"Occupy Wall Street" at hand

In a move reminiscent of the final scenes in "Vendetta," a coalition of citizens uniting under the banner of "Occupy Wall Street" will begin rallying at Bowling Green Park tomorrow (Saturday, September 17). The group, which opposes the concept of "corporate personhood," financial industry manipulation of a brutal economy, student loan debt, an avalanche of home foreclosures, and wall street influence in Washington and at the ballot box, intends to begin an open-ended "occupation" of Wall Street. In-depth instructions on civil disobedience, food arrangements, and the encouragement of a 'tent city' have characterized what appears to be a well-organized movement to call attention to the growing economic divide in the United States, as well as corporate influence in politics. The US Dept. of Homeland Security sees the movement seriously enough that last week it sent out security warnings to Wall Street area banks and financial institutions, in spite of the groups insistence that they will only engage in non-violent civil disobedience.

The groups' website, in an update posted three days ago, states

The people coming to Wall Street on September 17 come for a variety of reasons, but what unites them all is the opposition to the principle that has come to dominate not only our economic lives but our entire lives: profit over and above all else. Those that do not embrace this principle: prepare to be out-competed. They will lose the race to the bottom and the vulture will swoop down to feast. It is indicative of a deep spiritual sickness that has gripped civilization, a sickness that drives the vast deprivation, oppression and despoliation that has come to cover the world.

The world does not have to be this way. A society of ruthlessness and isolation can be confronted and replaced with a society of cooperation and community. Cynics will tell us this world is not possible. That the forces arrayed against us have won and will always win and, perhaps, should always win. But they are not gods. They are human beings, just like us. They are a product of a society that rewards the behavior that has led us to where we are today. They can be confronted. What's more, they can be reached. They just need to see us. See beyond the price tags we carry.

The NY City police response should prove quite interesting. On Thursday, September 1, a small group demonstration took place as an intended "test run" for tomorrow's occupation using the "legal encampment" strategy. Nine demonstrators were arrested for disorderly conduct, but were later released without charge.

According to a federal court ruling in 2000, the use of "public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression" is permissible as a protected form of protest and expression on public sidewalks in New York City. METROPOLITAN COUNCIL, INC. VS. HOWARD SAFIR, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, et al., 99 F. Supp. 2d 438; 2000 U.S. Dist. Ct..

The group specifically intends to target Goldman Sachs (gold manipulators extraordinaire, who masterminded the destruction of Ashanti Gold and provides more than their fair share of employees to the Federal Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank); the Securities & Exchange Commission (which is supposed to regulate stock market exchanges); the Federal Reserve (the unaccountable "fourth" branch of Government and personal kingdom of Ben Bernanke); and the New York Stock Exchange.

10 years after 9/11 - My Love Affair with New York City

In 1642, a Dutch ship owner named Bastiaen Van Kortrijk carried a group of settlers to the newly-found colony of Nieuw-Amsterdam. In return for helping to populate the new colony, he was awarded a land grant (or Manor) in what is today called “The Bronx.” His descendents would marry into the Corsa (or Corszen, or DeCoursey) family, who would occupy that land until after the American Revolution, when it was divided and sold off to pay debts (today these lands are better known as Fordham University, the Bronx Botanical Gardens, and the Bronx Zoo.)

The early days of New Amsterdam reflected a spirit of tolerance and diversity that was ground-breaking for its day. Within a decade of its founding, 18 different languages were being spoken in New Amsterdam. The Dutch, in fact, were a minority in their own colony, as Portuguese, free Africans, Germans, French, English, Swedes, Hispanics, native West Indians and Brazilians, Poles, and Bohemians settled the Colony...a far cry from modern nativist cries for an “English-Only!” country. Unlike the strict religious codes of Puritan New England, New Amsterdam guaranteed religious freedom for all, making it a favored destination for immigrating Jews and Quakers. And while the British Crown was guaranteeing a monopoly on all trans-Atlantic Trade for the British East India Company, free global trade was the norm for companies in New Amsterdam.

It’s no wonder that New York Times editorialist Russell Shorto called the people of New Amsterdam, the “UnPilgrims.” Tolerant, diverse, liberal, and commerce-oriented, these people were the founders of New York City…and are the deepest roots of my own family tree.

The Van Kortrijk - Corsa family and their descendents would live though more than 350 years of New York history. They would serve as local guides in George Washington’s army, as the first lithographers at South Street Seaport during the Civil War, and as blacksmiths on the Hyde Park Vanderbilt estate. Three centuries after landing on New York’s shore, my father would be born – where else, but in New York City. He would marry into another local New York family that had, in part, made its mark operating speakeasies during Prohibition – The Riviera, The Chop House, the Lafayette Grill – on Long Island’s south shore in the City of Long Beach. I would be raised not far from there, in Baldwin Harbor, growing up close to the bays and clam flats at a time when living near the canals meant you were on ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’ Accordingly, we were known as “Harbor Rats” and “Clamdiggers.”

One of the most enduring institutions on Long Island – the center of our social circle – were the volunteer Fire Departments. My great-grandfather would serve as Chief of Long Beach; my grandfather, Captain of Hose Company #1 in Baldwin; and my father, as Chief. My Uncle would follow him as Chief, and my cousin remains, to this day, an EMT in Brooklyn. The calendar of our lives was comprised of Parades (My sister and I were both in the Fire Department Drum & Bugle Corps), Tournaments, Department picnics and Christmas parties and installation dinners – and punctuated by the anguish of knowing that loved ones were in the middle of buildings aflame almost every day of the year. The sound of the fire alarm put us all on edge in a way that is hard to convey to those who have not lived with the daily risks to a firefighter’s life.

And so it is in that life-context that I watched in horror as the World Trade Center, one of the iconic symbols of New York City, began collapsing on itself – and on the firefighters and fellow New Yorkers trapped inside.

As one of my friends so poignantly reflected some weeks later in a letter, “Not a single neighborhood on Long Island has been untouched.” My best childhood friend would recount to me the horror of running through lower Manhattan – having been late for his appointment at the World Trade Center – as parts of bodies landed around him and on him. My brother-in-laws' (Bill) family, all New York City residents and workers, would take various routes home, including joining thousands walking over the Brooklyn Bridge. Bill, a hospital administrator, was supposed to be in New York City going over architectural plans...but to quote my sister, "..someone called to tell us Bill was back in the hospital preparing for what would never come---survivors." My cousin, the EMT, would lose six men from his company when the South Tower came down.

And I would stand with fellow New York natives where I worked, and watch, and feel helpless.

In the 10 years since that day, I figure that I have been back to NYC perhaps some 50 or 60 times. Each time, as I approach, I get a bit more animated, talk a little bit faster, and smile a little more broadly. Wo-Hops in Chinatown, concerts in Central Park, Ty's and Rockbar in The Village, Sici's in Soho, the pace of the Financial District, The Eagle in Chelsea, student hostels in Morningside Heights, Conways in the Garment District, Shows and Bubba Gumps in the Theater District, my old office and Saturday Night Live studios in Rockefeller Center, The Boilerroom and funky vintage shops of the Lower East Side & Alphabet City, taking in the Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park, outside dining and Tiramisu in Little Italy...and pizza everywhere. I can't get enough.

And in those 10 years, I have been back to Ground Zero at least half a dozen times. I cry each time, without fail, and I do not expect that will ever change. Actually, I do more than cry - I fall apart. Yes, it was an attack on the United States, on western civilization, on capitalism, and on freedom. But for me, it was more than that.

It was an attack on MY city. MY home. MY family. Almost 400 years of MY ancestor’s footprints on a city that outshines every other city in the world in its energy, its excellence, its diversity, its drive.

And while others felt they needed to flee New York in the aftermath of 9/11, I had the opposite reaction. Everything in me screamed, “No one can f*ck with my city like that and get away with it.!”

I may be currently living in New England, but I am wrapping that up. Someday – soon - I WILL return to my Home.

As Daddy Warbucks sings in “Annie,”

“What is it about you?
You're big - You're loud - You're tough
N.Y.C. - I go years without you
Then I can't get Enough!

Enough of the cab drivers answering back
In the language far from pure
Enough of frankfurters answering back
Brother, you know you're in NYC…

Too busy, Too crazy…
Too hot, Too cold, Too late, I'm sold
Again, On NYC

….Oh NYC
You make 'em all postcards
You crowd, You cramp…You're still the champ
Amen For NYC

The shimmer of Times Square
The pulse, The beat, The drive!

….Oh, NYC
The whole world keeps coming
By bus, By train, You can't explain
Their yen for NYC

NYC
You're standing room only
You crowd, You cramp
You're still the champ
Amen For NYC

"Labor Day" - or "Capital Day?"

[related, updated post at  Republicans, Democrats AWOL on Taft-Hartley]

The following editorial was written by E. J. Dionne, a native of Fall River, a senior fellow in governance studies at The Brookings Institution, a professor at Georgetown University, and an NPR commentator.

In a time when labor is under attack, it is worth a read on this Labor Day weekend....and worth our time, as we prepare to launch a new academic year, to recommit ourselves to support labor's voice and muscle

- Tully

Let’s get it over with and rename the holiday “Capital Day.” We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil — the phrase itself seems antique — as worthy of genuine respect.

Imagine a Republican saying this: “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

These heretical thoughts would inspire horror among our friends at Fox News or in the tea party. They’d likely label them as Marxist, socialist or Big Labor propaganda. Too bad for Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president, who offered those words in his annual message to Congress in 1861. Will President Obama dare say anything like this in his jobs speech this week?

As for the unions, they are often treated in the media as advocates of arcane work rules, protectors of inefficient public employees and obstacles to the economic growth our bold entrepreneurs would let loose if only they were free from labor regulations.

So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”

That’s what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981 encyclical Laborem exercens. Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted “the priority of labor over capital.”

That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.

Consider that what the media call economics reporting is largely finance reporting. Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the world of work and the unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat. Workers have vanished.

But we are now inundated with news (and “news”) about the world of capital. CNBC and the other financial media are for investors what ESPN is for sports junkies. We cheer the markets, learn the obscure language of hedge fund managers, and get to know some of the big investors in off-field interviews. Workers are regarded as factors of production. At best, they’re consumers; at worst, they’re “labor costs” cutting into profits and the sacred stock price.

They have faded away in both high and popular culture, too. Can you point to someone “who makes art out of working-class lives by refusing to prettify them”?

The phrase comes from a 2006 essay by the critic William Deresiewicz who observed that we no longer have few novelists such as John Steinbeck or John Dos Passos who take the lives of working people seriously. Nor do we have television shows along the lines of “The Honeymooners” or even “All in the Family,” which were parodies of an affectionate sort. “First we stopped noticing members of the working class,” Deresiewicz wrote, “and now we’re convinced they don’t exist.”

In his extraordinary book “Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class,” Jefferson Cowie spoke of how little we identify working-class people with their labor. “Workers occasionally reappeared in public discourse as ‘Reagan Democrats’ — later as ‘NASCAR Dads,’” he wrote, “or the victims of another plant shutdown or as irrational protectionist and protesters of free trade, but rarely did they appear as workers.”

With the worker disappearing from our media and our consciousness, isn’t it only a matter of time before Labor Day falls off the calendar? As long as it’s there, it should shame us about our cool indifference to the heroism of those who go to work every day.

Copyright 2011 The Herald News.

What Democrats can do about Obama

A liberal argues that the 2012 Democratic nomination should be debated -- with all options open

(This article by Matt Stoller first appeared 2 hours ago on salon.com)
From the debt ceiling fiasco to the recent rescheduling of a jobs speech at the behest of Speaker Boehner, it has not been a good summer for President Obama. Like Chinese water torture, Gallup's daily tracking poll has shown a steady and unrelenting drip of bad news. He has been in and out of the high 30s for his approval, and in the low to mid-50s for his disapproval.

George W. Bush's approval rating didn't drop this low until Katrina hit. And on the economy, 71 percent of Americans disapprove of how Obama is doing his job. Even among reliably Democratic groups -- union households, women and young people -- he's now unpopular.

No one, not even the president's defenders, expect his coming jobs speech to mean anything. When the president spoke during a recent market swoon, the market dropped another 100 points. Democrats may soon have to confront an uncomfortable truth, and ask whether Obama is a suitable choice at the top of the ticket in 2012. They may then have to ask themselves if there's any way they can push him off the top of the ticket.

That these questions have not yet been asked in any serious way shows how weak the Democratic Party is as a political organization. Yet this political weakness is not inevitable, it can be changed through courage and collective action by a few party insiders smart and principled enough to understand the value of a public debate, and by activists who are courageous enough to face the real legacy of the Obama years.

Obama has ruined the Democratic Party. The 2010 wipeout was an electoral catastrophe so bad you'd have to go back to 1894 to find comparable losses. From 2008 to 2010, according to Gallup, the fastest growing demographic party label was former Democrat. Obama took over the party in 2008 with 36 percent of Americans considering themselves Democrats. Within just two years, that number had dropped to 31 percent, which tied a 22-year low.

Of course, there are many rationalizations for Obama to remain the nominee. He's faced difficult opposition. He's passed major legislation. His presidency is historic. The economy is hard to resuscitate. But all such rationalizations evade the party's responsibilities to actually choose the nominee best suited to win votes. If Obama looks unlikely to get enough votes to win, he should not get the nomination.

If would be one thing if Obama were failing because he was too close to party orthodoxy. Yet his failures have come precisely because Obama has not listened to Democratic Party voters. He continued idiotic wars, bailed out banks, ignored luminaries like Paul Krugman, and generally did whatever he could to repudiate the New Deal. The Democratic Party should be the party of pay raises and homes, but under Obama it has become the party of pay cuts and foreclosures. Getting rid of Obama as the head of the party is the first step in reverting to form.

So why isn't there a legitimate primary challenger to Obama to make this case? Forty years ago, primaries were instituted in the Democratic Party as a response to party insiders having too much influence over nominations. These reforms were implemented before the prevalence of money in politics was as extreme as it is now. At this point, primary challenges are so expensive that a serious 2012 campaign would ironically require support of party insiders for viability. The party, inflexible as it was in 1968, is perhaps even more rigid today. As a result, no candidate has stepped up to challenge Obama in a primary, even though 32 percent of Democratic voters want one.

This is an institutional crisis for Democrats. The groups that fund and organize the party -- an uneasy alliance of financiers, conservative technology interests, the telecommunications industry, healthcare industries, labor unions, feminists, elite foundations, African-American church networks, academic elites, liberals at groups like MoveOn, the ACLU and the blogosphere -- are frustrated, but not one of them has broken from the pack. In remaining silent, they give their assent to the right-wing policy framework that first George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama, cemented in place. It will be nearly impossible to dislodge such a framework without starting within the Democratic Party itself.

In other words, party inflexibility has a price. If the economy worsens going into the fall, and the president continues as he has to attempt to cut Social Security, Democrats might be facing a Carter-Reagan scenario. Reagan, at first considered a lightweight candidate, ended up winning a landslide victory that devastated the Democratic Party in 1980. Carter wasn't the only loss; many significant liberal senators, such as George McGovern, John Culver and Birch Bayh, fell that year.

Today, it's clear that certain Democratic constituency groups -- unions especially -- are on their deathbed. A reinvigoration of debate over the nature of the American workplace is desperately needed, yet labor leaders seem to prefer supplicating quietly to politicians who betray them. This is not inevitable. People can show dignity.

So what can party leaders do? History offers one model. In 1892, the Democratic Party nominated Grover Cleveland, and with sweeping majorities in both houses, Democrats had control of the federal government for the first time since before the Civil War. Then a financial crisis, plus Cleveland's stubborn allegiance to banking interests, turned his presidency into a catastrophe for Democrats.

When taking state candidates into account, the 1894 midterm elections were comparable to the 2010 wipeout; Cleveland was disliked so ardently that party leaders pushed him out of running for reelection. Instead the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, who introduced many populist themes into the party and began the ideological transformation that would culminate with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. If a few of the key constituency groups in the Democratic Party publicly wondered whether Obama should run for reelection, rumblings would start. Some organized constituency groups -- say some components of the AFL-CIO -- would need to announce that their support is up for grabs, based on a clear set of criteria. Given the Obama administration's rampant anti-labor policies, this wouldn't be an unreasonable posture. And then a senior politician, like, say, a Tom Harkin, would need to decide that he would want to encourage robust intra-party debate about the party's future.

Harkin could run as a "favorite son" of Iowa, and encourage people in the caucuses to send a message to the party and to Obama by choosing him. Other candidates could then emerge in early primary and caucus states, as a way of repudiating Obama's leadership. Candidates wouldn't have to pretend to be running for president or be presidential quality; they could simply stand in as favorite sons or daughters of their own geographic area. This would immediately fire up a highly aggressive and needed debate about the direction of the Democratic Party and the country at large. It would build a new set of leaders, and elevate others who would like to distance themselves from the Obama policy agenda.

In a few months, we'll know better if Obama still looks like a loser next year. If he does, that does not mean the Democratic Party must follow him down the path to oblivion.

For Obama, the die is cast. He has put forward his economic program, and it will work to return jobs and income, and get the votes, or it won't. Knocking on doors won't change that, nor will a donation in a $6 billion election season. What can change the reality of 2012 is if Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, begins to take his job of representing workers seriously, and one or two establishment Democrats who remember liberalism decide to model courage for the younger generation. Then a robust debate can happen. Only by shaking up the current political order will solutions emerge.

Such debates tend to create institutional reforms -- the vibrant antiwar blogosphere of 2002-2006, and eventually the Obama campaign itself, emerged out of such a series of debates. Such a debate would also force the Obama campaign to come up with some answers to questions it would prefer to defer until after the election: Where are the jobs, and what is the plan to stop foreclosures? It would allow millions of Americans who have been hurt -- and who have benefited -- from administration policies, to have their say.

I wish I could say I was optimistic that party leaders will step forward and start the debate Democratic voters need. As for many, the last few years have shattered my faith in the political process. Obama has basically endorsed every major plank of George Bush's administration, yet Democrats still grant their approval. What we're finding out is that Obama's pathologically pro-establishment and conflict-averse DNA was funded by party insiders and embraced by liberal constituency groups in 2008 for a reason.

Political parties need to be flexible enough to allow for new ideas to come into the process, or else third parties or civil disorder are inevitable. All it would take to provide this flexibility are well-known Democratic elders who understand that rank and file Democrats deserve a choice, and a few political insiders who realize that they can increase their own power by encouraging a robust debate. I don't think this will happen. But just imagine if it did.

Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His twitter feed is @matthewstoller and he can be reached at stoller at gmail.com.

The Fed has been the Problem, not the Answer...

Investors, bankers, economists, politicians, and media sources around the world are looking to “The Fed” today for a response to the collapsing world economy. Like Munchkins running to see what The Wizard says about the evil in the sky, one wonders if they will be comforted for long by the grandiose display of smoke and mirrors to which they will be treated.

The Federal Reserve System (“The Fed”) is, inarguably, the single most powerful institution in the American economy. Almost completely removed from accountability to democratic processes, the Fed’s manipulation of the nation’s money supply is believed by many to have been a prime cause of the 1929 stock crash and depression…and here we have history repeating itself. Rather than being the economy’s savior, it has painted itself into a corner. It will make soothing announcements this afternoon as to how it is on the job, but the reality is that it is out of options.

The Federal Open Market Committee (or “FOMC”) of the Federal Reserve System is a committee comprised of the 7 Governors of the System, the President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and 4 other rotating Regional Fed Bank Presidents. Traditionally, they have authority in three areas:

1) The Discount Rate. This is the interest rate that the Fed charges member banks to borrow money. By lowering the Discount rate, local banks are able to borrow money cheaply, and then lend it out to consumers at fairly reasonable rates. By making loan money available, this stimulates borrowing, and spending, and it is hoped, begins to prop up the economy. However, the Discount Rate has already been lowered to one quarter of one percent...and banks are not lowering the rates they charge consumers, nor are they even making loans to consumers, and few businesses are borrowing in order to expand. The Fed is at the end of their rope with this tool, with nowhere to go.

2. The Reserve Ratio. This is the amount of money that the Fed requires banks to physically have on-hand, in each members vaults, in case of a bank run by the public (This is currently 10%). Lowering the Ratio means that banks have more to lend…but if no one’s borrowing, and banks aren’t willing to lend, it has no effect. And lowering the ratio only puts banks in a more precarious position if the public gets nervous and decided to withdraw cash. This could be an even larger problem in Europe, where the Eurozone Reserve Ratio is a paltry 2%. No option here.

3. And then there’s “Open Market Operations,” routinely paired of late with operations called “Quantitative Easing.” In 2008 the Fed engaged in large-scale purchases of bonds from their member banks, which amounted to printing money to replace the ‘paper’ that their own member banks held. This was the first round, called “QE 1,” which was quickly followed by a second round (“QE2.”) .

Neither effort helped the economy at large. Of course, that was not the point: The Fed was trying to bail out banks that had lost trillions due to their gambling on junk mortgage derivatives. In other words, the Fed created money to replace what the banks lost. None of this had any effect in funding business expansion or employment or consumption.

So what did happen to the money infused into the banks under QE1 and QE2? Businesses that can’t sell products can’t borrow. People who are out of work can’t borrow.

The US government has been cash-strapped as a result of a huge loss in revenues – tax revenues lost because of Republican demands to protect the wealthy from taxes, combined with 20% of the American workforce having no income, or less income, than before the recession began. So the US government decided it would borrow the money back from the banks, and pay them between 3 and 4 percent. Banks made a rational decision to make these loans. For the government and the banks, it was a win-win situation: the government raised the cash it needed, and banks had a profitable investment.

So, the banks received money printed by the Fed, and then used that money to lend it back to the US Government at 4%...paid for by the American taxpayer. In essence, you, my friends, are paying interest on the money you loaned your own government. Quite a racket, eh? How much money are we talking about here? 23 TRILLION dollars. Hence, a problem of having more debt than we can reasonably foresee paying back.

No, the Fed can not dig us out of the hole they dug us into. They will give reassuring comments this afternoon, but the man behind the curtain is a charlatan.

Politicians on the Left and the Right share blame in this mess. From the left, there has been a call to spend even more, while the right screams about cutting spending. And on that note, we are in a catch-22.

The first round of Stimulus Spending was a failure. Government can not pour money into an economy, cross its fingers, and “hope it all works out.” We have heard that the economy has been slowly improving, though some inthe last few days raised the fears of another recession. Well I have news for you: we never exited the first recession.

The amount of ‘growth’ in our nations GDP the last few quarters has been less than what is needed simply to keep up with deferred maintenance; we have not stopped falling behind since the 2008 crash.

Banks and Wall Street may be sighing a bit of relief because they got through the days when Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and Countrywide and AIG were melting down – but their restructuring did little to affect the national employment situation. The glimmer of hope we thought we saw was merely a brief ‘blip’ when the stimulus money hit the banks – and now its gone. Gone to pay debt, gone to overseas markets, gone everywhere except American jobs.

But the right's answer of slashing spending at every turn is just as wreckless. Unwilling to cease spending trillions of dollars on overseas adventures, slashing domestic spending means people here at home get hurt. Unemployed, sick, hungry, homeless, and hurting people do not create a vibrant economy. In my home state of New Hampshire, we are watching as over 500 jobs are being cut from hospitals as a result of budget slashing…this, in an industry (health care) that has the best prospects for job growth in the years ahead as our population ages. In Wisconisin and New Hampshire, we see efforts to end union benefits: not to prop up the economy, but to impoverish and punish and reduce the compensation that workers get. That's not a way to instill consumer confidence and stimulate purchases from hurting businesses.

Has anyone else noticed the explosion of home auctions, homes for sale, and "Business Closed" signs around? I sure have, and here in NH we are told that our unemloyment rate is only half that of the rest of the nation!

There are no easy answers ahead. Unless and until corporate profits are required to be shared with the labor producing them rather than hoarded by 6- and 7-figure paycheck Executives....and unless and until banks are forced to engage in lending to consumers and businesses rather than the government...unless and until the government matches revenues with expenditures…we are in for a long period – perhaps an entire generation – of economic unrest.

Iowa's Ignorance and HIV

In 1998, Iowa politicians enacted a law that criminalized potential HIV transmission as a Class B felony. The sentence designates the ‘carrier’ as a felon, imposes a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, and assigns him lifelong sex-offender status, even if the contact was consensual. Under the law, a person aware of his or her positive HIV status does not actually have to transmit the HIV virus, they only have to engage in intimate contact with another person.

The penalty exceeds that for manslaughter.

Since the law was enacted, 26 people have been convicted under the law; nine people currently sit behind bars. The cost to taxpayers is an estimated annual cost of $31,500 per inmate, plus medical costs of $24,000 annually per inmate.

The cost to the incarcerated is the destruction of their life for the crime of being human and having an illness.

Last year, the Iowa legislature defeated an effort to repeal the law, considered the most backwards and punitive (I would add ‘medieval’) in the country. Of course, this is Iowa, a state where right-wing fundamentalists are well-organized in the electoral processes and have handed presidential caucus victories to Pat Robertson in 1988 and Mike Huckabee just four years ago. Reason and Science need not apply...

Supporters of the law have a well-honed mantra that follows this general pattern:

“HIV/AIDs is a deadly disease that is a death sentence. When you know you have it and you are intimate with someone, you are infecting them, and committing an assault on them that is as dangerous as any other form of slow murder.”

In reality, much of the support for this law comes from those who look down on all sexual activity in general, and consider homosexuality in particular to be an abomination. Puritanical theology is the root of their desire to punish these people, not health. Nonetheless, in the battle of legislative processes, and insuring under the US Constitution that no excessive punishments be imposed for ‘crimes,’ it is important to address their stated reasoning above…and certainly time to educate the legislators and the public. I have been wanting to post this for a while, and the Iowa law was the tipping point.

1. HIV is not AIDs. Say that out loud. Again. HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a virus that attacks the immune system, as do thousands of viruses. The HIV virus may lead to AIDs as a long-term complication of the viral attack, but HIV is not AIDs any more than blindness or neuropathy is the same thing as diabetes. One may cause the other, but they are not the same thing.

2. HIV is not a death sentence. Gay activists often (appropriately) refer to the 1980s as a health holocaust, as entire neighborhoods were decimated. But times have changed significantly, and thousands of men and women live normal healthy lives for decades with the HIV virus under control. In other words, HIV is now a manageable medical condition, not the end of life.

3. As viruses go, transmission of the HIV virus is very, very difficult. It is not transmitted by close contact, or sharing food or drinking glasses, or by breathing on each other, or by kissing (unlike many other viruses). It is not transmitted through saliva, sweat, or urine. Unlike many prevalent STDs such as syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, HPV, and genital warts (none of which carry the penalties imposed in Iowa), it is not transmitted through oral sex.

Repeat: in the 30+ year history of HIV, there is not one single scientific case study that has documented transmission via fellatio. Period. In order to be on the ‘safe side,’ many doctors and government-funded clinics will publicly state that this is a ‘hypothetical’ route of transmission. But as for documenting a single case – it doesn’t exist…and privately, the medical community knows this. In July 2002 a study was concluded in Spain of serodiscordant couples (one HIV positive, One HIV Negative), where they evaluated for risks of HIV transmission through unprotected oral sex. In over 19,000 unprotected oral-genital contacts with HIV-infected partners, there was not a single case of seroconversion to HIV. (http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/insite?page=pr-rr-05)

Even vaginal and anal transmission of the virus is unlikely. According to the Guidelines for the Management and Post Exposure Prophylaxis of Individuals who Sustain Nonoccupational Exposure to HIV, ANCAHRD/CTARC Bulletin, February 2001, the risk of transmission as a result of receptive anal sex is approximately three per cent. Other experts place the risk as low as 1 in 1300. (http://aids.about.com/od/hivaidsstats/f/infectionrisk.htm)

4. HIV positive individuals who have their virus controlled with medication can not transmit the HIV virus. (http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1429357/)

“…Swiss HIV experts have produced the first-ever consensus statement to say that HIV-positive individuals on effective antiretroviral therapy…are sexually non-infectious… After review of the medical literature and extensive discussion [the] Swiss Federal Commission for HIV / AIDS resolves that, “An HIV-infected person on antiretroviral therapy with completely suppressed viraemia (“effective ART”) is not sexually infectious, i.e. cannot transmit HIV through sexual contact.”

The statement officially defines a ‘suppressed viraemia’ (or “Undetectable Viral Load,” the common US parlance) as a viral load that has been suppressed to less than < 40 copies/ml for at least six months. (For comparison, someone not controlled on medication may have a viral load of 500,000 to over 1 million copies/ml). At the time this statement was made, that was the most sensitive that HIV tests could detect; today, these tests can detect viral loads of only 20 copies/ml, which means someone declared to have an Undetectable Viral Load has even fewer copies of the virus in their system than the limit established by the original Swiss statement. Finally, the Commission specifically stated that “courts will have to take into account the fact that HIV-positive people on antiretroviral treatment…cannot transmit HIV sexually in criminal HIV exposure and transmission cases….Unprotected sex between a positive person on antiretroviral treatment…and an HIV-negative person, does not comply with the criteria for an “attempt at propagation of a dangerous disease” according to section 231 of the Swiss penal code nor for “an attempt to engender grievous bodily harm” according to section122, 123 or 125.”

Iowa politicians, take note.

The current law in Iowa, then, locks someone up in a cage for up to 25 years and brands them a sex offender for engaging in normal human activity that has no chance of endangering someone else…simply because of their ‘status’ as a branded individual. The law is not based in science or humanity or health, but expresses a punitive, uneducated, and fearful attitude towards what they do not wish to understand.