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First, two examples
to add to the debate about universal health care and a comprehensive energy
policy that mandates conservation. Then commentary
and opinion about the shrinking middle class. KwC Dental problems stymie Guard call-ups Fort Lewis, Washington – About 30 percent of the 4,500 National Guard
members called to active duty in Washington last year had dental conditions
that made them undeployable until their teeth were fixed. It took a Herculean effort to get
soldiers to the dentist before the 81st Brigade Combat Team
dispatched to Iraq in March 2004. Washington National Guard officials said the problem was simple: many
guardsmen lacked dental insurance and were unable or unwilling to pay for care. “We spend an awful lot of money making
sure the MI-AI (tank) is ready to be deployed. We spend absolutely nothing on
physical readiness of soldiers prior to mobilization,” said Maj. Gen. Timothy
Lowenberg, head of the Washington National Guard. “It is a significant point of
failure.” It’s a national issue,
with 20 percent of the Army’s citizen soldiers arriving at mobilization sites
with dental conditions that made them nondeployable. The House Armed Services Committee last week passed a $441 billion
defense bill that included a provision to provide permanent, government-paid
health and dental insurance to National Guard members before they mobilize. If the provision survives when the
final bill goes to the House floor this week, it would cost $3.8 billion over
five years. Active-duty soldiers are provided dental care. If they don’t have
employer-provided dental insurance, guardsmen can enroll in a government plan
that costs about $10 monthly. The
fees pay for annual examination, with a sliding scale for deductibles on major
dental work, taking into account the specific procedure and soldier’s rank. Both items seen in the MetroNW section of The Oregonian, page B3, Monday, May 23, 2005 Oregon Gas Prices
NYT Editorial Monday,
May 23, 2005:
Wages Lag Inflation, Again
Families, on the
other hand, have little reason to cheer. The core rate is meaningful for
financial markets, but real people buy food and gas. Moreover, the smaller a
paycheck is, the bigger the percentage of pay that is consumed by essentials.
Poor families, for instance, spend at least four times as much of their pay on
energy as rich families do. To make matters worse,
the paycheck itself is shrinking. For non-managers in both white- and blue-collar jobs,
hourly wage gains have failed to beat inflation in every month for the past
year. When that happens, the only way to get ahead is to work more. Earlier this month the government reported
that the average workweek lengthened in April, raising hopes that weekly
earnings would at last begin to outpace price increases. But inflation has
eaten up all of the income from the additional work - and more: over the past
year, average weekly earnings have fallen by 0.3 percent after inflation. So far, easy
credit, like home equity loans and credit cards, has papered over the steady
falloff in workers' purchasing power. But debt levels can quickly turn onerous.
The latest inflation numbers are as much a cause for concern as for
celebration. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/opinion/23mon2.html America Wants Security By Paul Krugman,
NYT, May 23, 2005 It was a carefully staged Norman Rockwell scene. The street
was lined with American flags; a high school band played "God Bless
America." Then, under the
watchful gaze of Wal-Mart's chief operating officer, Maryland's governor vetoed
a bill that would have obliged large businesses to spend more on employee
health care. The news here isn't that some politicians wrap their
deference to corporate interests in the flag. The news, instead, is that Maryland's
State Legislature passed a pro-worker bill in the first place. In fact, the
bill passed by a veto-proof majority in the Maryland Senate, and fell just
short of that margin in the House. After
November's election, the victors claimed a mandate to unravel the welfare
state. But the national election was about who would best defend us from gay
married terrorists. At the state level, where elections were fought on
bread-and-butter issues, voters sent a message that they wanted a stronger, not
weaker, social safety net. I'm not just talking about the shift in partisan alignment,
in which Democrats made modest gains in state legislatures, and achieved a few
startling successes. I'm also talking about specific issues, like the lopsided
votes in both Florida and Nevada for constitutional amendments raising the
minimum wage. Since the election, high-profile
right-wing initiatives, at both the federal and state level, have run into a
stone wall of public disapproval. President Bush's privatization road show seems
increasingly pathetic. In California, the conservative agenda of Arnold
Schwarzenegger, including an attempt to partially privatize state pensions, has
led to demonstrations by nurses, teachers, police officers and firefighters -
and to a crash in his approval ratings. There's a very good reason voters, when given a chance to make a clear
choice, increasingly support a stronger, not a weaker, social safety net: they need that net more than ever. Over
the past 25 years the lives of working Americans have become ever less secure.
Jobs come without health insurance; 401(k)'s vanish; corporations default on
their pension obligations; workers lose their jobs more often, and unemployment
lasts much longer than it used to. The
latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed what the pollsters called an
"angry electorate." By huge margins, voters think that politicians
are paying too little attention to their concerns, especially health care, jobs
and gas prices. At
the state level, many, though by no means all, politicians are responding to
those concerns. The push to raise the minimum wage is a useful political
barometer: seven states have raised the minimum in just the last two years. True, there are limits on what state governments can do:
they fear that if they do too much for workers, they'll drive business and jobs
away. I'd argue that the fear is often exaggerated. For example, Wal-Mart may
avoid states that force it to provide health insurance, but given the hidden
subsidies the company receives - one way or another, taxpayers end up paying a
lot for uninsured workers - this may not be such a bad thing. Still, any major
strengthening of the safety net will have to come at the federal level. Why, then, is Washington so out of touch? At a gala dinner in his honor, Tom DeLay cited his party's
recent achievements: "bankruptcy reform, class-action reform, energy,
border security, repealing the death tax." All of these measures are either irrelevant to or
actively hostile to the economic security of working Americans. Yet as Mr. DeLay boasted, many Democratic members of Congress
also voted in support of these measures. In so doing, they undermined their
party's ability to claim that it stands for something different. So where will change come from? Everyone loves historical analogies. Here's my thought:
maybe 2004 was 1928. During the 1920's, the national government followed
doctrinaire conservative policies, but reformist policies that presaged the New
Deal were already bubbling up in the states, especially in New York. In 1928 Al Smith, the governor of New
York, was defeated in an ugly presidential campaign in which Protestant
preachers warned their flocks that a vote for the Catholic Smith was a vote for
the devil. But four years later F.D.R. took office, and the New Deal began. Of course, the coming of the New Deal was hastened by a
severe national depression. Strange to say, we may be working on that, too. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/opinion/23krugman.html |
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