Miserable by Design
By PAUL KRUGMAN NY Times Op-Ed: October 3, 2005 Federal aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina is already faltering on two crucial fronts: health care and housing. Incompetence is part of the problem, but deeper political issues also play a crucial role. Start with health care, where conservative senators, generally believed to be acting on behalf of the White House, have blocked bipartisan legislation that would provide all low-income victims of Katrina with health coverage under Medicaid. In a letter urging Senate leaders to reject the bill, Mike Leavitt, the secretary of Health and Human Services, warned that it would create "a new Medicaid entitlement." He asserted that victims can be taken care of by Medicaid "waivers," which basically amount to giving refugees the health benefits, if any, that they would have been entitled to in their home states - and no more. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, many needy victims won't qualify for aid. For example, Medicaid doesn't cover childless adults of working age. In fact, surveys show that many destitute survivors of Katrina are being denied Medicaid, and some are going without medicines they need. Local hospitals and doctors will often treat Katrina victims even if they can't pay. But this means that communities that have welcomed Katrina refugees will, in effect, be financially punished for their generosity - something local officials will remember in future crises. (The administration has offered vague, unconvincing assurances that it will do something to compensate medical caregivers. It has offered much more concrete assurances that it will reimburse religious groups that provide aid.) What about housing? These days, both conservatives and liberals agree that public housing projects are a bad idea, and that housing vouchers - which help the poor pay rent - are much better. In the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, special housing vouchers issued to victims worked very well. But the administration has chosen, instead, to focus its efforts on the creation of public housing in the form of trailer parks, which have been slow to take shape, will almost surely be more expensive than a voucher program and may create long-term refugee ghettoes. Even Newt Gingrich calls this "extraordinarily bad policy" that "violates every conservative principle." What's going on here? The crucial point is that President Bush has been forced by events into short-term actions that conflict with his long-term goals. His mission in office is to dismantle or at least shrink the federal social safety net, yet he must, as a matter of political necessity, provide aid to Katrina's victims. His problem is how to do that without legitimizing the very role of government he opposes. This dilemma explains the administration's opposition to Medicaid coverage for all Katrina refugees. How can it provide that coverage without undermining its ongoing efforts to reduce the Medicaid rolls? More broadly, if it accepts the principle that all hurricane victims are entitled to medical care, people might start asking why the same isn't true of all American citizens - a line of thought that points toward a system of universal health insurance, which is anathema to conservatives. As for the administration's odd insistence on providing public housing instead of relying on the market, The Los Angeles Times reports that Department of Housing and Urban Development officials initially announced plans to issue rent vouchers, then backed off after meeting with White House aides. As the article notes, the administration has "repeatedly sought to cut or limit" the existing housing voucher program. This suggests that what administration officials fear isn't that housing vouchers would fail, but that they would succeed - and that this success would undermine the administration's ongoing efforts to cut back housing aid. So here's the key to understanding post-Katrina policy: Mr. Bush can't avoid helping Katrina's victims, but he doesn't want to legitimize institutions that help the needy, like the housing voucher program. As a result, his administration refuses to use those institutions, even when they are the best way to provide victims with aid. More generally, the administration is trying to treat Katrina's victims as harshly as the political realities allow, so as not to create a precedent for other aid efforts. As the misery of the hurricane's survivors goes on, remember this: to a large extent, they are miserable by design. *** The Relevance of Marching By David Swanson September 30, 2005 submitted to portside by the author David Corn, www.davidcorn.com, published an article today on his site and on www.tompaine.com arguing that last weekend's march on Washington to end the war was a waste of time and money and energy and won't help end the war. I disagree, but think Corn makes some useful points. Corn's arguments include: 1-these marches always result in debates over how many people showed up 2-not enough people showed up 3-there's nothing novel about marching anymore 4-more people watched "Desperate House Wives" than marched 5-the marchers are all from blue states, so the Republicans don't care 6-only one national march in the past 20 years has accomplished anything 7-we'd be better off targeting vulnerable Senators and Members of Congress 1.-Yes, there are always debates over how many people showed up. Some among those organizing this march made proposals that I supported but which were not accepted or acted on, to either carefully estimate the crowd as the march began and passed through a marked off area, or to acquire a good enough satellite photo to estimate crowd size. But the media coverage - lousy and insufficient as it was - did not focus on the crowd size as much as organizers and activists have. Most of the stories in the corporate media communicated that there was a huge, diverse march of people from all over the country who wanted to end the war. If there's also debate over the crowd size, what's so bad about that? The issue is at least in the news, and those in search of harder numbers can refer to opinion polls, which all now support the anti-war movement. 2.-Corn says a million people would have meant something. But it would not have meant eliminating the debate over what the right number was. And it will not happen without smaller marches first and recognition of what they achieve. It certainly won't happen if we write off marching as an outdated tool, the way the Bushies write off the labor movement. 3.-How many people really believe that the marches against the Vietnam War worked primarily because they were novel? In fact, was there anything novel then about marching? What works about marching, I think, is mostly not dependent on it being novel. For one thing, it puts an issue into the media and reaches more people. While a majority of Americans currently oppose the war, only a tiny minority knows that. Most people who oppose the war believe falsely that they hold a minority opinion. A march helps people learn that a mainstream opinion is mainstream. Each person at the march is understood to represent many more people who could not take off work, travel, physically march that distance, or risk arrest. And each person goes home and tells many other people about the inspiring experience of the march. The internet and activist networks are now a-fire with proposals and initiatives and hope. The bus tours and lobby visits and local protests and congressional hearings that preceded the march did not produce this. Local energy is higher now, not depleted by the national march or any of the regional marches that took place the same day. This is not a zero-sum game. It's closer to the reverse. The more we do, the more people come in with more energy to do more. And it's not just Americans who are excited. National marches in DC excite people around the world, build alliances with them, and restore some credibility to our country in the eyes of others. What generated excitement this past weekend, though, was not just the march, but also the civil disobedience at the White House on Monday. On that day 384 people accepted arrest to demand that the war end now. They sacrificed, and that moved people. And we know the exact count (384) because the police know how many arrests were made. There was also a ton of lobbying done by hundreds of people, some of it very aggressively, on Monday; and that was useful, but it did not accomplish the same things the march did. 4.-Of course, more people watched television. Many people work long hours and can't do much else. But of those supporting the war, all but a few hundred watch television. Of those opposing it, all but a few hundred thousand watch television. That's the difference. And this argument seems to be one that Corn has invented. I haven't seen it in the corporate media coverage of the march. Why invent arguments for the other side? 5.-The marchers were not all from blue states. Who said they were? And the supporters of the war in Congress are not all Republicans. In fact, Corn later asks why New Yorkers didn't stay home and challenge their Democratic senators. Well, because they came to DC to do so, by marching and then by meeting with them. In the process, they built solidarity with others and helped build the movement. 6.-Most marches don't result in immediate total victory. There is a dangerous tendency to expect that and then grow frustrated. But many of us never thought they would. We see marches as part of an ongoing movement. In this case, the march was combined with lobbying and civil disobedience and various other meetings and strategy sessions. I'd have thought this was a step in the direction Corn favored, but instead he didn't mention it at all. The idea that only one march in the past 20 years has had a noticeable effect is bizarre. Most marches I've been part of have resulted in positive change. The marches against this war have very likely helped prevent it being more of a slaughter than it's been. A few years back, ACORN and others organized a march on the Department of Health and Human Services, protesting their new policy of eliminating the minimum wage for workfare jobs. Within 8 hours, the White House reversed that policy. Numerous other marches at the Capitol and White House, even under Bush, have immediately resulted in improvements in horrible legislation, if only very rarely reversals of plans. 7.-I agree that we should target vulnerable senators and House members, both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, there have been discussions about this among the organizers of the recent national march. But the MeetWithTheMothers.org campaign, among other groups, was doing this in the weeks leading up to the march, and it did some good, but no one noticed. No one even bothered to write dismissive articles about it. It did not, I expect, do as much to bring in new people as this march did. We need both types of actions if we are going to have an effective movement. For upcoming plans, watch www.afterdowningstreet.org. David Swanson is creator of MeetWithCindy.org, co- founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com. His website is www.davidswanson.org To subscribe: http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside *** http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0927montini27.html# Arizona Republic Handling protests the 'right way' gets Tillmans nowhere by Ed Montini Sept. 27, 2005 12:00 AM The critics of Cindy Sheehan say that she's not going about her protest the "right way." They say she is hurting troop morale. They say that she is unpatriotic. A traitor, even. They say that she should just shut up. The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, Sheehan got a lot of media attention in August when she camped out at the entrance to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Since then she has led demonstrations against the war and the president's policies. On Monday she was arrested at a White House sit-in after she refused police orders to leave. Sheehan is being used, we've been told. She's nuts. She's dishonoring her son. Then again, to those who say that Sheehan might get the government to address her concerns if she only did things the "right way," I would offer two words: Mary Tillman. Mary is also the mother of a soldier killed in the war on terror. Her son, Pat, the former Arizona Cardinals star, was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in April 2004. Since that time, neither Mary nor her former husband, Patrick Sr., nor Pat's wife has come out publicly against the war. Not even after they found out that they had been deceived about his death. It took five weeks before the Army told the Tillmans that Pat was killed by his own comrades during a confused and frighteningly mishandled mission. That information, which investigators knew almost immediately, was withheld until after a very public funeral service for Tillman was broadcast across the nation. Several investigations have followed, none of which has satisfied the family or thoroughly answered their questions. They have worked with members of Congress, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, to get the truth about the incidents that led to Tillman's death. They have done so quietly, for the most part. Respectfully. In a manner that any reasonable person would describe as "the right way." It has gotten them nowhere. On Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle published a lengthy article based on its review of nearly 2,000 pages of investigative documents that Mary Tillman has received from the military. Most of which only lead to more questions. Questions about who knew what and when. Questions about altered testimony. Questions about delays and accountability. Now there is another investigation going on and the family isn't any more confident that the truth will surface. The Chronicle quoted Pat Sr. as saying, "The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons. This cover-up started within minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels." When I last spoke to Mary in late May she told me, "They could have told us up front that they were suspicious that it was a fratricide but they didn't. They wanted to use him for their purposes. It was good for the administration. It was before the elections. It was during the prison scandal. They needed something that looked good, and it was appalling that they would use him like that." Although they have been approached by media representatives from every print and TV outlet in the country, the Tillmans have kept a relatively low profile. Working through channels. Not participating in public protests. Their behavior should teach us a thing or two about the way we treat families who question their government's actions. For example, when we start demanding that people conduct themselves the "right way," it's not the mothers of dead soldiers we should be speaking to. Reach Montini at [EMAIL PROTECTED] (602) 444-8978. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 1.2 million kids a year are victims of human trafficking. 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