Category Archives: Network News/Events

Family planning services are wise investment

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By Beth Richardson

Columbia attorney with Tell Them, an e-advocacy network supported by the New Morning Foundation, a member of the SC Progressive Network

The Legislature faces the unenviable task of finding ways to reconcile the state’s budget while continuing to provide meaningful services to its citizens. What many lawmakers do not see, however, is the great opportunity to achieve a documented 17:1 return on investment simply by restoring funding for family planning services.

Births to teen mothers in South Carolina cost taxpayers upwards of $156 million annually. (In Richland and Lexington counties alone, that number reaches $15 million.) We have the eighth-highest rate of pregnancies among 15- to 19-year-olds in the nation, and our state’s teen pregnancy rates are on the rise. In some rural counties, the rates can be as high as 200 pregnancies per 1,000 young women ages 18 to 19. Why? They have received virtually no family planning education in school, and due to a series of state budget cuts, they have no access to contraceptive counseling and clinical services in their isolated rural communities.

A state’s money invested in family planning services offers a strong return on investment and represents sound fiscal policy. A cost-benefit analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa found that in as little as five years, a state can save $17 for every tax dollar invested in programs and clinics that help prevent unintended pregnancies among 14- to 19-year-olds.

Of course economics are only one part of the equation. Restoring state funding for family planning services will mean fewer unintended pregnancies, so fewer children will be born into situations where they will be at greater risk of child abuse or neglect.

Here is what we know: Children born to mothers age 15 and younger are twice as likely to be abused or neglected in the first five years of their lives than are the children born to mothers ages 20 to 21. They are more likely to grow up in a poor and mother-only family, to live in an impoverished or underprivileged neighborhood and to suffer high risks to both their health status and potential school achievement. Poverty, inadequate social support, mothers’ lack of education, mothers’ cognitive immaturity and greater maternal stress all have been suggested as possible factors contributing to unsatisfactory social and educational outcomes for the children of teen mothers, many of whom never were intended.

One in four children and nearly half of single-mother families are expected to be poor in 2011. Making further progress in reducing teen pregnancy will benefit the national and state economies as well as improve the educational, health and social prospects for this generation of young people and the next.

On March 23, thousands of South Carolinians are taking part in our state’s first-ever virtual march on the State House. They believe, as we do, that one of the most fiscally responsible actions our Legislature can take is to properly fund age-appropriate reproductive health education and access to services for all South Carolinians. By protecting all children and young adults now, we can save millions of dollars in public health care and welfare services in the future.

It’s our responsibility to stand together on behalf of all these young people, so that each of them can have the opportunity for a future that is bright and healthy. We must take a long view, and invest in programs that will make South Carolina a healthier state.

Global speak out targets human population crisis

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The Center for Biological Diversity announced today its participation in the second annual Global Population Speak Out, a month-long effort to publicize the crisis of unsustainable human population growth. The Center is speaking out as part of its overpopulation campaign, which addresses the devastating impacts of overpopulation on endangered species.

“The Center for Biological Diversity joins this year’s Global Population Speak Out to help raise awareness about this critical environmental issue and the endangered species and habitats threatened by human overpopulation,” said Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate leading the Center’s campaign. “Unsustainable human population growth is the primary underlying factor driving the current decline and mass extinction of other life on Earth.”

The Center’s campaign, launched in February 2009, is a major educational initiative drawing attention to the close connection between the massive increase in human numbers and the rapid decrease in the planet’s biological diversity. “It is rare that an environmental group is willing to address the deep-seated problem of overpopulation,” said Serraglio, “but with more species going extinct today than ever before in our lifetime, we can no longer ignore our impact on the planet. We hope that many more conservation groups will join the conversation about population growth because it affects every environmental issue.”

As part of the ongoing campaign, the Center has created a Web site that illuminates the connection between burgeoning human population and accelerating biodiversity loss. “Most biologists agree that we have begun the sixth mass extinction event in the Earth’s history,” said Serraglio. “What separates this one from earlier events is that it is being driven by a single species – humans. All the direct threats to the earth’s biodiversity – land-use changes due to urban sprawl and commercial development, environmental contamination, competition for water and other resources, climate change, and so on – are driven by human overpopulation.”

The 2010 Speak Out promises to be larger than last year’s, as hundreds of individuals and groups have pledged to participate. This year’s sponsors include prominent conservation voices from outside the United States, where the subject of human overpopulation is less taboo, including the president of the European Section of the Society for Conservation Biology and the director of conservation at the African Conservation Foundation.

“As part of the GPSO this month and the Center’s overpopulation campaign, we’re planning to launch creative, multimedia education projects focused on protecting endangered species and our environment,” said Serraglio. “Our goal is to reach out to the public in new ways and help people understand how they can be part of the solution to curb runaway human population growth.”

Support reproductive rights in SC

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On March 23, join South Carolina’s first Virtual March in support of responsible reproductive health policies. Advocates are organizing the march through Tell Them‘s Web site. Thousands of men and women from across the state are joining together to let their legislators know they support access to medically accurate sexual health information and access to counseling and clinical services. Together, through responsible reproductive health policies, we can reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in South Carolina. Join today by registering here. The march is an easy way people can let legislators know they support this issue and expect representatives to support responsible public health policies.

Nuclear ‘renaissance’ or ‘retreat’? France is not the example

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By Linda Gunter
Beyond Nuclear

It is perhaps no accident that the nuclear power industry chose a French word – “renaissance” – to promote its alleged comeback. Attached to this misapplied moniker are a series of fallacious suggestions that nuclear energy is “clean,” “safe” and even “renewable.” And, in keeping with its French flavor, a key argument in the industry’s propaganda arsenal is that the U.S. should follow the “successful” example of the French nuclear program.

France serves as a convenient sound bite for politicians and others advocating a nuclear revival (hypocritically evoked by many of the same people who insisted on “Freedom Fries” at the start of the Iraq War). A failure to challenge this facile falsehood has cemented the myth of a French nuclear Utopia in the minds of the public. It masks a very different reality.

France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. However, this alone does not constitute a success. Rather, it results in the production of an enormous amount of radioactive waste that, as is the case for all other nuclear countries, has nowhere to go.

France has no operating geological repository for nuclear waste. To date, therefore, it has resorted to reprocessing, a highly contaminating chemical process that separates uranium and plutonium while releasing large quantities of liquid and aerial radioactivity into the environment. These wastes have rendered the seabed near the French La Hague reprocessing center on the Normandy coast equivalent to radioactive waste. Liquid radioactive contamination from La Hague has been found in the Arctic Circle, while radioactive gases such as krypton 85 have been tracked around the world.

However, contrary to myth, reprocessed French waste is not “recycled.” The hottest waste, about 4 percent of the total, is stored at La Hague, along with about 81 tonnes of separated – and proliferation-friendly – plutonium (1 percent of the total). The remaining 95 percent, mostly uranium, is stored at another nuclear center, Pierrelatte, in southern France. Rather than “recycled,” this waste is simply transferred from La Hague operator, Areva, to the French electricity utility, Électicité de France (EDF). France does not have the technology to re-enrich this uranium but some of it is exported to Russia which does.

Nuclear energy has not gained France energy independence. France imports all uranium used in its 58 reactors – having abandoned the last of its 210 uranium mines in 2001. These latter also produced a large waste stream, including tailings (radioactive rocks and soils) that have been used to pave children’s playgrounds and public parking lots.

Today, French uranium is imported largely from Niger where Areva – which, despite its corporate appearance, is 90 percent government-owned – has mined for 40 years. Its legacy in one of the poorest countries on the planet is one of depleted and contaminated water, wide dispersal of radioactive dust and discarded radioactive metals that have been sold in local markets and used in homes.

Nor can nuclear meet all French electricity needs. France imports coal-powered electricity from Germany at peak times, because of its heavy use of electric home-heating. During heat waves and droughts, the French have been forced to power down or close more than a third of their nuclear plants, which rely on water sources such as rivers and lakes for cooling.

None of this has deterred Areva or EDF from driving aggressively into new nuclear markets, especially the U.S., where Aerva is promoting its huge Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), with seven targeted at six U.S. sites. Since new reactors are too expensive to build unless federally funded, EPRs in the U.S. could result in American tax dollars flowing to the French government.

However, French nuclear success overseas has proved as elusive as it is at home. All but two of the U.S. EPRs are now on the back burner or canceled altogether. A recent joint report from the British, Finnish and UK nuclear safety authorities challenged the safety of the unproven EPR design. The two EPR flagship construction sites in Finland and France have experienced cost overruns and delays. The Finnish Olkiluoto site is more than three years behind schedule, with cost estimates soaring from $3.6 billion at pre-construction to more than $8 billion currently. Technical errors have plagued both sites.

These problems are by no means unique to the French nuclear industry. They typify the nuclear “renaissance” as a whole, which resembles more of a retreat, a word with decidedly less positive connotations when applied to France.

There are some fine French fashions to be followed – from camembert to haute couture. Nuclear power just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

Gunter is co-founder of Beyond Nuclear and specializes in researching the French nuclear sector. She is also the media and development director for Beyond Nuclear. This editorial was provided by American Forum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational organization that supplies the media with the views of state experts on major public concerns in order to stimulate informed discussion.

Sign petition to urge Congress to pass Fair Elections Now Act

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By Nick Nyhart
Public Campaign

Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its long-awaited decision in Citizens United v. FEC. And to nobody’s surprise, the Roberts Court issued a sweeping ruling that overturned the decades-old ban on corporate spending in elections.

The Court’s slim 5-4 majority went leaps and bounds beyond the factual record of the case in order to gut longstanding principles of well-settled election law. Specifically, the Court overturned Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a landmark case in election law that upheld prohibitions on independent expenditures from a corporation’s general treasury fund.

We have all witnessed the corrosive impact that corporate and big money interests have had on the critical debates in Congress this year. They have successfully watered down or killed meaningful legislation on health care, financial regulation, and climate change. The Citizens United case will make an untenable situation worse. Members of Congress who vote against the deep pocket lobbyists will fear retribution during campaign season as they never have before.

To counter this increase in big money influence, we need Congress to act right away by passing the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752, H.R. 1826).

Please sign our petition to Congress today: The Fair Elections Now Act is the best way to respond to the Roberts Court blatant disregard for democracy.

We need to tell Congress that now, more than ever, we need to change the way Washington works by passing Fair Elections.

Corporate personhood trumps human rights

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Charlie Smith
AFFA, Charleston

The 14th Amendment was adopted to ensure the constitutional rights of freed slaves and their descendants after the Civil War. There have been roughly 325 federal court cases relative to this amendment since that time. Nineteen of those cases have actually had anything at all to do with a human being. The remaining 300 or so cases have been part of the ongoing corruption process that grants “personhood” to corporations.  

“Corporate Personhood” is the legal concept that grants most of the rights of natural living, breathing citizens to corporations. Under our constitution US corporations are allowed virtually every right of human beings, including such rights as the right to marry.

This “marriage/merger” concept which flies in the face of “traditional marriage” is openly embraced by conservatives who will freely grant to a profit-making business what they flatly refuse to grant to millions of our living, breathing LGBT citizens. Did anyone hear a single conservative objection when half the major banks in our country eloped with the other half in 2008? Even corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton are allowed to serve openly in every branch of our military — unlike thousands of living breathing gay and lesbian citizens who still serve and suffer under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

What we have discovered over the course of the past year is that along with our “constitutional rights,” human persons also have the obligation to serve time in prison and in some cases be executed when they break the law. Corporations have somehow managed to avoid that unpleasantness.

In the wake of last week’s decision in the Citizens United case, corporate rights of personhood will now also include the right of corporations to buy politicians and elections with no limit on the corrupting power of their contributions. This is because corporations as “persons” must be granted free speech. This free speech right is in addition to their corporate “human right” to marry and their corporate “human right” right to serve openly in the military.

Does anyone see the irony that corporations have now been granted more “Human Rights” by the Supreme Court than millions of our own anatomically HUMAN citizens have been granted? After the last two years of outrageous corporate arrogance and greed, why is it that we have done absolutely nothing to strip those rights from corporations, yet we strip those very same rights every day from our very human LGBT soldiers and citizens?

SC Progressive Network’s racial profiling study reveals SC traffic cops breaking the law

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The SC Progressive Network has released a study — based on a review of racial disparities in arrest rates and a new law requiring cops to report the race of those stopped for traffic warnings — that reveals most police agencies in the state are breaking the law by not reporting. The most recent report on the Department of Public Safety’s web site reveals that 189 of the state’s police agencies are not in compliance.

The Network is circulating this study to stimulate public dialogue about racial profiling and to encourage police agencies to advocate for a database that records all stops and allows for increased transparency.

Download the study here.

Does SC have a racial profiling problem?

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Legislature urged to make law agencies process data to see how prevalent it is

By John Monk

The State

The General Assembly needs to order all law enforcement agencies to process the racial data they collect on their traffic tickets to provide a snapshot of whether there is evidence of racial profiling.

That’s the conclusion of a 26-page report on racial profiling in state traffic stops just released by the S.C. Progressive Network. (You can download the study here.)

The state Highway Patrol analyzes the race of drivers given warning tickets by troopers because of a 2005 law. But it doesn’t analyze the race of those given actual citations for such offenses as driving under the influence of alcohol, speeding or breaking the state’s seat belt laws.

Other law enforcement agencies collect similar racial data on tickets of their own volition, but also don’t analyze it.

All of that needs to change, according to Brett Bursey, director of the S.C. Progressive Network.

“After all, the race of over 2 million drivers a year is already recorded on all traffic tickets, but that data is not put in a form so it may be examined for patterns,” Bursey said.

Racial profiling is a term that refers to the improper targeting of a motorist because of his or her race, not because of a driving issue.

Bursey said that since the General Assembly is required this session to review a 2005 state law that mandated that warning ticket data be analyzed, now is the time for that issue to be studied anew.

The 2005 law requires the Senate Transportation Committee and the House Education and Public Works Committee to make recommendations on how that law can be improved – if any are deemed necessary.

Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, a longtime supporter of better racial traffic stop data, agreed with Bursey.

“This goes to public confidence in laws and justice. To ensure our system is truly color blind, we need to understand what actually is happening when tickets are given,” Neal said.

Analyzing existing racial traffic stop data apparently would not be difficult or cost much money, law enforcement officials indicated.

Neal and Bursey say the state already collects and analyzes racial data in two law enforcement areas: prison populations and suspects arrested for serious crimes like murder.

And one major agency – the Richland County Sheriff’s Department – has been collecting and analyzing racial data on its 20,000-plus annual traffic stops for 10 years.

“It’s fast and it doesn’t cost anything,” said Sheriff Leon Lott.

Lott’s data gives an overall picture of how the race and ethnicity of stopped motorists compares with county racial demographics. The individual traffic stop records of each of Lott’s 500 deputies can be easily examined for possible profiling, he said.

Three years ago, Lott said, his data helped prove a deputy was targeting blacks and Hispanics. The officer was arrested and fired.

Statistics alone aren’t proof of racial profiling, Lott said. Further investigation is needed to establish the complete situation, he said.

“The statistic is the baseline to start looking,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, which handled 1.9 million adjudicated traffic tickets last fiscal year, said it wouldn’t be difficult to write a software program to extract an overall racial picture of citations in which people have been found guilty of violations.

DMV official Beth Parks estimated it would take about two hours and cost at least $200 to arrive at a computer-generated racial profile of last year’s citations to which people were found guilty. She did not have an estimate of what percentage of the 1.9 million citations itwould be.

Last year, as the 2005 law required, the DPS analyzed – and made public – overall race data on 377,676 warning tickets the Highway Patrol issued.

But those warning tickets are only 41 percent of 904,348 tickets it issued last year for seat belt, DUI and other violations.

Last week, DPS director Mark Keel, at The State’s request, examined how his agency handles racial data in the 59 percent of actual citations.

“We have learned we do have the ability to do things with this data that we have not fully explored and fully utilized,” Keel said.

For example, said Keel, DPS can access each trooper’s record of the race of the people who get citations. Racial breakdowns of all citations in individual counties also are available, Keel said.

In the past, such matters as reducing the highway death rate and dealing with budget concerns, have taken much of his attention, Keel said.

But DPS already is having conversations about how to make better use of the data, including possibly making some of the overall patterns publicly available, Keel said.

Keel also said troopers’ supervisors already monitor their officers’ performance, and any racial profiling should be detected now, from an examination of troopers’ tickets issued as well as video made at traffic stops. Before Keel assumed his job in 2008, a few of those videos made the news because they showed troopers mistreating motorists, some of them black.

An official at the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state laws, said a “fair number” of states track and process racial profiling data for traffic stops. She did not have specific numbers.

Lott said he has had good results gathering such data.

“It’s another tool,” Lott said. “You do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Bursey said he hopes law enforcement will take the lead on creating a transparent database. “Good cops don’t mind sharing this data with the public.”

(The Progressive Network’s report can be viewed at www.scpronet.com.)

Public interest group challenges women to run for public office

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South Carolina ranks last in the nation for female representation

No women serve in the South Carolina Senate and only 17 serve in the House of Representatives, which has 124 members. And there are no statewide elected women in South Carolina. That’s what prompted the Southeastern Institute for Women in Politics to hold a press conference today to call on more women to run for public office in the Palmetto State.

Rep. Jenny Horne, Summerville, and a member of the Institute’s Board, responded to the current statistics. “At 10 percent representation in the General Assembly, South Carolina ranks last in the nation for women in elected office. When I was a page in the South Carolina General Assembly in 1992, there were 22 women in the General Assembly or 12.9 percent. Since 1992, women have lost ground in female representation in the General Assembly. The Institute’s mission is to help reverse this disturbing trend.”

The Institute revealed a plan of action that aims to:

* Triple the number of women running for office in 2012;
* Build a network of outreach personnel to identify capable women in each congressional district;
* Stage 3 advanced training campaign schools in 2010
* Partner with Ready to Run™, a national training initiative of the Center for American Women and Politics at * Rutgers Eagle Institute of Politics, to increase training capacity;
* Launch a Talent Bank in cooperation with Alliance for Women to identify skilled women for nomination to public and private boards; and
* Host the 2010 Leading Women Dinner on April 16, drawing attention to women who have opened political doors.

“It’s regrettable that we’ll start our 2010 legislative session next week with these embarrassing numbers.” says Rep. Walt McLeod, Newberry, who serves on the Board of the Southeastern Institute. “Women make up more than half of our state’s population, yet they are just a fraction of the policy makers in our state legislature. This has a negative impact on the lives of all South Carolinians. We know that women bring positive perspectives to many issues critical to our state.”

Founded in 2008, the Southeastern Institute for Women in Politics is focused on three primary goals:

Increase the pool of capable women candidates.
Educate and train women to run and win.
Enhance the visibility of women in leadership roles and change public perception.

The Institute has held six campaign training schools and four major visibility events. It communicates twice each month with more than 20,000 statewide citizens via email.

“Our board is diverse politically, yet we are united on advancing women in political leadership roles,” says Donna Dewitt, Chair of the Institute’s Board and Co-chair of the SC Progressive Network. “We want every woman in South Carolina to have the opportunity to run for elected office, have the tools necessary to do so, and have unprecedented success.”

For further information on in Politics, email info@scelectswomen.com or visit www.scelectswomen.com.