Hosted by a shaving brush.
Sunday Shuffle
Wacky Weather
Video Description: Scenes of medium-sized hail balls falling in our front yard, with bursts of lightning.
Then, Friday, we had the apocalyptic storm that knocked out our power for an entire day:
Video Description: Scenes of rain coming down in sheets, accompanied by thunder and lightning.
That was before the storm got really bad. It stormed like that, with full-on thunder and lightning, for about four hours, then just continued to rain and rain, until there was flooding all over the area.
Saturday, it was sunny and almost 100 degrees. The dog park, which has excellent drainage, was nonetheless still flooded in the morning. Dudley, who has no stamina in and no tolerance for the heat, found a neat way to cool off:
Video Description: Dudley lays up to his chest in the floodwater, drinking it as he lies there. Iain and I laugh about how goofy he is.
Video Description: Dudley lays in the water, and, as he pants from running around in the hot sun, ripples fan out around him in the water. I laugh and ask him what he thinks he's doing. He spies his Beagle friend Walter across the park, and he leaps up, water dripping off of him.
Today, the sun is out, but I just heard thunder in the distance. Yikes. Who knows what today will bring! I've got $5 on snow. Why not?
Open Thread
Hosted by a unicandycorn.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by unicorns. By Melissa's request. Because she's all about unicorns, yo.
Bird For Hire
Now that Comcast has put the old NBC peacock out to pasture...
...it ended up in my backyard scrounging for food and calling out in the middle of the night.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
Have a nice weekend!
Belly up to the bar and name your poison, if that's your kind of thing.
Quote of the Day
"This show has become a movement. It doesn't belong on television." — Glenn Beck, saying good-bye, rather aptly, from the turd that was his TV show.
Update on South Dakota
Back in March South Dakota gov Dennis Daugaard signed into law a bill that would require women seeking an abortion to have a 72 hour wait, go to a "crisis pregnancy center", and that doctors must tell a women about all sorts of "complications" she may have due to the abortion. Remember: South Dakota has ONE clinic and its doctors must come in from out of state to provide abortion services.
Yesterday, one day before the law was to start taking effect, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Karen Schreier found in favor of Planned Parenthood, who sought an injunction of the law. You know, beyond the defunding via Medicaid, I think part of the strategy against Planned Parenthood is to drain them via legal fees and their now-constant need to battle for women in court. But I digress! Judge Schreier wrote a 61-page decision, some of which I'll excerpt, but you can also download and read it from here. As Reuters notes:
South Dakota has been at the center of some of the most bitter recent fights over abortion, which was legalized in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade.We've written A LOT on South Dakota and its attempts to ban abortion--which I noticed when I went looking for the post about the law. South Dakota was one, if you recall, who also proposed to make killing an abortion provider "justifiable homicide" (the bill was later shelved). Hostile is an understatement.
State lawmakers passed laws in 2006 and 2008 to ban most abortions unless they were necessary to save a woman's life. Voters later overturned both bans.
Onto Jude Schreier's ruling. The excerpts are long--and the ruling is truly an example of common sense and awesomeness.
On the Pregnancy Care Center clause (emphasis mine):
Defendants argue that the patients’ free speech rights are not implicated because a pregnant woman is only required to “speak” inasmuch as she is required to disclose that she is pregnant and that she has chosen to undergo an abortion. First, the plain language of the Pregnancy Help Center Requirements contradict defendants’ construction. Subsection 3(a) of section 3 states that the “pregnant mother must . . . have a private interview to discuss her circumstances that may subject her decision to coercion.” An interview necessarily requires questions and answers. And defendants offer no explanation on how an interview “to discuss her circumstances” could be done without the pregnant woman actually disclosing “her circumstances.”
Second, and in the alternative, if the pregnant woman does not have to actually discuss her circumstances during an interview and she only has to disclose that she is pregnant and has chosen to undergo an abortion, the Pregnancy Help Center Requirements still implicate the patient’s free speech rights. At the very least, the requirements on their face compel a patient to not only disclose that she is pregnant and is seeking an abortion, but also to disclose the name of her abortion physician so the pregnancy help center knows to whom to send the written statement or summary of assessment. See Section 6 of the Act (authorizing a pregnancy help center to forward “documents to the abortion physician”). This compelled disclosure necessarily reveals private factual information, such as she is pregnant, she is choosing to undergo an abortion, she has spoken with an abortion physician, and the name of her abortion physician. And she is being compelled to disclose this information to someone who is opposed5 to her decision to undergo an abortion. Even these “limited” compelled disclosures implicate the protection afforded by the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause.
[...]
[...] If the woman wishes to consult with a pregnancy help center, read pamphlets, or study the website, she is free to do so. Because the Pregnancy Help Center Requirements only apply to women who have chosen to undergo an abortion, they do nothing to inform pregnant women who may not be seeking an abortion but are seeking information about alternatives to abortion and information about assistance for raising children.
Defendants argue that using printed materials or the patient’s physician to provide information to pregnant women who have chosen to undergo an abortion have not always been successful. Thus, according to defendants, the legislature is allowed to experiment with different message delivery mechanisms in an attempt to ensure that the woman is fully informed. The court rejects defendants’ underlying assumption that legislatures are allowed to use more intrusive means that regulate speech because the alternatives are not 100 percent successful in achieving a compelling state interest.
[...]
On the Crisis Center being an undue burden
With the relevant cases in mind, the next issue is whether the Pregnancy Help Center Requirements create “a substantial obstacle to a woman’s choice to undergo an abortion.” See Miller, 63 F.3d at 1458. The plain language of sections 3, 4, 5, and 6 makes it clear that a woman can obtain an abortion if, and only if, she first consults a pregnancy help center when she otherwise would not. Forcing a woman to divulge to a stranger at a pregnancy help center the fact that she has chosen to undergo an abortion humiliates and degrades her as a human being. The woman will feel degraded by the compulsive nature of the Pregnancy Help Center Requirements, which suggest that she has made the “wrong” decision, has not really “thought” about her decision to undergo an abortion, or is “not intelligent enough” to make the decision with the advice of a physician.
Furthermore, these women are forced into a hostile environment. Aside from its compulsive nature, the hostility of the consultation is evidenced by the fact that section 5 of the Act establishes that the only entities that can be listed on the state registry of pregnancy help centers are those that routinely “consult[] with women for the purpose of helping them keep their relationship with their unborn children” and that “one of [their] principal missions is to educate, counsel, and otherwise assist women to help them maintain their relationship with their unborn children.” A pregnancy help center cannot have even “referred any pregnant women for an abortion at any time in the three years immediately preceding July 1, 2011.” Requiring these women to “have a consultation,” and a “private interview” with a “pregnancy help center” destroys “[t]he right to avoid unwelcome speech” that is “protected in confrontational settings.” Cf. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 717 (2000). And it forces an unnecessary confrontation on one of the most volatile subjects in America. See Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. at 920 (acknowledging that “[m]illions of Americans believe that . . . abortion is akin to causing the death of an innocent child”); Casey, 505 U.S. at 852 (recognizing that “some deem [abortions as] nothing short of an act of violence against innocent human life”).
There are clear ideological differences between a woman who has chosen to undergo an abortion and a “pregnancy help center.” When considering these differences, a woman will likely be unwilling to actually consult with a pregnancy help center because she will fear being ridiculed, labeled a murderer, subjected to anti-abortion ideology, and repeatedly contacted by the pregnancy help center. Moreover, a woman may likely believe, rightly or wrongly, that her decision to have an abortion could become public information. And it will not matter to her that in the future she may be able to obtain legal relief from the pregnancy help center worker who disclosed the information. By then it will be too late. Thus, rather than risk having such information being made public or to avoid “consulting” with someone who is not supportive of her decision to have an abortion, she will be forced to remain pregnant.
On the 72 hour waiting period:
With regard to whether the 72-Hour Requirement constitutes a substantial obstacle, plaintiffs argue with supporting evidence that women could be forced to wait up to one month between their initial consultation and the abortion procedure if the same physician is required to conduct both the initial consultation and the abortion. See Docket 10-6 at 6 (“[D]ue to the physicians’ schedules, a woman could be delayed up to a month in order to have two appointments with the same physician.”). This is because there is only one clinic in South Dakota, which provides abortions one day a week on average. Docket 10-6 at 4. And the three to four physicians who perform the abortions take turns flying into Sioux Falls about once a month. Docket 10-6 at 4. Defendants argue that such a delay will not occur because there is no requirement that the initial consultation be performed by the same physician who performs the abortion.
[...]
Even if the physician who performed the abortion was not required to have conducted the initial consultation, the 72-Hour Requirement still creates a substantial obstacle considering the circumstances that surround many of the women who choose to undergo an abortion in South Dakota. For example, 56 percent of women who chose to undergo an abortion “during the year beginning March 1, 2010,” had “incomes that [were] 100% or less than the federal poverty level.” Docket 10-6 at 4. And 87 percent of the women who chose to undergo an abortion during that same time period lived “at or below 200 percent of the [Federal Poverty Level].” Docket 10-6 at 4. Furthermore, approximately 30 percent of the women who chose to undergo an abortion during this time period traveled more than 150 miles to the abortion clinic, for a total of 300 miles. Docket 10-6 at 3.
Because the 72-Hour Requirement effectively requires two trips, almost every woman will be forced to cope with the financial burdens created by the additional trip. These burdens are great when considering the fact that approximately 87 percent of the women are at or below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Level. For many of these women, it stands to reason that they will be unable to afford the second trip and will abstain from obtaining an abortion even though they have chosen to undergo one. And women who live farther away are even more likely to be unable to afford a second trip. The inability to pay for the additional trip also becomes worse for the women who are stay-at-home mothers because they will be required to make additional arrangements for childcare. Docket 10-6 at 4. And if a pregnant woman has a job, she will be required to take twice as much time off from work. Docket 10-6at 4. The court finds that these financial circumstances constitute a substantial obstacle for a large fraction of the relevant cases.
The effective doubling of the financial burden created by the 72-Hour Requirement is arguably insignificant when compared to the other obstacles created by the 72-hour delay. For example, even if the delay between the initial consultation and the abortion is only one week, pregnant women who choose to undergo an abortion can be denied the ability to undergo a medication abortion, which may be their chosen method of abortion, because of the delay. Docket 10-6 at 2-3. A medication abortion is only available until 9 weeks after the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period, after which time a surgical abortion is required. Docket 10-6 at 2. For those women who refuse to undergo a surgical abortion in such situations, the 72-Hour Requirement effectively denies them of their right to an abortion. As to those women who choose a surgical abortion near the end of the first trimester, the delay created by the 72-Hour Requirement will prevent them from being able to obtain any abortion in South Dakota because these abortions are only available through the first 13.6 weeks after the first day of the woman’s last menstrual period. Docket 10- 6 at 2-3. It stands to reason that the number of women who are effectively denied their right to undergo an abortion increases as the required period of delay increases.
Moreover, it is generally accepted that women are often the victims of abuse. And abusers often forcibly impregnate their partners to maintain control or increase their control over their women. Docket 10-7 at 7-8. [...] For those women who are in such relationships, the 72- Hour Requirement creates an incredible obstacle because it requires them to make separate trips, which for many is effectively impossible to do because two trips double the chances of being “caught” and punished by the abusive partner. Docket 10-7 at 9-10. [...]
On the "risk factors" requirement (what docs had to say to patients regarding "complications":
Under South Dakota law, when a statute is “not ambiguous,” “[i]t is to be assumed that [the statute] means what it says and that the legislature has said what it meant.” Kreager v. Blomstrom Oil Co., 298 N.W.2d 519, 521 (S.D. 1980) (citation omitted). Thus, the Act requires the physician to tell the patient about “any factor . . . for which there is a statistical association with an increased risk of” “any adverse physical, psychological, or emotional reaction, for which there is a statistical association with legal abortion, such that there is a less than five percent probability that the statistical association is due to sampling error” that can be found anywhere in the nearly forty years of published literature covered by the Act. The literature covered by the Act also includes studies conducted in countries where abortion may be legal, but not practiced as safely as in the United States. And nothing in the text of the statute permits physicians to use their medical judgment to avoid disclosing information that is untrue, misleading, or irrelevant.Governor Daugaard said he wasn't surprised by the ruling and thinks it is merely a "setback". He is particularly fond of that 72 hour period which he called in a written statement regarding the ruling "time to reflect and let women make good choices". (Ahem, fuck you.)
[...]
Defendants argue that the physician is free to explain to the patient that this type of forced disclosure is untruthful or misleading. The court rejects this argument because even if the physician is allowed to tell the patient that the previously disclosed information is untruthful or misleading, then that information is irrelevant to the patient. And a physician cannot be forced to disclose information that is “untruthful, misleading or not relevant to the patient’s decision to have an abortion.” See Rounds, 530 F.3d at 735.
[...]
The second issue is whether the Risk Factors Requirement constitutes a substantial obstacle. The Risk Factors Requirement departs from standard medical practice by mandating that physicians identify, retrieve, and review every article published in English, after 1972, in every peer-reviewed journal indexed by PubMed or MEDLINE or PsycINFO that could trigger an assessment or disclosure obligation because it could include a “risk factor” or “complication” as defined in the Act. After this undertaking, physicians are required to assess every patient for the resulting list of “risk factors,” discuss the assessment, and disclose the associated “complications,” as well as “the rate at which those complications occur both in the general population and in the populations of persons with the risk factor.” See Section 3(6) of the Act.
[...]
Even if a physician could formulate a search and retrieve all of the required materials, the volume of articles the physician would have to review and analyze would be prohibitive. For example, a search for the term “abortion,” restricted to journals published in English between January 1973 and July 2010 yields more than 45,000 results in PubMed and more than 2,000 results in PsycInfo. Docket 10-12 at ¶ 24. Even ignoring the fact that some responsive articles will be missed in the above search, no physician could review the thousands of articles yielded by searching the two databases.
[...]
The barrier imposed by the Risk Factors Requirement is compounded by the Act’s provisions imposing civil liability on physicians who perform abortions. The Act creates a new civil action by the woman or her survivors against both the physician and the facility where the abortion was performed if the physician fails to comply with any of the Act’s requirements, including the Risk Factors Requirement. Future plaintiffs may receive a wide range of damages and attorneys’ fees.18 Moreover, the Act creates a presumption that a woman would not have had the abortion if the physician had complied with the Act’s requirements.
This presumption is a rebuttable presumption. But the Act provides that if a physician presents evidence rebutting the presumption, the “finder of fact” must determine whether the woman would have consented to the abortion “if she had been given . . . all information required by this Act to be disclosed[.]” See Section 9(3) of the Act. And as explained above, this includes information that is presented in an article as being true but is actually untrue and therefore misleading or irrelevant. Understandably, physicians will be unwilling to perform abortions when faced with likely litigation that will include this type of situation.
[...]
The third issue in the undue burden analysis is whether the Risk Factors Requirement is a substantial obstacle in a large fraction of the relevant cases. Every woman who chooses to undergo an abortion will be unable to obtain one because the Risk Factors Requirement applies to every woman who seeks an abortion in South Dakota and no physician will be able, or willing, to perform an abortion without violating these requirements. The Risk Factors Requirement is therefore a substantial obstacle in a large fraction of the relevant cases. Thus, plaintiffs are likely to demonstrate that the Risk Factors Requirement constitutes an undue burden on a woman’s constitutional right to a pre-viability abortion.
Leslee Unruh, who is a founder of one of the "crisis pregnancy centers" registered to provide "counseling" to women under the new law, is promising to file a motion to intervene in the lawsuit on the state's behalf:
Unruh said the Alpha Center plans to introduce evidence from the women who told South Dakota legislators that they'd been coerced into having abortions and that Planned Parenthood failed to learn that before going ahead with the procedure.Planned Parenthood is going to fight everything about that move. As for South Dakota itself:
"I don't want those women to feel discouraged tonight," Unruh said Thursday. "I do feel very strongly that this law will ultimately be upheld."
Attorney General Marty Jackley said his staff intends to take time to fully digest the ruling before making its next move.And so they regroup to plan the next method of denying women access to health care.
"At this point, I need to fully review the decision and discuss it with the attorneys involved in the case, the governor and legislative leadership," Jackley said.
Happy Canada Day!
Yep, it's that day when we get to celebrate poutine, beavers, red-serge-clad Mounties, bilingualism*, and the home of proper bagels (Montreal, of course):
Happy Canada Day/Bonne Fête du Canada, Shakers!
Renee over at Womanist Musings has a super post up about why Canada is great, eh.
What are your plans for the best holiday of the summer? Even if that means you have to take the weird alternative of celebrating Canada Day on the 4th of July?
* Who could argue against two tongues being better than one?
Neat Law!
Yesterday, Republican Ohio Governor John Kasich signed into law "a bill that allows gun owners in the state to carry concealed weapons into bars and other places where alcohol is served." Sure. Great idea. Neat law.
I know what you're thinking: Because of its inhibition-lowering properties, alcohol use results in lots of bar fights and other alcohol-related violence already, so it seems like a REALLY BAD IDEA to throw guns into the mix!
Well, no doy, they thought of that! That's why the law "prohibits gun owners from consuming alcohol or being under the influence of alcohol or drugs when they carry their weapons into bars."
Alcohol + Guns + Honor System = NOTHING COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!
Now, in case you're the sort of person who doesn't want to take your concealed weapon into a bar, but you WOULD like to carry it to a sporting event or a mall, fear not: You have not been left out.
The new laws allow residents to carry concealed handguns into licensed establishments in the state, including shopping malls and sporting venues.Perfect.
The new law also allows a person with a concealed carry license to transport a loaded handgun in a motor vehicle without securing it in a holster, case, bag or box -- and allows them to remove a handgun from a secure location.
Dispatches from CGI America
As I mentioned, I've been attending the Clinton Global Initiative America conference the last two days, in a press capacity, and it's been a very interesting experience. If you don't know anything about the Clinton Global Initiative, it's an outgrowth of the William J. Clinton Foundation, which is an organization founded by former president Bill Clinton with a mission to "strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence." CGI is the economic component of that vision, and its objective is to convene international leaders in the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs, to strategize innovative ideas to solve urgent global economic problems and to find commitments (financial donations) to fund those ideas. This conference was the first CGI meeting to focus on the United States.
I was really glad to have had the opportunity to attend; my thanks to Peter Daou. I also had such a good time meeting and having a chance to shoot the breeze (and breezy it was, sitting along the Chicago River!) with Vanessa Valenti, who is really warm and so nice.
Frequent guest contributor Shaker BrianWS came with me, and he'll have his own follow-up on the educational session we attended on Wednesday afternoon. I'm going to do a broader overview, with some specifics about Wednesday morning's session about "Jobs Jobs Jobs" and Thursday morning's session on "American Success Stories."
The conference is expertly branded and is generally very well organized. It definitely has the feeling of a place where Important Things are happening. When Clinton takes the stage at the opening plenary session on Wednesday morning, he is a total rock star. His charisma is legendary—and what you've heard about how he's even more electric in person is absolutely true. The guy is unbelievable.
And he is, of course, just the smoothest smooth talker in all of smoothdom: He has a way of saying things that allows everyone in the room to hear exactly what they want to hear: If you lean left, and want to hear him talking about improving the economy for the betterment of workers, that's what you'll hear, and, if you lean right, and want to hear him talking about improving the economy for the betterment of corporations, that's what you'll hear—and you're both listening to the same damn sentence. Guy's a fucking wizard.
Even a wizard has his limits, though, and, despite Clinton's ability to project concern for people who are struggling across this nation, it becomes evident very quickly that what is meant by "the public and private sectors working together" is "let's figure out what the government can do for corporations." This is not the typical theme of CGI meetings addressing global needs, but, this ain't the globe: This is America.
And, in the US, it's taken as read that capitalism trumps socialism, that everything has to be run through corporations, that every investment has to be profitable. Even investing in education, in healthcare, is framed in terms of a better educated workforce, healthier employees.
I remark to BrianWS that the difference between CGI Global and CGI America is like the difference between socialized medicine and Obama's healthcare reform: Elsewhere in the world, the government just guarantees and provides its citizens healthcare; here, we've got to run it through the insurance companies and make sure corporations still have the opportunity to profit.
I took a lot of detailed notes during the open session, intending to share them, but now I've got so much to pass on that I'll just note a couple of quick things:
1. Clinton noted that the US can't be scared to measure itself against the global competition and see if someone's doing something better than we are, which I thought was a very good point. So much of the "USA! Number One! USA! BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD!" rah-rah patriotism favored by the rightwing is really born of fear and insecurity, and refusing to self-reflect and explore the rest of the world with humility really does stand in the way of innovation.
2. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also spoke during the opening session, made the point that investment in cities requires confidence in those cities, which I also thought was a good observation. One of the reasons Chicago has always done well is because its mayors are absolutely ga-ga for their city: There's plenty of criticism to be made of Emanuel (and Mayor Daley before him), but when Emanuel says he believes Chicago should be the capitol city of the world, lol, he actually believes that shit.
(The difference between Daley and Emanuel is that Daley believed the city was its people; Emanuel believes the city is its industry.)
3. Emanuel introduced the idea that the government's role is not to create jobs; the public sector's role is to create the circumstances in which the private sector can best create jobs. The public sector's role, he argued, is to create an educated workforce and to build the roads and the public transportation and the infrastructure so they can get to work. This would be a recurring theme throughout the conference.
4. Clinton, who spoke again after Emanuel, noted that China spends as much as 9% of its income annually on infrastructure investments; the US spends about 3%. We need to invest to be competitive, he said.
5. Laura Tyson spoke after Clinton. She had many interesting facts like median wages have not increased since 1973 (holy shit!), and some less interesting facts like how the recession has been "particularly hard for men." (Nope and nope and nope and nope and nope! And there's way more nope where those came from.) But she was very insistent on this point. BrianWS passed me a note with his artistic interpretation of her address:
6. There followed a panel discussion (about which I observed in my notes: "Clinton reclines in his chair like Bacchus"), and during which I was struck how much less this CGI conference focused on empowering individuals than have others. Here, the focus was empowering businesses, because the US is so corporate-focused, so intractably certain of the infallible nature of The Market, that even the private sector must be designed to serve corporations.
After the morning session, we were sitting in the press room when Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger introduced himself to us. Karger is not the typical Republican presidential candidate: For a start, he is openly gay. For another, he supported Hillary Clinton in the last election. He is pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, pro-legalizing weed, pro-energy independence, pro-immigrant, and anti-war. He is to the left of Democratic President Barack Obama on virtually every social issue—and his "fiscally conservative" economic policies are essentially the Democratic Party's current economic platform.
"Fred," I asked him, "why are you a Republican?"
He laughed and told me that he wanted to change the Republican Party from the inside, to move it back to a party that actually believed in privacy and freedom and civil rights and individual choice.
Fred Karger is the sort of candidate people call a crank. I don't know if he's a crank, but I'm pretty sure he's one of the nicest and most earnest politicians I've ever met—and I'm really glad to have met him.
And Dudley really likes the Fred Karger Frisbee he gave me.
The afternoon session was "Education in America: Regaining Our Edge." As I mentioned, BrianWS is writing a more detailed piece on that session, so again I'll just quickly note a few things:
1. Someone on the introductory video whose name I didn't catch observed that, although we wouldn't put up with our Olympic teams being 24th or 25th, we seem to be content with our students being 24th or 25th in maths and sciences. Oof. It hurts because it's true!
2. Again, Clinton's star power is remarkable and everything he says sounds like what everyone wants to hear. Do you want to hear this is good for workers? Do you want to hear it's good for business? Done and done.
3. The unemployment crisis is an education crisis: 62% of Americans without high school diplomas aren't working.
4. Stephanie A. Burns, chair of the Dow Corning Corporation (because no doy that's who should be involved in education reform), explains that manufacturing has changed not just in that it demands more technical competency, but also in that workers make "critical decisions" on the floor. Good observation. I write in my notes: "Sooooooo...undermining the type of education that gives students critical thinking skills is pretty fucking stupid. And yet Corporate America almost unilaterally supports the GOP, which treats hostility toward intellectualism as a sacred oath."
5. There is discussion of social deficits in "soft skills," like the abilities to understand what's written in front of you, stay focused, finish tasks, control anger, and work well with others on a team. Roger Ferguson, CEO of TIAA-CREF, says that such social deficits are already evident as children enter school. Kaya Henderson, Chancellor of the DC Public Schools, notes that achievement gaps don't get closed in part because we still do school like we did 100 years ago.
6. Ferguson and Henderson, who are the only two people of color on the panel, seem more focused on educating individual people, as opposed to educating "a workforce." They make observations like how empathy and communication are important job skills.
7. During the debate about poverty not being "an excuse," I'll give you one guess which two members of the panel are able to successfully navigate the space in which poverty is not an excuse, but an explanation that creates disadvantages that need to be accommodated.
At the end of this session, BrianWS and I are depressed by how little focus there is at this conference in helping individual people, except as a by-product of creating a populace who can best serve corporations. It's not surprising, but it is nonetheless depressing how nakedly indifferent most of the participants are toward anything that isn't demonstrably profitable.
In good news, I note the diversity of participation. There are a lot of women here, many of whom are women of color.
Thursday morning, ugh, I wake up with a cold. One day among the humanoids and I'm sick!
The morning session is the one I've been looking forward to—my garbage governor Mitch Daniels is on the panel, which will be discussing "American Success Stories" over breakfast.
Former Democratic Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, is the moderator. She explains they'll be sharing "replicable and scalable success stories" that created job in their region.
Antonio Villaraigosa, Mayor of Los Angeles, starts the session, noting that the economies of the biggest 3 US cities—NY, LA, and Chicago—approximately equal the GDP of France. The 10 biggest cities combined form an economy which is only surpassed by the US as a whole and China. Thus, investment in US cities is important. Currently, he says, there is a $2.1 trillion need for infrastructure investment currently in the US—and, by the way, it's a good return on your investment!
Mitch Daniels is next. I can barely hear him over the sound of my head exploding as he waxes proudly about the fifth anniversary of the privatization of the toll road, resulting in the "best toll road we've ever had." Barf etc. He explains that his government's primary goal has always been to write regulations and rewrite law to make Indiana as attractive as possible to business. (Except, of course, where it is unattractive to businesses to not be able to extend same-sex partner benefits and trans* protections and know that their employees can get an abortion to save their lives if they need one.) "We do everything we can to make it attractive and profitable to do business in Indiana." Yep. Like undermining workers' collective bargaining rights.
Granholm says: "I think we all agree that small businesses are sparkly unicorn farts" or whatever.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, says very interesting things about building an arts community and a tech community and urban gardens. It's the first thing that's been said about investing in culture. But he then immediately argues that the best thing to replicate their success in Las Vegas is to deregulate and get rid of red tape and make it easy for private sector innovators and entrepreneurs to do what they want to do. He jokes how he doesn't pay attention to politics, which is maybe why he doesn't understand that deregulation tends to come at the expense of worker and/or consumer protections. Or possibly he doesn't care.
He wraps up by saying one of the best phrases he's heard is that failing to deregulate to allow speed to market and also speed of expansion, etc. "slows down the metabolism" of a place. Great fat metaphor. This is getting better by the minute.
There is a lot of talk of private and public partnerships, but it's basically just private enterprise wanting the public sector to deregulate everything to maximize profitability.
Tanya Fiddler, Executive Director of the Four Bands Community Fund, who works with tribal communities in the poorest county in the nation, tries to inject some humanity into the discussion: "I know a lot of the focus here is on urban environments, but what do you do with the rural 70% of the rest of the country? We have value, too." There need to be meaningful jobs to move people out of "chronic and persistent" poverty, she notes.
No one responds meaningfully to what Fiddler says. Hsieh immediately follows by saying something about how entrepreneurs need to follow their passion, not money. Follow your passion and money will come. Granholm: "How can government grease the wheels for passion?"
It's painful at this point.
Michael E. Porter, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, says government has to invest in infrastructure, invest in establishing R&D at local universities, facilitate connecting like-minded businesses regionally, but then get out of the way so that they can do business. Robert J. McCann, CEO of UBS Wealth Management Americas, says government needs to provide the sandbox for the natural creativity and entrepreneurship that exists in this country.
Et cetera.
This morning session seems to sum up the overarching theme of the conference: Government's role, it seems, is to build a business-friendly environment most conducive to for-profit enterprises and then get the fuck out of the way.
And, in theory, that sounds pretty good. But, in reality, deregulation and the subversion of both consumer protections (predatory lending) and worker protections (union-busting) is one of the contributing factors to the shitty economic situation we're in. We don't need more of that; we need less.
The whole premise of government providing for corporations so corporations can provide for the people also seems predicated on a fantasy that corporations give a fuck about the quality of life of its workforce. This has not been proven to be the case. In fact, the precise opposite has been demonstrably true for 40 years and counting. We're a long, long way from Mr. Ford and his philosophy about building cars his employees could afford.
I have no doubt that some very good ideas for genuinely progressive innovations will emerge from this conference, because there are many progressive policies that are also profitable.
But I did not walk away feeling optimistic about this nation's future. I walked away feeling more than ever that our democracy has been replaced by a corporatocracy—and I'm profoundly cynical about our ability to reclaim ownership of this state.
Question of the Day
If you could permanently remove one show from television, what would it be? (Or radio show, book series, etc, if you don't watch television)
I would love to see Man Vs. Food vanish forever. I can't begin to describe how much that show sickens me on so many different levels.
Kansas Update
This post is now updated
This post has been updated again, 7/01
So back on Monday I posted about Kansas's backdoor method of denying women access to health care.
There are now no abortion providers in the state:
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas has been denied a state license to allow it to continue performing abortions as of Friday. That means Kansas will become the only state without a clinic or doctor's office performing abortions, at least temporarily.Aid for Women was denied outright without inspection when the center said they would need to renovate. The Center for Women's Health (who also would have needed renovation) canceled its inspection and filed a federal lawsuit. All were in the Kansas City area and, according to this article, the next nearest clinic is in Columbia, Missouri. According to Google Maps, Columbia is--at best, depending on route and coming only from Kansas City (KS)--130 miles away.
[UPDATE] Planned Parenthood Kansas & Mid-Misouri just announced that they received a license to continue operations. So, there is just one clinic in the state of Kansas. Also, a hearing is scheduled for Friday regarding the lawsuit filed by the doctors who run The Center for Women's Health.
[UPDATE II, 07/01] Federal Judge Carlos Murguia has granted the request from Aid for Women and the Center For Women's Health for a preliminary injunction. So, for now, the law is blocked and unenforceable.
[H/T to Steph Harold, @IAmDrTiller]
