isn’t so appealing.
However, if the progressive movement can be clever and strategic for a second, and is willing to work from within rather than to cry defeat, we can actually work on the state level to move the goalposts of the health care debate in the direction of single-payer before we even get to the next round of national legislation.
Meg Whitman spent last week crisscrossing California with her Wall Street pal Mitt Romney, pumping up her already overflowing campaign coffers with even more corporate cash. Her campaign strategy is clear: write big checks and avoid a real conversation with voters about her background, her policies, and her plans for the state.
But California's workers aren't going to let Meg and her Wall Street agenda take the express jet to the Governor's office. While Meg and Mitt were rubbing elbows with the corporate elite, an army of nurses, educators, construction trades workers, and others who would be directly impacted by Meg's anti-worker agenda were putting the final touches on our campaign to expose her plans to do Wall Street's bidding and what her Governorship would mean for California's families.
Today, the California Labor Federation launched a massive grassroots campaign massive grassroots campaign that will deploy an army of volunteers to expose the truth about Meg Whitman's Wall Street agenda and her history on the board at Goldman Sachs. The campaign will counter Whitman's avalanche of TV ads and estimated $150 war chest with online tools as well as and person-to-person contact, which is proven to be the best way to reach voters.
In this election, working people don't have a choice. We have an imperative.
Jerry Brown has spent a lifetime fighting for working families. Meg Whitman, on the other hand, has spent her adult life as one of the corporate elite, advancing Wall Street's disastrous agenda. Whitman's plan to corporatize our economy would lead to more devastating cuts to education, health care and the safety net. She'd cut tens of thousands of jobs, making an already severe recession much worse. She'd strip workers of important protections like meal breaks and overtime pay.
More than 500 union members and leaders from across the state gathered in San Jose this morning committing to reject Whitman's hostile takeover attempt of California and elect a proven, experienced leader and fighter for working families, Jerry Brown.
The California Labor Federation today endorsed Attorney General Brown in his bid to become Governor, kicking off Labor's broadest grassroots electoral campaign in California history.
A glimpse at Brown's record shows why he's the right person to renew California's promise and rebuild our middle class. During his nearly four decades of public service, he has compiled an impressive record in support of working families' priorities. Brown fought to:
Protect and improve our wages. As Governor, Brown strengthened the state's equal pay law (SB 1051, 1976), and signed a law that requires the University of California to pay prevailing wage on construction projects (SB 394, 1975).
Ensure a safe and healthy workplace. In 1980, Brown signed a groundbreaking law (SB 1874) that requires employers to provide information to workers on toxic substances produced or handled in their workplace.
Strengthen the safety net for laid off and injured workers. During his 8 years as governor, Brown increased unemployment benefits for laid off workers (AB 91, 1975), and signed several bills to extend and increase workers' compensation for those who were injured on the job (SB 469, 1975; AB 467, 1976; AB 3028, 1978).
Expand and defend our right to form and join unions. Under Brown's leadership, California established collective bargaining rights for teachers, school employees and other state workers (SB 160, 1975), firefighters, police and other local government workers (AB 644, 1978) and farm workers (SB 1, 1975). Additionally, Brown signed a law that prohibits the use of professional strikebreakers in labor disputes (SB 719, 1975). Today, more than a million Californians can bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions thanks to Jerry Brown.
Crack down on employers that don't play by the rules. As Attorney General, Jerry Brown has take legal action against a number of companies that exploit and abuse their workers and violate California's labor laws. Just this month, Brown secured a settlement for construction workers whose rights have been violated by their employer (CA v. Evleth Construction, 4/5/2010). He's never shied away from a fight, even when the odds were against him.
In short, Jerry Brown did more than any governor in California history to build the middle class.
He also knows a thing or two about creating jobs. Unlike Meg's unrepentant job slashing, Jerry Brown has a record job creating. As Governor, he created 1.9 million jobs for California.
From his time as Governor to his work as Attorney General, Jerry's been on our side.
Jerry Brown's life of public service has been about fighting for a fair deal --
Not CEO deals;
Not multinational corporations;
Not the wealthy and privileged.
Jerry fights now for a new generation of prosperity, a new chapter for California -A chapter in which everyone has the right to earn their own way, to a safe workplace, a healthy environment, and good health care.
Meg Whitman is trying to buy the Governor's office to corporatize our economy, to give more power and wealth to the already wealthy and powerful.
Jerry Brown fights to restore for us the California that we knew - when he led it - a California that is unsurpassed in its potential for the future. A California that works for its working people.
He shares our values. He's on our side. We need a leader in Sacramento who we trust, not another corporate crony to do Wall Street's bidding. The contrast between the two candidates couldn't be starker. And there's never been more on the line for California's families than there is this year.
Jerry Brown is leading a new fight for our better future. Now it's time for us to fight for him.
Art Pulaski is executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, representing 2.1 million union members in over 1,200 unions across the state. For more information, visit www.CaliforniaLabor.org.
January 2009 was a watershed moment in our nation's history. As we gathered to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama, members of my union felt a powerful sense of accomplishment. Together we had worked long hours and covered many miles to elect a president who would represent working people instead of big corporations.
But those days were also bittersweet for me and thousands of health care workers in California. As President Obama took the oath of office, SEIU's President Andy Stern had begun a process to remove me and other health care workers from our elected positions, suspend our local union's constitution, and put his own officials in charge.
When the trial started two weeks ago, it was clearly stated what this was all about. It was about rules, the dangers of thinking you can be above them, and the consequences for then refusing to follow them. In his opening arguments, Gary Kholman, attorney for the 150,000 members that were abandoned by Rosselli and his co-defendants, told the jury that he will lay out evidence that showed how the defendants, in reaction to "constitutional mandates" placed upon them by the international, began to plot and put into motion a set of premeditated actions in response. The sole purpose of these actions by the defendants was to pilfer the union's treasury, hijack the local's valuable information network, and ultimately steal members away and put them into a new organization with shady beginnings. In the two weeks that followed those opening statements by Mr. Kholman, witness after witness after witness came forward to testify. They told how they were recruited to either lie to and cheat members out of due representation, or how they were intimidated into cooperation. Mountains of documents, many from the defendants' own hands, were put into evidence. We read secret e-mails, task lists, minutes and notes of meetings, correspondence, and watched videos that showed the evolution of this "great plan" of these 26 OUTSIDERS that sought to destroy our union of over eighty years.
In his closing arguments today, Kholman again reminded the jury what this has always been about rules and consequences. These defendants always had three honorable options before them;
- Accept the rules and abide by them
- Work within the system to change the rules
- Leave the organization
Instead, they chose a fourth, dishonorable option, to defy the rules and breach the rules that govern our union. The means they used to reach that end were equally dishonorable! Taking members' dues monies off the books into a secret slush fund, pirating our confidential information into a shadow database, and creating secret groups that held clandestine meetings. Appalling as that is, the worst offense they made against us was to lie to us and then recruit us as pawns in their sinister scheme.
In society, and the organizations within them, rules are what bind us together and keep us from falling into chaos. Regardless how one felt about the 2000 Bush v Gore election drama, it was because rules were in place that an "orderly transition" occurred from one president to the next. Hard as it may have been for Gore to accept the result, can you imagine what shambles our democracy would be put into if he had decided to not accept or abide by it and instead conspired to have the "blue states" secede? That's what Rosselli and the others are trying to do.
For NUHW, It's Still About Distraction and Distortion:
Two weeks ago Dan Siegel, attorney for Rosselli and his co-defendants, chose to talk about what this trial was NOT about. He wanted to talk about Andy Stern, his salary and a book he wrote. He wanted to preach about democracy and tyranny. He told us how his clients' actions were "motivated by patient care." These attempts to distract the jury only got him stiff admonishments from the judge who then instructed him to follow the rules. Throughout the trial, he offered no evidence to refute our claims against his clients...only spin. He put forth witnesses that proudly verified claims of violent actions, then insinuated the victims were to blame. On the stand, his clients broke down, and Rosselli himself became as nervous as a "sinner in church!"
In his closing arguments today, Siegel offered nothing new...only spin. He spoke about gazing at the stars and pondered the horoscope signs they formed. He dipped his feet into various conspiracy theories like the government's involvement in 9-11 and the CIA's role in the Kennedy assassination. From this, he gathered that SEIU our union of over eighty years, is like Iran. He defended his clients' obstructive actions as mere "expression," saying they cannot be held accountable for them, but then referred to them as "terrible conspirators." Mr. Siegel obviously has never stepped foot in any of our facilities, this much was evident when he had the nerve to ask "Did anything horrible really happen?" The answer to that Mr. Siegel, YES!!! Ask any of the 150,000 members your clients left behind.
With both sides resting their cases, a milestone has been reached in the federal lawsuit against ousted SEIU-UHW President Sal Rosselli and his 25 co-defendants. The case is being tried in federal court in San Francisco before U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup.
Ms. "Ungovernable Situation" Takes The Stand:
Barbara Lewis, author of the now infamous "Ungovernable Situation" memo, which plotted out leaving our union in chaos after they were ousted from power, took the stand. From her we learned how she spent $41, 871 at Kinko's to print decertification petitions. When asked if she put her staff on "Code Orange," she replied that she could not recall. However, a January 22, 2009 memo was shown where she instructed trusted staff to:
- Always be accessible by phone
- Not to plan for any sleep - OUCH!
- Be on 24 hour standby
And yes, she did say "Code Orange." She was asked if as high ranking officer of UHW how she felt about trusteeship being imposed to which she said very saddened by the whole situation. Mr. Kohlman then showed a video clip where she called it "A great day for our union." Ooops.
"Define Forming"
NUHW co-founder John Borsos was one of the final witnesses in the case. Despite his lack of recollect, the jury was shown a memo where lawyers advised him to "lay low" about active resistance to the international. He was told to "launder" it through an intermediary. At one point Mr. Kohlman asked him if one still works for one union and uses the resources of that union to start forming a new union, would he consider that stealing. His answer "depends on how you define forming." He then insisted that despite the similarities between this case and the Colcord case of 2005, it's a different situation. Different, apparently, because he's the one on the hot seat.
(Colcord case: In 2005 three organizers while still employed by UHW used union resources such as the member database among other stuff to form a new union to organize EMT workers at AMR. Rosselli and UHW sued the three and won a judgment against them. In this trial, UHW makes the same claim, that Rosselli and the other defendants used UHW resources to form NUHW while they were still the top officers/employees of UHW.)
Tomorrow we will hear the closing arguments and the judge will give the jury instructions they will use for their deliberations.
The Press Conference at the Steamfitters Union Hall in Concord was billed as a declaration of support for the TRADE Act of 2009 ("http://www.citizen.org/documents/TRADEAct2009_Final_House.pdf) by Congressmen Garamendi and Miller but it also included some fireworks as Miller took aim at the Columbian Government and declared that his investigation indicated that in the last decade 2700 union organizers in Columbia were "..killed at the direction of the government...killed at the direction of the manufacturers" as well as the economic elite of the country. He declared that Columbia was the most dangerous place in the world to try to organize workers.
The details of the Bill 3012 were not reviewed which include:
1. review of all trade treaties including in that review details of what it is worth in terms of jobs for America
2. eliminate any future reinstatement of Fast Track for Trade Treaties
3. require in future treaties that the other countries agree to
a. labor standards including minimum wage (amount not specified)
b. by direct reference the UN Declaration of Human Rights
c. 'fair treatment of workers'
d. dispute resolution that is open to the public
e. a reference to environmental protection (unspecified)
f. equal protection under the law for investments citing specifically the US 14th Amendment Clause 1
The Congressmen also used the opportunity to tout their joint support for Buy American with Rep. Garamendi calling for the establishment of a military style procurement process that forces Buy American with the hope to re-establish some industries that have bleed massive jobs overseas.
The main thrust of this is the desire to redo NAFTA and WTO which Miller said 'was a bad idea then and is bad idea now'.
The chances of this bill getting passed was alluded to as very slim and a massive uphill battle. As such it provides an opportunity only for posturing before the union crowds. What is needed is to separate out the issues rather than to put them all in a single package where collectively they act to attract negatives to make it a dead bill despite some good ideas being weighted down with totally impractical approaches to international business and foreign relations. Simply put- just calling for a rework of NAFTA and WTO is hard enough.
As the economic recovery continues its slow march, and the unemployment slowly stops increasing (hopefully), consider what kind of jobs are emerging in this brave new world that we are building. The jobs are mostly in the service sector, and many are temporary.
As demand rose after the last two recessions, in the early 1990s and in 2001, employers moved more quickly. They added temps for only two or three months before stepping up the hiring of permanent workers. Now temp hiring has risen for four months, the economy is growing, and still corporate managers have been reluctant to shift to hiring permanent workers, relying instead on temps and other casual labor easily shed if demand slows again. (New York Times)
Workers are disposable in this brave new economy. In fact, many companies are trying to get employees that they laid off to come back as temps. Sure, you've got a job, the same one you had before, but now you are making less money with few, if any, benefits.
In California, this practice is particularly dangerous for a couple of reasons. First, as companies are less attached to their workers, they are less attached to their locations. Temporary workers tend to be cheaper in the low-rent towns of Nevada, so why not go migrant?
The other concerning point for the state is that we have already had a pretty strong temporary work culture. For those farmers who hire legal labor, they are still generally hiring temporary labor. For a state that already has a big problem with both employment and the numbers of uninsured.
The only true force opposing the complete temporary-ification of our work force is the labor movement. As unionization rates go down, so do benefits and wages as more and more workers become part-time.
So, how do we increase employer-sponsored health insurance rates (which it appears we are for the time being) and increase full time employment? Besides an additional stimulus bill, the obvious answer would be the Employee Free Choice Act.
In a swift and decisive move this week, three employee rights organizations joined the "Emblem to Win" Campaign and gave their official endorsement to Democratic Congressional Candidate, Tracy Emblem, in a contested primary.
When asked what prompted IUPAT's decision to make a financial commitment so early in a contested Democratic primary, DC36/LU831 Business Representative Paul Vauchelet stated, "Tracy Emblem has got a lot of fight, a lot of fire in her belly. She is someone who will really fight for our working families."
Many of the AFL-CIO affiliates have been active in races in the 50th since the 2006 special election. With the emergence of Emblem's winning message, professionalism and natural leadership, the tides are shifting past party loyalties to focus on the only viable Progressive Democrat that can unseat the incumbent, Republican Brian Bilbray. The labor unions are in it to win, are backing a fresh face and have invested in Tracy Emblem as their "Emblem for Change".
"The voters are ready for change," Emblem said. "These progressive labor groups, like many folks residing in the 50th, believe that we need to focus on economic recovery in our own communities by returning our tax dollars to our neighborhoods, cities and schools, through well-paying jobs."
Tomorrow at noon, pickets will spring up on every campus of the University, a familiar sight especially since the U.C regents decided to raise undergraduate tuition by 32% this fall. This time, it’s PRO-UAW (the union for post-doctoral scholars or “post-docs”) and UPTE (the union for research and technical workers) who are protesting the U.C’s stonewalling contract negotiations over wages and benefits.
Lest anyone mistake this picket as just one more expression of discontent at the U.C’s budget woes, let me point out an important fact that shows why this protest shows how both sides of the U.C’s mission as a public research university are being undermined by the Regents’ drive towards privatization: these workers are being paid through Federal grants, not from the U.C’s general budget.
So why would the U.C refuse to pay for cost-of-living increases and benefit improvements when the money isn’t coming out of their funds?
Walmart says it wants you to live better. But they apparently don't feel the same way about the workers who pick the grapes and other produce they sell in their stores. They sell grapes and other produce from Giumarra's Nature's Partner label--despite knowing that this mega company abuses the grape workers who work in their vineyards.
Giumarra harvests approximately 1 out of every 10 bunches of grapes picked in the US. In addition they are a major label of imported and domestic produce. Combined with the market power of the Walmart behemoth, this huge conglomerate helps set the industry standard.
• CapAlert reports that Karen Bass will try again to get some of the more spineless members of her caucus to support a prison reform bill better than the scaled-back effort it already passed. Bass talked about adding the "alternative custody" provisions into the bill, which would get it to the proper level of cuts, but not the sentencing commission, which still looks dead, sadly.
• One bill we know to be dead is SB88, which would have forced localities to get permission from the state before going into bankruptcy. This was a union-backed bill to protect their local contracts, but city governments balked. Sen. Mark DeSaulnier says he'll try to broker a compromise for next year. Those bankruptcies are probably right down the pike, so he'd better hurry.
• The bill that the Governor arrogantly vetoed earlier in the week, in a hissy fit because he wasn't getting his way on water or prisons, was a bill to initiate a Vietnam Veteran's memorial day. It was authored by Republican Assemblyman Paul Cook, and he's whipping support to undergo the first legislative veto override in Sacramento in about 30 years, which is truly a sad legacy. Only in California could securing an override on an uncontroversial bill be something that could end a political career, as Cook acknowledged today. An override would be at least a sign of life in the Legislature.
UPDATE: And that's going to fizzle, because the Yacht Party in the Senate won't go along with an override. What point is there having the law on the books? Paul Cook is going to us a gut-and-amend to put the same bill up tonight, anyway.
• A lot of rumbling about the water bill, which is being written completely in secrecy, and without the input of politicians who represent the Sacramento Delta. Bass hinted at a bond issue to finance whatever comes out of conference, which would cost $600 $800 million in debt service annually without any consequent gains in revenue to pay for it.
UPDATE: The Fresno Bee has more. The bond issue seems to be the sticking point.
Could be another long night...
UPDATE: Here's some actual good news. SB13, the bill to fund $16.3 million for domestic violence shelters by shifting some budget accounts, passed the Assembly on a bipartisan vote of 63-1. I wrote yesterday about how the loss of this funding was simply devastating and indeed, a death warrant, to domestic violence victims across the state. It moves to the Senate for concurrence.
There's lots of significant news in the Legislature's last week regarding various bills, and it's extremely difficult to keep up with it all, probably by design. I should point out that, while the legislative calendar has an end date, there's no actual reason for some of the forced bottlenecks that result in hundreds of bills being passed at the last minute. It creates a shroud of secrecy in which special interests rule, and saps the public trust. A Democratic leadership actually interested in positioning government as somewhat decent would remove these forced bottlenecks from the internal legislative rules and allow bills to be approved on a rolling basis. That said, this is the system we have now, and here's a bunch of news about various bills:
• A new bill would exempt non-General Fund workers from furloughs. This would reverse one of the dumbest provisions in the budget bill, the practice of forcing furloughs on workers not paid by state government, saving almost no money and depriving people of needed services. Of course, the Governor will probably veto this one, because he hates admitting how wrong he is.
• Democrats on that vaunted water committee have decided against floating a bond to pay for any restoration or overhaul of the Delta. This means Republicans won't vote for it, and very little will come of this very important committee thrown together at the last minute. Some conference committee reports are here, but a deal looks remote, as it would need votes from some of the empty chairs in the Yacht Party.
• One bill that has cleared both chambers would set up "Education Finance Districts", "in which three or more contiguous school districts can band together to try to increase local taxes." This is a small step to make it easier for districts to pass parcel taxes to fund schools, but at this point every little bit helps. The 2/3 rule for approving such taxes would remain.
• With all the talk of health care reform, it's notable that an anti-rescission bill has once again passed the legislature. The bill would also simplify insurance forms. Last session, Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. There's something you don't hear much about from the Democratic leadership - Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have banned insurance companies from dropping patients after they get sick. He sided with the forces of insurer-assisted suicide. This is your modern Yacht Party on this issue:
"Any of those who have read the various exposés in the Los Angeles Times and others . . . is aware that health insurers have admitted and acknowledged they engaged in a form of post-claims underwriting," said Sen. Mark Wyland (R-Escondido). "It is unethical and, considering what some of these people have endured, it really borders on the immoral."
However, Wyland said he would not vote for the bill because the Department of Insurance has proposed new rules to solve the problem, and he wants to see how they work.
Hey, give 'em a chance to see if the immorality stops! If not, we can think it over.
• The Legislature may extend a homebuyer's tax credit passed in a previous budget agreement that was nothing but a bailout for developers. It only credited new construction, and was structured only to benefit high-income households who could afford new construction. By the way, sales of new units have fell since this was enacted, so it's not even meeting its intended purpose. But it's a giveaway to a special interest, so off the money may go, even though we cannot afford it at this time.
• A bill to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from children's products was delayed after the Assembly couldn't muster 41 votes. The debate in the Assembly last night was pretty fierce.
• Cities and counties reacted angrily to a proposed bill to slow local government bankruptcies until vetted by the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission. On the merits this looks to be a bill that would install more control on locals from Sacramento, although there are arguments on both sides. But mainly it's about the fate of union contracts in local bankruptcies, I don't think either side would deny that.
• A roundup of other bills passed yesterday can be found here.
Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many-younger than 35-still live at home with their parents because they can't afford to be on their own.
These are the findings of a new report, "Young Workers: A Lost Decade." Conducted in July 2009 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, the nationwide survey of 1,156 people follows up on a similar survey the AFL-CIO conducted in 1999. The deterioration of young workers' economic situation in those 10 years is alarming.
"Unemployment compensation, as we conceive it, is a front line of defense, especially valuable for those who are ordinarily steadily employed, but very beneficial also in maintaining purchasing power. While it will not directly benefit those now unemployed until they are reabsorbed in industry, it should be instituted at the earliest possible date to increase the security of all who are employed..." - Report to the President, Committee on Economic Security (1935)
In a previous post, I discussed the need to improve the payroll tax, and noted that one of the reasons we need to do this is to fix the unemployment insurance (UI). Our current UI system is fundamentally broken. As I wrote on the 12th, "at a time when nearly one in ten American workers are unemployed, only half of them qualify for Unemployment Insurance, to the extent that the program no longer adequately functions either as a safety net or an “automatic stabilizer.”"
If I didn't have the time and the space to say it at the time, let me say it now. The fact that a majority of workers are no longer protected, nearly seventy-five years after the passage of an act that was meant to protect every worker from" one of many misfortunes" of economic life, is a moral failure of the highest order. The idea that governors in America would reject stimulus funds in the middle of a recession because those funds would make it easier for temporary or part time workers to gain access to UI suggests the total moral bankruptcy of the American conservative movement. Not for nothing did FDR say:
"Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."
“O reason not the need! Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is as cheap as beast’s.” (Lear, II iv)
The Problem:
If there is any one area of American life that best expresses the adage “poverty in the midst of prosperity,” it must be housing. Even as thousands upon thousands of homes now stand empty, vast swathes of speculative suburban developments along the highways and hills of California turned into ghost towns, homelessness has increased. In Washington D.C, the number of homeless families has increased in the last year by 15%, with similar figures being reported in New York City and other metropolitan centers. Even when the sub-prime boom was spreading home-ownership wide and far and actually beginning to make headway against the unequal distribution of housing in America, in 2006, 8.8 million households were paying more than half their income in rent (I was probably one of them). Major systemic problems (the lack of affordable housing and workforce housing near where people work, the need to in-fill versus sprawl, racial and class discrimination) were not being addressed, even when the market was flush.
It isn’t flush now. If ever there was a need for proof that “spatial mismatch” and “credit discrimination” exist, we can find it in the fact that at a time when thousands of houses are empty rotting shells, that people who want and need housing are being turned away by banks who have suddenly become paragons of fiscal rectitude.
At the same time, the national unemployment rate currently stands at 9.4%. Within the construction industry, unemployment stands at 21%. Within California, the situation is even worse, with an overall unemployment rate of 11.5%, and a construction industry that’s down 150,000 jobs from last year. While I fully expect that the stimulative effect of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will begin to ameliorate this situation within the next six months, I personally was calling for an even larger jobs bill at the time.
I think we can tackle both problems at the same time.
Yesterday, the Economic Policy Institute held an event, co-sponsored by the “Broader, Bolder” education reform group, on reforming No Child Left Behind. This fact was commented on in a post on Crooked Timber, and within eight poss, you could read that ” The goal of NCLB was not to improve education, it was to destroy the teacher’s unions and take away the hard won rights including tenure and the ability to act as professionals…One group sees education as a way to instruct the young with the essentials of the society and turn them into docile citizens who will provide the workforce and consumer base that the elite depends upon. This group favors an authoritarian, top down, approach to instruction,” and “the “Broader, Bolder Coalition”—whose manifesto openly embraces using education policy as a stalking horse for a broad political agenda…has little to do with educational standards.”
And there, in a microcosm, is the state of our current education reform debate: one group, loosely grouped around the “Broader, Bolder” coalition, and another group, loosely grouped around the Education Equality Project and they hate each other worse than Communists hate Trotskyists, and with the same sectarian flair. Apparently the Broader, Bolder folks are either your standard left-of-center education policy wonks and activists who emphasize the need to tackle the social environment of schools or a stalking horse for the teachers unions out to destroy education reform. Likewise, the Educational Equality Project people are either a very similar group of wonks who focus on the achievement gap between white students and students of color, or a neoliberal plot to destroy teachers unions, force students into becoming standardized-tested drones, and privatize the public education system. Oh, and they’re both the only true “reformers.”
The 