I'm not a Democrat or a supporter of President Obama, but the Republicans' actions with regard to raising the debt ceiling is completely disgraceful, although that's probably an understatement.
To recap...
-Congressional Republicans are refusing to raise the debt ceiling to pay for expenditures Congress has already authorized as part of the regular budget. Given that 'Tea Partiers' yammer on incessantly about strict fidelity to the Constitution, perhaps they can explain how their demand that spending be approved by Congress twice squares with the 14th Amendment.
-The current federal fiscal year ends on September 30. This means that Republicans and their 'Tea Party' fringe are holding the economy hostage to their probably unconstitutional ideological posturing rather than waiting two months for budget negotiations, where such grandstanding belongs.
A piece from last year in The Washington Post sheds some more light on the widening inequality in the US.
From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy. But since then, according to Saez and Piketty, virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year.
Even within that top "decile," the distribution is remarkably skewed. By 2007, the top 1 percent of households took home 23 percent of the national income after a 15-year run in which they captured more than half - yes, you read that right, more than half - of the country's economic growth. As Tim Noah noted recently in a wonderful series of articles in Slate, that's the kind of income distribution you'd associate with a banana republic or a sub-Saharan kleptocracy, not the world's oldest democracy and wealthiest market economy.
It's worth noting that not only Republicans but Democrats, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have been complicit in crafting policies to this effect.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Clerks claim 'right' to flout law
WAMC News did a story about how some municipal clerks in New York are claiming the 'right' to refuse to issue same sex marriage licenses, now that it has become law in the state. The so-called Alliance Defense Fund rails against "threats from top officials of the Empire State to charge clerks who decline to issue such licenses with a criminal offense--forcing clerks to decide between their career and their faith"... as though this is somehow both illegal and unprecedented.
If a Muslim clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to Christian couples because of religious beliefs, would these organizations defend their right to do so? What if a gay clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to a straight couple? What if a racist white clerk wanted to refuse a marriage license to a black or interracial couple?
Let’s take this further. What if an evangelical clerk wanted to deny a birth certificate to the newborn of an unmarried woman? What if a strict Muslim DMV worker wanted to deny driver's licenses to women? What if a Protestant bureaucrat wanted to deny a building permit to a Catholic church?
Would any of these be tolerated on the basis of the ‘rights’ of the bureaucrat? Of course not.
The clerks, like all citizens, have the right to their religious beliefs. They do not have the right to a job.
A job is a privilege, not a right, and is subject to conditions and expectations defined by the employer. For example, I may have the right to freedom of speech as a citizen, but if I exercised that right by shouting in the workplace that my boss was a lying crook, I probably wouldn’t have that job much longer. No one would argue with a straight face that my firing would be a violation of my free speech rights.
Rights outside the workplace and those related to the execution of your job duties are two very different things. Why should religious public sector workers be subjected to a different standard?
Taxpayers have the right to expect that public sector workers they are paying will apply and respect the law as written, regardless of their personal biases, prejudices and beliefs. They have a job to do. If they can’t do their job in good conscience, they should have the principle to resign, as some already have. If they won’t do their lawful jobs, the public has the right to replace them with somebody who will.
If a Muslim clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to Christian couples because of religious beliefs, would these organizations defend their right to do so? What if a gay clerk wanted to refuse to issue marriage licenses to a straight couple? What if a racist white clerk wanted to refuse a marriage license to a black or interracial couple?
Let’s take this further. What if an evangelical clerk wanted to deny a birth certificate to the newborn of an unmarried woman? What if a strict Muslim DMV worker wanted to deny driver's licenses to women? What if a Protestant bureaucrat wanted to deny a building permit to a Catholic church?
Would any of these be tolerated on the basis of the ‘rights’ of the bureaucrat? Of course not.
The clerks, like all citizens, have the right to their religious beliefs. They do not have the right to a job.
A job is a privilege, not a right, and is subject to conditions and expectations defined by the employer. For example, I may have the right to freedom of speech as a citizen, but if I exercised that right by shouting in the workplace that my boss was a lying crook, I probably wouldn’t have that job much longer. No one would argue with a straight face that my firing would be a violation of my free speech rights.
Rights outside the workplace and those related to the execution of your job duties are two very different things. Why should religious public sector workers be subjected to a different standard?
Taxpayers have the right to expect that public sector workers they are paying will apply and respect the law as written, regardless of their personal biases, prejudices and beliefs. They have a job to do. If they can’t do their job in good conscience, they should have the principle to resign, as some already have. If they won’t do their lawful jobs, the public has the right to replace them with somebody who will.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Male victims of sex crimes in war 'almost equal' number of female victims
This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine and the Trumped Up Enemy of the Month. A list of all pieces in this series can be found found here..
In recent years, there's been quite a bit of press coverage of the rape and sexual assault against women during war time, and rightly so. However, there's virtually no awareness of such crimes against men. Both al-Jazeera (here) and the UK Observer (here) have done pieces on this mostly ignored scourge.
Both news outlets report the claim that sex crimes against men during war is nearly as common as those against women, some of the victims having been gang raped repeatedly for months or even years. But The Observer points out that the problem is so little thought of that such statistics are hard to find. Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence.
They note that, in addition to the taboos (and in some places, laws) preventing many such men from getting help, many non-governmental organizations are set up to help female victims of sex crimes but not males.
"The organisations working on sexual violence don't talk about it," says Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project (RLP) at the Makerere University in Uganda.
But it goes beyond not talking about it to an active muzzling of reality.
"I know for a fact that the people behind [a 2006 United Nations] report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," [Dolan] says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female.
The Observer article concludes depressingly: Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.
In recent years, there's been quite a bit of press coverage of the rape and sexual assault against women during war time, and rightly so. However, there's virtually no awareness of such crimes against men. Both al-Jazeera (here) and the UK Observer (here) have done pieces on this mostly ignored scourge.
Both news outlets report the claim that sex crimes against men during war is nearly as common as those against women, some of the victims having been gang raped repeatedly for months or even years. But The Observer points out that the problem is so little thought of that such statistics are hard to find. Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence.
They note that, in addition to the taboos (and in some places, laws) preventing many such men from getting help, many non-governmental organizations are set up to help female victims of sex crimes but not males.
"The organisations working on sexual violence don't talk about it," says Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project (RLP) at the Makerere University in Uganda.
But it goes beyond not talking about it to an active muzzling of reality.
"I know for a fact that the people behind [a 2006 United Nations] report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," [Dolan] says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female.
The Observer article concludes depressingly: Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Christian Jihadists
So reading this piece on the terrorist attack in Norway committed by a white, blond-haired Norwegian, could someone please remind me why violent, conservative Muslim theocratic extremists are so much more dangerous to safety, democracy and civilized western values than violent conservative Christian theocratic extremists?
Saturday, July 23, 2011
From the wisdom of Twitter
"When its a Muslim [who commits a heinous crime], every Muslim in the world somehow shares responsibility. When it's a white Christian, he's always a lone wolf." -@Gazamom
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
"Reporting on a murder is taking a pro-homicide position" and other absurdities
North Country Public Radio announced that it is planning on doing a story on area gay couples who are getting married when it takes effect in New York. Seems pretty straight forward (no pun intended). Gays have never been able to legally marry in the state so doing a story on something that's never happened before seems a no-brainer.
Some of the enlightened commenters on NCPR’s In Box blog whined that such reporting constitutes the station “taking a political stance” on marriage equality.
Strangely, the “political stance” accusation wasn’t leveled at the public radio station when it aired a long interview with the Catholic archbishop of Ogdensburg railing against the gay marriage bill.
According to this sad logic, if a news outlet interviews a convicted murderer, it’s taking the political stance of being pro-homicide.
Those fishing for the dreaded “liberal bias” ogre will look under every nook and cranny for the tiniest semblance of evidence and are not bound by the logic of normal people.
In the same announcement, NCPR also mentioned that it was going to include in the report the views of municipal clerks who have religious reservations about issuing marriage licenses to gay couples (of course they should issue the license or resign on principle).
For some reason, this inclusion was not subjected to the “taking a political stance” accusation; in fact, it wasn’t even acknowledged by the whiners in question. According to the whiners, NCPR's real bias isn't that it's ignoring the anti-gay marriage position; it's that the station is including the pro- side.
But it’s well-known that selective vision and hearing are critical elements in any martyr complex.
Some of the enlightened commenters on NCPR’s In Box blog whined that such reporting constitutes the station “taking a political stance” on marriage equality.
Strangely, the “political stance” accusation wasn’t leveled at the public radio station when it aired a long interview with the Catholic archbishop of Ogdensburg railing against the gay marriage bill.
According to this sad logic, if a news outlet interviews a convicted murderer, it’s taking the political stance of being pro-homicide.
Those fishing for the dreaded “liberal bias” ogre will look under every nook and cranny for the tiniest semblance of evidence and are not bound by the logic of normal people.
In the same announcement, NCPR also mentioned that it was going to include in the report the views of municipal clerks who have religious reservations about issuing marriage licenses to gay couples (of course they should issue the license or resign on principle).
For some reason, this inclusion was not subjected to the “taking a political stance” accusation; in fact, it wasn’t even acknowledged by the whiners in question. According to the whiners, NCPR's real bias isn't that it's ignoring the anti-gay marriage position; it's that the station is including the pro- side.
But it’s well-known that selective vision and hearing are critical elements in any martyr complex.
Monday, July 18, 2011
More news you may not be reading in your local daily (guest essay)
6th in a series on troubles at The Post-Star
by Mark Wilson
Lee Enterprises, Inc., the Post-Star’s Davenport, Iowa-based corporate parent, reported last week that they have received warning that their listing on the New York Stock Exchange is endangered. Lee’s stock price has averaged below one dollar for the past 30-days, a trigger mechanism for being placed on an exchange watch list.
The NYSE keeps rigid compliance standards for its listed companies. Lee not only needs to find a way to attract investors to lift it out of the penny-stock zone, but charges the company plans to take against earnings in an effort to boost the stock price, may throw the company out of whack on another exchange compliance standard. According to Thompson Reuters ONE, if both the company’s shareholder equity and market capitalization fall below $50 million the second standard is breached.
At the same time, Jonathan Keehner, Shannon D. Harrington and Jeffrey McCracken at Bloomberg.com are reporting that Lee directors are working desperately to refinance the roughly $1 billion in loans that come due in nine months. Lee is sweetening the deal to potential suitors offering higher-than-market rates of interest as well as equity stakes in the company. As reported in previous installments, Lee’s overwhelming debt burden—which increases proportionately as the company’s market capitalization shrinks—and it’s imminent maturity, are largely responsible for investors’ flight away from the stock. Continued sluggish advertising revenues and loss of readership from the publisher’s 49 owned and 4 partially owned newspaper properties have also contributed to the stock’s poor performance.
Since failing in an attempt to refinance its debt with a junk bond issue in April, Lee has started to show its hand in the next frontier of cost savings: In Davenport a corporate executive is taking on the publishing duties of one newspaper (source)
Lee headquarters personnel are also assuming remote publishing responsibility for groups of LEE properties (source).
Out in Montana, Lee has combined the management of two newspapers, The Montana Standard (from Butte) and the Helena Independent Record (seventy miles away), eliminating the Helena IR's editor position.
Lee is also suing three employees—members of the St. Louis Newspaper Guild—over retirement packages.
If the company’s misfortunes continue, Lee’s troubles will have ramifications for its employees in Glens Falls. Apart from the ongoing threat of another round of staffing cutbacks, the depressed stock price adversely impacts all Lee employees whose pension and compensation packages include stock or are tied to stock performance.
Despite efforts to retain as many news reporters as possible, corporate cutbacks invariably take a toll on the quality of journalism. In terms of raw numbers alone: PostStar.com claimed the paper had nearly 200 employees at the start of 2004. That number was down to 147 full and part time personnel in March 2009 before the last major round of layoffs reduced the number to 136.
Managing editor Ken Tingley continues to dress up a grim situation as best he can. A recent blog post “When the cup board is bare” (proofreaders have been lost) explains the careful manipulation of scarce news content around the Fourth of July in a manner that conjures up a tapped-out dowager rearranging furniture to cover frayed sections of the oriental rug. The remarkable efforts of Don Lehman, Tom Dimopoulos and Jon Alexander last week covering incidents in White Creek and Salem notwithstanding, fewer resources equals less coverage.
Unless miracles start to happen for Lee -- in Davenport and on Wall Street --sooner or later the management of the Post-Star will need to figure out how to level with their readers on the exact straits faced by their parent organization (Post-Star is still in denial about its audited circulation figures). If they continue to refuse to shine a light on a matter of interest to many of their readers, when the news eventually hits home those readers may start to wonder what else their newspaper is not reporting.
[Here is a test of the adequacy of the Post-Star’s coverage of itself: Which do you think is the more important Post-Star-related news story: The threatened delisting of P-S parent Lee Enterprise stock from the NYSE, or the third-place finish of P-S editor Ken Tingley in a newspaper columnist award competition? Now guess which of these stories the Post-Star lists on its business web page.]
In other news of relevance to news consumers in the greater capital region, Journal Register Company, the Yardley, PA-based corporate parent of The Saratogian, The Record of Troy, and The Daily Freeman of Kingston announced last week that it had been purchased by international hedge fund Alden Global Capital, a major investor following the company’s 2009 bankruptcy. The recent history of Journal Register Co. may be instructive for those worrying about the future of Lee Enterprises, Inc.
The Wikipedia entry for the company states that the company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in April of 2008 (following the dropping of the stock’s 30-day average share price below $1.05 earlier in the year). The company filed for bankruptcy on February 21, 2009, emerging in August of that year as a privately-held company.
by Mark Wilson
Lee Enterprises, Inc., the Post-Star’s Davenport, Iowa-based corporate parent, reported last week that they have received warning that their listing on the New York Stock Exchange is endangered. Lee’s stock price has averaged below one dollar for the past 30-days, a trigger mechanism for being placed on an exchange watch list.
The NYSE keeps rigid compliance standards for its listed companies. Lee not only needs to find a way to attract investors to lift it out of the penny-stock zone, but charges the company plans to take against earnings in an effort to boost the stock price, may throw the company out of whack on another exchange compliance standard. According to Thompson Reuters ONE, if both the company’s shareholder equity and market capitalization fall below $50 million the second standard is breached.
At the same time, Jonathan Keehner, Shannon D. Harrington and Jeffrey McCracken at Bloomberg.com are reporting that Lee directors are working desperately to refinance the roughly $1 billion in loans that come due in nine months. Lee is sweetening the deal to potential suitors offering higher-than-market rates of interest as well as equity stakes in the company. As reported in previous installments, Lee’s overwhelming debt burden—which increases proportionately as the company’s market capitalization shrinks—and it’s imminent maturity, are largely responsible for investors’ flight away from the stock. Continued sluggish advertising revenues and loss of readership from the publisher’s 49 owned and 4 partially owned newspaper properties have also contributed to the stock’s poor performance.
Since failing in an attempt to refinance its debt with a junk bond issue in April, Lee has started to show its hand in the next frontier of cost savings: In Davenport a corporate executive is taking on the publishing duties of one newspaper (source)
Lee headquarters personnel are also assuming remote publishing responsibility for groups of LEE properties (source).
Out in Montana, Lee has combined the management of two newspapers, The Montana Standard (from Butte) and the Helena Independent Record (seventy miles away), eliminating the Helena IR's editor position.
Lee is also suing three employees—members of the St. Louis Newspaper Guild—over retirement packages.
If the company’s misfortunes continue, Lee’s troubles will have ramifications for its employees in Glens Falls. Apart from the ongoing threat of another round of staffing cutbacks, the depressed stock price adversely impacts all Lee employees whose pension and compensation packages include stock or are tied to stock performance.
Despite efforts to retain as many news reporters as possible, corporate cutbacks invariably take a toll on the quality of journalism. In terms of raw numbers alone: PostStar.com claimed the paper had nearly 200 employees at the start of 2004. That number was down to 147 full and part time personnel in March 2009 before the last major round of layoffs reduced the number to 136.
Managing editor Ken Tingley continues to dress up a grim situation as best he can. A recent blog post “When the cup board is bare” (proofreaders have been lost) explains the careful manipulation of scarce news content around the Fourth of July in a manner that conjures up a tapped-out dowager rearranging furniture to cover frayed sections of the oriental rug. The remarkable efforts of Don Lehman, Tom Dimopoulos and Jon Alexander last week covering incidents in White Creek and Salem notwithstanding, fewer resources equals less coverage.
Unless miracles start to happen for Lee -- in Davenport and on Wall Street --sooner or later the management of the Post-Star will need to figure out how to level with their readers on the exact straits faced by their parent organization (Post-Star is still in denial about its audited circulation figures). If they continue to refuse to shine a light on a matter of interest to many of their readers, when the news eventually hits home those readers may start to wonder what else their newspaper is not reporting.
[Here is a test of the adequacy of the Post-Star’s coverage of itself: Which do you think is the more important Post-Star-related news story: The threatened delisting of P-S parent Lee Enterprise stock from the NYSE, or the third-place finish of P-S editor Ken Tingley in a newspaper columnist award competition? Now guess which of these stories the Post-Star lists on its business web page.]
In other news of relevance to news consumers in the greater capital region, Journal Register Company, the Yardley, PA-based corporate parent of The Saratogian, The Record of Troy, and The Daily Freeman of Kingston announced last week that it had been purchased by international hedge fund Alden Global Capital, a major investor following the company’s 2009 bankruptcy. The recent history of Journal Register Co. may be instructive for those worrying about the future of Lee Enterprises, Inc.
The Wikipedia entry for the company states that the company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in April of 2008 (following the dropping of the stock’s 30-day average share price below $1.05 earlier in the year). The company filed for bankruptcy on February 21, 2009, emerging in August of that year as a privately-held company.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Income inequality and economic growth
NPR's All Things Considered ran an interesting story exploring whether the exploding gap in income inequality is holding back economic growth. It notes that income inequality is worse in the US now that at any point since the year before the start of the Great Depression and that it's 'in the same inequality ballpark' as countries like Cameroon and Ivory Coast.
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