Puget Sound Liberals Weekly Newsletter #203
Enhancing Freedom, Opportunity and Cooperation in
Through informing and networking Liberals and Liberal Organizations.
Our vision is hundreds of thousands of well-informed
Our Website Our Editor To Unsubscribe Table of
Contents * Featured Articles Calendars of Events Communication with Our Members Opportunities Petitions Commentaries from Our Members Liberals and Democrats Links to the Beef The Courage of Our Convictions* State and Local Links
to the Beef Featured Advocacy Group: United for a Fair Economy Don’t Stereotypically Punish Police Brutality** Nation and World Links to the Beef My Approach
to Creating Well Paying Jobs** Our Liberal Spirit Thanksgiving and Responsibility Our
Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean
Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and
Competent Spending ·
Investment for
Productivity ·
Quality
Health, Education, Jobs, Income ·
Environmental
Protection and Energy Independence ·
Security and
Equal Rights ·
Justice and
Peace Everywhere ·
International
Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives oppose all of these Let’s
End Our National Nightmare
Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More on Conservative opposition to our
American Dream Washington State’s 5 Major Needs · Federal Funding for Health and Education · Substituting
a Progressive Income Tax · Replacing
Conservative Legislators Quote of the Week As much has been given
us, much will be expected from us.
Theodore Roosevelt As we express our
gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to
utter words, but to live by them. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Calendar of Events
Saturday,
December 12: All union members and organizations are urged to turn out and
bring their union banners and homemade signs to "Health Care 4 the
Holidays" rallies, organized by Health Care for America NOW! and the
Healthy Washington Coalition. Here is the schedule:
BELLINGHAM -- Noon at City Hall, 210 Lottie St.
BREMERTON -- 10:30 a.m. to noon at Harborside
Fountain Park.
EVERETT -- 1 p.m. at the Courthouse Amphitheater, Rockefeller & Pacific
OLYMPIA -- Permit application pending for noon at Heritage Park,
adjacent to the Capitol Campus.
SEATTLE -- 2 to 3 p.m. at Occidental
Park at Occidental Ave. South and S. Main St. Health
care rally featuring Congressman Jim McDermott, Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn,
Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, Leno Rose-Avila, holiday caroling & more!! Participants are encouraged to bring holiday
greeting cards to Senators Murray and Cantwell saying why you want them to pass
health care reform before Congress takes its holiday recess.
SPOKANE -- Time/location TBA
TACOMA -- 1:30 to 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 621 Tacoma Ave. S.
VANCOUVER -- Time/location TBA
YAKIMA -- 1 p.m. at Chesterly Park, N. 40th Ave and Powerhouse Rd.
We
have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve something for which American
working families have fought for decades: genuine health care reform. We have
an opportunity to loosen the albatross of insurance company greed that is
making health insurance unaffordable, squeezing middle-class budgets, harming
U.S. businesses' competitiveness, and perpetuating the moral crisis of rampant
medical bankruptcies. We have the opportunity to do this for ourselves, for our
children and for their children.
But
well-heeled insurance industry and short-sided business lobbying groups are
spending millions every day to convince Congress to maintain the status quo and
kill health insurance reform. Although they have been voted into the minority,
politically motivated Republicans are doing everything in their power to keep
President Barack Obama from succeeding in this effort. That's why we need to keep up the pressure
and remind Congress that working families continue demand real health care
reform. For more information about the legislation before Congress, visit the AFL-CIO's
Health Care web site.
Communication
with Our Members
A Quiet Week. Then Lots of Action.
With congress in recess during the long
Thanksgiving weekend, there were fewer political events than usual. Returning from their recess, our Senate is
deliberating health care reform. President
Obama has just presented his decisions concerning the Afghanistan war. President Obama held a jobs summit on Thursday,
which will likely result in some new measures to create jobs. And President Obama plans to go to Copenhagen
to promote agreement concerning measures to reduce global warming.
Opportunities
Useful
Websites: contacts, maps, community organizing tools, and more.
Petitions
Tell
our congress members to removed the Stupak/Pitts amendment from our health
reform bill.
Tell
Harry Reid to pass a bill with a public option or use the reconciliation
approach.
Tell
government officials to protect polar bears from offshore oil and gas drilling.
Tell
President Obama to send no additional troops to Afghanistan.
Commentaries
From Our Members
Liberals
and Democrats
Government Watch
Also go to Whitehouse.gov.
Health Care Reform
Rationing
health care now occurs unfairly. Many
of us want to ration other people’s health care, but not our own.
Jobs
Commentary on
the Jobs Summit held on Thursday, December 3rd will be included in
next week’s newsletter. See
my recommendations below.
Regulating Derivatives and Financial Companies
House Financial
Services Committee Chair Barney
Frank will likely pass a reform bill which eliminates most derivatives,
those which don’t hedge against specific losses. Lobbyists
for large financial companies are weakening many reforms. See my recommendations below.
Climate Control
President
Obama will go to Copenhagen to indicate U.S. greenhouse gas reduction targets,
even though he is handicapped by lack of final congressional action. For
more. Funds are needed to stop
deforestation. Congress
should not delay passing the Clean Energy Jobs and American
Protection Act.
Mining Law Reform
For the first
time in over a decade, congress
with White House support is considering reforming our mining law to
regulate mining, make miners pay part of what they obtain and clean up after
past mining
Afghanistan
President Obama
expressed his decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 30,000. These will focus upon:
·
Co-opting non-ideological Taliban
fighters,
·
Assisting local villagers to develop
their villages and defend themselves from Taliban and corrupt government
intrusions
·
Working with non-corrupt government
officials
·
Pressuring Hamid Karzai to eliminate
corruption
·
Training the Afghan army
·
Cooperating with Pakistan to
eliminate safe havens for Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists.
Hopefully these
measures will be successful by the end of 2011, so that American troops can be
withdrawn. Hamid Karzai and other
Afghans are warned that if these measures are not successful by the end of
2011, we will still withdraw, leaving them subject to Taliban influence.
Land Mines
Our U.S.
doesn’t use land mines and is paying to defuse old ones. But our military wants to preserve its
options. And President Obama is bowing
to them. So in spite of Senator Patrick
Leahy’s efforts, we are one of the few
countries which aren’t ratifying the treaty to ban land mines.
The Courage of Our Convictions
By Minnesota State Senator John
Marty, November 30, 2009
If 21st
Century Progressives led the 19th Century Abolition Movement, we'd still have
slavery, but we'd have limited it to 40 hour work weeks, and we'd be so proud
of the progress we'd made.
In earlier eras of U.S. history, progressives believed they could fight
injustice and move society forward, and they did so. Today however, many
progressives have lost faith in their ability to affect significant change.
Many are content simply to tinker with problems, whether the issue is getting living
wages for work, ending poverty, or removing toxins from our food supply.
For example, consider universal health care. All progressives claim to support
this, but many aren't willing to fight for it -- not because they believe it’s
bad policy, but because they believe it is "politically unrealistic."
When our proposed Minnesota Health Plan is offered as a way to deliver
universal health care, some dismiss it as legislation that can't happen for
decades. They talk about universal health care but offer and support
proposals that are mere band-aids.
It is instructive to look back to the past. Despite the reality that men were
the only ones who held office and the only ones who could vote, suffragettes
fought and won the seemingly impossible goal of gaining the right to vote. In
the 1960's civil rights activists believed they could get rid of segregation
laws and get equal rights under the law. When told they were expecting change
to occur too rapidly, Martin Luther King wrote a book explaining, "Why
We Can't Wait."
Today, however, regardless of the speed of other changes in society, many
progressives have lost hope. For them, such a book would now be titled, "Why
We Need to be Pragmatic and Accept Token Change."
This timidity can be explained by decades of defeat at the hands of right wing
politicians like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, which caused many progressives to
retreat from a "Politics of Principle" to a supposed "Politics
of Pragmatism" that is not only lacking in courage, but also has been
highly ineffective.
Under the politics of principle, the progressive movement would fight for the
goal, using pragmatic politics only to figure out how to promote the message.
But with the current politics of misguided pragmatism, some progressives
calculate what is politically acceptable, and then determine what
they will stand for. For example, using this "pragmatism," President
Obama decided to push for health insurance for more instead of
health care for all.
One cannot totally fault the President for failing to push for comprehensive
reform. He shied away from principle-based reform because he knows that members
of Congress working on health reform take big campaign contributions from the
health insurance lobby and other powerful interests. He knows that they are
afraid of nasty campaign attacks and believe they need the big money to win
reelection.
"Pragmatically," Democrats in Washington are pushing for
"universal" health care that isn't universal. They are pushing for
reforms that cost more, not less, and policies that focus more on their sense
of pragmatism than on real public health and prevention.
It's time for progressives to have the courage of our convictions. If we claim
to believe in universal health care, we need to fight for it. The MN Health
Plan -- which covers everyone for all their medical needs, and costs less than
we are spending now -- is on the table. Those who are not willing to take on
the powerful insurance lobby, ought to be honest and admit that reelection and
other priorities matter more.
Refusing to fight for it because it is "not politically realistic"
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Likewise, dismissing it as something that
will take decades to pass means leaving the problem to the next generation.
Whether the issue is living wages for workers, environmental protection, or
LGBT equality, many progressives have lost courage. They fight to raise the
minimum wage by fifty cents for every dollar that inflation takes away. Even in
victory, we accomplish little.
It is time to move beyond fear and stand up for the principles we say we
believe in. Minnesotans deserve nothing less.
Minnesota State Senator John
Marty
Here’s the Beef
President Obama should make clear that he is cleaning
up the mess made by President Bush and his Republican colleagues, who
should pitch in to help clean it up.
Whatever
health care reform bill passes will contain enough positive features to be a
step forward.
Health
care reform bills should include more specifics for stopping infection in
hospitals.
Paul
Starr offers suggestions for faster implementation of health care reforms.
Whatever
President Obama decides to do in Afghanistan, it should be paid for by cuts or
taxes. For more.
President Obama could
benefit from following President Kennedy’s profile of courage.
Republicans establish 10
litmus tests for their candidates. Ronald
Reagan would have flunked these tests.
This helps Democrats who will only have to run against extremists.
There
is one less turkey on television: Lou Dobbs.
State
and Local
State of Working Washington
Hi Dave. I want to give you an introduction to our Economic Opportunity Institute’s 2009
“State
of Working Washington” report:
·
Many hallmarks of
middle-class life – owning a home, sending the kids to college, having health
care, and building a nest egg for the golden years – have become increasingly
unattainable for Washington families.
·
Even as costs have
increased, today’s households and workers have less income than was the norm
just a decade ago. Worse yet, most middle-income Washington families hadn’t
even dug out of the economic hole created by the last recession before the
“Great Recession” of 2008-09. By contrast, high-income households have
continued to pull away from everyone else on the economic ladder.
·
State budget cuts
have fed the downward spiral, though unemployment insurance has provided some
counter-cyclical stimulus. The report calls on state lawmakers to implement an
agenda for shared prosperity in 2010 that will position Washington and its
residents for future economic growth.
In addition, see
our press release. To obtain more
information, call our report’s main author Marilyn Watkins (206-529-6370). Thanks, Aaron
Keating
I find the following
statements in the report particularly important:
Washington
State has pursued a mixed public policy course. We have a higher minimum wage, more
people covered by health insurance, more workers in unions, and lower levels of
poverty than the national average.
But
Washington has also pulled back on public investments over the past two
decades. A
regressive and archaic tax structure has fed anti-tax initiatives and left
policymakers with few tools for combating a structural deficit, short of
comprehensive tax reform.
From 1992 to 2007, Washington’s rank
among the states in total per-capita K-12 spending fell from 17th to 33rd. Measured by our relatively high personal
incomes, our rank in school spending fell from 24th to 47th. While we are 5th nationally in the awarding
of associate degrees, we place a dismal 37th in awarding bachelor degrees and
39th in professional degrees. State budget cuts have fed a downward spiral
of job loss, falling incomes, and declining public investments. In response to
sharply falling tax revenues in the spring of 2009, Washington’s legislature
and Governor adopted a two-year budget with deep cuts in education, health
care, the social safety net, and public sector jobs. In fact, the state
employed 5,000 few people in September 2009 than in September 2008. Without
federal aid, these cuts would have been far deeper.
On
a more positive note, Washington did use the resources of a strong unemployment
insurance system to augment checks to unemployed workers – precisely the kind
of counter-cyclical stimulus the system was designed to provide. While full recovery from the recession will
depend on federal action, the Washington legislature can take action in 2010 to
position our state and its people to take full advantage of economic growth, and
to ensure widespread opportunity and prosperity for individuals and businesses.
A state agenda for shared prosperity includes:
·
Expanding investments in education, including
expanding quality early learning programs, accelerating implementation of
full-day kindergarten, fully funding basic education, expanding access to
higher education and rolling back excessive tuition increases.
·
Responding to the decline in work-place
benefits by restoring the Basic Health Plan, adopting Retirement Investment
Security Accounts,7 setting a new workplace standard for employer provided paid
sick days, and both funding and expanding the family and medical leave
insurance program.
·
Expanding the state tax base to provide immediate new revenues,
including new taxes on candy, gum, and bakery goods; pop syrup, soft drinks,
and bottled water; and selected services. And then taking the first steps
toward creating a fairer and more stable tax structure. Dave
Thomas
Featured Advocacy Group
-------------------------------- United for a Fair
Economy ---------------------------
Mission
United for a Fair
Economy (UFE) raises
awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt
democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart. We support and
help build social movements for greater equality.
Vision
Our vision is of a global society where prosperity
is better shared, where there is genuine equality of opportunity, where the
power of concentrated money and corporations neither dominates the economy nor
dictates the content of mass culture. We envision communities and nations
without disparities of income, wages, wealth, health, safety, respect, and
opportunities for recreation and personal growth.
We aspire to build communities that are socially
and environmentally sustainable, where children are cherished and nurtured, and
cultural and racial differences among people are valued and celebrated. We
envision an economy where everyone contributes to society with their labor and
everyone benefits from society's financial growth. We envision a society in
which values, not profits alone, guide economic decisions.
Goals
Our goals are to close the growing wealth divide,
to change the rules that tilt tax benefits increasingly toward the wealthy, to
spotlight the role of race in economic inequality, and to serve as a forum
where different races, different cultures, and people with varying degrees of
wealth can come together to work for economic justice.
Strategies
Education for Action: We use
participatory education to deepen analysis, develop critical thinking, and move
people to action. We have conducted our flagship workshop, "The Growing
Divide: Economic Inequality and the Roots of Insecurity" for over 70,000
people in religious congregations, unions, community organizations and business
associations.
In the past year, we trained over 400 people to
lead the "Growing Divide" and other UFE curricula on racial wealth
disparities, globalization, and state budget crises. We organized a three day
Training of Trainers' Institute in Tennessee. And, we have conducted
Spanish-language workshops.
Media: We reach beyond the
converted to expand the public conversation and influence debate on economic
issues. Our capacity to influence public attitudes through talk radio, print
media, and television continues to grow. Our work has also appeared on a
variety of blogs and online magazines.
Our media work multiplies our reach and adds
credibility to our message of economic fairness. We have had more than 2,000
media hits in the past two years. The campaign to preserve the estate tax alone
yielded 500 major media hits in a three-month period. Our message - and often
our spokespeople - was covered by every major television network and syndicated
print publication.
Research Publications and Books: We write,
research, and disseminate articles, books, and curricula for a variety of
constituencies. We produce several yearly reports on wage disparities, the
influence of race on economics, corporate responsibility, and other topics tied
to current events. We conduct original research but also repackage existing
reports and data to make them accessible to wider audiences.
Responsible Wealth: Our
Responsible Wealth (RW) project is a surprising and welcome voice for economic
fairness. This network of over 750 business leaders, investors and other
wealthy people works to build a fairer economy through shareholder activism,
support for the living wage, and fair taxation work.
RW members have filed numerous shareholder
resolutions advocating a fairer economy over the years. And once again, RW's
voice was the backbone of the most recent victory in staving off permanent
repeal of the federal estate tax.
Cross-Class, Cross-Race Networking Opportunities: At UFE, the
feeling is strong that social change will not happen without a multi-racial,
multi-cultural and multi-class base. Across the country, we need to foster a
broad sentiment for greater equality. To move closer to this goal, we sponsor
and organize a variety of events that bring together those from different walks
of life and encourage individuals and groups to build relationships to
strengthen the economic justice movement.
A project of UFE, Responsible
Wealth is a network of over 700 business leaders and wealthy individuals in
the top 5% of wealth and/or income in the US who use their surprising voice to
advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability.
Use Your Voice. Join RW Today! As a Responsible Wealth member, you can participate in a number of ways,
including:
·
Write letters to
the editor and/or op-eds.
·
Talk to the press
about economic fairness issues (taxes, wage issues, budget issues, corporate
accountability, etc.).
·
Take the Tax Fairness Pledge to redirect your Clinton and Bush-era tax cuts to tax
fairness efforts.
·
Help preserve a
strong estate tax by signing the Call or participating in our lobby days.
·
Advocate
progressive taxation at the state level.
·
Participate in
our shareholder accountability work by filing resolutions, attending annual meetings or
assigning your proxy for others to attend meetings.
·
Sponsor an
organizer from your state to participate in one of UFE's Trainings of Trainers.
·
Network with
other wealthy individuals and progressive business leaders at UFE and RW
events.
For more information, read the Responsible Wealth Action News.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don’t Stereotypically Punish Police Brutality
As I commented concerning the police treatment of the Harvard
University profession, showing disrespect for law enforcement agents typically
has nasty consequences. But it is not
illegal. No law enforcement agent has
the right to punish anyone for showing disrespect, only for resisting arrest
and threatening physical harm.
Yet we frequently see on television police punishing people for
showing disrespect. Recently two police
were in a jail cell, when one threw a woman against a wall. She could not escape or harm the police. All they had to do was leave the cell. Not long before that, we saw a similar
happening out on a street. And we have
seen many others going back to the police beating Rodney King in Los
Angeles. In each case, the other police
that are present appear not to object.
Instead they support the beatings or killings and any review board exonerates
the behavior as justified.
Based on these experiences, I believe that if I answered a knock
on my door while unarmed to be confronted by several police agents and one shot
me, claiming he thought I was armed, the other would support him as would any
review board. My murder would go
unpunished. It is not right that any
police agent can without punishment kill any citizen.
I don’t believe that most police want to beat or kill anyone, but
a significant number do as evidenced by the gusto with which they acted during
the Seattle WTA protests and similar demonstrations, not unlike the behavior
that we have recently seen in Iran.
Just as it is wrong for police to treat Blacks stereotypically, so
it is wrong for anyone to stereotypically punish police. There is no evidence that the Seattle
policeman and four Lakewood Police agents were guilty of illegally punishing
people. And the killer was crazy, with
no personal experience of ill treatment by police. Instead, the system had treated him much too
leniently.
In the absence of any official sanctions, can it ever be justified
for citizens to punish police who behave illegally? One of the justifications for the 2nd
(gun rights) constitutional amendment is to allow citizens to resist government
oppression. In any event, I repeat that
it is wrong for anyone to stereotypically punish police, without regard to
whether they have personally been guilty of unjustified police brutality.
Here’s the Beef
The Washington
State Budget and Policy Center has finally admitted that revenue increases may
be necessary, but still fails to discuss fair revenue increases.
How
about encouraging your community to become a slow city?
Nation
and World
My Approach to Creating Well Paying Jobs
1. Reduce Special Interest Lobbyist Influence
Create Elections Commission within
Judicial Branch, which would regulate:
·
Delimiting of
congressional districts
·
Public campaign
financing
·
Instant run-off
elections
·
Campaign
practices, including debates and advertising
Legally declare that
corporations aren’t people, with civil rights that people have, such as rights
to privacy, association, expression and lobbying, in accordance with the
approach taken by European companies
2. Pay for Reforms
·
Create
progressive income tax affecting 5% of people who have highest incomes with at
least 50% top rate
·
Reduce federal
deficit to no more than the rate at which economy is growing
3. Create Government Jobs
·
Create WPA type
program targeted to younger job seekers to do infrastructure maintenance and
green jobs
·
Fund health and
education services which are provided by state and local governments
4. Stimulate Private Employment
·
Substitute value
added tax for FICA jobs tax (Read
ideas from Business Week)
·
Eliminate
employer paid health care insurance
·
Pay employers to
provide employees more time off at same wages (Read Dean
Baker’s commentary)
5. Grant Money to Deserving People Who Will Spend It
·
Increase minimum
wage
·
Increase earned
income tax credit
·
Extend
unemployment insurance to all unemployed
6. Encourage Unionization
·
Increase
penalties for employers who violate worker’s rights
·
Approve employee
check off system for adopting a union
·
Encourage unions
to include more workers than the ones they represent with particular employees
7. Reduce Speculation
·
Implement
financial transactions tax (Read
Paul Krugman’s commentary)
·
Eliminate hedges
where no loss by hedger is involved (Washington Senator Maria
Cantwell is also trying to regulate derivatives.)
·
Pass
Glass-Steagall Act to separate commercial and investment bank activity (Read Robert
Weissman commentary.)
·
Increase margin
requirements for stock purchases
·
Increase % of
securities sold by investment bank which must be retained
·
Divide ‘too big
to fail’ financial companies
·
Substitute
purchase of social security add-ons for 401(k)s
8. Protect People from Undeserved Financial Loss
·
Implement health
care reform which provides everyone with health care coverage
·
Reform bankruptcy
law to enable people to eliminate undeserved debts
·
Nullify
fraudulent mortgages
·
Allow people
whose mortgages are foreclosed to stay in houses as renters
Dean Baker has proposed several
of the above recommendations.
In Summary: These measures would
·
Create and
stimulate jobs and protect people from undeserved financial losses
·
Eliminate most
speculation
·
Eliminate the
power of lobbyists to oppose such reforms
·
Raise revenues to
lower federal deficits.
They would help us change our
mindset and practices from Borrow,
Consume and Speculate to Earn,
Conserve and Invest. Also see Paul
Starr’s suggestions. And Jeff
Faux’s commentary.
Here’s the Beef
New
analyses indicate stimulus-recovery package is working as far as it goes.
Dean
Baker emphasizes that our government deficits are less dangerous than the
alternative: failing infrastructure and massive unemployment.
Help
Main Street People instead of Banks, but letting them rent instead of own their
houses.
See
some ads that are being used to persuade people to take climate change
seriously.
Dubai
is environmentally and morally wrong.
Al Gore says oil shale
leaves an enormous carbon footprint.
We can and must reduce
our resources footprint.
We
can save energy by making products which are durable, repairable and
upgradable.
Our
domestic terrorists are the products of our wars.
Our
Liberal Spirit
Thanksgiving and
Responsibility
Living in a Liberal
environment which offers freedom, opportunity, fairness, competence and
compassion is of little avail if our mindset doesn’t allow us to benefit from
them. We must be grateful for our good
fortune to have an environment with at least some of these features, instead of
assuming that our benefits all result simply from our own actions. We must understand that we depend upon others
and are responsible for maintaining and enhancing our freedom, opportunity,
fairness, competence and compassion for all of us.
Only if we and others
maintain this mindset of gratitude and responsibility, will we and others
continue to have a Liberal environment and its benefits. Remembering our less
fortunate.
Recommended Books – See our list of books for liberals
Kyrsten Sinema, 2009, Unite
and Conquer. How to Build Coalitions
that Win and Last.
This book describes in detail the approach used by Saul Alinsky,
Sound Alliance and Barack Obama. It
consists of getting to know your opponent enough to find some concerns you have
in common. You then reframe your concern
in terms of your common concerns. If
successful, you can cooperate with your opponent without sacrificing your own
values. Even if you decide that you
don’t need to do this, it is worthwhile to read this book to understand
coalition building as an option.