The Class War Continues

While We Were Looking Elsewhere

Writing for Daily Kos, Laura Clawson reports

A staggering 84 percent of New York City fast food workers reports having been a victim of wage theft, a new survey finds. Things are even worse for fast food delivery workers—100 percent of them report wage theft. The New York State attorney general is reportedly investigating pay practices in New York City fast food, and the new survey and report from Fast Food Forward offer a detailed picture of what that investigation might find.

Employers cheat workers out of wages in a number of ways, forcing them to work off the clock before or after their shifts or during break times, not paying overtime when workers work more than 40 hours a week, making delivery workers pay for equipment they're required to have to do their jobs, or just plain not paying the minimum wage.

Blogging for Daily Kos, Laura Clawson finds

A staggering 84 percent of New York City fast food workers reports having been a victim of wage theft, a new survey finds. Things are even worse for fast food delivery workers—100 percent of them report wage theft. The New York State attorney general is reportedly investigating pay practices in New York City fast food, and the new survey and report from Fast Food Forward offer a detailed picture of what that investigation might find.

Employers cheat workers out of wages in a number of ways, forcing them to work off the clock before or after their shifts or during break times, not paying overtime when workers work more than 40 hours a week, making delivery workers pay for equipment they're required to have to do their jobs, or just plain not paying the minimum wage.

That's what goes on in an industry without unions.  It's happening not only in the fast food biz nor only in New York City but with retail behemoths including Walmart and Home Depot and franchisees including McDonalds and Taco Bell. The New York Times reports

paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.’s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards. These fees can take such a big bite out of paychecks that some employees end up making less than the minimum wage once the charges are taken into account, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, employees, and state and federal regulators...

Many employees say they have no choice but to use the cards: some companies no longer offer common payroll options like ordinary checks or direct deposit.

At companies where there is a choice, it is often more in theory than in practice, according to interviews with employees, state regulators and consumer advocates. Employees say they are often automatically enrolled in the payroll card programs and confronted with a pile of paperwork if they want to opt out.

Chris Hayes comments

The reason for the growth of the practice, you won`t be surprised to hear, is that it is a sweet deal for the participating banks like Citibank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, and for the largest issuer  of payroll cards, Net Spend. The banks are making swipe fees. The kind of  swipe fees they were prohibited from making with regular ATM cards under  Dodd Frank Financial Reform.

Natalie Gunshannon, an employee at a McDonalds "restaurant" in Dallas, Pennsylvania was required to use the payroll card, sued, and quit.  The joint changed its policy but Gunshannon's lawsuit is ongoing and she is seeking punitive damages.  In New York State, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has begun an investigation of the practice.

These policies persist despite their impact on the working poor... or maybe because of it.   While most of the progressive world and the mainstream media are fascinated with bright, shiny objects- today, "marriage equality" and immigration reform- income inequality continues to grow.  From information supplied by Emanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty and a graph (below) from nationalaffairs.com via Daily Kos, we learn that the top 1% of earners now possess 20% of the nation's income. Between 1979 (shortly before the "Reagan Revolution" lauched) and 2007, real income for the top 1 percent of households (as judged by total income) rose 240.5%, by 19.2% for the middle fifth and 10.8 percent for the bottom fifth of households.  Wealth is always distributed even more unequally and when in 2010 the top 1% had 17.2% of income, they controlled 35.2% of the wealth (graph, further below, from the Economic Policy Institute via Ezra Klein's Wonkblog).

The generals in the financial industry have been waging class warfare in the U.S.A. for over three decades.  They've won nearly every major battle, and now they're just rubbing our noses in it.

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Walk Like An Egyptian

Walk Like An Egyptian

In the world a quarter of a century ago, all power was held by the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  In a slightly broader sense, it was the Free World, led by the United States and including western/northern Europe and nations elsewhere, squared off against the Communists in Moscow and Beijing.

Generally to the benefit of most of that world, the United States had an outsized influence. But on Wednesday, President Obama issued a statement (transcript, here) to "call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters."

President Obama was, predictably, ignored awhile supporters and opponents of the Morsi government took to the streets in violent protests.   In an article published Friday by the online edition of The New Republic, Laura Dean notes widespread disenchantment because Egypt's first democratically elected government has been ousted by the military. She writes

The army has no good answer to these people, and arresting the Brotherhood’s leadership and shooting members of the rank and file doesn’t offer one. At least three Morsi supporters have been shot dead today by security forces and the sun has not yet set.

In the early afternoon on the day after the army informed Morsi he was no longer president, there were only a few hundred stragglers left in Tahrir. Everyone else had gone home, because as far as they were concerned it was all over. But for supporters of Morsi, the real opposition has just begun.

As we have seen time and again in this part of the world, it is impossible to stamp out ideas by censoring them. In so doing you only push them underground and legitimize their most radical elements. Even the Brotherhood spokesman, Wael el Karim, who is more diplomatic than most said, “Now we see the only path to power in Egypt is by force.” Only by bringing them into the political fold and treating them like the political losers that they are, rather than like criminals, which they are not, can that rift be healed and can they begin to develop into the mainstream political player, among many players, that they could be. 

Still, we ought not to romanticize the government led by the Muslim Brotherhood., despite President Obama's remark "we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsy and suspend the Egyptian constitution."

Oh, please.   That Egyptian constitution (text, here) President Obama seems to believe is inviolate was written once Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood had taken power. It is not a 225-year old document which has stood the test of time nor does it resemble the United States Constitution   Included in its 236 articles:  Islam is the religion of the state and Arabic its official language" and "principles of Islamic Sharia are the principal source of legislation."  Further, no disagreement will be tolerated, for "insult or abuse of all religious mesengers and prohphets shall be prohibited." 

 The authors were not James Madison, John Adams, or John Dickinson.  Instead, as Joshua Hammer explained last December in TNR, it was

written by an assembly that was 70 percent Islamist. Hard-line Salafists, who comprised 25 percent of the assembly, backed off many of their initial demands, such as making zakat (charity) as well as the hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca) constitutional obligations. But the final draft still proved alarming enough to provoke a walkout of secularists and Coptic Christians. The new charter also leaves intact Article 2 from Egypt’s former constitution, which states that only “principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation,” but does not call specifically for sharia’s enforcement. However, the Islamists more rigorously defined those principles, singling out “the scholars of Al Azhar University,” a venerated Islamic institution in Cairo, as the final arbiters of Egyptian law. One article makes it illegal to insult the Prophet Mohammed. Hazy language about women’s rights has raised the fear that the Islamists will now have the leeway to lower the marriage age from 18, decriminalize female genital mutilation, and impose discriminatory property inheritance and divorce laws.

Ayman Nour, the party founder who organized the secular democrats into a bloc and led the walkout in November, doesn’t think Morsi feels any natural sympathy for liberal ideas. “In my estimation, the Brotherhood are Wahhabis, and the Salafists are Wahhabis, and they have many things in common,” he told me as we sat in the huge living room of his penthouse apartment in Zamalek, an affluent neighborhood whose many bars and active nightlife are symbols of the society that Egypt’s liberals are determined to preserve. Nour was betting that Morsi’s instinctual pragmatism, his lifelong desire to forestall the unpredictable consequences of a real revolution, would stop him from finally giving in to the Salafists. “As president, he swore five times in a single day that Egypt will never become a religious state,” Nour told me.

Mohamed Morsi is no George Washington, nor even a George Herbert Walker Bush. Hammer concluded

A hundred miles and a world away from Nour’s penthouse apartment, however, those who have known Morsi the longest say they have little doubt where his true values lie. Sitting beside his fields on the outskirts of Al Adwa, Said Morsi told me that his older brother remains rooted to the uncompromising Islamic beliefs that stamped his childhood and that have guided him throughout his life. “All of the vacations before becoming the president, he would come back here and work the fields, and sit with me, and talk,” he said, smoking a cigarette as the wail of the muezzin began to sound from a few hundred yards away. “In his heart, he belongs to the village.”

Unfortunately for the nation, President Obama is inclined to have us believe otherwise.  Fortunately, for President Obama, the Republican Party, which ascribes to Obama all manner of faults and sins for which he is not responsible, will not notice.



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A Clever Chief Justice

Clever Chief Justice

They say a even a stopped clock is right twice a day.  In the same vein, the National Review Online's John Fund is right twice a year, and the most recent was on Tuesday, when he recognized the decision by John Roberts in refusing to overturn Proposition 8 as an affront to democracy.    Kevin Drum, unlike Fund a supporter of same-sex marriage, explains

the Supreme Court declined to allow supporters of California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, to appeal their case in federal court. Supporters could defend Prop 8 in the initial suit in California, the court said, because California recognized their standing, but they aren't allowed to appeal their loss because they don't have appellate standing according to federal rules. Since a district court had previously ruled Prop. 8 unconstitutional, this means the issue has been decided. Gay marriage is legal in California.

Fund commends Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in his minority opinion maintained

The Court's reasoning does not take into account the fundamental principles or the practical dynamics of the initiative system in California, which uses this mechanism to control and to bypass public officials—the same officials who would not defend the initiative, an injury the Court now leaves unremedied. The Court's decision also has implications for the 26 other States that use an initiative or popular referendum system and which, like California, may choose to have initiative proponents stand in for the State when public officials decline to defend an initiative in litigation.

Similarly, Drum observes "the Supreme Court is basically gutting the people's right to pass initiatives that elected officials don't like and then to defend them all the way to the highest court in the land."    Fund is only too pleased to quote a former law school dean who told him

Someday, liberals could win an environmental-protection measure in a state and see a conservative governor and attorney general refuse to enforce or defend it.   When that time comes, the proponents may seek their day in federal court and find that there’s only darkness because they lack any standing to defend their own law.

Already one individual is using Roberts' eccentric reasoning toward a rather illiberal end.   Following the Chief Justice's opinion to its logical conclusion. On Tuesday, according to Think Progress' Ian Millhiser, Paula

Deen filed a notice with the federal court hearing a race discrimination lawsuit against her, suggesting that the court should dismiss this lawsuit in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Prop 8 case. Last week, the Court explained that “for a federal court to have authority under the Constitution to settle a dispute, the party before it must seek a remedy for a personal and tangible harm.”

Deen is employing the precedent to claim that the white plaintiff who is suing her, Lisa Jackson,cannot bring a race discrimination suit alleging animus against African-Americans because she is not personally injured by racism directed at people of another race.

At one time, they would call this "what's good for the goose is good for the gander."   And this is not the first time the Chief Justice has employed reasoning from the right to reach a conclusion adored by progressives.   While criticizing Roberts' approach to California's Prop 8, Fund identifies the Chief Justice's "twisted reasoning in last year’s Obamacare ruling" though, unfortunately, he fails to define or explain the "twisted reasoning."

There is no doubt, however, that the conservative Fund was not referring to the Court's decision that states cannot be cut off from Medicaid funding because they choose not to expand Medicaid to individuals earning as much as 130% of the federal poverty guidelines.   If sensible, he finds twisted the idea that fining someone for not purchasing health care is a tax.  It is, of course, a penalty, intended not to raise money (as in a tax) but to get people to purchase a good or service.
  
But the Chief Justice had other ideas and, as he undoubtedly realized, rejecting the commerce clause as basis of the health care mandate would likely have severe repercussions upon the ability of Congress to legislate on behalf of the welfare of the American people.  And so, too, did he understand, as Fund recognizes

All state officials have to do is refuse to defend a law passed by the people, watch as those seeking to overturn the law go judge-shopping (Prop 8 opponents found a gay judge in San Francisco who did not disclose his sexual orientation), and then watch the proponents of the initiative lose in federal court because they “lack standing” to represent the law they wrote.

The system of initiative and referendum has had both humanizing and dehumanizing effects, sometimes with unintended consequences.  Still, there will come a time when an initiative such as requiring labeling of products with genetically modified ingredients will be approved, a state court will overturn it, a GOP or neo-liberal state government will refuse to endorse it, and the Supreme Court will refuse to grant standing in federal court to a group wanting the public will to prevail.  At that time, perhaps the left will recognize the twisted reasoning of Chief Justice Roberts.  Maybe not, though, given his decision to allow in California fulfillment of one of the left's two most fervent causes of the day.





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What Is This July 4th Of Which You Speak?

What Is This July 4 Of Which You Speak?

Traditional country music entertainer Bobby Bare once sang "there ain't no ten (video, below)."  He was speaking of women- the same assessment could be made of men- but also is true of opinion pieces.

If it's not a "10," however, Alex Seitz-Wald's "Obama's War on July 4th: The Perfect Right-Wing Scandal" should be a 9.9 in the annals of Independence Day articles. He writes in Salon

It’s been almost ten years since Barack Obama first exploded onto the national stage in a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, but after three elections, two years in the Senate and five years in the White House, some people are still not convinced that the president of the United States is “pro-America” enough. At least that’s what the latest mini-controversy lighting up conservative blogs and Fox News suggests.

“Obama Spends $100M on African Trip But Cancels Marines’ July 4th Fireworks,” the headline on FoxNation read. “Shocking! While Obama Funds Syrian Rebels, Military Bases Must Cut Fireworks Celebrations,” another read. “Those funds would have covered every federal Fourth of July event nationwide with plenty left over for a president’s vacation [in Africa],” wrote Brent Bozell, whom allies call “a beloved and critically important player in American history.” Fox gave the controversy airtime twice this week, also contrasting it with the spending on the presidential trip to Africa.

The implication is clear: Obama doesn’t really love America, or else he wouldn’t be insulting our troops by depriving them of fireworks on the Fourth of July, of all days, and taking the money go to spend it in Africa or the Middle East. It hits all the right buttons for an Obamaphone-esque right-wing mini-scandal, and just in time for the holiday weekend.

What’s really going on here? Sequestration. Remember the package of budget cuts that the White House warned would lead to the sky falling while Republicans shrugged? The AP reportsthat because of cuts to the military’s budget in sequestration, a handful of military base commanders are deciding to forgo their annual Independence Day festivities, which can cost up to $100,000, in order to devote their diminished resources to other arguably more important things like keeping people employed. It’s unfortunate and unjust for American service members affected, but Brig. Gen. Thomas Gorry, the commander of the Marine’s Camp LeJune in North Carolina, told the AP that it was necessary to “ensure that we can mitigate the fiscal challenges we are currently facing.” And it was Obama who repeatedly pressed to undo the sequester.

And the notion that Obama, while on a trip to Africa, reached down into the budget of individual military bases to cut single line items is absurd. If he were to do that, you’d think he’d cut the fireworks budget across the board or in places controlled by his political enemies, not in his home state of Hawaii.

As for the $100 billion spent on Africa. First, the number is $60-$100 million, and even then unconfirmed. Second, anyone can play this game. Why do hedge fund managers and oil companies get tax breaks that let them deprive the government of money that could go to fireworks? Or why are taxpayers footing the bill for George W. Bush’s presidential library instead of giving our troops a good fireworks show? Or spending $5 million a year on abstinence-only sex education, which we know does not work, instead of on fireworks?

Seitz-Wald, who recommends donating to the USO Warrior and Family Center at Walter Reed Military Medical Center to celebrate the holiday, gives Bozell a pass on one thing.    Bozell, who implies President Obama has somehow engineered the elimination of some fireworks events to dramatize his opposition to the sequester, refers by name to today's holiday on 15 occasions, 11 of them in recounting news events, in which it is difficult to determine if he is summarizing or repeating verbatim (thirteen) news accounts.

Of these references, eleven, there are seven (7) references to "July 4" and only four (4) to "Independence Day."  When Bozell clearly himself writes of the holiday, he mentions "July 4" four (4) times and "Independence Day" not at all.

Lest you think this is a liberal, or mid-year, version of Bill O'Reilly's "War on Christmas," consider that "Christmas" is called just that- Christmas.   One is never asked "Are you seeing your family for December 25?"   Similarly, rarely is heard "Are you taking your girlfriend (or boyfriend, wife, husband, or "sweetheart") to dinner for February 14?   Similarly, one is encouraged to hang the American flag not for December 7 but for Pearl Harbor Day and is more likely to be asked if he/she is excused from work for Lincoln's Birthday than for February 12.

July 4 is a splendid opportunity for a cookout, excursion to the beach (ocean, sea, lake, pond, or elsewhere), a movie, or even (rumor has it) to drink, though for some individuals any of the other 364 days will do.  (And always drink in moderation, as the beer companies insincerely lecture you.)  

So enjoy your July 4th, however you wish.   The holiday, however, is Independence Day.  And that is 'not for nothing,' as they say.  It is a reminder that many countries lack independence and even in some of them (such as in the Middle East, with a notable exception for all nations beginning with an "Is"), scoundrels may be arrested or punished. Here, thankfully, we let them write, and their employers publish, silly and demeaning articles about their political opponents.










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Slamming Progressives

Meat Loaf sang "two out of three ain't bad." One out of three, however, is less than admirable.

Writing in Slate, Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick ask whether we noticed

that, on the way to this victory, the left, as a movement, seemed to abandon almost everything else for which it once stood? That while gay marriage rose like cream to the top of the liberal agenda, the rest of what the left once cherished was shoved aside, ignored, or “it’s complicated” to oblivion? Stipulate: Gay rights is an unequivocally just cause. But this win, however deserved, addresses no more than a small fraction of what the left once believed essential.

While that is clearly the case, Friedman/Lithwick are disturbingly off the mark when they claim

Progressives could have pushed marriage equality without ditching all the causes and ideas on which their movement was founded. It’s not like anyone in the gay community ever asked them to abandon the rest of their agenda. But progressives did. Perhaps it was battle fatigue, or a loss of confidence in how to fix things. Or maybe issues like poverty and education seem intractable, and it just got too hard to keep trying.

I've argued the left ought to be less concerned with the rights of individuals on the basis of sexual preference than on the basis of lack of wealth and power, such as on April 13, when I lamented the "increase in tolerance of same-sex marriage" while "support for extending to all women of child-bearing years power over their personal and professional lives has declined." Or when five days later, I was displeased that, as a Democratic strategist pointed out, same-sex marriage "is becoming an early litmus test for potential (Democratic) 2016 candidates." Or when just last Friday, I agreed with a blogger who suggested "the possibility that the difference (in activism for gay rights far beyond other liberal causes) is that powerful economic interests don't lose anything from gay equality."

Other better known and read progressives, though far more enamored of extending the (sarcasm alert) flourishing institution of marriage to an individual wishing to marry someone of his/her gender, have written or blogged extensively on varied liberal causes. They include bloggers found on Beat the Press, Crooks and Liars, Hullabaloo, Firedoglake, and The Brad Blog, and all others on Main Street Liberal's blogroll. And nearly all- with the notable exception of Daily Kos and, especially, Think Progress (an operation of the Center for American Progress)- realize, as does Cornel West, "the irony of the age of Obama in which black folks found themselves pushed to the back (while) our gay brothers and lesbian sisters more and more (are) pushed to the center."

Friedman/Lithwick, perhaps eager to declare that undying love they believe blinds progressives, assert "It’s not like anyone in the gay community ever asked them to abandon the rest of their agenda. But progressives did." But that is simplistic. Three years ago, I ignored a story which resulted in the the gay activist Human Rights Campaign (as well as, admittedly, the progressive moveon.org) leading

petition drives and a boycott of Target since it decided to support Emmer, a state House member who angered the progressive community for his conservative positions on abortion and birth control. Target officials have said the donation to a newly-formed business group, Minnesota Forward, came from its business account rather than its internal political action committee; the retailer is backing Emmer because he appeared to be the strongest pro-business candidate in the race.

Emmer's stands on reproductive freedom and business regulation clearly were not of the utmost concern to either group, for

After employees and outside groups complained, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel issued memos to his workers explaining his motivation for the donation and apologizing if it upset them. He also reiterated the company’s commitment to equal rights within the workplace and its sponsorship of gay rights events in Minnesota.

But HRC had hoped to convince the firm to donate $150,000 to pro-gay rights candidates and groups in Minnesota to “make right” its support for Emmer. After weeks of negotiations, HRC officials said Monday that the talks had broken down without a deal.

HRC said it will devote $150,000 of its resources to defeat Emmer. And MoveOn members are still calling for a boycott of the national chain that had nurtured strong ties to the gay community through its store locations, marketing, and non-discriminatory employee benefits program.

That's a boycott of Target, known mainly as one of the two major competitors of Wal-Mart. Yes, that Wal-Mart, which pays its employees so little that a 2004 study found "The families of Wal-Mart employees in California utilize an estimated 40 percent more in taxpayer-funded healthcare than the average for families of all large retail employees.'" and "use an estimated 38 percent more in other (bon-health care) public asssitance programs (such as food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized school lunches, and subsidized housing) than the average for families of all large retail employees." (These problems persist.) The same Wal-Mart which today won't sign an agreement for fire and building safety in Bangladesh. That same Wal-Mart which was probably quite pleased that shoppers of Target were being indirectly encouraged by progressive groups, one dedicated to gay rights, to shift its business to Wal-Mart. Way to go, guys.

Friedman/Lithwick conclude

Now that gay marriage is looking like a check in the win column, it is precisely the right moment to ask: What does it mean to be left anymore? Is there even a left left? Or just a center that calls itself left because it is always standing next to the dude labeled “right” in the photographs

By necessity, then, what we’re telling here is only half the story. The half about what got left behind on the way to the altar. To remain vibrant and effective, the American left must be for something, not just against the right’s most idiotic ideas. Winning elections is vital, of course, but the point of winning elections is to have an agenda once you get there. What should be the agenda for the left? What is left?

Those two paragraphs bear a critical similarity to the other fifteen paragraphs of their piece in that there is, astoundingly, no mention of the most important "progressive" of them all: the President of the United States. Nothing.

When the vice president of the United States came out in favor of gay marriage, the failure of his boss to have evolved fully became untenable and he, too, declared his support. It would have been unseemly for the President to remain a lower life form once his running mate had evolved. Support for same-sex marriage then skyrocketed, led by a dramatic shift of opinion among black Americans.

But aside from marriage rights, one searches in vain for presidential leadership on progressive causes. Friedman/Lithwick cite "economic fairness, a war on poverty, meaningful education reform, voting rights, workers’ rights, racial justice, women’s rights, equal access to child care and health care" as issues progressives have shirked.

Yet, President Obama has sacrificed political capital only for health reform and even that came without expanded Medicare (as in single-payer), a public option, or, as it turns out, extending care to the tens of millions of people we were promised. (There is a third, "meaningful education reform," which Obama and his Education Secretary have advocated which, in most iterations, is hardly progressive or humane. See Diane Ravitch's Blog or Jersey Jazzman.)

The authors contend that the only cause beside same-sex marriage "progressives wholeheartedly and unequivocally embraced were electing the country’s first black man as president, and immigration reform." But those weren't progressives who have embraced only gay marriage and immigration reform and the notion that electing a black man as president would lift the veil of racism from the nation and bring harmony upon the land. Those were some centrists and, especially, much of the mainstream media, with weak connection to ideological principle. And perhaps it includes Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick who- holding the leader of the Free World blameless- turn Mr. Dooley's dictum on its head and afflict the powerless while comforting the afflicted.

Happy Independence Day

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Fetus Untruth

Is Wendy Davis smarter than a fifth grader?  Probably, because she's smarter than I am, and I made it past 5th grade.  The Texas state senator, able to conduct a filibuster Harry Reid could barely imagine, was asked by David Gregory on Meet the Press (transcript, here) about efforts by several states to ban abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy.  She responded

Right now, that ban of course is being talked about because of the idea of fetal pain. And at the constitutional level, what we of course have assured is that women have the ability to make these reproductive decisions up to the point of viability. That has to remain the key question here.

I doubted the wisdom of Davis' thrust to skirt the issue of fetal pain in favor of the question of viability.  The Supreme Court, significantly, had ruled in 1973 that states could not ban abortions during the first trimester and could do so during the second trimester only to protect the health of the woman. It was at that point, the Court concluded, that the fetus became viable.  

Nevertheless, many Americans have come to the belief that banning abortion after the 20th week would be sound public policy. Later in the same broadcast, serial liar Ralph Reed would contend "70% of the American people favor bans on abortion after the 20th week." That claim, coming from the man known for unethical funding for his (successful) run for GOP party chairman in Georgia, better known for repeatedly violating campaign finance laws as head of the Christian Coalition, and best known for thoroughly corrupt activities while heavily involved as a lobbyist for Jack Abramoff, unsurprisingly  is false.  That 70%, as noted by Sarah Kliff in Wonkblog, turns out to be 48%, a slight plurality- and that's without informing respondents that such a ban would violate Roe v. Wade.

Repubs in state legislatures have promoted such a ban on the premise the fetus feels pain after 20 weeks of gestation and ten states have passed legislation of that kind.  That premise, however, appears bogus.  The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has observed there is "no legitimate scientific information that supports the statement that a fetus experiences pain."   Science Daily, which reported in September, 2011 of a study from which Dr Rebeccah Slater, UCL Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, summarized: "Premature babies who are younger than 35 weeks have similar brain responses when they experience touch or pain. After this time there is a gradual change, rather than a sudden shift, when the brain starts to process the two types of stimuli in a distinct manner." Fetuses do, then, experience pain- shortly before birth.

But just as the right is able to find the odd climate scientist who believes(or claims to believe)  the earth is not warming, so, too, will there be scientists, such as Professor KJS Anand of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, to maintain that fetuses may feel pain earlier in the process.  But a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in overturning the ruling of a US District Judge upholding Arizona's post-20th week ban on abortions, wrote "no changes of fact have rendered viability more or less appropriate at the point at which the balance of interest tips." Jessica Mason Pieklo, Senior Legal Analyst for RH Reality Check, concludes

It’s that full-forced defense of viability as the cut-off point for when the state can ban abortion that is the most important, because, as the Arizona case illustrates, a key component of the legal argument challenging Roe is to find a way to either abandon viability altogether or replace it with something else, like “fetal pain.” And as the Arizona case also illustrates, at least one sitting federal judge was willing to bite and do so.

Fetal viability as the earliest point when states can legally ban most abortions is an imperfect standard at best, but it is one that has provided the most legal shelter from efforts to overturn Roe. The Ninth Circuit, in forcefully re-affirming that standard, also forcefully re-affirmed the idea that a woman’s body is not de facto property of the state once she becomes pregnant.   It’s critically important to have that idea re-affirmed.

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Change We Shouldn't Believe In

Robin R. Ford describes herself in Salon as "an educated African-American woman" whose "parents grew up in the South."   She would like to sit down with Paula Deen and talk to her about race, though she "can't bring myself to dislike her" and states "I forgive her."

I don't much care whether Ford is able to arrange her meeting because, like her, I find Deen's failure to grasp reality far less important than Chief Justice Roberts' unwillingness to acknowledge it.   In his politically brilliant decision (text, here) striking down chapter of the Voting Rights Act- rendering the legislation impotent while avoiding eliminating the entire law- Roberts imagined a country that never has been.   "Today the nation," the Chief Justice intoned, "is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were."   Ford notes

Just because a biracial man who appears more black than white was elected president doesn’t make discrimination based on color a problem of the past. If race were no longer an issue in this country then young black men wouldn’t make up the vast majority of those incarcerated. And minorities wouldn’t have lower test scores because of unfairly funded schools, and poverty would not affect minorities disproportionately. And no one would contest the president’s heritage.

The fact of the matter is, race still matters. It is a constant fact of life in this country whether we want to admit it or not. It would be nice to feel like Obama’s election and resounding reelection signaled the end to racism in America, but I fear that it just made those who have hatred in their hearts that much more determined to keep minorities “in their place.” The fear of losing control of the country to minorities has actually pushed many out of the racist closet. The country is as divided by race as it has ever been. The difference now is that people don’t speak in public what they are thinking and sharing behind closed doors. The difference is that now there are laws that protect minorities from overt discrimination, legislation like the Voting Rights Act, which has protected every citizens’ access to voting since 1965.

It seems such a long time ago, but it was less than five years ago that Adam Nagourney expressed in The New York Times the sentiment of centrist and conservative Americans and, especially, the mainstream media when he characterized the election of Barack Obama as "a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation's fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago."    

On that election night when the naive held sway, the victor boasted "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."  And his vanquished opponent, the Arizona senator, believed "This is a historic election, and I recognize the significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.  We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation."

Well, yes, the injustice of slavery has been abolished.   Even Paula Deen, John Roberts, and (probably) Clarence Thomas are glad about that.    But Bill Maher, who boldly continues to be politically correct, put it well (video, below) on Friday night when he observed

I found it very fun, funny- or maybe not funny.  I watched John Roberts say "This country has changed- racism not a big deal anymore.  That's why we got rid of the voting rights act.  Then two days later I watched this woman on the Trayvon Martin trial, Rachel Jeantel, talking to the white white lawyer and they literally could not understand each other.  And I thought these Supreme Court dudes- they don't live in the real world; they don't know how much the country has changed.

At one point he said "Did you call the police" and she was like "you know what? people like me don't call the police.  We try to avoid the police."

Perhaps Maher and some others would attribute all this to racism, which would be an oversimplification akin to thinking that the election of a black (actually, mixed-race) man over a guy representing a party understood to have mauled the nation signified the upheaval of the old order.   The election of Barack Obama did not prove "all things are possible," with inequality and social immobility continuing to grow in the U.S.A.  Nor was it a realization of "the dream of our founders" or curtail the injustices of the military-corporate complex.   It was merely an election which changed little, as Chief Justice John Roberts demonstrated last week when he moved to make it more difficult for the poor, the elderly, minorities, and others less privileged to exercise the franchise.

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