Nation’s Michelle Goldberg nails GOP for denying poverty exists

by Marc Jampole

 

Michelle Goldberg puts a lot of facts together to reach her perceptive conclusions about Republican attitudes on American poverty in “Poverty Denialism,” in the latest Nation. 

Goldberg quotes the usual suspects—FOX commentators, Bobby Jindal, Tea Party Congressmen—to demonstrate that the GOP denies poverty exists, and instead proposes that there are only a bunch of people who could work if they wanted to but prefer to sit at home getting fat on government handouts.

The article points out that the Republicans could blame President Obama for poverty, if they wanted to. But to do so would be to admit that poverty exists and require them to present a plan to deal with it. Goldberg recalls that Nixon, Kemp and even Bush II proposed initiatives to address poverty.  All the current Republicans want to do now is cut, cut, cut.  I urge you to read Goldberg’s article.

The sheer meanness in the attitudes of most Republicans is dazzling. They are willing to watch their fellow citizens starve so that taxes on the wealthy and corporations can remain low and go even lower.  It’s not even good economics, since the poor will spend all the money the government gives to them and thereby fuel the economy and create more jobs, whereas the wealthy recipients of GOP largess are just going to save it. But these Republicans don’t really care about creating new jobs or strengthening the economy. They want theirs. Thus they ignore the poor except to cut their food stamp benefits by 7% and to make it harder for them to get public assistance, or to make clever and cruel comments about their laziness.  

The current Republican neglect and mocking of poverty represents the height of selfishness. But it only makes sense: Selfishness goes hand-in-glove with a materialistic culture in which the mass media and TV commercials tell you to indulge yourself all the time.

Of course the same people who fund the GOP mostly control or own the companies that are advertising and producing our entertainment. It’s up to the American people to reject this selfish thinking and elect representatives who want to make sure that everyone in the country eats at night, can access needed medical care and has a chance to attend a quality school, As humans in a wealthy society, we have both a right to these basics and the responsibility to make sure that everyone has them. Republicans once knew it, but the current bunch seems to have forgotten.

Rollout and communications snafus don’t invalidate good of Affordable Care Act

By Marc Jampole

So far, the rollout of the health exchanges—the heart of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—has reminded me of the incompetence associated with the Bush II Administration. The interesting part of the Obama Administration's bungling of the rollout is that the mistakes have not been made now in the heat of the moment, but months ago when Barack Obama and his inner circle had time to think about it.

Waiting until the Supreme Court affirmed the ACA to begin writing the software and setting up the website was at the very least overly cautious. I would be among the ones who would call it gutless, because it was not in the best interest of the United States and its citizens to wait and the money saved would really have been a drop in the bucket in the current deficit.  Far better it would have been if the Administration had given the tech folks the time to do more extensive testing of the system. We should note, however, that as with many large websites of private sector companies, it’s very possible that the health exchange website would have still encountered problems even with extra time.

It’s a shame, because the state exchanges are mostly working and it’s primarily the people in the Republican-controlled states who have to wait until the federal website is fixed to sign up for health insurance.  Those are the same states in which the poor eligible for Medicaid coverage under the ACA won’t get coverage because their governors rejected the federally funded expansion of Medicaid in their states.

Perhaps more interesting to me is the mistake in messaging that the President made when it comes to the relatively small number of people who are losing their existing policies.  

First the facts: ACA sets new standards for health insurance plans. Setting standards has been a government function since at least the Sumerians. It is the government that tells us how much an ounce must weigh and how much fat and extenders you can throw in and still call it “lean ground beef.” All indications are that in writing both the laws and the regulations, large health insurers had input into developing the new standards. The policies held by the 3 million who will have to change do not meet the basic standards established in the ACA. Many are lousy policies, not worth the paper upon which they’re printed.

What the President said—months ago—was that no one will lose their policies. What he should have said was that less than one percent of people would have to change policies because their policies were below the new standard.  This more truthful statement would have set the bar of expectations at the appropriate level. Many of those who have to change policies would still be angry and frustrated, especially if they lived in Republican-controlled states and couldn’t get through on the federal website. But the President’s misstatement would not have provoked a scandal in the news media, nor would the rest of the public be up in arms.

Setting the expectations of the audience is one of the basic principles of communications. The operating theory is the idea of “relative deprivation,” which basically states that people get angrier at being deprived of something than at never having had it. Contrast the positive reaction if you promise someone $80 and you give her $90 to the negative reaction if you promise someone $110 and you give her $100 for doing the same job. The public was led to believe that no one would lose their policies and now feels the frustrations of relative deprivation.

When I conduct seminars on communications, I advise my students—mostly executives and professionals—to set the audience’s expectations at the very beginning of the interaction. For example, before you open the floor to questions at a meeting of many people, always say that individuals will have the chance to ask only one question and one quick follow-up question until everyone has had a chance to pose questions. Without setting that expectation, if someone tries to grab control of the meeting by barraging you with questions and long comments, the audience may think you’re trying to suppress discussion when you try to stop him. But if you have set expectations, when the demagogue tries to take control, the audience will be on your side and shout out, “Give someone else a turn.” I’ve seen both scenarios play out multiple times.

In a sense, the website snafu is also a failure to meet expectations. When an organization announces a website is up and running, the expectation is that it will work.   

I’m fairly confident that the website will get fixed and that the health exchanges, new standards and other features of the new law will lead to many more Americans being covered by good health insurance plans, an improvement in the nation’s health and a decline in the cost of medical care. The Affordable Care Act will work, but it’s unfortunate that before it does, the Administration has to learn some basic lessons in setting expectations…and meeting them.

Jewelry ads pop up - a sign that America’s favorite holiday—Black Friday—is fast approaching

By Marc Jampole

On the side of the highway into Pittsburgh today I passed a billboard for Orr’s, a regional jewelry chain and it reminded me that we are about to be inundated with ads cajoling us to buy bits of rocks embedded in metal and other functionless baubles.

The Orr’s billboard is mostly white with black lettering focused on the words, “Stephen Webster,” who, a quick trip to the Internet told me, is a British jewelry designer. On the right is a highly stylized photograph of a nearly bald woman with her head and neck twisted upwards almost in the elongated style of the Italian Mannerist painter Pontormo. The only colors on the page are the jewels in the rings and earrings she wears. But the figure is so much like the background white that all people in passing cars can really digest are the words “Stephen Webster.” 

The unspoken message that Orr’s assumes we will get is that Stephen Webster is the equivalent of Cadillac or Apple, a premium brand. But I didn’t know it, nor did the other person in the car, nor did anyone in my office, nor does anyone except those interested in jewelry or perhaps design in general.  Thus, what Orr’s is selling is not the “Stephen Webster” brand, but the fact that Orr’s has the brands.  A quick trip to the Orr’s website confirms this analysis: the home page features a long horizontal billboard space in which ads for Stephen Webster, Henri Daussi, Roberto Coin, Cartier (the only one I recognized) and Marco Bicego rotated in succession.

The Orr’s basic marketing message—We have the best brands—got me thinking of other approaches that jewelry stores take to selling what are essentially luxury and to my mind frivolous products with arbitrary value.

We are starting to be bombarded by TV ads by Jared, a national chain which primarily places its stores in malls. For years, Jared has used the line, “He went to Jared.” The line is whispered as lascivious gossip between neighbors, screamed to best friends and sisters, intoned seriously by admiring but envious buddies. The context is always other people and their reactions. Whether you label the operative behavior as “Keeping up with the Joneses” or “If you got it, flaunt it,” the message that Jared is trying to make is come to Jared to make sure your friends and neighbors respect, honor, envy and like you.

Thorsten Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class” seems to be the operating theory here. For Veblen, the leisure class engages in conspicuous consumption for the sole purpose of making individual distinctions based on financial wealth.  You show you are worth something by buying your spouse “diamonds as big as horse turds,” as my father used to put it. In this case, you make sure that everyone knows you are prosperous by going to Jared.

Jared has been using the slogan for years, so it must be working. But around even longer and working even better, I think, is the slogan of another national chain, Kay's. Their line, sung in commercials after the presentation of a ring, earrings, bracelet or watch leads to an embrace, is “Every kiss begins with Kay.”

The reason I like the Kay’s approach—selling sex—is because it comes closer to the reason that most jewelry (other than graduation watches and sweet 16 charm bracelets) is purchased: to give to a beloved to symbolize a sexual relationship. Yes, some people want to make sure that they have the top quality, whatever that means, and have been trained to associate brands with quality. But they aren’t buying jewelry to get a brand. And yes, keeping up with or surpassing the Joneses is a big motivation to many people when they purchase jewelry, but it’s only a secondary motivation. No one buys an engagement ring to please the family (although he or she may have proposed because of family or societal pressure). They buy the ring or the earrings or whatever for the loved one. They may select one item over another because they know it’s better than what the Joneses have, but only after the decision to buy has been made.

The causal connection between giving someone jewelry and engaging in sexual relations is strongly rooted in our society precisely for the reasons that Veblen details. It is a form of display that is supposed to make the wearer more attractive and more of a status symbol for the giver. The exchange of rings symbolizes marriage, which is a public construct and the traditionally sanctioned locus for sexual relations. We give a ring to mark the engagement, as well, and for key anniversaries. We are brainwashed that other types of jewelry are the go-to gift for the spouse.

In a real sense, jewelry commoditizes romantic relationships, which means it turns romance into something that can be bought and sold.  Instead of buying conjugal rights, you buy the symbol and give that to the object of affection.  In the world of symbols and hidden meanings by which our society lives, every kiss does (or can) begin with the presentation of jewelry. Kay’s hits the bull’s eye.

Editorial: Whose Credibility Gap?

Did President Obama tell a whopper when he told voters in 2012, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health care plan”?

The White House clearly knew that some people would lose their health plan, and even though the combination of state-run healthcare exchanges and tax subsidies would offer most a better deal, some insurance customers inevitably would be upset. So the President should have included a disclaimer that “you can keep your insurance unless it is a junk policy that does not meet minimum standards for meaningful coverage of hospitalization or chronic health problems. In that case, no, you won’t be able to let the insurance company swindle you any more.”

A good example of the disclaimered class is Donna Barrette, a 57-year-old Florida real estate agent who was paying $54 a month for Blue Cross insurance. She was upset when she got a letter that her plan would be cancelled as of Jan. 1, 2014. Blue Cross offered a replacement plan at $591 a month, which she said was unaffordable at her salary of $30,000. CBS News depicted her as a typical case of “Obama taking my insurance away.” But other reporters found that Barette could get cheaper plans on the state healthcare exchange, with tax credits paying for nearly $320 a month. And Barrette’s old plan was no bargain, paying only $50 per doctor visit, charging her for tests that can run into hundreds of dollars, $15 per prescription, which barely covers generic drugs, and nothing at all for hospitalization, putting her coverage squarely in the “junk policy” category.

Nancy Metcalf of Consumer Reports found that Humana’s Direct Silver 4600/6300 plan, available in Florida at a cost to Barrette of $165 per month, pays for preventive services, the first $500 of diagnostic lab tests and x-rays per year and 100% of expenses after she spends $6,300.

When Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic told Barrette about her options, she said she would jump at it. “With my age, things can happen. I don’t want to have bills that could make me bankrupt. I don’t want to lose my house.” She added, “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.”

Republicans have little room to complain about President Obama’s stretching the truth after the GOP has spent the last four years lying about the Affordable Care Act.

Catharine Richert of Minnesota Public Radio in September listed the “Top 5 myths about ‘Obamacare’ that refuse to die.”

The top myth was that the law creates “death panels.” Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey (R) on July 16, 2009 falsely claimed that the House health care reform bill would “require” end-of-life counseling for seniors to “tell them how to end their life sooner.” Conservative media repeated that claim until Sarah Palin on Aug. 7, 2009, claimed that “my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care.”

PolitiFact examined both claims and on Aug. 8, 2009 rated them “Pants on Fire!” “The truth is that the health bill allows Medicare, for the first time, to pay for doctors’ appointments for patients to discuss living wills and other end-of-life issues with their physicians. These types of appointments are completely optional, and AARP supports the measure.” (The claim that ACA included “death panels” was rated by PolitiFact as “Life of the Year” for 2009.)

Those are clearly the facts, but that hasn’t stopped conservative commentators from claiming that Obamacare includes death panels every time a committee meets that is affiliated with Medicare or other health care programs.

The second myth is that the law represents a government takeover of healthcare. What the ACA did was to establish standards for what a health insurance policy must cover, so that patients would not find out after being diagnosed with a serious illness that their insurance didn’t cover it, or that the coverage was severely limited. The law created an online marketplace where consumers and small businesses can shop for health plans — most of them offered by private corporations.

The third myth — that you won’t be able to keep your doctor or your current insurance — is where Obama ran into trouble when he assured Americans that “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.”

For the 87.5% of Americans who get their insurance through their employer or the government, their insurance shouldn’t change, unless employers decide to change the coverage they offer. Nothing in the law requires changes, as long as the policy meets minimum standards.

Richert also noted that if you’re buying insurance through one of the new exchanges, it’s possible you won’t be able to find a plan that includes your current physician. But that’s largely a function of the provider networks insurers choose.

The fourth myth is that ACA covers unauthorized immigrants and abortions. The ACA bars unauthorized immigrants from purchasing insurance through the exchanges, and they cannot obtain Medicare or non-emergency Medicaid coverage. They can get care at the emergency room, but that’s no different from how things already work.

As for abortion coverage, federal funds still can’t be used to cover abortions unless it is a case of rape, incest or the mother’s life is in danger. Insurance companies will retain their current ability to sell plans that cover abortions, Richert wrote, but for people who qualify for federal subsidies, the law includes a mechanism to make sure that aid isn’t used to pay for abortion coverage.

The fifth myth is that the ACA is a “job killer.” Richert noted that claim is based on a mischaracterization of a Congressional Budget Office report that predicted upwards of 800,000 people, who keep their jobs mainly for the health care coverage, would leave the workforce because they would be able to find affordable insurance through the state insurance exchanges. Some of them will be older workers who choose to retire earlier than they otherwise would — which would free jobs for younger people who are looking for work. Some workers will be able to leave their corporate jobs to pursue their own entrepreneurial ambitions. And the National Federation of Independent Business, which has fought the health reform law, recently reported that 7% of its members who now offer insurance plan to drop it, but 13% of those who don’t currently offer insurance plan to add it.

There also have been projections that, with an estimated 32 million Americans gaining health insurance that they would not otherwise have, that increase in demand for services will require hundreds of thousands of new jobs in health care and insurance industries.

So while Obama may have stumbled out of bounds with his promise that people could keep their insurance policies, Republican critics of the Affordable Care Act have repeatedly hit low blows, mischaracterizing the health reform law with a reprehensible disregard for the truth.

Even now, Republicans at the state level have refused to let the working poor get Medicaid coverage for which the federal government is paying nearly the entire cost. They refused to participate in development of the healthcare exchanges and they are even harassing “navigators” who help guide people through their options on the exchanges. In Congress, the Republican-dominated House refused Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ request for funds to help implement the program after 36 states ducked their duties. They shut down the government in an attempt to defund the law. And now they are calling Sebelius to their committees so they can complain about the glitchy website.

As the benefits of the Affordable Care Act become recognizable, we think the American people will be more forgiving of President Obama and Secretary Sebelius than they will be of the Republicans who tried to obstruct its passage and then sabotaged its implementation at the state and federal level. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2013

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Selections from the December 1, 2013 issue

COVER/Michael Lind
The tea party is an anti-populist elite tool

EDITORIAL
Whose credibility gap?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
Kicking the poor to the curb

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
Be concerned about food sovereignty

DISPATCHES
Dems: why not expand Social Security?;
CBS botches Benghazi report;
Dems' 3 big wins;
Dems gave Christie a pass;
McAuliffe’s progressive campaign;
JFK assassination: still unsolved;
Kinky candidate for Texas ag post;
Food stamp cuts bring hardship for holidays;
Infrastructure spending collapse;
Wendy Davis helps rival vote in Texas;
Brazil spies on us, too;
Portlanders arrested for protesting P.O. privatization;
Backroom budget deal vs. small-town America;
Blood cancer downwind of Alberta's tar sands operations;
Limbaugh's lie meter ...

BOB BURNETT
Politics of hate

GENE NICHOL
Hapless Pat McCrory

DON ROLLINS
Duke Energy cashes in with no-nuke plan

WENONAH HAUTER
Keep corporate poultry out of your house

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Low T: Disease, the gold mine

SAM URETSKY
Exceptional times

WAYNE O’LEARY
Stupid is as stupid does

JOHN BUELL
Political monsters, inner demons

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Globalize this

ROB PATTERSON
Finales don’t mean the end for actors

POPULIST PICKS
Chuck Berry; ‘Just Visiting’; ‘Masters of Sex’

and more ...

Off-year elections show it’s good to be friends of the Clintons and have lots of money

By Marc Jampole

There were not many races with national significance in the 2013 election, but there are several lessons we can learn from the three races that received the most news coverage—left-winger Bill DeBlasio’s historic landslide victory for Mayor of New York, moderate Republican Chris Christie’s mere landslide re-election as Governor of New Jersey and conservative Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s two-point win as Governor of Virginia over a Tea Party poster boy.

Lesson # 1: People are tired of the Tea Party

As the many mainstream reporters touting Chris Christie for President have pointed out, the Tea Party candidate lost in a Southern state, whereas the Non-Tea flavored Republican won in a Northern state. The Tea Party candidate also lost a bitter battle to a less radically conservative Republican in a special election for Congress in Alabama. Most people either suffered or know someone who suffered because of the sequester or the government shutdown. Most now realize that the Tea Party has little to offer to anyone except the one percenters, who will benefit from tax cuts and less government regulation.

Lesson #2: People didn’t care that much about Obamacare’s rollout problems

Everyone is rightfully pissed off that the website for the federal healthcare exchange isn’t working right. But they’re more pissed about the government shutdown, the sequester, the enormously inequitable distribution of wealth in the United States and continued high unemployment and they blame Republicans for all that. Any Republican candidate thinking he or she would get an anti-Obamacare bounce must have swallowed the entire pitcher of Kool-Aid. They certainly ignored the recent study that showed that many more Americans either like the Affordable Care Act or want to strengthen it than those who want to end or weaken it.

Lesson #3: It helps to be FOHAB or FOBAH

Friend of Hillary & Bill or Friend of Bill & Hillary—which is it? Maybe we should just write FOTC and leave it at that. However you name the phenomenon, it’s interesting to note that two of the three winners in the major races have close ties to the Clintons. The Clintons endorsed DeBlasio and spent time campaigning for their former fundraiser Terry McAuliffe. These results substantiate what many are saying: that Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming favorite to be elected as our next president, assuming that she runs.

Lesson #4: Money wins

In all three of the major races (and the Alabama Congressional race), the candidate who raised and spent the most money won the contest. Just like all the recent presidential elections. Progressive who may be overjoyed that McAuliffe and DeBlasio won and not all that upset that Christie won should nonetheless be alarmed at the continuation of the trend of money trumping every other factor.

Lesson #5: The crony capitalists won

In crony capitalism one function of government is to procure federal contracts and other favorable treatment for the supporters of the winning candidates. Both McAuliffe and Christie qualify as practitioners of crony capitalism. It was McAuliffe who auctioned off nights at the White House for campaign contributions, whereas Christie has a reputation for dealing state contracts to and getting favorable rulings for his pals and contributors. Thank goodness that DeBlasio—left wing superhero that he appears to be right now—has no reputation for engaging in the practices of crony capitalism.

Both McAuliffe and Christie are part of the current corrupt political system that favors big-money contributors and organized industries. McAuliffe is a centrist and Christie is slightly right of center but willing to move left in practical matters such as natural disasters and recessions. While Bill DeBlasio offers the hope of a political culture that seeks the best interests of all our citizens, it remains to be seen if he will carry out his promises. If he does—if he manages to build housing for the middle and lower class, raise taxes on the wealthy to support universal preschool, negotiate contracts that give city union workers decent raises, end racist police practices, improve mass transit in the outer boroughs—if he makes New York a more livable and more progressive place, then the results of the 2013 election will reverberate for decades. Otherwise, it will be remembered as another election in which money and influence won.

17 of 18 health insurance marketplaces had successful rollouts & are working fine

By Marc Jampole

If 18 large organizations installed, customized and rolled out new complicated software systems, how many rollouts would be relatively glitch free?

Ask any experienced information technology (IT) consultant and they’ll likely answer, ”About 50%,” without blinking an eye. That’s based on facts.

At least half of all software installations fail miserably—over budget, past the deadline and missing key features. Take enterprise resource planning software (ERP)—software that runs an entire enterprise: about 60% of companies installing ERP report receiving less than half the benefits they thought they would get from the software. And customer resource management (CRM) software, which makes it easier to track sales and customer contact—shows a 50% failure rate.

Isn’t it amazing then that 18 government entities have just launched websites using sophisticated software and 17 of them have few if any glitches? I’m talking of course about the new health insurance marketplaces set up by 16 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government.

Unfortunately for millions of Americans, it’s the largest one that has experienced the snafus. The fault lies with the Obama Administration. If it had begun developing the federal electronic health insurance marketplace earlier, it would have had time to do proper testing and removed the bugs before the legal date for opening.  Instead, the Administration pussy-footed around waiting to make sure the law wasn’t reversed after the 2010 elections or declared unconstitutional.   Similar pussy-footing around is responsible for some, but certainly not all the numerous software failures in the private sector.

So what we have is 17-1 for governments, when the private sector only would have managed maybe 9-9. The real story of the rollout of Obamacare is that government can and often does do things better than the private sector.  In this case, what government seems to be doing better is implementing sophisticated software systems.

Idaho prisons show once again that privatization of government functions is not such a good idea

By Marc Jampole

We got another reminder of the failure of much privatization of government functions in a Wall Street Journal article detailing the woes that the state of Idaho has had since it privatized its state prisons in 2000. The current vendor is walking away from a new contract, leaving Idaho with several lawsuits alleging understaffing leading to gangs rampaging violently through Idaho’s private prisons.  The Journal article quotes one of the three board members of Idaho’s Department of Corrections: “Privatization is a failed concept in the state of Idaho.”

Privatization is also a failed concept when it comes to schools. For years studies have shown that charter schools—private schools run with public money—underperform public schools.  And a recent study showed that when all factors are considered, private schools also underperform public schools.

By the way, Idaho isn’t the only state having problems with privatized prisons.

• The Journal says that Michigan recently dropped plans to house 968 cons in a privately run prison after the bids by private companies exceeded by millions how much it would costs the state to do it. 
• Two years ago, a study showed that private prisons cost the state of Arizona more than a public system would have.
• When the State of Ohio gave its first inspection to one recently privatized prison, it found that since a private company had taken over the facility compliance to regulations fell from 97.3% to 66.7%, a stunning decline.
• Three years ago, the Lexington Herald-Ledger called the privatized prison system in Kentucky a failure and cited the many abuses at one notorious private-run correctional facility. 

I look at the privatization movement as nothing more than a government wealth transfer program. Since the decline of private sector incomes, government jobs now tend to pay more than private sector jobs at all levels except the top executives, who tend to make significantly more money in the private sector. By privatizing a school or prison facility, what the government is really doing is taking money from the many entry and midlevel jobs—union jobs to a large degree—and giving it to senior management and the investors. It’s a kind of reverse Robin Hood. 

The question remains unanswered as to why the government tends to do better than the private sector on such tasks as educating our children or housing our prisoners. Is it that these functions are inherently better served by government for some reason? Perhaps it’s because government is more stable and will always be around, whereas private institutions come and go as part of the “creative destruction of capitalism?” Or maybe public schools and prisons work best because government workers tend be unionized, since numerous studies show that union workers are more productive? Or maybe the service aspect of working for the government makes executives more dedicated to their customers and less willing to cut corners. Certainly when there is public scrutiny, it’s more likely an exec who cuts corners will be found out. I like to think that the fact that public schools and jails outperform private ones comes down to the simple fact that in America the most competent make the most money and public school teachers and correctional officers make more money than their confreres working for privatized concerns.

Whatever it is, we have gathered enough evidence now to recognize that the privatization movement has been a failure, except for the executives and investors of the companies who get the federal contracts and the factotums these rich folk send to state legislatures to vote to privatize yet more government functions.

Editorial: Obamacare Survives

John Boehner’s miserable performance as the nominal head of the House of Representatives during the recent showdown over the budget and debt ceiling has enhanced his claim to the title of Worst House Speaker since the Civil War.

Boehner’s fear of a revolt by approximately 30 “Tea Party” Republicans caused him to ignore his duties as speaker of the House — a constitutional office that requires him to act in the best interests of the nation, not just his own party. Instead he has consistently refused to allow bills to be heard that would help the President spur the economy, if they were not supported by a majority of the Republican caucus. He also refused to allow House conferees to negotiate with the Senate on the budget and appropriations before they expired on Oct. 1. Then he kept the House from voting on a “clean” continuing resolution that would have prevented the shutdown.

Only after the GOP’s more sober corporate sponsors began to panic at the prospect of a Treasury default did Boehner allow the business-class Republicans to vote with the Democrats to defuse the debt crisis and put the government back to work.

In shutting down the government for 16 days, Boehner and the House Republicans cost the United States more than $24 billion, according to Standard & Poors, and perhaps as much as $31 billion, as estimated by Moody’s Analytics. But Republicans still blamed the shutdown on President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for refusing to negotiate on defunding the Affordable Care Act as a condition for passing the continuing resolution.

We should be concerned that Sen. Rafael “Ted” Cruz (R-Texas), who helped to marshal the House Teabaggers to hold fast for defunding the government when the Democrats did not submit to their demands to defund Obamacare, against the advice of more senior Senate Republicans who could count. In the end, Cruz got 17 other senators and 144 House members to vote for default. He apparently is determined to make another run at shutting down the government and blocking a further debt extension next year.

“This was going to be a multistage, extended battle,” said Cruz, “but we’ve also seen a model that I think is the model going forward to defeat Obamacare, to bring back jobs, economic growth ...”

Which, of course, is nonsense, from the leader of a cabal that has stymied jobs and economic growth.

After the budget and the debt ceiling were resolved, the cable news channels had to find another crisis to cover. Luckily for them the new “Obamacare” website that debuted Oct. 1 was experiencing major malfunctions as millions of people, including the uninsured, the underinsured and the merely curious swamped HealthCare.gov. Most of them were unable to set up accounts that were needed before they could go ahead and browse available plans.

This glitch was annoying, but not entirely unexpected. Previous initiatives to expand health care, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) under President Bill Clinton, Medicare Part D under President George W. Bush and Commonwealth Care, the Massachusetts health care exchange under then-Gov. Mitt Romney, also had rocky startups. But the traffic jam at HealthCare.gov was quickly translated by the talking heads on TV into a disastrous blunder that threatened the health-care reforms.

Your editor waited a week before trying to check out the online health insurance exchange. In two tries over a couple days, I was unable to set up an account. But after the feds did some work on the website the weekend of Oct. 19-20, I tried again on Oct. 21 and found that I was able to bypass the account setup and simply price the insurance plans that are available on the exchange.

It turns out that, despite Republican efforts to sabotage the initiative, Texans (at least in Austin) have 80 plans to choose from. Those under 50 can get health coverage for as little as $109 per month for catastrophic coverage, which has a maximum deductible of $6,350. That might seem like a lot, but your medical bill can run past that deductible in a hurry if you break a leg or find that you need a new kidney, which young adults occasionally do.

Texans over 50 in Austin can get health coverage for as little as $185.83 monthly for catastrophic coverage ($265.92 for a couple); $245.98 for the Bronze Plan, which is designed to cover 60% of all health care costs for the average person ($352 for a couple); $287.76 for the Silver Plan, which would cover 70% of health costs ($411.80 for a couple); $328.22 for the Gold Plan, which would cover 80% of health costs ($469.70 for a couple); and $399 for the Platinum Plan, which would cover 90% of health costs ($571 for a couple).

As it happens, my existing coverage with Aetna is priced comparably with the cheapest Bronze Plan, which is a Blue Cross HMO, but my Aetna PPO plan has better features, so I probably will keep it. Many families will benefit from the new choices — particularly those with pre-existing conditions that made it hard or impossible to get affordable insurance under the old system. For example, when my wife was laid off from the Austin school district in 2011, we paid $544 monthly to keep our coverage under the COBRA plan for what was similar to a Silver plan now available for a couple at $411.80. When we looked at getting our own coverage in 2011, we were unable to find an insurance company that was willing to cover my wife, who had a pre-existing condition. (She found another job that offers health coverage, but I had to find my own insurance, since TPP staff — but not the editor — get insurance through the Storm Lake Times in Iowa.)

And, far from costing jobs, the Affordable Care Act actually gives potential entrepreneurs the option to quit their old jobs and start new businesses without risking loss of health coverage for their spouse and/or children who have health problems. And small businesses will get tax credits to help them cover their workers.

So if you were unable to get into HealthCare.gov the first couple weeks, splash your face and try again. If you still can’t get through on the website, you can get help 24/7 by calling toll-free 1-800-318-2596. In many cities, you can stop by community-based health care exchange navigators to check out your options (find help in your area at LocalHelp.HealthCare.gov). And compare them with your friendly neighborhood insurance agent.

Consumers have until Dec. 15 to enroll for coverage that starts Jan. 1. Subsidies are available for people making up to 400% of the poverty level. Those who are uninsured have until March 31 to enroll in a health plan or face a fine. (Those below the poverty level will either be covered by Medicaid at federal expense or, if they are in states where Republican officials have refused to accept the federal money to help the working poor, at least they will not be penalized for their state’s miserly interference.)

As of Oct. 20, the White House said 476,000 Americans have begun applying for insurance, out of 19 million who had visited the website. More than half of the applicants are coming from the 36 states where the federal government was forced to take the lead in running the markets. The rest come from 14 states running their own markets, along with Washington, D.C.

Republicans have a three-year head-start on telling lies about what Obamacare will do, so it may take several weeks to get the system running smoothly and convince working-class Republicans (God help them!) to check their options on the healthcare exchange. But the health reforms will save lives of people who, as of Jan. 1, can go to the doctor without fear that the wrong diagnosis will cause their insurance company to cancel their policy and leave them adrift.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts seven million Americans will sign up for insurance in the health care exchanges between October and March, including 2.7 million young and healthy people. Nine million are expected to sign up for Medicaid. And anybody whose insurance premiums rise because of the Affordable Care Act may assume that a major reason is that their insurance provider is now required by federal law to provide benefits and pay for claims that previously would have been denied. And the Republican Party cannot let that accountability stand. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2013

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Selections from the November 15, 2013 issue

COVER/Michael Lind
The South is holding America hostage

EDITORIAL
Obamacare survives, and will thrive

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The problem with capitalism

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

DISPATCHES
Fox’s ‘Obamacare’ smears can’t stand scrutiny;
Ohio expands Medicaid under 'Obamacare';
Oregon cuts uninsured population by 10% in two weeks;
Farm bill showdown over food stamps;
Kochs see $100B profit from tar sands pipeline;
Labor warns Dems: Don’t mess with Social Security or Medicare;
Sanders named to budget panel;
Sequester cut 1.2 million jobs;
Jobs report shows jobs needed, not theatrics;
Cruz gains from government shutdown;
Schweitzer mulls Dem prez race;
Biz lobby backs away from comprehensive immigration reform;
Sailor describes ocean as dead;
Stats: 'Obamacare' isn't creating part-time economy;
New voter ID law almost blocks Texas judge from polls;
CNN poll: Obamacare more popular than GOP;
Texas rep to disabled vets: Everybody's got to sacrifice ...

BOB RUNDLE
We should build an economy that’s fair to all

JOAN WALSH
Kick shutdown extortionists out of office

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Obamacare is a victory for women

SAM URETSKY
Money talks in politics, rich want to talk louder

WAYNE O’LEARY
The meaning of Syria

JOHN BUELL
No way to run a government

NORMAN SOLOMON
Google: Doing evil with ALEC

MARK ANDERSON
Swiss propose basic income payment

BILL JOHNSTON
Minority rule in the dollarocracy

RANDY KEHLER
Resisting the lies that make war possible

BOOK REVIEW/Seth Sandronsky
Saving our public schools

DON ROLLINS
Berkeley still a city on a hill

ROB PATTERSON
‘Mandela’ celebrates a hero

POPULIST PICKS
Heir to execution; When you’re deaf; Casting by

Movie promoters resort to print ad consisting of two blank pages and a URL

By Marc Jampole

Page A9 of today’s New York Times is entirely blank. So is page A10, with the exception of a cryptic website address at the bottom of the page:  wordsarelife.com.

What could “words are life” mean? And where will the URL lead us? To religion? Politics? To some feel good pop psychology or philosophy?

In fact the URL redirects to thebooktheif.com, which is a rather conventional website promoting a new movie, “The Book Thief,” based on the novel of the same name by Australian Markus Zusak. Narrated by the character called Death, the novel is about a German girl during World War II. The trailer and scenes come right out of the style I call “middle brow art house”: soft, pastel or autumn colors that seem painterly, music in the French light classical vein, a ponderous importance in the voices of the actors as if every line dripped with meaning, beautifully composed static shots. The director of the film, BTW, also directed “Life of Pi.” Enough said there.

I checked in other newspapers—Wall Street Journal and two Pennsylvania dailies—and didn’t find the ad.  It may have only run in the Times.

The ad raises some interesting questions about marketing. Clearly, the producers of the film think that people are going to wonder about what wordsarelife.com is all about and go to the website. I have no question that, compared to most other print ads in any publication, this two-page ad will influence more of the audience to comply with the call to action—to visit the website!

But once at the website, I wonder how long people will remain before heading elsewhere, disappointed that what they are seeing is a shill for a movie. Will people think, “Gee this approach is clever” or will they feel let down and disappointed, having anticipated something political or spiritual?

Two aspects of the website will tend to make people feel disappointed or betrayed, as opposed to enjoying the cleverness of the pitch: First off, you don’t go directly to wordsarelife.com, but are rerouted to another website, which people who frequently surf the web often associate with a betrayal or trick.

Secondly, the website is so derivative and unclever that it is disappointing as a piece of entertainment. If, by going to the website, we stumbled upon an incredible scene from the movie to the sound of offbeat or catchy music, the creativity of the website would continue the creativity of the print and that would be fine. But instead, we get a static image, some pious words from a very serious young girl and music that sounds like leftovers from a French flick about romance between octogenarians.

The film’s producers must have run the print ads in front of focus groups, but there are many ways to skew the results of focus groups, which is why they have no statistical validity. And it may be that the focus group participants saw the ads without seeing the website, and so demonstrated that the approach worked in terms of a call to action. We can only speculate as to what research went into the decision to run the ads, but I get a gnawing feeling that the producers and their ad folk misinterpreted the results of research or fixed them through employing faulty methodology.

Yet even before we get to the website, I question the wisdom of placing this ad. Is the front section of the New York Times the best place for this print ad? People read different media in different ways and when they read a newspaper they read different parts of the paper in different ways. The same people who actively seek out movie ads in the entertainment section as part of planning their evening or weekend they may skim past all ads in the front section, focused as they are on digesting the overnight news.

The idea, of course, is that they can’t look past the two blank pages and that they will be enticed to visit the website because wordsarelife.com is an open-ended phrase that suggests spirituality, or at the very least higher order thinking—the very kind of thinking the reader is supposedly doing at the time he or she is reading the news section of the New York Times.  I can see this scenario working in the real world, but I can also imagine large numbers of people understanding immediately that the ad is a big sell and feeling betrayed even before they get on their computers or portable devices.

Lonely picket tells Park Avenue residents about their right-wing neighbor, David Koch

By Marc Jampole

The luxury apartment building at 740 Park Avenue in New York’s Upper East Side is so famous that it even has a book dedicated to its history. Now lots of churches and castles have volumes describing their history and residents, but not many apartment buildings achieve this mythic status. When the news media uses a single building to represent real money, it’s usually 740 Park,  which stands as a monument to Art Deco architecture at the corner of Park and East 71st Street.

Jackie Kennedy Onassis supposedly grew up here. Among other apartment unit owners we find this interesting triple play: John D. Rockefeller sold it to Saul Steinberg who sold it to Stephen Schwartzman, all billionaires and among the wealthiest men in the world when they set up housekeeping at 740. Among other notable residents of 740 Park at one time or another include Ronald Lauder, Jerzy Kosinski, Ronald Perelman, Steve Ross, John Thain and Vera Wang, all heavyweight money.

But perhaps the most infamous of the billionaires and multi-millionaires at 740 Park is David Koch, who took advantage of the awful Supreme Court decision in Citizen’s United to finance first the Tea Party and then the movement to not raise the debt ceiling or fund the government unless the Affordable Care Act was defunded. I think that even casual followers of news recognize David Koch and his less public brother Charles. 

Too bad for the other building residents that even as I write this blog entry, camped outside the door of 740 Park is a scruffy middle-aged man with three anti-Koch signs. He hangs out legally at the edge of the green awning and close to the street on completely public property.

The posters are all manufactured block print lettering in all caps on corrugated cardboard, so the letters hardly stand out and are hard to read a distance. The copy on the three signs says it all:

1.       

KOCH INDUSTRIES

LEADING THE CHARGE

IN THE CORPORATE

COUP D’ÉTAT OF

OUR DEMOCRACY

 

2.       

THE KOCH BROTHERS

DESTROYING OUR LAND

POLLUTING OUR AIR

POISONING OUR WATER

KILLING OUR DEMOCRACY

 

3.       

DAVID & CHARLES

KOCH

THE NEW FACES OF

ORGANIZED CRIME

 

The man is dressed in a denim army-style jacket and blue jeans, standard fare for protest rallies. Sometimes he stands and sometimes he sits. The man’s hair flows beneath his shoulders and is blond quickly going gray. His face has the sun creases of someone who has spent a lot of time working or playing outside. This sole protester could very easily be middle class, but what betrays his impoverished circumstances is his lack of teeth when he smiles. When he’s not engaged in conversation with willing passers-by, he reads a tattered paperback book.

The guy is passing out little two-sided postcards for a website called PopularResistance.org, which is the current website of one of the main national Occupy groups. The website should prove useful to anyone interested in protesting the current rule by the one-percenters, which has led to the most inequitable distribution of wealth since the Gilded Age. Sections of the website offer resources and information about existing protest group, forming new groups, getting informed about the issues and learning about community organizing and nonviolent protest.

It did my heart good to learn that someone was bringing the battle—in this case a class war—to the bad guys. But then I realized that the Tea Party financier is probably spending time at another of his several residences.

Or maybe Koch is on a retreat for one of the many boards of which he is a director. Or perhaps he’s visiting the theatre named after him at Lincoln Center or the dinosaur wing of the American Museum of Natural History, which also bear his name. He could even be hiding out in one of the many hospitals to which has given a collective $395 million.

I don’t look at Koch’s civic and charitable contributions as a redeeming virtue, but rather as proof that he has too much money, much of it inherited.  His charitable activities fail to lend credibility to his extremely ignorant views. Yes, he helps to educate children in paleontology, but he also pays good money to spread doubt on global warming. Even while rich folk were both entertained and edified in the David Koch theatre during recent performances, thousands of poor children across the country missed Head Start early education and nutritional programs because of the recent government shutdown.

I applaud the sole picketer and wish more would join him and that other picketers were outside the residences of the ultra wealthy who are bankrolling conservative ideas.

But all the picketing in the world will do no good unless we remember to vote for the most progressive candidates in primaries and general elections—every election, not just every four years. We also have to keep the pressure on elected officials to raise the minimum wage, pass laws that make it easier to unionize and inject more money into repairing roads, increasing mass transit and subsidizing alternative energy.

All the same, it was good to see someone tell the truth about the Kochs in front of their neighbors.

Study proving public schools outperforms private schools is ignored by news media

Marc Jampole

It doesn’t surprise me that somebody figured out how to prove that public schools outperform private schools.

And it doesn’t surprise me that this seminal study is being ignored by the mainstream news media. As of one day after Atlantic released its article reviewing The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools, a Google search yielded but one article covering the important findings of authors Sarah Theule Lubienski and Christopher A Lubienski.  

The Lubienskis took into account the effects of affluence, disabilities and other background factors and found that then public schools outperformed private schools over the past twenty years. According to Atlantic, the Lubienskis report that the Educational Testing Service, Stanford and Notre Dame all took a look at the same statistics—datasets they call it—and came to the same conclusions.

The Lubienskis aren’t saying that public school students score higher, because test comparisons show that the average private school student scores higher. But the private school student is likely to be wealthier, come from a stable family, not have a disability and not have suffered early life trauma. Correct for these factors—in a sense only compare apples that fell from the private school tree with those that fell from the public school tree—and the public school wins hands down. Not only that, but far from the crisis in public education that many see, the Lubienskis make a strong case that public schools are doing a fine job educating the youth of America.

The results of the study don’t surprise me because I live in the real world and in the real world the best get paid the most. Now I’m not saying that Alex Rodriguez deserves to make more money than Miguel Cabrera, but that they and every other professional ball player make a lot more money than minor leaguers, those in foreign leagues, semi-pros and beer league softballers.

The best lawyers tend to make the most money. The best accountants tend to make the most money. The best writers—business and entertainment—tend to make the most money. The best musicians tend to make the most money. Forget the obscene fact that Beyonce makes about 200 times what the concertmaster for the New York Philharmonic does, they both do quite well when compared to the average piano teacher who gives lessons through the Jewish Community Center or the YMCA.

Public school teachers make more money than private school teachers. Doesn’t it make sense that they would therefore do a better job and that public schools would therefore do better in quantitative comparisons?  I know that there are some very competent and dedicated private school teachers, but in general, how could they outperform public school teachers, who make so much more money?

Thus my lack of surprise to learn that public school students outperform private school students on a level playing field and that public schools and their teachers are more open to innovations and trying new learning techniques.

Nor was I surprised that the news media has ignored the Lubienski book. One of the ideological tenets of the mass media is that the private sector always outperforms the public sector. In the case of education, it's just not so, but the news media filters out this important news for ideological reasons.

The news media, owned as they are by large companies, have come to share big business’ disdain for unions, especially over the past 30 years. The news media will certainly give fair coverage to both sides of most labor disputes, but in feature coverage they give far greater voice to anti-union pundits, writers, politicians, theories and events than to those in support of unions. Weakening unions is one key strategy in the 30 year class war in which wealth has been transferred from the middle class and poor up the economic ladder to the wealthy.

Charter schools, vouchers for private schools, school and school district takeovers—virtually all of right-wing school reform attacks public school teachers because they are unionized and therefore make a decent wage. As supporters of this campaign against public teachers unions, it only makes sense that the news media ignores important books such as The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools.

We’ve been ruled by incompetent minority since Supreme Court gave 2000 election to the candidate with fewer votes

By Marc Jampole

 

Perhaps the best characterization of the U.S. political scene since the turn of the 21st century is to say that we have been ruled primarily by an incompetent minority.

Let’s face it. The victory this week over the economic know-nothing Tea Party came with very few spoils for the American people: All the majority got was the right to keep a functioning economy through the rest of the year and a continuation of the sequestration spending cuts that have hurt so many people and serve as a drag on the economy. So in a real sense the minority ruled.

And it is an incompetent minority who don’t understand fully the dire ramifications of not extending the debt ceiling and who fought a battle that they could not win. That battle cost the economy billions of dollars, put hundreds of thousands of people out of work and ground to a halt much of the workings of government, but not the processes related to the law whose implementation the minority said they wanted to impede.

It’s taken political trickery and the selection of partisanship over what’s good for the country to keep a minority—and often a minority of the minority—in power.  It started with what may have been election tampering in Florida in the 2000 presidential election that was affirmed by the Supreme Court voting along party lines. This combination of state shenanigans and Supreme Court recklessness led to a man who admitted basing decisions on gut and faith rather than facts and analysis being declared president even though he had fewer votes.

So the minority took charge in 2000, and what an incompetent minority it was: The pursuit of the Iraqi war without a plan to govern Iraq displayed incompetence. Going to war with Iraq instead of chasing Osama bin Laden displayed incompetence. Establishing a gulag of torture sites displayed incompetence because most military experts agree that torture doesn’t work (and whatever any movie portrays, the facts show that torture did not help capture bin Laden). 

Then there’s Hurricane Katrina, which displayed Bush Administration incompetence at its low point.

When Barack Obama swept into office in 2008 he brought with him an army of competent people, but after a brilliantly planned 2008 election strategy, the president and Democrats forgot that you need both houses to govern. They incompetently let the Tea Party dominate the 2010 Congressional and statewide elections. Of course, the Tea Party had a lot of help from the mainstream news media which lionized them while ignoring the many progressive candidates and rallies that took place before the 2010 election.  Analysis of polls show that Tea Party candidates won because many Democratic voters stayed home. The 2010 surge for right-wingers came about because the Democrats stupidly forgot to rally their own troops.

Once having won a majority of 2010 state legislatures, the Republicans were in a position to gerrymander new Congressional districts that gave them a large number of secure House seats.  Thus in 2012, the Republicans kept the House, even though they won millions of fewer votes for their Congressional candidates than the Democrats did.

The current Congress majority was thus elected by a minority of voters.  A minority of the minority—the Tea Party—took control of the legislative process because of the incompetence of Speaker Boehner and the fear of moderate Republicans that the Tea Party would spend lots of money to defeat them in primaries. 

And now the Tea Party has revealed how incompetent it is by driving the country to the brink of financial ruin—and for a goal that could not be attained. 

Let’s hope that Democrats have learned from the 2010 experience and treat the 2014 midterm election as if it were as important as a presidential election. That means raising a lot of money and reminding the voters constantly of how the Republican Party almost let a right-wing know-nothing faction destroy the world economy. It means sending the president, VP Biden, Bill and Hillary and new progressive heroes Elizabeth Warren and  Bill DeBlasio all over the country to campaign for Democratic Congressional representatives, state legislators, county commissioners, even dog catcher!!  It means loading vans with minorities, senior citizens and students and bringing them to the polls to vote on Election Day.  

It’s time that the American people rose up and overthrew the tyranny of the incompetent minority that has been running this country into the ground since the election of Bush II.

New study shows why we have to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour

By Marc Jampole

Your Big Mac and Baconator aren’t as cheap as you think they are. In fact, every time you bite into a burger or other fast food concoction, the federal government subsidizes your meal—and the profit made by the fast food company.

That’s because more than one half of low-wage workers employed by the largest U.S. fast food restaurants earn so little that they get public assistance.  An analysis of Census Bureau figures by researchers at the Universities of California-Berkeley and Illinois released this week found that 52% of fast food workers used Medicaid, food stamps or the Earned Income Tax Credit program, between 2007 and 2011.  In fact, more than twice as many fast food workers sign up for public aid programs than does the overall workforce.

Another study—this one by the National Employment Law project (NELP)—found that public assistance for fast food workers costs U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion a year. That’s a $3.8 billion subsidy to the fast food industry and denizens of fast food. It’s almost 2% of the total sales of the U.S. fast food industry, but a much larger portion of the profit. So if senior management of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and Sonic are enjoying their country club memberships and private pools, they have the U.S. government and taxpayers to thank.

The NELP study estimates that the average in-store fast food employee makes $8.94 an hour.  That works out to less than $20,000 per year for someone working 40 hours a week 52 weeks a year.

I can understand why taxpayers subsidize the development of alternative energies, oil and gas drilling and university attendance. But why are we subsidizing an industry that contributes so much to our national health epidemics of obesity, diabetes and heart disease?

I’m thinking that if we ended this subsidy by raising the minimum wage to a decent level—say $15 an hour—your burger and fries would likely cost a little more and that the big fast food purveyors would make a little less profit. Of course, if fast food cost what it is supposed to cost without government subsidies, maybe some part of the market for fast food would opt for healthier and tastier food.  While that might lead to healthier Americans, it would definitely lead to fast food companies making even less money. And we couldn’t have that, could we?

Could and should.

The argument that raising the minimum wage would lead to job losses is complete garbage.  Employers tend to only hire when they need someone and when they can demonstrate to themselves that the additional employee will help to make a lot more money than the new employee’s salary, benefits and cost to train and equip. Many companies get fat over time and have to do occasional trimming or purging—but that’s not related to the minimum wage. These companies didn’t hire additional workers because they were cheap, but because company management thought they needed them at the time.

It makes sense that employers like to pay as little as possible for everything, including labor. But the minimum wage sets a floor on how low employers can go for public policy reasons: most everyone would agree that it’s in the best interest of the country to make sure that people who work will be able to eat and have shelter. With the current minimum wage, far too many don’t have the basics.  It’s time to raise it.

The call for $15 an hour minimum for all workers is realistic because over the past 30 years we have allowed the minimum wage to lose ground against the cost of living and corporate profits. Keeping the minimum wage low was an integral part of the game plan in the class war against the middle class and poor that the wealthy began in this country under Reagan.

The first step in returning to a more equitable distribution of wealth is raising the minimum wage.

You might have to pay more for your hamburger, but fewer of your tax dollars will go to the public aid programs for the poor that so many Americans love to hate.

New book documents how jellyfish are inheriting the oceans, with a lot of help from humans

By Marc Jampole

If even just half of what Lisa-ann Gershwin reports in Stung! is true, then many younger readers may be telling their grandchildren stories about the long ago days when humans caught ocean fish and ate them. Stung! gives the depressing news about how we’ve managed to pollute the oceans probably beyond saving. By beyond saving, Gershwin means a return to Earth’s oceans some 500 million years ago when disgustingly slimy and stingy jellyfish ruled.

Gershwin catalogues overfished areas, red tides, jellyfish blooms, heated and oxygen deprived waters, waters polluted by fertilizer and other human wastes and man-made catastrophes that collectively are killing many fish species and destroying the ocean’s delicate cycle of life.  She gives copious examples of all the problems we have created:

• Over-fishing, which means taking so many fish out of the water that a species is doomed to extinction.  Included in overfishing is the problem of bycatch, which occurs when fishing for one species leads to the capture and destruction of other species.  There is also bottom trawling, which essentially runs a large rake across the water’s floor, picking up delicacies like shrimp but destroying plant and other animal life.
• Eutrophication, which is a type of pollution caused by excessive fertilizer and sewage runoff causing an accelerated growth of algae and other plant life, leading to a disturbance in the balance of underwater life.
• Other kinds of pollution which causes deformities or contaminates fish and other sea creatures.
• The decline in oxygen levels in the oceans, which leads to the death of virtually all higher forms of life.
• The increasing acidification of the ocean, which dissolves shells. Particularly alarming is the fact that ocean acidification destroys diatoms, tiny creatures at the base of the food chain of higher order animals like fish, whales and penguins. Acidification also makes it more conducive for the type of tiny creatures upon which jellyfish love to graze.
• Climate change, which is warming the waters, again upsetting nature’s balance and leading to the imminent extinction of many sea dwellers.

As it turns out, each of these conditions makes the waters more conducive to jellyfish, since jellyfish can live in many environments and adapt well to a lack of oxygen.  Moreover, once jellyfish get a hold on a body of water, they multiply to the point of crowding out other life forms.

Stung! holds out absolutely no hope that we can fix the oceans. Gershwin’s last words in the book are “If you are waiting for me to offer some great insight, some morsel of wisdom, some words of advice…okay then…Adapt.”

But what does adaptation mean? I’m guessing that it means giving up on eating any creature from the ocean and figuring out how to eliminate the pollution from industrial fisheries, which right now contribute to the problem by dumping waste matter from production into the water. We’ll have to limit water sports to pools and other manmade structures, which we can keep clean of pollutants and jellyfish.  We’ll have to figure out how to keep jellyfish from destroying the filters of a variety of operations sited on bodies of water. It might mean developing technologies that actively clean carbon-dioxide out of the ocean water. It certainly will mean ending our dependence on burning fossil fuels, which is both warming the waters and injecting carbon into them.

Another recent book, Countdown by Alan Weisman, tells us what else we have to do: reduce the human population. We currently have about 7 billion people in the world and counting.

Some biologists think we can sustain 1.5 billion people living the kind of life we live in industrialized countries. My own back-of-the-envelope, seat-of-my-pants, pulled-out-of-thin-air estimate of the earth’s carrying capacity for humans is 1.0 billion. I pick that number because it’s the number of people on the earth in 1800.

My own belief—and it is only a belief—is that humans are so smart that we will survive, even if that means a return to living lives that, as Thomas Hobbes once put it, are “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  I assume that survival of humans will only come at the cost of a great decline in our population. My only question is whether war, epidemics, famine and chemical poisoning—the four horsemen of the Apocalypse—will cause the decline in our numbers or if we will take matters into our own hands and do it through birth control and family planning