Back to life, back to reality... Gov't shutdown edition

Apologies for being MIA for more than a month. But I'm back, and here's what I have to say:

Republicans don't like Title X, and I don't like Republicans. Or Bill O'Reilly.

Several news outlets are reporting this morning that the government is on the verge of a shutdown because of Republican intransigence over Title X funding and other policy issues, none of which have anything real to do with the budget. Thankfully the Democrats, led by New York's own Senator Chuck Schumer, are standing strong against these efforts, at least so far.

But the conservative thinking on these issues is truly scary. In an interview last night with Charlie Rangel, Bill O'Reilly tried to differentiate between Title X funding and other health care funding, saying that: "Health care is another matter....That has to be taken very methodically because people's lives are affected....Nobody's life is affected by Planned Parenthood."

Perhaps he'd care to actually speak to one of the 3 million women and men who go to Planned Parenthood every year? If he doesn't want to have to be in a room with one of these radical people, he can just hear from them on the interwebs. But, as the Huffington Post points out, O'Reilly isn't the only one oblivious to the people who this actually affects: "The negotiations are dominated by men," Ryan Grim writes. "All of the principal negotiators in both parties are male, as are most of the senior staff involved."

NATO Kills 9 Afghan Children

Here's the worst story of the past 24 hours (beating out lots of competition for that title): NATO forces in Afghanistan "accidentally" killed 9 Afghan boys who were gathering firewood. Apparently the NATO troops who shot them from a helicopter mistook them for grown men who had earlier attacked a NATO operating base. I put "accidentally" in quotes not because I think it was purposeful, but because I just think it's appalling to excuse the murder of 9 children as an accident.

The story is doubly horrifying precisely because it's getting so little press in the U.S. It was buried on the fourth page of the New York Times and I didn't hear anything about it on NPR this morning. The hourly news headlines did, though, lead with a story about two U.S. soldiers killed in Germany, supposedly by an Islamic militant, although as usual the story didn't offer any evidence for that assumption.

It saddens me that we've gotten so complacent about our country's involvement in two unnecessary wars, and so certain that there's no way to end those wars and get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, that we've basically just started to ignore the atrocities that are going on there in our names. Killings of civilians were among the most important motivators for the antiwar movement during the Vietnam era, but today those killings happen so frequently and with so little news coverage that they barely raise a ripple. If we wonder why "Islamic extremists" are attacking U.S. soldiers in Germany, we might want to start by looking at U.S. soldiers killing children in Afghanistan.

What’s Really Behind the Attacks on Title X

John Boehner made a very telling comment in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network on Sunday. Discussing the proposed continuing resolution (CR) that will keep the federal government operating for two more weeks, he acknowledged that the Republicans will probably allow Title X’s funding for Planned Parenthood to continue for now, but not in the long term. Here’s his reasoning:

“The goal here again is to cut spending and keep the government open. I met with a lot of religious leaders earlier today to talk about the strategy and I think it’s important that we understand that what we want to do here is win the war not just win a battle. And there will be an opportunity some time in order to win the big war and we're looking for that opportunity. I don't think this short term CR is the opportunity that will get us there.”

So, for all the Republicans’ talk about the need to cut government spending, Boehner admitted here pretty clearly that the fight against Title X has nothing to do with that. Instead, it’s a capitulation to “religious leaders” and pro-lifers, and it actually detracts from accomplishing the goals of “cut[ting] spending and keep[ing] the government open.”

For those of us who support Planned Parenthood and all the other family planning providers out there, Boehner has given us fair warning. He’s planning a “big war,” so if we manage to sustain Title X funding during the current budget battle, we can’t let that make us complacent.

The good news is that Chuck Schumer has big plans to defend Title X: he told a rally on Saturday that the Republicans’ planned Title X cuts will be “dead on arrival” in the Senate. I, for one, am going to be writing him a letter to thank him and tell him to keep up the good work. Are you?

A CEO, A Public Employee, a Tea Partier, and a Democratic Governor...

This joke has been floating around the internet for the past couple of days: “A unionized public employee, a tea party supporter, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a dozen cookies on a plate. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier, and says, ‘Watch out for that union guy. He wants some of your cookie.’”

Brilliant, and it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so true. I woke up this morning to a radio report  about how the “surplus” income tax on people earning over $250,000 annually in New York is going to expire and talks to extend it are going nowhere, partially because Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo doesn’t support its extension. Instead, in order to balance the budget he apparently favors slashing health care for the poor, firing thousands of public school teachers in some of the state’s neediest neighborhoods, and cutting funding for the city’s already cash-strapped public transit system.

What is wrong with this picture?! Wealthy people in America pay the lowest taxes they’ve paid since before World War II, and to offset that lost revenue state governments around the country, as well as the federal government, are slashing programs for the poor and middle class. Investment bankers and large corporations did most of the work getting us into the economic mess in which we find ourselves – but they’ve largely recovered while everyone else is watching their wages get cut and government services get eviscerated.

Thanks to the influence of those same bankers and multinational corporations, the solutions elected officials are offering are to cut taxes, give those corporations more money, and cut education, health, and social service spending for the rest of us. Goldman Sachs and Moody’s Analytics just completed separate studies showing that these strategies are going to seriously hurt the economic recovery and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs – but it seems that no one in Albany or Washington is listening.

These days the world often really feels like a very, very dark version of Alice in Wonderland.

Americans Used to Agree on Public Funding for Family Planning. What Happened?

I have a guest post today on Slate's XX Factor blog about the history of Title X, the federal family planning program that House Republicans would like to eliminate. Check it out! I'll elaborate on it here in the next day or two, because it turns out to be hard to summarize my dissertation in 600 words.

100 Years Later, We Know Their Names

There's a haunting story in yesterday's Times about a researcher who has finally managed to compile a list of all 146 people killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire 100 years ago. The haunting part of it is that nobody had managed to do so earlier. I had no idea that until now there were at least 6 people who died in the fire but had never been identified. A researcher named Michael Hirsch has spent the last few years combing at least 30 newspapers from the early 20th century, correlating missing person reports and death notices with public records, charity reports, and descendants' stories to compile the most accurate and complete list to date of those who died in the fire.

This story is a harsh reminder of the anonymity of immigrants' and poor people's lives in early 20th century urban America. All of those who died had relatives and friends in New York at the time who knew they were missing after the fire, but their bodies were burned beyond recognition and their disappearances weren't tracked, even with the enormous amount of publicity that the fire received at the time. Plus, the relatives' grief may have prevented earlier positive identifications. The Times mentions one family who put a notice about a missing relative in the Forward, the Yiddish newspaper, saying that "We believe that he survived the fire, but from great fear and being upset he went mad and is wandering the streets."

It's tragic that it took so long to find these names, but better late than never, I suppose.

On Wisconsin

I've been inspired by what's going on in Wisconsin over the past week. It's exciting to see some serious labor and progressive activism, for once, and also to see that some Democrats have the spine to stand up to horrendous Republican proposals. It's clear that governor's proposal is just an attempt to decimate one of the last strongholds of organized labor in the country - the public sector - and I'm glad to see how many people all over the country have responded with horror. Did you hear about the pizza place in Madison that's delivered 1,000 pizza orders to the protestors at the state capitol, paid for by supporters all over the country?

Wisconsin has a long history of progressivism so it makes sense to me that this fight is happening there, but it's also why it's incredibly infuriating that the governor is such a rabid conservative. Wisconsin was the home of Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (in 1910),  as well as leading Progressive politician Robert La Follette and many of the other major voices of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century. It was the birthplace of many labor laws and other reforms that we take for granted today, including the nation's first worker's compensation law. La Follette and the other Progressives fought the political power of railroads and other big corporations by breaking up monopolies and taxing corporate profits, helped create one of the nation's strongest public university systems, and regulated factory safety and work hours. Milwaukee had socialist mayors from 1910 until 1941.

I hope that the current effort to erode the collective bargaining power of Wisconsin's public employee unions doesn't set the kind of precedent that the 20th century progressive reforms did. What has upset me most about the whole situation was seeing pictures of the counter-demonstrators who came out yesterday to yell at the union activists. I hate that we have a political climate right now that pits "taxpayers" against "workers," failing to recognize that they are often the same people, and that those "workers" provide services that the "taxpayers" need, want, and appreciate. It is in all of our interests to make sure that public workers are well-compensated, not least because they help set a model of compensation that includes full benefits and retirement packages. I recognize that most American workers don't get those things anymore, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't all get them. The answer is not to demand the destruction of the few remaining jobs that provide a real safety net, but to demand that ALL of us get that kind of a safety net.