The Patient-Centered Medical Home — A Path to Lower Costs and Better Health Outcomes
At the end of 2007, I wrote a post discussing how a recent report that we at the Primary Care Development Corporation authored showed that the primary care system—the backbone of our healthcare infrastructure—had reached crisis levels. We had discovered that, at least for low income patients, every primary care provider initially loses money on every single visit by a patient. As a result, they are forced to scramble to fill these deficits with public and/or private grants or other revenues.
Thus the system, already weak, is at risk of complete collapse in many communities, threatening both our fiscal and medical future in New York State.
However, there is a bright side to our study. We propose a new model of primary care capable of reducing overall health care costs while improving health outcomes. The model is known as the Patient-Centered Medical Home and is gaining widespread support from both physicians and health care policy experts. It is viewed as a keystone policy change that is absolutely necessary for the solvency and viability of our primary care system.
A patient-centered medical home emphasizes primary and preventive care in achieving better outcomes and using resources more efficiently. It creates an ongoing relationship between a patient and a personal provider trained to provide first contact, continuous and comprehensive care. And it is organized into patient care teams that work in partnership with the patient and take responsibility for the ongoing, total care of the patient, including coordination across care settings (e.g. specialists, laboratories, x-ray facilities, hospitals, home care agencies, etc.) And it removes traditional barriers to access, such as long waiting times.
So why isn’t this model followed by health care providers? While it requires radical change, the overwhelming reason comes down to money. Both commercial insurers and Medicaid (along with most other insurance options) do not pay physicians for providing this kind of service.
To make the patient-centered medical home financially feasible, Albany must take action to change the structure of our reimbursement system for health care. As usual, health care looms large as one of the major battles in this year’s legislative session. But unless action is taken to change the nature of our reimbursement system for primary care, the entire health care system faces financial and medical peril.
Where Do the Candidates Stand on Health Care? Hillary Clinton
At first glance, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are a policy world apart. On some of the issues — like how long to keep troops in Iraq, for example — Clinton and Edwards are marching to beats of different drummers. But when it comes to health care policy, Clinton and Edwards have surprisingly similar platforms. Both candidates have released comprehensive plans that would create mandated universal health care. As Paul Krugman writes,
“It’s [Clinton’s plan] as strong as the Edwards plan — because unless you get deep into the fine print, the Clinton plan basically is the Edwards plan. That’s not a criticism; it’s much more important that a politician get health care right than that he or she score points for originality. Senator Clinton may be politically cautious, but she does understand health care economics and she knows a good thing when she sees it.”
Clinton’s plan, which she calls “America’s Health Choices Plan,” not only has plenty of pictures of healthy people and smiling doctors, but lays out a fairly comprehensive plan for universal health care. Under Clinton’s plan, Americans would be given the choice to keep their current plan, enroll in a plan similar to the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP, the plan currently offered to members of Congress) or choose a public plan, similar to the Medicaid system that exists today. The government will regulate the insurance industry to prevent discrimination against elderly people or people with previous health conditions. Her plan reads, “By creating a level-playing field of insurance rules across states and markets, the plan ensures that no American is denied coverage, refused renewal, unfairly priced out of the market, or forced to pay excessive
insurance company premiums.” http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/healthcareplan/americanhealthchoicesplan.pdf
Clinton’s plan will create a Health Choices Menu, which will include both private plans currently offered in the FEHBP and public plans. This “Menu” will give employers, businesses and the uninsured the option of buying of high quality group health insurance. “The Health Choices Menu will have the purchasing power of millions of
Americans in securing high-quality and affordable insurance,” writes Clinton, which will help to lower costs. She says that available plans will include mental health parity, dental coverage, and focus on preventative services “that experts agree are proven and effective.”
The most interesting part of the Health Choices Menu is what Clinton has to say about public plans. Her health care plan reads,
“In addition to the array of private insurance choices offered, the Health Choices Menu will also provide Americans with a choice of a public plan option, which could be modeled on the traditional Medicare program, but would cover the same benefits as guaranteed in private plan options in the Health Choices Menu without creating a new bureaucracy. The alternative will compete on a level playing field with traditional private insurance plans. It will provide a more affordable option, in part through greater administrative savings. It will not be funded through the Medicare trust fund.”
If the public and private plans would cover the same benefits, but the public one is “more affordable,” why would anyone not choose the cheaper plan? This may be Clinton’s sly way of doing what Edwards’ plan honestly admits to — allowing the private and public insurance systems to compete with each other, in the hopes that the private sector will be unable to compete with the government. Eventually, the system could hypothetically become single-payer care. As Edwards’ plan reads:
“Health Care Markets will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it. Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.”
Given her previous health care baggage, and desire to appear less “populist” than Edwards, Clinton probably doesn’t want to even mention anything that sounds remotely like “socialized medicine.” But, she sneakily suggests, if that’s where the market goes she wouldn’t complain.
Clinton’s policy, like both Obama’s and Edwards’, contains a grab bag of new policies and federal agencies. One, a Best Practices Institute, would research medical treatments and work to disseminate research information to insurers and consumers. Other policies include programs to better care for the chronically ill, financial incentives for medical providers to adopt information technology, and incentives to expand preventative care. Clinton even includes policies to fight HIV/AIDS (both in the U.S. and abroad), cancer, and autism.
The one issue where Clinton’s and Edwards’ plans diverge from Obama’s is that of mandates. As I wrote here, Clinton’s plan would require that every American have some kind of health insurance, whereas Obama’s plan only mandates that children have a health insurance plan. Obama’s plan, charges Clinton, would leave “as many as 15 million Americans” uninsured. Obama has claimed that the main barrier to health care coverage is cost, so after health care becomes affordable more people will choose to buy insurance.
A fairly appetizing menu, if you ask me. But where does all the money come from? Clinton spells it out fairly clearly in her plan. Like Obama, Clinton plans to scale back the taxes on Americans making over $250,000 a year — Edwards sets that bar at $200,000 — which she estimates will save about $52 billion a year. The rest of the $112 billion plan will come from reforms such as modernizing the health system through information technology, phasing out “excessive Medicare overpayments to HMOs,” better managing chronic care, and government purchasing of bulk, generic prescription drugs.
Overall, Clinton offers a solid proposal that would certainly improve the current system. Although some questions remain — such as how the mandate would be enforced, for example — her plan would be a welcome change for not only America’s 47 million uninsured, but for the middle class at large.
How Do You Compensate 27 Years of Injust Inprisonment?
On Thursday, after spending 27 years in prison for a crime that he did not commit, Charles Chatman walked free. The world — or the world outside of jail, that is — was a different place than that he had left nearly three decades ago. After only using spoons in prison, he had to relearn how to use a knife to cut his steak. The judge for his case even had to teach him how to use a cell phone — a newfangled technology, for 47-year-old Chatman — so he could call his family. Chatman is the 15th wrongfully convicted prisoner in Dallas County who has been exonerated by DNA evidence since 2001.
Chatman’s story is one of those tug-on-your-heartstrings tales of a man whose life spun out of his control. When he was 20, he was convicted of raping a young women who lived five houses down the street. The women, who was in her 20s, picked Chatman from a police lineup. Serology tests further validated her claim, showing that Chatman’s blood type matched that found at the crime scene, despite the fact that the blood type also matched that of 40% of black males. Chatman was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 99 years in prison based on a police lineup, unreliable blood evidence, and a jury that had only one black member. “I was convicted because a black man committed a crime against a white woman,” Chatman said, as quoted in the Associated Press. “And I was available.” Chatman had been working at the time of the crime — a claim supported by his sister, who was his then-employer — but the alibi didn’t seem to matter.
During those 27 long years in prison, Chatman did have three chances at parole. The parole board always pressed him to confess, and when Chatman refused fabricate a story of his crime, the board refused to let him out. “Every time I’d go to parole, they’d want a description of the crime or my version of the crime,” said Chatman. “I don’t have a version of the crime. I never committed the crime. I never will admit to doing this crime that I know I didn’t do.”
Last year, when Chatman applied for DNA testing, he was told it would be risky. There was only one DNA sample available from the crime — a small amount of DNA on a vaginal swab from the victim. Despite the fact that the single test would use all available DNA evidence and rule out the possibility of further tests, said his lawyer, Dallas County public defender Michelle Moore, Chatman decided to go ahead with the procedure. The DNA test showed that the rape had been committed by another man, and Chatman joyfully left the cell that had been his home for nearly three decades.
Chatman’s exoneration, and the exoneration of other wrongfully convicted Dallas County prisoners, are largely the results of the the work of Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins and the Innocence Project. Since Watkins’ election as the first African-American DA in Texas, he has worked to both reform the criminal justice system’s methods of convicting criminals, and has utilized saved DNA in the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences, a Dallas County laboratory, to overturn cases of wrongful convictions. The Times reports that Watkins’ office, working with the Innocence Project, has reviewed 80 claims of wrongful conviction.
This past October, Watkins was the featured speaker at DMI’s Marketplace of Ideas event on preventing wrongful convictions and exonerating the innocent. He spoke on how his goal wasn’t just to get innocent people out of prison, but to reform the system to both prevent crime and prevent innocent convictions in the first place. “Maybe we should put our money on the front end instead of the back end,” he said, noting that “we spend roughly $34 a day to imprison an inmate, and only $8 a day to educate our children.” He says, that by talking about the “economic side of the criminal justice system,” he’s gotten even staunch conservatives to agree with his policies.
But back to Chatman. Now that Chatman’s been exonerated, he’ll disappear from the news (not that he got much coverage anyway, having been freed on the day of the Iowa caucuses). But Chatman’s struggle is far from over. If he wants any kind of financial compensation for his decades spent in prison, he’ll have to fight a system that makes it anything but easy for wrongly convicted people to obtain compensation for their time in jail. “The majority of people exonerated after proving their innocence have not been compensated for the injustice they suffered and the time they spent incarcerated,” says the Innocence Project. And that doesn’t even take into account other services that innocent ex-convicts desperately need for re-entry into society, like job training, health and legal services, and education. After all, if you’ve spent the majority of your adult life in prison (from age 20 to 47, anyway), how could you possibly have any employable skills or the abilities to procure health or legal services on your own?
The current system for compensation is pretty much a political morass. In some states, former inmates must file civil lawsuits to receive compensation. Currently, only 22 states plus D.C. have compensation statutes. In Texas, for example, “A wrongfully convicted person is entitled to $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration (and $100,000 per year if that person was sentenced to death), compensation for child support payments, and one year of counseling,” according to the Innocence Project. But other states have less clear cut policies. In New York, for example, according to the Innocence Project, “If the wrongfully convicted person ‘did not by his own conduct cause or bring about his conviction’ and files a claim within two years of his pardon of innocence, he shall receive ‘damages in such sum of money as the court determines will fairly and reasonably compensate him.’” That means that if innocent people plead guilty so as to get parole (like Chatman could have done) they can never receive any kind of compensation.
And then there are those 28 states that have no compensation policies at all, where many ex-inmates, after leaving jail, actually receive less of a safety net than that offered to actual guilty prisoners. In August of 2007, the Times researched the compensation claims of 206 people that have been exonerated by DNA evidence. They concluded,
“At least 79 — nearly 40 percent — got no money for their years in prison. Half of those have federal lawsuits or state claims pending. More than half of those who did receive compensation waited two years or longer after exoneration for the first payment. Few of those who were interviewed received any government services after their release. Indeed, despite being imprisoned for an average of 12 years, they typically left prison with less help — prerelease counseling, job training, substance-abuse treatment, housing assistance and other services — than some states offer to paroled prisoners.”
The efforts of DA Watkins, the Innocence Project, and others who have worked to get more than 200 innocent people out of jail are nothing short of amazing. But, in creating this new population of innocent ex-convicts, they have generated a need not only for fair, equitable, and nationally consistent compensation laws, but for a guaranteed social safety net that will help the wrongfully incarcerated to reintegrate into society. After all, if people like Chatman need to learn how to use cell phones and knives, might we expect they’ll need job training, health insurance, and counseling, too?
Now out of jail, Chatman says he plans to help other innocent prisoners who are currently incarcerated. “I believe that there are hundreds, and I know of two or three personally that very well could be sitting in this seat if they had the support and they had the backing that I have,” Chatman said. “My number one interest is trying to help people who have been in the situation I am in.”
In the face of an Obama victory in Iowa, the audacity of John Edwards
All Obama, all the time. Now that the audaciously hopeful candidate has rocked Iowa, that’s what you’re going to see and hear over the next few weeks. And rightfully so.
But there is another story buried deeper in the Iowa results that is just as worthy of attention. It’s John Edwards’s second place, 30% showing and his populist “let’s put corporate power in check ” message that is building momentum.
Forget his haircut. If you listen enough to the men and average white bands on the Sunday morning talk shows, you would think there is nothing more to Edwards than his pompadour. Furthermore, the mainstream press has dismissed him as apoplectic. David Brooks wrote in today’s New York Times that Obama has “made John Edwards, with his angry cries that ‘corporate greed is killing your children’s future,’ seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over. “
Well, with Brooks and his colleagues reducing the Democratic presidential race to a dual axis, Obama-Clinton, affair there may in fact be no political oxygen left for Edwards as the primary season advances. Dodd and Biden have already dropped out.
But with foreclosures, fueled by Wall Street greed and recklessness, wiping out homeownership America with Katrina-like force, and with regulators and politicians offering up consumers to corporations like lambs to slaughter, Edwards’s indignation is the appropriate political tone to strike. Even the Wall Street Journal recently acknowledged that the pissed-off populism that Edwards and Mike Huckabee represent is apparently resonating with voters
Hope is indeed audacious. But no more so than a presidential candidate giving voice to economic justice.
Monday’s Albany Times Union included an oped by DMI’s executive director, Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Joel Barkin, the executive director of Progressive States Network.
The oped makes strong policy AND political arguments for this course of action.
With President Bush’s anemic proposal to assist homeowners meeting with lukewarm responses, the table is set for Spitzer to send a bold message that New York is capable of leading the nation in addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time. There is already a growing movement within the state Senate’s Democratic Conference to propose a six-month foreclosures moratorium. By ensuring the passage of such legislation, Spitzer could regain lost allies and start to build the kind of broad-based coalition necessary to move legislation on other pressing issues affecting working families such as affordable healthcare.
Since we know that Spitzer is reading up on biographies, we’re sure he knows about what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in similar circumstances to protect the interests of ordinary citizens in the face of economic meltdown and corporate greed.
In Pre-Caucus Raucus, Obama Jabs Edwards and Trial Lawyer Profession
The Iowa caucus is tonight, and the candidates aren’t holding any punches. Poll results show Obama, Clinton, and Edwards fighting neck and neck to win Iowans and inspire them to get out the vote. I also read that the candidates are expected to spend $200 per voter to affect its outcome.
In this environment, aggresive tactics and hard-hitting critiques of their opponents are to be expected. As a matter of fact, when the candidates aren’t putting up their best fight, they face criticism for being too nice or diplomatic.
But it would be nice if these political jabs were based on something other than pure personal attacks that do nothing but play into the conservative agenda. Like Obama’s quick jab at the trial lawyer profession, interpreted as a challenge against successful former trial lawyer and competitor John Edwards. According to WaPo, in a recent speech Obama emphasized to voters that he’s “a normal person” who was squarely middle class until winning his Senate position. He reflected on how he could have taken lucrative career opportunities but that his dedication to public service prevented him from doing so. “That’s why I didn’t become a trial lawyer,” he adds.
To my pleasant surprise, this comment has generated a good little bit of ‘net-based broo haha among the left. For instance, Kos at DailyKos and TPM Cafe ask whether Obama’s criticism is really meant to suggest that because Edwards was a trial lawyer he is less commited to public service. TPM Cafe includes a link, courtesy of the Edwards campaign, to a video statement by Sandy Lakey, Edwards’ former client whose daughter was seriously injured by a faulty drain cover. (See here) They say this is the best response to Obama’s challenge.
Obama’s remarks not only assault a profession that is driven by representing “normal people”-who he claims to be and represent-in legal battles against Goliath-like opponents like big businesses; they also just don’t make sense politically. For someone whose appeal is largely based on his fresh perspective and willingness to advocate for the average person, his attack of Edwards looks suspiciously stale and similar to those made in the last election.
Atrios succinctly critiques this move by Obama as something that looks like pandering to the conservative right. Alas, Obama’s not alone among the candidates in his willingness to vilify trial lawyers. In fact, actually a while back I wrote about remarks made by Edwards which, ironically, appeared to advance the tort “reform” agenda more than hilight the importance of our civil justice system.
In this sense one could say that the attack on civil justice is a bi-partisan effort among the candidates. It’s not just the trial lawyer remark, it’s the willingness to accept what the right has said about the civil justice system, and to operate from that framework. Obama’s quick willingness to suggest that the profession is antithetical to public service is just symptomatic of that problem.
By the way, a cursory little search for pro-civil justice statements among the candidates yielded very little meat. (Anyone got anything on this? Please feel free to share links in the comments section) It’s like this isn’t an important issue for them unless they’re using it to attack one another or to jump on the tort “reform” bandwagon. Oh, how I’d love it if we could get the candidates talking about how we can improve the civil justice system for real people, so that they can use it more effectively to protect and advocate for themselves. (Stay tuned on this… more to come soon.)
Distorted Democracy: How the Iowa Caucus Excludes Working People
This evening, Iowans will gather in church basements, public libraries, and schools. After months of television ads, radio spots, excessive polling, cold calling and door knocking, Iowans will finally vote in their record-breakingly early caucus and start off this election year’s primary season.
But even though the results of the Iowa caucuses will be hailed as somehow indicative of the political preferences of the nation at large, Iowa’s caucuses aren’t exactly a shining example of American democracy at its best. As the Times reported yesterday, this political contest is structured in a way that systematically excludes working people. The article reads,
“Iowans begin the presidential selection process, making choices among the candidates that can heavily influence how the race unfolds. Now some are starting to ask why the first, crucial step in that process is also one that discourages so many people, especially working-class people, from participating.”
The Times reported that the structure of the caucus system — not only are they held at a specific time in the early evening, but they don’t allow absentee voting — prevents a whole host of people from participating in the political process. “The infirm, soldiers on active duty, medical personnel who cannot leave their patients, parents who do not have baby sitters, restaurant employees on the dinner shift, and many others who work in retail, at gas stations and in other jobs that require evening duty” all are unable to vote in the caucuses. (Although, as Slate reports, things may be looking up for single parents, as Senator Barack Obama is promising free babysitting this evening. The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, is distributing green snow shovels to dig elderly Iowans out of their homes in case of bad weather.)
And it’s not as if these people want to be left out of the political process. The Times interviewed a single mother in Johnston who wanted to vote but couldn’t leave her children, an emergency room worker in Ames who couldn’t change her shift, and a college student working at a restaurant in Des Moines. All wanted to vote, but given the inflexibility of the system won’t be able to participate in tonight’s caucus. “I would love to participate,” said the single mother. “Shouldn’t we at least have as much influence in this as any other citizen?” asks an Iowan serving in the National Guard in Afghanistan. A high school teacher in Iowa City questioned the fairness of the system. “It disenfranchises certain voters or makes them make choices between putting food on the table and caucusing,” he said. Ironically, even some campaign volunteers can’t caucus because they have to work that evening.
Not only does the caucus system tend to exclude working people, but the strangely archaic structure of the system isn’t exactly a paradigm of democracy. “First-time caucus-goers get the shock of their lives,” says Michael Mauro, Iowa’s secretary of state. “They don’t know they have to stand in a corner, and there is no secret ballot.” According to Politico, less than 10% of Iowas’ voting-age population shows up for the caucuses. There are a total of 3,000 delegates, which, in 2004, averaged to about 41 caucusgoers for every delegate elected. The procedures for the Republican and Democratic caucuses also vary — whereas Republican caucusgoers cast a vote by secret ballot and straightforward vote tabulations are reported to the media, the Democratic party uses a much more complicated system of both voting and result tabulation. As Washington Post blogger Dan Balz writes, “In a primary, voters quietly fill out their ballots and leave. In the caucuses, they are required to come and stay for several hours, and there are no secret ballots. In the presence of friends, neighbors and occasionally strangers, Iowa Democrats vote with their feet, by raising their hands and moving to different parts of the room to signify their support for one candidate or another.”
Iowa is also largely white and rural, and not reflective of America as a whole. As DMI wrote on MayorTV.com, corn fields and tractors have been given a disproportionate amount of airtime, despite the fact that we live in a largely urban nation.
“In today’s presidential campaign, America is all heartland — tractor pulls, county fairs, town halls and truck stops. Candidates scramble for photo ops in plaid, stump in wheat fields and scarf down corn dogs. Our country, it seems, is all country. Yet we are an urban nation. More than 80% of Americans live in cities. Urbanites drive 90% of our economy. In pandering to rural voters, presidential candidates ignore the bread and butter issues that most Americans deal with every day — housing, transportation, infrastructure, crime, education.”
Not only is Iowa more rural than the rest of the country, but rural voters tend to have more impact within Iowa itself. For example, in rural Fremont County, it took only 22 caucusgoers to elect a delegate, whereas in more urban counties (especially ones with universities or large student populations), it can take several times that amount. In Johnson County, home of the University of Iowa, it took about 80 caucusgoers to elect each delegate. The result is a system that tends to give rural and older voters a disproportionate amount of political influence.
So tonight, when TV reporters alternate preliminary vote tallies with small talk about the freezing Iowa weather, it’s important to keep in mind that the results of this overhyped political event aren’t all that they’re chalked up to be. Unfortunately for Americans — and especially working Iowans — even free snow shovels, sandwich platters, and babysitting aren’t enough to eliminate the systematic inequality of the Iowa caucuses.
Though up to 78% of voters polled expressed support for legalization undocumented immigrants, candidates and the major parties continue to approach the issue without broaching how the American middle class, in addition to immigrants themselves, can benefit from smart immigration policy. A recent essay from Christopher Jencks points out just how little substance there is to most mainstream political stances on the issue.
(As in Hillary’s hokey-pokey on whether or not she supported issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, Rudy’s hokey-pokey over his immigration policies during his tenure as New York City’s Mayor, and even Mike Huckabee’s initially practical approaches to Arkansas immigrant community needs before deciding if he becomes President, all undocumented people will leave the country within 120 days. Now if those aren’t examples of dances of indecision, I don’t know what are.)
I really like this idea of a charade on immigration, because it seems to me it’s a game that pretty much all the Presidential candidates are playing these days in some way, shape or form. Looks like everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon of being against illegal immigration and undocumented immigrants without taking the time to wrestle over what a smart immigration platform would look like – and how it could also benefit the American middle class, the group that has traditionally been pitted against immigrant workers and their families.
The New York Times did a good job this weekend (goodness, I seem to be giving a lot of shout-outs to their editorial board these days!) of calling out the candidates on both sides of the partisan divide for their eternal and increasingly furious pandering to what they see as popular anti-immigrant sentiment – and also for the lack of substance and practicality in their immigration platforms.
Political pundits opine that after the demise of last summer’s attempt at large-scale immigration reform – which failed despite strong backing from the White House and lukewarm support from the Democrats – it is unlikely that any new attempt at reform will happen for at least the next two years. If Rahm Emanuel, Lou Dobbs, and Pat Buchanan had their way, immigration policy would not emerge as a real policy option except to focus on enforcement as the only angle worth taking on immigration.
I’ve already written about how this approach (dubbed ‘employer sanctions’, an ironic misnomer because immigrant workers will be the real ones who’ll feel the brunt of this enforcement plan) will not nab the real bad guys in this drama of American firms employing undocumented workers: crooked bosses who hold immigration status above the heads of their undocumented workers to force them to accept substandard wages. We know from past experience with employer sanctions and similar programs (SSA No-Match, anyone?) that employers don’t fire their undocumented workers when they become aware of their lack of immigration status – no, they wait until these workers begin to unionize, demand worker safety protections, or ask for a fair wage to sack ‘em.
Mind you, all these existing worker protection laws apply to ALL workers regardless of their immigration status – but who’s counting? When it comes to immigration policy, who cares about workers’ rights? Or how upholding fair wage and worker protection laws for immigrant workers will in the end help the American middle class by bringing up the playing field for all workers.
Sure, immigration defies easy answers; and sure, the nation’s number of foreign-born residents is at one of its highest levels in our nation’s history. But resorting to knee-jerk nativism, English-only, or mass deportation is neither a smart or practical way to deal with the one in ten US residents who is foreign-born.
In the meantime, the courts continue to see a maelstrom of lawsuits and rulings on immigration policy: the latest development is a Michigan State Supreme Court ruling that bars the state’s undocumented residents from receiving driver’s licenses. So much for an example of immigration policy that honored the economic contributions and potential of immigrant workers while effectively bringing down car insurance rates in a state that is, coincidentally, usually a battleground state in national electoral politics.
Well, folks, I’m here to tell you that is not a way for our nation to move forward into a future that’s healthy, just, and prosperous not just for those in the highest tax brackets, but for the country’s beleaguered middle class.
As DMI has been saying for a while, what we need is a pro-immigrant, pro-worker agenda that first legalizes undocumented immigrants to bring them out of the shadows and the underground economy, then forces shady employers to comply with existing worker protection and fair wage laws – which will level the playing field for all workers, including the American middle class, when it comes to wages and work conditions.
Arizona Employer Sanctions Law Goes Into Effect - Or Does It?
I try hard to imagine it. Virginia, 18th century, and a bunch of white folks, standing around in the streets, with homemade signs, demanding their right…to be, uhm, slaves. Yeah, slaves. Git Yer Arse Back to Africa! the signs would demand, for the white folks would be livid because they believed the slaves to be doing jobs that they, the undocumented British settlers of this “new” country (that had inconveniently been inhabited by human beings for at least 10,000 years before they showed up in their pilgrim shoes), should have been doing instead.
Bueno. Hard as I try, I just can’t get the visual. I close my eyes, crunch my forehead like a big Nathaniel Hawthorne fist. I breathe deeply, open my chakras one at a time - pop, pop, pop. Eh. Nah. Still nothin’. And I’m a fiction-writer, for Chrissakes. Some things, I suppose, are just too far-fetched to conjure.
Or are they?
Driving past the towering palm trees and lush, unnatural lawns of my neighborhood in Paradise Valley (near Phoenix, Arizona) last weekend, that is more or less the scenario I came across. A motley group of white people, mostly bikers (as in Harleys and the occasional ill-advised leather chaps) waddling around outside of the mall at the corner of Tatum Boulevard and Cactus Road. They waggled their homemade signs to the traffic, their meaty heads wrapped up tight in American flag scarves. (This to, one supposes, display their patriotism, in spite of the fact that Section 8d of the nation’s flag rules and regulations states “the flag should never be used as wearing apparel.)
The signs the thirty or so protesters displayed demanded, in essence (and often misspelled) an end to “illegal immigration”. The group that organized the protest-ette call themselves (oddly to my ears, but I’m a fiction writer who ironically values truth in advertising) the “American Freedom Riders”. They, like the editors and publishers of the local mainstream newspapers, want the estimated 500,000 “illegals” in Arizona “go home,” wherever that might be, and so long as that home was not any sort of rental property in this state that might, I dunno, generate income and property tax money, at a time of record foreclosures and bankruptcies in the state.
The evening news, the night before this itsy-bitsy protest, blared and droned on and on, with breathless anticipation, about the demonstration, evidence, they told us, that the public was fed up with “illegals”. They predicted a turnout in the hundreds. They were wrong. But you wouldn’t know that unless you were there. Just like you wouldn’t know that some people can affix teddy bears to Harleys and still be hateful, unless you saw it with your own eyes. Some things you just have to actually witness, rather than read about in the paper, or watch on TV.
Anyway, presumably, all these well-fed Hell’s Angels types, with their $20,000 recreational road hogs, were themselves jumping at the chance to take the jobs that will be left vacant when the migrants supposedly leave; jobs that pay below the minimum wage, but nonetheless contribute an estimated $29 billion to the state’s economy each year. I mean, why else would they come out in what the media dubbed “droves” (perhaps this referred to the handful of angry bikers having droved themselves to da mall; perhaps ‘tis I who erred, assuming an assertion of “droves” to have been a predictive quantitative assessment?)
But here I get confused again. The bikers are pissed that the “illegals” have taken everyone’s jobs, right? They bellow about it from behind their wooly moustaches, warble about it from within their jowly scowlies. But if you question the paltry attendance at their events (which, in spite of paltry attendance are broadcast from every media mountaintop in the Valley of Sun as being significant and even monumental), the Freedom Riders will tell you their numbers are low because…wait for it, wait for it….because their members are “patriots,” and, says the group’s leader, “most patriots have jobs.”
Each year, those of us at the Drum Major Institute face a dilemma in putting together our annual Year in Review. On the one hand, we need to get the report edited, laid out, printed, and mailed in time to hit mailboxes in mid-December. On the other hand, the year isn’t over yet, and public policies, both appalling and terrific continue to go into effect. (On second thought, the policies introduced around the holidays, perhaps when policymakers know most people aren’t paying attention, tend to cluster at the appalling end of the scale.) Case in point: the decision by the National Labor Relations Board released the Friday before Christmas ruling that employers have greater latitude to prevent employees from sending union-related email at work.
U.S. labor law generally holds that employees can use employer resources, like bulletin boards or office telephones, to discuss union activities if they’re generally allowed to use these resources to communicate about other matters. The ability to communicate with co-workers in the workplace is a core element of Americans’ freedom to join unions. But, as this recent ruling demonstrates, the current NLRB dominated by Bush appointees has been steadily narrowing that right. The result? The difficult task of exercising your right to join a union at work is about to get even harder.
If the ruling came out sooner, it might have made our list of the Worst Public Policies of 2007. But one thing’s for certain, it illustrates the need for one of our best public policies, The Employee Free Choice Act (see #5 on the list) which we hailed for passing the House in 2007 even as it fell to a Senate filibuster. Let’s hope for better in ‘08.
As 2007 rolls into 2008, Americans are making New Year’s resolutions in record numbers. We resolve to eat less, drink less, and exercise more. We’re promising to quit smoking, spend more time with our families, and volunteer. But what about progressive public policy? Where does that fit into all these well intentioned (but not necessarily long lasting) resolutions for the New Year?
Here at DMI we have a few New Year’s Resolutions of our own. We are resolving to continue doing what we’ve been up to all last year: encouraging politicians to develop and implement progressive public policies and coming up with innovative policy solutions of our own that benefit the current and aspiring middle class.
So, in no particular order, here are some of DMI’s resolutions for the New Year.
1. Challenge the Presidential candidates to talk about civil justice and discuss ways to make the courts accessible to all Americans. In our soon to be released report, Election ’08: A Pro-Civil Justice Presidential Platform, DMI Fellow Kia Franklin outlines policies that, if implemented, “would improve the lives of countless Americans.” The civil justice system is important, she says, because it “allows ordinary citizens to advocate for their rights and protect themselves against undue harm from unsafe products, unscrupulous business practices, and abuses of government power, through the public courts.”
2. Train the next generation of public policy makers. It isn’t enough just to talk about change or write about change. Through our DMI Scholars program, we resolve to continue to educate diverse young people in what it means to make progressive public policy and to help them develop the connections they need to succeed in the field after college. In our intensive Summer Institute and internship programs, the 2008-2009 scholars will be equipped with the skills to succeed in politics and effect progressive social change in the future. Check out the 2007-2008 class of DMI Scholars in this quick video on why every progressive college student should consider this program.
3. Make cities a part of the political discussion. Over 80% of Americans live in cities, but Presidential candidates still manage to focus more on corn and county fair photo-ops than the subjects that urban Americans really care about — issues like housing, transportation, infrastructure, crime, and education. This New Year, DMI resolves to make the urban agenda part of the public policy conversation. Our website MayorTV.com, which was produced in collaboration with the Nation, features a series of video interviews with ten mayors across the country, from cities big and small. Clyde Haberman noted the silence of the Presidential candidates on urban issues in the New York Times. “Sure, they have discussed terrorism, health care, the economy, immigration and other matters that affect cities as much as the rest of the country. But what about basic urban and suburban concerns like housing, transportation, crime, education, Medicaid costs, homelessness, crumbling infrastructure?…The silence has not gone unnoticed by the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan, though decidedly liberal, New York think tank.” We’ll continue to update MayorTV in the New Year.
4. Continue hosting our Marketplace of Ideas events to bring real progressive policies to the forefront of the political discussion. In 2007, our Marketplace of Ideas series included topics ranging from Boston Mayor Tom Menino speaking about turning abandoned buildings into affordable housing to Dallas DA Craig Watkins on exonerating the innocent to London Mayor Nicky Gavron on combating global warming through congestion pricing. These Marketplace events not only create a platform for progressive policy makers to debate and discussion actual policy solutions, but are archived on our website in a series of videos, podcasts, liveblogs, and transcripts. In 2008, we resolve to continue to use the Marketplace series to show how government can make a real and demonstrable difference in people’s lives through progressive public policy.
5. Hold members of Congress accountable for their votes on issues that effect the middle class. In 2007, we launched TheMiddleClass.org, a website that analyzes domestic legislation and assigns each member of Congress a percentage ranking based on how well their votes aligned with middle class interests. This site is updated whenever new legislation makes its way through Congress, and even allows users to build a widget for specific issue areas or Congressmembers. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a site that so compellingly presents such essential information about new and pending legislation,” wrote Josh Levy at TechPresident. In February of 2008, we will once again release letter grades for every member of Congress based on their voting records over the past year in an effort to further hold Congress accountable to current and aspiring middle class Americans. We will repeat our successful Google AdWords campaign and buy a Google ad in the name of every member of Congress so that anyone searching for their representative will see how he or she was graded on middle class issues.
So this New Year, don’t just resolve to eat less chocolate or jump on the treadmill. Help DMI accomplish our New Year’s resolutions by making progressive public policy a part of your daily life. Build a widget, download a podcast, make a donation, or just resolve to start your day with a cup of coffee and a daily dose of progressive policy from the DMI Blog.
Minimum number of hazardous children’s toys recalled by Mattel in August 2007: 9,500,000
Number of employees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2007: 420
Number of CPSC staff who currently inspect toys, according to the New York Times: 1
Number of CPSC staff eliminated by the Bush administration’s 2008 budget: 19
Average number of people watching the presidential primary debates: 2 million
Average number of people watching the first five weeks of American Idol’s 2007 season: 33.5 million
Number of members of the Nobel Committee that awarded the Peace Prize to Al Gore in 2007: 5
Number of U.S. Supreme Court Justices who voted against Gore in Bush v. Gore to prevent a recount of ballots cast in Florida during the 2000 presidential election: 5
Number of states in the continental U.S. with areas that experienced at least moderate drought conditions in August: 36
Number of homes threatened by wildfires in California: 68,500
Average cost per day to Los Angeles County to house a female in the Los Angeles jail: $99.64
Cost of housing Paris Hilton in the Los Angeles jail for one day, including special staff for her needs: $1,109.78
Cost of one night in the Eiffel Suite at the Hilton Paris: $1,392
Number of families who may lose their homes due to foreclosures on their sub-prime mortgage loans: 2,200,000
Chance that a Hispanic or African-American borrower received a subprime loan compared to a white borrower with similar credit ratings: 3:1
Chance that the next president will be either the leading Hispanic or African-American candidate respectively according to the November 2007 odds on an online gaming website: 45:1, 5:1
Total amount of contributions raised by all 2008 presidential campaigns a full year before the election is held: $419,877,377
Number of times Rudy Giuliani has answered phone calls from his wife during speeches, conferences, and presentations, as estimated by the Wall Street Journal: 40
Length of time one New York man stood in line to get an iPhone: 6 hours
Length of the United Auto Worker’s strike against Chrysler: 6 hours
Longest television appearance by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez on his television program Aló Presidente: 8 hours
Number of graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University serving in President Bush’s administration, according to Slate: 150
Likelihood that a Regent graduate will be employed in some form of government work: 1:6
Minimum no. of days of suspension including out-of-school, in-school, and Saturday detentions, received by three white students at Jena High School for hanging three nooses from the school’s “white tree,” under which only white students traditionally sat: 19
Number of years of prison 17-year-old Mychal Bell, one of the Jena 6, initially faced after being convicted of beating up a white student after the noose incident: 15
Median income of non-Hispanic white households and African-American households, respectively: $52,400 and $32,000
Date on which the median price of the American dollar to the Canadian dollar was 1/1: September 20, 2007
Percentage tax rate of income from “carried interest,” the compensation that fund mangers receive for managing investments: 15
Estimated percentage tax rate if carried interest were taxed as regular income: 35
Percentage of total political donations by hedge funds that were given to Democrats in 2006: 72
Number of uninsured children in the United States: 8.6 million
Approximate number of currently uninsured children who would be covered by the bill Congress passed to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP): 4 million
Date on which SCHIP was vetoed by President Bush: October 3, 2007
Percentage of population identifying with Democrats and Republicans in 2002, respectively: 43, 43
Percentage of population identifying with Democrats and Republicans in 2007, respectively: 50, 36
Number of warrants issued by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in anti-immigration raids in Nassau County, New York on September 24 and 26 during which 186 immigrants were arrested: 96
Number of warrants with wrong or outdated addresses, according to the Nassau County Police Commissioner: 90
Number of warrants that the special agent in charge of the raid said were needed to make arrests during the raid: 0
From DMI’s Year In Review, “a hawk’s eye view of what the think tanks on the conservative right are up to.” Read the full report on the year in politics and policy on our website.
The Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute continued to blame poverty on the poor in 2007, decrying the efficacy of any and all public efforts to address economic hardship (the Manhattan Institute doesn’t suffer a similar affliction; they spent more than $12 million in 2006 to get out their message.) Par for the course was a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed by Senior Fellow Steven Malanga, who scoffed at efforts to raise the minimum wage or protect labor rights because “poverty in America results increasingly from the choices that people make, not our economic system’s supposed shortcomings.”
Along similar lines, Fellow Heather MacDonald deplored calls to expand social services for babies and children as “a pathetic diversion…as if the last 40 years of poverty policy haven’t proven the futility of such money sinkholes.” Noting that the lowest income Americans are often uneducated, underemployed, and disproportionately include single mothers struggling to raise children on their own, Malanga, MacDonald, and many of the nearly 40 other commentators on the Manhattan Institute payroll offer an uncomplicated prescription: the poor should simply get an education, get a job, and above all, get married. Nothing could be easier.
Competitive Enterprise Institute
After more than twenty years fighting environmental protection and regulation of toxic waste and emissions, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, with the backing of the world’s largest oil companies, today devotes some of its $3 million annual operating budget to propagating conspiracy theories about the scientific consensus on global warming. Climate scientists, according to Fellow Steven Milloy, are part of a sinister plot. “Averting planetary disaster is not what global warming alarmism is all about. There are many nefarious agendas driving the global warming controversy, none of them have anything to do with ‘saving’ the planet.”
The first threat is “radical left-wing environmentalists whose goal… is global socialism.” Other conspirators include “Europeans [who] now see global warming as a means of hampering U.S. economic competitiveness” and yes, even Wal-Mart, the conservative stalwart, which is scheming to sell compact fluorescent bulbs rather than the cheaper but less efficient incandescent variety. To Milloy, even a modest agenda to address global climate change amounts to a fullscale “recipe for social, political and economic disaster… for everyone, with the possible exception of the misanthropic, back-to-nature socialists among us.” A fringe viewpoint? Perhaps, but as a regular contributor to FoxNews.com, Milloy enjoys a wide audience.
The Heritage Foundation
Washington’s premier conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, will celebrate its 35th birthday in 2008 (no need for a present; last year, they declared total assets of over $213 million.) But if you imagine that their advancing age has encouraged mature and responsible thinking, think again. This year, Heritage Foundation “expert” and vice president of government relations, Michael Franc, stooped to a true low: comparing the new congressional majority to the terrorist mastermind behind the massacre on 9/11.
“I do not question the patriotism of these lawmakers,” Franc avers, but “who would have thought that one of the chief challenges confronting congressional Democrats would be a need to distinguish themselves from Osama bin Laden?” What have Nancy Pelosi and her caucus done that makes it so hard for Franc to tell them apart from the brutal Al Qaeda leader? First, Franc points out that bin Laden opposes the Iraq war and believes that it has endangered America’s international reputation. Congressional Democrats have also been heard criticizing the war, noting the international opinion surveys that show a less favorable impression of the U.S. What’s more, Franc will have us know, bin Laden criticized capitalism in his latest video, while Senator Harry Reid speaks about the middle class squeeze. Finally, bin Laden thinks global warming is a threat and could ultimately lead to widespread death and displacement and “liberal lawmakers make these points every day.” What’s the lesson for the man who compares our nation’s elected leadership to murderous terrorists? “Liberals need to wean themselves from… excessive rhetoric.” We’ll be right behind you, Mr. Franc.
Family Research Council
According to their mission statement, The Family Research Council “champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, the seedbed of virtue, and the wellspring of society.” But this mainstay of the far religious right isn’t talking about just any marriage, or any family. Indeed their $22 million in assets are devoted to promoting a narrow and exclusive definition of both. “Society gives ‘benefits’ to marriage because marriage gives benefits to society,” writes FRC’s Peter Sprigg in USA Today, “Therefore, when those who are not married, such as people in homosexual or cohabiting relationships, seek to receive such public benefits, they bear the burden of proof. They must show that such relationships benefit society (not just themselves) in the same way and to the same degree that authentic marriage between a man and a woman does. This is a burden they cannot meet. Only the union of a man and a woman can result in the natural reproduction that is essential literally to continue the human race.” Last time we checked, it was all too easy for cohabitating opposite sex couples to engage in “natural reproduction” —especially as the FRC condemns abortion and contraception.
The Hoover Institution
Founded in 1919 by 31st President-to-be Herbert Hoover, the Hoover Institution has been home to ultraconservatives like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, enjoying an operating budget well over $38 million in 2007. As long-time advocates of tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, Hoover has updated and revised its 1985 pitch for regressive taxation, “The Flat Tax.”
Their plan calls for a flat tax on personal and corporate incomes that would effectively place a greater burden on America’s struggling middle and lower income earners, while significantly lowering the amount paid by individuals and corporations who benefit the most from our economy. Their flat tax at a “low, uniform 19%” would actually raise taxes on the lower and middle classes, while dramatically cutting them for the highest earners. Sadly, it seems that if the Hoover Institution wins its 25 year struggle to raise the taxes of those least able to pay them, the promise of “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” will yet remain an even more dismal reminder of Hoover’s failed public policy.
Employment Policy Institute/ Center for Consumer Freedom/Center for Union Facts Rick Berman is quite a guy. Back in 1991, he founded the Employment Policy Institute which to this day doggedly repeats a single point in publications from the New York Times to the San Diego Union- Tribune: raising the minimum wage, instituting a living wage, and requiring employers to put a penny toward employee health care are all guaranteed to destroy jobs and help almost no one. But why content yourself with a single one-note right wing think tank when you can run three of them?
Through his Center for Consumer Freedom, Berman argues against schools banning junk food and laws requiring restaurant menus to list calorie content. Through the highly abrasive Center for Union Facts, he runs newspaper ads attacking the labor movement and asserting that union leaders—in general—embezzle their members’ dues money. His editorials, meanwhile, deride labor as a “perpetual money machine” and sound the warning that facilitating the process for employees to choose union representation could strengthen unions. And then? “Stronger unions use their greater financial strength to push the activist, liberal agenda that will elect more union-friendly legislators.” They might even try to raise the minimum wage.
Cato Institute
The libertarian Cato Institute has always toed a consistent line: America would be better off without most of the laws, regulations, and public goods we have today. The privatization of everything from schools to Social Security is part of the plan. Accordingly, Michael F. Cannon, Cato’s director of Health Policy, wants you to trust free markets with your life. Cannon advocates cutting the public safety net out of health care altogether. He makes the case against “conservatives [who] have been seduced into thinking we can achieve universal coverage in a free-market way,” arguing that “a free market would not provide health insurance to all; some people are uninsurable…” And with that, Cannon is off organizing the “Anti-Universal Coverage Club.” That’s the last we’ll hear from him about the “uninsurables”—mostly very sick people with expensive medical conditions, who certainly cannot afford to pay for the care they need out-of-pocket—because those of us who think that sick people ought to have access to medical care are “lefties and rent-seeking weasels.” But Cannon needn’t worry: while millions of Americans are still without adequate health coverage, and medical expenses are a leading contributor to personal bankruptcy, they’re not feeling the squeeze at Cato, which declared assets of well over $22 million last year.
American Enterprise Institute
Observers from across the political spectrum have noted that a college education is out of reach for the majority of Americans. Most people have the soaring cost of tuition in mind when they say this. But Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (2006 net assets: $69 million), is talking about IQ. While experts on human intelligence are still debating the worth of IQ tests, with some arguing that the tests only measure the ability to take the test itself, Murray is eager to stake the educational future of America on it. To his mind, IQ tests prove that most Americans are too stupid for college. “It makes sense for only about 15 percent of the population— 25 percent, if one stretches it—to get a college education. And yet more than 45 percent of recent high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges… Government policy contributes to the problem by making college scholarships and loans too easy to get.” You heard it from American Enterprise first, Ladies and Gentlemen: too many Americans are getting a college degree. Let’s get to work cutting those lousy scholarships.
From DMI’s Year In Review (read the full round-up of the year in politics and policy online here)
1. Selling Out Consumer Safety
As headlines about the recall of millions of children’s toys coated with highly toxic lead paint dominated the newspapers this summer, many Americans wondered: isn’t there some kind of government agency that’s supposed to keep dangerous goods off store shelves in the first place? Enter the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), an anemic agency with a meager budget that pays for just 15 employees to inspect consumer product imports and one employee to inspect toys. Overall, the agency staff is just half what it was in the 1980s, when many fewer imported goods were on the market. Congress recently moved to remedy the problem, proposing to enlarge the CPSC’s staff and budget, increase the maximum penalties for safety violations, and strengthen protections for industry whistle-blowers. Astonishingly, the Commission itself said thanks, but no thanks. Acting Chairwoman Nancy Nord, a former corporate lawyer who was appointed without congressional approval, insisted that she had not requested the staff and budget increases and that the bill was too tough on manufacturers. For undermining its own mission to improve consumer safety, the CPSC’s sell out is one of the worst policies of 2007.
2. Assault on Gun Tracing
The National Rifle Association is again working feverishly to protect our right to privacy. Never mind warrantless wiretapping, Internet searches saved for all eternity, and cell phone tracking systems. The pressing privacy issue of the day is ensuring that gun trace data is kept out of the hands of safety officials who would use it to track down illegal gun dealers. Representative Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) is the NRA’s mouthpiece in Congress on the issue; for years, he has sponsored amendments to limit city and state governments’ capacity to gather the data needed to establish distribution patterns linking dealers to illegal guns. The Tiahrt amendment v.2007 goes even further by prohibiting the use of trace data in civil suits against gun dealers and manufacturers. This newest legislation is a direct assault on the civil litigation strategy pioneered by the country’s mayors which seeks to root out and prosecute the slimiest 1% of gun dealers who sell 57% of illegal guns. This year’s Tiahrt amendment perpetuates the NRA’s strategy of keeping federal gun enforcement ineffective, while staunching creative local innovations to limit gun violence. For a tragic misfire when it comes to keeping illegal guns off the streets, the Tiahrt amendment is one of the worst policies of 2007.
3. Bush Not Hip on SCHIP
What does President Bush have against sick children? In September, large bipartisan majorities in Congress passed legislation reauthorizing the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and expanding it to provide health coverage to an additional 3.8 million low- and moderate-income kids. A joint state and federal program, SCHIP has been enormously successful in making sure that uninsured children have access to timely medical care—serving up to six million young Americans so far. Even the insurance industry was rooting for the measure to get passed. Nevertheless, the “compassionate conservative” president tanked the bill with a veto. Justifying the cold-hearted move with bogus rationalizations about middle-income kids abandoning private insurance for the government program, the President suggested leaving millions of children uninsured was not really such a big problem anyway: “After all, you just go to an emergency room.” For preventing millions of uninsured children from getting the health coverage they need, Mr. Bush’s policy of funding war over funding children’s health flat-lines as one of this year’s “worst.”
4. Supreme Court Tomfoolery
Should the age-old adage “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” apply to discriminatory employment practices? The Supreme Court thinks so. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the Court’s majority found that complaints of pay discrimination must be filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 180 days of the first discriminatory act. The problem? Since workplaces frequently prohibit employees from even discussing how much they’re paid, many aren’t aware they’ve been discriminated against until it’s been going on for years. By that time, according to the Court, it is simply too late to complain. That’s what happened to Lilly Ledbetter, one of the few female supervisors at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama, who proved to a jury that she had been paid hundreds of dollars a month less than her male counterparts for nearly 20 years. The Court ruled that she had no recourse within the law because she failed to register her complaint within 180 days of her first paycheck. The Ledbetter decision will have a chilling effect on cases of pay discrimination and gives a green light to employers to “fool” their employees with incremental discrimination once, then twice, then again and again. For ignoring the realities of the workplace, the Ledbetter decision is one of the worst policies of the year.
5. Tricked on Trade?
Fair trade certainly wasn’t the only issue in the 2006 elections, but it played a major role in some of the key races that won the Democrats a congressional majority. So the news last May came as quite a surprise: behind closed doors, the Democratic leadership had negotiated with President Bush to pass a new NAFTA-style trade deal with Peru. To be fair, the deal contains some important advances over previous trade agreements, including measures requiring Peru to fulfill its obligations on environmental agreements, as well as new language on labor rights. But the deal also retains incentives for companies to outsource jobs and has troubling language that gives foreign investors special rights to challenge American laws—from local zoning decisions to environmentally-friendly procurement policies—in foreign courts. What’s more, in a time of increased concern about the safety of imported products, the deal raises alarm bells with its limits on U.S. inspections of food imports. Even the labor provisions may be less positive than they sound: Peru must agree to follow a set of labor rights principles, but is not bound to specific agreedupon standards. As yet another unfair trade deal that meets only the lowest standard, the Peru agreement is one of 2007’s worst policies.
6. Government for Hire
What do Coast Guard cutters, border security, and dams in Louisiana have in common? Both by land and by sea, the federal government is contracting important public functions like these to private companies, a practice now valued at $400 billion a year. What makes this redistribution of taxpayer dollars to large corporations—the 20 largest contractors receive 38% of procurement dollars—so insidious, though, is the waste, fraud, and failure associated with the projects. The value of non-competitive contracts has tripled since 2000 while government oversight of the contracting process has withered. These days we’re even contracting out oversight over the contractors! From the lawlessness of private military contractors in Iraq to the incompetence of security contractors caught sleeping while on guard at a nuclear power plant, the result is a proliferation of contracts for overpriced goods and services of indeterminable quality. The accelerated creation of an unaccountable “shadow government” working for private gain rather than the public good is one of the worst public policies of 2007.
7. Shredding the Welcome Mat
Most towns want people to move in; with new residents come vibrancy, tax revenue, small businesses, new customers and a workforce. But don’t tell that to Riverside, New Jersey, where the town’s anti-immigrant policies effectively hamstrung its main source of economic activity: immigrants. Earning the dubious distinction of being at the vanguard of a wave of local anti-immigrant ordinances, Riverside, NJ’s local law penalized landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants and employers who hire them. It’s a prime example of vindictive, impractical, and shortsighted public policy on immigration. While instilling a sense of fear among the town’s large immigrant population, the measure also succeeded in crippling the old factory town’s economy, which had been revived by immigrant entrepreneurs and other small businesses that catered to Riverside’s growing number of immigrant consumers. Though ultimately repealed in September 2007, Riverside’s business district remains a ghost town. The town’s scapegoating of immigrants to the peril of immigrant and native-born residents alike qualifies their policy as one of the worst of 2007.
8. Fewer Choices, Fewer Voices
Viacom, CBS, General Electric, Disney, AOL Time Warner—and let’s not forget Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The list of corporations that dominate U.S. media is short. Even on the freewheeling Internet, a majority of Americans get their news from just a few sites. As fewer and fewer big companies own more media outlets, local news coverage declines and the diversity of voices and viewpoints is diminished. Yet, the FCC has decided to loosen regulations on media ownership and allow even more consolidation. The proposal itself is vague: in general the plan would allow a single company to own more radio and TV stations in one city while also controlling a daily newspaper (perhaps the only daily newspaper) in town. Although the details have not been announced, the FCC has held a series of poorly publicized public hearings and aims to have the new policy in place by the end of 2007. With democracy itself dependent on an informed public making knowledgeable decisions, the stakes couldn’t be higher. For failing to address media diversity and promoting an anti-democratic monopoly on information, this policy gets a spot in our lineup of worst policies.
9. One Sick Policy
There’s no domestic problem that can’t be solved by tax cuts. At least that seems to be the Bush Administration’s position. So faced with growing public outcry over rising health insurance costs and the plight of 47 million Americans without coverage, it’s no surprise what President Bush proposed. The President’s “standard deduction for health insurance,” unveiled during the 2007 State of the Union Address, would provide a limited tax break to both employers and individuals who purchase health coverage. But the proposal would do little to help low-income Americans who are most likely to be uninsured—they already pay too little in taxes for a deduction to be meaningful. Worse, the plan would erode the already frayed system of employer-sponsored health insurance, replacing it with a private market in which each family must fend for itself when it comes to finding coverage. The open market, however, contains no mechanism for pooling risk, meaning that healthy people could buy cheap insurance, but many sick people who need coverage most would be in worse shape than today. Luckily, Congress has shown little interest in this boondoggle. Our diagnosis: “fixing” health care with tax breaks is one of 2007’s worst prescriptions.
10. Incredible Injustice
Will the Patriot Act ever cease to rear its ugly head? The 2006 reauthorization of the bill precipitated this year’s biggest scandal by permitting the Justice Department to make indefinite interim appointments of U.S. attorneys without congressional oversight. With a sixth sense for political opportunism, the Attorney General’s office sprung into action, using targeted firings to replace eight U.S. attorneys whose otherwise positive job reviews did not include being “loyal Bushies” or capitulating to pressure from the Beltway to initiate unethical, politically motivated prosecutions. An intractable Alberto Gonzalez initially refused to resign his post, despite evidence that the prosecutors had been contacted at home by prying U.S. senators, that the White House wanted to pad the resumes of Republicans by inserting them in the ousted attorneys’ posts, and that most of the former prosecutors had been involved in investigations that ran counter to the administration’s interests. Even if, at our own risk, we dismiss the scheming e-mails and conveniently timed firings as conspiratorial, the U.S. attorney scandal at the very least compromises the credibility of justice. For this, it is one of the worst policies of 2007.
Do you have a bit of down-time at the end of the year? Catch up on your reading with the DMI 2007 Year in Review’s Reading List. This list features some of the “can’t miss” books, studies and reports that you just may have accidentally missed. So here are our suggestions for inspired holiday reading.
________________________ An Economy That Puts Families First: Expanding the Social Contract To Include Family Care [pdf]
Report by Heidi Hartmann, Ariane Hegewisch, and Vicky Lovell at the Economic Policy Institute
In reality, both parents are in the workforce in two out of three families with children. In American public policy, “parents have made enormous changes in their lives with little help or support, and the strains are showing.” There is no one to pick up the slack during emergencies, illness, or when one earner cannot work. Since society has an overwhelming interest in seeing that the next generation is cared for, and the market alone cannot ensure this, we need public policy that allows for flexible work schedules, paid family leave and sick days, and subsidized childcare.
From the clerk at the 99-cent store who works 60-hour weeks without ever seeing a dime of overtime pay, to the dry cleaning employee inhaling hazardous chemicals with no protection, this intensive, three year study from the Brennan Center finds that federal, state, and local workplace safety laws are systematically violated in a wide number of low-wage industries in New York City. The authors caution that “the many laws on the books to protect the working poor mean little if they are not enforced.” And it’s not just a few bad apples in the Big Apple—the implications of this report for the rest of the country are grim.
A surprise? Not so much. The experts at the Center for Responsible Lending raised alarms about the dangers of loosely regulated subprime loans long before the mainstream media caught on. In this report, billed as “the first comprehensive, nationwide review of millions of subprime mortgages originated from 1998 through the third quarter of 2006,” the Center presents a disturbing forecast about the scale of the crisis. One out of every five subprime mortgages is likely to end in default, leading millions of American homeowners to lose both their homes and an estimated $164 billion due to foreclosures.
For twenty years, Pew has been surveying Americans about a broad range of political, social and economic beliefs and values, from the existence of God to the advisability of maintaining a strong military. The most recent edition contains some good news for progressives: Pew finds increased concern about economic inequality, greater public support for the social safety net, and more moderate views on race, gender, and homosexuality. And while the country was equally divided on partisan lines in 2002, 2006 reveals a decided Democratic advantage.
The former Vice President is quickly developing a reputation for impassioned yet meticulously researched books that tackle the foremost issues of the day. This time, he considers the overall state of American public discourse on big questions from terrorism to, yes, global warming. Gore argues that “reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions,” a trend he finds embodied by—but hardly limited to—the reality-challenged Bush Administration, which regularly dismisses sound evidence, expert advice, and public debate in favor of a pre-set ideological agenda.
Oh, the liberal media! After an exhaustive review of the daily newspapers in the United States, this report concludes that “in paper after paper, state after state, and region after region, conservative syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive counterparts.” While 60% of the papers print more conservatives every week, just 20% print more progressives (the rest print an even number). What’s more, the top ten columnists by circulation include five conservatives, two centrists, and just three progressives. So much for balance.
One in eight Americans lives in poverty. Can we really do anything about it? This report provides a resounding “yes!” in the form of twelve policies that together have the potential to cut American poverty in half within a decade. From expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to helping former prisoners reintegrate into communities and raising Pell Grants to help poor kids attend college, the cumulative impact of these policies would lift millions of Americans toward the middle class.
Proponents of a guest worker program to address the nation’s future immigration needs would do well to consider the program currently in effect. This report finds that the approximately 120,000 guest workers brought to the U.S. annually under the H-2 visa program regularly face exploitation, from squalid living conditions to denial of wages earned. Despite being faced with an abusive employer, they are prohibited from changing jobs. To make matters worse, the study finds that “if guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.” Sound familiar?
This powerful book explores the recent history of efforts in the U.S. and abroad to “[use] moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering” in service of a right wing economic vision of privatization, deregulated markets, and a slashed social safety net. With the gutting of worker protections, demolition of public housing without replacement and privatization of schools in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as one example, Klein finds that devastating “free” market proposals are often pushed through when the public is too shocked by a man-made or natural disaster to resist.
This sobering report from the Nobel Prize winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds evidence that natural systems throughout the world are already being affected by climate change. The report predicts that in North America, coastal communities will be particularly stressed, air quality will decline due to higher ozone levels, and heat waves, floods, storms, wild fires and droughts will increase both in number and severity. The report concludes that many impacts of climate change can be reduced or avoided by taking steps to mitigate it, for example through sustainable development.
The tough housing market affects more than just homeowners: low- and moderate-income renters are also struggling. This nationwide study looks at working families in 31 metro areas who earn just over the area’s median income or less. Since 1997, the number of these families paying more than half of their income for rent has doubled. The problem is not limited to expensive cities on the East and West Coasts: “significant numbers of working families in every metro area —including those in Atlanta, Denver and Indianapolis—pay more than half their income for housing.”
Two years after Hurricane Katrina, high levels of crime and violence continue to plague New Orleans, and the criminal justice system remains chaotic. The result of a yearlong study, this report documents the situation before the storm, the immediate impact of Katrina and its persistent consequences, including a dramatically understaffed police force, insufficient jail space, and inadequate legal representation for indigent defendants. The study concludes that “together, these issues create a cycle of hard-to-shake problems, including low officer and resident morale, further jeopardizing the region’s ability to maintain safe streets.”
Besides a few stale calls for tort “reform,” you won’t hear much about civil justice in the 2008 presidential discussion. DMI’s latest report aims to set that right, explaining that “Our civil justice system empowers citizens to advocate for their rights and protect themselves against undue harm… ensuring that everyone, even powerful corporations and our government, abides by the rule of law.” The report outlines common-sense steps the next president can take to improve access to the civil court system, from establishing a right to civil counsel in certain critical cases to creating a presumption that federal laws will not preempt state regulations that protect public health and safety, economic fairness, and social justice.
All comments, ideas and thoughts on DMI Blog are property of their authors. Reasonable excerpts are permitted on other sites and blogs; otherwise reproduction without the author's permission is strictly prohibited.
All opinions expressed on the DMI Blog website are solely those of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy.
