The head of Sen. Barack Obama’s church rallies his congregation. Shades of things to come?
AIDS fight requires more than politics as usual
By Scott Blaine Swenson
Americans need look no farther than the reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to understand why fundamental change is needed in Washington. The good intentions of American taxpayers extending a helping hand to Africans ravaged by AIDS are caught between Republican ideologues and complicit Democrats avoiding a fight on issues at the center of efforts to combat AIDS; sexual and reproductive health.
PEPFAR’s mission was compromised by the House Foreign Affairs Committee because they cannot honestly discuss sexual reproductive health. Once Republican ideologues invoke abortion, which has nothing to do with PEPFAR, problem solving is lost to politics.
For 25 years social conservatives ignored AIDS, using it to marginalize people and allowing the disease to run rampant. Now rigid ideology prevents them from allowing public health experts to use proven scientific methods to educate, prevent and treat. Democrats who compromise are politically complicit.
Ignoring objective analyses and recommendations based on PEPFAR’s first five years from the Institute of Medicine, General Accounting Office, Center for Public Integrity and others, the current proposal fails to ensure the increased funds are spent wisely. Congress will spend more without listening to proven public health strategies.
The good news is the White House has agreed to Congress’ request for $50 billion, over five-years, up from $30 billion President Bush requested. More money is good, but more money spent wisely, based on reality is better.
The new proposal includes efforts to address unique circumstances that women, girls and youth face, including efforts to confront violence against women, promoting property and inheritance rights, expanding economic opportunity to promote financial independence, and efforts to work with men and boys to reinforce positive attitudes and the rights of women. Women in Africa have less ability to negotiate sex, are often married young, and exposed to HIV often through marriage.
Other positive changes include increased training of health care professionals and support for nutrition programs.
Now for the bad news:
Republicans continue to push abstinence-only policies that major studies on PEPFAR indicate impede program effectiveness. An earmark insisting 33 percent of funds be spent on abstinence is gone. But in its place is a requirement that 50 percent of funds for preventing sexual transmission be spent on “behavior change,” defined as abstinence, delay of sexual debut, monogamy and fidelity. The tone of the new requirement suggests that abstinence-only programming is preferred. The proposal requires local public health officials to report noncompliance. Congressional micro-management like this perpetuates failed abstinence-only policies and politicizes a program that should be based on scientific evidence, not ideology.
Funnies
A 15-year-old’s take on the Democratic race
I’m so proud of my granddaugher Laura’s (age 15) writing that I had to pass this along. I think she has nailed what’s at issue in our time: hope vs. fear.
Peace,
Dwight Fee
(Dwight is the Progressive Network’s representative for the Low Country Peace Network.)
***************
Hillary Clinton’s switch from dialogue to diatribe
By Laura Schneck, NYC
According to the media, America’s fighter, Hillary Clinton, has made a comeback. The March 4th primaries awarded Senator Clinton only six more pledged delegates than Barack Obama, but proved that she could survive being “victimized” by a misogynistic media.
To me, though, Hillary’s comeback couldn’t have been more of a letdown.
A year ago, I was just another high school freshman completely oblivious to anything political. And if you had asked me to describe my parents’ political tendencies I’d have to say that they were, at best, apathetic democrats.
Last January, something changed. My mom would come over and sit with me as I waited to see the results of the night’s primaries. We’d play tag team, watching for when Obama would come out to make his speech. We’d listen together, and, yes, we began to hope together. Night after night, we talked politics at the dinner table with my dad and 10-year-old sister and then sat side-by-side, glued to CNN. I became a fan of top political analysts rather than pop-culture icons, ate lunch with page A18 instead of the “in” crowd, and stayed up to watch the democratic debates instead of the latest reality show. Our family was interested. We were inspired. We were almost ready to ask what we could do for our country.
Then Hillary decided to try a new tactic: making fun of us. She tried to make it sound like we were being duped by Obama, that we were somehow deluded in feeling passionate about a candidate who could bring integrity back to the White House. She poked fun not only at his optimism, but also at ours. The Clinton people claimed that my family had fallen for a fairy tale, soundtrack courtesy of a celestial choir.
I think I speak for many Obama supporters when I say our enthusiasm is not based on imagination or illusions. I don’t support Obama because he’s “cool,” uses big words, or because I love the way he blows his nose. I support Obama because I agree with his policies on the issues-from healthcare to energy-that affect my family. I support him because he can make it to the White House with dignity. And once he’s in the White House, he will make sensible and substantial changes to improve relations between parties in this country and between countries in the world. Sorry, Hillary, but your patronizing attempt at a wake-up call only motivated me to donate to Obama’s campaign.
Some people wonder why I became so interested in politics, but mainly they ask why I am not supporting a woman for president. I tell them that, although I’ve always favored Obama, I can’t help but admire Hillary’s intelligence and tenacity. Until a few weeks ago, I might have even taken some pointers from her climb to power.
But then she disappointed me; she began playing dirty. Ironically, her “fighter” mentality made me doubt her strength and my own. As a woman, can I only become successful by putting up a fight? Will people only listen to me if I shout? Will people only take notice of me if I scare them?
Senator Obama welcomed me into this race and Senator Clinton pushed me out. Until recently, the Democratic race convinced me that powerful people can be decent, and one doesn’t need to tear others down to come out on top. I even began to wonder what my apathetic parents had seen so wrong with politics. But the recent switch from dialogue to diatribe has turned my parents back into cynics and may convert me as well.
In the coming weeks, my optimism is on the line. I’ll be looking to see, as Bob Herbert put it, how Obama will confront the kitchen sink.
Oregonians exercise democracy through ‘Voter Owned Elections’ (or Clean Elections)
10,000 Maniacs
by Jeff Malachowsky
CommonDreams.org
Some political scientists argue that voting is irrational, that the act of political participation doesn’t bring enough benefits to the individual to make it worth the effort.
This might be so in many places, but Oregonians don’t think so. Recently, 10,000 have declared, ‘things are different here.’
That’s how many voters coughed up $5 and gave their signatures to candidates running for mayor and city council in Portland, under the city’s new ‘Voter Owned Elections’ system. Moreover, the election is still months away, in May, and it’s only a primary, to boot. What is going on?
Yogi Berra, one of baseball’s most famous orators, once observed – “If the people don’t want to come, nobody’s gonna stop ‘em.” And there-in lies the problem with elections, and with democratic government more broadly. You can’t compel participation; you can’t stop people from sitting out the vote.
But what if you could attract people, make it more fun, more popular – and, more rewarding to participate?
Gay bashing OK in OK?
An Oklahoma legislator lets loose on the evils of homosexuality.
Un. Be. Lievable.
Political buyer beware
A message for women
By Martha Burk
The media is awash in stories about how women (except for some of us old gals over 50) are flocking to Barack Obama in droves and away from Hillary Clinton. Feminists are pitted against feminists as to which candidate, if elected, would be better for women, and many younger women are arguing with their mothers and aunties. But there’s a much bigger division looming, and it’s not between the Obama and Clinton camps. What everybody ought to be looking closer at is that “if elected” part. Women have suffered incredible setbacks under the Bush administration and it is in their hands whether that path continues after November.
A lot of Bush’s damage to the country as a whole, like the war and the tanking economy, is front and center. But much of the damage to women has been under the radar. Presidential appointees can do tremendous harm, mostly out of the public eye. Take Wade Horn, one of Bush’s Health and Human Services assistant secretaries. Horn founded the National Fatherhood Initiative to promote marriage as the solution to poverty, loudly touting his belief that “the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.” Then he gave the group $12.38 million of the taxpayer’s money to push marriage instead of funding job training and educational programs to get women off welfare. But the marriage money is peanuts compared to the megabucks Horn poured into abstinence-only sex education in the public schools. That tab now comes to $176 million per year, even though the government’s own research shows the programs don’t work and teenage pregnancy is up for the first time in 15 years.
Not to be outdone, the Bush appointees over at the Department of Education have stayed busy dismantling Title IX, the law protecting girls from discrimination in educational programs, including sports. For decades courts have upheld the Education Department’s rigorous criteria for compliance as valid. But no matter. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings issued a Title IX “clarification,” allowing schools to refuse to create additional sports opportunities for women based solely on e-mail interest surveys. Failure of female students to answer e-mail surveys is now routinely counted by colleges as a lack of interest in participating in sports. Neither the standard nor the e-mail survey method of limiting opportunities applies to male students.
Columbia passes historic city ordinances
Council Passes Ordinances Prohibiting Discrimination in Housing and Public Accommodations
Today the Columbia City Council voted unanimously to pass ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in housing and public accommodations. South Carolina Equality proposed these ordinances in January and the ordinances passed with little opposition.
C. Ray Drew, Executive Director of South Carolina Equality Coalition, said, “We have passed one of the most comprehensive bills in the country, in one of the most conservative states in the country. South Carolina, and states like ours, represents the front lines of our battle for LGBT civil rights in this country.”
Columbia is the first municipality in the state to pass comprehensive human rights ordinances in housing and public accommodations including sexual orientation and gender identity. Council Members Daniel Rickenmann and Tameika Isaac Devine introduced the legislation and urged the City Council to support the ordinances. Rickenmann and Isaac Devine stated, “When we work together and respect each other, we can make Columbia an even better place to live.”
Columbia joins two other cities in the “Deep South” that have passed comprehensive anti-discrimination ordinances – New Orleans and Atlanta.
Harriet Hancock, longtime activist and Board member of the SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement, said, “These ordinances represent the single greatest advance in civil rights for the LGBT community in the history of our state.” Hancock was the architect of the 1991 city ordinances prohibiting discrimination in city employment on the basis of sexual orientation.
Drew added, “Working collaboratively with the SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement in passing these historic city ordinances is a perfect example of what our community can accomplish when we work together.”
Ryan Wilson, President of SC Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement, said, “There’s a whole new energy in our state. We’re focused and working together. There’s no end to what we can accomplish.”
Iraq war by the numbers
5: Number of years the Iraq war has lasted. (March 19, 2008, the 6th year begins.)
3973: U.S. Deaths Confirmed By the DoD (as of March 3, 2008)
May 2, 2003: The day the President arrived on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared “Mission Accomplished.”
64%: Percentage of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq (CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Feb. 1-3, 2008)
57%: Percentage of Iraqis who think it is acceptable to attack American soldiers. (Up from 51% in March and 17% back in February 2004.) (August 2007: ABC; BBC; NHK; D3 Systems of Vienna, Va.; and KA Research of Turkey)
81,000 – >600,000: Estimates of number of civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
(Epidemiologists have estimated that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.)
49: Number of countries in the Coalition of the Willing when the invasion began in 2003
25: Current number of countries supplying 11,685 troops — about 7% of the size of the U.S. forces.
4 million: Number of displaced Iraqis: more than 2 million uprooted within Iraq, and as many have fled to neighboring countries.
$600 billion: Approved funds for the war ($499 billion spent as of today). President Bush has requested another $200 billion for 2008, which would bring the cumulative total to close to $800 billion.
$3 trillion: Estimate of true cost of war by Nobel Prize-winning economists (< #1>see below).
$270 million: Number of dollars the U.S. spends each day in Iraq
$390,000: Cost of deploying one U.S. soldier for one year in Iraq
(Congressional Research Service)
$9 billion: Amount lost & unaccounted for in Iraq
$1.4 billion: Amount of Halliburton overcharges classified by the Pentagon as unreasonable and unsupported
$20 billion: Amount paid to KBR, a former Halliburton division, to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items
$3.2 billion: Portion of that $20 billion that Pentagon auditors deem “questionable or supportable”
75: Number of major U.S. bases in Iraq (The Nation/New York Times)
166,895: Troops in Iraq: 157,000 from the U.S., 4,500 from the UK, 2,000 from Georgia, 900 from Poland, 650 from South Korea and 1,845 from all other nations
6,000: Iraqi troops trained and able to function independent of U.S. forces (NBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 20, 2007)
27 to 60%: Iraqi unemployment rate (depending on where curfew is in effect)
28%: Iraqi children suffering from chronic malnutrition (CNN.com, July 30, 2007)
40%: Professionals who have left Iraq since 2003
34,000: Iraqi physicians before 2003 invasion
12,000: Iraqi physicians who have left Iraq since 2005 invasion
2,000: Iraqi physicians murdered since 2003 invasion
10.9: Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity (May 2007)
5.6: Average Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity (May 2007)
16 to 24: Pre-War Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Had Electricity
70%: Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies (CNN.com, July 30, 2007)
22%: Water Treatment Plants Rehabilitated
0: Number of WMDs found in Iraq
0: Number of connections between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of 9/11
0: Number of convincing reasons for starting the war, and continuing the occupation
Democrats shift gears on Iraq
By Mike Soraghan
The Hill
Congressional Democrats searching for a message that will resonate on the Iraq war are preparing an argument that getting troops out of the conflict is the only way to rebuild a spent military.
It’s a less ambitious argument than the “Out-of-Iraq now” proposals put forward last year, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top Democrats believe it will allow the party to criticize the war without being seen as criticizing those fighting it. It could also help Democrats to portray themselves as protecting the military and national security.
The Pentagon’s commanders have repeatedly testified that the Iraq war is straining the military, and Democrats say they can take that foundation and add the extra step of saying the strain is the reason to withdraw troops.
“This is about America’s security,” said Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). “We have an Army that can’t deploy anywhere else in the world.”
Or, as a staffer put it, “You can’t rebuild an engine while you’re driving along at 60 miles per hour.”