Tag Archives: kentucky

Kochs Bankroll Movement to Rewrite the Constitution

NEWS & POLITICs
Austerity advocates claim that they need only to convince five of seven targeted states to get on board.
By Alex Kotch / Exposed by CMD
March 24, 2017

Photo Credit: GongTo / Shutterstock

A constitutional convention, something thought impossible not long ago, is looking increasingly likely. Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, if 34 state legislatures “issue a call” for a constitutional convention, Congress must convene one. By some counts, the right-wing only needs six more states. Once called, delegates can propose and vote on changes and new amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which, if approved, are currently required to be ratified by 38 states.

There are two major legislative pushes for a convention at the state level. One would attempt to engineer a convention for a balanced budget amendment only, and the other tries to secure an open convention for the purpose of limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. But once a convention is underway, all bets are off. The convention can write its own rules, resulting in a wide-open or “runaway” convention that can make major changes to the constitution and even change the number of states required to ratify those changes.

If America gets saddled with a runaway convention, the Koch coterie of funders will be to blame. Most of the groups pushing the convention idea are being underwritten by one or more institutions tied to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Attempts to Limit Topic of the Convention Likely to Fail

On Feb. 24, Wyoming became the 29th state to pass a resolution requesting a convention specifically to add a single balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Many of these legislative resolutions also attempt to set the rules for the convention and limit who can attend it to a select list of largely GOP state leaders.

Austerity advocates claim that they need only to convince five of seven targeted states—Arizona, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin—to get on board, and they will have enough states to convene a convention. As the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, three linked measures were just introduced in Wisconsin and were placed on a fast track to approval.

Another faction representing a broader “Convention of States” initiative is advocating an open constitutional convention to limit “the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.” Because this open convention format would be called on a particular subject rather than a particular amendment, representatives would likely vote on any number of measures.

Legislatures in nine states—Arizona, Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana—have signed on to the Convention of States resolution,. Texas appears likely to join in, as the state Senate approved a Convention of States bill in February. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is fiercely campaigning for a convention and has deemed it an “emergency issue.” In 2016, he published a 70-page plan that includes nine proposed amendments aimed at severely limiting federal authority, even allowing a two-thirds majority of the states to override a Supreme Court ruling or a federal law.

Groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Common Cause, and the Center for Media and Democracy have raised the alarm about these efforts. No convention has been called since 1787 in Philadelphia where George Washington presided.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains why any convention call, no matter how narrowly written, is likely to result in a “runaway” convention. A convention is empowered to write its own rules, including how delegates are chosen, how many delegates attend and whether a supermajority is required to approve amendments.

Nothing in the Constitution prevents a convention, once convened, from setting its own agenda, influenced by powerful special interests like the Koch groups. A convention could even choose an entirely new ratification process. “The 1787 convention ignored the ratification process under which it was established and created a new one, reducing the number of states needed to approve the new Constitution and removing Congress from the approval process,” writes CBPP.

Legal uncertainly surrounds the entire effort, which is sure to be litigated if successful. For instance, are states bound by resolutions passed many years ago? Will states withdraw their approval? Some states, like Delaware and New Mexico, have already moved to do so.

The Koch Connection to the Push for a Constitutional Convention

Libertarian billionaires Charles and Dav id Koch have long opposed federal power and federal spending. Koch Industries is one of the nation’s biggest polluters and has been sanctioned and fined over and over again by both federal and state authorities. In response, the Kochs have launched a host of “limited government” advocacy organizations and have created a massive $400 million campaign finance network, fueled by their fortunes and those of their wealthy, right-wing allies, that rivals the two major political parties.

The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity says it favors a balanced budget convention. Such an austerity amendment would drastically cut the size of the federal government, threatening critical programs like Social Security and Medicare and eviscerating the government’s ability to respond to economic downturns, major disasters and the climate crisis.

AFP has opposed an open convention, calling it “problematic.” But whatever qualms the Kochs might have, they continue to be a bedrock funder of the entire convention “movement.”

Running the “Convention of States initiative” is an Austin, Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). CSG reported revenue of $5.7 million in 2015, more than double its haul from two years earlier, when it launched its Convention of States Project, according to Dallas News. It now boasts 115,000 “volunteers,” although that figure may represent the number of addresses on its email list.

The group is not required to disclose its donors, but research into other organizations’ tax records by the Center for Media and Democracy, Conservative Transparency and this author show a web of Koch-linked groups having provided nearly $5.4 million to CSG from the group’s founding in 2011 through 2015:

  • Donors Trust, a preferred secret money conduit for individuals and foundations in the Koch network of funders, has given CSG at least $790,000 since 2011.
  • The Greater Houston Community Foundation, which is funded by Donors Capital Fund (linked to Donors Trust) and the Kochs’ Knowledge and Progress Fund, has donated over $2 million since 2011.
  • The Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Donors Capital Fund, gave $2.5 million from 2012-2013.

Citizens for Self-Governance also has two Koch-connected board members. Eric O’Keefe is a director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a group which has taken in considerable funding from Koch-linked groups like the Center to Protect Patient Rights, and was at the center of the long-running “John Doe” criminal investigation of Scott Walker’s campaign coordination with dark money groups.

O’Keefe was thenational field coordinator for the Libertarian Party when David Koch ran for Vice President in 1979 on the Libertarian Party ticket. The party’s platform called for the end of campaign finance law, the minimum wage, “oppressive Social Security,” Medicaid, Medicare and federal deficit spending.

The Koch agenda has not changed much since.

Another board member is Tim Dunn, an oilman from Midland, Texas who is vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a right-wing think tank that’s raked in over $1 million from Koch family foundations, $160,000 from Koch Industries in 2012 alone and at least $1.8 million from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Dunn runs another political group, Empower Texans, which supports Republican candidates and has taken in funds from Donors Trust and “Americans for Job Security,” a Koch-tied dark money group that was slapped with a severe fine by the FEC for its involvement in a dark money shell game intended to disguise the origin of its funds.

Both TPPF and Empower Texans back the constitutional convention idea.

What’s more, a 501(c)4 nonprofit connected to CSG, the Alliance for Self-Governance (which does business as Convention of States Action), received $270,000 in 2012 from Americans for Limited Government, which has received funding not only by Donors Capital Fund but by two Koch-funded political groups, the Center to Protect Patient Rights and Americans for Job Security.

Those two groups exchanged millions of dollars in 2010 and 2012, illegally hiding the source of funding for political expenditures, lying to the Internal Revenue Service and making unlawful contributions to pass-through groups, prompting investigations and historic fines by the both the State of California and the Federal Elections Commission. Eric O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth also funneled $450,000 to Alliance for Self-Governance in 2012, at a time when WCFG was battling the Walker recall.

Any time any organization is named “self-governance” or “limited government” you can be sure that Wisconsin’s Eric O’Keefe is either a founder or on the board, and indeed O’Keefe is tied to all three organizations: CSG, the Alliance for Self-Governance and Americans for Limited Government.

If the Kochs and their friends don’t want an open constitutional convention, they’ve sure done a lot to aid the effort.

American Legislative Exchange Council

CSG also has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that unites conservative politicians with big-business lobbyists who develop cookie-cutter “model” legislation behind closed doors at ALEC meetings.

ALEC has long been funded by Koch Industries and a representative of Koch Industries sits on its executive board, while representatives from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity groups fund and sit on various committees. ALEC has also received funding from Koch family foundations. CMD estimates this funding to be over $1 million, though the actual total could be much higher. In addition, ALEC gets funding from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

According to Common Cause, “no group has been more influential” in promoting an Article V convention than ALEC. In 2011, ALEC commissioned a handbook for state legislators on how to push for a constitutional convention. The group has produced at least three model balanced budget amendment bills and has endorsed several model bills calling for a convention to vote on constitutional amendments, such as requiring Congress to get approval by two-thirds of the states before imposing new taxes or increasing the federal debt or federal spending.

CSG has sponsored ALEC conferences and led sessions focused on a constitutional convention. In 2015, ALEC’s board of directors officially endorsed CSG’s open convention plan as a “model” bill. The group had previously endorsed a balanced-budget-only plan. ALEC’s Jeffersonian Project, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit formed in 2013, has been lobbying state legislators to propose such a convention, CMD reports.

More Koch Money Pushing Austerity Amendment

Another group, the Florida-based Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, is backing a balanced budget convention bill that 29 states have approved. In its effort, the group has lobbied for the bill and attended ALEC conferences and other similar events. On its website, the task force lists ALEC and the Heartland Institute as partner organizations.

“ALEC has been instrumental in providing us a forum within which to present our campaign, recruit sponsors, and approve model legislation that legislators can be confident in,” claims the site.

Another big backer of the balanced budget amendment approach is the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is also tied to the Koch brothers. A member of ALEC, it has received $5.6 million from the Donors Capital Fund since 2011 and tens of thousands of dollars each from the Charles Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation. Heartland publishes posts praising or defending the Kochs and even put out an annual environmental report from Koch Industries.

“The Heartland Institute has put the full weight of its influence behind the BBA Task Force as well as other campaigns in order to encourage the states to use their power to amend the U.S. Constitution,” reads the site.

Compact for America, formed by a former counsel with the conservative Goldwater Institute and staffed by more Goldwater alumni, has its own balanced budget convention proposal, which only four states have signed on to. The institute, which promotes many of ALEC’s model bills, has taken in big donations from Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund and the Charles Koch Foundation.

If America faces the madness of a runaway convention, voters of both parties will know whom to blame.

Mary Bottari contributed to this article.

Alex Kotch is an independent investigative journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. Follow him on Twitter at @alexkotch.

The controversy over transgender access to public bathrooms

13TRANSGENDER-master768

18 May 2016

The Obama administration on May 13 issued a letter requiring all public school districts in the country to permit transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. This decision marks an escalation of the ongoing political and media controversy over a North Carolina statute that would require transgender individuals to use the bathroom that corresponds to their sex as stipulated on their birth certificate.

The letter, issued jointly by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, included guidelines purportedly designed to ensure that “transgender students enjoy a supportive and nondiscriminatory school environment.” Schools that fail to follow the guidelines can face a cutoff of federal funding.

North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2), passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor Pat McCrory in March, overturns a Charlotte City Council decision to allow transgender individuals to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. HB2 is reactionary and must be opposed, together with the rest of the recent efforts by Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass laws invoking “religious liberty” to whip up bigotry and codify intolerance against gay and transgender people.

That being said, the presentation by the Obama administration and much of the media of bathroom access for transgender people as the single most critical issue of the day is grossly disproportionate to its intrinsic significance and has the character of a political diversion. The American people, and the people of the entire world, are confronting issues of the most immense and urgent import—the growing danger of world war, the growth of poverty and inequality, the militarization of society and drive toward dictatorship. These issues are either being buried or trivialized in the US election campaign.

It is significant that the Obama administration is waging its campaign over only one of the many reactionary provisions of the North Carolina statute. Under the guise of upholding “religious liberty,” HB2 goes much further, nullifying local laws protecting residents against discrimination based not only on sexual orientation, but also on race, religion, color, national origin, gender or physical handicap. The North Carolina law also includes a provision banning any local minimum wage—a fact left out of virtually all media accounts of the controversy.

HB2 is itself only one of number of similar anti-democratic and discriminatory laws targeting gay and transgender individuals that have been recently introduced or passed throughout the country, including in Georgia, Indiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota and other states. These laws take as their starting point the Supreme Court’s reactionary 2014 Hobby Lobbydecision upholding the “religious liberty” of corporations to refuse to pay for birth control for employees.

Perhaps the most egregious of these measures is a Mississippi bill that explicitly allows specific forms of discrimination, such as denying contracts and scholarships, withholding state benefits, denying marriage and other licenses and certifications, withholding diplomas and grades, imposing tax penalties, and carrying out workplace retaliation, including termination. The Mississippi law is not limited to gay or transgender people, but also codifies discrimination against anyone who has “sexual relations” outside of heterosexual marriage. In more than half of US states, it is currently legal for an employer to fire an employee for being gay.

These laws will have a punitive impact on gays and other targeted individuals. But their implications are far broader. They are part of an assault on the democratic rights of the population as a whole. They are bound up with a relentless attack on the separation of church and state, a keystone of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

This offensive is being waged on the basis of a false presentation of religious liberty that turns an important democratic principle into its opposite, i.e., the “right” of an organization or business, citing religious belief, to deny its employees access to birth control and refuse to serve gays. If an employer can fire an employee for being gay, there is no reason in principle why he cannot fire someone for being an atheist, or black, or Jewish.

These reactionary laws are not a response to popular pressure. On the contrary, recent years have seen a marked decline in these forms of intolerance within the population. It is, rather, the response of the most rabidly reactionary and fascistic elements within the ruling elite and the political establishment to the deepening crisis of American capitalism, together with the growth of social opposition and anti-capitalist sentiment. Centered in the Republican Party, this element is seeking to appeal to the most backward conceptions and whip up the most reactionary social forces.

For their part, the Obama administration and the Democratic Party are giving the issue of what bathrooms transgender individuals should use a vastly disproportionate level of political attention. A relative handful of people are directly affected in a country where the democratic rights of hundreds of millions of people are under ferocious assault by both capitalist parties.

There is an immense element of political and electoral calculation and cynicism on both sides of this controversy. In an election dominated by mass anger over economic inequality and the control of the political system by Wall Street, there is a desire by both parties to change the subject. The Republicans are seeking to mobilize their base among more backward, disoriented and economically depressed middle class layers. The Democrats are seeking to appeal to layers of the more privileged upper-middle class that have made various issues of identity—race, gender, sexual orientation—their obsessive focus.

In a speech on May 9, Attorney General Loretta Lynch compared the campaign against the North Carolina statute to the struggles of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s against Jim Crow segregation. “This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation,” she said. “We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education”—a reference to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling abolishing racial segregation in public schools.

The Obama administration’s attempt to cloak itself in the legacy of the civil rights movement is as fraudulent as the historical comparison is inappropriate. The Democrats have barely lifted a finger in response to the Supreme Court’s reactionary 2013 ruling gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was arguably the most significant reform that resulted from the struggles of that period. Not a single bill has been introduced on the floor of either house of Congress to revive the enforcement provisions that were struck down by the Supreme Court. The Democrats’ capitulation has emboldened Republican-controlled state governments around the country, which have shifted onto the offensive, to enact anti-democratic voter ID requirements and other measures that discriminate against working class, poor, and minority voters.

The comparison of the question of bathroom access for transgender individuals to the struggle against Jim Crow also ignores the much more complicated and sensitive cultural and legal questions involved. For example, which communal showers it is best for transgender high school students to use, and on what sports teams they should compete, are questions that cannot necessarily be resolved with simple answers. One expects that with the passage of time, architecture and customs will adapt. The Obama administration’s heavy-handed and disproportionate campaign over this issue ends up trivializing struggles over issues of much broader democratic significance.

The posturing of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party with respect to the North Carolina “bathroom bill” reflects their strategy of using of identity politics to provide a cover for their own right-wing and anti-democratic policies. Identity politics, whether based on race, gender or sexual orientation, have been promoted for decades and become central components of the ideological and political arsenal of the ruling elite.

Far from promoting the interests of the vast majority of minorities or women, these policies have coincided with a sustained assault on the living standards of all sections of the working class and a colossal growth of social inequality. The Democratic Party has presided, no less than the Republicans, over this offensive against the working class.

Obama, touted by the proponents of identity politics as the first African-American president, has overseen the biggest increase in social inequality in American history. The frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, Hillary Clinton, who is marketing herself as potentially the first female president, as first lady supported her husband’s termination of federal welfare benefits for the poor and the adoption of reactionary law-and-order legislation that has resulted in the imprisonment of huge numbers of poor and minority youth for non-violent crimes.

Under Democratic and Republican administrations alike—from Clinton to Bush to Obama—civil liberties have been progressively shredded. The Obama administration, in particular, will be remembered for the militarization of police, the assertion of the president’s power to assassinate anyone in the world, amnesty for torturers and financial criminals, rampant corruption and criminality, a vast police state spying operation against the population, and the persecution of whistleblowers.

Precisely on issues that are of particular concern to women, such as birth control and abortion rights, Obama and the Democratic Party have carried out one cowardly retreat and capitulation to churches and the religious right after another, providing the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court with ammunition to uphold the “right” of businesses and other organizations to discriminate on religious grounds.

Those middle-class “left” individuals and tendencies that are falling into line behind the Obama administration’s political maneuver on the issue of transgender bathroom access are taking their obsessive fixation on issues of sex and gender to new heights of absurdity. The essential political function of all forms of identity politics is to obscure the basic class issues in society and politics and obstruct the political unification of the working class on a revolutionary socialist basis. The attempt to make the issue of transgender bathroom access the overriding issue before the American people will not be the end of such efforts.

Tom Carter

 

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/18/pers-m18.html

Life expectancy gap between US rich and poor widens

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By Jerry White
12 April 2016

A study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA) provides more evidence that life expectancy in the United States is chiefly determined by economic class. Higher income is the most critical factor in longevity, the study found, with the gap between the richest one percent and poorest one percent of individuals averaging 14.6 years for men and 10.1 years for women.

The study was based on income data derived from 1.4 billion tax records between 1999 and 2014 of individuals aged 40 to 76, and death records obtained from the Social Security Administration. It found that men in the top one percent had an expected age of death of 87.3, compared to 72.7 years for the poorest one percent. The richest women on average lived 88.9 years, while the poorest lived only 78.8 years.

“Men in the bottom 1 percent of the income distribution at the age of 40 years in the United States,” the study noted,” have life expectancies similar to the mean life expectancy of 40-year-old men in Sudan and Pakistan.” US men in the top one percent of income distribution have “higher life expectancies than the mean life expectancy for men in all countries at age 40 years,” the study found.

Writing on the findings, which were obtained by a research team led by Stanford University economics professor Raj Chetty, the Stanford University News commented, “Being richer was associated with living longer at every level of the income distribution. And the gap between the richest 1 percent and the bottom 1 percent in the nation was vast.”

The study is only the latest report highlighting the pervasive impact of social inequality on every aspect of life in America. A study released late last year by two Princeton University economists showed that the mortality rate for white, middle-aged working-class Americans has risen sharply over the past fifteen years, largely due to a dramatic rise in the rate of deaths from suicide, drug abuse and alcoholism.

Another recent study showed that all net full-time job growth in the US between 2005 and 2015 was accounted for by “alternative work arrangements,” i.e., people working as independent contractors, temps, through contract firms or on-call.

These reports provide a glimpse of the grim reality of social life for broad masses of American workers and youth, a reality that is concealed by the media behind complacent and self-satisfied portrayals of an economy rebounding from the financial disaster of 2008. The political establishment is indifferent to the economic and social deprivation facing tens of millions of Americans. President Barack Obama summed up the combination of contemptuousness and cluelessness of the ruling elite when he hailed the jobs report for February with the boast, “America is pretty darn great right now.”

This social crisis is the source of the immense anger and hatred for the political establishment revealed in the 2016 election campaign. The worsening plight of workers—occurring side-by-side with record corporate profits and stock prices—underlies the convulsive character of the presidential contest.

The Republican front-runner, billionaire real estate speculator Donald Trump, has sought to tap into popular anger in order to divert it along the reactionary path of anti-immigrant chauvinism and militarism. But the broader phenomenon, reflected in the widespread support for self-described “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, is the growth of anti-capitalist sentiment. The political radicalization of the working class is taking the initial form of backing for a candidate who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination by presenting himself as an opponent of social inequality and the “billionaire class.”

The Stanford study underscores that the essential division in the United States is not race, but class. In America, how long you live is determined above all by what social class you belong to.

Between 2001 and 2014, life expectancy in the United States increased by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women in the top five percent of income distribution, but by only a negligible 0.32 years for men and 0.04 years for women in the bottom five percent. The increase in longevity for the richest Americans, the study noted, is equivalent to eliminating all cancer deaths in the US.

The advances in medical science and life-extending technology have largely bypassed large sections of the population. The disparity is worse in areas hit hardest by deindustrialization and rural poverty.

Of the states with the lowest life expectancy in the bottom income quartile (25 percent), eight form a geographic belt from Michigan to Kansas (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas). Nevada, Indiana and Oklahoma had the lowest life expectancies (<77.9 years) when men and women in the bottom income quartile were averaged.

When broken down further into so-called commuting zones—urban areas and surrounding counties that share common economic characteristics—five of the zones with the lowest life expectancies were clustered in the industrial Midwest states. Among the cities where the poorest sections of the population live the shortest lives were: Louisville, Kentucky (77.9); Toledo and Cincinnati, Ohio (77.9); Detroit, Michigan (77.7); Indianapolis, Indiana (77.6), Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (77.6), and Las Vegas, Nevada (77.6).

The worst in the nation is the economically depressed steel town of Gary, Indiana, where the mean life expectancy for both sexes is 77.4 years, and for men, 74.2 years. The gap in life expectancies between the richest and the poorest quintiles is 7.2 years in Gary, where more than 40 percent of the population lives in poverty. The gap in life expectancies is far higher, however, in several other cities, including Madison, Wisconsin (8.1 years), Detroit (8.2 years), Salt Lake City, Utah (8.3 years), and Louisville, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio (8.4 years).

Between 2001 and 2014, average life expectancy in the bottom income quintile fell in several commuting zones. In Florida, this included Cape Coral, Miami, Tampa and Pensacola. Other areas seeing a decline were Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Des Moines, Iowa; Bakersfield, California; and Knoxville, Tennessee.

While the Stanford study does not point to the contributing factors in the growing disparity in life expectancy, there is little question that they include access to good nutrition, decent housing, a healthy environment and lower levels of stress. A study last year by researchers from Harvard Business School and Stanford University found that stressful workplaces, caused by the probability of being laid off, long working hours, work-family conflicts and the lack of employer-paid health care, contributed to lower life expectancy. Researchers concluded that 10–38 percent of the difference in life expectancy across demographic groups can be attributed to disparate job conditions.

The American Psychological Association’s annual stress report issued last month found that more than one-quarter of adults reported feeling stressed about money most or all of the time. Nearly one-third (32 percent) said their finances or lack of money prevented them from having a healthy lifestyle, and one in five said they had either considered skipping or had skipped going to the doctor in the past year when they needed care because of financial concerns.

 

 

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/04/12/life-a12.html

Democrats silent as one million lose food stamp benefits in the US

By Patrick Martin
4 April 2016

Tens of thousands of impoverished, unemployed adults were cut off food stamps Friday, the first wave of a social catastrophe that could affect more than one million people this year.

Some 22 states began terminating benefits for “Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents,” or ABAWDs, in the jargon of the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the federally funded food stamp program, or Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as it is formally known.

These adults, aged 18 to 49 years and without children, are generally the poorest section of the working class, earning only 17 percent of the official poverty rat, an average o f barely $150-170 per month in income. But they are eligible for only 90 days of feood stamp benefits unless they have paid employment or job training for at least 80 hours in a month. The 90-day clock began running January 1, so adults who no longer qualify under this rule began being terminated in state after state April 1.

The 22 states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia.

Another 22 states (see map) had already enforced work requirements to cut food stamp benefits for ABAWDs in 2015 or earlier. Those states account for 30 percent of the US population, while the states that are imposing work requirements this year account for another 35 percent.

The numbers in some of the larger states are staggering. Florida alone will cut off benefits to an estimated 300,000 childless adults; Tennessee 150,000 and North Carolina 110,000. New York state will cut off more than 50,000, including 3,000 people in Manhattan, home to the world’s biggest concentration of billionaires. Missouri cuts off 60,000; Alabama 40,000 and Massachusetts 23,000.

The work requirements for food stamp recipients were waived for most states during the deep recession that followed the 2008 financial crash. States had to have an official unemployment rate above 10 percent, or at least 20 percent above the national average, or demonstrate a weak labor market under other criteria set down by the Department of Labor.

The number of childless adults eligible for food stamps jumped from 1.7 million in 2007 to 4.9 million in 2013, then began to decline to 4.7 million in 2014, largely because states like Kansas and Ohio began to impose work requirements.

The harsh “work for food” requirements were first introduced for food stamps under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. This is the notorious “welfare reform” bill sponsored by then-US Rep. John Kasich, who is now Ohio’s governor and a Republican candidate for president, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, husband of the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It is particularly noticeable that none of the presidential candidates of either capitalist party, including the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, has made an issue of the food stamp cutoff that is plunging hundreds of thousands overnight into hunger and destitution.

Senator Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in the midst of a campaign in the April 19 New York primary, but neither has said a word on behalf of the more than 50,000 New Yorkers who began losing their food stamp benefits Friday.

On Tuesday, Bill Clinton will campaign for his wife in Erie County, which includes the city of Buffalo, devastated by the collapse of the steel industry. Some 2,800 Erie County residents were cut off food stamps April 1, but it is unlikely that the former president, who has raked in more than $100 million in income since he left the White House, will have anything to say about it.

Hillary Clinton gloried in the “welfare reform” legislation in her 2003 memoirLiving History (for which she was paid $8 million). She wrote that Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the program the bill abolished, “had helped to create generations of welfare-dependent Americans … I strongly argued that we had to change the system, although my endorsement of welfare reform came at some personal cost.” The “cost,” of course, was to her political credibility as a supposed advocate of the poor.

Clinton claimed that the legislation her husband signed “was a critical first step to reforming our nation’s welfare system. I agreed that he should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage—though he and the legislation were roundly criticized by some liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system.”

Sanders has criticized Hillary Clinton repeatedly for giving speeches to Wall Street audiences in return for six-figure fees, as well as raking in campaign contributions from the financial and fossil fuel industries. But he has not sought to make a connection between Clinton’s close ties to the super-rich and the record of the first Clinton administration, particularly its attack on the poorest sections of the working class.

Nor has Sanders, in general, made an issue of the cuts in vital social programs, particularly those implemented with the collaboration of the Obama administration, like the $8.7 billion cut in food stamp benefits pushed through in 2014 as part of a bipartisan deal with congressional Republicans, or this year’s drastic cutback in food stamp eligibility for childless adults.

Food stamp recipients, and particularly childless adults on food stamps, have become targets of abuse for big business politicians of both parties. Several of the states now implementing work requirements have gone well beyond the regulations set down by the federal Department of Agriculture or the provisions of the welfare reform law.

State governments are permitted to seek exemptions from benefit cutoffs for regions of the state with particularly high concentrations of unemployment, even if the state as a whole no longer qualifies. In New York state, for example, the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have such exemptions, although Manhattan does not.

But many states, like Florida, have refused to seek such exemptions. The Missouri legislature even passed a bill last year prohibiting the state government from seeking a waiver, with legislators claiming it was easy for the unemployed to find at least 20 hours work per week.

In Mississippi, with one of the highest unemployment rates and highest poverty rates in the country, Republican Governor Phil Bryant chose not to extend the waiver of the work requirement. “We want people to go to work in Mississippi,” he said in a statement. “We want these individuals to get a good job and live the American dream, not just be dependent on the federal government.”

 

 

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/04/04/food-a04.html

Democratic Senate candidates sound right-wing themes in pre-election debates

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By Patrick Martin
24 October 2014

The November 4 election will decide whether the Democratic Party or the Republican Party has a majority in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, but it will not change the basic political direction of the United States, since both corporate-controlled parties are committed to programs of militarism, attacks on democratic rights, and slashing spending on domestic social programs.

The fundamental agreement between the Democrats and Republicans was on display last week in a series of debates between Senate candidates in five southern states: North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Kentucky. The five races are closely contested, with polls showing the outcome too close to call or with small leads for one party or the other.

Given the current 55-45 edge for the Democrats in the Senate, with the Republican Party needing a net gain of six seats to take control, the results in these five southern races could well decide the outcome. (Three seats being vacated by longtime Democratic senators, in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia, are already projected to be won by the Republicans).

The five debates reviewed here included the following:

• GEORGIA, Democrat Michelle Nunn, daughter of longtime former senator Sam Nunn, vs. Republican millionaire CEO David Perdue.

• NORTH CAROLINA, Democratic Senator Kay Hagan vs. the Republican speaker of the state legislature Thom Tillis.

• LOUISIANA, Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu vs. Republican Congressman Bill Cassidy.

• ARKANSAS, Democratic Senator Mark Pryor vs. Republican Congressman Tom Cotton.

• KENTUCKY, Democratic state secretary of state Allison Lundergan Grimes vs. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who would become Majority Leader if the Republicans take control November 4.

Videos and transcripts of the debates are available on C-Span. The transcripts have the following oddity: while giving a verbatim account of what each candidate said, they do not identify candidates themselves by name, only as “unidentified speaker.” Given the similarity in content, it is frequently difficult to tell when the Democrat or the Republican is speaking. The constant references to Obama (from the Republicans), and the non-mention of Obama (from the Democrats) are the clearest indication of which party’s candidate is speaking.

One of the most remarkable aspects of these debates was their sheer narrowness and parochialism. The Obama administration last month launched a major war in the Middle East, bombing targets in Syria in addition to those already under attack in Iraq. Yet in two of the five Senate debates, there was no discussion of the war: in Arkansas, foreign policy was discussed only from the standpoint of the need to keep open local military bases, while in Kentucky, the subject did not come up at all.

In Georgia and North Carolina, the Democratic candidates fervently supported US military intervention and attacked their Republican opponents from the right, for being more reluctant to back such action.

Michelle Nunn in Georgia is the daughter of a former senator who played a hawkish role in US military and foreign policy in the 1980s and 1990s. She called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) an “incredibly dangerous threat,” and then went on to attack her opponent as insufficiently militaristic. “One year ago David Perdue said to do nothing about Syria, and I said we needed to intervene,” she argued. “It was not the popular thing to do then, but now it is.”

Senator Kay Hagan in North Carolina described herself as someone who would “fight for the military” in her role on the Armed Services Committee. She said of ISIS, “These individuals are terrorists. They have attacked Americans. Our mission should be to eradicate these terrorists.”

She went on to attack her opponent Tillis, saying, “What I have seen Speaker Tillis has done is he is waffling on these issues. I have been clear. I have been decisive. I think we need to hear from Speaker Tillis as far as what he would do.”

In response to criticism by Tillis of her performance on the Armed Services Committee, she placed herself in the vanguard of pro-intervention senators, saying, “Please note a year ago this past spring I actually asked about arming and training moderate Syrian rebels at the time. That was before we knew what ISIS was. I really think if we had taken that step we would not have seen the proliferation of these barbaric terrorists.”

In Louisiana, Senator Landrieu embraced the Obama administration’s policy in the Middle East, saying of ISIS, “We need to do everything we can to eliminate it. It’s a serious threat not only against the United States but the region, which is an important region of our interests. Secondly I do support the airstrikes against ISIS and believe that all presidents should have the authority to act when they believe America is in danger. Thirdly I would support the use of force. I think I would stop short at this point for boots on the ground.”

Republican Congressman Cassidy denounced the administration furiously but agreed with its policy in substance. “I support the plan because it’s the only plan out there,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s going to be adequate.” But he went on to suggest he would back the use of ground troops as part of a larger strategy.

On domestic policy, both Democrats and Republicans backed further cuts in public spending. Michelle Nunn said of the federal budget deficit, “We both agree this is a huge issue. We disagree in that I believe in a bipartisan effort. It has to be done in a collaboration. Cut spending, cut medical expenses.” She went on to say, “I believe the only way to craft good legislation is with Republican support.”

Asked for more specifics, she hailed the outgoing Republican senator she is running to succeed, Saxby Chambliss, in his effort to draft a bipartisan spending and tax bill with Democrat Mark Warner. “We need to cut spending and reform taxes to settle the deficit,” she concluded.

Kay Hagan likewise backed reactionary bipartisan measures including the immigration legislation proposed by Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, which would have established a 17-year process for immigrants to become citizens. She also backed Republican calls for a ban on travelers from the three countries in West Africa now devastated by Ebola.

Her plan for deficit reduction centered on a massive tax cut for giant US corporations that have parked $1 trillion in offshore accounts to avoid paying US corporate income taxes. The current tax rate is 35 percent, but Hagan boasted, “My bill would allow that money to come in at eight percent. They can bring that to five if they hire American workers.” In other words, corporate America would enjoy a windfall of $300 billion, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

In the Arkansas debate, Senator Pryor, the Democratic incumbent, portrayed himself as a veteran budget-cutter. “You all know me and you know I am serious about this. People in Washington know—I watch this closely and we have to get spending under control. That is why I voted to cut spending by $4 trillion in the last three years.”

As always in a US election, the Democrats portrayed the Republicans as committed to slashing Medicare and Social Security, while the Republicans piously proclaimed their dedication to these programs—only one, Cassidy in Louisiana, declaring his support for raising the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 70 years.

For the most part, the actual differences between the Democrats and Republicans boiled down to the following, in state after state: the Democrats backed an increase in the minimum wage, declared climate change to be a reality, supported gay marriage, and opposed repeal of Obamacare. The Republicans took the opposite stand on each question.

While the climate change issue reveals the grip of Christian fundamentalists (and oil companies) on the Republican Party, the differences in ideology have no real practical implications. Democratic candidate Grimes in Kentucky pledged her loyalty to the coal industry and Senator Landrieu in Louisiana did the same for the oil and gas producers.

On Obamacare, the Republicans continue to point to its most reactionary features, such as cuts in Medicare funding, even while they themselves support even deeper cuts. The Arkansas debate was held just after Arkansas-based Walmart announced it was ending health care benefits for tens of thousands of part-time workers, dumping these workers into the exchanges set up under Obamacare.

The minimum wage increase is an empty promise that even if fulfilled would not lift millions of low-paid workers out of poverty. With a Republican-controlled House, there is no possibility of such an increase passing, so Democratic Senate candidates are happy to make the promise knowing they won’t have to do anything.

This issue has been highlighted is several states by the introduction of referendum measures which will be on the ballot November 4, whose major purpose is to persuade poor and working-class voters to go to the polls despite their deep aversion to both parties.

In only one of the five debates was a Republican placed at a disadvantage on the economic issue, and that by his own doing. In the Georgia debate, David Perdue was asked about outsourcing at several corporations he had headed, particularly the textile manufacturer Pillowtex and he proceeded to boast about his record. In the aftermath of the debate, his poll numbers began to plunge.

Because the policies of the Obama administration have so clearly favored the wealthy and Wall Street, however, it was impossible for the Democratic candidates to sustain the pretense that they defended the interests of working people. This was demonstrated in the Arkansas debate, where Senator Pryor, the Democratic incumbent, denounced his Republican opponent Cotton for his ties to billionaires like the Koch brothers.

At one point Pryor was asked how he defined middle class, and the senator, himself the son of former senator David Pryor, and thus an epitome of inherited privilege, said that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income. This is a state which ranks 49th out of the 50 states in nearly every socioeconomic indicator, with a median income of barely $40,000.

A lengthy wrangle over the economy then ensued, with Cotton concluding, “Over the last six years of the economy, if you make a living off of assets or investments like stocks or bonds, the top five percent of all income earners, you are doing OK. If you make a living by working, if labor is your means of putting food on your table, your incomes are down… That is because Mark Pryor is a rubberstamp for Barack Obama’s policies.”

Cotton is perhaps the most extreme right-winger running as a major-party Senate candidate this year, calling for the gutting of food stamps and other forms of government support to the poor. That this diehard reactionary can posture as a defender of those who “make a living by working” only testifies to the utter bankruptcy of the Democratic Party, and of the two-party system as a whole.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/24/elec-o24.html