Meet The 18 People Who Could Determine The Fate Of Social Security | TPMDC
Why did President Obama appoint a bunch of millionaires to meet in secret about cutting Social Security in the name of deficit/debt reduction? Why did he put Social Security on the commission's agenda? Social Security does not contribute to the deficit/debt. There are solvency problems within Social Security -- a shortfall in payouts thirty-plus years from now. The shortfall problem can be addressed within the framework of the Trust Fund by raising the cap on income that is subject to FICA contributions. The projected Social Security shortfall and debate about how to fix it do not bear upon imminent deficit causes and cures. Do not let the deficit commission make Social Security the scapegoat for true fiscal reforms such as raising taxes on the rich, cutting corporate welfare, ending wars.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
White House unloads anger over criticism from 'professional left’
The Hill Mobile - White House unloads anger over criticism from 'professional left’
According to the White House, progressive critics of Obama-style triangulation/centrism "ought to be drug tested..." Gibbs's ad hominems and overall disrespect for independent thinking makes me wonder why. After all, too many progressives (including some in the "professional left") have bent over backwards to rationalize, justify, and excuse the myriad disappointments emanating from the Obama Administration. There's a lot of mischief either in the works or coming down the pike that we need to resolve to fight -- inequalities in health provision codified in the new health care law; assaults on social security and medicare in the name of debt reduction; deepening stratification of educational quality in the name of education reform; cuts in food stamps and other poverty programs despite rising need for assistance; draconian immigration practices and elitist gestures toward reform; not to mention the disastrous war in Afghanistan. The White House would do well to stand up to the enemies of peace, equality, equity, and justice -- rather than assail those who call them out.
According to the White House, progressive critics of Obama-style triangulation/centrism "ought to be drug tested..." Gibbs's ad hominems and overall disrespect for independent thinking makes me wonder why. After all, too many progressives (including some in the "professional left") have bent over backwards to rationalize, justify, and excuse the myriad disappointments emanating from the Obama Administration. There's a lot of mischief either in the works or coming down the pike that we need to resolve to fight -- inequalities in health provision codified in the new health care law; assaults on social security and medicare in the name of debt reduction; deepening stratification of educational quality in the name of education reform; cuts in food stamps and other poverty programs despite rising need for assistance; draconian immigration practices and elitist gestures toward reform; not to mention the disastrous war in Afghanistan. The White House would do well to stand up to the enemies of peace, equality, equity, and justice -- rather than assail those who call them out.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
t r u t h o u t | A Long Stay
383,524 immigrants currently are being detained by ICE -- many of them in private detention centers. Only around 16% of detainees are represented by attorneys. Check out: t r u t h o u t | A Long Stay
Friday, July 9, 2010
Why Progressives Disappoint Themselves
Eric Alterman shares many insights in his analysis of why progressives have little to celebrate even though Democrats control the federal government (Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now | The Nation).
He describes and explains the new countermajoritarianism, pinpointing systemic and individual reasons why conservatives have so often derailed what might have been progressive Democratic initiatives. The problem, though, is that there hasn't been a lot that's progressive in many Democratic initiatives of late, starting with health care reform. So ultimately, Alterman's analysis passes the buck for progressive disappointments -- exonerating Obama and Democrats in Congress by pointing to the influence of factors beyond the Democrats' control -- monied minorities, "the American political system," GOP obstructionist parliamentary games, and more.
We do live in a political universe in which money and media power can drown out, manipulate, or pervert majority will. Polls tell us that even if popular majorities did control how government acts, they would not necessarily or automatically push for inclusive or redistributive or even fair public policies. Political culture and ideology can crimp our solidarity with others, just as the rules and structures of politics can make it difficult to legislate generous policy. But none of these impediments make political solidarity and policy generosity impossible. History teaches us that "change" can happen and can move the polity in a progressive direction.
In Who Cares?: Public Ambivalence and Government Activism from the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs remind us that individual and collective traits like courage, leadership, and moral compass matter a lot in politics -- and are essential to achieving significant policy change. They look at presidencies that accomplished major social policy innovation to help low income and economically insecure individuals and families, showing that both Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were not achieved because the proposed policies were popular but because political leaders actually led. As Newman and Jacobs put it, "The essence of leadership is not registering the popular will and transforming it into policy but setting a course and sticking to one's guns in the face of growing resistance." The authors are not calling for elite indifference to public opinion, but correcting the debasing and corrupting impulse to equate democratic decision making with following the preferences of fat cats, polls and focus groups.
Newman and Jacobs compel us to think about the precarious relationship between leaders and public opinion, raising familiar questions about the meaning of representation (weather vane?) and the obligations of representatives (re-election?). The health of the democracy requires us to always think about these questions, and always to demand answers to them from our actual and would-be leaders. But a healthy democracy also requires leadership -- not positioning, difference-splitting, pandering, and pleasing, but advancing bold visions in concrete policy proposals that serve our best principles rather than our narrowest self-interests. Of course compromises will be struck and clear proposals will blur at the margins and become messy within. But if you start in the messy middle and erase the margins of political debate -- as Obama did in the health care debate -- you might end up with a few system tweaks but you certainly won't accomplish progressive change.
The two hallmarks of progressive policy innovation -- Social Security and Medicare -- face uncertain futures as Obama's deficit commission considers strategies to ensure federal "fiscal responsibility." As William Greider explained, "The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits for future retirees while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink." (William Greider, "Whacking the Old Folks," http://www.thenation.com/article/whacking-old-folks). The commission's work is behind closed doors and its recommendations will not be issued until the end of the year. Whatever the commission does recommend may well be received as fait accompli, the triumphal product of bipartisanship. In creating and charging the commission, our supposedly progressive president has created the occasion for a potentially devastating assault on Social Security and Medicare. What George Bush couldn't win in the name of the "ownership society" Barack Obama may well win in the name of the "deficit-free society." Billionaire Pete Peterson, who has campaigned against Social Security for decades, supports the Obama initiative, including with some of his billions.
The present course does not bode well for progressive policy. But perhaps if progressives hold ourselves and our putative leaders accountable for our own disappointments we could force a change of course. Now that would be change I can believe in.
He describes and explains the new countermajoritarianism, pinpointing systemic and individual reasons why conservatives have so often derailed what might have been progressive Democratic initiatives. The problem, though, is that there hasn't been a lot that's progressive in many Democratic initiatives of late, starting with health care reform. So ultimately, Alterman's analysis passes the buck for progressive disappointments -- exonerating Obama and Democrats in Congress by pointing to the influence of factors beyond the Democrats' control -- monied minorities, "the American political system," GOP obstructionist parliamentary games, and more.
We do live in a political universe in which money and media power can drown out, manipulate, or pervert majority will. Polls tell us that even if popular majorities did control how government acts, they would not necessarily or automatically push for inclusive or redistributive or even fair public policies. Political culture and ideology can crimp our solidarity with others, just as the rules and structures of politics can make it difficult to legislate generous policy. But none of these impediments make political solidarity and policy generosity impossible. History teaches us that "change" can happen and can move the polity in a progressive direction.
In Who Cares?: Public Ambivalence and Government Activism from the New Deal to the Second Gilded Age Katherine Newman and Elisabeth Jacobs remind us that individual and collective traits like courage, leadership, and moral compass matter a lot in politics -- and are essential to achieving significant policy change. They look at presidencies that accomplished major social policy innovation to help low income and economically insecure individuals and families, showing that both Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were not achieved because the proposed policies were popular but because political leaders actually led. As Newman and Jacobs put it, "The essence of leadership is not registering the popular will and transforming it into policy but setting a course and sticking to one's guns in the face of growing resistance." The authors are not calling for elite indifference to public opinion, but correcting the debasing and corrupting impulse to equate democratic decision making with following the preferences of fat cats, polls and focus groups.
Newman and Jacobs compel us to think about the precarious relationship between leaders and public opinion, raising familiar questions about the meaning of representation (weather vane?) and the obligations of representatives (re-election?). The health of the democracy requires us to always think about these questions, and always to demand answers to them from our actual and would-be leaders. But a healthy democracy also requires leadership -- not positioning, difference-splitting, pandering, and pleasing, but advancing bold visions in concrete policy proposals that serve our best principles rather than our narrowest self-interests. Of course compromises will be struck and clear proposals will blur at the margins and become messy within. But if you start in the messy middle and erase the margins of political debate -- as Obama did in the health care debate -- you might end up with a few system tweaks but you certainly won't accomplish progressive change.
The two hallmarks of progressive policy innovation -- Social Security and Medicare -- face uncertain futures as Obama's deficit commission considers strategies to ensure federal "fiscal responsibility." As William Greider explained, "The president intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits for future retirees while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink." (William Greider, "Whacking the Old Folks," http://www.thenation.com/article/whacking-old-folks). The commission's work is behind closed doors and its recommendations will not be issued until the end of the year. Whatever the commission does recommend may well be received as fait accompli, the triumphal product of bipartisanship. In creating and charging the commission, our supposedly progressive president has created the occasion for a potentially devastating assault on Social Security and Medicare. What George Bush couldn't win in the name of the "ownership society" Barack Obama may well win in the name of the "deficit-free society." Billionaire Pete Peterson, who has campaigned against Social Security for decades, supports the Obama initiative, including with some of his billions.
The present course does not bode well for progressive policy. But perhaps if progressives hold ourselves and our putative leaders accountable for our own disappointments we could force a change of course. Now that would be change I can believe in.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Fatherhood.gov
Another Father's Day, another lament that single mothers raise children... The president once again pledged to use government to put fathers in families. This is more bad wine in fancy bottles. Fatherhood.gov coming to your browser soon.
It's time to put a stop to patriarchal public policies. It's time to support caregiving parents, not to divert precious funds and programs to meddle with family forms ...Notice that the President's fatherhood proclamation leaves out single mothers as legitimate or desirable parents. Two fathers are better than one mother, it seems: "Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian." (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-proclamation-fathers-day)
It's time to put a stop to patriarchal public policies. It's time to support caregiving parents, not to divert precious funds and programs to meddle with family forms ...Notice that the President's fatherhood proclamation leaves out single mothers as legitimate or desirable parents. Two fathers are better than one mother, it seems: "Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian." (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-proclamation-fathers-day)
Friday, June 11, 2010
Obama Administration Plan to Establish a Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund: Old Wine in New Bottles
The Obama administration has proposed to extend Temporary Assistance for Needy Families for one year (rather than reauthorize it for five years) and to establish a Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund to replace the current Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood funds. The Innovation Fund would total $500 million (2.5% of the TANF budget) a net increase of $350 million on top of the $150 million that is currently allocated to Healthy Marriage &Responsible Fatherhood annually.
[Answer by] Joshua Dubois: I think that's exactly right. It's very well said, Martha." [it is??]
Another highlight was their explanation that the grant application will not list eligible activities, only broad objectives and strategies. There will not be set-asides for specific strategies (e.g., marriage promotion vs. fatherhood supports). Dubois, who is also Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships referred to the influence of his Task Force on Fatherhood and Healthy Families. Among that task force's recommendations was to "Ensure that programming for couples' employment training, job placement, and financial literacy are allowable activities under federally funded fatherhood, healthy relationship, and healthy marriage grants." (Task Force members vehemently disagreed about whether unmarried couples should be allowed to receive services.)"
The Alternatives to Marriage Project reports:
"In April, the National Fatherhood Leadership Group offered a one-hour conference call in which two Special Assistants to the President described the proposal and answered pre-selected audience questions. The entire transcript is online. AtMP was among nearly 1,500 participants, listening specifically for clues to whether this administration is wedded to marriage promotion.
The highlight was Question 3 by Phil: Will the current administration be supportive of programs that include couple relationship strengthening, regardless of the marital status of the parents?
[Answer by] Martha Coven: Sure, and Joshua may want to add something here. I think we're open to anything. Whatever the most effective ways are to reach people is what we want, and I think we all know that, and Joshua will probably say this more eloquently than I can. We take parents as prospective parents or folks who shouldn't be parents right away as they are in the various points in their relationships and relationship with each other and with their children. And, I don't think we want to take any point where anyone is currently and take that off the table.
[Answer by] Joshua Dubois: I think that's exactly right. It's very well said, Martha." [it is??]
Another highlight was their explanation that the grant application will not list eligible activities, only broad objectives and strategies. There will not be set-asides for specific strategies (e.g., marriage promotion vs. fatherhood supports). Dubois, who is also Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships referred to the influence of his Task Force on Fatherhood and Healthy Families. Among that task force's recommendations was to "Ensure that programming for couples' employment training, job placement, and financial literacy are allowable activities under federally funded fatherhood, healthy relationship, and healthy marriage grants." (Task Force members vehemently disagreed about whether unmarried couples should be allowed to receive services.)"
In my view, this repackaging of intimate interventions does not end what's wrong with substituting family engineering for economic resources for low-income families.
We have struggled for decades to get government out of our bedrooms and to stop governmental interference in reproductive decisions. Do we really want to invite government into our intimate relationships?
As with pregnancy termination, services should be available and accessible to those who seek them. Counseling for partners should be available through health programs. Preparation for parenting should be available as part of elementary-secondary schooling. Parenting classes should be available for adults who are parents. Supports should be offered to partners who have to flee relationships due to intimate violence.
Educational and support services for parents and prospective parents should not target poor people, should not pathologize poverty. They should reach everyone in recognition that anyone might benefit from parenting support.
But the availability of such educational and support services should not authorize the government to act as a missionary for two-parent families, for marriage, or for fathers.
Some proponents of these sorts of programs argue that bringing fathers into families helps reduce poverty. Other proponents argue that the presence of married fathers in families is a good in itself, regardless of economic consequences. Either way, proponents want to uplift fathers even if at the expense of mothers.
Why should employment training, job placement, and financial literacy -- all mentioned by DuBois, above -- be linked to fathers or to couples? Shouldn't these efforts to improve economic circumstances be directed at individuals, especially individuals who are custodial parents? Why does the economic security of a mother have to be tied to her relationship to her child's father?
The big losers here are single mothers. Every increment of spending directed away from income support for single mother families and toward family formation programs to enhance fatherhood hurts the economic wellbeing of single mothers and their children.
We should embark on a more promising and more just course toward ending poverty. Some first steps down such a path include: wage reform to assure comparable worth; minimum wage reform to assure a living wage; unemployment insurance reform to take women's work patterns into account; education and training supports for low-wage workers and low-income family members; paid family leave; universal child care; income support to caregivers in economic recognition for the work of raising children and caring for family members.
For more on this, see my article "Women's Work, Mother's Poverty: Are Men's Wages the Best Cure for Women's Economic Insecurity," http://www.newpol.org/fromthearchives?nid=164
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Marriage Promotion Hasn't Promoted Marriage. And It Certainly Hasn't Met It's Putative Goal of Ending Poverty.
See Shawn Fremstad's excellent review of a recent evaluation of the Marriage Promotion program:
The Failure of Conservative Welfare Reform: Marriage Promotion Edition
The White House is pushing for agency budget cuts. It should start by ending all federal spending on managing the intimate lives of low income people.
The Failure of Conservative Welfare Reform: Marriage Promotion Edition
The White House is pushing for agency budget cuts. It should start by ending all federal spending on managing the intimate lives of low income people.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Mink Foundation and Awardee Brittney Ferara featured in Women's Enews
Scholarships Help Work Around Welfare Limits | Womens eNews
http://www.womensenews.org/
http://www.womensenews.org/
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