This article by Amy Mall is re-posted from EcoWatch.
The George Washington National Forest in Virginia is currently a target for natural gas leasing, yet this area is home to the headwaters of the Potomac and James Rivers.
The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in the process of developing new rules for fracking on more than 750 million acres of public and private land across the country. A final rule could be released as early as December.
The current rules are woefully inadequate and need to be dramatically strengthened to protect health and the environment. Even Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has said that the current rules “… are in many ways outdated …”
BLM has the opportunity and obligation to be a leader in regulating fracking. But the BLM’s current draft for new rules is too weak. The rules need to be strengthened in many ways that the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has detailed in previous blogs, such as requiring companies to disclose the chemicals they use before fracking begins; requiring baseline water testing in an area before fracking begins in order to determine if contamination has occurred; establishing the highest standards for well design and construction; and prohibiting the use of open air pits to store or dispose of toxic fracking waste.
The stakes are high—fracking comes with serious risks and stronger rules are essential to protect the health and safety of millions of people nationwide.
It’s not only wildlands like the pristine mountain ranges and magnificent red rock canyons in the western U.S. that fall under the category of “public lands.” It’s true that BLM’s new rules will govern oil and gas fracking in California, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. And protecting those lands for wildlife and wilderness qualities is critical.
Drinking water for millions at risk
But in addition, the rules will also apply to national forests nationwide that are the sources of drinking water for tens of millions of Americans. Priority drinking watersheds, and other sensitive natural, scenic and recreation areas, should be made off limits to fracking in BLM’s new rule. The toxic waste that can spill or leak, dangerous air pollutants, harms to streams and forests, and threats to drinking water from contamination in watersheds that serve millions of people are too severe to allow oil and gas development to proceed in places like this. A map below illustrates federal lands and their importance to surface drinking water supplies.
Take, for example:
Washington, D.C.: The George Washington National Forest in Virginia is currently a target for leasing, yet this area is home to the headwaters of the Potomac and James Rivers. The waters in this forest feed the drinking water supplies for approximately four million people, including all of Washington, D.C., northern Virginia, and Richmond (see our map below), and more than 260,000 residents of the Shenandoah Valley. While the U.S. Forest Service has proposed keeping horizontal drilling and fracking out of here, its plan has yet to be finalized, and would still allow vertical drilling with fracking in nearly the entire area if it is approved. Not only are the risks of fracking here far too great—whether horizontal or vertical—but the proposed new BLM rules are inadequate to properly safeguard the drinking water resources that depend on this forest from any kind of fracking that might move forward here, regardless of the outcome of the Forest Service’s new plan.
Denver and western Colorado: The White River National Forest in Colorado, where oil and gas leasing is in the works, is home to the main reservoirs for Denver’s drinking water and parts of water projects that serve Aurora and Colorado Springs, among other cities. Its crystal clear streams provide drinking water to many local communities, including Glenwood Springs, Silt, New Castle, Carbondale, Redstone, Vail, Aspen, Basalt, Eagle, Gypsum and Rifle. And it is also the source of most of the water in the Upper Colorado River—which ultimately sustains 30 million people downstream in Arizona, Nevada and California. Additionally, the White River National Forest is the most visited national forest in the nation because it is home to some of America’s most spectacular wild beauty, unparalleled outdoor recreation opportunities including Aspen and Vail, incredibly valuable wildlife habitat and prized hunting and fishing spots.
Athens, Ohio: The Wayne National Forest is facing oil and gas leasing of more than 3,000 acres. Most of the acreage lies directly along the Hocking River and the underlying aquifer that serves as the sole source of drinking water for more than 70,000 people in four Ohio counties: Athens, Hocking, Perry and Morgan. This includes major metropolitan areas like Athens and Nelsonville, and Ohio University. According to the City of Athens, the sole-source aquifer is shallow, averaging a maximum of 60 feet below ground level, and is therefore “especially susceptible to pollution from surface level and near-surface level contamination.” The Burr Oak Regional Water District opposes any fracking near the aquifer, saying that contamination would pose a “serious and catastrophic health risk to the people and communities that depend upon this water source.”
The BLM has more work to do in order to deliver a stronger and more, protective fracking rule to help safeguard the health of the millions of people and the more than 700 million acres across the country it will govern. From California to Virginia, Michigan to Texas, and the many places in between, our drinking water sources, communities and wild places are too precious for anything less.
Here is a map of areas in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region that are primarily served by water from the Potomac River; this map does not include areas in Frederick County, MD:
And here is a map of federal lands nationwide and their importance to surface drinking water supplies, based on data from the U.S. Forest Service “Forests to Faucets” program:
Gaza Quiz
This quiz by Stephen Shalom is re-posted from ZNet.
An uneasy cease-fire has been declared ending Israel’s attack on Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense. Take this quiz to see how much you know about the situation.
1. How did the people of Gaza come to be where they are?
a. A majority of them are descendants of refugees who in 1948-1949 fled or were driven out by Israeli forces from territory that was supposed to be part of the Arab state of Palestine but was taken over by Israel, and they were never permitted to return.
b. Some of them are descendants of residents of the Arab town of Majdal, who, after the 1948-49 war were evacuated from different parts of the town and concentrated in a neighborhood surrounded by barbed wire (to make way for Jewish settlers) and then expelled to Gaza.
c. Gaza was conquered by Israel in October 1956 and subjected to massacres; Israel withdrew under international pressure in March 1957.
d. Gazans came under Israeli occupation in 1967 when Israel—in a war in which, in the words of Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1982, “we had a choice … We decided to attack [Egypt]”—conquered the Sinai (since returned to Egypt), Gaza, East Jerusalem (annexed), the West Bank, and the Golan Heights (annexed).
e. All of the above.
2. In 2005, Israel under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “disengaged” from Gaza. Which of the following statements about the disengagement is true?
a. Israel’s Gaza “disengagement” was a unilateral move, not worked out with any Palestinian leaders at all.
b. Israeli settlers were removed from Gaza, but more new settlers moved to the West Bank in 2005 than left Gaza and more Palestinian land was taken over on the West Bank than was given up in Gaza.
c. Ariel Sharon’s chief aide, Dov Weisglass, told an interviewer for an Israeli newspaper: The significance of the disengagement plan “is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.”
d. All of the above.
3.Israel says that its occupation of Gaza ended in 2005. Which of the following conditions that exist to this day raises a question about whether there has actually been an end to Israeli control of Gaza?
a. Israel prohibits Gaza from engaging in air commerce with or air travel to or from other nations.
b. Israel prohibits Gaza from engaging in sea commerce with or sea travel to or from other nations.
c. Israel prohibits Gazans engaged in fishing from going more than 3 nautical miles off shore, denying them access to 85% of their fishing waters.
d. Israel has declared a formal no-go zone for Palestinians inside Gaza covering more than 3 percent of the total land area and another 14 percent within which entry is effectively restricted due to a real risk of gunfire, excluding from Palestinian use 35% of the land suitable for farming.
e. The Israeli army carries out incursions into this zone a number of times a week.
f. All of the above.
4.Which of the following reflects the Israeli attitude toward Gaza and its people?
a. The statement in a 1956 Knesset speech by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion: “If I believed in miracles, I would pray that Gaza would be washed down into the sea.”
b. The statement by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993: “If only it [Gaza] would just sink into the Sea.”
c. The fact that in Israeli slang, “go to Gaza” means “go to hell.”
d. All of the above.
5.The Palestinian organization Hamas rules within Gaza. Which of the following is true regarding Hamas?
a. A descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, it was promoted in its early years by Israel and the United States, which were eager to establish a counterweight to the then-dominant secular Palestinian organization Fatah.
b. It won a plurality in the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006.
c. It took over Gaza in 2007 after Fatah, working with Israel and the United States, launched a failed coup against it.
d. All of the above.
6. Hamas refuses to accept the three Israeli-U.S. conditions: that it recognize Israel, renounce violence, and agree to accept all agreements previously accepted by the Palestinian Authority. Which of the following is true?
a. Israel and the United States have refused to recognize an independent Palestinian state, with Washington even blocking UN recognition of nominal Palestinian statehood.
b. Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv has renounced violence (to say the least).
c. Nonviolent protest against the Israeli occupation has been brutally repressed.
d. Israel “previously accepted” the Fourth Geneva Convention, but when the World Court found Israel’s construction of the Wall on the occupied West Bank to be in violation of that convention, Israel refused to remove it and the United States supported its refusal.
e. Israel signed the Oslo Accords which state that “The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, whose integrity will be preserved during the interim period” and yet has pursued a policy of trying to separate Gaza from the West Bank.
f. Hamas has indicated on numerous occasions that it was willing to accept an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, along with a truce that could last 20, 30, or 50 years, or even indefinitely.
g. All of the above.
7.Israel says it can’t trust Hamas to maintain cease-fires. Which of the following is part of the historical record?
a. A study found that from 2000 to 2008, it was “overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict” and that this pattern “becomes more pronounced for longer conflict pauses,” with Israel unilaterally having interrupted 96% of the periods of nonviolence that lasted longer than a week and 100% of the periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.
b. In 1997, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal made an offer to Israel through King Hussein of Jordan for a thirty-year cease-fire. Israel ignored the offer and then tried to assassinate Meshal in Amman.
c. Following its 2006 electoral victory in Gaza, Hamas secretly conveyed a message to the Israeli government that it “would pledge not to carry out any violent actions against Israel and would even prevent other Palestinian organizations from doing so,” if Israel stopped its undercover assassination program and ended its military attacks in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel did not reply.
d. In June 2008 a six-month truce was arranged between Israel and Hamas, and broken by Israel on the night of Nov. 4-5, 2008.
e. All of the above.
8.Israel claims that its blockade of Gaza is simply a means of keeping out weapons from the territory. Which of the following is true?
a. The blockade has always included a ban on almost all exports from Gaza, crippling the economy, while having no connection to weapons imports.
b. Dov Weisglass, an adviser to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, explained that “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
c. The Israeli Ministry of Defense did a study in 2008 of the minimum daily humanitarian food needs of Gaza and then, until June 2010, Israel proceeded to allow in less than that amount.
d. Among the items Israel prohibited being imported into Gaza before June 2010 were notebooks, cilantro, sage, jam, chocolate, French fries, dried fruit, fabrics, and toys.
e. Even though food is now allowed into Gaza, Israel still restricts exports, imports of basic construction materials, despite a shortage of approximately 250 schools and some 71,000 housing units, and restricts travel between Gaza and the West Bank.
f. All of the above.
9.Which of the following describes conditions in Gaza on the eve of Operation Pillar of Defense?
a. The people of Gaza have lower per capita incomes than they did in the 1990s, despite improvements over the past three years.
b. The unemployment rate in 2011 was 29% and during the first quarter of 2012 unemployment stood at 47% for women and 58% for people between 20 and 24 years old.
c. 44% of households were food insecure in 2011 and another 16% were vulnerable to food insecurity.
d. 10% of children suffer from stunting (long-term exposure to chronic malnutrition).
e. 39% of people lived below the poverty line.
f. Currently, more than 90% of the water supplied through Gaza’s aquifer does not meet the safety standards of the World Health Organization and is unfit for drinking.
g. All of the above.
10.Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense on November 14, 2012, claiming it needed to respond to an unrelenting barrage of rockets from Hamas. Which of the following is an accurate statement of the lead-up to November 14?
a. From October 30, 2012, until Nov. 10, 2012, there were a total of 2 rockets fired from Gaza, which fell in open areas causing no casualties or damage.
b. On November 4, Israeli forces shot and killed a 23 year-old mentally-challenged Palestinian walking approximately ten meters from the fence on the Gaza side. The Israeli military did not allow a Palestinian ambulance to retrieve the body for two hours.
c. On Nov. 8, Israeli troops operating within Gaza were fired on by Palestinians; Israeli fire killed a Palestinian boy.
d. On Nov. 10, Palestinian armed factions fired on an Israeli military vehicle patrolling on the Israeli side of the fence, injuring four soldiers. Israel responded by firing tank shells hitting a residential area, killing 5 civilians, including 2 children, and injuring 36 civilians, including 9 children.
e. Palestinian rocket attacks began on Nov. 10, after more than a week of quiet.
f. All of the above.
11.What happened on November 13, the day before the Israeli targeted assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, Hamas’ military chief?
a. Palestinian rocket fire decreased from 64 on Nov. 11, to 35 on Nov. 12, to 1 on the morning of Nov. 13.
b. Palestinian rocket fire ended, but then, in the words of the Israeli government, “Following the launch of Israel’s operation Pillar of Defense … rocket fire from Gaza resumed on Wednesday evening (14 Nov)…”
c. Reuters reported that “After five days of mounting violence, Israel and the Palestinians stepped back from the brink of a new war in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, [Nov. 13,] sending signals to each other via Egypt that they would hold their fire unless attacked. … Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza’s Hamas government, praised the main armed factions in the enclave for agreeing on Monday night to a truce. ‘They showed a high sense of responsibility by saying they would respect calm should the Israeli occupation also abide by it,’ he said.”
d. A draft proposal for a long-term cease-fire, with mechanisms to ensure compliance, had been agreed to by an Israeli negotiator and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, and was being submitted to Ahmed al-Jabari and Israeli security officials for their consideration. Jabari, who had authorized the negotiations, received a copy of the proposal the day he was assassinated.
e. All of the above.
12.Israel (and the United States) claim that the Israeli attack on Gaza was a lawful act of self-defense. Which of the following statements about self-defense conform to international law and morality?
a. Military force in self-defense must be a last resort, having exhausted non-military means (such as accepting a cease-fire, negotiating a long-term cease-fire, and, most decisively, ending the occupation of Palestinian territory).
b. Self-defense is not permissible against someone legitimately resisting illegal occupation (and so, for example, Japanese troops in China from 1937-45 had no right of self-defense against attacks from Chinese forces).
c. Even when self-defense is permitted, the measures taken must not disproportionately endanger civilians.
d. All of the above.
13.If a cease-fire was possible without Operation Pillar of Defense, which of the following is a plausible explanation for why Israel launched its attack?
a. Because Israel always wants to maintain its deterrent power, meaning that fear of its massive military response will keep subject people in line.
b. Because an election is coming soon in Israel and wars and Palestinian rockets tend to help politicians’ electoral prospects.
c. To test out the Iron Dome system and send a message to Iran.
d. Because Pillar of Defense weakened Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, while strengthening Hamas, which serves the Israeli interest in being able to insist there is no partner for peace.
e. All of the above.
14.Which of the following statements was made by an Israeli official or personality?
a. Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai: “We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water.”
b. Israel Katz, Israel’s transport minister and member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, on 11 November: “we must detach from Gaza in a civilian manner—electricity, water, food, and fuel—and transition into a policy of deterrence, just like in Southern Lebanon.”
c. Avi Dichter, Israel’s Minister of Home Front Defense: “there is no other choice, Israel must carry out a formatting action in Gaza, actually format the system and clean it out, the way we did in Judea & Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield.”
d. Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari of the National Union party: “Brothers! Beloved soldiers and commanders—preserve your lives! Don’t give a hoot about Goldstone! There are no innocents in Gaza, don’t let any diplomats who want to look good in the world endanger your lives[;] at any tiniest concern for your lives—Mow them!”
e. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of Israel’s former Chief Rabbi and spiritual leader of the Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef: “The army has got to learn from the Syrians how to slaughter and crush the enemy.”
f. Gilad Sharon, the son of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, in the Jerusalem Post: “The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences….We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima—the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.”
g. All of the above.
15.Which of the following is a UN statistic regarding the casualties of Operation Pillar of Defense?
a. More than twenty-five Palestinian civilians were killed for every Israeli civilian killed (103:4).
b. More than twenty-five Palestinian combatants were killed for every Israeli combatant killed (55:2).
c. Israel, with its arsenal of highly advanced “smart” weaponry, fired without being under pressure, killed as high a percentage of civilians among all those it killed (65%) as did Hamas (67%), with its inaccurate rockets fired under great pressure.
d. All of the above.
16.Which of the following is true regarding U.S. military aid to Israel?
a. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance in the world since 1945, having received $115 billion in bilateral assistance, about two-thirds of which has been military aid and which in recent years has been almost entirely military aid.
b. U.S. military aid to Israel has helped transform Israel’s armed forces into one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world and has helped Israel build a domestic arms industry that ranks as one of the top 10 arm exporters.
c. One of the main Israeli weapons used to attack Gaza have been F-16 aircraft, provided by the United States. From 2000 to 2009, the United States paid for and delivered at least 93 F-16D fighter jets, valued at $2.48 billion, and licensed and paid for at least 13,559 spare parts and co-production parts for Israel’s arsenal of F-16s.
d. All of the above.
17.In which other way has the United States aided Israel in its assault on Gaza?
a. The Obama administration blocked a United Nations Security Council statement calling for a cease-fire on November 20, 2012 to end Operation Pillar of Defense.
b. President Obama told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “no country can be expected to tolerate rocket attacks against civilians,” but failed to note that no people should have to live under occupation, with bombs and shells falling on them, killing far greater numbers of innocent civilians.
c. The United States has blocked efforts to hold Israel responsible for its previous assault on Gaza, by rejecting the Goldstone Commission Report.
d. President Obama declared that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with Hamas.
e. The United States has defended Israel’s right to stop humanitarian aid ships bound for Gaza.
f. The Obama administration, by its use of targeted drone killings, has normalized the practice that Israel now uses to such murderous effect.
g. The United States has over many years blocked efforts to move in the direction of a long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, among many other acts vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
h. All of the above.
18.Which of the following is a way to put pressure on the Israeli government to end its occupation of Palestine, and on the United States government and corporations which support that occupation?
a. Support the work of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.
b. Support the work of Jewish Voice for Peace and its “We Divest” campaign to pressure TIAA/CREF to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation.
c. Support the work of Code Pink and its Stolen Beauty campaign to boycott beauty products made in the occupied territories.
d. Support other campaigns that aim to achieve justice for Palestinians.
e. All of the above.
Answers and Sources, click here.
AIDS and Activism Part III – ACT UP and the power of direct action
This is the third of a three part series that began earlier this week. In Part I, we posted the chapter on AIDS and the Gay Community in Grand Rapids from the film “A People’s History of the LGBTQ Community in Grand Rapids. In Part II, we focused on the silence of the US government in the 1980s and the homophobic response to AIDS by the Religious Right.
We left off in Part II of this series talking about the virulently homophobic responses from the Religious Right in the 1980s around the issue of AIDS. In Part III, we want to focus on the creation and work of the group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP).
ACT UP was founded in 1987, at a time when the US government was in some ways ignoring the AIDS crisis and at the same time blaming the gay community for this new deadly disease. ACT UP was both a response to the brutally homophobic climate of the 1980s and the lack of any real movement to challenge the systemic inadequacies of the US health care system.
ACT UP was not interested in charity, reform or working within the system, they used direct action and confrontation to demand health care rights and challenge the institutional homophobia of that permeated most of society.
One of the early ACT UP activists, Sarah Schulman, recounted years later what motivated the strategy of the new movement:
The group operated in a way Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated, which was to “educate yourself so you really understand the issue, make a demand that’s reasonable and doable, present that demand to the powers that be who can enact it, and when they refuse, you do civil disobedience until they are forced by pressure to take that action.”
Jerry Kramer, another one of the early leaders of ACT UP, during one meeting asked half of those in the room to stand up as a way of making a point about the urgency of this issue. He said, “you will all be dead from AIDS in a year, what are you gonna do about it?”
This is the kind of passion and rage that people brought to the movement in ACT UP and it manifested itself in the following ways:
- Catholic Cardinal John O’Connor, was not only preaching against the gay community, he was on the Reagan appointed AIDS Commission and refused to acknowledge the crisis, which was taking the lives of thousands of people in New York City alone. In 1989, ACT UP members and the Women’s Health Action Network (WHAM!) held marches outside St. Patricks Cathedral in New York, once with a banner that read, “O’Connor Public Health Menace.” On one occasion the group did an action in the church during mass and held a die-in to dramatize the seriousness of AIDS. Some members yelled during the mass and said, “You are killing us, stop killing us, we’re not going to take it anymore.” Over 100 people were arrested for this action, known as the Stop the Church Campaign, which was later made into a 24 minute documentary.
- In March of 1987, 250 members of ACT UP protested in front of Wall Street to demand greater access to HIV/AIDS drugs and a more coordinated national policy to deal with the crisis. The group chose Wall Street to confront large drug companies that were more interested in making money that providing drugs to fight AIDS. Seventeen members of ACT UP were arrested at this action.
- In April of 1987, ACT UP held an action at the main post office on the last day to file income tax returns. The group knew that the news media always reports on late filers and would have to report on their action, plus the group began its Silence = Death campaign, with the now infamous logo.
- In 1988, members of ACT Up took action against Cosmopolitan Magazine, because it had published misleading and harmful information about AIDS and sex. About 150 people protested outside the Hearst building, which is the parent company of Cosmo. People chanted, “Say no to Cosmo,” and ACT UP had a film team there to document the action and produce a new video for this campaign.
- When the US War in the Gulf began in 1991, ACT UP took the opportunity to draw the connections between military spending and lack of funds for AIDS. One action involved getting into the studio of CBS and disrupting a live broadcast, where Dan Rather was reading the news. The very next day ACT UP members went to the Grand Central Terminal in New York and released banners that said, “Money for AIDS, not for war.” These actions were part of what ACT UP called Days of Desperation.
In essence, what ACT UP accomplished was to have a profound and lasting impact on HIV/AIDS, not just from the greater awareness their actions brought, but because they challenge systems of power that perpetuated violence, suffering and social exclusion against those who were and are HIV positive.
ACT UP did not play nice, they did not ask for marginal reforms, they did not create public/private partnerships and they didn’t rely on either the government or the so-called free market to solve the problem.
What we can learn from ACT UP
There were and still are numerous chapters of ACT UP all across the country, with sister organizations around the world that continue to fight against institutional violence, oppression and homophobia.
This fight continues today, despite the gains made by grassroots activism to address the class, gender and class disparities within HIV/AIDS. Corporations are motivated by profits rather than people, AIDS still disproportionately impacts poor communities, the LGBTQ community, communities of color and immigrant populations and the lack of adequate funding for resources is still a major part of the fight.
What we can learn from ACT UP about how we organize today is important. First, we have to take bold action, the kind of action that will challenge power systems in whatever form they take. We cannot allow government agencies, pharmaceutical companies, trade policies and religious institutions to prevent anyone from having access to HIV/AIDS testing & medication.
Second, our demands should not just be for access, it is about justice and part of that fight for justice today is to radically change social structures and power dynamics that perpetuate the spread of such diseases – classism, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, heterosexism and imperialism.
Third, ACT UP understood the importance of an intersectional analysis, which is why they did not shy away from making the demand of money for AIDS, not for war. As of today, roughly $212 million has left Grand Rapids to fund the US occupation of Afghanistan. Imagine if just 1% of that much money, $2.1 million, was available to groups like The Red Project. Imagine what kind of work they could accomplish if money was never an issue. The Obama administration, like all previous administrations always puts its priority in military spending and not human rights issues like HIV/AIDS.
Fourth, we have to target those structures, which benefit from the current systems of oppression. Pharmaceutical companies still profit while people unnecessarily die. Governments still deny or avoid making HIV/AIDS a priority, within a larger context of public health justice. Religious institutions still marginalize and promote hate around the issue of HIV/AIDS. Commercial media still misinforms or minimally informs on the larger social and historical context of HIV/AIDS.
Lastly, we need to learn from ACT UP, in terms of their ability to a have creative and impacting media strategy. We must avoid doing things that are media friendly, instead do things that 1) provoke the media, and 2) we need to make more of our own media that both documents actions and challenges power. We must not be content to just make media that is symbolic, rather media that makes those in power feel terribly uncomfortable.
Films About ACT UP in West Michigan
In the next week, we highly recommend that people in West Michigan attend one of the screenings of two separate documentaries that deal with the history of ACT UP. The LGBT Resource Center at GVSU will be screening the film How to Survive A Plague, on Monday, December 3 at noon on the Allendale Campus (Grand River Room – Kirkhof Center) and at 6:00PM at the downtown campus (Loosemore auditorium). UICA will be screening the film United in Anger, on Wednesday, December 5 at 7:00PM.
Holland’s Power Plant still being debated
This article was written by Nicole Berens-Capizzi.
Holland City Council held its regular weekly meeting on Wednesday, November 28. At this meeting they discussed a variety of topics, including the 114 MW natural gas power plant being considered to power the city. In the days leading up to the meeting, the public was under the impression that Holland City Council would vote on the Baseload Generation Staff Recommendation. On November 12, Holland Board of Public Works (HBPW) approved the staff recommendation to build the natural gas power plant. Based on how the process had played out thus far, residents have expected city council would also approve this plan. In spite of this, Mayor Kurt Dykstra officially announced to the media that a decision on the issue wouldn’t be likely at this meeting. 
During the pre-council meeting the general manager of HBPW, Dave Koster, briefly discussed the plan. He said that HBPW had approved the plan and are “looking for council to follow suit”. Not long after this discussion, the mayor announced that this issue would be taken off the agenda for the night, but city council would likely vote on the issue the following Wednesday, December 5. Mayor Dykstra also announced that following the city council meeting would be a study session regarding the board’s recommendation. This concerned many at the meeting because the decision to omit this issue from the agenda while holding a separate study session after the council meeting was never announced to the public prior to the pre-council meeting. Because the study session is supposed to be open to the public it would have made sense to announce this decision prior to the meeting, in the name of transparency. This decision was also problematic because the study session wouldn’t begin until later in the evening after much of the public had already left for the night.
Members of the public who wanted to comment on the recommendation were encouraged to do so either when item twelve on the agenda was addressed, or during the study session after the council meeting. Once city council reached item twelve, three members of the public decided to speak out against the proposed 114 MW natural gas power plant.
Susan Harley, the Michigan Policy Director for Clean Water Action, stated for the record that since the study session is distinct from the city council meeting, an announcement should have been made about the study session at least eighteen hours in advance to comply with the Open Meetings Act. She expressed concern not only about the fact that city council hadn’t decided to move completely away from coal, but also the environmental impacts of fracking. She stated that HBPW didn’t include concerns about fracking throughout their decision making process because they felt this issue was out of their hands, but considering there may be more regulations on fracking in the near future, this is something they should take into consideration. Overall, she said it’s the wrong time to make a decision on natural gas.
Carol from the Holland Area League of Women Voters, like Susan, also expressed concern about the fact that the city is still planning on keeping the James DeYoung coal-fired power plant running. She spoke on behalf of LWV when stating that she is very concerned about climate change and believes Holland can be a leader in a cleaner energy future, should they decide to move toward a sustainable energy policy.
Jan O’Connell, the Energy Issues Organizer for the Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club, said that “HBPW’s recommendation and vote is putting the cart before the horse in setting up and recommending a plan to build a large, 114 MW natural gas plant without fully factoring in and maximizing energy efficiency as well as renewable energy”. She also expressed concern about the fluctuating price of natural gas and the city locking itself into one particular source of energy when it might not be financially sustainable in the future.
The study session regarding HBPW’s recommendation to move forward with the natural gas plant began at approximately 9:30pm. Unfortunately, much of the public had left by this time. Dave Koster of HBPW began the presentation by reiterating the idea that the public has had many opportunities to give input, though the public hasn’t felt very included in the process. (A previous article explores this more in-depth.) He went on to summarize HBPW’s proposal to “pursue combined-cycle technology in a 2 x 1 configuration approximately 114mw in size”. In the presentation, they also included the idea that a “7.5% more efficient cycle means less emissions, less fuel burned and therefore less cost per kWh”. Unfortunately, like many of the other arguments in favor of the natural gas power plant, this only looks at the bottom line and doesn’t take into consideration the impact that fracking for natural gas has on the environment.
Unlike the October 29 meeting, the public was given the opportunity to comment after the presentation by HBPW. Most of the meeting thus far had focused on the economics of HBPW’s recommendation, with a few comments on the environmental impact of this plan. The first person to comment during the study session, however, really brought the issue home. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to follow up with her after the meeting since she left right after speaking. She said that if the city decides to go with natural gas, she hopes they continue researching other options, and she also asked HBPW if they knew who the provider of the natural gas would be. Mr. Koster stated that HBPW owns a natural gas pipeline in Overisel that is connected to an interstate pipeline and has multiple suppliers. After he said this, the concerned resident also expressed her fears about fracking. She said that many Allegan residents have received letters or solicitations to lease their property for fracking. In her words, this was “too close for comfort” given how unsafe fracking is and how they are exempt from regulations regarding clean air and water. She said fracking destroys communities, and that people are paid big money for leasing their land, but have to sign nondisclosure agreements in the process. “This imprisons people”, she said.
Mr. Koster stated that HBPW isn’t in the business of fracking or looking to get into the business, they just focus on what sources of energy are best for the city. He also encouraged her to look up a fact sheet from the Michigan DEQ that “dispels myths about fracking”, and he reassured her that the process is safe and has been going on in Michigan for years.
Monica Hallacy, a concerned Holland resident, commented on how new horizontal hydraulic fracturing is to the state and expressed similar concerns regarding the industry’s exemptions from basic regulations. She said that Holland wants to be a leader in clean energy.
I was the last person to comment during the study session. I said that while I understand HBPW isn’t in the business of fracking, it’s irresponsible to not consider the impact fracking has on the environment when making decisions about the overall environmental impact of a particular source of energy. I made the point that the DEQ and EPA are pro-industry, not community, and that the way to learn the truth about the impacts of fracking is to talk to those who live in communities where it’s taken place. I mentioned the increased rates of breast cancer among those living near frack sites, and also the impact consumption of contaminated water has on farmers (their animals in particular). After this comment, city council and HBPW moved on to a discussion of the proposal in general.
Even though no final decision was made on November 28, a few members of city council expressed various concerns about the board’s recommendation, including the possible location of the new natural gas power plant, as well as cautioning against relying strictly on one source of energy. City council seemed more divided on this issue than some of us previously believed.
Obama and GOP Play Tag Team on Entitlements
This article by Glen Ford is re-posted from Black Agenda Report.
It seems that every breathless moment of corporate media news is choreographed to convince Americans that austerity is as inevitable as tomorrow’s weather. The objective of this con game is to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The two principle parties engaged in negotiations – the White House and congressional Republican leaders – are both agreed that entitlements must be put under the knife. The “grand bargain” that both Obama and the GOP seek has already been made, in principle. Austerity is the common language and goal of the talks, and nobody that counts in the discussions is defending entitlements.
There is only one problem: the vast majority of Americans oppose cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
This is the great difficulty facing both Obama and the Republicans: the fact that the public favors the maintenance and even expansion of the meager U.S. social safety net. The disagreement, the great debate, is not between Republicans and the White House, who both agree on putting entitlements on the chopping block. The disagreement is between strong majorities of the American people, who want no tampering with the three entitlement programs, and Obama and his Republican friends, who are hell bent on so-called entitlement “reform.”
This is not a fight between the two parties; it is a choreographed beat-down of the American majority by corporate Democratic and Republican thugs, aided by shrieking corporate media banshees screaming, Watch out for the cliff, Watch out for the cliff!.
The “grand bargain” was struck back in the summer of 2011, when both sides agreed on roughly $4 trillion in cuts. The agreement only unraveled because a presidential election was drawing near, and the two parties needed to pretend that they were separated by vast political differences. Now that the election is over and the verdict is in, corporate Democrats and Republicans can abandon the pretense of a great ideological divide, and return to their shared mission of cutting entitlements. Both hide behind the phony “fiscal cliff” to convince the public that the pending theft of entitlements is an unstoppable act of nature, rather than a conspiracy of corporate henchmen, against the clear wishes of the majority of Americans.
Robert Reich, the liberal former Labor Secretary in President Bill Clinton’s administration, says that Obama is not behaving like a president who is serious about facing down the Republicans. If he were, Obama would let the Bush tax cuts die at the end of this year, and then have Democrats introduce new tax cuts for the middle class. The president could dare the Republicans to hold middle class to tax cuts hostage to cuts for the rich. In that kind of facedown, Obama would likely win.
But Obama is not trying to outmaneuver Republicans; he and the GOP have teamed up to stampede the public – the suckers in this game – into giving up their entitlements. As David Swanson puts it, we are not witnessing the making of a grand bargain, but a “grand catastrophe.”
Minneapolis Congressman Keith Ellison, the Black co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says he and the other 75 members “are not going to allow the most vulnerable Americans to shoulder the burden of this fiscal problem.” But the left wing of the Democratic Party can only stop the forces arrayed against entitlements by actively opposing their own president, who is playing austerity tag team with the Republicans. And the so-called progressives don’t have it in them.
What If America’s Leaders Actually Want Catastrophic Climate Change?
This article by Dave Lindorff is re-posted from Counter Punch. Editor’s note: What this writer is referring to in terms of the US government’s planning for climate catastrophe is what Christian Parenti explores in his book “Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.”
What if the leaders of the United States — and by leaders I mean the generals in the Pentagon, the corporate executives of the country’s largest enterprises, and the top officials in government — have secretly concluded that while world-wide climate change is indeed going to be catastrophic, the US, or more broadly speaking, North America, is fortuitously situated to come out on top in the resulting global struggle for survival?
I’m not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but this horrifying thought came to me yesterday as I batted away yet another round of ignorant rants from people who insist against all logic that climate change is a gigantic fraud being perpetrated, variously, by the oil companies (who allegedly want to benefit from carbon credit trading), the scientific community (which allegedly is collectively selling out and participating in some world-wide system of omerta in order to get grants), or the world socialist conspiracy (which of course, is trying to destroy capitalism).
What prompted me to this speculation about an American conspiracy of inaction was the seemingly incomprehensible failure of the US — in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Earth is heating up at an accelerating rate, and that we are in danger of soon reaching a point of no return where the process feeds itself — to do anything to reduce either this country’s annual production of more atmospheric CO2, or to promote some broader international agreement to slow the production of greenhouse gases.
It seems insane that this nation’s leaders, corporate and political, would even now still be deliberately refusing to take action to protect the Earth, which of course they and their children and grandchildren will also have to live on, and yet almost to a one they are on the side of the deniers or the delayers. The business leaders for example overwhelmingly provided campaign funding to the Republicans — a party that makes jokes about global warming and openly urges more burning of coal.
Okay, a lot of Republicans are wacky believers in a 6000-year-old world where Adam and Eve hunted dinosaurs and god talked to Moses. But it seems equally or even more insane that people who clearly know better, like President Barack Obama, or most of the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, would resist even minimal efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and would directly work to undermine international efforts at reaching a rigorous treaty on global reduction of carbon emissions.
Unless, that is, you consider that in a dog-eat-dog environment of nations struggling to survive in a world that, as the World Bank’s latest report predicts, could be 4°C hotter (7.2°F) by as early as 2060, with mass starvation in Africa, Asia and South America, flooding of critical river deltas and low-elevation population centers like Shanghai, Bangladesh, Holland, etc., and the loss of most of the world’s fish to an acidified ocean, the US could be sitting pretty, at least relatively speaking. Sure low-lying places like Cape Cod, the Outer Banks, the lower Florida peninsula, New Orleans, and the Rockaways and the Manhattan financial district would be gone, but given this nation’s current wealth and military power, its vast natural resources, and its widely varied climate zones, including Alaska, the U.S. could probably come out ahead in such a survival-of-the-fittest struggle.
Consider that perhaps the current breadbasket region of the midwest might become a dust-bowl. Okay, nasty, but the evidence so far suggests that at least for the next hundred years, all the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and other land ice in northern Canada, will be impacting the nation’s northeast by having all that new fresh water pushing the Gulf Stream out to sea (a Gulf Stream that we are told will also be weakening dramatically), actually making the northeast cooler and wetter during that period. That is to say, states from Ohio to Maine, and south to perhaps Virginia or North Carolina, could become better places to grow crops, at least until all the ice up north is gone. Arizona and Florida would be hell for retirees, but they could retire elsewhere. Deep wells could draw on prehistoric aquifers, as farmers in Texas and Oklahoma have done for years, which could compensate for epic climate-change-caused droughts. So what if this would destroy the aquifers eventually? Nobody thinks a century ahead anyhow.
Meanwhile, while the US would adapt fairly handily to the global catastrophe, most of the rest of the world would become a pure hell, with nations desperately battling nations over dwindling water supplies, and famine killing people not by the tens of thousands as today, but by the millions, or perhaps even billions. Think of China and India, our biggest competitors in global markets these days. With their relative poverty, their massive populations, mostly concentrated along low-lying coastal areas, they will be toast in a 4°C hotter world.
I’m sorry to say it, but I don’t have a hard time imagining most of our ruling elite looking at this scenario and thinking, “Hey! That could work out well for us! With huge oceans separating us from the desperate masses in Asia and Africa, and only a relatively small desert border to protect to our south, and with a small, weak and friendly nation to the north, we could come out of this with the world at our feet, ripe for the picking.” What’s a mass extinction event that wipes out half of all living species to such people? What’s it matter to them if the teeming oceans lose their food chain and become filled with nothing but jellyfish? What’s it matter of hundreds of millions of poor people starve to death, or if nations in Africa or Asia blow each other up? If they, the US and their companies, can come out of this rubble largely intact, and with the same elites still in charge, where’s the downside?
I haven’t looked closely at the science of this, but I think I’m correct in saying that the US is probably better situated than most other countries to survive a major global warming event. Of course, even in the US, climate change of this scale would be massively destructive and destabilizing, and would cause huge social and political upheaval. This may explain why we keep reading about the Department of Homeland Security ordering huge quantities of dumdum bullets (even for places like Social Security Administration field offices!) and building mass detention centers, or about Congress continuing to pass ever more intrusive and invasive police state-type legislation, while militarizing local police.
I’m not suggesting that these leaders would be contemplating just walling off the US, and allowing us all to continue on as the free society that we have grown used to over the last few hundred years, while the rest of the world goes through its death throes, horrendous and unacceptable as that would be. Rather, I’m speculating that the elites may be contemplating a way that they, the ruling class, not we as Americans, could, by doing nothing to stop climate change, come out on top as a result of it.
I realize this is conspiracy thinking, and that as such it is rather far-fetched, and yet what troubles me is that it’s hard to imagine a alternative explanation for the years of complete inaction on combating global warming, and the deliberate undermining of any sort of international accord which America has engaged in for the past decade.
Our leaders, political and corporate, may be puerile, egocentric greed-heads, but they are not stupid. They surely for the most part recognize that the Earth is heating up and heading at full speed towards ecological, social and political disaster. How else to explain, then, their astonishing unwillingness to take action?
Grand Rapids pays someone to represent the City in Washington
This morning, MLive posted a story about what the City of Grand Rapids pays a lobbyist in DC. The article identifies Dykema Gossett PLLC as being the lobbying firm the city has used since 2006.
The cost to the City of Grand Rapids, and thus to taxpayers, is $5,250 per month, which comes to $63,000 a year.
The remainder of the brief article includes comments from a City staff member and First Ward Commissioner Dave Shaffer, both of which speak very highly of the lobbying firm. The article lists several projects, which had received federal funding because of the lobbying efforts of Dykema Gossett PLLC.
The article ends with the following comment:
“We believe that given the direction in Congress (with the ban on earmarks), it’s very important for us to have representation in D.C.” Alibasic said. “We’re going to be looking to really strengthen our grant opportunities through this contract.”
Such a statement is a reflection of how politics works in this country. If you pay someone to “represent” your interests, government works. Questioning the City staffer who made such a comment was not what the MLive reporter was interested in, even though asking for further clarification on what was meant by paying someone in DC to represent “us” really means.
The MLive story is also lacking on content about the lobbying firm itself, not even a link to the company’s site.
It would stand to reason that if taxpayers are coughing up $63,000 a year to this company, they should know something about the firm the City of Grand Rapids has hired.
Dykema Gossett has several offices in Michigan and across the country. They provide a number of services besides lobbying, such as legal work and consultation. The firm works in numerous fields of business, but represents three main industries – automotive, energy and the financial industry. A pretty corrupt trio.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Dykema Gossett didn’t spend much money during the last election cycle, with only two payments to candidates, both going to 2nd Congressional Candidate Bill Huizenga. However, employees of the firm made significant contributions to candidates, with a total of 337 separate donations, many of which were $1,000 or more. Here is a list of recipients of that money from Dykema Gossett.
Dykema has a pretty interesting client base, in addition to the City of Grand Rapids. Such a client list would make anyone with a conscience have serious reservations about doing business with a company that profits from the likes of Bank of America, Bayer Corporation, Compuware Corporation, eBay Inc., Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Honda North America, JPMorgan Chase, McDonald’s Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Sears Roebuck & Company, The Walt Disney Company, Verizon Wireless and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
It’s unfortunate that MLive did not bother to provide readers with any background information on the company that Grand Rapids taxpayers have given nearly $400,000 to since 2006.
Staggering Amount of Chemicals Entering Great Lakes—Do You Buy Products that Threaten Drinking Water?
This article by the Alliance for the Great Lakes is re-posted from Ecowatch.
The Great Lakes are home to 20 percent of the world’s surface freshwater and, increasingly, host to a worrisome class of chemical compounds known as contaminants of emerging concern.
Often originating from everyday products ranging from shampoos and pharmaceuticals to textiles and home furnishings, as well as from common agricultural practices around the Midwest, these compounds can have impacts on people and wildlife that are far from benign and are raising concerns about their effects on the body’s endocrine system—the driver of key functions such as growth and development, metabolism and reproduction.
A report released today by the Alliance for the Great Lakes notes that since the production of synthetic chemicals took off after World War II, the waters of Lake Michigan—which take a century to refresh—have yet to see a complete turnover.
Halfway through this cycle, scientists are beginning to see alarming trends of an increasing multitude of chemicals found in the water. In southern Lake Michigan, one of the most urbanized and industrialized areas in the Great Lakes Basin and home to approximately a third of the Great Lakes population, these contaminants are a steady source of chemical exposure for aquatic species, and affect the quality of the waters we rely upon for drinking and look to for recreation.
“The number of chemicals entering the nation’s environment each year is staggering, as is the potential for them to degrade the water we drink and swim in,” says Alliance President and CEO Joel Brammeier. Upwards of 85,000 chemicals are in production and use in the U.S. today—more than 2,200 of them produced at a rate of 1 million-plus pounds a year. Beyond this, consumers can choose from more than 50,000 pharmaceutical products, and nearly 20,000 registered pesticide products have entered the market since registration began in 1947.
The report applies a published, peer-reviewed scientific framework to rank chemicals of highest concern found in national waters that are representative of those found in the Great Lakes. The methodology examines both surface water and treated drinking water—identifying the top 20 emerging contaminants for each based on occurrence, ecologic and human health impacts, and water treatment capabilities. The top-ranking chemicals include representatives from a broad range of categories: hormones, synthetic musks, antibiotics, pharmaceuticals, antimicrobials and preservatives, UV blockers, plasticizers, flame retardants and pesticides.
As the chemical presence around us expands, the potential for them to end up in the Great Lakes also grows—arriving there via atmospheric deposition, stormwater runoff and sewage overflows. Others are released into the Great Lakes at trace concentrations via treated wastewater discharges because conventional sewage treatment isn’t designed to remove them.
Lake Michigan’s surface waters are affected, with six of the top 20 chemicals detected—among them flame retardants, synthetic fragrances, bisphenol A (BPA), and a popular cholesterol-lowering drug—found in the open lake waters. Current data shows that, after processing in a treatment plant, drinking water drawn from Lake Michigan may not be significantly burdened with contaminants, with only one chemical—a flame retardant—detected of the top 20 identified in the report. The report cautions that the data collected thus far provides only a snapshot of what might be in the open waters of the Great Lakes, however, and doesn’t take into account the health risks that bioaccumulating chemicals in the water pose to people who eat Great Lakes fish. Also not known is the level of risk these trace levels of contaminants in the water actually pose for people and wildlife.
“With hundreds of mostly unregulated compounds detected in Great Lakes surface waters today, it’s critical to start identifying now those chemicals that pose the greatest threat to the health of the lakes, the wildlife and the 40 million people who depend on them for drinking water,” says Olga Lyandres, Alliance research manager and author of the report.
Some municipalities and public utilities already monitor or study emerging contaminants, among them Chicago, Milwaukee and the Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency—which supplies drinking water to Lake Michigan communities in northern Illinois. But many smaller communities, such as Gary, Ind. and Racine, Wis., don’t monitor for them because of the absence of clear guidance on how to do so.
Although water treatment plays a key role in removing contaminants, the report emphasizes that water and wastewater utilities are not solely responsible for preventing and controlling contaminants in Great Lakes water. To that end, it calls for a comprehensive approach that involves not only technological solutions, but collaboration among utilities, regulatory agencies, public health officials, manufacturers and environmentalists to focus on pollution prevention.
“Together these entities must work to encourage policy, social and behavioral changes that propel businesses to evaluate chemicals before they enter the marketplace, and individuals to reduce their use of chemicals—thereby lessening the risks associated with the chemicals’ eventual release into the environment,” the report states. The report further calls for:
- Funding development of consistent, uniform regional monitoring standards.
- Encouraging the U.S. and Canada to draw on credible prioritization methods to set binational objectives for controlling high-priority Great Lakes contaminants, and to pursue these goals through domestic policy reforms.
- Reforming the 36-year-old federal Toxic Substances Control Act to feature a framework that places pollution prevention at the forefront of new chemical design and production.
CEO Evening News?
This article is re-posted from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
The CBS Evening News has decided the best way to inform viewers about the impending “fiscal cliff” is to let corporate CEOs affiliated with the Fix the Debt campaign recommend cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
On November 19, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was tapped for his apparent expertise in long-term budget forecasting. His message was simple: Benefit cuts are necessary. “The entitlements, and what people think that they’re going to get, because it’s not going to–they’re not going to get it,” he asserted.
Blankfein offered more specifics, explaining that
Social Security wasn’t devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. So there will be certain things that the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised.
It’s hard to know what he’s talking about when he refers to a “25-year career.” Perhaps some Goldman Sachs employees retire in their early 40s, but most workers do not–and they certainly don’t get Social Security retirement benefits when they do so. But Blankfein derives a straightforward moral from this dubious talking point: These benefits must be cut “because we can’t afford them.”
The following night, anchor Scott Pelley had a new expert: Honeywell CEO David Cote, who warned that the country’s debt load meant that “we’ve got to do something.” Why should viewers care what Cote says about any of this? Pelley explained that he “knows about fixing finances. He pulled Honeywell out of a slump.”
Cote’s fix is to reduce tax deductions, since “there were like 169 different ones used in, I don’t know, 2008 or 2009, somewhere in there.” Like the other CBS CEO, Cote also wants benefit cuts: “The big nut is going to have to be Medicare/Medicaid.… At the end of the day, you can’t avoid the topic. Especially with the Baby Boomer generation retiring. It’s going to literally crush the system.”
On November 21, CBS Evening News was still on the case. The experts this time were, as anchor Jeff Glor put it, “two men who say they know how it should be done–if only Washington would listen.” The two are Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who co-chaired a 2011 White House debt commission. The chairs issued a report, based on drastically shrinking the federal government, that was championed by many in the press (Extra!, 1/11), but failed to be approved by the full commission. Both are co-founders of the corporate-backed “Fix the Debt” campaign.
That was followed on the broadcast by another segment with Goldman Sachs’ Blankfein, who told anchor Scott Pelley:
Look, if we go over the fiscal cliff it will be very bad, hugely bad–hugely negative for the stock market, which is, you know, a source of people’s wealth, people will feel poor.
Of course, many people don’t consider the stock market a source of their own wealth. And 50 million Americans already “feel poor” because they are.
Blankfein added: “To me, whether the tax rate is 2 percent lower or higher or the cutoff age on some entitlement is one year less or more is secondary or tertiary to the fact that this country is focused on its future.”
A cut in Social Security or healthcare probably is “tertiary” to a guy who makes millions of dollars every year. Which makes his perspective a peculiar one to highlight twice in one week.
So what accounts for the urgent need to cut benefits?
The “fiscal cliff” is a scheduled set of tax increases and spending cuts that, if allowed to roll out over the course of 2013, would likely do considerable harm to the fragile economic recovery. It is not really a “cliff,” though; Congress and the White House could go over it on January 1 and still reach a subsequent deal in the days or weeks afterwards.
Some of those pushing the “cliff” crisis seem more interested in making some permanent cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare–which would have far more serious consequences for Americans than the “fiscal cliff.” Among those advocates are the business interests behind the Simpson/Bowles Fix the Debt campaign. All of the CBS fiscal experts featured last week were affiliated with this group.
There are critics of this plan. The Institute for Policy Studies recently issued a report (11/13/12 ) explaining the corporate interests behind the debt campaign. Report co-author Sarah Anderson told Democracy Now! (11/13/12) that Fix the Debt is “really just a Trojan horse. They’re pushing for the same old tax breaks for corporations that they’ve been pushing for for about a decade.”
Instead of doing journalism to expose the interests behind this campaign, CBS is giving them a megaphone.
ACTION: Tell CBS Evening News that their discussion of the “fiscal cliff” should include experts who aren’t entitlement-busting CEOs.
CONTACT: CBS Evening News Phone: 212 975-3247 evening@cbsnews.com
AIDS and Activism Part II: Reagan, DeVos and the 1980s crisis
Since as early as 1981, AIDS was known to be a deadly disease. Even by 1983, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had begun a national hotline for AIDS.
Cases of AIDS were being reported in almost every major city in the US beginning in 1982, but the national news media did not report on it until the following year. In fact, the New York Times did not make AIDS a front-page story until May 25, 1983.
This delayed reporting on AIDS by the New York Times becomes more striking, when one considers the following:
Similarly, the discovery of cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules in the Chicago area in October 1982 prompted a huge spate of press coverage. The New York Times covered the story every day of October, and then ran 23 more stories in November and December. In the end, seven people died from the capsules.
By contrast, The New York Times published only three stories on AIDS in 1981, and only three more in all of 1982, none of which were on page one. Yet by the time of the Tylenol poisonings, 260 Americans had died of AIDS, and 374 more had been diagnosed.
One person who was making AIDS a concern of reporting was Randy Shiltz, a journalist who was assigned to report on AIDS in San Francisco in 1982 for the San Francisco Chronicle. Shiltz was a member of the Gay community and had already written a powerful biography of slain Gay activist and San Francisco official, Harvey Milk.
Shiltz relied heavily on early HIV/AIDS activists like Bill Kraus and Cleve Jones for information and came to the realization that AIDS was a disease impacting thousands and it was a story that outside of the Gay community was either unknown or suppressed. Shiltz eventually wrote his book, And the Band Played On, which chronicled the first half of the 1980s and the AIDS epidemic. The book was published in 1987 and spent 5 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
By 1987, 20,000 had died from AIDS and despite the growing epidemic the federal government did not take any formal action until that year. Reagan did appoint the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic in the summer of 1987; it was later renamed the Watkins Commission, after its chair.
With the appointment of this commission, Reagan was able to appease those who demanded a more sustained federal response to AIDS. He also answered the concerns of the New Right by appointing an AIDS commission that included few scientists who had participated in AIDS research and few physicians who had actually treated people with AIDS. In addition, the commission included outspoken opponents of AIDS education, such as New York Cardinal John O’Connor. O’Connor was not only opposed to AIDS education, he was openly hostile to the Gay community.
Religious Right leader Gary Bauer, who was in the Reagan administration in 1987, said of those appoint by the President:
…..the panel was designed to be ”a cross-section of thoughtful Americans” rather than another medical or scientific group that would duplicate dozens of previous efforts. ”We intentionally tried to get people from a wide variety of walks of life, and took the risk that there would be disagreements and fireworks,” Mr. Bauer said. He also called it ”a good group” to deal with such issues as insurance coverage and care for AIDS patients and said he doubted that quarantines, school policy or casual transmission would become a major focus.
The Religious Right was particularly incensed by the AIDS crisis and saw it as purely a result of immoral behavior, especially in the Gay community. Religious Right leaders at the time, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, equated the deaths with the Gay community as retribution from God for their “sinful” lives. Falwell not only despised the Gay community, he despised the larger society which “tolerated” Gays. Falwell’s famous statement was:
“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals, It is God’s punishment for a society that tolerates homosexuals.”
Rich DeVos and the AIDS Commission
One of the people appointed to the 13-member AIDS Commission was Amway co-founder Rich DeVos. DeVos was chosen in part because he was one of the largest financial supporters of the Republican Party, but also because of his role in the Religious Right.
In an interview with MLive a few years ago, DeVos made some pretty revealing comments about his attitudes towards the Gay community while sitting on the AIDS Commission.
When HIV first came out, President Reagan formed a commission and I was honored to be on that commission. I listened to 300 witnesses tell us that it was every body else’s fault but their own. Nothing to do with their conduct, just that the government didn’t fix this disease. At the end of that I put in the document, it was the conclusion document from the commission, that actions have consequences and you are responsible for yours. AIDS is a disease people gain because of their actions. It wasn’t like cancer. We all made the exceptions for how you got it, by accident, that was all solved a long time ago. That’s when they started hanging me in effigy because I wasn’t sympathetic to all their requests for special treatment. Because at that time it was always someone else’s fault. I said, you are responsible for your actions too, you know. Conduct yourself properly, which is a pretty solid Christian principle.
Not only does DeVos show his homophobic bias, his comments demonstrate his ignorance of the issues surrounding HIV/AIDS. It was within this climate of homophobia and inaction on the part of the federal government that AIDS activism would take a new direction in 1987, with the creation of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). We will explore the impact of ACT UP in Part III of this series.
