President Barack Obama, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, and Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph look at the effect the BP oil spill has had on Fourchon Beach in Port Fourchon, La., May 28, 2010. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza), Image via the Official White House Flickr Photostream
I am angry about the oil spill, and unlike President Obama, I’ve been angry ever since it happened, on Earth Day– I didn’t have to be badgered by reporters into packing my angry eyes, just in case (Toy Story reference, heck yes). But more than just being angry, I want answers.
I’ve been annoyed with the right wing meme that the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is “Obama’s Katrina.” But, if the problem with Bush’s handling of Katrina was that he downplayed the extent of the disaster, failed to make it a proper priority, kept incompetent people in charge of the recovery even after their incompetence was known, and failed to take responsibility for his administration’s role in the disaster, well then, I’m starting to think maybe this IS Obama’s Katrina after reading this piece, “The Spill, The Scandal, and the President,” from Rolling Stone. (Though I remain frustrated with the comparison, because obviously, Katrina involved a huge loss of human life and a huge amount of human suffering, and the response involved a heaping helping of racism.) Because I know not everyone has time to sit down and read a 10 page piece, I thought I’d *highly encourage* you to check it out, while also hitting some of the high points here. If you’ve been reading here for any length of time, you know I’m generally a big Obama fan. But I think he and his administration dropped the ball bigtime on this disaster. Continue reading “Obama and the Oil Spill”
And now, my fair governor is in the news once again. His wife having filed for divorce and written a tell-all book after their efforts to save their marriage failed, he is trying to reunite with the Argentinian woman he calls his “soulmate.” And the thing is, I’m fine with that. I can’t say why exactly, but somehow, I’m less bothered by a man who simply fell in love with the wrong woman at the wrong time, than I am with an Elliot Spitzer screwing prostitutes behind his wife’s back after making a career going after prostitution rings, or John Edwards cheating on his dying wife with a bimbo, and then failing to wrap it up, all the while thinking that he could still run for president and no one would know about his love child. Somehow, I’m sympathetic to love, even if it’s narrated by poorly-written email poetry about tan lines.
This is a slide from a presentation my husband gave on the subject of childhood smoking.
What I’m less sympathetic to are Sanford’s policies, particularly his veto this week of a proposed tobacco tax increase in a state with the lowest tobacco taxes in the nation. As someone concerned about childrens’ health in particular (and the wife of a pediatrician), I know that higher tobacco taxes are a proven way of keeping tobacco out of kids’ hands and a great way to fund tobacco use prevention programs. According to the SC Tobacco Collaborative, “Studies show that every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces youth smoking by about 7 percent and overall cigarette consumption by about 4 percent.” Keeping kids from smoking is a key way to prevent adults from smoking and make our nation a healthier place, keeping health care costs down for all of us. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, most smokers have their first cigarette between the ages of 11 and 14! Thankfully the House overrode his veto, and there is hope the Senate will do the same.
It’s just a shame that yet again, the governor’s love life is detracting attention from his more serious missteps, like the ones that put SC children at risk.
But then, today, I saw some bumper stickers on a Subaru that made me want to flag the drivers down and ask them if they wanted to be BFFS. I saw this on my way home:
Because that’s a crappy phone picture I took all stalker style (I blurred out the license plate so as not to be too stalkeriffic), I’ll tell you what some of the stickers say: “Pro-child, Pro-Family, Pro-Choice” “Vaginas” “Uppity Women Unite” and “My kid has more chromosomes than yours.” SC, I probably don’t need to tell you, is quite a red state. So seeing a bunch of feminist and disability activist stickers on a car is rare and rather heartwarming for this bleeding heart liberal. I wish I could have pulled up alongside and waved and told the driver, “Hi, your stickers rule!” But the traffic didn’t allow. I sure hope that Subaru driver doesn’t get accosted by Sarah Palin fans, but if they do, I have a feeling they can handle it.
Just in case any of you get accosted by a Sarah Palin fan who wants to know how that “hopey changey thing is workin out for ya,” you can check out this handy list of awesome hopey changey things Obama has done in the past year or so in office. Then you can say, “Well, it’s workin’ out pretty darn well, actually!” And then you can feel like another sticker I saw in a parking deck today– like a Righteous Babe (or Dude):
Just for fun, I'm illustrating this with a pic of me pretending to be a Tea Partier in the Smithsonian gift shop. The fact that I carry Jasmine Green Tea around in my purse probably reveals that I'm really an elitist liberal.
My friend Adam posted a great link to his Facebook today. It’s an open letter to the Tea Partiers by John H. Richardson in Esquire. Many of these protesters, opposed to what they call “big government” like to claim that things like health care are part of “big government,” are antithetical to American values, and are perhaps even unconstitutional.
Claims like those make me wonder if perhaps these patriotic protesters somehow missed US history. Taking care of each other, interdependence, and community spirit are founding American values. Most of our early colonies were founded as “commonwealths,” where the good of everyone was considered crucial to the good of the colony. According to the Esquire piece:
Way back in colonial times, Americans spent between “10 and 35 percent of all municipal funds” on what was then called “relief,” according to Walter I. Trattner’s standard textbook on the subject, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America. Aid to the poor and sick was the largest single government expense, providing crucial sustenance to the widows and orphans of the Indian wars, the survivors of epidemics, starving immigrants, and a surprising number of abandoned bastard children (during the Revolutionary era, between a third and 50 percent of all first children were illegitimate — take that, nostalgists of family values!).
I’d also add that a democracy is only ever as strong as its citizens. Only people who are free from basic want, secure from preventable disease, protected in the event of catastrophic illness, and ensured a basic level of education and employment are able to be the kind of citizens who can participate fully in a system of representative democracy. Our constitution’s preamble asserts that the purpose of the document and the government it establishes includes a responsibility to “provide for the general welfare.” It is for this reason that our founders, notably John Adams (who is my favorite and for whom I am crusading for a monument in Washington D.C., although that is a subject for another post), were so adamant that public education be a cornerstone of our democracy (which is why I am personally very passionate about the subject of public education and not a huge fan of private or home school, though of course people should have those as choices). I see public health as an extension of that concept. If medicine had been more of an established science at the time of our nation’s founding, I’m sure providing for the public health would have been more explicitly mentioned. (As an aside, I’d encourage any vaccine doubters to see the John Adams miniseries and observe what a miracle early innoculation was for this nation.)
The bottom line is, for all the rugged individual John Wayne-iness of this nation, there’s an equal tradition of people coming together to create communities dedicated to the good of all. We can’t be the shining city on the hill if our image is tarnished by people in this great nation unable to access even basic medical care, with people always at risk of poverty and homelessness if a catastrophic illness should befall them or a loved one.
I sure hope we get a vote on a final health care reform bill this week. Bills have already passed the House and the Senate, and now we just need those two bodies to come together to get something passed for President Obama to sign.
Image via flickr user chad davis, under a Creative Commons license.
Today, in class, while discussing the Black Arts movement and the fact that the revolution they hoped for never happened, and the fact that many of them went on to mainstream jobs in academia and renounced black nationalism, my (fabulous) professor told us a story about one of her former students. As an undergrad, this young man had a long ponytail and carried around a copy of Thoreau everywhere he went. He was an idealist, sure the world needed changing and sure this changing had to start with him. He distrusted student government and formed his own organizations. He taught kids to read and organized street cleanups. And then he graduated, and, as you do, had to get a job, which he got, on campus. He still works on campus, and my professor described going out to lunch with him, seeing him wearing a suit and tie for the first time, the ponytail gone, and remarking that he seemed all grown up. He said to her, “You know, I have friends who are going without shoes in solidarity with people who have no shoes, but I’m not sure that’s working. Sometimes you have to put on a tie and go to the meeting.”
In some ways, I think I identify with both the shoeless idealist and the guy in a tie at the meeting. Either way, I think I’ve always been an activist. Continue reading “a brief history of my activism”
Gotta love a Flight of the Conchords reference. Image is available on a tshirt from snorgtees.com
Today, I posted a link to my Facebook, encouraging friends to check out the New York Times‘ story on the Tea Party (I’m using great restraint here to type Tea Party instead of my preferred Teabagger) Movement. In linking to the piece, I wrote, “An interesting piece. I’m still hoping that these people won’t destroy the Republican party (I think we need two functional parties for democracy to function) or the country.” A friend (whom I respect! and like!) left this comment: “I’ve got to disagree with you. I’m with Evan Bayh: the 2 party partisan system is killing America. Most people don’t adhere 100% to one side or another. There is definitely room for a Centrist movement.” Which is when I took to my blog to explain why I think a two-party system is crucial to the American way of government, and life. (I am leaving aside the part about how I think Evan Bayh is a hypocrite, a dirty rotten traitor, a selfish slimebag, and utterly in the pocket of big companies like Wellpoint.)
I got my college degree in both English and Political Science. As such, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to take comparative government. It was in this class that I learned that our Founders (look at me! talking about the Founders like a Tea Partier! let me fetch my tricorn hat!) very deliberately chose a two-party system. More than anything, the Founders feared tyranny, and they believed that factionalism (we might say extremism) was the major cause of tyranny. In crafting a two party system in which the majority rules, our Founders created a system that would tend toward centrism. Each party would have to play toward the middle in order to secure the majority they needed to govern. In trying to secure a majority of voters, each party would have to tend toward moderation.
In contrast, look at governments that have more than two parties. I seem to remember my professor (himself a conservatve/libertarian, and yet my favorite in college) pointing at Italy as a particularly grievous example of the problem of more-than-two-party systems. In these systems, any party that can secure a bare minimum of votes is rewarded with seats in the legislature. This means that each party plays to its own small audience, and their specific needs and beliefs, in order to win their votes. If they don’t, those voters can simply choose from among a plethora of possible parties. In turn, with each party that can secure a bare minimum of votes being rewarded with seats, multiple parties have to form coalitions in order to govern– a coalition will elect the leader of the legislature and decide on committee heads, for example. While these coalitions might sound great in theory, they have a tendency to fall apart regularly, with each party holding the whole process hostage to get what they want, or leaving the coalition and forcing new elections if they don’t. Multi-party systems lead to every party playing toward the fringes, NOT centrism.
So this is why I believe a two-party system is the only way to centrism and moderation. I may not always personally LIKE the slow, incremental, glacial pace of change that results from a two party system, but it’s nothing compared to the gridlock that results in systems with more parties. The only reason I’d vote third-party is to teach my own party a lesson. And here’s where I break faith with the folks waving tea bags: I think that the current Democratic party is pretty darn centrist. Most of the proposals of the dreaded health care reform package, for example, are things Republicans were proposing back in the Clinton years. If anything, I find the Democratic party too moderate, and might consider voting Green Party in order to teach them a lesson about abandoning their Progressive base.
(I feel like I just took a test in one of Dr. Gitz’s classes. Give me an A!)
Today is the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. While anti-choice activists are marching on Washington (or in the comfort of their own homes, weirdly enough), those of us who believe in a woman’s right alone to make all choices about her body and her pregnancy are participating in Blog for Choice Day. The theme of this year’s event are the words of assassinated OB/Gyn Dr. George Tiller: Trust Women. Specifically, what does “trust women” mean?
To me it means that trusting women– to make the right choices for themselves and their bodies, trusting that they do not make choices lightly, trusting that they alone know their circumstances, lives, and hearts– trusting women is the only way to go.
And because I am slammed at work, I will link to these interesting facts about abortion in the US from the Guttmacher (there I go again wanting to type Gut-muncher) Institute. One that particularly struck me was that 60% of abortions are performed on women who already have at least one child, confirming my suspicion that often, women choose abortion because they know they cannot support, either emotionally or financially, another child, not because, as some anti-choicers would have us believe, because they hate babies and do not understand what it means to be a mother.
I’ll also share a previously posted piece I wrote about “common ground on abortion,” a hot topic in the age of Obama, and what I really think we should all be coming together to work on, be we for or against a woman’s right to choose (as you’ll see, I think being anti-choice is as sensical as being for Prohibition of alcohol): Continue reading “trust women”
So a Republican won Teddy Kennedy’s seat in the Senate last night. This kills the Democrats’ 60 seat super majority, though it’s worth reminding people that they still have a majority, and only 51 votes are needed to pass legislation– I saw a few people claiming on Twitter last night that the Republicans now “control” the Senate, which is completely untrue. They’re just now able to filibuster more easily, meaning it will be easier for them to waste everyone’s time keeping the Senate from voting on things. I’d like to remind the 59 remaining Democrats that Bush got more done with less of a majority than they have now, so I expect them to get shit done anyway, even without Coakley. Of course, knowing what spineless wretches the Democrats, particularly the Blue Dogs, are, I don’t have a whole lot of hope. Which brings me to a wonderful post by Ezra Klein on what Teddy Kennedy would say to the Democrats. Ezra writes:
For now, it’s worth observing that a Democratic Party that would abandon their central initiative this quickly isn’t a Democratic Party that deserves to hold power. If they don’t believe in the importance of their policies, why should anyone who’s skeptical change their mind? If they’re not interested in actually passing their agenda, why should voters who agree with Democrats on the issues work to elect them? A commitment provisional on Ted Kennedy not dying and Martha Coakley not running a terrible campaign is not much of a commitment at all.
Earlier today, I tweeted this: It was in response to reading a rumor that the Christian (as they define it) organization Focus on the Family is set to spend $4 million on an anti-abortion-rights ad during the Super Bowl. According to rumor, the ad would feature the parents of college football phenom Tim Tebow, and would tell how they chose not to abort their son, despite recommendations from a doctor (Mrs. Tebow had been on some meds that could have seriously damaged her fetus), they chose to carry the pregnancy to term, and that baby grew up to be a football star.
My tweet was re-tweeted a few times by some of my Twitter friends, people I don’t know in real life, but who I’m closer to than Kevin Bacon if it came down to degrees of separation. I know people who know these people, and who knows, maybe once we move to Little Rock, I’ll know them myself. Those re-tweets and replies stirred up more replies. Continue reading “stirring up…conversation”
I am deeply disappointed to read that you were the only Senator to vote against extending unemployment benefits. I recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of being laid off from my job in the real estate industry. Though I was only out of work for three months, I count myself among the blessed and lucky few who were able to obtain a new job so quickly. Many South Carolinians are not so lucky. In my time in the unemployment office, I saw people from all walks of life who were out of work and desperate. Unemployment is still very high, and if you are really working for South Carolinians, you would support our unemployment benefits, especially when our state has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
I can assure you, the benefits are not so cushy as to keep anyone from seeking a job. It was a fraction of what I made when I was employed, and I would not have been able to survive had I not had a spouse who was still employed. My unemployment wouldn’t have even covered COBRA for my health insurance which I lost when I lost my job.
I’m deeply disappointed and can’t help but feel that you took this terrible stand to get attention. Please don’t seek attention at the expense of out-of-work people in our state. Please be an advocate for the people who need you, particularly the unemployed who have been hit so hard by this economic downturn, especially as the holidays approach.
Here’s hoping he actually reads it, but at least I feel better knowing I tried to tell my representative how I feel.
I just read that 
erniebufflo's south & west kitchen 